richellemead-vampireacademy01-vampireacademy-110824015328-phpapp02

"Someone's leaving early," I said, peering at him from around a cluster of bushes. I glanced
behind us and saw nothing. "They'll probably be here any minute.”
Lissa caught on. "When you said, 'We're leaving,' you meant…no. Rose, we can't leave the
Academy. We'd never get through the wards and checkpoints.”
"We don't have to," I said firmly. "He does.”
"But how does that help us?”
I took a deep breath, regretting what I had to say but seeing it as the lesser of evils. "You know
how you made Wade do those things?”
She flinched but nodded.
"I need you to do the same thing. Go up to that guy and tell him to hide us in his trunk.”
Shock and fear poured out of her. She didn't understand, and she was scared. Extremely scared.
She'd been scared for weeks now, ever since the healing and the moods and Wade. She was
fragile and on the edge of something neither of us understood. But through all of that, she
trusted me. She believed I would keep her safe.
"Okay," she said. She took a few steps toward him, then looked back at me. "Why? Why are we
doing this?”
I thought about Lissa's anger, her desire to do anything to get back at Wade. And I thought
about Ms. Karp—pretty, unstable Ms. Karp—going Strigoi. "I'm taking care of you," I said.
"You don't need to know anything else.”
At the mall in Missoula, standing between racks of designer clothes, Lissa asked again, "Why
didn't you tell me?”
"You didn't need to know," I repeated.
She headed toward the dressing room, still whispering with me. "You're worried I'm going to
lose it. Are you worried I'll go Strigoi too?”
"No. No way. That was all her. You'd never do that.”