PROLOGUE
If he weren’t already dead, I swear I would kill Stephen Wills. I mean, the undead jerkwad completely ruined my sixteenth birthday. It’s one thing not to get the car my dad promised me, but to be turned into a vampire? I’m sorry, but that’s taking bad karma to a whole new level.
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Elizabeth Frasier and I’m sixteen years old (dead?). I’m a junior at Waterloo High in Austin, Texas. Or, at least, I was a junior until I woke up dead in a field behind the school. I’m pretty sure that the Austin Independent School District’s budget doesn’t cover the education of the undead.
Austin, you might be interested to know, has the largest urban colony of Mexican free-tailed bats in the world. I’ve known that fact for years. More recently, I’ve learned that Austin has a pretty hefty population of teenage vampires. Coincidence? I think not.
The thing is, I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in cause and effect, setup and payoff. I’ve spent almost sixteen years’ worth of weekends parked in front of a movie screen, and I know that it’s always the stupid coincidences that have the audience groaning and throwing popcorn. But make the stupid coincidence part of a bigger plan, and we’re right there on the edge of our seats.
It’s like that in life, too. Something might look like a coincidence, but it’s probably part of some overall scheme. Just because you don’t see the big picture doesn’t mean it’s not there. And if you don’t watch out, you might end up getting burned.
So you see, I should have realized. I should have known. But this is Stephen Wills we’re talking about. Hunky, gorgeous, dreamy Stephen Wills. And all I can do is plead temporary insanity.
It started, like so many things in high school, during lunch . . .