Never Bite a Boy on the First Date

I’d never been in a boys’ locker room before, not even when I was dating Zach, king of high school athletics back in Georgia. To put it politely, the smell was much…stronger…than in the girls’ locker room. Daniel chivalrously held the door open for me, so I had a chance to glance around when we first went in. I spotted a row of mirrors over the sinks, off in an alcove. Wouldn’t it be useful if I could spot Daniel in one of those – or not spot him, as the case may be – if, say, it turned out he had no reflection? But getting any closer would run the risk that he’d notice my lack of reflection too.

I watched him as he wove through the benches. Was he avoiding the mirrors like I was? If he was, he was pretty casual about it. We made it to the door that led on to the football field and I checked out the broken lock. It looked like a super-strength job – as if someone had just grabbed the door and pulled, snapping the lock mechanism in half.

Outside, the clouds were clearing up, and rays of moonlight sliced across the football field in front of us. Daniel paused in an oval of silver light and looked down at me.

“It was nice to meet you, Kira,” he said.

“Yeah, you too. Welcome to the school,” I added wryly. “It’s usually not quite this exciting. Um – I mean awful. Well, OK, it’s usually awful, but in a different, really boring way. Um, but I’m sure you’ll love it.” OK, stop talking now.

“I’m looking forward to it a lot more now that I’ve met you,” he said. A slow smile spread across his face. It was a sexy smile, a candles-and-black-lace smile – the polar opposite of Zach’s dopey let’s do it in a closet leer.

“See you tomorrow then,” I said, smiling back.

He touched his forehead in a little salute and started to walk away across the football field.

“Daniel,” I called after he’d gone a couple of paces. He turned and looked at me, walking backward. “Did you find anything upstairs? I mean – about the murder?”

He smiled the same smile again, but for some reason, this time it sent chills down my spine.

“Oh,” he said. “I have some theories.”

Then the moon went behind another cloud, and when it emerged again, Daniel was gone.

Chapter Six (#ulink_f95b2be6-c2d2-5501-aae0-e7a1930e86bb)

ISPENT THE REST of the night trying to make lists of clues to help me solve the mystery. To give you an idea of how well that went, here’s what my “Daniel” list looked like:

DANIEL

Hot

Likes hanging out at murder scenes at night

Really hot

Says he wants to be a detective

Great abs

Starting school right after the murder – suspicious?

Extremely, totally, remarkably hot

And here’s another list:

SMILEY GUY

Looked at the crime scene v. suspiciously

Also very hot

Where have these hot boys been hiding?

Too smiley to be a vampire?

Really cute smile

Find out name…investigate further…critically important: great abs or not?

Like, seriously cute smile

So it wasn’t exactly Nancy Drew-calibre work. Perhaps you can tell that I’d been stuck with Zach for the last six months of moving and hiding and not meeting hot new guys, so I was having some side-effects. I don’t normally obsess over abs that much. At least I don’t think I do. Then again, my experience with hot-guy abs is fairly limited so far. Presumably in, like, a century or so, I’ll be all blasé: Oh yeah, abs, whatever – been there, done that.

I checked Tex’s blog again to see what the last entry said. Scrolling back, I saw that he usually posted twice a day – once in the morning to record his breakfast and morning workout, and once in the evening to talk about what else he’d eaten, how totally kickass he was and what sports he’d watched that day. He’d posted the last entry on the morning of the day he died.