Page 53 of The Golden Receiver

Campus felt different the day of the blood moon.

It was like everyone around me was buzzing. Or almost everyone. None of us humans were buzzing around with that unseen energy. I heard a few humans in one of my classes talking about their plans for the night. There was a group planning on sitting somewhere on campus and watching all the monsters roaming around. It felt voyeuristic, like it was turning our classmates into some kind of sideshow.

I didn’t have any plans.

Practice was canceled for the day, because it was starting to get dark by the time we finished up. The coaches knew that once the moon was up, there wasn’t anything that could keep the monsters on the team in their human shapes. And as I was the only non-monster on the team, that could be a bit problematic. Might be interesting to see what all my teammates turned into and might be interesting to see them try to play football, but I could see how that might not work. Especially if any of our teammates had claws.

Might puncture the ball.

When my last class got out, I wasn’t surprised to find Evander waiting outside. He’d been doing that a lot since the day he left practice early. I didn’t know what had happened that day, and I didn’t know what had changed, but something clearly had. I’d gone down, and he’d disappeared. Ever since then, he was practically glued to my side. He waited for me after every class and appeared out of nowhere. Even when I was pretty sure he was supposed to be in class.

I didn’t know the reason behind it, but I can’t say that I minded too much. I was starting to really enjoy Evander’s company.

“How was class?” he asked as he fell into step beside me.

I shrugged. “About a third of the class didn’t bother showing up. The rest of them were too busy talking about their plans tonight for class to be useful.” It had been a waste of time. I could’ve been making headway on my homework. Guess I did have plans for tonight after all. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class right now?”

He waved off the question, and I decided not to poke at it. Evander was an adult. If he wanted to blow off his classes, that was on him.

“What are your plans for tonight?” There was an underlying tightness to his question that I didn’t really understand.

I chose to ignore it. “Might head over to the library. Get some studying done.”

His reaction to my words was immediate. His shoulders tensed up, and the smile I was so used to seeing on his face had fallen right off. His amber eyes hardened, and I felt a chill race up my spine. But when he spoke, his voice was normal. I could still hear some of that tightness there, but it didn’t match the rest of his demeanor. “Or you could stay in tonight.”

I raised a brow at him. Why the hell would I stay in? “Why? You think one of our classmates is going to eat me or something?”

“No.”

He didn’t elaborate further. That wasn’t like him at all. He always had too much to say. Most of the time, I couldn’t get him to shut up. I didn’t like this. I needed to get to the bottom of it. I sucked in a deep breath and looked at him. I didn’t want to miss any clue in his answer. “What’s going on, Evander?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s bullshit. You’ve been acting weird as fuck for days.” His lips tightened into a thin line. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s nothing. Just paranoid,” he told me. “After everything with the team, I guess…” He let out a small breath. “I guess I’m just worried that something might go down tonight, and I’d feel better if I knew you were in your dorm. Safe.”

“I’ll be safe in the library.”

“Kieran.”

“Evander.”

“Can you just say you’ll stay in your room?”

“I’m not going to lie to you,” I told him with a shake of my head. “Like you said, it’s just paranoia.” We were getting closer to Karloff Hall already. “What time are you meeting the pack?”

“Grabbing a few things then heading over to Poe Hall to meet up.” He gave me one more pleading look. “Can you just promise you’ll try to be safe tonight?”

I nodded. That I could promise, because Professor Fan had said many times: no one was really in danger during the blood moon.

The walk to the library was an interesting one.

I’d never seen so many monsters in one place. I mean, I had. All semester since I’d come to Creelin, but they hadn’t all walked around looking like monsters. But tonight, under the light of the blood moon? The campus was full of monsters. I passed a giant walking tree holding hands with some normal looking guy. I passed a group of people with skin in varying pastel colors with wings. In fact, I saw a lot of people with wings or horns or tails just roaming around the campus.

There were people with glowing eyes, and I was sure I saw Coach Erikkson walking down a path. He looked taller than he did in practice, and that was saying something. The guy was already taller than anyone else on the field. I only recognized him because his skin looked just as gray as it always did, and he was the only person I knew with actual fire in his eyes. He waved to me when he saw me passing, so that was another clue of who he was.

Most of the other monsters just ignored me.