"Yeah, I suppose." Part of her still wondered what they knew about Christian or if it had been a bluff. "I just hope they don't get too annoying."

"Don't worry," he told her, his voice hard. "I'll make sure they don't."

I slipped back to my body and opened the door to my own dorm. Halfway up the stairs, I discovered I was smiling. I certainly didn't want Jesse and Ralf bothering Lissa, but if it came down to Eddie having to rough them up? Yeah. I wouldn't mind seeing them get a little payback for what they'd done to others.

CHAPTER 22

Deirdre the counselor must not have had much of a life, because she scheduled our next appointment on a Sunday. I wasn't thrilled about it, seeing as it wasn't just my day off—it was also the day my friends had off. Orders were orders, however, so I grudgingly showed up.

"You're wrong," I told her as soon as I sat down. We hadn't really addressed the questions from my first session yet. We'd spent our last couple of times talking about my mother and what I thought of the field experience.

"What about?" she asked. She wore a sleeveless floral dress that seemed too cold for a day like today. It also bore an eerie resemblance to the nature photographs that hung around the office.

"About the guy. I don't just like him because I can't have him. I like him because … well, because he's him. I've proven it to myself."

"Proven it how?"

"It's a long story," I said evasively. I didn't really want to get into the details of my Adrian compulsion experiment. "You just have to trust me."

"What about the other thing we talked about?" she asked. "What about your feelings about Lissa?"

"That idea was wrong too."

"Did you prove it to yourself?"

"No, but it wasn't the kind of thing I could really test the same way."

"Then how can you be sure?" she asked.

"Because I am." That was the best answer she was going to get.

"How have things been with her recently?"

"Recently how?"

"Have you spent a lot of time together? Kept up with what she's been doing?"

"Sure, kind of. I don't see her as much. She's doing the same things as usual though. Hanging out with Christian. Acing every test. Oh, and she's practically got Lehigh's website memorized."

"Lehigh?"

I explained the queen's offer to Deirdre. "She won't even be there until fall, but Lissa's already looking at all her classes and trying to figure out what she wants to major in."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What will you do while she attends classes?"

"I'll go with her. That's what usually happens if a Moroi has a guardian close to her age. They'll probably enroll me too."

"You'll take the same classes she does?"

"Yup."

"Are there classes you'd rather take instead?"

"How do I know? She hasn't even picked the ones she's going to take, so I don't know if I want to take them or not. But it doesn't matter. I have to go with her."

"And you don't have a problem with that?"

My temper was starting to prickle. This was exactly what I hadn't wanted to talk about. "No," I said tightly.

I knew Deirdre wanted me to elaborate, but I refused to. We held each other's eyes for a few moments, almost like we were challenging the other to look away. Or maybe I was reading too much into it. She glanced down at the mysterious notepad she always held and flipped through a couple of pages. I noticed that her nails were perfectly shaped and painted red. The polish on mine had started to chip.

"Would you rather not talk about Lissa today?" she asked at last.

"We can talk about whatever you think is useful."

"What do you think is useful?"

Damn it. She was doing the question thing again. I wondered if one of the certificates on her wall gave her some sort of special qualification to do that.

"I think it'd be useful if you stopped talking to me like I'm a Moroi. You act like I have choices—like I have the right to be upset about any of this or pick what classes I want to take. I mean, let's say I could choose them. What good would it do? What am I going to do with those classes? Go be a lawyer or a marine biologist? There's no point in me having my own schedule. Everything's already decided for me."

"And you're okay with that." It could have been a question, but she said it like a statement of fact.

I shrugged. "I'm okay with keeping her safe, and that's what you keep missing here. Every job has bad parts. Do I want to sit through her calculus classes? No. But I have to because the other part is more important. Do you want to listen to angry teenagers try to block your efforts? No. But you have to because the rest of your job is more important."

"Actually," she said unexpectedly, "that's my favorite part of the job."

I couldn't tell if she was joking or not, but I decided not to pursue it, particularly since she hadn't responded with a question. I sighed.

"I just hate everyone acting like I'm being forced to be a guardian."

"Who's 'everyone'?"

"Well, you and this guy I met at Court…this dhampir named Ambrose. He's…well, he's a blood whore. A guy blood whore." Like that wasn't obvious. I waited to see if she'd react to the term, but she didn't. "He made it sound like I was trapped in this life and all that too. But I'm not. This is what I want. I'm good at this. I know how to fight, and I know how to defend others. Have you ever seen a Strigoi?"

She shook her head.

"Well, I have. And when I say I want to spend my life protecting Moroi and killing Strigoi, I mean it. Strigoi are evil and need to be wiped out. I'm happy to do that and if I get to be with my best friend in the process, that's even better."

"I understand that, but what happens if you want other things—things that you can't have by choosing this lifestyle?"

I crossed my arms. "Same answer as before. There are good and bad sides to everything. We just have to balance them as best we can. I mean, are you going to try to tell me that life isn't that way? That if I can't have everything perfect, then there's something wrong with me?"

"No, of course not," she said, tilting back in her chair. "I want you to have a wonderful life, but I can't expect a perfect one. No one can. But what I think is interesting here is how you respond and cope when you have to reconcile these contradictory pieces of your life—when having one thing means you can't have another."

"Everyone goes through that." I felt like I was repeating myself.

"Yes, but not everyone sees ghosts as a result of it."

It took several heavy seconds for me to finally realize what she was getting at. "So wait. You're saying that the reason I'm seeing Mason is because I secretly resent Lissa for the things I can't have in my life? What happened to all the trauma I've been through? I thought that was the reason I'm seeing Mason?"

"I think there are a lot of reasons you're seeing Mason," she said. "And that's what we're exploring."

"And yet," I said, "we never actually talk about Mason."

Deirdre smiled serenely. "Don't we?"

Our session ended.

"Does she always answer your questions with questions?" I asked Lissa later. I was walking with her through the quad, heading toward the commons for dinner. Afterward, we were going to meet up with the others for a movie. It had been a while since she and I had hung out just by ourselves, and I realized now how much I'd missed it.

"We don't see the same counselor," she laughed. "It'd be a conflict of interest."

"Well, does yours do that then?"

"Not that I've really noticed. I take it yours does?"

"Yeah … it's actually pretty amazing to watch."

"Who knew the day would come when we'd be comparing notes on therapy?"