Chapter 36
Bayla
Darkness Descends
Midnight Syndicate
A cool breeze brushed across my face, swirling through my now shoulder-length hair, and I felt like I was being watched. I looked around hastily, because even though it was completely dark, I was surprisingly aware of a lot. I felt as if shadows were scurrying along the walls everywhere. Maybe some students sneaking around here at night, just like us.
“We can still go back.”
I sighed.
“Believe me, Julian, if I had the choice, three guesses where I’d be right now.”
Julian snorted, visibly dissatisfied.
Did it make a difference to him to be in the same room as Larissa or Bastien? After all, both of them were the same species. Maybe I should have spoken to Larissa first... Maybe. She had run off before I had even had the chance to speak to her in private. It was already unpleasant enough that Julian knew that something was wrong with me at all .
What if something had gone wrong with me? Maybe it had something to do with the rite of passage?
“What is it you’re thinking about, Blueberry?” I looked startled at my annoying neighbor, who must have noticed that I had a lot on my mind.
“How miserable my life is right now,” I replied with a frustrated sigh.
A soft laugh escaped him.
“It’s not funny. It’s stressing me out.”
Julian gave me his Julian grin.
“Can you actually do anything other than be amused by me all the time?”
The grin widened. “Every time I think my life is a mess, you come to me with something worse.”
I raised my eyebrows in fake contempt.
“Meanwhile, I feel most comfortable with you for that very reason.”
I stopped and looked at him in astonishment. He stopped too.
I hadn’t expected those words.
“You... I mean, everything seems so perfect about Emely, you know?” he continued, gesticulating, and a strange feeling that I couldn’t place settled on my chest. “She has everything you could have. A rich family, Nash’s guys backing her... She has the choice to go wherever she wants, even if she doesn’t use that chance. And then there is us. Chaos seems to be following us both.”
I nodded and studied his eyes, which shimmered like a deep lake in the lantern light and gleamed in the evening twilight. At the same time, I tried to sort out my strange feelings. What was wrong with me? Was it this town?
“By the way, I asked her today.”
The feeling in my chest became heavier and the smile, which was absolutely sincere, felt fake.
Concentrate, Bayla. He asked her, just like you suggested.
“So?” With all my effort, this question swung through the cool air.
How could a single word suddenly weigh so much?
I flinched violently as Julian placed both of his unnaturally warm hands on my shoulders. The desire to enjoy this warmth for longer flared up inside me.
God, Bayla, pull yourself together and bring more fucking clothes next time!
“She said yes !”
The joy in his gaze instantly melted my heart. How could anyone not be happy for him? He had managed to ask the girl he had feelings for, for years now – without even knowing it – out on a date.
The gleam in his eyes was abnormally captivating, so I looked at him a little too long before smiling.
“I’ve never seen anyone as excited as you,” I laughed softly.
The corners of Julian’s mouth relaxed a little, and he looked straight at me.
The wind blew through my hair again, making an unpleasantly eerie sound as it howled through the deserted corridors of the campus.
Then I felt something else, someone , close by...
Julian looked around in alarm. He must have heard it too.
“Bayla Adams,” a rough voice murmured, and I wheeled around.
There he was. The man who could have worked for a modeling magazine, but instead roamed the campus at night in black suits, chauffeuring rich spoiled snobs to university in Ferraris, making me take a step back and crash right into Julian’s inhumanly warm body.
I noticed Julian tense up, but then he stepped around me to stand in front of me.
But Bastien suddenly appeared behind me.
I wheeled around.
The Ruisangor man was staring at me with red glowing eyes. The moon illuminated his angular face dimly so that one half was in shadows.
His gaze triggered something in me. I couldn’t describe it. It was an alarming tingling sensation on my skin, all around my eyes.
“Didn’t I tell you to come alone?”
Julian only now realized that Bastien was standing right in front of me and turned around, ready to fight.
I grabbed his arm and motioned for him to stay behind me, looking to him, pleading, until he stepped beside me, his gaze... confused.
“Your eyes...”
What was wrong with my eyes? Had they taken on a life of their own again?
“Do you need any more proof that you’re one of us?” Bastien asked, his arms crossed behind his back. I saw a silver badge peeking out from his flat stomach, but I couldn’t make out the initials because his black suit jacket was slipping over it.
“Your eyes, your thirst for blood...”
“Has disappeared.”
Bastien looked at me indecisively. “That can’t be true.”
“But it is.”
He snorted discontentedly and came closer. “There’s something very strange about you, Bayla... Adams.”
Julian stepped closer, and Bastien’s head turned in his direction. His gaze grew darker, the glow more intense.
“You...” He stepped closer to Julian, and for a moment I was afraid they were going to attack each other, but the man had himself under control. He always seemed very composed and controlled. “You smell just like him .”
Julian narrowed his eyes, and I didn’t understand Bastien’s reference until Julian forced out his answer. “I’m nothing like the pack.”
Bastien eyed him. “You actually look like him.”
Confused, I blinked.
“I’m not one of them!” Julian pressed out angrily, but Bastien didn’t seem to mind.
He looked at him as if Julian was a file that could be read. Then he turned back to me, and I swallowed hard.
This man didn’t scare me, I just felt the need to absolutely not want to piss him off. His threat still burned like a brand in my brain.
“There’s something wrong with you. The daughter of Diana Adams, of all people.”
“So, you know my mother?” I snapped at him a little too harshly.
It bothered me that I couldn’t read his expression, because it was like a wall of steel.
“I’ll keep an eye on you. If anything suspicious happens involving you, I’ll take you to the estate, and we’ll train you there.”
Of course, he skirted my question.
“She’s not going anywhere she doesn’t want to go,” Julian said harshly, stepping closer to Bastien than I would have recommended.
How could he be so naive as to mess with a Ruisangor?
Bastien looked at Julian as if he were a ghost before lowering his voice and seeking my gaze.
“You’re one of us.”
His red eyes sent a shiver down my spine.
And then Bastien rushed past me like an illusion, through the corridors, until I could no longer hear him.
“What the hell was that?” Julian hissed tensely and I turned to him.
“Don’t ask me. The guy doesn’t scare me, but I wouldn’t invite him for tea either.”
The idea of Bastien sitting at a small table with a pink tablecloth and a small cup in his hand was more than absurd.
“I meant you.”
I looked up at Julian.
He meant my eyes.
“Are they still... red?”
“No,” he said quickly, and something inside me relaxed.
Then a soft howl of wind swept through the dark corridors again, and my goosebumps were back. It was as if I could feel a gaze on the back of my neck.
It was time to get out of here.
When Julian and I entered the house, three girls with green face masks stared at us as if they had seen a ghost.
“What’s he doing here?” Kelly Hepburn shrieked.
She was a real-life Barbie and the reason why my white T-shirts had turned a light shade of pink. She genuinely thought her colorful clothes matched my whites perfectly in the washing machine.
“If the Circle finds out...” Amber hissed angrily and pulled her black bathrobe tighter, making her wasp waist peek out.
Vivienna eyed me suspiciously.
I didn’t want to know what she was thinking. After all, she had seen my yellow eyes.
“I’m already gone,” Julian replied and was about to turn around when I grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him through the living area.
“Forget about it! You stay here. I still have something to show you.”
And that wasn’t even a lie. Five minutes ago, Larissa had texted me that we had missed a page while reading the diary, and now I was dying to squeeze the last bit of information I could get out of this shred of a book.
“Not the pregnancy test, is it?” Vivienna laughed gleefully. “That would be a scandal.”
I didn’t stop, but pulled Julian up the stairs without restraint.
“What pregnancy test?” he asked in alarm behind me.
“Don’t worry, not mine.”
“I’ll tell the Circle everything anyway, Bayla Adams!” Vivienna called from downstairs, and I jerked to a halt.
Slowly, I turned on the stairs and looked down.
There she stood. Vivienna, the spawn of hell, carrying my little secret. The devilish grin on her face spoke for itself.
“I can’t have you breaking the rules so brazenly. You’re ruining our reputation!”
Julian had to laugh, which made Vivienna visibly boil, and a book flew at him. He dodged quickly, and it smashed against the window pane of the stairwell.
“I warned you!” she hissed.
The murderous look in her eyes gave me the kick I needed to turn away from her and pull Julian further up the stairs, into the room where Grace, Larissa and Julie seemed to be having a heated debate.
“She fell in love again, so she never replied to the letter, and that’s why she stopped writing the diary.”
Grace seemed very determined to defend her point of view. A few of her wild black-brown corkscrew curls had fallen into her face. There were a lot of old books spread out in front of her, reminding me of the ones from the Quatura underground temple. There were strange brown stones scattered all around her and then, in contrast, Julie on the other bed, sitting at her laptop and trying to concentrate on something.
“I don’t think so. No. She had far too many questions and the new guy could never have clouded her mind so much that she threw all her principles overboard, just like that,” Larissa argued, throwing the figure-hugging leather jacket carelessly into the corner of her bed.
“ But maybe she realized that it’s pointless to bother with all this,” Grace hissed angrily.
“Then why didn’t you ever find out about her?” Larissa seemed to be in an argumentative mood. “I’m telling you. There’s something in the bush just waiting to be uncovered.”
Grace was beginning to lose her composure and when she looked at me, I could swear I saw hope in her eyes.
“Thank God you’re back. Your bloodthirsty friend is, firstly, unable to stay away from us; secondly, she touched the diary again, which you wanted to bring back and; thirdly, she is involved in forbidden things!”
“Firstly, I would never hurt you guys; secondly, good thing I looked again and thirdly; forbidden things are exactly my field of expertise.”
Grace shook her head, obviously frustrated, and seemed to want to give up arguing with my dominant friend for the time being.
Larissa only now seemed to realize that I was present.
“Bayla! There you are. Finally!”
She seemed to have forgiven me again.
Larissa looked at Julian and gave me that I-know-what’s-going-on-here look , which made me widen my eyes and shake my head. The urgent need to explain myself spread through my stomach.
“What’s he doing here again?”
“Grace, please,” I began. It was my luck that Grace seemed to be exhausted. I pulled Julian, who was about to leave again, further into the room, and he sighed, but gave in. “Julian doesn’t bite. Otherwise, your mother probably wouldn’t have allowed him to live in your neighborhood.”
Grace sighed as well.
“Bayla!” Larissa jumped up and came toward me. The next thing I knew, I was holding a scrap of paper in my hand and immediately recognized Alice’s handwriting. “We overlooked this yesterday.”
“And, unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way,” Grace mumbled annoyed from Emely’s bed, and I wondered when she had last slept there. She was usually at home – wherever that was – or – very rarely – on the couch downstairs.
“You have to read it!”
Only now did I fully realize what Larissa had pressed into my hand.
I hurried to my bed and threw my brown leather bag into the corner before sinking into the soft pillows and reading the diary entry. When Julian came to me, I had to smile because he seemed to be just as curious as I was.
How could I have missed this?
Revolving Door
Abel Korzeniowski
Beloved Mum,
I think fall has begun. I always feel so strange during fall. It probably has something to do with my powers. They just want to come out, and I really need to get back to Moenia to use them. But you’re sick and even though you’re an Air Quatura, you were still a good teacher. I’m lost without you. There is no other Fire Quatura in the Circle...
Anyway, it rained today. Very hard. I hurried across campus with Diana’s umbrella and had a lot of books under my arm. That was a mistake. There was a stupid slippery spot, and I fell to the ground with a crash.
So, I was lying there more or less soaking wet, the books in my arms protected from the rain. (God forbid I ever drop books on the floor).
“I don’t know anyone who cares that much about their books,” an amused male voice had said, and I had looked up, startled.
You won’t believe it, but it was the kind of book moment I had never really liked. But once you’re in the situation yourself, I think everything is different.
A young man was standing in front of me, both hands in his trouser pockets, and he was only wearing the white shirt of his uniform, black pleated trousers and a black suit jacket, none of the dark green and dark blue sweaters that most people wear here.
But it wasn’t his clothes, it was his amused smile at my clumsy behavior.
Instead of just getting up and walking away, I had stared at him. His clear gray eyes and the short dark blond hair that had fallen down his forehead, wet from the rain... He had looked at me the same way, just as insistently, until he had bent down to me to pick up the umbrella and hold it over us.
“Do you want to stay down here?” he had asked with a grin, and I had immediately turned into a tomato.
I don’t know why, but this young man had left me speechless and embarrassed at the same time. We had been almost alone on campus; me, completely soaked on the ground and him, squatting right in front of me as if I were a small cat.
Somehow, I must have managed to break out of my stupor and take the hand he had held out to me. He had been cold. Very cold. But his warm smile had felt welcoming and warm. And when I had stood again, he had taken off his suit jacket and placed it on top of my books.
“To keep your books intact until you get inside...” I, the idiot I was, had continued to stare at him speechlessly until he had said “But you should put them on afterward, so you don’t get sick,” leaving me standing there with the books wrapped up in his suit jacket and the umbrella and then disappearing somewhere in the east wing... There, where those courtyards with the fountains and stone pillars entwined with ivy are.
It had reminded me of these places, of little fleeting moments that were sometimes overlooked, but which held a little spark of magic if you took the time to look at them.
I must have stood there for a few more minutes, watching the rain turn the meadows a lush green and the sky a dull gray. The emerging sun had shone on the leaves, and everything had glistened.
And at that moment I had known that I had experienced just such a book moment. But then it was gone, and with it the mysterious young man whose name I would probably never know.
The Old Manor
Alessandro Mastroianni, Ano Pi
Irritated, I held the page in my hand.
Those words were beautiful. Alice had fallen in love with someone... and then the diary stopped.
Grace eyed the page in my hand suspiciously. “The very fact that she was a Fire Quatura means she should never have occupied herself with such thoughts.”
“Why?” Julian asked, and Grace blinked at him in indecision before continuing.
“Fire is a rare element, so she must have been very much the center of attention. And secondly, her father probably wasn’t human either, because he probably passed on this gift to her, which would have made her a powerful Quatura and pushed her even further into the focus of the Councils.”
I looked at Julie. She, too, had to be a powerful Quatura. And I felt sorry for her.
Larissa laid back down on the cozy-looking bed, without taking off her black boots, of course. “We need to find the rest.”
Larissa’s idea didn’t seem to please Grace at all . “No, you don’t have to!”
“You bet we do,” Larissa replied mischievously and looked at me. “You’re going to look for the rest, aren’t you?”
The curiosity in me made me answer faster than I intended. “I have no other choice if I want to find out more about my mother.”
“Perfect.” Larissa straightened with satisfaction and reached for her camera.
Grace’s eyes widened with indignation. “You can’t be serious.”
Guilt mingled with my curiosity, as if I was doing something forbidden and disappointing Grace. No doubt this was true, but I had nothing to lose but my memories of this town.
“There’s no Alice Blair in the student records,” it came surprisingly from Julie, who looked up from her laptop for the first time, making Grace’s jaw drop.
“Are you serious?”
Julie blushed, but turned her gaze to us. “The old files haven’t been digitized yet.”
“Crap,” Larissa muttered, disappointed.
“Not necessarily,” I said, looking at her. “When we were at Professor Copeland’s the other day, I found the student files from the last few decades.”
“Jackpot.”
The expression on Larissa’s face changed instantly, and I knew she was about to come up with one of her doomed plans that would once again only cost me my head.
“What?! You broke into the Senseque director’s office?!”
Everyone looked at Grace. Only I looked at Julie, whose pale face was beginning to take on color.
“Let’s just say we needed some information.”
Larissa sounded like Grace wasn’t giving us all a death stare and winked at Julie, which Grace – thankfully – didn’t question.
“Have you completely lost your mind now?” Grace jumped up angrily, her look killing any joy at Larissa’s discovery. “If he finds out and my mother finds out, Julie and I are screwed!”
“Relax, woman.”
How could Larissa not lose her cool with Grace?
“No, I won’t! Don’t interfere in this matter!” Grace was beside herself with anger. “Bayla is one of us!”
My heart stung, and there it was again: that feeling that I was a traitor. How was I going to tell Grace that I wasn’t one of them? No doubt she would tell her mother and I would be the center of attention again.
“And she should behave accordingly!”
Now Grace looked at me. Her lips pressed together in anger.
Her eyes had a slight greenish glow.
It had to be like that with all species. When they were angry, their magic was activated. Anger . One of many strong emotions, just as Alarik had told me.
“And Julie and I will not be joining in your insane spying!”
I looked at Julie, whose expression said something completely different.
“Are you sure you want to miss out on this?” Larissa made it sound like a theater play we all wanted to attend, which it most certainly was not.
“Ruisangors only do harm! Stay away from her in the future!” Grace snorted furiously at me, turned away and a second later she slammed the door behind her.
I was surprised that only one door had had to be repaired so far.
“I warned you!” I heard her from the hallway, then everything fell silent.
No one dared to say anything until Julian spoke up for the first time in minutes.
“You broke into Alarik’s office?”
I thought he would be angry, but there was concern in his expression.
Wasn’t he the one who knew Alarik better than I did? Did I have to worry now? Alarik had caught me that day and had been strangely friendly.
“It was important,” I said in a rush, turning my gaze away from his piercing olive-green eyes.
“So, I shouldn’t ask any more questions or worry?” he now asked with suspicion.
“It’s lovely that you’re worried, but we’ll be fine,” Larissa said with amusement and came over to take the diary entry from my hand.
Once she had tasted blood, it was hard to stop her from doing something. And automatically I wondered if she really drank blood all the time and how it made her feel.
I had experienced it myself. This lust, this greed for it... and it was still a mystery to me. But the feeling had disappeared overnight, and now I was disgusted again by the plastic bags under my bed that Larissa had almost found twice.
“I just don’t want to get killed if you’re up to anything,” Julian said, and I looked at him in surprise.
“So, you’re going to help us find out more about Alice?” Larissa asked with suspicion and I looked at Julian in confusion.
Girls Like You
The Naked And Famous
“Actually, I wanted to stay away from all this stuff, but it looks like I’ve somehow ended up in the middle of it.”
The corners of my annoying neighbor’s mouth moved up a little until his eyes twinkled playfully at me.
Great . I had Julian Bardot stuck with me.
“Any objections, Blueberry?”
I grinned and flashed him my middle finger. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re hard to get rid of?”
“No, you’re the first person.”
I rolled my eyes.
“He knows too much for us to let him go without erasing his memory.” I looked at Julie, who seemed to have just meant that seriously. “Even if memory deletion is more complicated with a Senseque.”
Julian shook his head. “I’m not letting you witches play with my head.”
Julie bit her lip. You could tell Julian’s presence was still unsettling her.
I felt his gaze on me and wheeled around.
“Your friends don’t like me. Is that possible?” he laughed sheepishly.
“That depends on whether you’re one of Bayla’s friends too, or whether you’re participating in this...” Larissa drew theatrical quotation marks with her fingers in the air. “ We-all-hate-each-other-just-because-we-don’t-belong-to-the-same-species nonsense .”
“There are reasons for this hostility,” Julie remarked with seriousness.
“I’m sure it’s just based on prejudices,” Larissa countered.
I looked at Julian, who was giving me a thoughtful look, and wished I could read his mind. He never wanted to have anything to do with any of this, but now I had somehow dragged him into it.
Oddly enough, he straightened up and smiled playfully. Then he showed me his middle finger too, which completely threw me off.
“What are you saying? Friends?”
It sounded sincere.
I looked at his finger until it finally clicked, and an amused smile spread across my face.
“Friends under probation,” I said, rolling my eyes and giving him my middle finger so he could hook into it.
Julian was such a child. Me too.
Larissa laughed, confused. “Do I have to understand?”
Julian and I looked at each other, grinning broadly, as if this insider was something very special, and Larissa just shook her head.
“You’re the strangest guy I’ve ever met,” she said before turning to me. Her eyes began to glow.
Eventually, I would get used to it.
“Bayla, you know what to do.”