Chapter 46
Emely
Nature Night-time
mahogany
My stomach tingled excitedly as I walked through the forest. I could feel that he was nearby. He had really come.
I kept running and running, toward the place I hadn’t been in a long time. I had often sat on the thick wooden beams on the edge of the entrance and let my legs dangle.
My steps quickened until I stopped twenty meters from my destination to adjust my clothes.
It seemed strange that I was doing this for Julian . We had known each other for so long. It seemed like half an eternity. It had been ages, considering we had first met when we had been five.
Tucking my hair behind my ear, I walked along the path at a human pace.
In the evenings, it was pleasant here. You could hear animals, feel everything slowly quieting down and the stream rippling nearby.
Then I spotted our tree house. The place where half my youth had taken place.
Julian was sitting on one of the top branches of the tree, leaning against the trunk with his eyes closed.
“Hey, Bardot, don’t fall off the branch!” I shouted, wondering if that tone was even appropriate anymore.
Julian opened his eyes and looked down at me.
“You should know me. I’ve never fallen from a tree,” he laughed and came climbing down one level to the entrance to the man-sized tree house we’d built with Nash when the three of us had been twelve. Kieran, who had been eighteen at the time, had helped us, but hadn’t played with us there.
Taking a running start, I pushed myself off the bark of the trunk, moving fast enough so that I could push myself up without slipping. I pulled myself up by the branches and within a few seconds I found myself almost a meter below Julian, who playfully glared at me.
He held out his hand to me... and I grabbed it.
His hands had become more masculine, bigger, but above all warm and rough. It was an unfamiliar feeling.
He realized I was thinking too long before I pulled myself up, holding his hand.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay...” I gasped strained as I pulled myself up by his hand, which ended in me falling right into him and both of us crashing onto the wooden floor inside the house.
I lay on top of Julian and stared at him, but then quickly pushed myself off him.
“I’m sorry, I...” I had looked at Julian, thinking of someone completely else.
My face turned red, redder than it had been for a long time.
Why was my brain doing this to me? Memories that I wanted to erase because they were unpleasant.
“It’s all right. I just didn’t expect you to have so much strength.”
Julian got to his feet and sat down cross-legged next to me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I laughed and narrowed my brow. “I’m not fifteen anymore.”
Julian smiled as he looked at me.
“What?” I laughed shyly.
“You’ve really changed.” His gaze lingered on me longer than usual. Just like when he had visited us the other day. “You really aren’t the little girl you used to be.”
“You’ve changed too...” I replied quickly and turned my gaze away.
I didn’t want him to see that I was on the verge of tears.
How long had I waited to sit here with him? This tree house was part of my home, along with Julian.
“Thank you for saying yes .”
I tried harder to stifle the tears so I could turn back to him.
“Thank you for asking me.”
Then it just rolled awkwardly down my cheek.
Julian’s expression changed immediately. Where his smile would normally be, there was now concern. And then realization. He stared at me as if he could read all my emotions.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hating myself for just ruining the date.
“Hey, Ems...” Julian put his hand on my shoulder... and I let him. “I’m sorry. I was an idiot. I should have checked in with you more often.”
“No, it’s okay, I understand. The pack...” I began, but Julian cut me off and scooted closer to me, making my stomach tingle a little.
“Forget about the pack for a moment. It’s about you.”
And suddenly something blurted out of me that had been haunting me for two days. “What am I without the pack, Julian?” My eyes became so watery that my vision of Julian blurred. “What am I without these people, without this place?”
“Is it because of Russia?” There was audible concern in his voice. “You know you don’t have to go there.”
Automatically, I wondered if he would miss me. I looked at him desperately, wishing he would say so. But he remained calm, thoughtful.
And then we sat there, listening to the last of the birds and looking down at the stream, along the overgrown course of which fireflies were beginning to gather. The place was beautiful and distracted me from my thoughts. But only for the moment...
“More has changed than you think,” I sighed. “My brothers are no longer children, everyone around me wants to prove themselves. Now we have important guests, and it’s all the more important how I present myself as the Alpha’s daughter.”
Ever since the conversation with Tania, this title had made me feel uncomfortable.
“Even back then, the pack was already so important to you...”
I didn’t look at Julian, continuing to stare at the stream that reflected the soft glow of the tiny animals.
“Because it’s the place where I can be myself. My true nature only has a home there... and a purpose.”
What were we without our pack? Where was our home if not in a place where we were bound together by our similarities and formed an invincible unit? On our own, we were lost, lonely, vulnerable. Hunters could hunt us. Here we had a hunt-free area, my family’s private property, vast lands, almost half an island.
I turned my head to the person who had always made me feel most understood.
“And it could be yours too.”
The moment I spoke my words, I regretted them, because something inside Julian shut down. I could tell by the way he slowly turned his gaze away from me and toward his hands, which he was clutching the edge of the wood with.
“I’m sorry. I’ve gone too far.”
Julian didn’t say anything for a while, and I was getting more and more nervous.
“Ems... It’s just hard for me to see you separated from the pack. I’m trying to have a good time here with you, but at the same time, I’m being confronted with all the crap I wanted to stay away from.”
I swallowed.
Never would I tell him how much his words had just hurt me. How could I separate myself from the pack? What else did he want to talk about?
Slight anger flared in my stomach.
He had asked me on this date, not the other way around.
“I mean, that was also the reason I’d stayed away from you. You’re the Alpha’s daughter. If anyone would remind me most of the part of me I’m trying to separate myself from, it’s you.”
It felt like Julian was taking a knife and severing the connection between us. This was it, the moment when I felt most painfully deeply that Julian had grown away from me.
“Why does everyone always just see me as the Alpha’s daughter? As if I have no other characteristics, no personality.”
Anger rose up in me again. Was I really this little girl to everyone? The Alpha’s daughter?
“Because that’s what you are. And you like being it. You even live for it, talking about it all the time. It’s as if you want to carry the entire responsibility of your family on your shoulders.” I stared at him, stunned. “Just the fact that you’re trying to missionize me.” Missionize? Was he serious? I only wanted to help him. “Over and over again.” Julian was upset. He ran his fingers through his hair. “My God...”
His cell phone slipped out of his pocket, down the tree and landed in a rustling pile of leaves.
“Shit...”
Julian swung himself down from the tree. Then he reached for his cell phone to check the time.
I hadn’t felt this worthless in a long time.
“You’re seriously looking at your watch?” I said disappointedly.
He looked up at me apologetically. “I’m sorry. I have somewhere to be.”
I snorted with disdain.
I knew exactly where he was going. Yesterday, when I had needed to get to my next lecture, I had lingered on the stairs and had coincidentally overheard everything. The diary entries, the conversation. And that they were actually up to something. At first, I had listened in disbelief. A Quatura that had something to do with my uncle. As much as I wished the contents of that diary were fictitious, it made sense now that Alarik was the way he was today.
He was defending the other species, no matter how harmful it was to our pack, based solely on a crush he should never have had.
She had been a Blair witch. And she had disappeared. Surely her Circle had found out about it and done whatever to her.
I found it all the more na?ve that Julian was talking to Bayla and Yes – I wasn’t blind – he was literally glued to her. But he had asked me out on this unsuccessful date and I had successfully blocked that fact out.
I wondered if he really cared about me or if this was all just happening because Mica was here now to propose to me by the end of March if not sooner... Was Nash behind it?
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said quickly, and then he was gone.
And me? I sat annoyed in a tree house and watched fireflies.
If Julian thought I would be able to just talk to him normally after this behavior, he was wrong.
My cell phone rang.
It was Nash.
Had I not known what it was about, I wouldn’t have answered it. But my brother knew how to make things up to me, so this morning he had come up with a very amusing idea to get me involved in something risky.
“So?” I asked, feeling my stomach tingle with anticipation. I hoped he had good news about the plan, but I didn’t expect him to.
“You should come here right now. We’ll never get this chance again.”
Sneaky
original_soundtrack
I hadn’t sneaked across campus this quietly and discreetly in a long time. On the one hand, I was about to behave really badly. On the other hand, because I knew that Bayla, Julian, Larissa, and Julie were on their forbidden mission, which I would have loved to prevent my childhood friend from joining. But he probably needed to crash hard, face-first, to finally realize there were rules, that he couldn’t just spend time with two Quatura and a Ruisangor girl without facing consequences.
Only, what would my uncle do if he caught them? Should I call him?
The thought was extremely thrilling. But I wouldn’t have to do that. He was always on campus late on Tuesdays, usually in the library before he came home.
When I heard the rattling of metal, I looked around and spotted my brother holding his backpack up, grinning mischievously at me.
I hurried over to him.
“Don’t be so loud, damn it,” I hissed.
Then I looked around and spotted the matte gray beauty, which definitely shouldn’t belong to a twenty-year-old snob.
Miles always drove home, which made me all the more surprised that his car was here today. He was probably at Midnights.
“Ready to teach a Ruisangor a little lesson?”
Oh yes, I was. I was burning for it.
Nash handed me one of the spray paint cans, which I identified as red.
“The first or the second design?”
“The second,” I said firmly, remembering my brother’s spidery drawings. “He’ll always remember that.”
“Don’t you think he’ll know it was us ?”
Since when was my brother so worried? Hadn’t he been the one acting so impulsively lately?
“What do you want him to do? Call the police?”
Now I was actually the impulsive one. I would probably look back in a few years and wonder what had gotten into me. Hell. That’s what I would tell myself.
Nash laughed in amusement and started spraying. I hadn’t seen him this frisky in a long time.
It felt like an art project for school, only with the teeny tiny difference that it was a surprise gift for someone very special.
“It seems like he’s challenged you before,” Nash guessed correctly.
“That bastard pushes me to my limits every fucking day!”
“So, the mirrors too?” my brother asked eagerly.
“Everything, Nash, everything.”
A devilish grin settled on my lips as I continued with green.
Had I known how good revenge could feel, I would have started much sooner.
The urge to cough was getting stronger and Nash’s eyes were glowing yellow, but he was so obsessed with ruining Miles’ car that he probably didn’t care. Loud rock music would have been appropriate now, but we didn’t want to overdo it.
“If I had known that Ruisangor would annoy you, I would have done it much sooner.”
“I can handle him perfectly well. Let that be my worry.”
Nash scrutinized me before grabbing the black spray can and joining me at the engine hood.
“Quite a lot of effort for trying to annoy him, Emy.”
“If we’re doing it, then with style!”
Euphorically, I took the black from my brother’s hand and outlined my little work of art.
“I hope we don’t get our heads cut off for this.”
Nash sounded worried.
“The first one who cuts someone’s head off is me.”
I really had to sound like a possessed person.
“Shall we color Mikhail’s car while we’re at it?”
I widened my eyes and lowered the bottle. “Have you lost your mind?”
“He insulted you!” my brother hissed indignantly and leaned against the nearby tree where the bag was. I came over to him and grabbed the spray cans.
“You know that’s how he was brought up. He comes straight from the patriarchy .”
Just like us... I would have liked to add, but I didn’t. I had never been discriminated against or reduced to my gender by anyone in the pack.
“You don’t usually put up with that.”
Nash seemed unhappy with my attitude. What business was it of his anyway?
“That’s not your problem. You’re not an Alpha yet, so please take care of your own duties...” Before he could interrupt me, I continued. “When was the last time you hunted with Father?”
Correct. Not for a while now. Father and son went hunting. It was a time-honored Copeland tradition. Every half-moon. The last one had been a week ago.
Nash was silent for a while before he answered me. “Father is busy. He’s planning something...”
I raised a brow. “In what way?”
“I don’t know, but you should definitely tell Julian to join the pack, or he’ll be in big trouble.”
Since when was he so interested in Julian’s well-being? Didn’t he despise him for not joining us yet? Or was I right and the two of them were getting back together?
“Did something happen between you and Julian?” I asked teasingly and looked around. Not that anyone else was out here...
“Let’s put it this way. He finds your new admirer just as unfitting as I do.”
So there we had it...
“Very funny,” I grumbled, tying up the backpack when I noticed a bright flicker in the corner of my eye and looked up in alarm.
“And Father...”
I pulled Nash behind the wide trunk of the oak tree and looked at him in warning. “ Shh .”
Then I peeked around the tree.
“What?” Nash asked, irritated.
My eyes wandered across campus. Something had been there. I could swear...
“I just thought someone was there.”
“We should get out of here anyway,” my brother said, reaching for his backpack.
“Go already. I’m going to sleep soon too,” I assured him.
I couldn’t just leave here. Someone was here. And if anyone had seen us, we were finished. It wasn’t as if we had just damaged expensive private property... on a campus... that belonged to my family.
If the Bexleys found out...
Nash shrugged his shoulders.
“Whatever. See you,” he simply replied, then disappeared in the other direction, over to one of the paths that would lead him to the residential parks.
Sneaky Sneaky
Gold-Tiger
I turned to the porticoes that lay far behind the campus lawn with its many oak trees and scanned my surroundings.
I wanted to smell first to see if there was anything suspicious in the air. The lovely smell of spray paint immediately filled my lungs, and I had to fight the urge to cough.
There was no way around it. I had to go to where I had seen the strange flickering.
Without hesitation, I entered the portico and spotted what had caught my attention. Or rather who.
“Julie?”
Why did I even act surprised? Of course she was here.
Said person wheeled around, startled, and I felt a very cold breeze hit me directly, causing goosebumps to appear on my skin.
“You shouldn’t be here...” she whispered in panic.
I walked a little further toward her until we were only six feet apart.
It was her gray hoodie that had shimmered so brightly.
“Next time you go out to do forbidden things, you should wear something less noticeable.”
Julie’s face showed no emotion at all. “Where did...”
“Come on, you guys are so loud. It’s a wonder no one else has heard about this diary yet.”
The Quatura girl’s eyes widened.
“Where are your friends?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Let me guess, they’re snooping around my uncle’s office?”
Julie turned even paler than usual, which was an interesting play of color given her general pallor – noticeable despite the dim light from the wall lanterns.
I started to move. If my suspicions were correct, they had to be in Alarik’s private rooms... looking for information on a missing woman. What a waste of time.
Julie touched me on the arm and I winced. She was colder than Miles.
“Emely, please, I’m supposed to keep watch to make sure nobody comes.”
I shrugged and kept walking. “Pretend I’m nobody.”
“Please, I can’t let you go there.”
“This university belongs to my family,” I replied to Julie, who was trying to keep up with me. “You won’t be able to stop me.”
“What do I have to do to make you leave and pretend you didn’t notice?”
Julie looked at me desperately as we turned into the next corridor leading up to the stairs.
“You should rather ask me not to mention you when my uncle finds out.” I simply didn’t tell her that Alarik was a cinnamon roll and that the consequences would be harmless, to say the least. “You can still go back to our room and get into bed without a care in the world.”
“I can’t. I need clarity.”
I looked at her. She still tried to keep up.
“Because the book was also about your father?”
Julie eyed me. “You’re observant.”
“I’m a Senseque,” I said with more pride than I intended, and automatically got an adrenaline rush.
“But as you wish...” I began as I took the first steps of the staircase. “But then don’t be surprised if this little mission has consequences.”
Julie sighed and followed me to the thick wooden door. She had obviously given up.
Then, I opened the door and stepped inside.
The candlelight was already magically lit – as always – and the candles had not yet burned out after all these years. A trick my uncle never wanted to talk about and my father ignored, even though we all knew it had something to do with Quatura magic.
Monkeys Spinning Monkeys
Kevin MacLeod, Kevin
Bayla jumped up from the desk and I heard a drawer fall into a compartment. Julian came out of the sitting area with the fireplace to see what had happened. I had happened.
“Emely... What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same.” I looked at him challengingly, but then turned to Bayla. “And you!”
Bayla looked at Julie, who shrugged apologetically. “I didn’t have time to warn you. She just passed me by...”
Bayla looked back at me. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“I think that’s exactly what it is,” I said sharply.
“She knows,” Julian stated, running his hand through his hair indecisively. “I just didn’t know you knew that much.”
“You knew, and you didn’t tell us?” Julie asked, looking at him with a look of disbelief. Bayla did the same.
“She overheard us,” Julian explained to his accomplices.
“Sometimes I wish I could turn that hearing off, but I can’t. And you were talking so loudly about it, it was only a matter of time until someone found out.”
They all stared at me as if I’d just told them I’d seen that Alice girl in the East Wing.
“Just understand me. This is important. I’m certainly not staying in your stupid manor twiddling my thumbs when there’s a mystery screaming to be solved.”
We all wheeled around as Larissa appeared in the doorway, clearly at the edge of her nerves. The moment she spotted me, she stiffened and looked at Julie.
“What’s she doing here?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be standing guard at the west entrance?” Bayla asked desperately.
“Isn’t Julie supposed to be keeping watch in the east wing? And anyway… why does it smell so chemical here?” Larissa replied.
I bit my tongue.
The spray paint.
“What on earth is he doing here?” Julian asked and Julie immediately backed away, bumping into my uncle’s globe as someone else suddenly appeared in the doorway.
The one she was referring to stepped out from behind a visibly annoyed Larissa.
“Meet my babysitter, Miles DeLoughrey.”
I froze into a pillar of salt, ready to crumble into a billion pieces as soon as he caught sight of me.
“Your worried brother,” Miles murmured in a serious tone before eyeing Julie, Bayla, then Julian, and then... he spotted me.
“ You .”
I winced. He was fucking here, for whatever reason, and I’d spray-painted his car a few minutes ago .
“Miles. Could you please stop being so loud? We don’t want to blow the whistle,” Larissa grumbled.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t call my uncle right now,” I began cautiously.
I tried to block out Miles’ presence and looked at each of the others.
“I told you this was a stupid plan,” Miles said to his sister. “Now you’ve got that one stuck to your leg.”
He looked straight at me. There was mockery in his eyes.
Larissa ignored Miles and looked at me sheepishly. “Because we all got lost and were actually going somewhere else?”
It sounded more like a question Larissa was trying to ask in order to talk her way out of it.
“She knows...” Julian sighed and walked to one of the windows.
Larissa lowered the camera bag she had been clutching the whole time. “Oh.”
I took a deep breath.
How had I ended up in this situation?
“So, I’m listening,” I asked everyone present.
Miles rolled his eyes and leaned against the door frame with his arms crossed, eyeing me strangely. An extremely awkward situation, because I couldn’t escape his gaze.
“Because this mission is super important,” Larissa began to explain with determination and walked over to Bayla.
“You’re snooping around in my family’s things.” I looked at the two of them. “How am I supposed to know that you won’t use the information you find against us?”
“What do you expect them to do?” Annoyed, I looked at my biggest rival. “Don’t always be so paranoid, Copeland.”
How could he talk to me like that?
“Does he know too?” Bayla asked, obviously beginning to lose her patience.
“The most important facts,” Larissa waved it off, and Miles raised both eyebrows.
“You told me something about diary entries in which a missing Quatura had something with a Ruisangor and a Senseque at the same time.”
Typical men. They only remembered the parts about sex.
Hysteresis
Angus MacRae
I shook my head, which Miles noticed immediately. He started looking at me again. Not hostile, but indecisive. He wore his chin-length hair loose, along with the black coat that flattered his physique far too well.
Again, I found myself staring at him, dammit...
I quickly turned to the three girls who had positioned themselves behind the desk as if it were theirs.
I had to pull myself together to keep myself from commenting.
“I think it’s idiotic to look for her. What will you do when you find her?”
“She is dead,” Julian snorted, crossing his arms at the window.
Looking at him, standing like that, he reminded me a little of Alarik.
“We don’t know that,” Bayla said.
Miles laughed, causing my stomach to do a strange flip, as if I’d swallowed the fireflies from the stream bank. “Sounds like that woman had a death wish, though.”
“Right!” I snorted. “Just like all of you!”
I noticed Miles’ gaze on me more intensely. What was his problem? Couldn’t he leave me alone?
Then I realized what his problem was. I had just agreed with him.
Frustration at myself spread through me, along with a slight heat in my cheeks.
“That woman was so much further ahead than the people here in Blairville. She had so many ideas and questioned so much. And I’m convinced by now that it’s really stupid to make such a drama because of our different genetics.”
Bayla sounded like she meant it.
“You just don’t want to be separated from your little friend,” I pressed out.
“Emely. Can we talk for a minute?”
I looked at Julian, who gestured me to come over. I eyed the girls suspiciously for a moment, but then turned to Julian, who led me further back into the second part of the big old two-room office.
When we arrived at the other end by the grand stone fireplace, I looked around for the others. Larissa and Bayla seemed to be deep in conversation while Julie was bending down to open one of the drawers. And then there was Miles... He was watching us both.
“Can you make an exception for me?” Julian began.
He seemed to have forgotten how he had behaved toward me earlier...
I crossed my arms. “So that your witch friend turns everything upside down, and I end up getting into all the trouble?”
I watched in despair as Bayla and Larissa continued to rummage again, quickly looking back down at the files they held in their hands when they realized I was watching them.
“She has no bad intentions, trust me. Her mother has some kind of secrets, and she just needs information.”
I looked back at Julian.
Since when was he so interested in what the Quatura needed? Was I a joke to him?
But more importantly... “Keep Alarik out of this.”
“We can’t. He does play a significant role.”
He wasn’t wrong. Alarik had been part of every diary entry. If anyone knew anything about this witch, it was him. But maybe he had moved on from her? It was his past for a reason...
“Aren’t you interested in what happened back then?”
Julian had hit the nail on the head. Of course I was interested, even if I didn’t want to be.
“Are you?” I asked, trying not to let on and heard a quiet, amused snort of laughter from the door.
No, I wouldn’t look at him now.
“By now I am,” Julian whispered, and it sounded sincere.
I looked at him, irritated. “Didn’t you want distance from this drama? Isn’t that the reason you keep giving me for why you won’t join the pack?”
Julian crossed his arms. His expression darkened.
He was uncomfortable. So once again I had crossed his line. A line which I didn’t understand. The usual...
I snorted. “Fine, look for that woman, but please not at my uncle’s office!”
“Make an exception, please. This one time.”
He sounded more demanding, which I didn’t like.
I sighed.
Arguing with Julian was exhausting. Whatever it was that made me want to give him this chance, it was someplace in my heart that only existed for him.
“Hurry up,” I said firmly, turning away from him and toward the other girls, who paused for a second. “Come on, you’ve got five minutes.”
I rolled my eyes, and they went back to their files.
Then I looked at Miles and tensed up.
He was staring at me so intensely that my body didn’t seem to know how to react. His eyes gleamed with the flames of the candles that lit the room. His aura seemed warmer here, not as cool as in the sand-colored corridors, which he always dominated with his presence.
A mixture of anticipation and shame overcame me.
If he knew what his car looked like right now... And then the realization: He would see it later... As soon as he would enter the parking lot...
I realized that I was staring at him just as blatantly as he did. But how could I help it? The staring was now part of telling him how much I despised him. It was just that the thought felt strange. He looked at me as if he was searching for something and every second made it harder to tear myself away from his gaze. Was that his gift? What if I wasn’t looking at him willingly?
“It seems like I need to have new security measures put in place, because lately I keep bumping into students who think they can make themselves at home in my office.”
Me and Miles both winced and turned to the door, where my uncle was staring expectantly at Larissa, Julie and Bayla. Then he spotted Julian and Miles.
“And every time, the constellation surprises me anew.” He looked amused, not at all angry, and of course surprised... Then he spotted me.
“Emely.”
He didn’t look at me with the slightest reproach, as I would have expected. After all, I allowed these people to stay in this room, including two Ruisangors. Father would have grounded me, or worse.
Alarik tore his gaze away from me and looked at Bayla, who was slowly closing the drawer with the student files – albeit with an unpleasantly loud squeak – and I spotted Julie slipping something under her hoodie, but I didn’t recognize what it was.
My gaze slid back to the biggest problem in my life.
I should have heard Alarik coming, but that fool had completely distracted me.
“What brings you here this time?” my uncle asked, closing the door.
What was wrong with him?
Then he laughed in amusement. “Have you lost your tongue over me being here?” He looked at me. “You should actually know.”
Finally, someone said something. It was Bayla. “We’re sorry. We were looking for something.”
He looked at her and was it... pity that resonated in his gaze?
“In the student files? For real this time?” he asked, as if Bayla had gotten something wrong.
He sounded incredibly calm.
“For real...” Bayla assured him sheepishly and looked down.
Alarik went to the round little table with the scotch bottle, right next to Miles, and calmly poured himself a glass. He took a sip and put his other hand in his trouser pocket.
“Honestly. I don’t even want to know what you all are doing here,” he laughed warmly and looked at each of us... at me for a particularly long time. “Even if I didn’t expect it from some of you.”
Did he think I was one of them?
“But I can’t pretend I’m not curious either. After so many years...” Everyone present suddenly looked at him in alarm. “Next time, please remember that you can see the light from my office very clearly, especially at night... Or that my office door isn’t usually wide open.”
Julian cleared his throat and I reminded myself that the light did what it wanted at random anyway.
The three girls suddenly looked at me and I raised my eyebrows.
I didn’t have to justify myself for that. That was their problem. If I hadn’t seen Julie, I probably never would have gone to check out Alarik’s office.
“We’re sorry. We were just leaving,” Larissa said quickly, pulling Bayla with her. Julie followed almost automatically and Miles also turned away from us, not without looking at me one last time and giving me that strange feeling of tension again.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Alarik said, gesturing toward the door with his free hand.
Bayla looked at him indecisively and Julie looked like she was in shock.
“Have a good night,” Alarik wished them.
What the fuck?
Julian nodded to Alarik, then joined him and followed the others.
“Good night,” he mumbled quickly, and then he was gone too.
I was left with my uncle, who paced around the desk and sat down, not even glancing at the open drawers, as if it was normal for him that students were here without permission.
“It’s funny,” he laughed softly, shaking his head and staring at one of his old bookshelves overgrown with plants, lost in thought.
“Have they been here before?” I asked quickly.
Alarik looked up at me and I felt uncomfortable, ready for his lecture.
“Bayla Adams, yes.”
He put the glass down and pulled out some papers before pulling out a pen.
How could he be working now? At this time of night? And what had he just said?
“And I’m not blind. I can see that she can’t part with her Ruisangor friend and that Julian is keeping an eye on her.”
Keeping an eye on one of them... as if he had nothing better to do. Julian always chose the wrong side.
“I’m sure it’s Diana’s doing.”
“You know her mother,” I realized, remembering exactly the diary entry where he had met her in the library with that Alice girl.
“I know a lot of people in this town. You know me by now, I don’t make secrets out of it... not anymore.”
It sounded like he was tired of it.
I didn’t want to probe further, because I respected his past, so I brought up what I was really interested in. “Why didn’t you punish them for their misbehavior?”
“They all have enough problems with their families. Why should I burden them any further, especially when it’s only the student files they were going through? As long as it doesn’t happen again...” my uncle sighed.
Was he serious? He was just going to let them get away with it?
“They could find incriminating evidence and destroy your career.”
I hadn’t meant to say that, and now I was blushing.
Alarik looked at me in alarm. “Incriminating evidence... Emely, what do you think of me?”
So he wasn’t transparent after all... At that moment I also knew that he didn’t trust me, at least not to the extent that he would ever say a word about Alice.
“The only incriminating thing that seems to keep finding its way into my office is Rebecca Harlow. Now this woman wants to have the Winter Ball organized in a classical style within a month.”
That fucking witch.
I realized my uncle had almost managed to distract me.
“They are dangerous. That’s all I want you to keep in mind.”
Alarik laughed and lowered his pen.
“A boy who lost his mother in a car accident; two siblings who found each other again; one of the quietest girls in town; and the daughter of a former acquaintance of mine? I don’t think these young people are dangerous .”
I swallowed.
He wasn’t naive. I hadn’t believed it until now, but now I knew that he had been involved with people like that. He wasn’t gullible, but he was too stuck in the past.
“It’s about what they are,” I tried to clarify.
My uncle lowered his pen, pushed back his ancient wooden chair and walked to the window.
“It’s always about what you are. It has always been more important what you were.” His thoughts seemed to be spinning. “But it only matters the moment someone who actually cares is present.”
His words were a kick in the gut. He meant me . He didn’t just mean me, he also defended the others, saw no danger in them and blamed me... for what? For common sense? For caution?
“It feels like you’re not teaching them a lesson because you want them to come again,” I huffed.
Alarik turned to me, looking at me calmly, as he had earlier when he had come in and looked at the others.
“You’ve always been clever, Emely.”
My jaw dropped a little.
I didn’t know what to reply to that.
Alarik turned back to the desk.
“You should go to sleep now, so you’ll be more or less fit in the morning.”
I remained silent.
He had confused me so much that I no longer knew what I could or should ask, or whether I should leave this office and not ask my uncle any more questions from now on. I chose the latter because I realized whose side he was on, even if I didn’t want to admit it.
Nothing seemed to have changed in his attitude since back then.
“Good night...” I said, suddenly feeling so alone in my world of sanity.
All the people who were important to me didn’t seem to see what was really right. What were they thinking? Did they want to risk a war? Was it naivety? And why couldn’t I open anyone’s eyes?
“Sleep well, Emely.”
I looked one last time at my uncle, who seemed to be living in his own little world. His smile was warm and sincere, as always, but for the first time it didn’t reach me.