Chapter 36. Lorena
lorena
Hanover is emptier today than it was last time. Probably because it’s a weekday.
I spend an hour walking around with the green book, hoping William is nearby and will pick up my scent.
I pass the chocolate café we never got to visit and the stores where Salma and Tiffany tried things on. I even check out the warehouse area where Nate and Cisco brought me, but there’s no sign of the vampires.
They’re not here.
He’s not here.
I feel a face-twisting sob forming in the pit of my stomach, and I know I need to get out of here—before anyone spots the crying teen and starts asking questions.
So I pull up an app on my phone to order a car back to school. I spend the twenty minutes it takes to arrive picking up a treat from the Chocolate Bar. And when I make it to Huntington Manor, a tall woman with red hair and dark eyes is waiting for me by the front doors.
The driver takes off as soon as I get out, and I stare into the enraged face of Director Minaro. “Follow me” is all she manages to eke past her clenched jaw.
I do as she says, my gut tight with apprehension. What if she expels me? I can’t leave this place, especially not now, when I’ve finally found information useful to William. If I go, how will he find me?
Not that he has any reason to come looking for me. By now he must have made vampire friends far more interesting than me. Or maybe he has some cool new Familiar who doesn’t jump at the chance to accuse him of murder.
“What were you thinking?”
Minaro rounds on me in the privacy of her office, and despite the anger in her voice, the lines of her face and neck don’t tauten. She has an ageless quality that makes me think she’s had a lot of enhancements.
“Well?” she demands when I don’t answer, slamming the door behind us. Yet rather than sit at her desk, we remain standing in a kind of staring contest.
“Please don’t tell my parents,” I blurt, unable to contain myself. “Salma and I are in a fight, and William is gone, and I needed to go back to the last place where things made sense to me. Before everything fell apart.”
I didn’t expect for my lie to be so honest. The truth of the words strikes me hard, and I feel the ugly sob restarting its climb up my throat, but I swallow, pushing down the emotions.
“I am sorry to hear things are so hard right now.” Minaro walks to her chair and sits down, gesturing for me to take the seat across from her. Since I don’t really have a choice, I slide into the chair and brace myself for the oncoming lecture.
“You and William seemed very close. Did you have any inkling that he would be leaving us so soon?”
Once again, I get the sense she’s unusually interested in the vampire.
“It was more of an out-of-the-blue-family-emergency type thing,” I hedge.
I’m not sure the exact excuse William gave when he compelled her, and I don’t want to undermine his lie.
I’m surprised he cared enough to make up a lie at all, but it’s possible Nate and Cisco insisted that he cover his tracks.
“As for Salma, I am sorry to see the two of you feuding,” the director goes on. “I know I can come off as severe and unapproachable, but I am also a proficient listener and counselor if you would like to talk.”
“It’s okay,” I say, sliding to the edge of the chair to signal that I’d like to go now. “I can handle it.”
“It does not seem as if you are handling it well,” she says. “Do you understand that your behavior this morning rises to the level of expulsion?”
“I’ll do anything you want for extra credit, but please don’t kick me out. Just tell me how I can fix this.”
“Are you asking for your sake or your mother’s?”
I knew I wasn’t imagining Minaro’s distaste. She really did look pointedly at Salma and me that first day, when she congratulated our class on defying the odds.
“Does it matter?” I ask.
“It should,” she says, angling her head, almost lizard-like. “I will confess I had no interest in admitting you, and yet you have turned out to be the most interesting of your lot.”
I have no idea how to take that. All I know is my first impression of Minaro was 100 percent right: She is weird as hell.
“Thank you, I think.”
“I know it may be hard to hear,” she says, “but in some ways, this is better … losing them today instead of tomorrow.”
It takes me a moment to process her meaning. Is she talking about Salma and William? “Why would I lose them tomorrow?” I ask.
“Because that is the way time works, dear,” she says matter-of-factly. “It makes things disappear.”
Her words make me think of the secret timeline on the LUB’s ceiling, and I suddenly wonder if she knows about that place. Is it possible she wanted someone to go down there and find William’s coffin and awaken him?
“Director Minaro,” I say, not sure how to phrase this. “Do you … know something? Like, about William?”
“As I told you a few days ago, I have not heard from Mr. Pride,” she says, sitting up straight.
“Now, I feel compelled to look past this morning’s incident, considering you seem to be navigating a difficult moment.
Yet if you pull another stunt like this one, I will expel you, and the world will judge your mother for it. Are you understanding me?”
“Yes,” I say, eager to get out of her office.
“No one at school must know about your adventure,” she warns as soon as I’m on my feet.
“We are going to pretend you went to see the nurse and then stayed in your room all day because you were not feeling well. Tell your roommates I am ordering the three of you to keep this quiet. We do not want your classmates getting any ideas. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” I say again, then I take off as fast as I can to the third tower, where I wait out the rest of the school day. I don’t see Salma and Tiffany until they return to our room after classes end.
“Where were you?”
Salma marches to my desk the instant she opens the door and sees me.
“I—”
“Do you understand how fucking scared I was when I woke up and you weren’t here? Then you didn’t show up to breakfast or history class or at all?” She grips my arm with her good one, and I understand what she means.
She must have thought the vampires had come to finish me off.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I just—I can’t stand how things are between us.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” says Tiffany after dropping her bag on her desk. “I’ll be back later.” She takes off, presumably to give Salma and me some privacy to work things out.
“What happened?” asks Salma, perching on her desk chair.
“I went to Hanover,” I say, and her eyes widen. “I found something I thought could help him, and I thought maybe he would smell me or something and show up.”
“But he didn’t?” she asks, and I’m relieved to hear more empathy than condemnation in her voice.
I shake my head.
“What did you find?” she prods, and I reach into my bag and pull out the green text.
She rolls closer in her chair, so that we’re both at my desk. “Is this from the LUB?” she asks, and I nod in assent.
She flips through the pages, finding stains, the words I wrote, and the red X, then nothing but blank paper until the logo with black flames and red smoke.
“What is this?” she asks, looking up.
“That’s the Legion of Fire logo. They’re the ones who hunt vampires and apparently drove them away.”
“Why is it here?”
“Trevor found this book the first night, and he kept it because he thinks this is his family’s crest. That’s why he was so convinced there must be other books there with hidden messages. But before leaving, William took this one from him.”
“But … does that mean Trevor’s family are Legion?” asks Salma, cottoning on quickly.
“That’s what William thinks. That’s why…”
“Why what?” she asks when I shut my mouth to stop speaking. “What did he do?”
“He compelled Trevor to forget about the book.” I suck in a sharp breath before revealing the rest: “And to forget about asking you to the dance.”
“What the fuck?” she demands, glaring at me. “Why would he do that? And why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know, Sal! He just hated Trevor, and Trevor hated him, and I guess on some subconscious level they must have recognized they were vampire and vampire hunter. And I probably would’ve told you if we’d actually talked at all in the past ten days, but you cut me off completely.”
We’re both breathing heavily, as if we’ve just finished the mile run in PE.
“What happened to this book?” she asks, flipping back to the early pages of the green text. “Looks like it’s been to war.”
“I thought of how we found the timeline on the LUB’s ceiling, and I wanted to test if there was hidden ink, so I tried a bunch of things, and nothing worked. Except for blood.”
“Blood?”
“That’s what I wanted to tell William. When I bled onto the page, my blood turned into an X. I think it’s like password protected, and William’s blood might unlock it.”
The door handle turns, and Salma shuts the book right as Tiffany pokes her head in. “Don’t want to interrupt, but if you’re going to be a lot longer, I’ll grab my books.”
“We’re good,” says Salma, and I look at my best friend to see if she really means that. When she takes my hand, I feel a wave of relief crash in my chest that this awful break is finally over.
“Remind me to tell you about our moms’ worst fight ever,” I say, and her eyes grow round.
“Tell me now—”
“Just a sec,” I say, and I turn to Tiffany, who grabbed her bag and is walking out. “I got you something,” I say to her.
“Me?” she asks in surprise, stopping shy of the door.
I pluck the brown paper bag with handles from my desk and hand it to her.
Tiffany gingerly reaches inside, pulling out a black-and-white chocolate bunny. “Lore!” she says, grinning as she squeezes me in a hug. “Thank you!”
Over her shoulder, I lock eyes with Salma, expecting to earn her approving smile. After all, she’s the one who wanted me to give Tiffany a chance.
Yet rather than grinning with us, my best friend gets to her feet and says, “Lore and I already read Dracula, so we should head to the library and keep working on plans for Time Period Day.”
Then she loops her arm around mine, tugging me toward the door. I look back at Tiffany as we’re leaving, and she looks crushed.
I know I should say something since she had my back earlier. But right now I’m just happy to have my best friend again and want to enjoy the moment.
“I’M SO hungry, I could eat Girl Scouts for breakfast!”
Thursday morning, I wake up to Salma’s declaration and grin, happy things are back to normal between us.
When breakfast is winding down and it’s almost time for the bell to go off, Minaro says, “A quick morning announcement. In two weeks, on the last day of class before winter break, your very own history club is going to host a Time Period Day! We will spend it learning what life was like for people in the mid-1700s, and all the meals and activities that day will be determined by club members.”
Trevor stands up and takes a bow, and people clap.
“I would also like to introduce two new faces. To help the history club brainstorm ideas, we have enlisted the expertise of a couple of history majors from nearby Dartmouth College.”
That’s when I notice the extra chairs added to the staff table. The two new guys are seated facing away from us; one looks square-framed and brawny, while the other has a long ponytail. “Stand up, please,” says the director.
The two of them turn to face the school and wave. At me.
My jaw drops.
“Please give a rousing welcome to our guests,” says Minaro, “Nate and Cisco!”