“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 orat 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 redX,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 thefuck?” 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 anX. 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—”
