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“Randomly,” she says. “At a bookstore.”
“You do love to read.”
She smiles a little.
“You remember.”
“Of course I remember. I remember everything.”
“Me too,” she says, but I don’t think that this is the time for reminiscing. This is the time for finding out what happened to her after I left. This is where I discover exactly what’s happened to the sweet girl I fell in love with.
“What happened?” I ask her. “How did that meeting go?”
“About as well as can be expected,” she says. “No, I take that back. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced before. It was so...ideal. It was almost too perfect. It was like, like a movie. It was like a scene from a romantic comedy. We both reached for a book at the same time, and then we bumped into each other, and it was just...it was really lighthearted,” she says.
“Almost sounds fake,” I say, and instantly, I realize it was the wrong thing to say because her eyes go wide, and then they darken.
“You would think so,” she whispers.
I cock my head to the side. Her breathing has increased and gotten nervous, tense.
“Nicole? What is it you aren’t saying?”
“I’ve been here for awhile,” she says. “In Fablehaven.”
“About three months or so.”
“And in that time, I’ve had a chance to reflect on my life. On us,” she says. “But also on Micah.”
“Okay?”
“There are a lot of things that don’t add up,” she whispers. “A lot of things that didn’t make sense at the time, but that now, I wonder about.”
“What do you mean? I mean, breakups are hard, but you seem like you’re scared of him. Did he threaten you?”
“Not directly,” she says. “But...Micah worked at Lucky. He didn’t seem very happy when I started consulting with them and doing work with them. In fact, he almost discouraged it.”
“Really? That seems a bit odd, especially coming from a cheater.”
“Well, yeah,” she says, agreeing. “It was always kind of a point of contention. The head of the marketing departmen
t would reach out with questions for me about scientific terms. Sometimes one of the other scientists would call and set up a meeting between me and one of the directors.”
“That does seem kind of weird,” I say. “You’re smart, Nic, don’t get me wrong, but why would a bio-engineering company call you to ask about scientific terms?”
“I’m not sure,” she agrees. “And sometimes, I’d get weird calls. They were supposedly from different departments, but it always sounded like the same person.”
“Do you think someone was spying on you? It almost sounds like someone was stalking you.”
“I’m not sure,” she says. “It was always kind of weird, but...after the breakup, well, I can’t help but wonder if maybe Micah’s wife worked at Lucky. I didn’t see it at the time, but everything that went down is so strange. I mean, it was right after we broke up that I was offered the job. I didn’t apply. It was just handed to me, basically. Then my first week on the gig, I get an assignment to go catch a dragon? And with cutthroat Bernie? It doesn’t really make any sense, in retrospect.”
I think about everything she’s said, and I agree. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Do you think your employer wanted to hurt you?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t imagine they planned for things to go as poorly as they did, but surely they knew bringing in a dragon wouldn’t be that easy. Not for two young females.”
Then I get what she’s saying.
