Page 114 of Bone Year

“Lux will ask her dad.”

“Lux asking her dad is different. That’s a girl asking her father a question about school safety. Anyone can do that.”

“Right.”

“But we keep an eye on Malric.”

“Oh, I’m keeping an eye on Malric.”

“We both are.”

We slide the drawer closed. I place my hand on the front of it for a second longer than I need to.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her quietly. “I’m going to find out.”

Ellavee waits, and when I turn away from the drawer, she is already moving toward the door.

Lux is in the corridor with her back pressed against the wall and the keyring tucked against her stomach. Her eyes go wide when we come out.

“Well?”

“Vampire,” Ellavee says.

“Shit,” Lux murmurs.

“But the marks are weird. Too clean. Could be him, might not be him.” I say.

“Brilliant. That is so helpful. I love when we find out nothing,” Lux sighs.

“We found out it was most likely a vampire.” Ellavee says.

“Most likely and confirming are different. Sounds like we know exactly what we knew before coming down here.”

We lock the door behind us. Lux drops the ring back in the drawer where she found it. Ellavee closes the cabinet. None of us speaks as we climb the stairs back up and slip out through the side door we came in, and by the time we’re outside again, the snow is coming down in large flakes, fat and slow. The cold has gone past hurting into something else.

“Bed,” Lux says eventually.

“Bed,” Ellavee agrees.

“Bed,” I say.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Fear will keep you alive if you let it sharpen you. It will kill you if you let it freeze you.”

— Professor Bale, Lecture Notes

It’s been several weeks since Senna was found drained, and the story everyone is telling now is that something came through a fissure and killed her.

Headmaster Ashmoor called an assembly the next day and said a minor fissure had opened along the outer grounds that night, too small for the wards to register until it was too late. He said a twisted creature came through and that Senna had the misfortune of being the first one it found. He named the thing, something feline that hunts and drains its prey. He said the breach had been sealed, the wards reinforced, the perimeter patrols doubled. He assured us the academy is safe and everything has returned to normal.

The three of us haven’t told anyone what we saw in the morgue. As much as we’d like to believe the headmaster and let it go, especially Lux, we can’t. I know we are all still keeping an eye on Malric and watching our backs.

Jace has moved past his indifference and decided to hate me instead. He went from pretending I don’t exist to going out of his way to say hurtful things whenever we cross paths. Snide comments about my abilities. Last week, he told my patient right in front of me that I was incompetent and they should request a different student to be assigned to their case.

The patient actually did.

I try to tell myself I don’t deserve this, that what happened between us doesn’t give him the right to sabotage my work, to poison people against me before I even have a chance to prove myself.