“The point is,” he said, “that Dalcrest is an unusual place. Beyond elves and ghosts, there has been a plethora of documented unusual occurrences, and rumors and legends of far more spring up around campus every year.
Mysterious deaths. Secret societies. Tales of monsters.” He paused dramatical y and looked around at them. “I beg you, do not become part of the legend. Be smart, be safe, and stick together. Class dismissed.”
The students glanced at one another uneasily, startled by this abrupt dismissal with stil more than half an hour left in the class. Regardless, they started to gather their possessions together and trickle out of the room in twos and threes.
Elena grabbed her bag and hurried to the front of the room.
“Professor,” she said. “James.”
“Ah, Elena,” James said. “I hope you were paying attention today. It is important that you young girls be on your guard. The young men, too, real y. Whatever affects this campus does not seem to discriminate.” Up close, he looked pale and worried, older than he had at the beginning of the semester.
“I was very interested in what you said about the history of Dalcrest,” Elena said. “But you didn’t talk about what’s happening now. What do you think is going on here?” Professor Campbel ’s face creased into even grimmer lines, and his bright eyes gazed past her. “Wel , my dear,” he said, “it’s hard to say. Yes, very hard.” He licked his lips nervously. “I’ve spent a lot of time at this school, you know, years and years. There’s not a lot I wouldn’t believe at this point. But I just don’t know,” he said softly, as if he was talking to himself.
“There was something else I wanted to ask you,” Elena said, and he looked at her attentively. “I went to see the picture you told me about. The one of you and my parents when you were students here. You were al wearing the same pin in the picture. It was blue and in the shape of a V.” She was close enough to James that she felt his whole body jolt with surprise. His face lost its grim thoughtfulness and went blank. “Oh, yes?” he said. “I can’t imagine what it was, I’m afraid. Probably something Elizabeth made. She was always very creative. Now, my dear, I real y must run.” He slipped past Elena and made his escape, hurrying out of the classroom despite a few other students’ trying to stop him with questions.
Elena watched him go, feeling her own eyebrows going up in surprise. James knew more than he was saying, that was for sure. If he wouldn’t tel her—and she wasn’t giving up on him just yet—she’d find out somewhere else. Those pins were significant, his reaction proved that.
What kind of mystery could be tied to a pin? Had James said something about secret societies?
“After my parents died,” Samantha told Meredith, “I went to live with my aunt. She came from a hunter family, too, but she didn’t know anything about it. She didn’t seem to want to know. I kept on doing martial arts and everything I could learn by myself, but I didn’t have anyone to train me.” Meredith shone her flashlight into the dark bushes over by the music building and waved the beam around. Nothing to see except plants.
“You did a good job teaching yourself,” she told Samantha. “You’re smart and strong and careful. You just need to keep trusting your instincts.” It had been Samantha’s idea to patrol the campus together after sundown, to check out the places where the missing girl, Courtney, had been spotted last night, to see if they could find anything.
Meredith had felt powerful at the beginning of the evening, poised to fight, with her sister hunter beside her.
But now, even though it was interesting to patrol with Samantha, to see the hunter life through her eyes, it was starting to feel like they were just wandering around at random.
“The police found her sweater somewhere over here,” Samantha said. “We should look around for clues.”
“Okay.” Meredith restrained herself from saying that the police had already been through here with dogs, looking for clues themselves, and there was a good chance they had found anything there was to find. She scanned the flashlight over the grass and path. “Maybe we’d be better off doing this during the day, when we can see better.”
“I guess you’re right,” Samantha said, flicking her own flashlight on and off. “It’s good that we’re out here at night, though, don’t you think? If we’re patrol ing, we can protect people. Keep things from getting out of control. We walked Bonnie home last night and kept her safe.” Meredith felt a flicker of anxiety. What if they hadn’t come along? Could Bonnie have been the one who disappeared, instead of Courtney?
Samantha looked at Meredith, a little smile curling up the corners of her mouth. “It’s our destiny, right? What we were born for.”
Meredith grinned back at her, forgetting her momentary anxiety. She loved Samantha’s enthusiasm for the hunt, her constant striving to get better, to fight the darkness. “Our destiny,” she agreed.
Off across the quad, someone screamed.
Snapping into action without even thinking about it, Meredith began running. Samantha was a few steps behind her, already struggling to keep up. She needs to work on her speed, cool y commented the part of Meredith that was always taking notes.
The scream, shril and frightened, came again, a bit to the left. Meredith changed direction and sped toward it.
Where? She was close now, but she couldn’t see anything. She scanned her flashlight over the ground, searching.
There. On the ground nearby, two dark figures lay, one pinning the other to the ground.
Everyone froze for a moment, and then Meredith was racing toward them, shouting “Stop it! Get off! Get off!” and a second later, the figure that had been pinning the other down was up and running into the darkness.
Black hoodie, black jeans, the note taker said calmly.
Can’t tell if it’s a guy or a girl.
The person who’d been pinned was a girl, and she flinched and screamed as Meredith ran past her, but Meredith couldn’t stop. Samantha was behind her so she could help the girl. Meredith had to catch the fleeing figure.
Her long strides ate up the ground, but she wasn’t fast enough.
Even though she was going as fast as she could, the person in black was faster. There was a glimpse of
