Page 169 of A University of Betrayal

“And anyway, what areyoutwo doing here?Together.”

Julian jumped up with a jerk, and I had to grin before Grace’s death stare brought me back to reality.

“Grace,” Julie began calmly, as if her cousin wasn’t standing in the doorway pissed off. “Do you know an Alice Blair?”

“Hell, no! I don’t know anyone by that name.” She stepped toward us and looked at the diary as if it were a deadly poison. “Where did you get that?”

I looked at her, unsettled. Individual corkscrew curls fell wildly down her face, and I realized that she was the last person who was supposed to know about this.

Now she was standing in front of us. And she wouldn’t calm down without an explanation from us.

“From the room of the person who wrote the diary,” I began with inner reluctance.

“Her mother apparently lived in a shared house with this Alice Blair and another one of you witches, and now she owns the house,” Larissa said, and I looked at her stunned.

“And there’s a room?”

Grace didn’t sound so angry now.

“I think it’s crazy that she got a love letter from our professor.” Larissa sounded sensationalistic.

“She disappeared, Larissa.”

The color in Julie’s face had finally lost its saturation.

Grace looked at us all in alarm. “Maybe someone found out, and she had to leave town. They must have erased her memories.”

“Wow,chill, why would they do that to her?” Larissa laughed, but Grace’s expression darkened.

“Because love relationships between the species are strictly forbidden. It’s written in the treaty.”

I looked at her, dumbfounded.

It was the first time I’d heard that. Even though it made sense in this town…

“Anything else I should know?” I asked, frustrated.

Grace understood me immediately and sighed. “I keep forgetting that you’re clueless.”

I looked at her with growing frustration, but she avoided my gaze.

Larissa intervened. “What treaty?”

“Long story...” Grace began. “Actually, you shouldn’t even be here.”

“Are you trying to kick me out again?”

I bit my lip and noticed Julian tense up noticeably, as if he was uncomfortable with the whole situation. I tried to catch his gaze and when I succeeded, I tried to let him know with my facial expressions that everything was okay.

His chest rose. Then he stood up. “I should probably go now.”

“Right,” Grace grumbled, as if there really was something unbearable about Julian.

He nodded at me and then he was gone.

“I don’t understand why the species have such a problem with each other in the first place,” I sighed, thinking back to the conversation with Alarik in his car.

“Because we don’t match biologically or morally, and because history has shown that we don’t belong together.” Grace rolled her eyes and stood up again. “Probably that girl was sent away. It’s a disgrace that someone like that was part of our family...”

---