Page 36 of Flirting with Darkness

Felt his hand on my leg.

Mina was giving me a strange look.

“Well. I’m glad you’re alright. I was… we were just all so worried about you, alright? Don’t you dare leave me like that again.”

I agreed, but it was a lie. That was the cruel joke with Mina and I. She’d leave me, or I left her. I’d do everything I could to make sure it was the latter.

* * *

“A letter came for you this morning,” Mina told me later that evening. “It’s in your office. It’s… strange.”

She was right. The letterwasstrange. But strange in a way I now was beginning to know quite well. The paper of the envelope looked as if it could be a decade old, yellowed and a little crumpled. It was closed with a red wax seal.

I knew right away that it was him. I smiled to myself when I held it, just because it reminded me so much of him. It was so… well, so vampiric.

I opened the envelope. Inside, there were a few torn-out pages of books with notes and translations scribbled in the margins in the handwriting I now recognized as Vale’s.

And then there was a letter. At the top was my name, and then several black drips of ink, like he’d hovered the pen over the page for a long time, thinking about what to write.

Lilith,

I hope you made it home safely. I found some more notes for you. I thought you wouldn’t want to waste the time without them.

I welcome any letters you wish to send before your visit.

I will help you however I can.

If you want it.

Vale.

I didn’t realize I was smiling until my cheeks began to ache.

It was so…

Familiar. So strangely familiar. Just a few stilted lines. None of the flowery language of polite society.

And yet, I knew it said so much that wasn’t written in these words, too.

I set the letter down and jumped when I realized Mina was standing behind me. I cursed and shoved the letter into my pocket, even though I didn’t know why my impulse was to hide it.

But she had seen it, anyway.

“You startled me,” I said.

“Be careful, Lilith,” she said. “You know what will happen if they know. If they find out.”

My mouth was dry.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I didn’t want Mina to know, either. But who was I fooling? She was so much smarter than anyone ever gave her credit for.

And she was smart enough to know when I was lying.

She gave me a hard look. “Be careful.”

PARTIV

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