Page 157 of Love Bites

BELLA

Following our afternoon class, Anya, Cori and I went to see Nina, who had spent the day in her dorm room.

We knocked on the door and Lark opened it.

“Hey guys,” she said.

I nodded to her and jogged over to Nina’s bed. She was curled up with a book, which should not have surprised me.

“You’re okay?” I asked her, relief washing over me as I sat on the edge of her quilt.

“I’ve got a pretty nasty bump on my head, and I had a headache all morning,” she said with a wry smile. “So I didn’t go to class, just in case. But I’m totally fine now.”

“Thank God,” I said, meaning it.

“Was that guy really a warlock from the Order of the Broken Blade?” Cori asked. “I thought all that stuff was history.”

“That’s what Luke says,” I told her. “The guardians aren’t happy about them being out in the open again. He thinks they’re planning something.”

And the information Luke and I had just discovered made it pretty clear what that something was.

“I’m just glad we have the book back,” Nina said. “It was totally worth it.”

“I’m so grateful to you guys for that,” I said, knowing that I had to tell them the bad news. “I’m grateful for everything. But there’s a problem.”

“What’s wrong?” Anya asked.

“The man who was trying to take the book managed to rip a page out,” I told them. “Luke and I looked at it today and we realized which page it was.”

They all leaned in.

I hated to tell them, hated to leave them with this threat when they had saved my life and saved the rest of the book. But they deserved the truth.

“It was the page claiming to be a spell to wake the Raven King,” I said softly. “And we can’t even try to predict what they’ll try to do next because the page is gone. I’ll never know what it said.”

“Actually,” Nina said thoughtfully. “Someone grab my notebook?”

Cori scrambled for the notebook on Nina’s desk and handed it over.

“I saw that page for a second right before he hit me,” Nina said. “I’m not sure, but I think… maybe…”

We all watched as she closed her eyes and began murmuring a spell under her breath.

Words faded into existence on the paper in front of her. By the time she opened her eyes again, the entire page was filled with arcane scrawlings.

“Oh, wow, Nina,” I said.

Most of the writing was in a language I didn’t understand, but it looked like instructions for a spell, including a circular diagram and a list of components that would be necessary to cast it.

“What are you guys up to?” Kendall’s voice cut the air as she stepped into the room.

“Hey,” I said, rising immediately. “Thank you so much, for helping me with the book this afternoon.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said. “I got it back to the library, but I might have, uh, shelved it in the wrong spot.”

“What do you mean?” Nina asked, sounding upset at the idea of a book being misfiled.

“I figured if you stole it, you must need it for something important,” Kendall said, shrugging. “I thought it would be good if it was easier for you to get to it next time. I can show you later.”

---