Page 97 of Live To Tell

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’,” he mimics. Leif and Grayson glance at each other as the error of my behavior hits me. Rowan stands. “I guess the girl who’d walk over others to get what she wants hasn’t left us yet. Thanks a fucking bunch, Violet.”

My mouth goes dry as he grabs his bag before striding away.

Leaving the envelope on the lawn.

“Well, then,” says Grayson. “How are you going to fix this one, Violet?”

An identical feeling to when Leif rejected me after the shifter visit drops into my stomach, joined by a second sicker feeling. Guilt.

But I never intended for this to happen.

“I don’t know, but I will,” I say.

Chapter 33

VIOLET

I’ve learned enough about people to know that I screwed up badly. Perhaps I should’ve told Dorian to hold off. Maybe I believed Rowan would change his mind. And to be frank, as Dorian hasn’t mentioned the Circle since our meeting, I thought he’d failed. Therefore, the request I’d made to Dorian dropped from my mind as I considered other angles to gain entry into the Circle.

In truth, I forgot.

If I explain this to Rowan, will he understand that I didn’t deliberately override him?

Rowan doesn’t answer my messages and so I return to the diary and throw myself back into investigative mode. The very mode that created this problem. I’ll find Rowan later. Allow him to calm down, and then apologize—something that will shock him, if nothing else. And I’ll speak to Dorian in order to fix the situation and arrange to rescind the invite, because there must be a solution.

I pull out Madeleine’s diary and set about numbing my mind. The diary matches the video clips for banality. Page after page describing lessons, days out, evenings out, boys Madison wants to date, boys she dates, gossip. So much gossip.

I compare Rowan’s list, and many of the guys’ names match initials in the diary. More people to investigate? There’s one initial that doesn’t match any of the names Rowan found: X. Names beginning with that particular letter would be unusual and easy to find—unless X is the ultimate code to hide a person?

The outdoor gatherings happen at a place initialed RK. Madison meets X at BH or occasionally inside J. Frustratingly vague. There’re pages where she’s scrawled through the words with a thick black marker—or someone else did, since we can’t discount another found the diary before Julius. Even he could’ve defaced the book; we can’t rule him out.

Madison details her plans for the dance over several pages, including a sketch of her dress, but no mention of a tiara. Or a date.

The most frustrating part? The last page of the diary is missing altogether. I wait until the end of the day, and corner Julius outside a classroom after lessons, demanding to know if he altered the diary in any way.

Remembering Rowan’s comments about Julius’s upset earlier, I gave him the list of names we’d matched to show we’d identified some of her male partners but didn’t elaborate about the guy she argued with. His disappointment we’d found nothing new is palpable, but I give him no more information than we’d agreed, and he fortunately doesn’t react to me as he did Rowan.

Julius believes X is a code and not a name. He doesn’t know the location of the gatherings and apparently the two friends he contacted refused to tell him, claiming they never went to any. An obvious lie. I casually ask about Sergei, and if Julius knows whether the vamp and girl both survived the relationship.

He hasn’t a clue about them.

Pre-Reveal, supes were banned from telling humans about our world—did that lead to Madison’s demise because she broke the rule? The girls did spend time with humans. Was one Sawyer? I’ve researched Christopher’s age, and he’s old enough to match Madison’s at the time.

Is he X? Or is that the mysterious guy she argued with?

A frustrated Julius told me he’d ‘considered all this’ and that unless I found my way into the Circle or closer to Whitegrove, I’d never find answers.

To which my mind switched straight back to Rowan. I made my excuses and left to find him.

Rowan isn’t in his room or with Leif, so I have a keen idea where he may be—especially since the ominously dark clouds that threatened the day now pour rain over the academy grounds, adding an extra delight to the evening gloom.

I stride across the sodden lawns, expecting to find Rowan in the same place as the night he conjured the storm, and hinted at how potent his magic is. There’s nobody in the space where Rowan stood that evening, and the prickling energy that forewarns lightning isn’t in the air.

What if he’s using shadows and not elemental magic?

I continue on, hoping I don’t pick up on that Blackwood magic. As I pass the greenhouse, a witch light flares in the space between the glass-walled building and the shed, hovering a few inches above Rowan’s hand.

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