Chapter 128

KATHERINE.

“Hey, Aunt Vivian.”

“Katherine, sweetheart. We're going to be a little bit late. I'm so sorry.” She sounded frazzled and my brows tugged together while I zipped up my backpack.

“Oh. Is everything alright?” I asked.

“The car just stopped in the middle of the road. Your uncle is trying to fix it, but he's failing, honey. He's failing,” she answered and laughter bubbled out of me.

“I heard that,” came Uncle Lander's voice in the background.

“Keep going, sweetheart. You got this,” she replied before whispering to me, “He does ‘not' got it. We might end up being a lot late. I'm so sorry. Is that okay?”

I bobbed my head, glad that they'd be running late because that meant I could spend more time with Theo before they got here. I was still going to see him during the break but I was still in the phase where I wanted to see him every moment, so sue me. “Yes, yes, it's fine.”

“Okay. See you soon,” she said cheerily before hanging up and I heaved a sigh, dropping the backpack next to the rest of my things.

Blackwood was closing. Not for good, but it would be for a long time because the Administration had called for an investigation. They wanted to find out how all of this – a student getting possessed, said student kidnapping other students, said students killing other students – happened under the watch of the dean who had already stepped down, so we were all being sent home to ‘recover’.

Unfortunately, we hadn't found the other missing students in Renfield Hall that day – which was five days ago – and seeing as Blake was no longer possessed by Blackwood, he couldn't be asked. So the school had to search every area of the land to find the students who were already presumed dead. It was saddening.

Blake had been taken into custody by the authorities so they could ask him a couple of questions and Lenore had gone with him the day they came to get him. Josie, Priyanka, and more than half of the students in the school were picked up by their parents the day the news of what happened broke, and the only reason I was still here was because I'd found my mate. My uncle and aunt had stayed in the building owned by Blackwood not far from the school though so they could get here quickly if anything else happened.

Speaking of Blackwood, no one knew where he was. He wasn't back in the soul-holding jar among his things in the basement of Bolton Hall and he hadn't possessed anyone else as far as we knew. The professors who could use magic had tried to track him down but they still hadn't found him yet and I hoped they'd do so soon because the last thing anyone needed was that son of a bitch running rampant somewhere. I hated him with every fiber of my being.

He had taken notes of what he was doing and had a pretty old journal – we'd found them in Blake's room – and based on them, we found out that he'd really been the one behind the killings that had taken place in the three universities for almost a century, he'd been killing students to steal their moons and add them to his since a werewolf’s life was measured in full moons. The bastard wanted to be immortal. And finally, Professor Norvin Hellaton wasn't the one who had been practicing dark magic and killed Blackwood. That was all Blackwood, and Professor Norvin Hellaton had finally been exonerated even if it was several decades late.

I made my way out of Stavenger Hall which was almost empty since a lot of students had left and headed toward the library. I remembered the malevolent spirit attack that happened weeks ago and I couldn't help but wonder if Blackwood had something to do with the spirit escaping in the first place.

“Silver eyes,” Zack greeted me as I got to the landing of the second floor and I flashed him a smile before tilting my head to the side.

“Why are you even in the library?” I asked and he shrugged, making me raise a brow. “School is closed. We're not writing exams anytime soon.”

“A mind needs books, Katherine. A mind needs books,” he replied while tapping the side of his head and the corner of my mouth twitched at the familiar statement.

“You got that from Theo, huh?”

He nodded. “That and this.” He picked up one of the books on the table in front of him before stretching it out to me and I collected it. The book's title was History of Blackwood and I drew my brows together, wondering why he asked Zac to give me this.

“Thanks.” With the book in hand, I headed over to the art section to find it empty. I opened the textbook to see that someone had used a red pen to cross over a lot of the things that mentioned the good deeds Killian Blackwood had done, and left annotations in a couple of places. That ‘someone’ was Theo.

My lips curved into a smile and I kept flipping through the textbook till I saw a note from Theo to me on a piece of paper. ‘Stop stalking me,’ it said and I snorted before grabbing the textbook and heading out of the library. There was one other place I knew he could be right now so I headed there, but he wasn't there either and I frowned.

The sound of a twig breaking behind me had me pulling electricity to my fingertips, prepared to defend myself, before I turned around to see Theo standing there and I immediately dispersed it.

“I could have electrocuted you,” I said because I was still getting the hang of it, and sometimes electricity shot out of my fingertips without me wanting that to happen. The corner of his mouth turned up and he began to close the distance between us.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he said and I returned his smile before folding my arms across my chest.

“You're not going to ask me what I'm doing here?”

“Meh, it's a public space.” He pressed a short, but sweet kiss to my lips when he got to me and my cheeks warmed. We'd done that a couple of times in the past few days, but I still blushed whenever it happened.

I cleared my throat. “Where were you?”

“I was with Hunter,” he answered and I muttered an ‘oh’. Hunter hadn't told me that he was a seer because he didn't want his mom to find out – she wouldn't want him to keep on studying Art if she did – but with everything that happened ‘that' day, his mom ended up finding out. He wasn't happy about that.

“So you got my note and still came here?” Theo asked after glancing down at the piece of paper in my hand and I smacked his arm before he snorted and wrapped his arms around me. He heaved a sigh. “It's almost sunset.”

“What? Are you scared of ghosts? I'll protect you, don't worry,” I replied with a smile and he snorted again.

“Aren't I lucky?”

“Yes, you are.” Honestly, I was the lucky one.

He was going to be coming over to my pack during the break, so I could introduce him to my family and the council, and I couldn't wait for that to happen. Silver Bow and Blue Moon wanting to dissolve my pack was no longer an urgent issue because the Administration meeting they would have brought the case up at had been canceled due to the recent events in Blackwood, so they had to wait for several months for the next one. By then, my pack and I would be ready for them.

“Can we go watch the sunset from the Elemental Science class?” I asked because according to Lenore, that class had the best view of the sunset, and Theo pulled back to smile at me.

“Definitely.”