Chapter 45 Aria
Group study nights with Sienna and Nora usually felt like home. Background music humming low, Nora lecturing us about science concepts we didn’t ask for, and Sienna being dramatic about everything from homework to snack choices. But tonight had an edge I couldn’t place. My Mom had left for her shift in the hospital so we had the whole place to ourselves and I called a girls’ night.
Nora sat cross-legged on the carpet, lost in the world of her colour-coded flashcards. She was muttering terms under her breath and occasionally waving a card at us like a prophet delivering warnings of academic doom. Sienna was sprawled across my bed, her chin propped on her palm with pen tapping against the page of her open notebook. Her braid slid across her shoulder each time she shifted.
She wasn’t doodling hearts, flowers, or cartoon frogs like usual. She was way too focused. I glanced up again and caught her quick flick of her eyes toward the window. The bounce of her foot wasn’t relaxed fidgeting but tension disguised as habit.
“You okay?” I asked, keeping my voice light.
Sienna didn’t look up. “Yep. Peachy.”
It wasn’t normal. Sienna’s default setting was eye contact and overly expressive sarcasm. This version of her felt thinner and stretched around something she wasn’t saying.
Nora looked between us. “Aria, you’re staring like she’s about to sprout wings.”
“She might,” I said.
Sienna smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Only on weekends.”
Her notebook lay open in front of her, angled just enough that I could see the edges of the page. Nothing like her usual messy chaos were in there.
A timer dinged on Nora’s phone, startling all three of us. “Break time,” Nora announced like a camp counsellor. “Time to hydrate, peasants.”
Sienna slid off the bed and headed toward the kitchen, stretching her arms over her head. “I’ll get water.”
She left her notebook open and Sienna never left her notebook open.
Ever.
My curiosity prickled and I told myself I was just checking and making sure she wasn’t spiraling, or planning a dramatic sabotage of her grades again. But when I leaned closer, my breath caught.
The page was covered in symbols. Not her normal swirls or goofy cartoon faces. These were crisp shapes drawn in dark ink. A large one sat in the center with three overlapping circles, connected by a triangle that wasn’t quite symmetrical. At each point of the triangle, she had drawn a small mark that looked almost like… teeth or fangs.
Around it were smaller sigils each one drawn with steady strokes. Some resembled distorted stars. Others were clusters of intersecting lines that reminded me of the pattern Luca once described near rogue trails which were lines meant to confuse or mislead and mark territory.
But Sienna was human. Wasn’t she?
My fingers brushed the edge of the paper, and that’s when I noticed a faint indentation on the next page like she’d pressed too hard meaning she’d drawn these fast with anger or something else.
I scanned the margins and found a note so tiny it was almost hidden.
Never again.
A shiver curled down my spine cause the words didn’t feel random. They felt like a promise or a warning. The floorboard creaked from the hallway and I jerked upright just as Sienna appeared in the doorway holding three water bottles.
She took one look at my face and arched an eyebrow. “What?”
I froze, guilt flashing through me. “I—your notebook was open—”
“Oh my gosh.” She laughed lightly and crossed the room, sliding the notebook toward herself with a single smooth motion. “Aria, babe, breathe. They’re doodle and my brain’s weird when I’m bored.”
She flipped the page before I could ask anything else but the movement was just a little too quick.
“You sure those were doodles?” I asked quietly.
She paused then smiled wider, the kind of smile that felt rehearsed. “What, you think I’m writing secret code? Planning your murder? Practicing witchcraft?”
Nora snorted. “Honestly? I wouldn’t put the witchcraft part past you.”
Sienna tossed a pillow at her. “I don’t need ritual magic to ace chemistry. Just caffeine and spite.”
Her voice was normal now but the tension in her shoulders didn’t disappear. She kept one hand resting on her closed notebook her fingers tapping lightly as if confirming the cover stayed shut.
I sat next to her on the floor studying her profile. She looked like Sienna truly with expressive eyes, that confident tilt of her chin, and a half-smile like she knew a joke no one else had caught but underneath it, something felt wrong.
Different.
And every instinct I had whispered the same thing. Those symbols meant something she didn’t want me to know.
“Seriously, Aria,” Sienna said, nudging my knee with hers. “Don’t go cray cray on my doodles.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were,” she cut in firmly. “Drop it.”
Nora didn’t notice the shift as she was already lecturing us about mitochondria, bless her heart. But I couldn’t drop it because the sigils weren’t random and Sienna wasn’t fine. She laughed with us, ate cookies with us, complained about school with us but somewhere beneath that bright exterior was something gnawing at her.
And I couldn’t tell if she was protecting me from it or protecting herself. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty. Those symbols weren’t the last secret Sienna was hiding.
Not by a long shot.
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Do you hear that?
That’s the plot SWERVING into best-friend mystery danger territory and I am HYPED.
Aria: Those aren’t doodles.
Sienna: “Anyway!” 😁✨
Me: Ma’am those were CODE SYMBOLS.
We are officially in the “my best friend might be involved in something terrifying and people are lying to me” stage of the teen supernatural romance and honestly?
Hold tight, my lovelies. The tension is rising and secrets are multiplying. Luca is 0.2 seconds away from smelling those sigils on the page and losing his ENTIRE mind.
More chaos soon. 💋🔥