Chapter 33 WHAT THE DARK REMEMBERS

Chapter 33 WHAT THE DARK REMEMBERS
Lily’s POV

Neither of us moved for a long moment after Alexander said it.

A warning about who was already gone.

The words sat heavy in the small kitchen, and I felt the bond pulse once.

“We have to do something,” I said. “We can’t just stand here.”

“There’s nothing to do tonight.” Alexander’s jaw was tight. “Jake’s already called the school. The school’s already called the council. By morning there’ll be a search organized, proper trackers, people who know what they’re doing. If we go out there right now, blind, we’re just two more people who could go missing.”

“So we wait.” I hated how it sounded coming out of my own mouth. “We just wait while he’s out there somewhere.”

“I didn’t say I liked it.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I said it’s what we will do tonight.”

I turned away from him and gripped the edge of the counter, staring down at the cold kettle like it had answers. My mind kept circling back to Damien hunched over his books, the dry, humorless edge in his voice. Better intense than failing because we romanticized compulsion. He hadn’t been performing for the project. He’d been performing for himself, working something out loud, and I’d been too tired to catch it.

“He wasn’t being dramatic,” I said quietly. “About the bond stuff. He knew something real.”

Alexander came up beside me, close enough that I felt the warmth of him at my shoulder. “I know.”

“Do you think it’s connected? To the car. To whoever’s been” I couldn’t finish it.

“I don’t know yet.” His voice had gone low. “But I’m not leaving you alone tonight, not after this.”

I should have argued. Some old, stubborn piece of me wanted to remind him I’d survived plenty of nights alone before he ever existed in my life. But the truth was simpler and less comfortable: I didn’t want to be alone either.

“The couch folds out,” I said instead.

Something flickered across his face, surprise, maybe relief, gone too fast to name. “Okay.”

Alexander’s POV

She gave me a blanket that smelled like her detergent and went to bed without making me argue about it, which told me more than anything how exhausted she actually was.

I didn’t sleep.

I lay on the unfolded couch listening to the building settle, to her breathing even out down the hall, to the bond hum steady and quiet between us like it was finally satisfied I was close enough. I kept my phone on my chest, screen up, waiting for it to light with Jake’s name, or worse, the council’s.

It lit at half past midnight.

Jake: Found his bag half a mile from his house and no signshim.

I was upright before I finished reading it. Where exactly.

Jake: Send you the pin. Council’s already there. They’re saying don’t come.

Me: I’m not asking permission.

I looked down the hallway toward Lily’s closed door and made myself stop. She’d hear me leave no matter how quiet I tried to be, the bond would tell her even if my footsteps didn’t, and the last thing either of us needed was her following me out into whatever this was.

I wrote four words on the notepad close to her phone’s charger. I went to help. Stay. Then I let myself out as carefully as I could and went down the stairs into the cold.

The pin took me to the edge of the woods bordering the east side of town, the same stretch that backed onto the old service road. Council vehicles were already there, headlights cutting through the dark, two enforcers in dark coats moving along the treeline with the particular unhurried focus of people who’d done this before and didn’t love what it usually meant.

Jake was standing near his car, arms crossed so tight his knuckles had gone pale. He looked up when I approached and didn’t bother with a greeting.

“They won’t let me past the tape,” he said. “I found the bag near the bend up there, right where the road curves. It was just sitting on the ground like he’d set it down on purpose.”

“Or dropped it.” I kept my voice level for his sake, though nothing in me felt level.

“Or dropped it,” Jake echoed, and didn’t sound like he believed it either.

One of the enforcers, an older vampire I half recognized from council functions, peeled away from the treeline and came toward us, expression unreadable in the dark.

“You two need to clear the area,” he said. “This isn’t a school project anymore.”

“Did you find anything else?” I asked. “Blood, signs of a struggle, anything?”

The enforcer’s eyes flicked over me, assessing the way older vampires always assessed younger ones, weighing how much truth I could be trusted with. Whatever he decided, it wasn’t much.

“We found a scent trail,” he said finally. “It splits about forty feet past the bag. One direction leads deeper into the woods. The other” He stopped himself, jaw tightening.

“The other what?,” Jake pressed.

“The other comes back out toward town.” The enforcer’s gaze settled on me, deliberate now, weighted in a way that made my stomach drop before he even finished. “Toward the residential streets. We’re tracing it now.”

I felt the bond pull, tugging me back the way I’d come.

Back toward Lily’s apartment.