Chapter 23
“Miss Harper?”
I snapped my eyes open.
Ms. Ingram stared down at me from the lab table I sat at. “I asked you a question.”
I glanced around the room, but there were no other students present. I didn’t remember why she was talking to me. “Yes?”
She sighed. “Classes have been dismissed for an assembly. I figured you would go with the others, but you don’t seem like yourself lately. Has something happened?”
Yes and no. I met her eyes but didn’t tell her that. She was already a threat to Finn. If I started explaining my life in detail I might as well as attack and kill her. I didn’t want to do that, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I know that look. I’ve been there myself.”
I doubted that.
She pulled up a stool and sat down on it. “When I was much younger, I met this boy. He was strong and handsome, and his muscles were fantastic,” she said dreamily. She cleared her expression and continued. “I had no idea what he was, but when I found out that he was like me, a hunter, I was thrilled. I had these daydreams of us hunting together and kissing once the hunt was over. But fate intervened and he was killed before we could have one date. I vowed my vengeance on vampires that day, not only for his death, but for my future. I planned on spending my life with that man, until his untimely demise. Even though I haven’t met the thing that killed him, I’ll never give up searching.”
I frowned. I thought she would regale me with a tale that pertained more to my thoughts of having to make a difficult decision. How was what she stated similar to my own life? I wasn’t out for vengeance. “What does that story have to do with me?”
She smiled sweetly. “Take every day as though it were your last. Seize the moment and go for it.”
The fact that she took that phrase to be the moral of her story unnerved me. She was wrong about so many things… I stayed where I was and didn’t respond.
When I didn’t move, her face grew worrisome. “Do you have something to tell me?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t done what I promised her, which reminded me I still had some work to do on that subject.
“Well, I might have some knowledge that will cheer you up.”
I arched an eyebrow. Great, what now? “What kind of information?”
“I talked with my cousin, she’s a historian. When I told her about my convictions regarding the Tierney family, she dug up some old periodicals dating back in the eighteen hundreds that involve his family. There had been this huge scandal involving a pair of lovers. Supposedly, the family tried keeping it hushed up, but some information leaked to the press. Now the odd thing is, they mentioned the last name of the bride. The bride was not a Tierney, but a Cassian.”
I thought I had told her to stop digging into Finn’s ancestral heritage. Fear now crept up my spine, and I struggled to maintain a straight face mostly because of the two families involved in the article.
“Now normally I wouldn’t be interested in the names of these elopers, but the last name caught my attention. All vampire hunters learn the history of the Cassian Coven because it is where all vampires originate from. You see, newspapers and events supposedly reported the coven destroyed in the early 17th century. So this development certainly doesn’t make any sense to me because I thought it impossible for the Cassian’s to still be alive. But if the Cassian’s did survive, and that story is true, then that means the Tierney’s are related to them.”
I remained still and unmoving. I didn’t like where she was headed with this. Already she knew more than I wanted her to.
Her eyes twinkled. “I have never met Mr. Finn’s parents in all these years of teaching him. That must mean his family are vampires. It’s the only logical explanation as to why we’ve never met. I would know at once if they hadn’t aged in over four years.”
I shrugged trying to remain indifferent. She treaded on dangerous ground already. “Why do you think that? Is it because you believe they can’t go out in the sun? Because I’ve met them both and they don’t turn into fried chicken upon contact with the sun’s rays. I can assure you his parents are quite real and alive, with heartbeats.”
She smiled. “That’s exactly what I thought, until you disproved my logic.”
I shook my head, enough with the games. She needed to stop this nonsense, now, before she got hurt. “Like with the holy water and the garlic, not everything is what it seems especially when it comes to us. I told you before that you needed to keep your nose out of the searching and leave the vampire hunting to me. Your training didn’t teach you anything important except how to die.”
She took my harsh words very seriously, though she needed to hear them. Her eyes flashed with tiny lightning bolts. “I don’t understand why you would mock me now? You promised you would help me find one that I can defeat.”
“And I will. You’re rushing this. Hunting is an art. And the Tierney’s are not what you’re suggesting they are. You need to leave them alone, and let me handle the vampires here. I promised you I would find one that you could fight, and I will. Give me time.”
She rose and went back to her desk. “I don’t believe that the Tierney’s are not a threat.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. “Believe it or not, it’s the truth. Are you really going to try and hunt them because you believe in a scandal based off a newspaper dating back to the seventeen hundreds?”
Her shoulders slumped in defeat. “You’re right. I need concrete evidence. If what you say is true, and they are alive, I could get into serious trouble if I started attacking them based off of a whim.”
I relaxed slightly. “I wish I could help you with this, but if you blindly go looking for trouble where there’s none to be found, I can’t help you. In fact, I’ll warn you. If you didn’t understand me before, you need to now. You will get hurt, and in the worst case scenario, you will die. Leave everything to me.” I grabbed my bag and stood up.
She caught my arm on the way out the door. “I know you know where I can find one, but you keep holding me back, away from the ones I can hunt. If you continue to do so, you might regret our alliance.”
I shook off her touch and disappeared down the hall. She had threatened me again, but this time I knew it was coming. She was a problem, a serious one. She knew about Finn based off a newspaper written over three hundred years ago. Once Emery and Thalia found out about this, I wouldn’t know how they’d react. Finn might go on vacation for a while, taking his presence away from mine. But that wouldn’t make Ms. Ingram stop. If anything, it’d affirm the fact of what he was, alive or not. She’d still be hunting him here, or there, or in France or wherever else along with his family. No matter how much I tried persuading her otherwise, she was dead set on ending one of their lives.
It was time that I find one she could hunt, to get her mind off Finn. I detoured away from the assembly, already clearly late, and left the school. Finn didn’t see me leave the building, but Emery did. He caught up to me outside and stopped me before I could get to the bus stop.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head - he must’ve seen my upset expression that I was sure I had plastered on my face. “I need to take care of something.” I side stepped him, but he blocked my way again.
“If Finn’s in trouble we need to know. It is your job now to protect him.”
I sighed. “He’s not in trouble, not yet. But whatever you do, don’t let him stay alone with Ms. Ingram.”
He stood there flabbergasted on the sidewalk for a few minutes, probably because I didn’t explain further. “She would attack him?”
I shrugged. “Hopefully not, but I will handle this. She’s itching to destroy a vampire. I need to go find one she can kill.”
His hand touched my shoulder. I noticed his touch didn’t have the same effect on me that Finn’s did. “She may not come back from that.”
I met his brown eyes already understanding what this would mean. “I know.” I walked away from him then. I knew the risks - she knew the risks. I was past the point of caring about her life now that she had discovered the truth about Finn. I had warned her earlier that if she got in my way I would destroy her. Now she was in my way.