“Hunter! Did you want to—whoa.” Jenna raised her eyebrows when I swung around. She was coming from the cafeteria with a basket and Spencer and Jason behind her. “Scary face.”
“Sorry.” I sighed, trying to shake off my mood. It wasn’t fair to take it out on them, especially after getting mad at Chloe for doing the very same thing to me.
“You okay?” Spencer asked.
“I’m fine,” I grumbled. “Chloe needs therapy though.”
He snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Jenna held up her basket. “Picnic time. You in?”
“Always,” I answered, following them off the path toward one of the back fields bordering the woods. We did this every time we needed a little privacy from possible surveillance cameras, bugged phones, and teachers in general. It wasn’t easy to hide in a school that trained you in spy maneuvers and combat. Campus was full of bugs and hidden cameras. Sitting in the middle of a field was our favorite way to trade information. The potato salad wasn’t a bad incentive either.
We spread out a blanket and dug into the food right away. We sat shoulder to shoulder, angled out so that we could see in all directions and no one could sneak up on us.
“So what’s the scoop?” I asked, wiping mayo off my top lip. “Any word on Will?”
“Nothing new,” Jason said. “He’s stable enough but they’re still waiting to see which way he goes.”
“It was weird.” I frowned. “Really weird, the way that Hel-Blar just disintegrated.”
“Something’s up,” Jenna agreed, her red hair caught back in a messy braid. Her sneakers had little stars all over them.
“The Niner boys are whispering about some kind of pill that will make them stronger,” Jason said, shaking his head. “I totally don’t want to narc but, man, I’m going to have to if I can’t figure out where they’re getting it from.”
I went cold.
“Wait. What?”
“They’re saying it’s some kind of vitamin that makes you stronger.”
“Will mentioned something about taking vitamins,” I said quietly. I looked at Spencer pointedly. “And Chloe’s taking all these vitamins and protein powders.”
He frowned. “But her mom gave her those. She’s a doctor and a biochemist.”
“True.”
Jenna tilted her head. “If they really are vitamins, who cares? I mean, I’m taking vitamin C right now. My roommate’s got that flu and I really don’t want to catch it. If they need to think it makes them better fighters, where’s the harm? It’s not like they’re on steroids.”
“I guess.” I wasn’t sure why, but I wasn’t convinced.
“But we all agree we need to find out what’s going on, right?” Jason asked. “I mean, with the Hel-Blar and all the secrecy and some of the teachers being all weird?”
Spencer lay on his back, soaking in the sun and abandoning his watch. No one was paying attention to us anyway. It was too nice a day.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said yawning. His dreads spread out around him like honey-pale snakes. “We always do.”
I didn’t see Chloe for the rest of the day. But when I went back to our room Friday evening after dinner there was a note on my pillow. It was in her handwriting and read, Sorry. I think I have a wicked case of PMS. She’d left a chocolate bar and a new romance novel as a peace offering. I wasn’t mad anymore, but I was still worried.
So I did what any vampire hunter would do.
I snooped.
I felt bad going through her stuff but I couldn’t help myself. It was no use booting up her computer and going through her files; some of that encryption stuff may as well have been in ancient Babylonian for all that I understood it. Her gym bag was by her bed though, the zipper half open. I could see the white plastic cap on the bottle with the prescription sticker poking out. I plucked it out of the bag, along with the second bottle I found underneath it. That one was a popular brand of protein powder. I looked inside and sniffed it but it seemed innocuous enough. Not that I really knew what I was looking for.
The second label described the contents as a multivitamin and it had Chloe’s name on it and her mom’s. They looked normal and even had the regular gross vitamin smell.
I should let this go. I was being ridiculous.
But it didn’t stop me from pocketing one of the vitamins in case I needed to get it analyzed later.
I was probably just being paranoid. It happened sometimes to hunters. And PMS could totally account for Chloe’s weird mood swings and sudden obsession with working out and combat practice. Still, I kept searching.
I didn’t find anything, though—just her normal assortment of nail polishes and data sticks and computer parts, and her secret bottle of peach schnapps in the back of her closet in her left rain boot. She hid a bottle there every year.
I was being a paranoid idiot.
I closed the closet door with a determined snap. I had enough to worry about with Courtney and the Niners and Will to be rifling through my friend’s stuff.
Like the fact that Quinn was waiting for me in the clearing in the woods right this very moment.
The sun had fully set while I was rummaging through Chloe’s things, which meant Quinn was out there with Kieran and Lucy. Kieran had gotten permission for me to train Lucy as long as we did it out of sight of the school and kept it quiet. It wasn’t a precedent they wanted to set, and there was something about insurance as well. Whatever. I didn’t want an audience. I felt self-conscious enough knowing Quinn would be there.