Blood Pledged (Arcane Arts Academy #3) - Elena Lawson Page 0,78

all together.

Adrian shrugged, gloomy. “Otherwise, why her? She’s your roommate, and she’s often alone studying, from what you’ve said.”

My skin crawled, and I shuddered at the awful feeling raising the hairs on my arms and legs. This wasn’t fair. If someone was really messing with Bianca’s head—using dangerous memory magic on her because of me—I’d never forgive myself for that. And the person responsible for something so heinous would pay dearly for trespassing where they didn’t belong.

No one touched my friends.

But there was something I still didn’t understand. “Why this stupid ball?”

“There’s only one way to test the theory,” Cal said, lifting my hand from my side to hold between his two larger ones. The heat made me shiver, but my stomach dropped at the look in his eyes. I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say, was I?

“We bait the hook,” Adrian said stoically. “We feed Bianca information that may interest this person and set her loose. You tell her you think you’ve figured out what was happening in Elk Falls—maybe that you’ve discovered something in your father’s study? But most importantly, that you’re going to be meeting someone who’ll tell you if you’re right.”

Cal held up the invitation. “And you’re going to say they’re meeting you at the party.”

“Why?” I asked, so completely uncomfortable with this plan. I couldn’t use Bianca as bait, could I? I hadn’t left her alone unless it was with Marcus for the last couple days, and the thought of leaving her side, of sending her into the clutches of whoever was tampering with her head, made me physically ill.

“You aren’t exactly popular,” Cal said with a pained expression. “But that works to our advantage here. I doubt all that many people will show up, but if whoever is doing this to Bianca—”

“And to those other girls,” I added, still convinced whoever it was hard to be the same person. There couldn’t be two monsters right under our noses, right?

“Maybe,” Adrian allowed. “But the point is, anyone who shows up will be a suspect. We can narrow it down a lot by baiting whoever is responsible to come.”

They had a good point. We were getting nowhere otherwise. And narrowing it down was a good place to start. As much as I hated to admit it. “Fine,” I said with a sigh, my jaw tight. “I’ll do it. But there’s something else we need to figure out, too.”

“What—”

A knock came at the door, and we all froze. Draven vanished into the bathroom in a blur of dark hair and pale skin. Cal mouthed, who would that be?

I shrugged, going to the door. I wasn’t exactly supposed to be here, but I’d take the tongue lashing if it happened to be a teacher come to escort me back to class.

But when I opened the door, my heart in my throat, thinking it was probably Granger, or maybe the Arcane Authorities coming to interrogate my familiars some more, I was surprised to find neither. Elias stood in the doorway, an ivory envelope in his hand with a broken red was seal.

“Thought I’d find you here.” He walked past me, inviting himself inside. “Want to explain why you didn’t tell me your birthday is in five days?”

“You invited Elias?” I asked Cal and Adrian, ignoring Elias altogether.

“Were they not supposed to?” Elias asked, hurt crossing his eyes.

Adrian poured himself a cup of coffee, and filled another three for Cal, Elias, and I. Draven was back from hiding out in the bathroom, and Elias jolted at the sight of him in the shed.

“What’s going on here?” Elias asked no one in particular, turning down the mug of piping hot coffee Adrian was trying to hand him.

Cal took the coffee instead and downed a large gulp. He turned to me. “We don’t know if it’s a teacher or a student—”

“Could still be a vampire, too, just because it’s not Draven—”

“Shut up,” Cal interrupted Adrian. “Would you quit interrupting me?” He sighed. “Like I was saying. We don’t know who it is, which means for this plan to work we had to invite everyone. Besides, we figured you’d want your boyfriend there for your birthday since we’re forcing you to throw yourself a party.”

Elias stiffened at Cal’s words, and his gaze shot to me, his eyes wide. “You told them?”

Ugh.

“It wasn’t hard to guess,” Adrian said. “Especially with our superior sense of smell.”

“And you should really refrain from making out in her room,” Draven added. “Never know who