Bloodlines (Bloodlines #1)(100)

I was skimming the index of the junior yearbook when I heard a knock at the door. For a moment, I didn't want to answer. For all I knew, it was some loser friend Keith had made while here, looking to eat his food and watch TV. Then I worried it could be something Alchemist related. I found the Kelly tribute section I'd been seeking and set the yearbook down before tentatively approaching the door. Looking out the peephole, I caught sight of a familiar face.

"Lee?" I asked, opening the door.

He gave me a sheepish smile. "Hey. Sorry to bug you here."

"What are you doing here?" I exclaimed, beckoning him inside. "Why aren't you back with the others?"

He followed me into the living room. "I - I needed to talk to you. When you said you were coming here, it made me wonder if what my father had said was true. That Keith isn't here anymore?"

I sat back down on the recliner. Lee took a spot on the nearby loveseat. "Yup. Keith's gone. He was, uh, reassigned." Keith was off being punished somewhere, and I said good riddance.

Lee glanced around, taking in the expensive furnishings. "This is a nice place." His eyes fell on the cabinet that had held the alchemy supplies. Its door still hung precariously from its hinges, and I hadn't bothered tidying up where the Alchemists had cleaned out its other contents.

"Was this..." Lee frowned. "Was this place broken into?"

"Not exactly," I said. "Keith, um, just needed to find something in a hurry before he left."

Lee wrung his hands and looked around some more before turning back to me. "And he's not coming back?"

"Probably not."

Lee's face fell, which surprised me. I'd always gotten the impression he didn't like Keith. "Will another Alchemist be replacing him?"

"I don't know," I said. There was still some debate on that. Turning Keith in had stopped me from being replaced by Zoe, and Stanton was now considering just having me fill in as the local Alchemist since the duties were light. "If someone does, it may be a while."

"So you're the only Alchemist in the area," he repeated, sounding sadder still.

I shrugged. "There are some in Los Angeles."

That inexplicably perked him up a little. "Really? Could you tell me their - "

Lee stopped as his focus dropped to the open yearbook lying at my feet. "Oh," I said, scooping it up. "Just a research project I'm doing on - "

"Kelly Hayes." The cheerful look was gone.

"Yeah. Have you heard of her?" I reached for a nearby piece of scrap paper, intending to use it as a bookmark for the tribute section.

"You might say that," he replied.

I started to ask what he meant, and that's when I saw it. The spread they'd done in honor of Kelly had pictures from all parts of her high school life. Unsurprisingly, most of them were pictures of her playing sports. There were a few from other areas of her social and academic worlds, including one of her at the prom. She wore a stunning blue satin dress that made the most of her athletic figure and was giving the camera a big grin as she wrapped an arm around her dashing, tuxedo-clad date.

Lee.

I jerked my head up and looked at Lee, who was now regarding me with an unreadable expression. I turned back to the picture, scrutinizing it carefully. What was remarkable wasn't that Lee was in the picture - though, believe me, I hadn't figured out what was going on with that yet. What had me hung up was the timing. This yearbook was five years old. Lee would've been fourteen at the time, and the guy looking back at me with Kelly was certainly not that young. The Lee in the picture looked exactly like the nineteen-year-old sitting across from me, which was impossible. Moroi had no special immortality. They aged like humans. I looked back up, wondering if I should be asking if he had a brother.

Lee saved me from questioning, though. He simply regarded me with a sad look and shook his head. "Shit. I hadn't wanted it to happen like this."

And then, he took out a knife.

Chapter Twenty-Four

IT'S WEIRD how you react in moments of immediate danger. Part of me was pure panic, complete with racing heart and rapid breathing. That hollow feeling, the one that felt like a hole had opened in my chest, returned. Another part of me was able to still inexplicably think along logical lines, mostly something like, Yup, that's the kind of knife that could slit a throat. The rest of me? Well, the rest of me was just confused.

I stayed where I was and kept my voice low and even. "Lee, what's going on? What is this?"

He shook his head. "Don't pretend. I know you know. You're too smart. I knew you'd figure it out, but I just didn't expect you to do it so soon."

My mind spun. Once again, someone thought I was smarter than I was. I supposed I should be flattered by his faith in my intelligence, but the truth was, I didn't know what was going on yet. I didn't know if betraying that would help or hinder me, though. I decided to play cool for as long as I reasonably could here.

"That's you in the picture," I said, careful not to make it a question.

"Of course," he said.

"You haven't aged." I dared a quick look at the picture, just to ascertain that for myself. It still baffled me. Only Strigoi were ageless, staying immortal at the age they'd turned. "That's... that's impossible. You're Moroi."