Jesse and Siobhan came to the agreement that they needed to warn Noah and Alicia about everything that Bella had told them, as it was likely the two were also seeing monsters around town and had no way of knowing what was going on.

  Of course, that was easier said than done, seeing as they were still ignoring them. They had no idea where Noah disappeared to during lunch, since they never saw him in the cafeteria, and neither of them had any classes with him, so they decided to focus on Alicia. But she was always surrounded by other popular kids which made trying to talk to her alone impossible. Jesse could just imagine the look on Siobhan’s sister’s face if they tried to approach her while she was with them. They’d never even make it within twenty feet.

  Which is how Jesse found himself standing in front of Alicia’s locker, a folded note clutched tightly in his hand. He and Siobhan had played rock paper scissors to decide who would try to get the news to her, which he lost. After a couple of failed attempts to talk to her before and after their shared chemistry class, he resorted to writing the bullet points of their situation down on a piece of paper and slipping it in her locker.

  “Ah ha! I knew it!” A sudden voice from behind him made him jump and whirl around, finding a group of three boys in matching blue and yellow letterman jackets staring him down. He’d chosen to try to slip the note into her locker during lunch, when hopefully no one would have seen him. So much for that plan.

  “Jeez, guys,” Jesse muttered as he rubbed his chest, willing his heartrate to slow down. Seriously, he’d faced down vampires before, how could a couple of jocks scare him? “What’s your problem?”

  The boy in the middle stepped forward, ignoring his remark. “I’ve seen the way you keep staring at Alicia Sheth, and now we’ve caught you red handed.”

  Jesse recognized him as Kevin Campbell-Qie, one of the members of the school football team. Not that he’d ever talked to him before, he just knew the name. But now that he was looking at him, he also realized that he was one of the boys who always hung around Alicia and Adrienne’s group of friends. He was handsome, Jesse supposed, in that athletic sort of way, with close-cropped black hair and a perpetual confident smile plastered on his face, though now it looked more like a smirk. He was a bit annoyed to notice that Kevin was a couple inches taller than him.

  Before he could ask what he was talking about, the jock took another step forward, forcing him back.

  “Admit it,” he said. “You have a crush on her, don’t you? Well guess what pal, she’s got an important game coming up and doesn’t need some creep distracting her by stalking her and shoving love letters into her locker.”

  “I-I'm not-” he stammered. The whole situation was so out of left field, it was taking his brain a second to catch up. “This isn’t-”

  “Oh yeah, why don’t you read it for us then? Or better yet, I’ll take it.”

  He made to grab the note from Jesse’s hand, but he quickly backed away, holding it out of his reach. If Kevin read it, there was no way he was coming out of this looking like anything other than a creep, or worse; a crazed lunatic.

  “Listen man,” Jesse said firmly. “You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t have a crush on Alicia.”

  Kevin snorted. “Sure, you don’t. She’s just the most popular, prettiest, coolest girl in the whole school. You expect me to believe that?”

  The boys who had been silently standing behind Kevin as backup (who Jesse had started to think of as his henchmen) exchanged a glance.

  “Uh, it kinda sounds like you’re the one with the crush,” Jesse pointed out.

  Kevin turned red, confident smile slipping from his face. “That’s not any of your business.”

  “Just like it’s not any of your business if I am trying to give her a love letter,” he shot back. “Did she ask you play white knight for her?”

  Judging by the way Kevin flushed even deeper, he was guessing she didn’t. In one sharp movement, he snatched the note from Jesse and began tearing it up, letting the shreds fall to the floor.

  Well... at least he didn’t read it.

  He returned his glare to Jesse, and he instinctively took another step back from the group in front of him. As he did, he bumped into something solid, and he turned to see Noah towering behind him, so tall he almost cast a shadow over him.

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  “What’s going on here?” he asked in a way that said he knew exactly what was going on. In terms of vibes, Noah was almost the complete opposite to Kevin; long, unkempt brown hair instead of his neat short style, a perpetual scowl instead of a perpetual smile. Everything about him screamed “bad kid,” and despite not being the focus of his attention, Jesse still found himself shrinking back. He may not have been dressed like a ghoul anymore, but he was no less intimidating.

  The jocks exchanged nervous glances with each other. Even though they were all on the football team, they looked absolutely tiny next to Noah.

  “Nothing’s going on,” Kevin said warily, all of his bravado from earlier gone. “We were just having a friendly conversation is all.”

  “A conversation that’s now over,” Jesse said.

  Noah raised an eyebrow. “You heard the man, he doesn’t want to talk anymore.”

  As the jocks retreated down the hall, trying to recover what little dignity they had left, Jesse let out a sigh of relief.

  “Thanks for that. You really saved me there.”

  Noah grunted in acknowledgement, crouching down to pick up a piece of the shredded note. “Were you actually trying to give Alicia a love letter?”

  “No!” Now he could feel himself going red. “I just had to tell her something, but it’s hard to find her alone.”

  He dropped his voice to a low whisper. “So, it’s about Gravewood?”

  Jesse looked around to check if they were alone. He didn’t see anyone, but he also hadn’t seen anyone when Kevin and his goons had shown up. “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  Noah stood. “Come on. I know a place.”

  The “place” turned out to be a secluded corner of the school grounds where a couple of trees shielded them from the view of the main building. Upon arrival, Noah had immediately dropped down to sit with his back against one of the trunks.

  “So, this is where you go during lunch,” Jesse said, sitting next to him.

  Noah shrugged. “I could either be alone in the cafeteria, or alone out here, so I choose here.”

  “You don’t get in trouble for being out here?”

  “It’s a blind spot for the teacher’s patrols, plus they don’t think to check here. And you’re not going to tell them.” His voice had an edge on that last part.

  “Right.” Despite all they went through together on Halloween, Jesse still couldn’t help but think of Noah as “that scary kid.” It was hard to tell what he was thinking at any given moment. But even so, he found himself suggesting, “You could always sit with me and Siobhan.”

  Noah fished a silver coin out of his pocket and started playing with it; flipping it and letting it fall back into his open palm. He seemed almost hesitant as he started, “I know I have a... reputation. It doesn’t need to affect you guys as well.”

  Reputation... Even though he’s not a bully and had never once been seen bullying other students, because of his appearance and stand-offish nature, Noah was feared amongst most of the school. Almost everyone in their grade went out of their way to avoid him, and Jesse was pretty sure he’d heard rumors that even the teachers tried not to call on him in class if they could help it. And the rumors didn’t stop there; there was all kinds of nonsense about how he was held back a grade for beating up thirty kids at once, or how’d already been to juvie five times. It wasn’t too far-fetched to believe that anyone who associated with him would also be subject to such gossip.

  Not that that bothered Jesse in the slightest. He waved off his concerns. “Like we care about that sort of thing. The offer stands if you ever change your mind.”

  “I’ll think about it. So, what did you want to talk about?”

  “The thing is...”

  He launched into an explanation of his and Siobhan’s visit to Gravewood. He tried to keep it brief while including everything Bella told them. Everything that he thought was important anyway. The “there is no potion to cure us” bits and not the “spider silk is a versatile potion ingredient” bits. He also told him about how he’d been trying to inform Alicia all of this, but she’d been giving him the cold shoulder.

  When he finished, Noah was quiet for a moment as he digested this information, still absentmindedly fiddling with the coin in his hand.

  “That explains some things,” he said at last.

  “You’ve also seen the monsters around town?”

  “They’re hard to miss. And Bella really said there’s no way to go back to normal?”

  He shook his head.

  “That is something Alicia should know,” Noah decided. “The princess has probably been losing her mind trying to get her life back on track.”

  Jesse frowned. “She looks fine to me.”

  “A little too fine. She’s definitely pretending.”

  He was about to ask what he meant by that, but got distracted when Noah flipped the coin once more. There was something about it that looked familiar.

  “Hey, isn’t that the coin you got from the fountain in Gravewood? You kept that thing?” The last time he had seen it, Bella had snipped a small portion of it off to use in the potion. He hadn’t thought about what happened to it after that.

  Noah cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, I just... after everything that was going on, I kinda forgot to put it back.”

  “Still, considering where it came from, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were like, cursed now, or something.”

  “I don’t know about that. I see it as more of a good luck charm. I mean, it did come in clutch at the end, remember?”

  “I guess,” Jesse conceded.

  “Anyway, since your love letter idea failed, we’ll just have to talk to Alicia face-to-face,” Noah said, standing up and shoving the coin back in his pocket.

  Jesse scrambled to his feet after him. “One, it wasn’t a love letter, and two, I already told you it’s impossible to get her alone, and we don’t exactly want anyone else eavesdropping.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I have a plan.”