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Goosebumps ate into my back, as if my own body was forcing me to remember the touch of his hand. As if his hand had branded me down there that evening.

Figure It Out

Royal Blood

Chapter 10

Julie

Numb3rs

Jay Varton

It was one thing to plan things, another to actually execute those plans.

I had planned to cancel the internship by calling the DLSC directly and leave my professor a logical explanation for my behavior in his jam-packed university mailbox. I had planned to drop out of his seminar and take other courses. I had planned to continue forgetting about Erik.

But now I was standing in the elevator of the DeLoughrey Science Center, in one of the town's two large high-tech skyscrapers, letting my gaze wander over the venerable downtown area – which was continuing to shrink below me – in order to distract myself from what awaited me in one of the top floors. But not even the ravens, which seemed to circle the skyscraper obsessively, as if their meal were hiding inside, managed to distract me.

It was Monday afternoon, and all day long I had been unable to think of anything but this nerve-wracking internship. Not even the new plans with Bayla, Larissa, and Miles had been able to take my mind off it.

I tapped my fingers on the steel bar in front of me, but immediately regretted it, because ice escaped from my fingertips and drew tiny crystals across the metal.

I hastily looked outside, trying not to hold on to anything and instead concentrating on something that had nothing to do with me.

The elevator took me higher and higher.

Bordering downtown were the suburbs, the outer districts, the harbor, and the surrounding forests, as well as all the mountains that blocked my view of the other parts of the island, which the locals called The Peaks.

The summits of The Peaks were covered in snow year-round, and several daring hikers who had attempted to explore the uncharted ridges had never returned.

The Quatura society told legends of ancient traces of the fourth species that were supposedly hidden up there, waiting for the saints of the stars to return to their promised land in order to free the island from the threat posed by the lower species. Giant hidden stone statues rising from among the rocks toward the sky, which, according to Quatura legends, were a sign that this island belonged to the Union of the Light Species.

Since the most populated part of Blairville, where the DLSC was located, lay in a lower area than the rest of the town, it was not possible to see past The Peaks, even from up here. However, in the distance, I could make out the Victorian lighthouse on the coast of the Quatura district, the Vanderwood, rising with its Gothic towers from the depths of the higher located snow-covered fir forests, and nearby, on a higher mountainside, the peaks of the roller coaster and the gigantic Ferris wheel of the old, dilapidated amusement park peeking out.

The gigantic mountains, covered with snow-lined coniferous forests and misty valleys, obscured the rest of my view, so my gaze settled on the ruins of the amusement park.

I wondered whether the owners of Blairville's Psychic Fun Fair had planned to run the park for only a decade, or whether they had abandoned their plans after the murders had begun in the 1980s.

My thoughts drifted back to my own plans, which I normally stuck to. Normally, I had everything under control. However, nothing about my condition was normal.

I was pregnant by the man I was supposed to see as my greatest threat after Gloria Westcode, while he didn't even know about it because he also considered me a threat, and I couldn't tell if he wasn't trying to lure me into a devious trap after all.

What made me doubt this was the fact that he hadn't kidnapped me when he had had the chance. That somewhere deep down in the part of him I thought I knew as Erik, something seemed to be slumbering that was real.

No. Julie. Stop. Concentrate. You promised yourself you wouldn't think about Erik.

The elevator door opened.

My heart stopped.

A man in a black suit stared at me. He was in his late thirties. At least he looked that way. His gray eyes scrutinized me coolly.

Bastien DeLoughrey.

The man who – according to her diary entries – had had something to do with Alice, even if only fleetingly.

I avoided his gaze, quickly looked past him and waited for him to enter the elevator. When he didn't, but instead let his gaze wander to my stomach, I quickly started moving.