David eyed me as if I had said something clever. Then he looked ahead to the Prof.
“Trust me, Quatura, he’s just a curious person.”
I followed his gaze to the professor, who opened a PowerPoint presentation on the whiteboard.
“Today, however, I will first give you an overview of the course.” He cleared his throat and pointed to the whiteboard, and around me the other students began opening their laptops and notebooks. My gaze lingered on his prominent Adam’s apple. “We only have a few months, which is why this course will only cover the basics of molecular biology: DNA, gene expression, transcription, replication, translation, gene regulation, mutations...”
I listened to the professor and tried to push aside the strange feeling.
He was probably just some highly intelligent fanatic. I didn’t even know what mythologies he was dealing with... Why did I immediately see him as a threat? Maybe because he jumped at my question?
“The subfields we will discuss are genetics, genomics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, proteomics, molecular genetics, molecular immunology, structural biology, molecular oncology, and molecular neurobiology.”
I forced myself to look at the laptop instead of the professor and focus on getting my shaking under control.
Probably, I really was too paranoid.
I shook my head and started typing.
“And, depending on what else you’re studying, you’ll each delve deeper into the topics we’re discussing here in the coming semesters.”
It wasn’t long before my gaze slid back not from the whiteboard to the laptop but to him, and our eyes met.
Again, I held my breath, trying to reassure myself that he was looking at me by maintaining eye contact. Something I had a hard time doing with any other person, but with this unrealistic-looking man, it was like making eye contact with a ghost.
He was no longer smiling. And the intensity of his green eyes made me shudder inside.
He looked away to the whiteboard and continued.
And I took another breath.
“I think you’ve made an enemy, Quatura,” David said from beside me.
And how right he would be.
Chapter 27
Emely
When I entered the room, she was still asleep, but fortunately, I was the only one here. The Blair cousins had probably taken some unnecessary extra courses in mathematics, which was Quatura-typical and idiotic. Something you didn’t really need when you owned almost the entire inner city as it was. But Grace had always wanted the extra credit to make her vain mother proud.
I tiptoed over to my bed with care, where somewhere I must have left my cell phone, which I had forgotten here this morning.
“Julian...”
I immediately wheeled around when I heard a faint whisper from the other corner of the room.
Great. Sleeping Beauty had awoken from her slumber. Now, of all times, when I was here. Couldn’t she have slept a few hours longer?
“Julian, where am I?”
I rolled my eyes in annoyance.
Bayla sounded a little confused, and judging by her scrunched-up face, things had really hit her hard yesterday.
“I’m not Julian,” I replied, perhaps a little too harshly, and turned back to my bed.
I threw back the black blanket, but there was nothing there. Crap, where had I put it?
Next, I looked in the top nightstand drawer, but since I hadn’t even used the nightstand until now, I pushed it right back shut. I guess it really was still home then.
“Emely, there you are.”
I turned around with a jerk to look at Bayla.
What did she want from me?
“Is something wrong?”
Granted, it wasn’t because she wasn’t nice. On the contrary, she was somehow the friendliest one here out of the whole house. But the fact that she didn’t smell like the other witches and that, according to Julian, something abnormal had happened to her yesterday caused me to distrust her. The daughter of a witch remained a witch to me.
Julian had wanted to tell me, but Father had spontaneously called the pack to an emergency meeting at the estate.
There, where I was sure my cell phone was still lying. Shit, man.
“Why is everyone so mean to you?”
Bay sat up straight, but immediately slumped back against the wall behind her.
