Page 245 of The Blairville Legacies

An icy breeze swept past my shoulder and I jerked my head toward the forest. Larissa was driving far too fast, and I shouldn't have recognized anything, but I spotted something.Him. The man with the knee-length coat. He was running through the thicket at the speed of the motorcycle, dodging every single tree without taking his piercing eyes off us.

“Fuck, Larissa. Drive faster!”

I didn't have to tell her twice, and although the needle on the speedometer was already way too high, Larissa sped up again.

I looked back into the forest, where this guy wouldn't stop running alongside us. He got closer to the edge of the forest, but stayed in the thicket. And the scariest thing was that he looked me straight in the eyes.

Goose bumps ran down my spine.

Then,suddenly, he looked ahead and disappeared deeper into the forest again until he finally disappeared out of my field of view entirely.

We came out onto a more even road, where isolated Victorian houses appeared at the side of the road every hundred meters.

As far as I remembered the borders correctly, this was the start of the Blairs' territory. We drove through it until we were back in the city center and Larissa took me to Mum's house.

She braked loudly and got off the hot machine she'd been given for her birthday by one of her ex-boyfriends. Probably the one with the rich parents in the drugs business who'd always saidhe'd change. And I was grateful to that bastard, because without that bike, Larissa would still have had that piece of junk from back then. And that wouldn't have saved us.

“Holy shit!”

Larissa took off her helmet. I did the same.

My breathing was going crazy and I suddenly felt so weak. Then I got off the bike, coughing, and propped myself up on my shaky knees, but when I gasped for air, I couldn't breathe.

Was this a panic attack?

“What happened?”

We both wheeled our heads around in panic, where a person I was all too familiar with just jumped out of his bedroom window like it was a normal thing to do.

Julian's face was full of shock, as if he had just been in the middle of this chase.

Larissa eyed him with suspicion until she recognized him.

“You must be Bay's neighbor. The one who got into a fight with Nash Copeland...” she realized and continued to scrutinize him. “And you just jumped out of the second floor...” she continued.

Julian ignored her and looked at me.

“You're shaking, what happened?” When I didn't answer because I was simply in shock, Julian looked at Larissa. “Where have you been?”

“Somewhere in the woods. I don't know...”

His expression darkened.

“What happened?” he repeated his question, which no one seemed to want to answer.

Larissa didn't seem to understand anything. And I understood even less, because how did Julian know that anything had happenedat all?

“There was some crazy guy with completely black eyes in the middle of the forest, and he and his friend wanted to do something to us... But we managed to get away,” Larissa groaned, running a hand over her forehead.

Julian's jaw was clenching hard. He seemed to be struggling for composure.

“What the...What were you looking for inFogs Forest?!” He gave me an intense look, his olive-green eyes sparkling, then looked back at Larissa.

She was silent, probably because she didn't want to reveal that we had been looking for something that was none of our business.

“I don't want you toeverset foot in thereagain!” he said harshly. But more to Larissa, who raised her eyebrows.

“Whatever's wrong with you, we barely escaped twoverynasty men, and I don't think I want to go back there any time soon.”