Dove Sport

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Wolves of Doveport

When Nick had still lived in Bulgaria with both his parents, his mother had often been in charge of organizing Danielov family events. Like hawks descending on their prey, the extended Danielov family would convene at one of Nick's father's estates for raging parties and reunions that often ended in someone's blood being spilled. It was so different from everything he had seen in America. Here, family reunions were meant to be fun and had things like barbecuing, or something. In Nick's experience, his family's reunions had always had some sort of business aspect.

Lately he had noticed an influx of out of towners arriving in Dovesport. A suspicious amount of out of towners. Normally Nick would write them off as being parents of the students at Edgewood come to collect their children for holidays abroad. It was only mid October, though, and Thanksgiving break wasn't wasn't for weeks yet. The next logical conclusion his mind jumped to was that these were associates of his father's come to see how the latest business enterprise was progressing or even, perhaps, to check up on Nick himself. This was half-right. According to his mother, several of his father's business partners would be paying him a visit in the coming months. However, that didn't explain why there were so many people right at this moment. As it turned out Nick would find his answer in one of the unlikeliest places: Meredith Lark.

A week had passed since, according to Arsen, Grace Wallis had moved in with the Larks. Blair was apparently inconsolable and blaming herself while her mother had moved onto investigating possible smear campaigns to run in her newspaper. Nick had to find all this out as secondhand information seeing as he and Blair weren't exactly speaking. Dara had assured him that she hadn't told Blair the truth about who he really was, but he sensed some lingering suspicion. She had, after all, also seen the gun under his bed, and Nick wouldn't exactly feel trusting if he had seen the same under her bed.

Still, Nick yearned to be friends with Blair again. He missed hearing her voice and the sound of her laugh, he missed going for shakes with the rest of their friends. Mostly he missed having someone he could confide in and be himself around.

Lost in his thoughts, Nick nearly didn't notice the girl striding across his campus. Her hair was a golden streak in the dreary color scheme of rainy October. She wore a black windbreaker that was unzipped to reveal a thick blue sweater. Nick stopped.

"Nicholas," The girl came to a halt in front of him and looked at him expectantly. Nick searched his mind for who this girl was but came up blank. Momentarily, he was thrown off.

"I don't think we've met," Nick said, recovering quickly. He held out a hand and said, "I'd offer my name, but you already seem to know who I am." Thankfully, the girl took this as the cue to offer her own name.

"Meredith Lark," She said, grasping his hand firmly. Her hands were soft but she squeezed a little as they shook. "I'm surprised it's taken us this long to meet, considering our mutual friend." Again, Nick wracked his brain to try and figure out what she meant. He realized the only person he knew that had mentioned Meredith to him was Blair and recalled that they had been friends once.

"Why are you here?" Nick figured it was better to get to the bottom of this meeting, seeing as Meredith had clearly been looking for him and he wanted to get inside.

Meredith gave a startled laugh before recovering and saying, "Did you know it's nearly Halloween? I didn't." Nick must have frowned a little because he got the feeling she knew he was not following the conversation. She did have a point though, while he'd known October was nearly over and knew that Americans celebrated Halloween at the end of the month, he hadn't connected the two in his mind. "Every all-hallows eve my family hosts a dinner party, a tradition which honors the Lark bloodline and the heritage of this town."