The Masqueraded

8

Mavis rushed down the hallway towards the student lounge. The lounge was relatively quiet, she made her way across the spacious room with its colorful tabletops and wing chairs and window seats. She spotted her friends sitting at a table in the corner.

'I met Detective Quinn on my way to the courts', she said as she slid into the comfortable upholstery chair next to Kira, 'you won't believe what happened'.

Sam looked up from his book. He was comfortably sitting cross legged in a corner reading a book.

'Should I leave?' Sam asked, politely, gathering his books closer to him. Ru looked at Mel expectantly, she didn't feel good about practically asking Sam to leave the table. Mel looked around at the others faces, clearly rattled. Thankfully, Mavis interjected.

'No need, Detective Quinn said that the transfer students already know quite a lot, since she'd spoken with them earlier. Apart from staying under the radar, Sam and Vaughn have promised to collaborate with the investigation in any way they can. So there, you can stay', she reassured him and smiled around at the girls. Wes looked at Sam,

'Plus, if Stefan has a chance be involved, so can Sam I suppose'. There was something about the way she said it, that made both Ru and Mel look at her in surprise. Wes calmly and casually went back to examining her nails, which she had chapped last night trying to open a bottle.

'What happened? Did something happen to someone?' Kira cut in.

'Uh, it's a little strange', Mavis began hesitantly. 'You see, the Dean got an anonymous email just this morning from an untraceable address. The police had of course tried to do something about it, but they are clueless. Anonymous email addresses are hard to track in general, this one especially'.

The girls leaned forward in their chairs to listen.

'The email was so strange, Mr. Reveira had been really shocked. He had told Detective Quinn multiple times that he didn't know what the email meant the least bit!'

'What was on the email?' Mel asked, impatiently. Mavis looked around the table at her friends' faces before responding in a low voice.

'A threatening note of some sort. Something about more people's lives being at risk because of his fault and then Mr. Alan had been throwing a fit saying he has a perfectly good record and that there was no reason for anyone to say something like that to him'. The girls stared at her, even Sam looked at her, surprised.

'What the hell does that mean?' Kira asked, in an equally hushed voice.

Mel shrugged, 'we need to go and talk to Detective Quinn about this'. Then she began gathering up her books and her laptop. The others started to put their belonging to their bags and waved at Sam as they made their way out of the student lounge.

They made their way over to the Office in a hurry. At the end of the corridor, Mel bumped hard into someone. She would have been thrown off balance had a pair of hands not grabbed her by the shoulders and steadied her. She took in the strong smell of minty aftershave and cologne and looked up in surprise.

Her eyes met a pair of familiar coffee brown eyes. Two globes of a darker shade of caramel cappuccino to be exact. Mel looked at them closely. They were a complicated color.

Caramel Cappuccino with chocolate syrup?

Suddenly she felt extremely stupid. What the hell was she thinking?

Mel jumped back with a start. There was a small smile playing on Stefan's lips as he cleared his throat softly. Annoyed and embarrassed at the same time, she scowled at him and adjusted the strap of her side bag.