"No."
"It's got to be a mistake," Bliss said tearfully.
"Bliss, listen to me," Schuyler said, a hard edge to her voice. "He's being set up. Dylan couldn't have killed Aggie. Remember?"
Bliss's eyes focused. She nodded. She knew what Schuyler was saying. "Because…"
"Because he's human and a Red Blood can't kill a Blue Blood… Aggie would have overpowered him in a second. It's a lie. Aggie was a vampire. There was no way Dylan could have killed her."
"A setup."
"Right," Schuyler said. The rain was coming down in torrents, and all three of them were getting soaked, but none of them seemed to notice.
Bliss looked fearfully at Oliver. "But Schuyler, there's no such thing as a vampire…" she said lamely.
"Oh. Don't worry about Oliver. He knows. He's okay. He's a Conduit. I'll explain later."
Oliver tried to look trustworthy and reassuring. He remembered his umbrella in his pack and opened it, shielding them from the rain.
"Jack told me last week that there's something out there killing Blue Bloods. My guess is Dylan's being framed," Schuyler explained.
"So that means he's innocent…" Bliss said hopefully. "Of course he is. We need to find out who is behind this, and we need to get Dylan out of there." Schuyler declared. Bliss nodded.
"We need to find out what's going on. Why Dylan is being charged all of a sudden, when the official report was a drug overdose. Where did they get this 'evidence'? And why Dylan?"
"Your dad's a senator. He's got to have some connections with the police department. Can't he help?" Oliver suggested.
"I'll ask him," Bliss promised. The three of them walked through the school gates. They were already late for their homeroom classes.
Later, at lunch, Bliss met up with Oliver and Schuyler at the cafeteria. They were seated at the back table as usual, hidden behind the marble fireplace.
"You spoke to your dad?" Schuyler asked.
"What did he say?" Oliver prodded.
Bliss pulled out a chair next to them and planted her elbows on the table. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the two of them. "He said, don't worry about your friend. The Committee is taking care of this."
Schuyler and Oliver digested the information. "That's strange isn't it?" Schuyler asked. "Because Committee meetings have been canceled until further notice."
CHAPTER 32
The whole school was still buzzing with the news that afternoon—and in Schuyler's ethics class, Mr. Orion was trying to calm down his students.
"Settle down, settle down, please," he said. "I know this is a tough time, but we need to remember that in the United States, we are innocent until proven guilty."
Schuyler walked into the room and noticed that Jack was back in his usual seat next to the window "Hey," she said, giving him a shy smile and taking the desk next to his. She would never forget the way he'd kissed her, almost as if he'd kissed her before.
Jack looked more handsome than she'd ever seen him. His hair gleamed white-gold underneath the light, and his clothes were crisply pressed, his shirt neatly tucked for once. He was wearing a black sweater and a gold watch she'd never seen on his wrist before. He didn't look up at her.
"Jack…"
"Yes?" he asked coldly.
Schuyler recoiled at the arctic tone in his voice. "Is something wrong?" she whispered.
He didn't reply.
"Jack, we have to do something! They've arrested Dylan! And you know it's wrong. He couldn't have killed her!" She whispered fiercely. "He's human. He's being set up. We need to find out why."
Jack took out his fountain pen and scratched the nib on his notebook. He didn't look at her. "It's none of our business."
Schuyler whispered fiercely, "But what do you mean? You know it is. We need to find out about what's killing us off. Don't you—didn't you want to—?"
"Care to share with the rest of the class, Miss Van Alen?" Mr. Orion asked, interrupting the conversation.
Schuyler slouched down in her seat. "No, sorry."
For the rest of the period, Jack sat silent and stony-faced. He refused to look at Schuyler, or even to read the notes she passed to him.
When the bell rang signaling the end of class, Schuyler ran after him.
"What's gotten into you? Is it your sister? What's wrong?" Jack snapped. "Don't bring Mimi into this."
"But I don't understand. What you said on Saturday night—"
"I spoke recklessly. It's not the way I feel. I'm sorry to have misled you."
"Why are you shutting me out? What's happened to you?" Schuyler asked, a catch in her voice.
Jack looked Schuyler up and down. "I'm really sorry, Schuyler. But I made a mistake. I shouldn't have said the things I said that night. I was wrong. My father set me straight. The Committee isn't hiding anything. They've investigated the circumstances of Aggie's death, and we just need to trust them to know what's best. They'll let us know once it's been resolved. I think we should just forget about the whole thing."
"Your father—your father has something to do with this, doesn't he?" she accused him.
He put a heavy hand on her shoulder; gripped it tightly, then released it, pushing himself away. "Leave it alone, Schuyler. For your sake and mine."
"Jack!" she called.
He didn't turn around. She saw him walk purposefully down to the second landing, where Mimi Force was coming out of a classroom. She saw the two of them together, noticing as if for the first time that they had the same lithe form, the same panther limbs, they were the same height, the same coloring. She saw Mimi smile when she saw Jack. As Jack slung an arm around his sister's shoulders in an intimate and affectionate way, something in her heart broke.
"What did Jack say?" Bliss asked, meeting Schuyler and Oliver for coffee at the Starbucks across the street during their free period.
"He's no help," Schuyler said, the words dead in her mouth.
"Why not?"
"He's changed his mind. He says that what he told me was a mistake. He told me to forget about it." She tore a paper napkin into tiny pieces, meticulously ripping it apart until her tray was filled with confetti. "He said The Committee will explain everything in time, we just need to be patient," she said bitterly.
"But what about Dylan?" Bliss asked. "We can't just let them charge him for something he didn't do!"
"We're not. It's up to us," Oliver said. "We're the only, ones who can help him now."
CHAPTER 33
The police wouldn't let them see Dylan. They tried to visit him after school, but they encountered a wall of law enforcement—and no one at the station would even admit to holding him there. It was a dead end. They had taken away his cell phone and his Sidekick, and they had no way to get in touch with him. Schuyler felt a deep sense of foreboding. The crisis brought the three of them—Bliss, Schuyler, and Oliver—closer than ever. The next day, Bliss stopped sitting with Mimi in the cafeteria. Instead, they spent every free period plotting on how to help their friend.
"His family's rich. I'm sure they have some awesome defense lawyer set up for him, right?" Bliss asked. "We need to talk to them. I need to tell them something."
"What?" Schuyler asked.
"I did a little investigating on my own last night. Okay, so I overheard my mom talking to some people about the case.
I heard her say the police said time of death was between ten and eleven P.M. They're pretty sure about that. The way Aggie's body was found, it couldn't have happened anytime earlier or later."
"So?" From a skeptical Oliver.
"So, Dylan was with me from ten to eleven. We were outside in the alley the whole time, smoking cigarettes. He never left my side."