LAMIAE

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE: CASPER'S ASSURANCE

"Casper..." she began in a whisper. "I think there's something you should know," she added, looking at the boy shyly. For some time she had been struggling with the idea that Victoria's diary should belong to the boy. Whatever he wanted to do with it, whether to hide it deep in the bottom of a drawer or put it on display, it should go to his room. She really wanted to read this diary to the end, especially now that she knew how to use it, but she couldn't stay silent any longer. "I have Victoria's diary."

Casper didn't look surprised. On the contrary, he smiled grimly.

"I knew it when I saw it."

Dagmara remembered this moment well. This was before she found a way to decipher the diary. Casper entered her room to wake her up and saw the diary in her hands. Then he said he didn't know she ran one too. He pretended so convincingly that she thought he had no idea who it belonged to. And yet...

"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, surprised.

"Because it's yours," he replied without hesitation, as if it was obvious.

The girl denied it.

"No, I didn't even know Victoria," she couldn't downplay the fact that she was the only person who had never seen the girl. As a result, she became the only person unworthy of appropriating the diary. She never thought of the diary as her own, she only hoped to read it and give it to someone else, just as it was in her room.

"That's what it's all about," Casper remarked, nodding vigorously. – I can't learn anything new from the diary, but you can.

Now he completely knocked her off her guard..

"Aren't you afraid of what I will discover in it?" she asked dryly, and he laughed slightly.

"Victoria wasn't stupid. The information she provides is certainly... " he paused, looking for the right word "dosed. I'm just surprised he actually gave it to you."

At the sight of her furrowed brows, Casper immediately corrected himself.

"I'm saying I'm surprised Alan gave you the diary.

"Alan," she repeated deafeningly. Only after a few seconds did it occur to her that she hadn't said anything more, so she choked out: "How did he get her diary?"

"The day before her birthday, Victoria wanted to give it to me. I didn't want to accept it then, I had the impression that she was starting to give away her personal belongings, as if she knew what would happen. Alan was with us then," he sighed fondly, remembering that moment. "Now that I think about it, I think she only gave it to him to teach me a lesson for refusing to store it, she was angry about it."

"Store it," she caught the key word correctly, because Casper made a funny face, as if he had said a little too much. "Yes, this diary was supposed to be yours anyway. To Genevieve's granddaughter," he announced officially, pointing at her.

"She wanted to give it to me?" she couldn't understand why a strange girl wanted to give somebody notes of her experiences, memories and feelings. It was incomprehensible, even if Genevieve was someone important to Victoria, it didn't explain why the diary didn't reach her grandmother.

"Victoria thought that you are very similar and your cases..." he obviously wanted to add something, but he couldn't make it. Except she had already deduced what it must have been. What she discovered terrified her more than anything she had ever known.

"They'll end the same way," she finished for Casper. The boy denied it, shaking his head insistently.

"No, no way, you can't think like that. Your cases may go in a similar direction," he emphasized the word may, after a moment he was in a hurry to explain. "Look, Victoria came to Kielce, just like you, from another city. She had two parents, but she didn't live with them. Like you, she had no siblings. She was good, smart, the same as you. It's a pity you didn't meet," he added at the end, completely out of context. "You'd like each other."

Dagmara looked at the boy. She looked him in the eye and asked him directly:

"Casper, am I in danger?"

His silence filled her with fear. He looked at her as if he didn't understand why she could even think of something like that.

"No," he finally said so sincerely that she had no reason to even believe he was lying. "You are completely safe here."

She noticed the word 'here' added at the end, but decided that she wouldn't be allergic to all the little details, that she would not be oversensitive, since she had just heard that she was not in danger.