Secrecy (Hosie)

Part 14: Nightmare

Josie has been attempting to wrap her mind around all of the information she gathered from her meeting with her father and Hope.

She has so many questions: What is Triad? What is Malivore? Why was he created? Why was he imprisoned? Why is Hope the only one capable of destroying him? Why are the monsters coming after her, seemingly trying to take her? Where would they take her?

None of this makes sense.

This past week, a couple of monsters had shown up in Mystic Falls, looking for Hope. A gargoyle and a unicorn. That was definitely an interesting one. Hope fought and killed each of them, with the help of her friends who researched the creatures in various mythological tales. Josie has gotten used to seeing Hope's werewolf strength, and now when Hope spars with Alaric at the school, she doesn't suppress her strength. The students at the school know she's a were-witch. She even let MG and Raf spar with her over the weekend. Josie was happy that her friends liked Hope, not that she was really ever worried about that. Hope is a very likable person, so she knew that her friends and family would approve.

In other news, Penelope had moved away from the school, saying the monster problem was too much for her to handle, so Josie no longer has to deal with her meddling. Before she left, though, she left Josie with a weird suggestion.
"You might want to talk to your dad about what's going to happen to you and Lizzie, the Gemini twins."
Josie disregarded it, until Penelope brought Hope into the conversation, "When Hope finds out, she'll drop your ass quicker than she got with you in the first place. With her past so full of loss, she'll want nothing to do with you."
Josie never believes anything Penelope says, but the thought of Hope leaving her did hurt. She figured that Penelope was just trying to get under her skin one last time before leaving town, but she tried to push the comments to the back of her mind. She doesn't want to psych herself out.
She's making it up.

Hope has been staying in the Salvatore School library pretty late into the night, almost every night recently. She tries to research anything on these monsters, and she finds practically nothing on Malivore and Triad, nothing on her connection to the two.

Josie helps her, until curfew at least. Her father doesn't let her stay up through the night, since she has classes in the morning. Hope has hardly slept since she found out about being the only one able to stop Malivore. It's a lot of pressure, Josie isn't sure how she's able to shoulder all of it without completely crumbling. But it is Hope, of course. She's strong— physically, mentally, and emotionally.
___________

Hope is the only person in the school who remains awake, it's a little past midnight, and the students are getting their rest for the day ahead. She's been flipping through old books for about 4 hours now.
It's been completely silent for the past 2 hours, since curfew was at 10:30 and everyone left the library, including Josie.

As she continues reading, she hears shuffling outside of the library, down the hallway. She slowly makes her way out of her seat, following the sound. She suspects it might be a new monster.

She follows it all the way to the end of the hall, toward the kitchen. When she opens the doors leading into the kitchen, she lets out a breath of relief realizing it's just one of the kids from the elementary witch program, "Pedro, what are you doing up so late?"

She walks over to him, squatting down so they are eye-to-eye. He holds a glass of milk in his hands, frozen like a deer in headlights, "Don't tell anyone I'm up, I just had a bad dream, and I couldn't go back to sleep."

Hope rubs his arm, attempting to comfort him, and her gaze softens, "Alright, how about this? We can go sit in the Great Room while you finish your drink, and then I'll take you back to your room, okay?"