Jack frowned. He kept his arms around her. "I'm going to tell you something. Something important."
Schuyler nodded.
"Something is hunting us. There is something out there hunting Blue Bloods," he said softly. "I wasn't sure before, but I am now."
"What do you mean, hunting us? Don't you have it backward? We're the ones everyone else needs to be afraid of!"
Jack shook his head. "I know it doesn't make sense."
"Because The Committee said we can't be kil - "
"Exactly," Jack interrupted. "They've always told us we live forever, that we're immortal and invulnerable, that nothing can kill us, right?" he asked.
Schuyler nodded. "That's what I was telling you."
"And they're right. I've tried."
"Tried what?"
"I've jumped in front of trains. I've cut myself. I was the one who fell out the library window last year."
Schuyler remembered that rumor - how some kid had jumped off the third-floor balcony and landed in the cortile. But she hadn't believed it. No one could survive a fifty-foot jump and live, much less land on their feet.
"Why?"
"To see if what they were telling us was true."
"But you could have died!"
"No. I couldn't. The Committee was right about that, at least."
"That night - that night in front of Block 122 - you were hit by the taxi."
He nodded. "But it didn't hurt me."
"No." Schuyler nodded. So she had seen him fall underneath the taxicab's wheels. He should have died. But he had appeared on the sidewalk, whole. She'd thought she was just tired from the night, that her eyes were strained. But it had actually happened. She'd seen it.
"Schuyler, listen to me. Nothing can harm us... except - "
"Except...?"
"I don't know!" He folded his hands into fists in frustration. "But there is something out there. The Committee isn't telling us everything."
Jack explained that before the first meeting, the senior members of The Committee decided that they wouldn't tell the premature about the danger. That instead of warning everyone, it was best to leave them in the dark for now. It was enough that they would find out about their true heritage first; no reason to raise alarm bells where there might be none. Except that he hadn't believed them. He knew they were keeping something from them.
"They're holding something back. I think it's something that might have happened before, in our history. Something to do with Plymouth, when we first came here. I've tried to dig it up, but it's as if it's blocked from my sight. When I try to think about it, all I remember is a word. A message nailed to a tree in an empty field. It contained one word: Croatan."
"What's that?" Croatan. Schuyler shuddered, repulsed by the mere sound of it.
"I have no idea." Jack shook his head. "I don't even know what it is. It could be anything. It might be a place, I'm not sure. But I think it has to do with what they haven't told us about. Something with the power to kill Blue Bloods."
"But how do you know? How can you be so sure?" she asked him, alarmed.
"Because, like I told you, Aggie Carondolet was murdered," he said, looking intently into her deep blue eyes. Schuyler was silent. "And?"
"Aggie was a vampire."
Schuyler gasped. Of course! That's why she'd felt so empathic at the funeral. She'd known, somehow, that Aggie was one of them.