13. echo #2
Runo cackled, Slash started laughing into the back of his hand, and Aeron looked pleased enough with himself that I knew I was never escaping this conversation cleanly.
Samael only shook his head, but the corner of his mouth moved before he told me again to send him anything suspicious and not to confront whoever was digging until they knew more.
“I know how investigations work, Pops. You taught me.”
“I also taught you not to ride a motorcycle loud enough to announce your location three blocks away. Education doesn’t always take.”
“That motorcycle is perfect.”
“It’s obnoxious.”
“So am I. We suit each other.”
That got the rumble of his laugh, which was close enough to victory for me.
Aeron made me promise to clean my feet before putting anything back on them, Slash told me to get my boots returned before the next call so he did not have to listen to another footwear crisis, and Runo blew me a kiss while telling me to have fun with my “not-boy.”
I hung up before he could make it worse. I stayed on the wall for another moment, then shoved my phone into my bag and picked up the heels. If Hunter was the one digging, Samael would find out soon enough.
I picked up the heels and started walking barefoot again. Hunter could have his stupid dress code exactly as written. Until he gave me my boots back, he was going to have to live with my interpretation of it.
By the time I found Priya, my feet were clean, bandaged, and still bare.
I’d stopped at the campus pharmacy like Aeron demanded, bought enough blister pads to satisfy him for at least twenty-four hours, and refused to put the heels back on afterward.
They hung from two fingers while I crossed the student union toward the café, and the first thing Maren did when she saw me was look down at my feet and laugh.
“I’m following the dress code,” I said as I slid into the booth beside Priya and tucked the heels underneath the table. “Nobody said the shoes had to remain physically attached to me. If Hunter has a problem with that, he can give me my fucking boots back.”
Devon leaned sideways to inspect the bandages, while Maren started explaining that walking barefoot through a campus full of rich people was probably how diseases evolved.
Priya laughed with them, but hers came a second late and disappeared too quickly.
She had both hands wrapped around a coffee she hadn’t touched, and every time the café door opened, her attention moved there before she dragged it back to whatever Devon was saying.
I let the conversation continue while I watched her do it three more times.
By the fourth, I stopped pretending I hadn’t noticed.
“Whatever you’re waiting to walk through that door is ruining your ability to lie convincingly,” I told her.
“You’ve checked it every time somebody comes in, and that coffee has been sitting there long enough to develop a personality.
If you don’t want to tell me, fine, but stop looking like you’re about to crawl under the table every time someone moves. ”
Priya’s mouth tightened. She looked at Devon and Maren first, which told me immediately that whatever this was, they didn’t know either, then pushed the cup away with a sigh.
“I did something stupid at the beginning of the semester. It wasn’t even a big thing then.
There was a donor reception I wanted into because one of the alumni there handles placements for a firm I wanted, and Lacey Durant got me access through somebody else’s credential.
When security noticed the extra hit afterward, she cleaned up the log before it became a disciplinary issue.
I told her I owed her, and for a while that meant harmless shit—an introduction here, getting her a seat somewhere there, helping her get information she could’ve found herself if she wasn’t lazy. Then you showed up.”
That got my attention faster than the rest. Priya rubbed one thumb over the side of her cup before continuing, irritation pushing through the embarrassment now that she had finally started talking.
Lacey had asked whether Hunter was using me for Quorum work, whether Nichlas was still protected, how often I was in the Kings’ lounge, what Malakai and I were doing, and what Ronan had said after yesterday’s assignment.
Priya had refused because she didn’t know half of it and had no intention of reporting on me even if she did.
Lacey’s response had been to remind her that she still had copies of the original access logs and could make the whole thing look much uglier if admissions ever decided to ask why Priya’s credential had been somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be.
I sat back and looked at her for a few seconds while the shape of it settled.
“You agreed to repay a favor. You didn’t agree to become her informant, and you definitely didn’t agree that she gets to keep increasing the price every time she thinks she has something better to squeeze out of you.
That stopped being collection the minute she threatened to manufacture a disciplinary problem if you didn’t give her information you never promised. ”
“I know that,” Priya said, quieter now. “The problem is knowing it doesn’t make the logs disappear. I can tell her to fuck off and she can still send them wherever she wants.”
Before I could answer, Malakai appeared at the end of the booth carrying a drink I was fairly sure he hadn’t paid for.
He didn’t ask whether there was room. He dragged a chair over from the next table, turned it backward, and folded his arms over the back while he listened to the last part of Priya’s explanation with far too much interest. I stared at him until he looked at me, completely unbothered by the fact that he had once again materialized wherever I happened to be.
“You’ve developed a tracking problem,” I told him. “I’m going to start charging you.”
“You can send me an invoice.” His attention moved to Priya after that, and for once he didn’t immediately turn the whole thing into a performance.
“Lacey’s father handles donor compliance for a couple of families close to the Quorum.
She’s been trading on that since freshman year because people assume she has more reach than she does.
She knows enough to make trouble, but she also knows exactly how fast her own access disappears if the wrong people decide she’s unreliable. ”
That was useful, which irritated me on principle.
I looked back at Priya and held out my hand for her phone.
She hesitated, then unlocked the thread and passed it over.
I read through the messages once without commenting, then again more slowly.
Lacey’s first requests looked ordinary enough.
The pressure changed over time, each favor getting slightly larger, the language sharper whenever Priya resisted.
The last few messages had stopped pretending altogether.
“You’re not the first person she’s done this to,” I said, handing the phone back.
“People who build leverage this way don’t invent the system for one target.
She helped you break a rule, kept proof that she helped you, then used the proof to rewrite what you owed. If that worked once, she did it again.”
Maren immediately mentioned two students she knew who had gotten into donor events through Lacey.
Devon remembered somebody from the previous year who’d had an access problem vanish after she got involved.
Malakai added a name I didn’t recognize, then sat back while the four of us started pulling threads.
Priya tried twice to tell me I didn’t need to turn this into a project.
I ignored the first attempt and answered the second only after we already had enough to prove the pattern.
“I’m not doing this because I think you’re incapable of handling yourself,” I told her, keeping my voice low enough that the surrounding tables couldn’t hear.
“If you want me out of it, say so and I’ll stay out.
But if you want her off your back, I can make that happen without turning it into some fucking blood feud.
I just need to know which answer you actually want. ”
Priya studied me for a moment, the embarrassment finally giving way to something firmer. “I want her to stop. I don’t want to spend the rest of the semester wondering when she’s going to decide I owe her something else.”
That was enough.
It took us less than half an hour to find Lacey outside the donor relations building.
She was alone, scrolling through her phone beneath the covered walkway, and her expression changed when she saw Priya coming toward her with me on one side and Malakai trailing several steps behind.
She recovered fast, but not before I saw the calculation.
Good. People made mistakes when they had to recalculate.
I didn’t give her a chance to control the conversation.
I stopped a few feet away and told her exactly what we had found: multiple students who had accepted small access favors from her, multiple situations where she kept evidence of the violation, and a pattern of increasing what she demanded once the original favor had already been repaid in pieces.
I didn’t threaten to hit her or drag Hunter into it.
I explained the part that actually mattered—that a favor network only worked if people believed the terms meant something.
If Lacey became known as someone who changed the price after the agreement, everything she had built around donor access became worthless because nobody with functioning survival instincts would owe her anything again.