Chapter 5
"You're being summoned," Sage says, appearing at my elbow with the particular energy of someone who has bad news and has decided the fastest delivery is the kindest. "Vampire House. Caspian Thorne wants you in front of the tribunal by the third bell."
"The tribunal," I repeat. "For what?"
"Apparently something went missing from the Vampire House treasury room last night.
" She keeps her voice low. We're in the main corridor between the dining hall and the east wing, and the morning foot traffic is thick enough that sound carries.
"A ring. Old bloodline crest, irreplaceable, the usual category of thing that makes vampires dramatic. "
"And they think I took it."
"Seraphina told someone she saw you near the east corridor last night." Sage's jaw tightens. "Which you weren't. You were finishing detention in the Bone Chapel."
"Which I can prove, since Ashford was there for most of it." I shift my bag to my other shoulder. "Fine. Where's the tribunal?"
"There isn't one, actually. Thorne is handling it himself. Privately." She says the word privately the way you'd say sharp edge. "Which is either better or worse than a full tribunal and I genuinely don't know which."
It's worse. Obviously it's worse. Anything Caspian Thorne handles privately is worse by definition.
The Vampire House occupies the academy's oldest wing, where the stone corridors are narrower and the ceilings are lower and the air carries a specific quality that I can only describe as permission withheld.
Like the building itself is deciding about you.
The students I pass in the corridor either ignore me with practiced precision or watch me go by with the particular attention of people cataloging what they're seeing for later use.
A prefect meets me at the entrance to the private residential floor and escorts me without speaking to a door at the end of a corridor lined with iron sconces. He knocks once, opens it, and steps aside.
I walk in.
Caspian Thorne's private rooms are not what I expected, though I couldn't have told you what I expected.
There's a desk. Bookshelves running floor to ceiling on two walls.
A low settee that looks like it has never been used for sitting.
The light is low and comes from candles rather than the sconces in the corridor, which tells me something about preference.
He's standing at the window with his back to me when I enter, and he doesn't turn around until the door clicks shut.
"Angelic Fairmont," he says. His voice has a particular quality, like something expensive that's been sharpened.
"Null. Four-house anomaly. Detention record already.
" He turns, and he looks exactly like every warning about him that I've been given.
He looks like someone designed to make you forget warnings. "Sit down."
"I'll stand."
He considers this for exactly one second. Then he moves away from the window, not toward me, just across the room, circling toward the desk in a way that requires him to pass closer to me than the room necessitates. I hold my ground.
"A ring was taken from the treasury room," he says. "Last night, between the tenth and eleventh bells. You were placed near the east corridor by a witness."
"I was in the Bone Chapel from the ninth bell onward. Professor Ashford can confirm it."
"Ashford left at some point before the eleventh bell. His own report says so." He stops at the desk, picks up a document, sets it down without reading it. "That leaves a gap."
"The gap in which I was sorting consecration records by date and then by warden name, alone, in a chapel full of bone panels and cold flame. It's a very compelling alibi, I agree."
Something shifts at the corner of his mouth. He doesn't let it become anything. "The witness was specific."
"The witness is Seraphina Vale, who ruined both of my uniforms yesterday and locked me in the basement the day before." I keep my voice even. "Specific doesn't mean accurate."
He moves again, this time around the end of the desk, and the circling is deliberate, I understand that now.
He moves the way things move when they're deciding whether something is prey.
I turn slightly to keep him in my sightline and he notices me doing it and something in his expression sharpens with what might be approval.
"You're not afraid," he says.
"I'm cautious. There's a difference."
"Most students who come into this room are afraid." He tilts his head, studying me with a directness that most people dress up as something else. He doesn't bother. "Your heart rate is elevated."
"You just told me I'm being investigated for theft. My heart rate is appropriate to the situation."
"Your heart rate was elevated before I said anything." The observation lands differently when he's close enough that I'm aware of it in ways that have nothing to do with threat assessment. That is deeply inconvenient. "Interesting."
"Are we discussing the ring or my cardiovascular system?"
"I can smell you," he says, conversationally, like he's noting the weather. "Your physical response to proximity. It's quite clear."
The room does not helpfully swallow me. I stand there and hold his gaze and refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking away first.
"That's a violation," I say.
"It's a biological fact. Vampires don't turn off sensory perception on request." He stops moving. He's standing roughly two feet away, which is close enough that I can see the particular quality of stillness he carries, like something that has learned to be very patient. "You find me threatening."
"You're threatening me. There's a difference there too."
"And yet." He leaves the sentence incomplete on purpose, which is the kind of conversational move that deserves a response I'm not going to give him.
"I didn't take the ring," I say. "You know I didn't take the ring. This is a performance, and the audience is Seraphina Vale, who told you to summon me here so she could watch whatever happens next from a safe distance." I meet his eyes. "So what happens next?"
He regards me for a long moment. His eyes are very dark, and they don't move off my face.
"Nothing happens next," he says. "You're not worth my effort."
He says it the way you'd say a verdict, flat and final, and then he turns back to his desk and picks up the document again, and the dismissal is so complete and so deliberate that it lands with a specific kind of weight.
I walk to the door.
"Fairmont." He doesn't look up from the document. "The ring was found this morning in Seraphina's own belongings. My prefects are thorough." A pause. "This conversation still happened. Remember that."
I pull the door open. "I'll add it to my files."
I don't look back, and I don't let myself run until I'm around the first corner and out of his corridor entirely, and even then it's not running, it's walking fast with purpose, which is a completely different thing.
Sage is waiting in the courtyard at the base of the Vampire House steps. She takes one look at my face and falls into step beside me without asking.
We walk for a full minute before either of us says anything.
"Well?" she asks.
"He knew I didn't do it. Found the ring in Seraphina's things this morning." I adjust my jacket collar. "He still interrogated me anyway."
"Of course he did."
"He commented on my physical response to him being in close proximity." I say it factually, because if I let any other register into my voice I'll have to deal with what it means. "Out loud. On purpose."
Sage makes a sound that is not quite a word.
"He said I wasn't worth his effort," I add. "After spending twenty minutes circling me like he was deciding whether to eat me."
"That's Caspian Thorne," she says. "He does both of those things. Sometimes in the same sentence." She glances at me sideways. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
"You look like someone who's pretending to be fine."
"Those are the same thing until proven otherwise." I stop walking. We're near the small garden at the east side of the grounds, stone benches and dormant hedges and nobody else around at this hour. "He said I wasn't worth his effort. He said it like he was closing a door."
"He was." Sage sits on one of the stone benches, pulling her coat tighter against the morning cold. "That's what makes him dangerous. Not the circling. The dismissal. The circling is theater. The dismissal is the actual weapon."
I sit beside her. The stone is cold through my repaired jacket, which the dormitory seamstress fixed yesterday with a needle and a look of profound, professional disapproval.
"I know what it's like to be dismissed," I say. "This felt different."
"Because he dismissed you after making sure you knew he'd noticed you.
" Sage pulls something from her coat pocket.
"Which is specifically designed to make you feel both seen and discarded simultaneously.
" She holds out her hand. Two small amulets rest in her palm, flat discs of dark stone carved with overlapping lines.
"Malik made these last night. He wants us both to wear them. "
I pick one up. The carved lines are precise, the kind of work that takes time. "Protective?"
"Warding charms. They won't stop someone actively trying to hurt us, but they'll disrupt passive compulsion attempts and low-level tracking.
" She closes her fingers around the second one.
"He said the Seraphina situation is escalating in ways that suggest someone is directing her. Not just encouraging her."
"Directing her toward me specifically."
"Directing her toward us." Sage puts her amulet on, tucking it under her collar. "Malik has his theories. He hasn't shared them yet, which means either he doesn't want to worry us or the theories are worrying enough that he's still checking them."
"Neither of those is reassuring."
"No." She watches me turn the amulet over in my fingers. "Put it on, Angelic."