Chapter 18
I wake up with a foot in my face and a hand in my hair, and neither of them is mine.
The foot is Tess's. Sometime in the night she rotated a full ninety degrees and annexed the bottom third of my emergency mattress, so I open my eyes to one bare heel six inches from my nose.
The hand belongs to Nellie, asleep sitting up on the floor with her back against her bed frame, fingers tangled loose in the ends of my hair like she was checking it was still attached to me.
Across the room Shandy has starfished over her whole mattress with the serenity of a woman who has never once worried about taking up space.
Margo is a tidy rectangle under a perfectly squared quilt, because of course she is.
There's a glass of water by my head I didn't pour. A second blanket over me I didn't bring in. The snack plate sits gutted on the rug, one cracker presiding over a field of crumbs.
I find the exits before I'm even awake—one window, one door, both across the room.
Old habit. Then I clock the threats. This morning the threats are a foot and a hand in my hair.
The most dangerous witch on campus, boxed in on three sides, and the worst thing that happened all night is that Tess kicks in her sleep.
It might be the funniest situation I've ever been in. I press my lips shut so I don't wake the whole room laughing.
They fell asleep on top of me. On purpose.
Like I'm someone you'd want to stay near and not a thing you'd want a wall between.
Twelve years of waking up alone in rooms built to hold me, and nobody told me there was a version where you come up out of sleep pinned and warm and faintly suffocating, with someone's heel in your face.
Nellie stirs when I start working her fingers free of my hair. One eye cracks. "Mm. M'walking you back," she mumbles. "Told the vampire. Eight o'clock."
"It's barely seven. Go back to sleep."
"Made a promise, Cal."
"You made it to Corvin, who's a grown vampire with a gun. Not to me." I tuck her hand back into her lap. "I can cross my own campus in daylight. Sleep. I'll text you when I'm home."
She squints, fighting it, working out whether letting me go is allowed. Then she lets go. "Fine," she breathes, eyes already shut. "Text me. And eat something that isn't a cracker." A pause, almost gone. "Slumber-party graduate."
I smile.
I find my shoes by the door and take the stairs slow, in sock feet, shoes in hand—and Corvin is in the common room at the bottom of them.
He's on the smaller of the two couches, too long for it, boots still on, the blanket Margo brought him folded with unsettling neatness over the arm instead of draped over him.
He didn't use it. He sat up all night in a witches' dormitory with his hands loose on his knees and his eyes on the door, and the only sign that hours have passed is the gray under his eyes that even a vampire can't fully hide.
He probably needs to feed. I ignore the chill that runs down my spine.
Corvin stands when I get to the bottom of the stairs. Old habit, or old manners. He doesn't have to stand for me. Nobody stands for the dangerous witch.
"Miss Dellaby."
I pull on my shoes and we head out into the humid morning. "You stayed."
"I weighed the alternative." Something starts at the corner of his mouth and doesn't finish.
And there it is—the thing the sight of him drags up every time now, the thing I've never said out loud to anyone but the voice in my head.
Weeks ago, a corridor outside theory class, Corvin with his back half-turned and a phone to his ear, not knowing I was three feet behind him, saying my name into it like a line on a form.
The schedule is consistent. She's cooperative.
Mostly. She trusts the routine. And the part that still finds me at three in the morning: When she's ready.
I'm aware of the parameters. I'll continue the reports until instructed otherwise.
Reports. To someone waiting for me to be ready—for what, he never said—and the thing I walked away certain of, the thing that turned my stomach, was that the voice on the other end of that call did not belong to the council.
I've played dumb about it for weeks. Smiled, kept the routine, let him write down that the routine was working. This morning I'm too warm and too tired and too newly stupid with nerve to keep my mouth shut.
"Who do you actually report to, Corvin?"
His face doesn't change. That's the first thing—no flicker, nothing to catalogue, and the nothing is louder than a flinch. Most people give you something. Corvin gives me a level blank.
"I file with the oversight office. Same as Zeva."
"That's not what I asked." I watch his hands, since the face won't give me anything. The hands don't either. "I heard you. Weeks ago, by the theory hall stairs. When she's ready. The parameters." I keep my voice as flat as his. "Ready for what, exactly?"
I know it’s insane. I know it’s risky–to call him out like this. But what else can I do? I can’t shake him, I can’t ignore what I heard any longer.
If he’s some kind of spy or enemy that I’m unaware of, I want to know it.
Something moves behind his eyes—not much, the smallest recalibration, like he’s remembering that conversation and trying to figure out how much he should and shouldn’t say.
I roll my neck. The morning sun heats up my cheeks as we walk across the pavement.
"You're a council oversight case," he says finally, even and unhurried, like he's reading me my own file. "Some people ask how you're getting on. Some people answer them. I'm the second kind. That's the whole of it."
"You didn't sound like you were reporting to the council."
For half a second he actually looks at me—not the professional sweep, a real look, gone almost before I catch it.
Then it seals over, and he slows where the path narrows toward the cottage, hanging back far enough to let me walk the last of it myself.
"Get some breakfast, Miss Dellaby," he says.
"Tell Miss Marchand the couch was adequate. "
Then he turns and uses his vamp speed to sprint off before I can even blink.
I stand there for a second, looking at the place Corvin just stood before walking up to the porch of the cottage.
A month in, and I'd foolishly let this place, my reality here become comfortable. Careless. He’s my council appointed enforcer–here to ensure that I don’t run.
To be eyes and ears for those who want me to succeed–or, possibly, fail.
I’m not sure when I stopped being vigilant, but that will stop now.
He's not here to protect me, he’s not my friend. He's here in case I need to be stopped—and maybe not only for the people I think. She's not suspicious, he told whoever was on that call, but why would the council be wondering if I was acting suspicious?
I'd started to feel safe. That was the mistake—not that I felt it, but that I stopped checking whether it was true. And not-checking is exactly the thing that gets the gentle parts of you killed.
I stay on the porch for a second longer, looking back to make sure Corvin hasn’t come back. Zeva is probably next door, taking today’s shift today. Can I trust her?
Can I trust anyone on this campus?
But then I feel myself frowning–shocked that that thought would even cross my mind.
Of course, I can.
I have Nellie.
∞∞∞
Room 204 smells like chalk and old paper and a roomful of people who'd rather be asleep. After spending all morning wondering who my allies are, boring is the best thing that could happen to me.
Nellie's saved my seat with her bag and a glare to anyone who even thought about stealing it.
I drop in beside her and ease my bag off the bad shoulder—better now; the sling's gone as of this morning, which she celebrated like a personal holiday.
The bandage on my neck still pulls if I turn my head too fast, so I turn it slow.
Up front, Professor Malloy paces the demonstration area with a stub of chalk and hardly any notes, laying down a diagram one hard stroke at a time.
"—which is why a binding is only ever as good as the will that sets it," she's saying.
"You can cut the cleanest sigil on the Gulf Coast and it will still come apart if your intent wavers halfway through.
Magic does not care how badly you want control.
" She underlines a word hard enough to break the chalk, and keeps moving. "It answers to whether you have it."
I take notes–writing down anything that I might be useful later.
The scratch of the pen, Nellie's knee going like a sewing machine beside me, the dry tap of Professor’s Malloy's chalk—and for the first time since Corvin blurred off down the path, the thing behind my sternum unclenches a notch.
Nobody in here wants anything from me… well unless I count Leopold who wants me to be his.
I don’t want to think about him.
For fifty minutes I'm just a student who's behind on the reading.
Halfway through class, a folded square of paper lands on my notebook. It's come a ways—soft at the folds, handed down the row—and when I glance over, three seats down, Emric Vane has his eyes nailed to the board and the tips of his ears gone red.
Subtle.
I swallow back a smile and open it in my lap.
Sorry I disappeared. My father flew the whole house in for the unveiling and required a full weekend of me being a credit to the Vane name. I survived. Mostly. And under that, smaller, written and half scratched out: Missed your face in here. Pretend I didn't say that.
My heart flutters quietly in my chest.
He offered me beignets weeks ago, and then neither of us did a single thing about it, the way you don't when wanting a thing is scarier than going without.
I really have been a coward about a damn pastry.
I fold the note small and pocket it and don't write back, because I have a better idea, and because Malloy's gaze is doing its slow sweep of the room and I don’t want to get on her bad side.