Chapter 560 | A Davenport Having Feelings

Chapter 560: 560 | A Davenport Having Feelings

Belle already had the laptop open under the spray. She tilted the screen toward the sprinkler head so the water would bead off the keys, and she typed one-handed while her braid dripped steady drops onto the trackpad.

"Fox, that thing’s going to short out," Naomi said. She grabbed the back of Belle’s blazer and tugged her under the overhang of the janitor’s door.

"This laptop survived a swamp, a sea monster, and Jordan’s elbow. It can handle a hallway." Belle kept typing, rain streaming down the screen. "Monroe, I need a timestamp for first contact, and don’t lie because the sprinkler log’s going to tell me anyway."

"First contact was her fault, so put her name in that column."

"First contact was a hostile act on my person," Blair snapped. She still had my tie wrapped around her fist like a leash she’d forgotten she was holding. "He provoked me in a corridor, and that’s an academic setting, which means there are rules."

"You melted a door handle this morning, Davenport. You don’t get to talk about rules."

Blair let go of the tie. She did it fast, flung the end at my chest like she was throwing back a fish too small to keep. Her eyes went down to her own blouse and the lace under it, visible through the soaked fabric. Her arms crossed over her chest so hard I heard the wet fabric squelch.

Belle kept typing. "Assault. Mutual provocation. Water damage. I’m adding emotional distress, and we’re all going to sign this, and then we’re going to hand it in before anyone else gets their lies on paper."

"I’m not signing anything you wrote while you were standing in a waterfall."

"Then write your own report, Blair, and see who Dean Ashford believes."

Blair’s face went red. Not the pink of embarrassment but the deep crimson that comes right before the crying starts, and she turned away from all three of us and stared at the wall like the cinderblock could give her privacy.

Naomi saw it too. Her pink eyes dropped to Blair’s chest for one second, came back up to my face, and then narrowed in a way I hadn’t seen since the hospital.

"You were looking," Naomi said to me, and she sounded hurt and amused at once, like a cat that caught you eating its food and wanted a bite.

"I’m a field lead, and I have to assess the damage."

"There’s no damage, Jace, she’s just wet."

"Wet is a kind of damage when you’re a Davenport," Belle said, and her fingers never stopped moving on the keys. "Her father probably has an insurance policy on that blouse."

Blair’s mouth worked, opened, and closed again. She had nothing to say because we all knew the blouse had a policy number and a rider.

The alarm kept shrieking above the ceiling tiles, and somewhere down the hall a door banged open hard enough to bounce back off the wall. A pack of Sapphire second-years came tumbling out of a seminar room with their bags held over their heads like shields and fury stamped all over their faces. One of them spotted our little alcove and locked onto Blair. He stopped so fast the guy behind him plowed straight into his spine.

Then the water around us stopped.

It didn’t shut off. The pipes in the walls still groaned and spat, and spray hammered the tile everywhere else down the corridor. But above our heads it just bent. Clean curve, no splash, running down an invisible slope straight into the drinking fountain. The air inside the alcove went dry and still like someone threw a switch, and every hair on my arms lifted off my skin in a wave.

"Interesting hallway," Professor Vale said.

He stood on the opposite wall with a coffee mug in one hand and not a drop of water anywhere near him. His silver hair sat perfect. His sunglasses sat indoors, perched on his nose like he owned the oxygen. The mug steamed in his grip and read WORLD’S OKAYEST HUNTER in block letters. Water poured around his shoulders like he stood under a canopy only he could see.

"Professor," Blair said, and her spine snapped straight so fast I worried it might crack. "This was a facilities malfunction."

"The fire panel in Theory East reads a localized thermal spike of six hundred degrees." Vale took a sip of his coffee and studied her over the rim of his glasses. "That’s either a kitchen fire in a hallway that has no kitchen, or it’s a Davenport having feelings."

Belle made a sound like a dying balloon and doubled over her laptop.

Blair turned a red I didn’t know a human face could reach. Steam rolled off her collar in thick white sheets, and her soaked hair started to frizz at the ends where her own heat dried it.

"I’ll bill the repair to Davenport Industries," Vale went on, smooth and pleasant, like a waiter reading the specials. "Your father pays the sprinkler maintenance contract for this building anyway, so he’ll be paying himself, and I find that funny."

"Please don’t email my father," Blair said.

Her voice came out small, and the word please sat strange in her mouth, like a foreign coin. Vale’s mismatched eyes moved to her face. Something in his expression shifted for a second, and he lowered his cup.

"I won’t email him," he said. "I’ll just tell him the building flooded and leave the rest out, because the rest isn’t his business."

Blair stared at him like he’d handed her a live grenade wrapped in a bow.

Vale turned his head toward me. "Monroe, you look like a drowned cat in a nice tie, and you’re going to make every girl in this corridor late for lunch."

"I’m innocent, sir, and I’d like that on record."

"Nobody in this alcove is innocent, Monroe, and that’s the only reason I like you." He pushed off the wall and started down the hall, and the water parted around him in a moving dry patch. "Fox, send me the tab when it’s done, because I want the timestamps for my files."

"Absolutely, Professor," Belle called after him, and she sounded far too happy about it.