Chapter 153: Can You Put the Mouse Down?

Nobody in the hallway moved.

Daemus stepped past Blair, reached up, and pulled the nail out of the door with two fingers. The mouse dropped into his palm. He looked at it for a long moment. Then he lifted it to his nose and breathed in.

His lip curled back from his teeth.

"Snake," he said.

He didn’t say the name. He didn’t have to. He had fought Rain once already, and Blair had been the one who bled for it.

Behind them, the whispering started.

"Is that a mouse?"

"Oh my god, is it bleeding on the floor?"

It wasn’t. It had been dead too long to bleed. Blair didn’t say so. She stood in the doorway in her blanket and stared at the small round hole the nail had left in the wood.

A tall girl with a towel wrapped around her hair pushed to the front of the crowd. She looked at the mouse in Daemus’s hand. Then she looked at Blair, and her mouth twisted.

"This is exactly what I said," she announced to the hallway. "Everyone who gets near her gets hurt."

"Don’t," someone muttered.

"Why not? It’s true." The girl folded her arms. "First Heather. Then the Blairs. Now there are dead things nailed to our doors."

Blair’s mouth went dry.

"What Blairs?" she whispered.

The hallway went quiet. A few girls exchanged looks, like they couldn’t believe she didn’t know.

"Seriously?" The towel girl stared at her. "There were seven other girls named Blair in this school. All of them lived in this building. And while you were off doing whatever you were doing..." Her eyes flicked to Daemus. "Every single one of them disappeared."

The cold that had been creeping down Blair’s spine spread through the rest of her.

"Their rooms got cleared out," a small girl at the back added, almost apologetically. "Like Heather’s."

"They used to follow that pretty Fish noble around," someone else said. "Like ducklings. And then one week, they just... didn’t."

Daemus went very still beside her.

The towel girl tossed her head. "So now it’s just you. The only Blair left." She looked at Blair a moment longer. "Lucky."

She turned and walked off toward the showers. The crowd broke apart behind her, girls drifting away in twos and threes.

Blair didn’t move.

Welcome home, sweetheart.

Seven girls with her name. Seven girls with plain brown hair and plain brown eyes, probably. Just like the face she had dyed and painted herself back into.

Jasper hadn’t known which Blair he was looking for.

So he had taken all of them.

She didn’t let herself finish the thought. She stepped back into her room. Daemus followed and shut the door.

* * *

"I’m going over there."

Daemus was pacing. Room 204 was not built for a wolf to pace in, so he took three steps toward the window, turned, and took three steps back. He was still holding the mouse.

"The fish first," he said. "Then the snake."

"Daemus..."

"He took seven girls with your name, Blair. And last night he was in your room."

"You don’t know what happened to them," she whispered. "Nobody does."

He stopped and looked at her. "Do you believe that?"

She looked at the floor.

That was answer enough. Daemus turned for the door.

Blair got there first.

She didn’t know how. One second she was sitting on the bed, and the next she was standing with her back flat against the door, the blanket slipping off one shoulder, her arms spread wide. It was the most ridiculous thing she had ever done. He could have moved her with one finger.

He stopped anyway.

"Move, Blair."

"No."

It came out barely above a whisper. She was staring at the faded logo on his hoodie, because she couldn’t look any higher. But she didn’t move.

"They’re nobles," she whispered. "If you hurt either of them, they’ll go straight to the headmaster. You’ll lose your place on the team. You’ll lose your scholarship." Her voice wobbled, and she made it stop.

Daemus said nothing.

"I won’t let you lose everything because of me," she whispered. "I won’t."

For a long moment, the only sound was his breathing. Then the tension went out of his shoulders all at once, and he let out a low, frustrated growl.

"You’re really bad at this," he muttered.

"At what?"

"Being scared." He scrubbed his free hand down his face. "You’re scared of everything. Crowds. Professors. My mom. But you jump in front of the scariest thing in the room every single time, as long as it’s not coming for you."

Blair’s face went hot. She said the only thing she could think of.

"Can you put the mouse down?"

Daemus looked at his hand. He seemed to have forgotten he was holding it.

"It’s evidence," he said.

"It’s a mouse."

"It’s evidence of a mouse."

A laugh broke out of her, small and shaky. Daemus’s mouth twitched. He tore a page out of the notebook on her desk and wrapped the mouse in it, almost gently.

"That was my chemistry notes," Blair said faintly.

"Was."

Then he came back and stood in front of her. Close enough that she had to tip her head back to see his face, with the door at her back and nowhere to go.

"Okay," he said quietly. "I won’t go over there. Not today."

"Thank you," she whispered.

"But I’m doing something else. And you’re gonna let me."

Her heart stumbled. "What?"

He lifted his wrist and held it beside her face, not quite touching.

"Scent," he said. "If mine’s on you, and on this door, anybody with a nose is gonna smell wolf before they get anywhere near you." His voice dropped. "Can I?"

She nodded.

Her face burned. "...Okay."

He pressed his wrist to the side of her neck.

It was warm, and slow. He drew it along her throat, under her jaw, down to the curve of her shoulder where the blanket had slipped. Then he bent his head and did the same with his cheek, his jaw brushing over the old mark he had left on her, his breath stirring the hair behind her ear.

Blair forgot how to breathe.

Her pulse was pounding against his jaw. He had to feel it. And he could smell what it was doing to her, because he went still against her neck, and the next breath he took was very deep.

For one long second, neither of them moved.

Then Daemus straightened and took a big step backward.

"Okay," he said roughly. "Okay. Door next."

He turned and rubbed his wrist up and down the doorframe with enormous concentration, like a man scrubbing out a stain.

He left ten minutes later, after scenting the doorframe, the window latch, and, very thoroughly, the pillow where the pearl had been. He took the mouse with him.

Blair locked the door behind him and rested her forehead against it.

She could still smell him everywhere.

Then someone knocked, so close to her face that she jerked back.

Not three knocks. Just one.

She looked through the peephole. It was the small girl from the back of the crowd, the one who had said like Heather’s. She wore a too-big bathrobe and kept glancing toward the stairs.

Blair opened the door an inch.

"I’m not supposed to talk to you," the girl whispered quickly. "Nobody is. But..." She bit her lip. "The Fish noble didn’t find them himself. Not at first. A girl named Olive went around with the dorm registry, weeks ago. She asked every Blair in the building to come meet him."

Blair stared at her.

"She knocked on every door on this floor," the girl whispered. Then she hurried off, slippers slapping against the tile.

Blair shut the door very slowly.

She had never heard of anyone named Olive in her life.