Chapter 155: You Missed a Spot

The hourglass ran out with Blair’s pencil still moving.

"Pencils down," the Owl proctor croaked.

She wrote the last word of her last sentence anyway, very small, and set the pencil down. Her hand ached all the way to the elbow.

Beside her, Jasper stretched like a cat waking from a nap. He had finished an hour ago. He had spent most of that hour watching her write.

"How did you do, sweetheart?"

Blair put her pencils and eraser into her bag one at a time, so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

"Fine," she whispered.

"Better than fine, I think." He rose and handed his paper to the proctor with a little flourish.

Blair handed over her exam and walked up the aisle as fast as she could without running.

He caught up at the doors. Of course he did. His legs were longer than hers, and he didn’t have to push through the crowd. The crowd simply parted for him.

"Let me walk you back," he said. "We can take the long way. By the water."

"I have to study."

"Then I’ll quiz you."

"Jasper!"

A cluster of beastwomen in pressed uniforms swept toward him down the corridor, all bright smiles and glossy hair. "How was it? Was it awful? Did you see what the Crown Prince..."

Jasper sighed and let them close around him. Over their heads, his eyes found Blair’s.

Somewhere private, he mouthed. Soon.

Blair turned and fled.

The next paper was History, at two o’clock.

That gave her two hours. Two hours to eat something, review her notes, and do what the Crown Prince had told her to do.

Bathe before the next paper. You smell like a kennel.

She told herself that wasn’t why she went back to Dormitory G. She went because the whole hall had laughed. Because a Leopard girl had wrinkled her nose, and someone had sung still not pregnant from the back row, and she couldn’t sit through three more hours of that.

That was why.

The shower room was empty at this hour. Blair took the stall at the very end, hung her towel over the door, and turned the water as hot as it would go.

She washed her hair first and checked the water running off it twice. The brown dye was holding. Then her arms, her stomach, her legs. Steam rose around her and fogged the small mirror on the stall wall.

She reached for her neck and stopped.

If mine’s on you, anybody with a nose is gonna smell wolf before they get anywhere near you.

She thought of Jasper’s finger lifting her hair. His hand drifting toward her cheek, one inch away, before Killian’s voice stopped it.

Blair stood under the water for a long time with the soap in her hand.

Then she tipped her head, turned the left side of her neck out of the spray, and washed everything else.

It was a stupid compromise. She knew it was. Anyone who leaned close would still smell him. But it was a small, quiet thing that belonged to her, and nobody had to know.

She was toweling her hair when two girls came in, chattering. They went silent when they saw her.

Blair kept her eyes on the floor and walked out.

* * *

She smelled the smoke before she saw him.

He was standing under the big elm halfway between Dormitory G and the main hall, out of the wind, a cigarette between two fingers. Long black coat. Black wings folded tight against his back. Students hurrying past gave him a wide berth, the way they would a dog that might bite.

Blair’s steps slowed.

"Ms. Willows," Jack said, without turning his head. "Walk with me."

She fell into step beside him. He walked slowly, which meant he wanted to talk. He said nothing for a long while, which meant he wanted her to wonder what about.

"The faculty lounge," he said at last, "is calling you the Crown Prince’s pet."

Blair’s face went hot. "I’m not," she whispered.

"I know." He tapped ash onto the path. "But Killian said it in a hall full of students. Which means he wanted them to hear it." He glanced down at her. "Did he look at you?"

It was a strange question. She frowned at the cobblestones.

"No. Not once."

"Not once," Jack repeated.

"Is that bad?"

"It’s interesting." He drew on the cigarette. "A man who refuses to look at something is usually afraid of what he’ll see."

Blair didn’t say anything. The last time she and Killian had looked at each other, she had ended up on her knees on the floor of Jack’s house, gasping for air, with no idea why. She didn’t know how to explain that.

Jack stopped walking.

She stopped too, a half step late. He turned to face her, and she looked at the second button of his coat, because it was safer than his eyes.

"You bathed," he said.

"He told me I smelled like a kennel."

The corner of Jack’s mouth moved. "And you listened."

"It wasn’t because of him," she whispered. "It was because everyone was..."

Jack bent his head.

Blair went rigid. He only leaned down, slowly, until his face was beside the left side of her throat, and breathed in. She felt the warmth of it on her skin. Goosebumps raced down her arm and disappeared under her sleeve.

"You missed a spot," he murmured.

Her heart forgot how to beat.

He stayed there a moment longer than he needed to. Then he straightened, and took another drag of his cigarette as though nothing had happened.

"Sentimental," he said.

"It’s not." Her voice came out thin. "It’s so people leave me alone."

"Mm." He dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his heel. "Daemus has always marked the things he’s afraid of losing. His hockey stick. His bedroom door."

Blair pressed her lips together.

"Or," he said, "the things he’s afraid someone else will win."

"Win?" she whispered.

But Jack had already turned toward the main hall, his coat stirring around his boots.