Chapter 157: Step One is to Cry

The sun was almost down by the time Blair came out of the examination hall.

She stopped at the top of the steps with her bag clutched to her chest and let the cold wind hit her face. Six hours of exams. One sweet. She felt a bit light-headed.

"Hey! Down here."

Daemus was sitting at the bottom of the steps with a paper bag in his lap. Students coming out of the hall split around him like water around a rock. Some of them stared. He didn’t notice.

Blair went down to him.

"Heard your stomach got detention," he said, grinning up at her.

Her face went hot. "Who told you that?"

"Everybody." He patted the step beside him. "Sit. Eat."

She sat. He opened the bag and started piling things in her lap. A meat pie, still warm. Two bread rolls. A paper cone of roasted nuts. An apple. A second meat pie.

"I didn’t know what you’d want," he said. "So I got all of it."

"I can’t eat all of this."

"Then I’ll eat what’s left." He was already eyeing the second pie.

She bit into the first one, and it was so good her eyes stung. She ate the whole thing without stopping, then a roll, while Daemus watched her with deep satisfaction, like a man who had just fed a stray cat and was very proud of himself.

"Better?"

She nodded, her mouth full.

"Good." He stretched his long legs down the steps. "How’d it go?"

"Okay, I think." She swallowed. "The last question was hard."

"Jack’s always are."

Then the wind shifted, and Daemus went quiet.

He leaned toward her. Not much. Just enough that his nose came close to her hair, and she heard him breathe in.

"You showered," he said.

"Everyone kept saying..." She stopped. She didn’t want to say kennel. "Things."

"Yeah. I heard." His voice was easy, but his jaw had gone a little tight. He leaned closer, breathing her in along her shoulder, her collar, the right side of her neck.

Then the left.

He stopped.

Blair froze with the roll halfway to her mouth. His breath was warm on her skin.

"You didn’t wash here," Daemus said quietly.

"I forgot."

It was out before she could stop it, and she hated it the second she heard it. "No, I didn’t forget," she whispered to the roll. "I wanted people to leave me alone."

Daemus pulled back. She could feel him looking at the side of her face, and she didn’t look up.

Then he smiled. "Okay," he said.

That was all. But he shifted a little closer after that, until his shoulder was pressed against hers, and he didn’t move away.

Then his nose wrinkled.

"Why," he said slowly, "does your sleeve smell like snake?"

Blair’s stomach dropped.

She could feel it there, the tiny folded square of black paper tucked against her wrist. She had forgotten it.

She drew it out and held it on her palm.

Daemus stared at it. "What is that?"

"A wrapper." Her voice came out very small. "My stomach kept... and Killian gave me a sweet. So I’d be quiet."

"He fed you?"

"It was one candy."

"He fed you in front of everybody, the same day he told the whole school you’re his pet," Daemus started. "Yeah. I heard about that too."

"I’m not," Blair whispered.

"I know you’re not." He glared at the little black square like it had insulted his mother. Daemus plucked the wrapper off her palm between two fingers, stood up, walked to the bin at the bottom of the steps, and dropped it in.

"Fuck, no," he muttered.

* * *

Daemus’s algebra midterm was the next morning, which meant the library until it closed.

They took a table by the tall windows on the ground floor, under one of the glowing orbs. The chair was too small for him. Everything in the library was too small for him. He sat hunched over his worksheet with his knees jammed against the underside of the table, chewing his pencil and glaring at the paper.

"Three x minus four equals eleven," he read under his breath, like a curse.

"What do you do first?" Blair whispered.

"Cry."

"Daemus."

"Add four." He scribbled. "Three x equals fifteen. Divide by three." He stopped. He looked up at her with his eyes very wide. "x is five."

"x is five," she agreed.

He pumped his fist in total silence. An old Badger librarian three tables over glared at them both over her spectacles.

Blair bent her head over her own notes so no one would see her smile.

He got the next one wrong, and the one after that right. Halfway through the seventh, she realized he had stopped writing. He was watching her instead, his chin propped on his fist.

"Eyes on your own paper," she whispered.

"Yours is better."

Her face went hot all the way to her ears. She looked down at her notes, then up again, just past his shoulder, so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

That was when she saw the girl.

She sat alone at a table across the reading room, a human in a perfect gray uniform. Her hair was blown out into soft, glossy waves, and her makeup was flawless. An open book lay in front of her. She wasn’t reading it.

She was looking at Blair.

Something glittered at her throat. A chain of real diamonds, catching the light from the orb above her every time she breathed.

Blair knew that necklace. She knew it from somewhere. She frowned, trying to remember.

The girl’s eyes met hers. Then they slid away, down to the book, and stayed there.

"Blair?" Daemus nudged her knee with his. "Is it seven? I got seven."

She looked down at his worksheet. It wasn’t seven.

"Check your signs," she whispered.

He groaned and bent over the paper again.

The orbs dimmed twice for closing. Across the room, a second girl stopped beside the diamond girl’s table with her bag over her shoulder.

"Olive," she said. "Come on. They’re locking up."

The diamond girl closed her book. She stood, smoothed her skirt, and walked toward the doors without hurrying. At the end of the aisle, she looked back once.

Not at Daemus. At Blair.

Then she was gone.

Blair sat very still, her pencil resting on her notes.

A girl named Olive went around with the dorm registry. She knocked on every door on this floor.

Room 204 was on that floor.

And nobody had ever knocked on hers.