Chapter 178: Everybody Put On Pants

Daemus was waiting outside the mathematics building with a sheet of paper folded into a square the size of a matchbox.

He held it out before she reached the bottom step.

"You open it."

Blair looked at the square. It had been folded so many times the corners had gone soft. "You haven’t looked?"

"I looked at the back. The back’s blank." His ears were flat. "He handed them out face down, and I just... folded."

"Daemus."

"If it’s bad, read it out slow. Like a doctor."

She unfolded it. The number was at the top in red ink, circled twice.

64.

Underneath, in the same red ink: Better.

Blair read it twice to be sure. Then she turned the paper around and held it up in front of his face.

Daemus didn’t say anything.

He looked at it for a long time. Then he sat down on the steps, right in the middle, so the students coming out of the building had to go around him. He took the paper from her and smoothed it flat on his knee with one hand, over and over, as if the number might come off.

"I’ve never passed one," he said. "Not a math one. Not ever."

Blair sat down beside him.

"You did the work," she said.

"You did the work." He turned the page over. In the bottom corner, faint where he’d rubbed it out, was the wolf. Someone had put a tiny red tick beside it. He folded the paper once, carefully, and tucked it into his inside pocket. Then he caught the back of her neck and kissed her.

It was slow, his mouth soft and coaxing over hers, his thumb moving behind her ear. She opened for him without thinking, and his tongue slid against hers. He tasted like mint. Blair’s fingers found his collar and held on.

Someone coming down the steps whistled.

Daemus broke the kiss and stood, pulling her up with him.

"Come on."

"Where?"

"The rink. Coach has to see this." He was already walking, her hand in his. "And he has to see you."

* * *

The Apex locker room smelled like rubber mats and something Blair decided not to identify.

It was also full of naked beastmen.

She stopped in the doorway. A Bison by the showers had a towel over his shoulder and nowhere else. Two of the defensive line were fighting over a roll of tape in their underwear. Someone at the far end was, as far as she could tell, wearing one skate.

Blair fixed her eyes on the ceiling. There was a water stain up there shaped like a boot.

"PANTS," Daemus bellowed. "Everybody. Pants."

"Since when do we—"

"Since now, Hollis."

Lockers banged. Somebody fell over a bench. The Bison put the towel where it belonged and glared at Daemus the whole time.

"You can look down now, Bunny."

She looked down very carefully, only as far as the benches.

Coach came out of his office, and Daemus put the test in his hand. He was a gray-muzzled wolf with a gravelly voice and a whistle he chewed when he was nervous, and he held the paper up to the overhead light like a jeweler with a stone.

"Sixty-four," he said.

"Sixty-four," Daemus agreed, with deep satisfaction.

"Four years." Coach looked at Blair. "Four years I’ve had this kid. Best he ever did was a thirty-one, and that was the one with the multiple choice."

"I put C for everything," Daemus told her. "I still think it was a smart move."

Coach pinned the test to the corkboard by the door, over the practice schedule and two old injury reports, and stepped back to admire it. Half the team crowded in behind him to admire it too.

"So you’re the tutor," said Hollis.

"She’s the human girl who beat the prince at beast law," someone else said.

Coach turned around. Blair felt it before he said a word: twenty-odd beastmen looking at one human girl as if she had something they wanted.

"Kincaid’s failing Beast Economics," Coach said. "Hollis can hardly read. Half my line has never passed anything with a number in it." He chewed the whistle. "I can’t have my playoffs decided by the registrar’s office."

Blair kept her eyes on a spot on the floor between his boots.

"I’m asking," Coach said, more gently. "Thursdays after lunch, to start. It’d be a proper earn-and-study position. I’ll put the paperwork through the bursar today, and you’d be paid by the hour."

Blair’s fingers closed around the strap of her bag.

Paid.

And she would be teaching... a whole room of students.

"Yes," she said, before she had thought about it at all.

Then she looked up.

The whole team was grinning at her. Hollis gave her a thumbs-up. They all looked very friendly.

Beastmen often did, right up until they didn’t.

"Daemus would have to be there," she said quickly. "Every session. He’s only passed basic math. He still has three courses to go and I don’t think he can do it on his own."

"Hey," said Daemus.

"It’s true."

Coach looked at Daemus. He looked at the paper on the corkboard. This human was a magician, he was willing to accept any of her demands. "You’re right."

Hollis put a hand over his heart and bowed. "Professor."

"Professor!" someone shouted from the showers, and then the whole line was saying it, banging on the lockers in time, until Coach blew the whistle and sent them all out to the ice.

* * *

Daemus’s room in the senior faction house had hockey players on every wall and trophies on every shelf, and a gym bag that he kicked under the bed the moment she walked in.

He’d showered after practice. His hair was still damp, and he smelled like soap. He flopped onto the bed beside her, rolled onto his back and pulled her down on top of him in one motion.

"Sixty-four," he said to the ceiling.

"You’ve said that eleven times."

"You counted?"

"You’re the one who’s bad at math."

He laughed, and she felt it under her. Then he lifted his head and kissed her.

His hand slid up under the back of her sweater, warm and wide across her spine, and pressed her down against him. She kissed him back with her fingers in his damp hair, and when they brushed the base of his ear, he made a low, helpless sound into her mouth. She did it again on purpose.

"Bunny," he warned.

She did it a third time.

He rolled them over and kissed her jaw, the side of her neck, the hollow of her throat, his breath hot against her skin, and his hand found her hip and held it. Blair arched up into him before she could stop herself, and his ears went flat back with pleasure.

Then he stopped.

He was braced over her on his forearms, breathing hard, looking down at her with deep adoration and gratitude in his eyes.

"Bunny," he said. "I—"

His ears dipped. He swallowed.

"I’m really glad it’s you," he said.

Blair looked up at him, somewhat unsure what he was talking about. She assumed tutoring them, so she said, "Me too."