Chapter 211: Put Your Wallet Away

On Monday, Beast Law had six empty seats.

Blair counted them on her way to her desk. A pair of empty chairs where the lion girls usually sat. A whole row near the back where a group of deer had always passed notes. Nobody had cleared off their name cards.

The professor, an old hare with spectacles on a chain, stood at the front and read from a sheet of paper without looking up.

"By order of the headmaster. The forest is closed to all students until further notice. Faculty will patrol the grounds after dark. Any student found past the rope will be expelled." He turned the sheet over. "Classes continue as scheduled. Your essays on the Treaty are still due Friday."

Someone groaned.

"Monsters on the lawn and he still wants the essay," a fox boy muttered behind her.

"He’d want it if the building was on fire," the girl next to him said.

Blair opened her notebook and wrote the date at the top of the page.

The whispering behind her changed.

"That’s her."

"The human?"

"Someone saw her coming out of the East Wing on Saturday night. With the wolf prince and the crown prince."

"At night?"

"Why would the crown prince be anywhere with a human at night?"

"Why would anyone?"

A snort. "Maybe she’s tutoring him too."

Blair’s pen pressed so hard it went through the paper. She turned the page and started again.

The door opened.

The whispering cut off.

Killian walked in, immaculate, with his books under one arm. The gray was gone from under his eyes. He went down the aisle to the empty seat beside hers, set his books down square with the edge, and sat.

Then he turned his head and looked straight at the fox boy.

The fox boy found something very interesting in his textbook.

Killian faced the front again. He opened his notebook, uncapped his pen and leaned slightly toward Blair without looking at her.

"They will lose interest by Wednesday," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Something more interesting always happens by Wednesday."

Blair looked at the empty chairs. "Like more people going home?"

"Like that."

He wrote the date at the top of his page in small, neat letters, and the hare began to talk about the Treaty.

**

The bursar’s office was a window at the end of a corridor in the administration building, with a brass bell on the counter and a line of students who wanted something.

Blair waited behind a bear arguing about a library fine. When it was her turn, she put her student card on the counter.

"Willows. Apex tutoring."

The clerk, a heavyset beaver with a pencil behind his ear, ran a finger down a ledger. He stopped. He looked at her over his glasses, then back at the ledger, as if one of them had to be wrong.

"Sign here."

She signed. He slid a fat white envelope under the glass.

She waited until she was out in the corridor. Then she stood against the wall and opened it.

She counted it once. Then again, slower, because it couldn’t be right.

Blair stared at it.

At the church, money had come in jars and went out on bread. The Wintercrest sponsorship paid for her books and her meals, straight to the academy, and she never touched any of it.

This was hers.

She held the envelope in both hands. It was more money than she had ever held in her life.

She could buy a winter coat that wasn’t secondhand. She could buy real shampoo. She could put it under her mattress and keep it there forever.

She thought about Daemus.

They had never once been on a date.

Blair folded the envelope shut and put it in the inside pocket of her coat.

**

Practice was back on.

Blair sat in the empty stands with her coat buttoned to the chin and watched twenty-two beastmen skate in circles while Coach screamed at them. The rink smelled like ice and rubber. Every few minutes someone slammed into the boards hard enough to shake her seat.

Daemus scored on the Bison twice in a row and skated past the goal with both arms up.

Then he saw her.

He forgot to turn. He went straight into the boards below her with a crash that made Coach spit out his whistle.

"KRELIN."

"I’m good!" Daemus shoved his helmet back and grinned up at her through the glass. "Hey, babe."

Hollis skated past and slapped the glass in front of her. "Professor!"

The whole line picked it up on the next lap.

When Coach finally blew the whistle and sent them to the showers, Daemus climbed straight over the boards in his skates and clomped up the steps to her row, sweating, his hair stuck to his forehead.

He dropped onto the bench beside her. "What are you doing here? You never come to practice."

"I wanted to ask you something."

His ears went up. Then they went down. "Is it about the monster lab?"

"No."

"Is it about Jack?"

"No." Blair looked down at her hands. Her face was getting hot. "Are you free Wednesday? After class?"

Daemus looked at her.

"I want to take you out," she said. "Into town. On a date."

He kept looking at her. His mouth had fallen a little open.

"Somewhere nice," she said. "I got paid today."

"Wait." He sat up straight. "You’re asking me out?"

"Yes."

"And you’re paying?"

"Yes."

Daemus’s tail thumped once against the bench.

He slapped a hand over it. "Ignore that."

Blair laughed.

"Bunny." He grabbed her face in both gloved hands, which were freezing and smelled terrible, and kissed her. Hard and loud, right on the mouth. Then again. "Yes. Obviously yes. What time? Where are we going? Do I need a tie? I don’t own a tie."

"You don’t need a tie."

"I’m wearing a tie."

"Daemus—"

"KRELIN," Coach roared from the ice. "SHOWERS."

Daemus stood up, clomped two steps down, then came back up and kissed her again, slower this time. His tongue slid against hers. His glove came off and his warm hand curved around the back of her neck under her hair, and for a moment the rink and the noise and Coach went away.

He pulled back an inch. His eyes were bright.

"I’m ordering the most expensive thing on the menu," he said.

"That’s fine."