Chapter 213: It Smells Like Steak

On Thursday after lunch, Daemus walked her down to the rink with her bag over his shoulder and his arm around her.

Hollis was waiting outside the video room with his arms folded.

"Where’s my tie?"

Daemus stopped. His hand went to his coat pocket.

"Krelin."

"Right here." He pulled it out in a crumpled ball, and two chestnut shells came out with it and bounced across the floor.

Hollis shook the tie out. The skinny end had a hard crease where the knot had been. He held it up to his nose and sniffed.

"It smells like steak."

"It was a steakhouse."

"You took my best tie to a steakhouse?"

"I took your tie on a date. It’s been forever since it got some action." Daemus steered Blair past him through the door. "You’re welcome."

Inside, the projector was off and the whiteboard was still full of arrows. Blair put her stack of worksheets on the desk and counted heads.

Twenty-one.

At the end of the back row, a folding chair leaned against the wall, closed.

"Where’s Tarrow?" she asked.

Tarrow was the lynx winger who sat in the back and drew little pucks in the margins of every sheet she handed him.

"His mom came Tuesday," Kincaid said. "Took him home."

"For the season?"

"Till they catch them, she said." Kincaid shrugged.

Hollis had dropped into his seat and was ironing his tie flat on his knee with his palm. "My cousin’s in the senior house. He says they stood on the lawn all night. Just looking up at the windows."

"Looking at what?" someone asked.

"That’s the creepy part."

"The creepy part is they don’t have faces," said Mosley. He was a walrus defenseman who needed two folding chairs, and he had pushed both of them as far from the window as they would go.

The radiator knocked.

The porcupine at the end of the front row jumped, and every quill on his back shot up with a dry rattle. The Bison beside him leaned away.

"Sorry," the porcupine said. "Sorry." His quills sank back down one row at a time.

Blair looked at twenty-one beastmen, most of them twice her size, all of them watching the window.

She picked up the first stack of worksheets.

"Number one," she said, handing them down the row. "Three x plus seven equals twenty-two."

"Professor," Mosley said. "Is it true one of them came right up to the human dorm?"

"I don’t know," Blair said. "I know finals start in two weeks. Number one."

They looked at her for a second. Then, one at a time, they bent over their sheets.

In the front row, Daemus caught her eye and grinned.

Coach banged the door open twenty minutes later. Mosley nearly went over backward in both chairs.

Coach had an envelope in one hand and his whistle between his teeth, and he was chewing it hard enough that it clicked.

"Sorry, Professor." He let the whistle drop on its cord. "This one can’t wait."

He unfolded a letter.

"From the registrar. Starting this term, any student athlete who fails a final exam is ineligible to compete." He looked up over the paper. "That includes the last game."

The room went dead quiet.

"Since when?" Kincaid said.

"Since Monday. Families are pulling kids out every day, and the headmaster wants to look strict about something." Coach folded the letter in half. "He picked us."

He turned to the front row.

"Krelin."

Daemus sat up.

"Your scholarship’s tied to eligibility. You get benched, the athletics office pulls it." Coach took a second sheet out of the envelope. "And the capital league sent word this morning. Two scouts. Last game of the season."

Somebody in the back whistled low.

Daemus’s ears went flat against his head.

"So if I fail algebra," he said slowly.

"You watch the scouts from the stands. And you pay for next year yourself."

Every head in the room turned to Blair.

Coach looked at her too. He put the whistle back in his mouth.

"Professor," he said around it. "Whatever you need."

When the hour was up, the team filed out much quieter than they had come in. Hollis knotted his tie around his own neck on the way past and patted Daemus on the head.

Daemus stayed in his chair.

Blair sat on the edge of the desk in front of him. He was staring at his worksheet. He had done eight problems. Seven were right.

"I can’t pay for next year," he said. "I’d have to ask my dad."

"You won’t have to ask him."

"You don’t know that."

"You got seven out of eight."

He looked down at the sheet. Then up at her. Something slow and wicked came into his face, and his ears came back up.

"I’d get eight out of eight," he said, "with the right motivation."

"Daemus."

"Every one I get right, you take something off."

Blair went red to her hairline. "This is the video room."

Daemus got up, wedged a folding chair under the door handle, and sat back down. "Now it’s a private video room."

"That isn’t a real study method."

"It could be," Daemus said. "Think about it."

Blair looked at the chair under the handle. She looked at him.

She took a fresh worksheet off the stack and handed it to him.

"One thing," she said. "Per right answer."

Daemus grabbed a pencil so fast he snapped the tip.

Number one took him forty seconds. Blair checked it, slid off the desk and took off her left shoe.

He stared at it. "That’s a shoe."

"It’s a thing."

"That’s cheating."

"You didn’t say which things."

He gave her a look of deep betrayal and bent over number two.

The right shoe. The left sock. The right sock. He was going faster now, his tongue between his teeth. He got number five wrong, swore, and fixed it himself.

Blair pulled the tie out of her hair. It came down around her shoulders.

"A hair thing," Daemus said. "Unbelievable."

Number six was a word problem: two trains, two speeds, one track. He read it twice with his lips moving, wrote down an answer and turned the sheet around for her.

It was right.

Blair looked down at herself. Bare feet on the cold floor. Sweater. Skirt.

She crossed her arms, took hold of the hem and pulled the sweater over her head.

Underneath was a thin white camisole. Goosebumps rose along her bare arms.

Daemus put the pencil down.

He stood, and his chair folded shut behind him and clattered to the floor. He came the one step to her, took her by the waist and lifted her onto the desk. Worksheets slid off the edge.

He kissed her hard. His mouth opened hers, his tongue stroking deep, and Blair made a small sound and grabbed his shirt. His palms ran up her bare arms to her shoulders. His thumbs traced the thin straps.

"Number seven," she gasped against his mouth.

"Later."

He kissed her jaw, her throat, the hollow at the base of it. His hands slid under the hem of the camisole and spread over her bare back, hot against her skin, and pulled her to the edge of the desk until her knees were around his hips. Blair wrapped her arms around his neck.

He hooked one finger under a strap and drew it down off her shoulder, slowly. He kissed the place where it had been. Then lower, along her collarbone.

Her breath shook. Her fingers curled in his hair.

Then he stopped.

He stood with his forehead on her shoulder, breathing hard. After a moment he slid the strap back up into place with one finger.

He picked her sweater up off the floor, turned it right side out and pulled it down over her head himself. Her face came out through the neck with her hair everywhere.

"Daemus?"

"The rest," he said, "is for when I pass."

He tugged the hem straight over her hips.

"I’m getting a hundred."