Chapter 108: The Fall Festival, Part Twenty-Three

Chapter 108: Chapter 108: The Fall Festival, Part Twenty-Three

Chapter 108: The Fall Festival, Part Twenty-Three

Daphne Whitlock stood in the corridor as if she had been waiting for them to turn that corner.

Cyrus stopped with Helena beside him.

The hallway was busy enough that Daphne could not do anything obvious. Families moved between classrooms, students in volunteer vests tried to direct traffic, and the smell of popcorn and baked sugar drifted from somewhere down the hall. Even so, Cyrus felt his mood drop the instant he saw her.

"Ms. Whitlock, did you need something from me?" he asked.

Daphne did not answer him.

Her attention moved to Helena first.

"Who is this?"

Cyrus followed the direction of her stare and immediately understood the problem.

Daphne had seen Helena before near The Full Moon Lounge. Now Helena stood beside him inside St. Alder, elegant, composed, and entirely too noticeable. Anyone with less obsession than Daphne could still misunderstand the scene. Daphne, unfortunately, had plenty of obsession to spare.

"She is a senior coworker from my part-time job," Cyrus said.

"Hello," Helena said, offering Daphne an easy nod. "I hope we are not interrupting anything."

Daphne returned the nod with the bare minimum of courtesy.

All three of them stood out too much to be ignored. Cyrus had his hair styled and his face uncovered. Helena drew attention without trying. Daphne’s teacherly polish and sharp beauty made passing students slow down before remembering they were supposed to keep walking.

The small knot of attention around them made Cyrus more aware of every second.

Daphne lifted the clipboard in her hand.

"I need to confirm something with Cyrus. Would you come with me for a minute?"

The words sounded professional enough. Her expression did too.

That made Cyrus trust her less.

Helena looked toward him, giving him the choice to refuse without saying so aloud.

Cyrus hesitated, then started after Daphne because refusing a teacher in the middle of a public hallway would draw more attention than following her for a few steps.

He had taken only a short distance before the problem assembled itself.

What did Daphne need to confirm with him?

In class, he was practically background decoration. On paper, he had no reason to attract special administrative attention during the festival. More importantly, his personal safety alarm was not on him. He had left it in his school bag with the uniform he changed out of.

If Daphne took him into an empty office, the advantage would belong entirely to her.

Cyrus stopped walking.

Helena remained within view behind him, still standing near the corridor turn with her phone in one hand. Several guests passed between them, but she could see him clearly.

Cyrus stayed where witnesses could notice.

"What do you need to confirm?" he asked.

Daphne turned back.

The professional mask held for another heartbeat before thinning.

"Who is that woman?"

Cyrus stared at her.

"You heard the answer already."

His brows lowered slightly.

Daphne was not even pretending well.

She took a breath, visibly holding down the urge to do something foolish. "You said you wanted to hide your face. Why are you showing it now?"

"She already knows what I look like," Cyrus said. "There is no reason to hide from her."

Daphne’s expression did not improve.

Cyrus added, with more patience than she deserved, "Everyone else at school thinks I am a guest from another campus. They are not connecting me to the student version of me."

"Does she know you can become small?"

"No, she does not."

The answer seemed to settle part of Daphne’s agitation.

Cyrus did not explain further. Letting Daphne know about Cory had been a mistake he would not repeat. Nobody else needed access to that weakness, and Daphne certainly did not get to interrogate him as if she had a right to guard the secret.

He turned to leave.

Daphne reached out and caught his sleeve.

Cyrus looked down at her hand, then back at her face.

"Do you have another question?"

Daphne did not speak right away.

Whatever she wanted to say clearly embarrassed even her. She stepped closer, bringing with her a faint trace of perfume and the clean scent of pressed fabric. The proximity would have worked better on someone who was not already prepared to treat her as a walking crime scene.

"Come to the office," Daphne said quietly. "Change into Cory and let me hold you."

Cyrus gave her several seconds to reconsider.

She lowered her lashes after saying it, as if shame had finally arrived late, but her hand did not release his sleeve. Her eyes kept lifting toward him despite the embarrassment.

Cyrus pulled his arm free.

Daphne seemed to realize her voice had come out too close to pleading. Her posture straightened, and the teacherly authority returned in a poor disguise.

"You do not want everyone here to know you are Cyrus Calder, do you?"

Cyrus almost asked whether she had injured her brain.

He swallowed the words.

Daphne still had the spare key to his building, a teacher’s position at his school, and enough shamelessness to weaponize both. If he insulted her directly in a crowded hallway, she might become less predictable.

Even so, the threat was ridiculous.

Daphne’s fixation on Cory was in his hands too. If she exposed his school disguise, she would risk exposing her own interest in a hidden childlike rare-blood form. They both had leverage, which meant she was threatening a mutual fall.

That was not strategy.

That was desperation.

Cyrus studied her for a moment, then let a small, unpleasant smile show.

"If I had to become small at school," he said, "I could always crawl into someone else’s arms to avoid the wind."

Daphne went completely still.

Cyrus did not wait for her answer. He turned around and walked back to Helena.

Behind him, Daphne stood in the hallway with her expression cooling into something much quieter and much worse.

She had wanted to see whether he would listen if she pushed him in public.

He had not.

Then he had offered her a picture she could not stop imagining.

Cory, small and cold, curled into another woman’s arms because Daphne had failed to hold him herself.

The thought scraped through her composure.

If waiting had not worked, then patience needed a different shape. By Monday, she could arrange a sick day for him if necessary. By tonight, she would have the apartment, the spare key, and enough privacy to test how far his stubbornness could stretch before he needed to retreat into that smaller body on his own.

Daphne watched Cyrus return to Helena and decided the matter was no longer optional.

Cyrus had no idea Daphne had gone that far in her thoughts.

He assumed she would not self-destruct in public. Her fixation made her reckless, but it also gave him control. People with obsessions were often easy to move once the obsession became visible.

He had practice with that.

When he reached Helena, she was filming a short clip of the corridor decorations. Paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, and a student-painted banner curved across the wall behind them.

"Is everything settled?" Helena asked.

"It was nothing important."

Helena did not ask for details. She only pocketed her phone and continued walking beside him.

The interruption ate up more time than Cyrus expected, but the public festival still had plenty left to offer. They passed through another game room, watched a student magic act for several minutes, and stopped at a table selling small handmade bookmarks. Helena recorded bits of scenery whenever something caught her interest. Cyrus carried the map, answered the practical questions, and bought a fried pastry when the smell became impossible to ignore.

Eventually, they reached the hallway outside Classroom Three.

The haunted-house line stretched nearly the length of two classrooms.

Cyrus stopped at the end and stared.

"How is our class still this popular?"

Had Audra gone out to advertise again?

At this point, the haunted house might be less popular as an activity and more popular as a place where visitors hoped to see St. Alder’s famous girl playing a ghost in white.

Helena glanced along the line.

"This is your class activity?"

"Yes," Cyrus said. "I did not expect the haunted house to draw so many people."

"Then let us make this the last stop."

"That works for me."

Waiting through the line would still leave him time to prepare for his afternoon shift. If they finished early, he could change back into his school disguise before anyone from class looked too closely.

They joined the queue.

Attention followed them even there.

Cyrus and Helena had become used to it, so neither reacted when people looked over and whispered. Their indifference seemed to make the situation worse. The line slowly tilted as visitors shifted for better views, and a student volunteer had to step in twice to straighten everyone out.

Nearly half an hour passed before they reached the entrance table.

"Two guests," Cyrus said.

The student collecting tickets accepted their payment and smiled brightly.

"Enjoy the haunted house."

Cyrus pushed aside the entrance curtain and led Helena inside.

Appearing in front of his own classmates with the face he normally hid felt strange. Behind the curtains, students crouched in the dark, whispered cues, and waited for visitors to pass. Any of them could be people who had seen him every day for months without recognizing what stood right in front of them now.

That was oddly amusing.

This was his third time walking the route, so Cyrus felt steadier than before.

He already knew the first section had fake limbs scattered across the floor and purple lights along the cardboard walls. He knew the second room used a broken audio recording to startle people. He knew where several of the fishing lines and hidden gaps were placed.

Being scared by the same classroom twice would be embarrassing.

The first two sections passed without incident.

Helena looked around with real interest, not fear. She paid attention to the props, the lighting, and the way students had used cheap materials to guide the route. Cyrus suspected she was collecting more details for whatever project had brought her here.

Then they reached the darker third section.

A sudden shriek cut through the room at the same time something brushed near Cyrus’s shoe.

He startled hard enough to take half a step back.

Then he saw the small insect moving along the wall and immediately recovered.

That had nothing to do with the haunted house.

The timing had simply been unfair.

Helena looked amused, though she politely said nothing.

Cyrus pretended not to notice.

The next curtain brought them into the bright white room.

This time, Cyrus had prepared himself.

The operating table stood where it had before, marked with dark red paint. The scattered fake limbs looked flat under the harsh light. The white sheet draped over the display coffin was too obvious to be frightening now that he knew what waited behind it.

The sheet fell.

Audra appeared behind the glass.

She wore the same white costume, lying still with her eyes closed and her hands folded. The image should have pulled at the fear in Cyrus’s memory. It did, faintly, but he was ready for it this time.

He looked at her without flinching.

Audra opened her eyes.

Their attention met through the glass.

For the script, her stare should have remained empty and eerie enough to unsettle visitors. Instead, recognition flickered across her face.

Cyrus was here.

So was the woman Audra had seen near The Full Moon Lounge.

Helena paused beside him.

The white-costumed girl inside the coffin held her attention at once. Helena stepped closer, studying the setup with sudden interest. Her focus moved from the glass frame to the costume, then to Audra’s still expression and the way the white figure contrasted with the staged mess around her.

Audra did not know what expression to make.

She closed her eyes again.

When she opened them after several seconds, the matching pair had already moved on and vanished into the next room.