Chapter 599 | Spilled Coffee

Chapter 599: 599 | Spilled Coffee

Mercy dismissed Hero Law at eleven fifty-two with a single flat sentence about liability statutes. Twenty teenagers stood up at once like a school of fish that had heard a gunshot. Monday, November eighteenth, was placement day, and nobody in Room 214 had absorbed a word about civilian property claims for the last forty minutes. I knew that for a fact, since I had spent those forty minutes watching Percy take notes for six people.

"You look like a man going to war," Caden said from the row behind me. His feet were back on my chair, which meant the building had stopped being haunted.

"I’m going to the Eastside, which the tourism board calls a war zone with parking."

"The tourism board doesn’t mention the Eastside at all." Percy clicked his pen shut, a sound he reserved for moments of emotional significance. "I checked three brochures, and two of them crop the skyline at Meridian."

"Thanks, buddy, very comforting."

"It wasn’t meant to comfort you. I was stating a fact about the brochures."

I slung my bag over my good shoulder and let the ache in the other one file its usual complaint. Four days of Demigod repair had turned a separated joint into something that grumbled at sixty degrees and shut up everywhere else. Juno called it tracking, and I had stopped asking what that meant.

The plan for the afternoon was straightforward on paper. Change into the approved field clothes, report to the Student Services loop by twelve thirty, and get collected by the placement agency for orientation. Steele had said "collected" in homeroom, and I had pictured something dignified, a sedan and a guy in a vest who called me sir.

Room 205 smelled of sage and Diane’s lamp cord opinions. I dropped the bag on the terrible mattress and pulled the field kit out of the closet, the charcoal Halloran utility jacket with the silver crest and the reinforced trousers that support track had tailored after the plaza turned my old suit into evidence. Diane had approved it on Saturday, then overruled Sloane on the collar, then called the whole outfit "tolerable for a first date with a district."

I had my shirt halfway over my head when the door opened without a knock.

Only two people on this campus opened my door without knocking, and one of them was forty minutes away running a crisis call about Victor Sterling’s feelings. The bond told me who it was before the fabric cleared my face, a hot bright pulse that landed in my sternum and spread outward like spilled coffee.

"You’re changing," Sloane said, and she said it like an accusation.

"I’m changing, and you’re in my room, so one of us is breaking a rule."

She closed the door with her hip and leaned against it. Creston Hills Community Outreach had issued her a navy polo with the district crest over the left breast, tucked into fitted grey trousers that the outreach coordinator had clearly never imagined on a girl who deadlifted. The polo was a size too small across the chest. Her pink hair was up in the high ponytail she wore for combat and job interviews, and the black choker sat snug at her throat, because Sloane Fitzgerald would sooner die than let a dress code win completely.

"My car’s here in twenty minutes," she said. "Mom’s outreach director is sending a driver, and he’s apparently named Bartholomew, which I refuse to accept."

"Bartholomew sounds trustworthy."

"Bartholomew sounds like a butler, and I’ve had enough butlers this month." Her voice cracked on that last word, and the bond cracked with it, a flicker of grey static underneath the heat. She crossed the room in three strides and stopped close enough that I could smell lavender dryer sheets and the vanilla shampoo she stole from Diane’s bathroom. "You’re going to the Eastside today." ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"That’s the assignment on the paper you read nine times."

"I read it eleven times, and you don’t get to be funny about it right now."

I let the shirt drop onto the bed. Her eyes went to my chest, then lower, then snapped back up with a flush crawling out of the polo collar. Two months, a dozen ruined sheets, and one shared bed with her mother, and the girl still blushed when I stood in front of her without a shirt. I found that deeply satisfying in a way I refused to examine before lunch.

"Sloane, I’ll be fine out there."

"You said that in the dome, right before you died for three seconds."

"Technically I didn’t say anything in the dome. I was busy."

She grabbed my jaw with one hand and kissed me hard enough that my back hit the closet door with a heavy thunk. There was nothing gentle in it. Her mouth was hot and angry and tasted of the strawberry protein bar she ate every morning like a sacrament, and her other hand fisted in the waistband of my trousers to drag my hips against hers.

"Mmh, stop being calm," she mumbled against my lips. "It makes me want to hit you."

"You’re already kind of hitting me."

"That’s a kiss, you idiot, and I’m doing it aggressively."

Her tongue slid against mine and the bond flooded open, her pulse bleeding into mine until I couldn’t tell which of us was shaking. I got a hand under the hem of that stupid polo and spread my palm across the small of her back, feeling bare warm skin and the tight muscle she’d built through nine years of mornings. She arched into it with a soft broken "haah," then bit my lower lip in retaliation for making her do that.

The interface chose that exact moment to exist.

[OBSERVATION: Heroine proximity elevated. Bond feedback loop active. Host departure window: 18 minutes. The interface notes that Bartholomew is punctual.]

I ignored it. Sloane’s thigh pressed between mine, and her hips rolled once in a slow grind that made the closet door creak. The sound she made when I squeezed her backside through the grey trousers was high and short and absolutely audible in the hallway.

"Nnh, Lukas, the walls are thin," she hissed.