Chapter 194: You Don’t Have to Come

Blair got back to Room 204 at twenty past one with her shoes in her hand.

Daemus hadn’t moved. He lay across her bed on his back with one arm hanging off the side and his phone face down on his chest. She stood inside the door until she was sure his breathing hadn’t changed. Then she hung up her coat, peeled off her skirt and sweater and climbed in beside him in her undershirt.

He rolled over without waking and pulled her into his chest.

Noon, Jack had said at the edge of the trees. Nothing else. Killian had already gone.

She was asleep before she could decide how she felt about any of it.

Some time later, he woke her by kissing the back of her neck.

Gray light. The radiator ticking. His hand had found its way under her undershirt in the night and lay spread over her stomach.

"Morning," he said into her hair.

"What time is it?"

"Don’t know. Don’t care." His mouth moved down the side of her throat. "It’s Sunday. Nobody has to be anywhere on Sunday. It’s in the Treaty."

"It isn’t."

"Article whatever. Look it up."

She laughed, and he rolled her onto her back and kissed her before she’d finished.

He settled over her on his forearms so he wouldn’t crush her and kissed her slowly. His tongue slid into her mouth and she opened for him. His thumb found the underside of her breast through the thin cotton and stroked it, back and forth, until her breath caught and her hips lifted off the mattress on their own.

His ears came up.

"Number two," he murmured against her lips.

"You remember?"

"I fell asleep. I didn’t die." He kissed the corner of her mouth. "Number two is you wear my jersey to the last game. The real one, with my name on the back. And you sit where I can see you."

She blinked up at him. "That’s it?"

"That’s it."

"Number one was the shower."

"Yeah. Number two is the whole arena knowing you’re mine." His grin went crooked. He wiggled his brows, "Different kind of filthy."

She pulled his head down so he would stop looking at her like that. He laughed into her mouth, and then he stopped laughing. His hand slid down her stomach to the waistband of her underwear and rested there. His fingers drew slow circles on her skin, and she pushed her hips up into his palm before she knew she was going to.

He groaned, low. "Bunny."

"Mm."

"What time is it?"

She turned her head toward the phone on the desk, and her stomach dropped.

11:38.

She sat up so fast she nearly hit his nose. "I have to go."

"Go where?"

"Professor Feron’s office. The forms. At noon."

Daemus fell face down into her pillow and stayed there. Then he rolled off the bed and started looking for his other shoe.

"You don’t have to come," she said a bit too quickly.

***

Jack’s door stood open. He was at the window with his back to the room.

"Sit, Ms. Willows."

She sat. Far down the corridor, Daemus leaned on the medal case with his phone held sideways. He lifted a hand without looking up.

Killian arrived at two minutes past twelve. She heard his footsteps on the stairs.

"Snake," Daemus said.

"Wolf."

Killian walked in and laid a long roll of paper on the desk.

Jack crossed the room, shut the door and turned the lock.

Killian unrolled the paper. It was a tracing of something much older: fine brown lines, the woods drawn as clusters of tiny circles, a dotted line running north beneath them. The dotted line ended at a wavy band lettered RIVER in faded capitals.

"The northern spur," Killian said. He set two fingers on the corner. "The gate is here. The line goes under the river and comes up on the far side. Or it did."

He leaned past her shoulder to pin down the edge that kept curling. His sleeve rested against her cheek. Behind her, Jack’s hand settled on the back of her chair, his knuckles an inch from her neck.

She looked at Killian’s fingers on the map. Then, for a little too long, at the window light on his silver hair.

***

Daemus heard the lock turn.

He looked up from his phone. On the screen, someone skated around his goalie and scored. He didn’t notice.

The door was shut. Locked. Blair was in there with Jack. And the snake.

A locked door. Three people. His mind went exactly where it shouldn’t.

He had made his peace with Jack. He’d said so out loud and meant it. But Kill? She had never said a word about Kill. She didn’t even like Kill. She was scared of him.

His ears went flat.

He put the phone in his pocket and walked down the corridor on the outside edges of his feet, the way he used to sneak past his father’s study as a kid. He stopped beside Jack’s door with his back to the wall.

If he heard one wrong sound, he was kicking it in.

Paper rustled.

"The lock I can open," Jack said. "The water I can’t."

Daemus frowned at the opposite wall.

"Nobody oils a gate to a lake," Killian said. "They drain it."

"From their side."

A gate. They were talking about a gate. His shoulders came down. He felt stupid for about two seconds.

"The scratches on the padlock were new," Blair said. "They were shiny last night. Someone opened it this week."

Last night.

Last night he’d fallen asleep with her on his chest. This morning he’d woken up with her in his arms.

"Someone has to go through and see how they drain it," Killian said. "And I don’t swim."

Nobody spoke.

"Ms. Willows will go," Jack then said.

Daemus’s stomach dropped.

"The human," Killian said.

"Yes."

"She’ll drown."

"She won’t."

Daemus waited for Blair to say no. She was scared of water. Through the door he could hear her breathing, fast and shallow.

She didn’t say no.

Jack knew something that he didn’t.

Daemus took his hand off the wall.

Some part of him had known since Friday. He’d told himself he was being paranoid. She had promised him. No more secrets. But whatever it was, the professor knew it. The snake knew it. And he didn’t.

Inside, Killian said something about Tuesday. Jack answered. Blair didn’t say anything at all.

Daemus walked back down the corridor to the medal case and took out his phone. The game had ended without him. He started a new one.

The door opened at ten to one.

Killian came out first and walked past the medal case without looking at it. Daemus didn’t say anything and neither did Killian.

"Done?" he asked.

"Yes," Blair said.

He put his phone in his pocket. She waited for him to hold out his hand. He didn’t.

"I’ve got film," he said. "You okay to walk back?"

"Oh. Yes. Okay."

He looked at her for a second. Then he looked at the stairs.

"See you," he said, and went down them two at a time.

He didn’t kiss her goodbye.

Blair stood beside the medal case until she couldn’t hear him anymore.

He was tired. That was all it was.

She didn’t text him that afternoon, and he didn’t text her.