Chapter 198: Get Off My Desk

Blair sent the text at four, between classes, before she could talk herself out of it.

Can you come by after practice? I need to tell you something.

The reply took eleven minutes.

ok

**

He knocked at a quarter past six.

She had made the bed twice. When she opened the door, he was standing a step back from it with his hair still wet and his hands in his jacket pockets.

"Hey," he said.

"Come in."

He came in and stood by the desk. She sat on the edge of the bed. After a moment he pulled out the desk chair and sat facing her, his knees almost touching hers.

Blair looked at her hands. Then she made herself look at him.

"There’s a gate in Hookup Forest," she said. "An old rail line runs under it. Professor Feron thinks it’s how they’re moving people out. Killian thinks so too. We’re going in tonight at eleven."

Daemus didn’t move.

"Part of the tunnel is flooded. I’m the one going through the water."

His ears went flat. "You can’t swim."

"No."

"Then how—"

"I won’t drown." She held his eyes. "I can’t tell you how I know that. Not yet. But I won’t."

He looked at her for a long moment. Something in his face shifted, and she couldn’t read it.

"Sunday," he said. "That’s what Sunday was."

"Yes."

"And Saturday night."

"Yes."

A second later, she heard it. She had never told him about Saturday.

He sat back in the chair and said nothing.

Her eyes stung. They filled before she could stop them, and his ears dropped. He leaned toward her. One hand was already coming out of his pocket.

She wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

"Don’t," she said. "Sit back. I don’t want to do it like this."

He stopped. Slowly, he sat back.

Blair took a breath.

"I’m sorry. Yesterday you asked me if anything happened, and I said just the forms. It wasn’t just the forms." She pressed her palms flat on her knees. "And I can’t promise I’ll tell you everything from now on. I want to. I can’t."

"Why not?"

She had decided that morning, in the shower, what she would say. It came out differently.

"When I was little, at the church, I had a friend. A girl my age." She kept her voice level. "I told her everything. Every single thing about me. And then someone took her."

Daemus went still.

"They never found her."

"I’m not doing that to you," Blair said. "I won’t have you hurt because of me. If someone took you—" She stopped. "I couldn’t live with that."

"Bunny."

"You’re the most important person in my life." She said it without meeting his gaze. Then she made herself say it to his face. "I don’t know what to do with that. It scares me."

She waited for him to say something back. He didn’t.

"I need some time," he said finally.

Blair looked at him. She hadn’t known he needed anything.

"I’m not going anywhere." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I just need time."

"Take it," she said.

He stood. She thought he was leaving.

Instead he put one hand on the mattress beside her hip, leaned down and kissed her.

He kept it careful. His mouth was firm on hers, slow, and his other hand stayed in his pocket. She held still and let him lead. When his lips parted, she opened for him. His tongue touched hers, and she heard his breath leave him through his nose. His hand moved from the mattress to her hip, and his fingers tightened there.

She reached up and touched his jaw. He let her.

She traced the line of it with her fingertips, down to his chin, and he made a low sound and kissed her harder. For a few seconds he pressed her back toward the pillow, his weight on his arm and his thumb hooked into her waistband.

Then he stopped. He rested his forehead against hers with his eyes shut.

"What time do you have to be at Jack’s?"

"Nine."

"I’m walking you."

It wasn’t a question. She didn’t argue.

**

Jack opened the door, looked at Daemus, then at Blair.

"Ms. Willows," he said. "And you."

"Hi, Jack."

Jack stood aside. When they were in, he shut the door and turned the lock.

Daemus walked past the chair by the desk and sat down on the corner of the desk itself, right on a stack of midterms. He planted his hands on the wood on either side of him and looked around the office with interest.

"Get off my desk."

"It’s a nice desk."

Blair sat in the chair and looked at the floor. Her face was on fire.

Footsteps came down the corridor. Jack unlocked the door, and Killian walked in. He stopped and looked at the wolf on the desk.

"Wolf."

"Snake."

Killian turned to Blair. "I said the wolf stays home."

"Wolf’s not home," Daemus winked.

Jack turned the lock again. "He’s coming."

A muscle moved in Killian’s jaw. He took the space on the other side of Blair’s chair and stood there with his hands clasped behind his back. Daemus slid along the desk until his knee was an inch from her shoulder. Jack went to the window.

"Ten-thirty, the service door," Jack said. "The cart tracks to the clearing, then north. I open the lock. Ms. Willows goes in."

"Alone," Daemus said.

"Alone."

"For how long?"

"As long as it takes her."

Daemus looked down at Blair. She looked back. He didn’t ask again.

"She finds the drain," Killian said. "She opens the gate from the inside, and she comes back to us. She doesn’t go on alone."

"You say that like she listens," Daemus said.

"She will tonight."

"She’ll come out of that water cold," Daemus continued. "I’ll warm her up."

"You’ll keep watch at the arch," Killian said.

Daemus smiled at him. It wasn’t friendly.

"After the gate," Killian went on, "she walks between Feron and me."

"She walks with me."

"She walks in front," Jack said.

Three heads turned toward her chair.

Blair looked up at them, one after another.

"I’ll walk where I’m needed," she said.

Nobody answered that.

Jack switched off the lamp. "Ten-thirty."

Out in the corridor, Daemus reached down without looking and took her hand. He held it all the way down the four flights of stairs.

At the bottom he still hadn’t let go. He was holding on hard enough to hurt, and she didn’t tell him.