"The witness is Seraphina Vale, who ruined both of my uniforms yesterday and locked me in the basement the day before." I keep my voice even. "Specific doesn't mean accurate."
He moves again, this time around the end of the desk, and the circling is deliberate, I understand that now. He moves the way things move when they're deciding whether something is prey. I turn slightly to keep him in my sightline and he notices me doing it and something in his expression sharpens with what might be approval.
"You're not afraid," he says.
"I'm cautious. There's a difference."
"Most students who come into this room are afraid." He tilts his head, studying me with a directness that most people dress up as something else. He doesn't bother. "Your heart rate is elevated."
"You just told me I'm being investigated for theft. My heart rate is appropriate to the situation."
"Your heart rate was elevated before I said anything." The observation lands differently when he's close enough that I'm aware of it in ways that have nothing to do with threat assessment. That is deeply inconvenient. "Interesting."
"Are we discussing the ring or my cardiovascular system?"
"I can smell you," he says, conversationally, like he's noting the weather. "Your physical response to proximity. It's quite clear."
The room does not helpfully swallow me. I stand there and hold his gaze and refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking away first.
"That's a violation," I say.
"It's a biological fact. Vampires don't turn off sensory perception on request." He stops moving. He's standing roughly two feet away, which is close enough that I can see the particular quality of stillness he carries, like something that has learned to be very patient. "You find me threatening."
"You're threatening me. There's a difference there too."
"And yet." He leaves the sentence incomplete on purpose, which is the kind of conversational move that deserves a response I'm not going to give him.
"I didn't take the ring," I say. "You know I didn't take the ring. This is a performance, and the audience is Seraphina Vale, who told you to summon me here so she could watch whatever happens next from a safe distance." I meet his eyes. "So what happens next?"
He regards me for a long moment. His eyes are very dark, and they don't move off my face.
"Nothing happens next," he says. "You're not worth my effort."
He says it the way you'd say a verdict, flat and final, and then he turns back to his desk and picks up the document again, andthe dismissal is so complete and so deliberate that it lands with a specific kind of weight.
I walk to the door.
"Fairmont." He doesn't look up from the document. "The ring was found this morning in Seraphina's own belongings. My prefects are thorough." A pause. "This conversation still happened. Remember that."
I pull the door open. "I'll add it to my files."
I don't look back, and I don't let myself run until I'm around the first corner and out of his corridor entirely, and even then it's not running, it's walking fast with purpose, which is a completely different thing.
Sage is waiting in the courtyard at the base of the Vampire House steps. She takes one look at my face and falls into step beside me without asking.
We walk for a full minute before either of us says anything.
"Well?" she asks.
"He knew I didn't do it. Found the ring in Seraphina's things this morning." I adjust my jacket collar. "He still interrogated me anyway."
"Of course he did."
"He commented on my physical response to him being in close proximity." I say it factually, because if I let any other register into my voice I'll have to deal with what it means. "Out loud. On purpose."
Sage makes a sound that is not quite a word.
"He said I wasn't worth his effort," I add. "After spending twenty minutes circling me like he was deciding whether to eat me."
