Page 118 of The Witch They Fear

"Then I'll surprise you." Shandy floats toward the kitchenette in her leggings and long cardigan, all six feet of her.

I look at Nellie. She bumps her shoulder against mine.

"Come on, slumber-party virgin. We've got work to do."

Chapter 18

I wake up with a foot in my face and a hand in my hair, and neither of them is mine.

The foot is Tess's. Sometime in the night she rotated a full ninety degrees and annexed the bottom third of my emergency mattress, so I open my eyes to one bare heel six inches from my nose. The hand belongs to Nellie, asleep sitting up on the floor with her back against her bed frame, fingers tangled loose in the ends of my hair like she was checking it was still attached to me. Across the room Shandy has starfished over her whole mattress with the serenity of a woman who has never once worried about taking up space. Margo is a tidy rectangle under a perfectly squared quilt, because of course she is.

There's a glass of water by my head I didn't pour. A second blanket over me I didn't bring in. The snack plate sits gutted on the rug, one cracker presiding over a field of crumbs.

I find the exits before I'm even awake—one window, one door, both across the room. Old habit. Then I clock the threats. This morning the threats are a foot and a hand in my hair. The most dangerous witch on campus, boxed in on three sides, and the worst thing that happened all night is that Tess kicks in her sleep.

It might be the funniest situation I've ever been in. I press my lips shut so I don't wake the whole room laughing.

They fell asleep on top of me. On purpose. Like I'm someone you'd want to stay near and not a thing you'd want a wall between. Twelve years of waking up alone in rooms built to hold me, and nobody told me there was a version where you come up out of sleep pinned and warm and faintly suffocating, with someone's heel in your face.

Nellie stirs when I start working her fingers free of my hair. One eye cracks. "Mm. M'walking you back," she mumbles. "Told the vampire. Eight o'clock."

"It's barely seven. Go back to sleep."

"Made a promise, Cal."

"You made it to Corvin, who's a grown vampire with a gun. Not to me." I tuck her hand back into her lap. "I can cross my own campus in daylight. Sleep. I'll text you when I'm home."

She squints, fighting it, working out whether letting me go is allowed. Then she lets go. "Fine," she breathes, eyes already shut. "Text me. And eat something that isn't a cracker." A pause, almost gone. "Slumber-party graduate."

I smile.

I find my shoes by the door and take the stairs slow, in sock feet, shoes in hand—and Corvin is in the common room at the bottom of them.

He's on the smaller of the two couches, too long for it, boots still on, the blanket Margo brought him folded with unsettling neatness over the arm instead of draped over him. He didn't use it. He sat up all night in a witches' dormitory with his hands loose on his knees and his eyes on the door, and the only sign that hours have passed is the gray under his eyes that even a vampire can't fully hide.

He probably needs to feed. I ignore the chill that runs down my spine.

Corvin stands when I get to the bottom of the stairs. Old habit, or old manners. He doesn't have to stand for me. Nobody stands for the dangerous witch.

"Miss Dellaby."

I pull on my shoes and we head out into the humid morning. "You stayed."

"I weighed the alternative." Something starts at the corner of his mouth and doesn't finish.

And there it is—the thing the sight of him drags up every time now, the thing I've never said out loud to anyone but the voice in my head. Weeks ago, a corridor outside theory class, Corvin with his back half-turned and a phone to his ear, not knowing I was three feet behind him, saying my name into it like a line on a form. The schedule is consistent. She's cooperative. Mostly. She trusts the routine. And the part that still finds me at three in the morning: When she's ready. I'm aware of the parameters. I'll continue the reports until instructed otherwise.

Reports. To someone waiting for me to be ready—for what, he never said—and the thing I walked away certain of, the thing that turned my stomach, was that the voice on the other end of that call did not belong to the council.

I've played dumb about it for weeks. Smiled, kept the routine, let him write down that the routine was working. This morning I'm too warm and too tired and too newly stupid with nerve to keep my mouth shut.

"Who do you actually report to, Corvin?"

His face doesn't change. That's the first thing—no flicker, nothing to catalogue, and the nothing is louder than a flinch. Most people give you something. Corvin gives me a level blank.

"I file with the oversight office. Same as Zeva."

"That's not what I asked." I watch his hands, since the face won't give me anything. The hands don't either. "I heard you. Weeks ago, by the theory hall stairs. When she's ready. The parameters." I keep my voice as flat as his. "Ready for what, exactly?"