Chapter 21 She's Really Here
POV: Niko
She was really here.
Outside his door. On this side of campus. In the corridor of Silas Hall where no witch had ever voluntarily set foot in the entire time he had attended Black River Academy.
He stood in the doorway and looked at her and genuinely could not think of a single thing to say which was not a problem he had ever had before in his life.
"How did you find my room." He said finally.
Carly shrugged casually. "You'd be surprised how talkative vampires can be when money's involved."
He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms. "Money. That's not surprising at all. What is surprising is any vampire being talkative with a witch for any reason that doesn't involve a promise of violence. But I'm flattered I was worth a hundred bucks."
"Nice try." She rolled her eyes. "I'm the only one with the odd sense of humor?"
"I'm wounded." He put a hand over his heart.
"I would never pay a vampire for anything." She said. "But being president of student council and having access to the office files has its perks."
His eyes narrowed with interest. "So you broke the rules to get my room number."
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"I thought about what you said." She said it carefully. Like she had rehearsed the opening and was now improvising everything after it. "About these guidelines we were forced to follow. About getting to know each other." She shifted her weight. "And I know I was against it and I still think this could completely backfire on me but." A breath. "Maybe it won't be the worst idea."
He kept his face completely neutral.
Inside he was doing something he was not going to name.
"Is that so." He said.
"The tacos were a good touch." She said. "You should have led with that."
He almost smiled. "I'll remember for next time."
She raised an eyebrow. "Someone's ambitious. Who said there's a next time."
"You really think we'll scratch the surface in one night." He said.
She pressed her lips together. "As long as the part about you sharing your own dirty laundry still stands."
His smile came out before he could stop it.
Twenty minutes ago he had been lying on his back staring at the ceiling cursing her name and now she was standing in his hallway and he was smiling like an idiot and he needed to get that under control immediately.
"I guess we'll see where the night takes us." He said.
She bit her lip and rocked back on her heels, her eyes moving up and down the corridor.
He noticed.
"No one's watching." He said quietly. The amusement faded out of his voice without him meaning it to. "You're fine."
She caught the shift in his tone and winced slightly. She knew she had been caught. To her credit she didn't try to deny it.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I've never actually snuck off campus before." She said it like she was confessing something.
"Obviously." He said.
Her scoff was softer than usual. "Sorry we all don't live on the edge." She leaned against the opposite wall. "And this campus has more security than I realized. So tell me genius, exactly how are we getting across the street with cameras and guards everywhere."
He stepped out into the corridor and pulled his door shut behind him.
"Follow me." He said. "And stay low."
He flashed down the hall before she could respond.
He heard her mutter something behind him as she tried to keep up. He slowed just enough that she could follow without losing him completely, which was more consideration than he usually extended to anyone and he was not going to think about what that meant.
They took the back stairs. He knew every camera angle in this building and every gap in the patrol rotation because he had mapped it out freshman year out of pure necessity and had been refining it ever since. He moved through it automatically, checking back every few seconds to make sure she was still with him.
She was keeping up better than he expected.
They made it to the ground floor and he pressed against the wall near the east corridor, peering around the corner. She crept up behind him close and careful and he could hear her trying to keep her breathing quiet.
He was about to signal her forward when he heard the footsteps.
He reacted before he thought about it.
His arm shot back and pulled her against the wall, his body turning to shield her, one hand covering her mouth before she could make a sound. Her back hit his chest and she went rigid for half a second before she registered what was happening and went still.
The security guard rounded the corner twenty feet away. Massive. Flashlight swinging. Boots loud on the floor.
Niko stayed completely still.
Carly stayed completely still against him.
She was warm. That was the first thing he registered and then immediately filed away. He was aware of the exact location of every point of contact between them and was doing his very best to be aware of nothing except the security guard currently walking their direction.
The guard slowed.
Niko didn't breathe.
Then the guard turned and walked the other way and the footsteps faded.
Niko released her slowly.
She stepped forward and immediately turned around and shoved him in the chest. "A warning would have been nice!"
"You were two seconds from walking into that man." He kept his voice low.
"So grabbing me like a doll was your solution?"
"I saved both of us." He said. "A thank you would be fine."
She crossed her arms and tapped her foot and glared at him and he looked back at her and waited.
"Now." He said. "Do you want to argue or do you want tacos."
She huffed.
Then she nodded.
He turned and headed for the exit and heard her fall into step behind him and did not let her see the expression on his face.
The wall was the part he had not fully thought through.
He had forgotten that she had never done this before. That the chain locked gate and the eight foot brick wall surrounding Black River Academy's campus was not something she had ever had reason to look at as an obstacle rather than a boundary.
She looked at it now like it had personally offended her.
"Absolutely not." She said.
"It's the only way out." He said.
"There has to be another option."
"There isn't."
"Niko."
"Carly."
She shook her head. "I am not climbing that wall."
"All right." He said. "I'll go get the tacos and bring them back and we can eat them in the corridor outside the headmistress' office if you prefer."
She gave him a look that could have curdled milk.
He waited.
She looked at the wall. Then at him. Then at the wall again.
"If I fall." She said.
"You won't."
"But if I do."
"I'll catch you." He said it simply.
She stared at him.
He stared back.
She walked to the wall.
He boosted her without asking because waiting for her to ask was going to take longer than they had. His hands went to her waist and she yelped quietly and grabbed for the ledge and he pushed her up until her fingers caught and she could pull herself the rest of the way.
She made it over.
He heard her land on the other side and then heard her laugh quietly to herself. Just one breath of it. Like she couldn't help it.
He vaulted over in one clean motion and landed beside her.
She looked at him with flushed cheeks and wide eyes and something in her face that he had not seen there before. Like something had just shifted slightly in a direction she hadn't been expecting.
"I can't believe I just climbed a wall." She said.
"And you didn't fall." He pointed out.
"You said I wouldn't."
"I did." He said.
She looked at him for one more second.
Then she turned toward the street and he fell into step beside her and neither of them said anything for a moment and it was the most comfortable silence they had managed yet.
POV: Reba
She was almost back to Degrassi Hall when she saw them.
She had taken the long way back from Silas on purpose. The longer route that cut past the east lawn and along the fence line because she needed the cold air and the space to walk off the specific kind of frustration that only her brother could produce in her.
She had almost reached the gate when movement near the far wall caught her eye.
She stopped.
Two figures. Moving fast and low across the lawn toward the perimeter wall. One of them she would recognize anywhere, the specific way he moved, that unhurried deliberate stride that somehow covered ground faster than it looked like it should.
Niko.
She narrowed her eyes and tracked them until they reached the wall and she watched her brother boost the other figure up without hesitation, hands on their waist, easy and certain.
The other figure's blonde curls caught the last of the evening light before they disappeared over the top.
Reba stood very still on the path.
Niko cleared the wall a second later and was gone.
She stood there for a long moment looking at the empty wall.
Niko snuck off campus regularly. That was not new. He had been doing it since freshman year and the headmistress had given up trying to stop him somewhere around sophomore year.
What was new was the person he was doing it with.
Reba knew exactly who those blonde curls belonged to. She had been watching them from across the cheer practice field for the past two weeks. Had watched her brother sit in the bleachers with his sketchbook and tell her he was just waiting for her practice to end. Had watched him not draw a single thing the entire time she was out there.
She started walking again.
Her brother was many things. Complicated and closed off and frustrating in ways that required a specific kind of patience she had spent years developing. But he was not careless. He did not do things without a reason.
Whatever this was, it had a reason.
She was going to find out what it was.
She pulled her jacket tighter against the Black River Falls cold and walked back toward the dormitory and said nothing to anyone.
For now.
Author's Note:
REBA SAW THEM. She saw the whole thing and she is saying nothing. -J