Chapter 71: Katerina

POV: Carly

Katy walked in with her phone in her hand and her eyes down and got approximately three steps into the room before she looked up.

She stopped.

Carly sat up on her elbows.

Niko's head came up from where it had been.

Three people in a room. Complete silence.

Then Katy's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"What the fu—"

"KATY." Carly shrieked.

She scrambled backward and grabbed the nearest blanket and pulled it over herself in one motion and felt her face go approximately eleven shades of red simultaneously.

Katy stood in the doorway with her hand still on the door handle and her eyes wide and her lips pressed together in the specific way that meant she was deciding between embarrassment and amusement and had already decided.

Amusement. Obviously.

Niko sat up on his knees on the bed with zero urgency and zero shame and looked at the intruder with the expression of someone who had been interrupted during something important and was assessing the situation.

"Have you ever heard of knocking." He said.

Katy's eyebrow went up. "Have you ever heard of this not being your room."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Ah. So you're the other roommate."

"And you're the very rude boyfriend." Katy said. "What a joy for us both."

"Stop." Carly said from underneath the blanket. "Both of you stop right now."

Neither of them stopped looking at each other.

Niko got off the bed without putting his shirt back on which Carly noted with a specific combination of gratitude and frustration. He moved toward Katy with the unhurried certainty of someone who owned whatever room he was currently in and Katy held her ground but something shifted in her posture. Just slightly. Just enough that Carly noticed.

He stopped in front of her.

She looked up at him.

He extended his hand.

"I don't think we've formally met." He said. "You can call me Niko."

Katy looked at the hand. Then at his face. She shook it with the expression of someone doing a thing they had decided to do in spite of themselves.

"Yeah." She said. "I got that."

He held her hand for a moment longer than a handshake required.

Then he said it.

Quiet and precise and in a language Carly did not speak.

"Zdravei, Katerina."

The room changed.

It was subtle. The kind of change that was in a person's face rather than the air around them. Katy's expression did something Carly had never seen it do. Not fear. Not anger. Something more specific and more private than either of those things. Like a door opening briefly and then being closed again before anyone could see what was behind it.

She withdrew her hand.

Her jaw set.

"Clearly your research is lacking." She said. Level and cool and completely recovered. "I go by Katy. Not Katerina."

Niko's eyes held something that might have been satisfaction. Or recognition. Or both. He did not press it.

He reached down and picked his shirt up from the floor and pulled it back on and walked to the door. He stopped and turned back and looked at Carly still wrapped in her blanket on the bed.

"I'll be seeing you tonight, love." He said. And winked.

Then he was gone.

The door closed.

Carly sat in the blanket for a moment.

Then she looked at Katy.

Katy was looking at the closed door with that expression still doing something complicated on her face that she had not fully managed back to neutral yet.

She noticed Carly looking.

Everything smoothed out immediately.

"Well." She said. "He seems like a treat."

Carly threw the blanket off. "I didn't know you were coming back."

"Clearly." Katy said. She walked to her bed and put her bag down. "For the record, a scrunchie on the doorknob. Standard practice."

"I'll remember that." Carly muttered.

"Also." Katy sat down. "Vampires have exceptional hearing. So whatever you were doing before I walked in, half the corridor probably already knew about it."

Carly pressed both hands over her face.

Katy laughed. Not unkindly.

"I'm going to need you to never mention this again." Carly said through her hands.

"Absolutely not." Katy said. "I'm going to mention it constantly. This is the best thing that has happened to me since I transferred here."

Carly groaned.

Katy tilted her head. "So the big date is tonight."

"Yes." Carly said. Looking at her closet with despair. "And I have nothing to wear because I did not know where we were going and now I have four hours and nothing."

Katy looked at the closet. Then at Carly. Then back at the closet.

"Four hours." She said.

"Four hours." Carly confirmed.

Katy stood up. "Okay. I have things. Come look."

She was already moving toward her own closet with the energy of someone who had been waiting for a reason to do exactly this and had been given one.

Carly followed.

She was halfway across the room when the knock came.

Three sharp knocks. Then nothing.

Katy got there first. She pulled the door open. Nobody in the corridor. She looked left and right and then looked down.

A large black velvet box sat on the floor wrapped in a white silk bow with a card tucked under it.

She picked it up.

Carly watched her pull the card free and open it.

"She was beautiful." Katy read. "But not like those girls in magazines. She was beautiful for the way she thought. For the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved." She paused. "She was beautiful for her ability to make other people smile even when she was sad. Not for something as temporary as her looks. Beautiful deep down to her soul."

She lowered the card.

Carly had her hand over her mouth.

"It is Fitzgerald." She said quietly.

Katy looked at the card. Then at Carly. Something moved through her face that was not the usual practiced detachment.

"Your boyfriend." She said. "Might be an ass." She handed the card to Carly. "But he has excellent taste in literature."

She turned to the box and opened it without asking and Carly did not even protest because she was still holding the card and reading it again and feeling something warm and specific sitting in her chest that she did not have a word for yet.

Katy's sharp intake of breath pulled her attention.

She crossed the room and looked into the box.

Royal blue. Mid thigh. Sapphire trimming on the straps and the neckline. The kind of dress that looked like it had been made for one specific person and that person was apparently her.

She lifted it out carefully.

Held it against herself.

Katy was looking at her with that expression again. The real one underneath the sarcasm.

"He knew you didn't know what to wear." Katy said.

"Yeah." Carly said softly. Looking at the dress.

"He thought about it ahead of time." Katy said.

"Yeah." Carly said again.

Katy pressed her lips together. Looked at the dress. Looked at Carly's face.

"Okay." She said briskly. Standing up. "You cannot wear that with your usual hair. And you are going to need accessories. And shoes." She was already moving back toward her closet. "We have a lot to do and four hours is not as much time as it sounds like."

Carly looked at the dress in her hands.

She thought about the Fitzgerald quote on the card. About the sketchbook pages she had seen. About the record player and the quiet morning and the specific warmth of a Saturday that had nothing else in it except this.

She smiled.

She hung the dress carefully on the back of the door and went to help Katy find shoes.

POV: Katy

She waited until Carly was buried in the closet before she let herself think about it.

Zdravei Katerina.

Hello Katerina.

In Bulgarian. Correct pronunciation. The specific dialect of it that placed the origin precisely. Not a guess. Not a performance of research. The real thing.

She kept her hands busy going through the shoe shelf and kept her face doing nothing in particular and thought about Niko Monroeson standing in this doorway knowing her full name and her origins before ever meeting her and saying it like a key turning in a lock.

She had not let it show. She was fairly certain she had not let it show.

She went through the shoes methodically.

He was faction leader. He had explained that. It was his responsibility to know every vampire student on campus. That was a reasonable explanation. That was the explanation she was going to accept and file away and not examine further tonight.

She pulled out the silver heels with the sapphire buckles and looked at them.

They were going to be perfect with the dress.

She thought about the look on his face when she pulled her hand back. That specific quality of patience that meant he had more to say and had decided to wait. She had met a lot of vampires in her life. Most of them announced their power loudly and constantly.

He had announced his quietly.

She filed that away too.

She thought about the faction review notice she had seen on the headmistress's board three days ago. About Whitney feeling the witch's call differently than she should have. About all the things she was quietly collecting in this school that she had not yet decided what to do with.

She thought about Carly holding that dress and looking like someone who had just been seen properly for the first time.

She handed the shoes over her shoulder.

"These." She said.

Carly took them and made a sound of approval.

Katy kept her face neutral and her thoughts exactly where she had put them and went back to being helpful.

She was going to think about Zdravei Katerina later.

Much later.

When she was alone and nobody was watching her face.