Chapter 54 Blood Bottles
POV: Niko
Reba left first.
She grabbed her bag and her cold coffee and told him to think about the wedding and not to be an idiot about the other thing and then she was gone before he could respond to either instruction which was very Reba.
He sat alone at the table for a moment.
The coffee shop had filled in slightly since he and Deacon had arrived. A few more students. A witch he vaguely recognized from the student council settling in near the door with a stack of notes. The barista had switched shifts with someone younger who was significantly more awake about it.
He turned his phone over.
Two messages he had not opened yet.
One from Marcel asking where he had been last night with a string of question marks that suggested Marcel already had theories.
One from Aurora.
He looked at Aurora's message for a moment without opening it.
He needed to talk to her. He had known that since before last night and last night had only made it more necessary and more difficult in equal measure. Aurora deserved honesty and he had not been giving her enough of it and he had been aware of that for longer than was comfortable to admit.
He put the phone in his pocket.
One thing at a time.
He picked up his bag and walked out of the coffee shop into the cold morning air of Black River Falls. The fog was thinning slightly as the morning pushed through it. Students were moving across the courtyard in the direction of the main building, heads down, collars up.
He walked in the opposite direction toward Silas Hall.
He needed to feed.
He had been off his schedule for two days and he could feel it in the specific way that had nothing to do with physical weakness and everything to do with the low simmer of irritability that came when he pushed it too long. His gums ached faintly. His patience was operating on a shorter thread than usual. He had been managing it but managing it was not the same as addressing it and he needed to address it before class.
He pushed through the Silas Hall door and took the stairs to the second floor.
His room was empty. Marcel and Enzo had cleared out for morning classes already. The evidence of them was everywhere as usual. Enzo's football kit on the floor by his bed. Marcel's textbooks stacked in a precise arrangement on his desk that suggested he was slightly more organized than he pretended to be.
Niko dropped his bag on his own bed and crossed to the small refrigerator under his desk.
He pulled out one of the water bottles and looked at it for a moment.
Dark red against the plastic. He had stocked up at the beginning of term the way he always did. Kept them cold. Kept them out of sight when guests were present.
He had not thought twice about any of that for years.
He thought about Carly's face the first night she had seen Katy's cooler. The way she had gone completely pale and backed herself against the door. He thought about her face when she watched him feed in the library. Not disgusted exactly. Fascinated in a way that clearly unsettled her. He thought about the conversation at the festival when he had explained the sunlight mechanic and she had listened with her chin in her hand and her eyes steady on his.
She was learning him.
Piece by piece and in the specific order that she could handle each piece and she had not run yet.
He uncapped the bottle and drank.
The relief was immediate and familiar and he leaned against the desk and let it do what it needed to do. The low simmer settled. The irritability retreated. His gums stopped their quiet complaint.
He capped the empty bottle and threw it in the recycling and stood up straight.
He pulled his phone back out.
He opened Aurora's message.
Aurora: We need to talk. I know you know that.
He read it twice.
She was right. He did know that. He had been knowing it and delaying it and delaying it some more because the conversation that was coming was not one he had ever had before and he was not entirely sure how to have it without causing damage he could not undo.
Aurora was his friend. She had been his friend before anything else and she deserved to still be his friend after.
He was going to have to be very careful.
He typed back.
Niko: Tonight. After dinner. I'll come to you.
He set the phone down and looked at the room around him.
Sketchbook under the textbooks where he always kept it. Record player in the corner. The chair by the window where he sat when he could not sleep and did not want to draw and just needed to look at something that was not the ceiling.
He thought about waking up this morning with her hair against his face and her warmth against his chest and the specific peace of it that he had not been prepared for and could not now unfeel.
He picked up the sketchbook.
He sat in the chair by the window and opened it to a clean page and let his pencil move without directing it.
Ten minutes later he looked down at what he had drawn.
The window in his room. The fog outside it. And just visible in the reflection of the glass, two people asleep in a bed behind it. Just the outline of them. The suggestion of it.
He looked at it for a moment.
Then he closed the sketchbook and put it back under the textbooks and stood up and grabbed his bag for class.
He had things to deal with today.
He was going to deal with them.
But he was glad she was here first.
He was very glad she was here first.