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I forced my eyes on the wall past him, where he had rows of certificates of excellence and old hand-written music by Bach and Debussy, his favorites. One of them was still my forgery, where I’d replaced an original notation with one on identical aged parchment, but with the notes from a death metal song instead of a concerto. I still had the original in my room. Maybe I should offer it back to him, but if he hadn’t noticed it yet, there was no way I was going to mention it now. “Yeah, I fell.” I pulled off my hoodie, then unbuttoned the dress and pulled it off, leaving me in the white slip of stupidity again.
“How did you fall?” he asked, gripping my chin and drawing a design across my face.
“Are you going to help me on the off chance that my dad really is a higher-up in the Gray Society?”
“Sure. Also, I’ve never seen a girl turn to stone before. It’s interesting. Your face is still untouched, but here, on this arm, it’s travelling down to the bone before it spreads horizontally. It should be like cancer, spreading faster and faster until there’s no fighting it.”
“You sound so cheerful about it.”
He smiled a stunning smile. “Naturally. Turn around. I’m going to examine your back. Why do you have so much hair when you always keep it wadded up or tucked inside your shirt?”
I didn’t answer him, just stood there in the slip and tried not to notice the way he drew on me with the thin metal claw that could plunge through my skin and yank out a kidney or something. My heart was pounding and my stomach was tangling while I stood there, knowing that he was going to do something terrible, but unable to anticipate it or stop him.
“Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. Actually, the whole process of turning to stone is supposed to be much more irritating than painful, since you’ll slowly lose all capacity for sensation, but you will get clumsier and heavier. I always thought that you could afford to put on some weight.”
“You still sound so cheerful.” I shivered. “Why is your room so cold? You aren’t really going to help me, are you? That means that you’re setting me up for something phenomenally awful, like the books only without the last minute save.”
“I haven’t bothered to torture you for years. Why would I take it up again now? Why are your hands and knees bandaged, more consequences of the fall you mentioned? How high were you when you fell? Were you scaling someone else’s building to put glue in their hair after you drugged them? I’m jealous.” His thumb brushed my shoulder blade where I’d bruised it in my tumble. It hurt, but it also didn’t hurt in a way that made me shift uneasily.
I cleared my throat. “Have you considered testing your food before eating it? You are far too easy to drug. I’d feel bad about it, but you really deserved it.”
“That’s true. I am a truly terrible person who deserved to spend hours and hours dissolving the glue in my hair. That was after I tarred your boots to the porch, right? It was a good theme, very messy and irritating for both of us.”
“I think that there’s something legit wrong with your brain,” I said, fighting the urge to grab my stuff and leap out of the window.
“It’s the genius in me. Don’t tell me you didn’t love our game when you took to it with so much enthusiasm. Your feelings towards me are so strong, as you proved with more demonstrations that I can count.”
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists, somehow not moving while that claw danced down my arm. “You make it difficult to not have strong feelings towards you.” There. I hadn’t even said that those feelings were raging hatred. “It must be the genius in you,” I added with a smirk he couldn’t see, because he was standing behind me.
“I’m done. You can put your clothes back on, unless you’d rather lounge around in… I’m not sure what I’d call it. It’s too drab and shapeless to be a negligee, and while revealing your arms and calves, it certainly doesn’t flatter anything. Have you ever been shopping?”
I lunged for the black janitor’s dress and pulled it on. “I have better things to do with my money than spend it on clothing that will make me a bigger target. Speaking of that, I should probably mention the demon. It followed me last night, and that’s why I fell, because it stopped my board with its tail and then…” I shivered and pulled on my hoodie, leaving my hair tucked inside. “Its breath wasn’t bad, though. I expected garlic and brimstone, but it smelled more like lilacs and petunias. Petunias always make me sneeze.”
“Did the demon make you sneeze?” His voice was cold, hard, without that slight trace of amusement that had coated everything else. “There is something legit wrong with your brain, Red. You didn’t start with the demon? Maybe you are turning to stone, and it’s a serious consideration, but if the demon has your scent, the odds are that it will come after you today. Am I supposed to protect you? That’s why you’re here, because you clearly can’t protect yourself, unless he lets you drug him. Describe it in every detail and don’t leave out the smallest thing.” His glare was scary, not gonna lie.
“Like you could fight off a demon. What would you do, smolder at it? Oh, I know, you’d outplay it on your fiddle, except I think that only works in Georgia.” I glared at him, but he only waited, arms crossed, finger claw tapping, tapping as he waited. I sighed heavily because it was his business, since it had manifested in his school, and he was supposed to be a magical genius, so maybe he could do something to trap it.
“Fine. I was skating along, minding my business.”
“Where?”
“Fourth and Union.”
“When?”
“Two-forty-five? Somewhere around there.”
“What were you doing in that part of town at that time of night?”
“I was on my way to climb a tower. I have to practice my climbing skills for the next time I need to put something nasty in your bed with you in it.”
“I like spiders.”
“That’s because you’re unnatural.”
“Why were you really on your way to a tower?”
“Because I thought I might find a gargoyle to ask about the turning to stone thing.”
