But absolutely wild for someone like him. He mocked her love of them constantly. The most interest she’d ever seen him pay them was that one he’d had in his hand, at the start of one of their lessons. Yet here they all were, jammed into shelves and spilling onto the floor and surrounding her on all sides. It made her want to take a closer look, to see what exactly it was that he liked.
She only resisted because of the sound he made.
It was so desperate now it cleaved her heart in two. Her feet actually tried to step toward him; she only held them back by the skin of her teeth. Though it wasn’t any easier just watching him. He seemed to be searching for something, desperately. He had an old suitcase out, from under the bed, and was trying to unfasten the straps.
And failing, obviously. His fingers fumbled awkwardly.
Like they were already frozen.
“Let me help you,” she said.
But he batted her away.
“No. No, you’ve helped enough.”
“But you’re going to just turn into a husk down here, on your own.”
“I have someone. They will do what’s needed. You don’t have to worry,” he said over his shoulder, offhandedly, quite obviously not thinking about what he was saying. But she thought about itthe moment he had. She actually jolted to hear it, for the second time, and immediately went over all possible candidates for such a thing.
A friend of his? The lithe, long-limbed girl?
No, no. It sounded like he’d known them a while.
He would have had to, if he had leaned on them as long as he’d been here. And she felt pretty sure he’d been here more than the three years it would take someone like him to graduate. So what did that leave? A professor, she thought. Someone like Cobble, who you could trust.
But she couldn’t bank on that. She had to ask.
“Well, tell me who they are, and I’ll go get them.”
“Who they are isn’t your business.”
“Then let me at least open that suitcase for you.”
“You wouldn’t want to if you knew what’s in there.”
Lilibet, she thought.
But even the parts of her that hated him recoiled from the idea.
No, it had to be something less horrible. Something simpler.
“I’m guessing it’s blood. Or maybe body parts,” she said.
Though even that made him balk. He looked at her, incredulous.
“You think I havebody partsstored under my bed?”
“Well, I was thinking of animals, not people.”
“So just a dead dog, then.”
“No. No. More like a rat. Or a bird.”
He stopped fighting with the suitcase at that. Laid his head on the bed, turned away from her, as if he was too exhausted to continue. It even seemed like he might have gone to sleep—until he made a sound. A wretched thing that seemed to go through his whole body. “Just please leave me now,” he moaned.
But she definitely couldn’t after hearing that.
“I will when you manage to make yourself better.”
