The alarm went off at six and I killed it with the kind of violence usually reserved for mosquitoes and people who spoil anime finales. Friday. The day before the festival. The last dress rehearsal, the final setup window, and approximately fourteen hours until I had to stand in a gymnasium wearing a cape and fake fangs while serving themed beverages to teenagers who would photograph every second of it for social media clout.

I lay on the couch staring at the ceiling. Gerald maintained his accusatory vigil from the kitchen counter. The water stain had grown another centimeter overnight, a slow brown continent expanding its borders while I slept.

My phone had seventeen notifications. Vivienne’s schedule revision, naturally, because the woman operated on the assumption that sleep was a suggestion and 5:47 AM was a reasonable time to send a document titled "FESTIVAL LOGISTICS FINAL (v.23)." Harlow had sent a photo of my butler vest hanging on her mannequin with a string of sparkle emojis and a voice note I was afraid to play at this hour. Cassidy sent a single text at midnight that read "don’t forget the graph paper tomorrow or I’ll end you" followed by a skull emoji, which could have been about our morning tutoring session or could have been a literal death threat. With Cassidy, both options carried equal probability.

Sabrina’s daily message had arrived at 11:00 PM on the dot, same as every other night that week. Tonight it said: "The cafe menu needs one more drink. Something for people who don’t like sweet things. Think about it."

I had thought about it. I’d thought about it at 11:01, and then again at 11:47, and then at 1:30 AM when I should have been unconscious. I’d come up with three options, texted her one at 2 AM, and she’d responded within thirty seconds with a single word: Perfect.

The woman slept less than me and somehow looked better for it. Life was not fair and Sabrina Valentine was proof.

I rolled off the couch, checked on Iris through her cracked bedroom door. She was burrowed under her comforter with only the crown of her dark hair visible and one arm hanging off the mattress, fingers still curled around a pencil she’d fallen asleep holding. Her sketchbook lay open on the pillow beside her, and even from the doorway I could see the half-finished panel of a girl with cat ears wielding an enormous sword. The pencil lines were confident and clean, way better than anything I could manage. She’d gotten her talent from somewhere, and it sure as hell wasn’t from me or Diana.

I closed the door softly and started the coffee.

The drive to Hartwell took the usual two hours. Traffic on the turnpike was light for a Friday, which meant I only wanted to commit three acts of vehicular aggression instead of the typical seven. The Lexus hummed along at seventy-four miles per hour because I refused to give campus security any excuse to run my plates. The morning sun turned the Manhattan skyline gold through the windshield, and for approximately forty-five seconds I felt something that might have been peace.

Then Cassidy texted: "Where are you. I’m in the library. It’s 7:46 and you said 7:45. You’re LATE."

The peace died.

I parked in my usual spot between a white Porsche and a matte gray BMW, grabbed my bag from the passenger seat, and headed toward the main building. The campus already hummed with festival energy even though the actual event wasn’t until tomorrow. Someone had taped orange and black streamers to the front columns overnight, and a banner reading "HARTWELL FALL FESTIVAL" hung across the entrance in letters large enough to be read from orbit. Patterson must have been involved because the banner included a line at the bottom in smaller font: "3-A WILL TRIUMPH."

The man had lost his mind. Good for him. At least one of us was enjoying the ride.

I found Cassidy in the library at our usual table, and the sight of her stopped me in the doorway for a full two seconds that I would deny under oath.

She wore her glasses. The black-framed ones that made her purple eyes look bigger and slightly rounder, the ones she claimed to hate but kept wearing because they helped her focus. Her hair was down today, no ponytail, the wine-red and black streaks falling past her shoulders in waves she hadn’t bothered to straighten. The uniform blazer hung open over a white button-down that she’d left untucked on one side but not the other, as though she’d started getting dressed and then gotten distracted by something more interesting, like plotting my murder.

The skirt was hiked. Obviously. Cassidy Valentine had never once in her seventeen years of existence worn a regulation-length skirt, and today was no exception. Her navy thigh-highs had slipped down on the left side, bunching at the knee in a way that exposed a stripe of bare skin between the stocking top and the skirt hem, and she either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

She didn’t notice. That was the thing about Cassidy. The whole disheveled bombshell thing wasn’t performance. Vivienne performed. Cassidy just existed with the volume turned all the way up and the safety off, and somehow that was worse. Infinitely worse. Because when someone was trying to look attractive, your brain could file it under seduction attempt and deploy countermeasures. When someone just sat in a library wearing glasses and messy hair with her stocking falling down and no idea how that combination could ruin a man’s entire morning, there was nothing to defend against.

Her colored pens were arranged in the order I’d taught her. Red for variables. Blue for operations. Green for solutions. Black for notes. The graph paper I’d given her last week was covered in practice problems she’d completed the night before, and even from the doorway I could see the neat boxes of her work, each step isolated and labeled the way we’d drilled together.

Twenty problems. Completed. Before I even walked in.

She looked up when I reached the table and her expression did the thing it always did when I appeared. Her eyes went wide for a fraction of a second, then narrowed immediately into a scowl as if she’d just remembered she was supposed to be hostile. The blush started at her ears and would reach her cheeks in approximately twelve seconds if past data held.

"You’re late."

"By ninety seconds."

"Ninety seconds is ninety seconds." She shoved the graph paper across the table without meeting my eyes. "Check these. I did them at two in the morning because I couldn’t sleep and don’t you dare say that’s unhealthy."

"It’s unhealthy."

"I said don’t."

I sat down across from her, pulled the pages toward me, and started reviewing her work. The library smelled like old books and the lemon polish Mrs. Chen used on the shelving, and the morning light came through the tall windows at an angle that turned the dust motes gold. Cassidy watched me grade with an intensity that could have cut glass, her knee bouncing under the table hard enough that I felt the vibration through the wood.

Problem one. Correct. Problem two. Correct. Problem three, she’d made a sign error on the second step but caught it herself, crossed it out, and redone the calculation below with the right answer circled in green. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"You caught your own mistake on three."

"Obviously." Her voice was sharp but her shoulders relaxed half an inch. "I’m not an idiot."