Soren woke up at three in the morning and Grimm wasn't there.
That was wrong in a way that took him a second to understand, because Grimm was always there.
She had slept curled against his back every night since the dungeon.
He had gotten so used to the weight of her that the absence of it was what woke him up, not any sound.
He sat up.
Selah was in the second bed on the other side of the room, turned toward the wall, breathing slowly and even like a person who had practiced sleeping through worse.
The door to the hallway was open about an inch.
Soren put his bare feet on the floor, walked over and pulled the door open the rest of the way.
The hall was empty.
The emergency lights were on, the soft red ones that came up at night, and there was nothing in either direction.
There was, however, a trail of wet paw prints coming up the hall toward the door, the last one pressed right into the threshold where she'd stopped to listen.
It was wet.
He crouched down, touched it with two fingers, his fingers came up red and sticky. It wasn't water.
Under the red emergency lights it looked black, so he stepped into the doorway and held his fingers up to the white bulb inside his room.
It was blood.
His stomach did a thing.
He walked back into the room, sat on the edge of his bed, and put his face in his hands again. That was apparently going to become his whole personality from now on.
Grimm, he thought, hard, the way she'd taught him. Where are you?
For a second nothing.
Then her voice came through, sweet and warm but a little out of breath.
I'm coming back, master. I just wanted some air.
Grimm. Whose blood is on your paws.
A bad person's. Don't worry about it.
That's not an answer.
A boy from the second-year track. He was going to talk to a tall woman in a council uniform tomorrow morning. He had a notebook with your name in it. I read it through his eyes before I made him stop. He was going to tell her things, master. I couldn't let him.
Soren stared at the wall.
He told himself there were five different people that boy could have been planning to talk to that had nothing to do with him.
He told himself notebooks had names in them all the time.
He told himself second-year students disappeared from this academy for twelve different mundane reasons every month and that whatever he was imagining was probably wrong.
The denial slid into place in his head with a soft click he could almost hear.
Grimm.
Yes, master.
Did you kill him?
A pause, just long enough for him to know the answer before she gave it.
No, master. I just made him forget how to walk in a straight line. He fell on the stairs in the east wing. The medics will find him in about an hour. He'll wake up and he won't remember why he was in the east wing or what was in his notebook. The notebook is gone. I ate it.
He laughed once, a small dry one, into his hands.
"You ate it."
It tasted like paper, master. I don't recommend it.
"Grimm."
Yes?
He didn't know what to say.
The thing he wanted to say was please stop, and the thing he was afraid to say was please stop, because he had a feeling she wouldn't, then they would both be standing in the wreckage of the only family he had in the damn novel.
So he said the other thing.
"Come back to bed."
Yes, master.
He heard her paws on the hallway tile a minute later, very soft, then the door opened just enough to let her in and clicked shut behind her on its own, which he had not seen her do before but which he chose not to think about.
She padded across the room and put her chin on his knee.
Her muzzle was clean.
She must have washed it somewhere.
The fur on her front paws was a little damp.
He looked down at her shut eyes and he was about to say something, anything, when Selah turned over in her sleep across the room.
Her breath caught for half a second. Her hand came out from under the blanket and rested on top of the covers, palm up, fingers loose.
Soren looked at the hand for a moment.
It was a normal hand.
The frost pattern on the knuckles was very faint in the red light, almost gone, the way it got when she was actually relaxed.
She had slept through everything.
Or she had pretended to.
He couldn't tell which one was worse.
Grimm made a small sound against his knee that was almost a hum.
Master. The ice girl is awake.
He looked across the room.
Selah's eyes were open. They were on him, and they had been on him for he didn't know how long.
Her face had no expression on it at all.
"Couldn't sleep?" he said, in a voice that was way too casual for the situation.
"I sleep fine," said Selah. "Your wolf came back with blood on her."
[DING!] — Obsession Index: Grimm 49/50. Spiritual Friction: 22%. Soul integrity 84%.]
[DING!] — WARNING: Witness compromise event in progress. Bonded beast [Grimm] requesting authorization to neutralize.]
[DING!] — Authorization required. Tamer response: ?]