Harmione was not what I expected.

She was warm. Easy to talk to. The kind of person who made conversation feel like it had always been happening and you had just arrived at the part that mattered. I understood immediately why Vince kept her close and why he had never let her past a certain point. Some people are kept precisely because of what they make a room feel like.

"So you’re from the Stray town?" she asked. "Heard most Hogsby people grew up there."

She was smiling. The kind that might have been her nature or might have been the specific warmth of someone who was genuinely enjoying where the conversation was going. I couldn’t tell yet. I was going to find out.

"Not the Stray town," I said. "I come from worse."

"Worse?" She tilted her head. "What’s worse than the Stray town?"

"Outside the walls."

She stared at me for a second. Then she laughed. Full and unguarded, the laugh of someone who has just heard something so unexpected that the response comes before the filter does.

"Get out of here," she said.

"I’m serious."

She looked at me. Really looked, the way people look when they’re deciding whether to update their assessment.

"Are you one of the six?" she asked.

"Yes."

Something shifted in how she was sitting. She leaned in slightly closer, the body language of someone who has just discovered the conversation is more interesting than they thought.

"I think about the outside sometimes," she said. "My thoughts tell me it’s actually safer out there. That the real danger is inside the walls."

I smiled and said nothing and let her keep going.

"I think zombies aren’t real," she said, in the tone of someone who has held a theory for a while and is testing it on someone who might actually know.

"They’re real," I said. "Everywhere outside."

"Do they talk?" she asked. "Do they have families?" The tone of someone asking questions they don’t fully expect answers to.

"No. They’re not human. The only way they relate to anything is when they see you."

She nodded like she was filing it.

Then I pulled out the line that had served me well since Hogsby. Leaned in slightly. Almost a whisper. "I did see them having sex once though."

"WHAT."

The word came out sharp enough that three rows of students looked over. She caught herself and pressed her lips together, eyes wide, smile fighting its way through.

"They were what?" Lower voice this time. The smile lines visible at the corners of her mouth in a way that was specific to her face.

"You heard me," I said.

She laughed again, the real unguarded one.

"You know what," she said, "I’m still a virgin." She said it like the thought had arrived unexpectedly. Then: "Need to work on that. Because if zombies are out there doing it, who is Harmione?"

"Are you serious?" I asked. "You have a boyfriend."

"Yes." Her voice settling from the laugh. "Does having a boyfriend mean losing my virginity?"

"No," I said. "It doesn’t."

The air shifted. I felt it before I registered what it meant. The specific atmospheric change that Vince Vale produced wherever he went, the cold and the weight of it. He was coming back.

I had maybe thirty seconds. I needed him to walk in during the right moment, not the end of one, not a pause between things, the actual middle of something that would land correctly.

"I think," I said, dropping my voice slightly, "that you have the most oblivious boyfriend alive. No man with functioning eyes sits across from you and controls himself."

She tilted her head. Crossed one leg over the other. The smile came slower this time, the kind that means the words landed where they were aimed.

"So if you were my boyfriend," she said, "I wouldn’t still be a virgin?"

"That’s not a question," I said.

She smiled. I looked up.

Vince was in the doorway. He had come back alone. No Azure.

Where is she? What did you do to her—what did you do to her?

He stood at the entrance with the stillness of someone who has just processed a scene and is deciding what it means. His eyes went to Harmione first. She was looking at me, smiling, one leg crossed, leaning slightly forward.

She hadn’t seen him. Or hadn’t bothered.

He didn’t enter. He just stood there, watching.

His jaw tightened. The specific tightening of someone who keeps a girl without giving her a reason to stay and has just watched someone give her three.

He had never slept with her. I was certain of that now. He had Azure to shapeshift into whoever he wanted, which meant Harmione was something else entirely. A different category. Kept at a distance and presented as his, which worked until someone came and sat in the empty seat and made her laugh in front of the whole class.

I looked at him directly. He looked back. I smiled. Not provocatively. Not a challenge. Just a man who had made a girl laugh and was comfortable with that.

"Your boyfriend’s at the door," I said to Harmione.

"I don’t care," she said, without turning.

I stood. "I’ll go back to my seat."

She caught my hand. Held my eyes for a second, then pressed her watch to mine. The scan completed before I could say anything.

"We’ll be in touch," she said.

I felt the contact she had just made, her number on my watch, my number on hers, the specific commitment of a girl who had decided something and was acting on it in front of the person she had been assigned to.

The students watched me walk back to my seat. I sat down. Vince did not enter the classroom.

[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM ]

[Harmione: Ability hidden. Contact established.]

[You have his attention now.]

[Be ready.]

I know, I thought, looking at the empty doorway.

I’m ready.