Chapter 32: Chapter 32: Are You Short on Money?

Chapter 32: Are You Short on Money?

Cyrus filled his stomach with a cheap snack-bar pastry and wandered the hallway without any clear destination.

Below the railing, students crossed the courtyard in little groups, laughing, checking their phones, trading notes, or pretending they had not come outside just to stand near someone they liked. St. Alder looked painfully harmless during lunch. Sunlight slid over the brick paths. A few teachers moved between buildings with coffee cups in hand. The whole place made it easy to forget that Grayhaven had produced a pink-eyed woman who could turn his head empty with a glance.

Last night came back to him in pieces.

The woman at the lounge. The short hair. The color changing at the edge of his vision. The weightless, clogged feeling in his mind, like someone had stuffed cotton behind his thoughts and left his body walking without permission.

Rhea had called her a siren-blood.

Cyrus leaned his forearms against the railing and watched a group of students cut across the courtyard toward the library.

So what exactly was a siren-blood?

Was that woman the first rare-blood he had run into outside his own people? What kind of line could make someone lose control that quickly? If the ring had not cooled his head at the right moment, would he have been dragged all the way to some hotel room and served up like takeout?

He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek.

If he had snapped awake earlier and fought her properly, could he have won?

He wanted to think so. The woman had not looked strong in a physical sense, and Cyrus was not helpless when his thoughts worked correctly. Still, rare-blood abilities were annoying because they rarely cared about fair fights. One look, one voice, one touch, and strength could become useless if the body forgot who owned it.

A pair of students passed him with library books against their chests. One of them was reading while walking, with a bookmark tucked behind her ear.

Cyrus followed them with his eyes.

The answer was probably in a book somewhere.

The human world had plenty of flaws, but it was very good at writing things down. If something existed, someone had probably studied it, misunderstood it, overexplained it, argued about it, and printed the argument in a volume thick enough to break a toe.

He checked the time.

There was still enough lunch left to visit the library.

St. Alder’s library occupied one of the older buildings on campus. Tall windows faced the courtyard, and warm lamps sat between rows of dark shelves. The place smelled faintly of paper, dust, ink, and air-conditioning.

Several students were actually studying.

More students were sitting in pairs, sharing tables and peaceful silence under the very convincing excuse of academic effort.

Cyrus ignored that and went to the catalog terminal.

After a few searches, he found a small section under rare-blood studies and folklore. The shelf was not huge, but it had enough titles to prove that the school took the subject seriously. Field guides, family histories, old folklore surveys, public safety pamphlets, and a few books sealed behind glass that looked too expensive for students to touch without a librarian hovering nearby.

He scanned the spines one by one until he found a thick guide with an outdated cover. The title promised a general introduction to known rare-blood lines.

The author’s last name, printed beneath it, was Sloane.

Cyrus paused.

Sloane.

Audra’s last name.

That could have been a coincidence. It could also have been the kind of coincidence that only stayed harmless until someone explained it. Cyrus did not know enough to decide, so he opened the book and filed the detail away.

The entries were organized clearly, one rare-blood line per section. It was not written like a dense medical text. It was meant for people who wanted the shape of the subject without being buried under technical language.

He flipped through the index and found siren-bloods.

The section was shorter than he expected.

According to the guide, siren-bloods usually lived alone in old forests or hidden wilderness areas. Their survival relied on drawing small amounts of vitality from plants, animals, and the environment around them. In stable territory, the process did not have to be deadly. A little taken from the soil, a little from surrounding life, and the forest recovered around them.

When they fed too heavily, the result changed.

Animals weakened first. Plants withered. Larger creatures could still be subdued because a siren-blood’s charm ability interfered with instinct, fear, and resistance. If too much vitality was taken from a living target, death could follow.

Cyrus read that part twice.

So the woman from the alley really could have killed someone.

He thought of the scene he had passed by before. Two women tangled in the dark. One flushed, then pale, then still.

His fingers tightened lightly against the page.

The guide also mentioned a dormancy cycle similar to hibernation. Unless hunger, danger, territory loss, or human disturbance drove them out, most siren-bloods avoided cities and preferred isolation.

Cyrus stared down at the neat printed lines.

Unfortunately for everyone nearby, one of them had apparently entered Grayhaven, kissed people in bars, drained them half-dead or worse, and tried to leave town before the police connected the bodies.

She would probably be learning how serious human holding cells could be by now.

He continued through the index.

If the book had siren-bloods, elves, the Firebird line, Starborn, bloodborns, giant-blooded lines, and several rare-blood names he had never heard before, then surely it would have something about Frostborn.

He checked once.

Then he checked again.

He turned to the back index in case the front list was incomplete.

There was nothing.

No Frostborn entry. No snow line. No obvious variation.

Cyrus leaned one shoulder against the shelf and looked at the open book.

Even inside a human rare-blood guide, his people were mostly absent.

That was interesting.

The human world had stories about snow women, mountain spirits, winter brides, pale girls in blizzards, and other useless legends people had probably repeated because they sounded dramatic. Useful information, though? Actual information about Frostborn? Male Frostborn? The guide offered him nothing.

That was probably good.

The more humans knew, the easier it became for someone to put the wrong pieces together. A vague legend could not identify him in a classroom. A detailed Chapter might.

By the end of lunch, Cyrus had checked the guide out under his student account and tucked it into his bag.

If he did not feel like sleeping during lunch later, he could use it to pass the time. If he did feel like sleeping, the book was heavy enough to look academic on his desk while he was unconscious behind it.

Both options had value.

The afternoon’s second math class nearly destroyed whatever satisfaction the library had given him.

Cyrus stayed awake through it, mostly out of stubbornness. He copied as much as he could from the board, followed the explanation when the numbers stayed within reach, and lost the thread whenever the formulas started behaving like they had personal grudges against him.

By the time the bell rang, half his notes were complete, a quarter looked suspicious, and the rest might as well have been evidence from a crime scene.

He lowered his pen and exhaled through his nose.

Owen, who had just put his phone away, noticed the sound and turned around with obvious surprise.

"That is rare," Owen said. "I did not expect you to survive a whole math class awake."

Faye Larkin, seated in front of Cyrus, turned around without making a sound.

Her thick glasses hid most of her expression, but her attention paused on the messy notes spread across his desk. Then she faced forward again.

After she straightened, her posture shifted subtly to the side.

The movement was small, but it blocked more of the front view of Cyrus’s desk.

Cyrus noticed.

He did not comment.

Owen, meanwhile, was still waiting for a reply.

Cyrus rested his chin lightly against his hand and calculated how long it would take him to catch up.

Audra’s tutoring plan was careful. Annoyingly careful. If he followed it properly, then maybe a month or two would let him build enough of a foundation to understand regular class without feeling like the teacher had switched languages halfway through.

That was the optimistic version.

The less optimistic version included work, sleep, rent, food, medicine, and the fact that he could not study while unconscious. His brain was not the problem. The foundation had cracks in it, and building higher without repairing the base first was how a tower collapsed on its own head.

Unless studying could pay him by the hour, his time would keep wobbling between the future he wanted and the bills he already had.

Money made everything rude.

He was still thinking when the next teacher entered the room. He did not notice class starting until the lecture had already settled into a steady rhythm.

That rhythm was fatal.

His head lowered before he made any clear decision about it, and the world blurred into voices, paper, and chalk moving against the board.

When Cyrus opened his eyes again, Owen was standing beside him with his backpack on.

The room had changed around them. Most of the class was already gone. Chairs had been pushed in badly, a few scraps of paper remained under desks, and the afternoon light had deepened along the windows.

Cyrus sat up slowly.

He had closed his eyes, and now it was dismissal.

Clearly, he had encountered time travel.

Owen grinned at his face. "Are you alive in there?"

"I am awake enough to understand that time has betrayed me."

"That sounds like a normal day for you." Owen slung his backpack higher on his shoulder. "I am heading out. Try not to sleep until tomorrow morning."

"I will consider that impossible request."

Owen laughed and left.

Cyrus stayed seated for a moment, one hand propping up his head while his thoughts dragged themselves back into order. The classroom had emptied until only a few students remained. Faye was gone. A girl near the front zipped her bag and hurried out. Chairs scraped faintly down the hall.

Then Audra Sloane walked toward him.

She carried a notebook in one hand.

Her expression was cool, composed, and difficult to read, as usual. She stopped beside his desk and placed the notebook in front of him. It was already open to a page of neat, elegant handwriting.

"Your notes from math are incomplete," she said. "Copy mine first."

Cyrus looked down at the page.

Every formula was written clearly. Every step had enough space around it. The places where the teacher had jumped through an explanation were filled in with small comments in the margin.

Audra continued, "You were actually awake for that class, so the material should still be fresh. If you fill in the missing parts now, you will remember more of it."

Cyrus did not ask how she had noticed the state of his notes while also paying attention to class.

She was ranked first in the grade. Worrying about her ability to multitask would be insulting to both of them.

He accepted the notebook. "Thanks, this helps."

Audra sat in Faye’s seat and turned the chair so she faced his desk. She took out a small booklet she had prepared over the weekend, the pages clipped neatly together and marked in different sections.

Cyrus looked at the cover.

It was not a formal workbook. It was handmade.

Audra had written the topics in order, beginning from the weak points exposed by his test and moving upward step by step. The first section was not humiliatingly simple, but it was close enough to the bottom that Cyrus understood what she was doing.

She was not patching over holes. She was trying to rebuild the floor.

That was more effort than he had expected from an apology.

Audra began with the section he could almost handle. Her voice was pleasant in the way expensive instruments were pleasant, clean and controlled without being sweet. She explained the logic behind each step, then circled back when he hesitated, using a different route instead of simply repeating the same sentence louder.

Cyrus listened seriously.

At this distance, he could faintly catch a clean fragrance from her hair or clothes, something light enough that it was probably intentional without feeling obvious. Her notebook sat close to his elbow. Her sleeve brushed the edge of the desk whenever she reached over to point at a line.

None of that made his head empty.

Numbers were already making enough trouble.

Forty minutes passed faster than he expected.

When Audra stopped, she lifted a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. Then she took a sip from her water bottle, tilting her chin slightly. The movement exposed the pale line of her throat above the collar of her uniform.

Cyrus watched for a beat.

If a bloodborn saw that, they would probably have a very strong opinion.

The book from the library had said bloodborns were close enough to the legends to be annoying: elongated canines, dependence on blood, and far too much public misunderstanding thanks to movies. Cyrus wondered whether a bloodborn would care about Audra’s careful posture or only about the clean pulse beneath her skin.

Across from him, Audra lowered the bottle.

She had noticed him looking.

The problem was that his expression did not match the reaction she had intended.

She had done that on purpose. Not too much, not enough to be embarrassing, just a small gesture with enough grace that most boys would either look away too quickly or stare too openly.

Cyrus had looked.

Then he had seemed to think about something impolite.

Audra could not decide whether she should trust her own instincts. It would be much more satisfying to believe he had been attracted to her. Her pride strongly preferred that explanation.

Unfortunately, some colder part of her suspected he had been thinking about something entirely unrelated to her charm.

That was more irritating than being ignored.

Cyrus began packing his things. He put Audra’s notebook back carefully, then closed his own half-filled notes and slid the library book deeper into his bag.

The tutoring session had ended, and he was already preparing to leave with that same unhurried efficiency, as if the classroom, Audra, her perfume, her throat, and the last forty minutes had all been filed under math assistance and nothing else.

Audra’s fingers rested on the edge of her booklet.

She watched him for another breath.

Then she spoke.

"Cyrus Calder," she said, keeping her voice even. "Are you short on money?"