“That was out of line.”

Sao watched Skogul simmer. Even her anger had a sort of sensual elegance.

“They worked each other up,” he said.

“Oh, really. Only one side brought up the other's mom from what I gleaned.” Skogul took a sharklike bite into her club sandwich.

Her long silky ponytail nearly touched the ruddy dining room carpet. She wouldn’t let it, of course. The snakelike flow of her hair was having a mesmerising effect on the staff. He and Rai had always struggled to find waiters in the Atrium, but the room was awash with them today, and all eyes were on their table. Just as well the place was having a relatively quiet lunch hour. Marsh has asserted that most of the students were in the dining hall for the tantalisingly named Steak Day.

Marsh himself was forking up shallot-crusted meatballs. “It’s hard to believe Triad would behave that way. He forced you to meet him with the lights off, you said? Bizarre.”

“All of this is too strange. Poor Rai,” Skogul lamented. “He should have joined us for lunch.”

“Rai is absolutely fine,” Sao said, hoping he sounded like enough of an authority on Poor Rai to dispel the name. “He’s used to having his family brought up in underhanded ways. Unavoidable at times, the incident with his father is on very public record. He wouldn’t start a scene over that.” When Skogul just shook her head, and the long snaking ponytail with it, he went on. “He isn’t joining us for lunch because of something he wanted to check on alone. It’s not as if he stormed off over Triad.”

Although, he’d come close. After leaving the professor to the apothecary of his office, Rai had descended the stairs with supreme control. But by the time they reached the foyer he’d picked up the pace and rammed the heavy wooden doors. These were not the type of doors that could be thrown open. He bounced off, groaning.

“Rai,” Sao called. Rai didn’t respond, probably even hear him, and he was shamefully relieved.

They emerged into a world of fresh fallen snow. Rai seemed startled by the clarity of it all, the crispness beneath his feet, and stopped.

“He knows.” Rai swivelled on his heel, to face Sao, though his eyes were staring off some distance in the direction of the row. “He knows who did it to the boy. Why calls us over here and not just give us a name?”

Sao pulled his coat tighter around him. “It’s someone he didn’t want to name. He’s protective.”

“Whether they deserve it or not.” A group of younger students passed by, cheeks rosy from the cold, and Rai slid his hand behind his back to conceal the bloody flower he had been grasping in its bed of tissue paper. Its petals were an inky black against the snow; an escaped remnant of the shadowy room. “We can be grateful he had enough of a conscience to drop us a hint.”

“A bit more than that.”

“So we’re on the same page.” After making sure nobody but Sao was looking, Rai attempted to squeeze the lily into some pocket in the lining of his jacket. “Well, let’s give it until the afternoon. I need to make a couple of calls, and I want to bother Rip and his roommate one more time. I’ll grab you later.”

When Rai started trudging away, the blood-encrusted boutonnière bobbing under his throat, Sao realized he was being dismissed.

“Tell him we miss him, then,” Skogul said over lunch.

Poor Rai. Sao smiled.

“And how are you doing?” Skogul asked. Her sandwich had vanished, leaving only a few crumbs and a slice of pickle, which she had excised before eating. “I never thanked you for the cake- your choices were spot on, by the way, I love Black Forest - and I never got to ask if you were alright. You were a bit worked up yourself last night.”

“I suppose it was jarring to get a call at four in the morning and not hear Rai’s voice on the other end,” Sao mused.

She set her chin on interlocked fingers and looked him in the eye. Her nails had recently been repainted a deep plum, and her lips were a darker color than usual, to match. The color made Sao think of the dead lily. The lily lips were pursed with concern. “When we found you on the couch, you looked like you were having a really intense dream.”

He appreciated that she didn’t automatically name it a nightmare. “Did I?”

“Oh, sure. You’re usually a peaceful sleeper.”

“True. But I don’t remember my dreams much.” The lie made his throat dry. Sao flagged down a waitress for tea. The waitress took away Skogul and Marsh’s plates and eyed him nervously. There was a nearly untouched salad in front of him that he couldn’t remember ordering. “I might have been thinking about the pictures.” That much was believable, he was thinking about them even now. He thought of Tinsel, the bony naked torso on rather ground, and the Tinsel in her hibiscus print dress and scarf, throwing down the bag of false teeth.

Skogul might not have been buying his excuses, but Marsh adjusted his glasses and looked empathetic. “I’m sorry I haven’t been much help.”

“You’ve been a great help. And we’re very close to confronting the - well, one of the people behind the vampire attacks. But there’s one aspect I don’t understand yet.” Sao ran a hand through his hair, smoothed it back down when he caught the waitress staring. “Marsh. Do you have access to records of which students were enrolled in which classes, for perhaps the last two years?”

“We have records going back a hundred years, if you need them. Do you need grades too?”

“Just names.”

Marsh glanced at Skogul, as if he needed her approval. Considering their positions, Sao thought, perhaps he did. “What exactly will you be looking for?” Skogul asked.

“Names. Two, in one class.”

—

He couldn’t find them.

Marsh had hung over his shoulder a while to make sure he was logged in and looking in the right place, then gone off to a lecture. He was awfully trusting with potentially sensitive information, Sao thought, only it wasn’t the information Sao was looking for.

He couldn’t say he was unhappy he’d made the visit, though. Marsh’s office was in the legendary clock tower. It bore a strong resemblance to the man’s home office with its walls of bookcases and regal desk, but this room had additional chairs across from the desk for visiting students, as well as an antique grandfather clock and a stuffed owl.

The taxidermied bird was perched on top of one of the bookshelves, white wings tucked against its sides, face pointed at the door. It made Sao wary when he’d entered, but once he was leaning back in Marsh’s wonderfully padded captain’s chair, legs outstretched, he felt at home. Perhaps it was because the beady eyes reminded him of the everpresent cameras in his apartment. The metronome ticking of the clock was a nice touch too, it gave the room something of a heartbeat. His landlord would never allow something so old into one of his properties, though.

Sao reluctantly sat up straight and looked through the enrolment spreadsheets again. Poring through repetitive lists without going cross eyed was really more of Rai's specialty.

He still couldn’t find them.

His phone was buzzing and he answered it without looking at the name. It was, of course, Rai. What he hadn’t expected was the cacophony of background noise. There were voices, singing maybe, and layered over it all a constant fuzz of static or nearby running water. Then a metallic thundering. What started as a clattering rose of volume until it was deafening, and slowly rattled off. Rai was still barely audible.

“Where are you?” Sao asked.

“By the train tracks,” Rai shouted. “Not the station. Further down the line, by the river. Do you want some gummies? They have some in every color.”

Sao pulled the phone away from his ear. He realigned himself by the ticking of the clock and placed the speaker back. “No, I think I’d better skip them. Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Oh, yeah.” And Rai told him. Sao could only catch every third word over the din, but he filled in the gaps. They were on the same page after all.

“So we’ve pretty much got him,” Rai said. “Meet you in half an hour at the student cafe. I need some coffee before we nail him to the wall. You’re still around?”

“I’m in Marsh’s office. I asked to look at some records.” Sao rested his head on the back of the chair. He wanted to close his eyes for the day. “I’m glad your time was productive because I didn’t find anything.”

Rai’s side of the call had become quieter, the voices and machinery reduced to white noise. “Doubts? Do you think we’re onto the wrong guy?” Rai asked.

“No. The question of who seems clear, I just can’t understand why.”

“Why?” He could envision Rai’s smirk in the word. “Let’s go ask him ourselves.”

—

The snow had stopped, and the sky had turned a limpid blue, puffed with columns of cottony clouds. Sao even heard birds. Where had the gloom gone? He felt they needed some of it, the mood called for it, considering what was to come. The campus dazzled around them in traitorous joy.

The powers that be had a cruel sense of humor.

The dormitory still held some of the gloom he was looking for. Ayer was inside, and so was Jin. Ayer must have known right away what their solemn entry meant. He pushed aside the pile of clothing he had been sorting through, bent his head as if a sudden weight had come around his neck and muttered, “Investigator.”

Jin was just as hunched and frowning twice as hard, shapeless in his oversized hood (although, it may not have been the same one as last time, since Sao saw one of identical size and color tossed over his bed.) His attention was on his computer. They hovered for a while at the edges of the room as he pecked his keys, willing one another to say something.

Ayer took it upon himself. Perhaps he felt he deserved it. “It’s okay. We can go into the hallway.”

“I think it’s better we talk in a private place,” Rai told him.

Sao crossed to Jin’s half of the room. His desk was by the window, like Sao’s was back at the office. Outside the window was a bare planter, which he tried not to look at, not yet. “Jin. A moment, please,” he said quietly. He was ignored. He looked at Jin’s spare, crumpled sweatshirt instead of the boy himself and spoke again. “It’s quite a serious matter.”

“Now? My project’s pretty serious too, you know. If I fail because of you–”

“It’s not going to take all day. We’re here to talk to Ayer.” Rai had taken up position by the door. With Sao at the window opposite they had the boys boxed in.

Jin was nonplussed. “So does he want me out too?”

Ayer looked forlornly at his feet and the dozens of tee shirts lying around them. “Of course not. But maybe it’s for the better…”

“Yeah, that’s convincing.” Jin clapped then laptop shut and hung an arm over the back of his chair. He snorted. “This guy got me involved, right? I should probably hear this. What did you even find out?”

“We have reason to believe Ayer is behind the assaults on Ace and Zed,” Rai said.

One scrappy eyebrow went up as Jin evaluated this. He shook his head. “That makes no sense.”

Rai motioned Ayer to sit and he did, overturning the stack of folded pants he must have been working on before they arrived. “We can start with the easy stuff,” Rai said. “I was referred to some peddlers on the ‘fashionable’ side of town. Apparently students can get whatever they need there, and date rape drugs are a popular item. They're so popular that the sellers can’t name every customer, but a tall student with a tan in the dead of winter and a…” He glanced at the closet where a telltale square of orange was protruding out. “A huge woven coat? That, multiple people could recall. So what does an upstanding guy like you need roofies?”

“All this on some vague physical description?” Jin grunted.

His roommate’s attempt at defence seemed to put Ayer at ease. “As you said. The stuff is popular. Turn over the room; you’ll probably find that pack of pills somewhere. I…” He paused, perhaps regretting the invitation. “I never found an opportunity to use them.”

“Not even on that girl Tinsel?”

The smile was gone. “Don’t joke about that.”

“Two days ago, you were the one who suggested those who were drugged and had their pictures sent out might have deserved it. Yesterday’s rant at the train station sounded like you were overcompensating in the opposite direction. So which is it?”

Ayer dropped his face into his hands and clawed at his forehead. “Oh my god. You don’t know anything, do you?”

Just as well his head was down so he couldn’t see Rai, who’d put on an expression that could have drawn blood. “I know you didn’t do anything to her. You did it all for her. Spike a drink and drag them away; the culture being what it is here, who’s going to stop you? A cool, outgoing guy isn’t going to go after the VP of the Investment club, that’s what everything thinks. The way they think also means, if anyone saw you they probably wouldn’t report you anyway.” The glare lightened. “You used everything about this place against it.”

Ayer’s hands dropped. There was a dreamy look on his face and a queasiness rose in Sao’s throat - Ayer had liked what Rai just said.

“You imitated the general method in all but a couple of ways. One, of course, is that you targeted men. The second obvious point is writing in blood instead of the usual pens.” Rai became thoughtful for a while. Sao knew he was considering complimenting the superior vampire aesthetic of blood versus marker and inwardly begged him not to. Rai was merciful. “But that was a misdirect for the third - the blood that was taken for a purpose other than writing.”

Sao turned to look over his shoulder and, at last, took in the planter. “The school has these flowerpots outside nearly every room,” he said. “We visited two other dorms, and they were snowed over. I noticed when we visited you, yours wasn’t. I couldn’t see what was in it before, but it looks empty now.”

And on Rai’s side of the room, he had pulled the dead lily out of his jacket. Its head hung damp, almost shameful. Sao heard Jin inhale sharply and whisper, “So, that’s…?”

Sao pushed the water-stained window open a crack for air. In Triad’s large office the odor had diffused into the dry musty air, but in the humid dormitory room the pungent smell travelled.

And yet the ones closest to the thing were the least affected. Ayer just stared with bright morose eyes, and Rai, so close he might be inhaling the blood off the petals, picked apart two limp leaves that had stuck together. “You were taking care of one of Triad’s new Highland hospital for him. He must trust you a lot,” Rai said. “But he also cared about the boys you’re targeting. He was the one who put us on your trail. He couldn’t bring himself to give us your name, but he knew. And I’m pretty sure he knew because of this.”

Rai thrust out the flower. Ayer didn’t take it.

“The aurora lily from Highland Arena,” Rai mumbled. He drew the flower back to his chest, mildly offended. “Forensics took a look at the wad dumped outside Rip’s room. Zed’s from C-East, but Ace has some public records in Core so we had something to go off. There was a match to his blood type in the roots. That’s where the blood ended up. You were in Highland to do accounting but you mentioned you did some volunteer work. Basic phlebotomy is something even the hospitals here teach to volunteers early on. I screwed up once or twice when my grandpa signed me up for that: tied the tourniquet too loose, forgot to tell them to apply pressure or how long... left a couple patients with a bruise like the one on Ace’s arm.”

“Ace, huh.” Ayer spat the name.

“For what it’s worth, I bet your technique’s pretty good. Zed went perfectly. But Ace has a condition, he was just going to bruise more easily. And apparently, he’s especially sensitive to blood loss.” Rai stroked the petals again and one of them finally fell off, landing like a lump of ash on one of Ayer’s white shirts. “And the flowers? They were going to be part of your big show. The grand finale. You fell for a tourist trap.”

“That’s kind of insensitive.”

“Triad told us about these lilies. They’re used for proposals - symbols of love, being willing to kill for it, and that kind of stuff.” Rai frowned, unsure of his own words. “It’s true they can grow after being watered with blood. But these things have a bad reaction to bodies full of modern chemicals. It’s only a recent discovery, Triad only found out because of people donating their bodies to the new hospital’s flower field and they were starting to see the effects. If it wasn’t the booze it would have been pills or medicines; Ace and his friends aren’t exactly teetotallers. Not to mention the roofies you introduced. Your flowers were never going to grow.”

Having been delivered that blow, Ayer locked eyes with Rai. His expression was gutted of all defenses and Sao felt sorry for him, for his doomed and dead little garden. But he couldn’t quite see the end yet.

Jin spoke for him. “But why would he do it? He’s the one who helped you look into these pictures in the first place. And why would those -” he shuddered - “flowers be given to Rip? Ayer?”

His bleating made Sao’s head ache. It was the smell, the memory of the pictures. The flower in Rai’s hand, a streak of black against his black jacket. Skogul had called the whole vampire setup a message, a means of revenge. The flower would have been a message too, if it and its brethren had grown into the bursts of color and heat and love as advertised. But since it hadn’t, a different message had been sent.

A crime of passion. Had there even been a crime, if nobody was willing to call it that? In that case, wasn’t it all just directionless passion?

“A statement,” Sao said. “Like all the rest.”

Rai nodded. “A threat to Rip, because the flowers were dying and he and Happy were proving tougher to catch off-guard. And…” Rai’s hard, rust-colored eyes moved off Ayer, over to Jin, who quailed in his voluminous hood, and then to Sao. “It was also aimed at us. We made the mission sound hopeless. Ayer - you were taking a stand for Tinsel and we told you she didn’t want it. You were willing to put yourself on the line, like in the story of the lilies, coming to us because finally, someone might help you take down the four who humiliated her. And we said actually, she might even become a suspect because of what you did. You must have been frustrated.”

“That’s crazy,” Jin said in a thin voice.

“It was,” Ayer agreed.

“But he was here all night,” Jin went on, as if Ayer had challenged him. “Rip’s in some dorm in the north wall, isn’t he? That’s a twenty minute walk, and it was snowing. I’m a light sleeper, I would have noticed…”

“Jin,” Ayer said mildly.

“People were everywhere because of the Valentines bashes going on in almost every building. Wouldn’t they have seen…?”

“Jin,” Ayer barked. He went to the closet and reached in. All three held their breath and Rai traded a frantic stare with Sao and reached for the doorknob. But Ayer emerged from his closet with only a plastic bag, the same size Omy had used for his edibles, only Ayer’s contained what looked like pieces of clear plastic. He threw it on the floor in front of Rai and held up his hands in mock surrender. “Fucking Ace. I can’t believe he was such a giveaway. I didn’t even take that much out of him.”

They all had their back to the walls, stiff as icicles. Jin thawed first, nearly falling forward and scraping his hands through his hair. “Ayer. Man, come on…”

Rai followed, kneeling over the bag.

Sao peered over his shoulder. There were a handful of needles; not cylindrical plungers but delicate, vaguely insectoid bits of plastic tipped with a needle; neatly bound together with thin plastic tubes dangling out like tails. Nested in the tails was a collection of clean blood vials with colorful plastic tops, and below them some more ambiguous, smaller implements.

Ayer only shook his head. He navigated around the bag, around Rai and piles of his own clothing until he was in front of Jin and awkwardly placed a hand on his shoulder to push him back upright. “You’re a good guy. I’m sorry you had to see this.”

Sao cleared his throat. “I still don’t quite understand.”

“Really?” Ayer rolled his eyes. “Your boss explained it all pretty clearly.”

“I mean, what started you on this vengeful business in the first place. I understand this was for Tinsel, but why her? You have no classes or clubs in common. You’ve been out half the year, and she’s not the first to have been attacked since you returned to Murnau. You weren’t on any of the event attendance sheets she gave to us.” And on the next point, he watched Ayer carefully. “She claimed she’d never even heard your name.”

There was a flinch, almost imperceptible. But with the timing, it was enough. With a heavy heart Sao took a seat on the window’s edge.

“I see,” Sao said, gentler now.

The flower was tucked back under Rai’s collar. One hand had his phone out and the other had, for some reason, remained on the doorknob. Rai was sheepish. “I thought I was going to need a less subtle approach. But I don’t want to waste the lady’s time since she’s here.” He opened the door. “You can come in now.”

A lump of winterwear trundled through, dripping with melted snow. Two mittened hands reached up to pull off the massive wool cap, releasing sprigs of reddish hair. A round, freckled face emerged.

“Tinsel,” Sao said. He was surprised how breathless he sounded.

“Hello again.” Her eyes travelled the length of the room, lighting up with fascination. When her gaze slid back down, over Jin’s collapsed form and across the ground, she saw the syringes and took a half-step back.

“Thanks for coming,” Rai said. “This is who I was telling you about.”

Ayer might have been suffering a sudden embolism. His face was crimson and his strong lean legs were kicking against the frame of his bed. He looked at Tinsel, then at his swaying feet. He leaned down and shovelled some shirts under his bed and looked at her again. “Hi.”

Tinsel tilted her head at the sound of his voice. “Is it true? You did those things to Zed and Ace for me?”

“I know you didn’t ask me…” The rest of Ayer’s sentence was too garbled for interpretation. When she approached him, he slid back, but there was only so far he could go. He was cornered, on his own bed. Wildly he motioned at Rai. “The flower. Show her the flower.”

“Uh.” Rai pulled the stem from his jacket. Another petal looked ready to drop. “Sure. It was for you, originally. Or it would have been.”

Tinsel took it without hesitation. “But it doesn’t make sense.” She cornered Ayer again with a simple look. “How do you even know me? I’m sure we’ve never met.”

“No. We haven’t. Not exactly.”

“But how…”

Ayer grasped at his blanket. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

There was the flash of a smile on her face, like light glancing off water. Another split second, but Sao caught the slant, the wryness of it. No, she didn’t believe. But she didn’t say so.

“I just saw you,” Ayer went on. “Up in your house.”

“My house?”

“The Alumni House! I just… passed by, after seeing the picture on Neocam. That wasn’t really the start of it, it doesn’t show you as you really are, like, I didn’t feel this way looking at some dirty picture. It was at the house. You were sitting by the window on that cloud of yellow daffodils-”

“Poppies.”

“Poppies, all by yourself. You were so pretty. I mean, peaceful. And I don’t know, it hurt me that you had been hurt. I could see the bandage on your neck. If I had talked to you then I would have exploded.” Ayer pulled the blanket to his lap. “I started thinking of all the things I could do for you without you knowing. All the ways I knew people showed love when they couldn’t just go up and hold the person they loved in their own arms. I guess I went a bit crazy.”

“No kidding,” muttered Jin.

“The flower,” Ayer said. “In Highland, it’s something warriors gave their girls when they proposed.”

Tinsel was twirling the dead black stalk in her hands and nodding along and Sao was increasingly tempted to stop her. Hadn’t the wretched plant suffered enough? Hadn’t they all had enough? Surely Ayer wasn’t about to drop a marriage proposal in earnest.

He didn’t, thankfully. “I needed to have one ready before I could speak to you. I can’t explain it.”

She pushed the cap back on her head, loosely, and bestowed on him a smile. This time it lingered. “You just did.”

—

Sao had been half sure Ayer would faint after she walked out. Instead, as soon as her footsteps fell out of earshot, Ayer leapt from the bed and pumped his fists, grabbing and throwing and thrusting at the air. He pumped them at Rai, then at Jin, who looked like he wanted to dissolve into his sweatshirt. Ayer did a twirl and beamed at Sao. Since nobody else would, Sao smiled back at him.

Having expelled that ludicrous display, Ayer draped himself back over his bed. “She’s really everything I hoped for. She wasn’t mad at all,”

“So in the end, this was all over a crush,” Rai said drily. “No sense in trying to be objective about love at first sight.”

“Come on. Don’t you have any sense of romance? Did you see her? She took the flower. Even though it was all fucked up.”

“Yeah. You did it.” Rai checked the time. “We’ll be going, I guess.”

“Am I under arrest, or anything?” Ayer couldn’t have sounded more delighted.

“I can’t do that. I can call the real cops, but Zed or Ace need to give actual statements. Them or anyone else you went after. Like Rip, but he’s pretty fixated on the idea that it was Triad who dumped the flowers outside his room to threaten him. He did make a formal report. Security’s going to be taking Triad in for some questioning.”

“Professor Triad?” One could almost hear the crash of Ayer falling back to earth. “Rip, that scrawny bastard.” Ayer went for the closet again and this time yanked out his tent of a coat. “I’ll clear this up in no time.”

Jin was slowly coming back to them too. He stood when he realized Ayer was leaving. “That means you’re going to tell everyone what you did.” When Ayer ignored him he stumbled forward. “All for some girl? You’re not serious.”

“It is pretty stupid, isn’t it? But I’d do it again, if it’s her. This is my mess. You don’t have to worry about the pictures anymore.” Ayer graced them all with the sunniest, silliest smile Sao had seen in a long time. “See you later.”

When Ayer had gone, a rage previously held at bay threw Jin launched back onto his feet. “That idiot.” He shivered and groaned and paced the room, cutting a line through Ayer’s ocean of clothing. “All for some girl he never met. He’d better not fucking show his face here again.” At some point he kicked into the bag of needles, froze, then wound up and kicked it again, hard. The bag bounced off Ayer’s bed with a crack.

As if that was what he’d been waiting for, Rai picked up the bag, collected Sao and they took their leave.