The bathroom where Rip was attacked was the large one, just down the hall from his suite. There wasn’t much left to observe besides the dented door. All signs of the previous night’s festivities - including Rip’s blood - had been dutifully mopped up by the cleaners. It in fact was so late in the day that they got to see the stockpile for the incoming night being carted through the door when they entered. A full pallet of beer kegs sat like a receptionist in the lobby.

Omy met them halfway between his room and the big bathroom, again in his slippers and hat. He had just woken up and was still groggy. “I can believe I slept through all my classes and lunch,” he groaned. “What the hell is the time? It’s already dark. I must have been out for, like, 24 hours.”

“Does that not happen often?”

Omy limped through the unlocked door and slouched onto his windowside bench. “No. I’m usually a night owl. And I had plans last night.”

“For the dorm party?”

“Yuck, no. I never go to those things. I was going to see my friends. You know–” He flapped a hand at Rai. “He knows. The guys under the bridge.” Omy searched the windowsill for a bottle of squash he had probably appropriated from Rip’s room and took a long swig. “I feel real bad. Even though I was here all night, I completely missed what happened to Rip.”

“Do you know where Rip is right now?” Rai asked.

Omy gestured at the extra room. “I actually woke up because he ran in slamming the doors and yelling, really freaked out, like an hour ago. He took his blanket and a snack and went in there. He’s sleeping.” Omy took another swig and smacked his lips. “Or that’s what he was like last I checked. What happened today? He looked like he was going to have a heart attack.”

“He might have a concussion. Could you let us in?”

“Shit.” Omy lumbered to his feet and stumbled across the room. “Rip? Hey, Rip? The cops are here.” He moved like he was underwater. Before he reached the knob he bumped hard into the desk. “Ow.”

Rai took the boy’s skinny forearm and dropped him into a chair, and opened the door. He slipped off a glove and squinted into the dark. His hand illuminated a bare bedframe; on it a bottle of cola, a bag of chips and a roll of fabric with a pincushion of hair sticking out of the end. The blanket wriggled and Rip’s murky, mauve colored eyes appeared over the edge of the blanket, blinking rapidly. “Huh?”

“Get up, man, you’re concussed,” Omy wailed.

“Let him rest for now,” Rai said. “Just leave the door open.”

“Huh,” Rip mumbled again, and his eyes closed.

The whole sequence had made Sao tense. “If Rip just came in an hour ago, that means he did go to class, or somewhere else on campus, after we saw him this morning. He seemed fairly calm then, didn’t he? Did something happen between then and now?”

“I don’t know,” Omy muttered. “I slept through the whole day until he came blasting in.”

“Happy might know.” Rai turned to Omy, who could not stop yawning. “Still tired? What time did you go to sleep last night?”

“Way too early. I must have fallen off around seven. It was before any of that night’s drinking party started. I’m surprised that it didn't wake me up.”

A mass of unease was forming in the pit of Rai’s stomach. “Is there any chance Rip came back in the night without you knowing?”

“I was completely out of it, so he probably did. He’s been coming back early from those drinking games because he’s scared of, uh, I guess he was scared of Professor Triad? Or Ayer? Though I guess he doesn’t have to be scared of either of them anymore.” Omy’s hazy brown eyes were distant. “But he was right to be scared of someone, since that someone got him in the end.”

Rai glanced at the entryway. “I noticed the door wasn’t locked.”

“It never is,” Omy admitted. “We just leave it like that. I always forget my keys.”

“You leave it open even though you have all this stuff lying around?” Rai patted a bag of multicolored gummies lying out on the desk.

“I can afford more. So if anyone wants some, they can have it. Do you want another one?” Omy yawned again. “If you’re worried about Rip’s friends, they never come in here. They hate the smell and the guy with the graying hair - Ace? He thinks I’m a dangerous crackhead. A real prude.” Omy chuckled. “Rip says that’s why he rooms with me, so he can get away from them and get some rest.”

That touching testimony only made Rai antsy. He stomped over to Rip’s room on the left, turned on the lights, and made a face. Bags of chips and cookies were piled as tall as the bed, and under the desk was a miniature fridge. The bookshelf had just a handful of books sandwiched between bottles of soft drinks; orange on the bottom shelf, green on the second, and the top shelf had no books at all, only bottles of dark cola. In the absence of its owner, the room was just a snack pantry. No – not just that. In the absence of its owner…

“A lot of guys never lock their rooms,” Omy was protesting. “The only people who can scan into the dorms are students, anyway.”

Rai opened the closet and was surprised to find nothing but clothing and extra bedding. He pushed aside the coats and shirts, and the hanging cubicles of shoes. But he didn’t have to push back much.

Sao had entered behind him and had likely intuited what Rai was up to the moment he saw the place - the deep closet. “Omy, do you two usually drink from the fridge first?”

“Mm. I always like them cold, but Rip says after a lot of alcohol he prefers his sugary stuff warm. I actually saw him microwave a cup of cola once…”

There was the puff of the fridge being opened. “Rai, you need to have a look,” Sao muttered.

And unless Rip had a lot of extremely chunky dandruff, Rai had found what he was looking for too. He scraped his glove against the floor of the closet and pulled the dust he’d found out into the light. In front of the fridge, Sao was holding a bottle up, inspecting some sediment floating at the bottom.

“Someone was in the room,” Rai grunted. “The door was unlocked and someone came in and drugged the drinks.” He held up the powder on his glove, picking out a little half moon of a pill wedged into the fold of his palm. “The culprit didn’t have to be at the party. Rip wasn’t drugged there. He came back early, had some soda, and probably went to the bathroom. The person hidden in the closet followed him out - and that was when it happened.”

Sao handed him the bottle. Rai looked at the ugly orange liquid for a second and cursed. “Omy.” He darted out of Rip’s room, and heard the crackling stack of chips flop over behind him. Omy was slumped facedown on the desk. Rai shook him by his shoulders and wrenched his bottle away. “You were drugged, Omy. Someone got to Rip’s stash. You were drugged last night and you’ve been drugging yourself since you woke up.” He shook the bottle.

Omy must have had experience forcing himself awake, because his eyes snapped open, the clarity returning almost instantly. “Then what about Rip’s drink–”

Rai swore again and hurtled into Rip’s room. With an armful of soda bottles he made the call for an ambulance, which pulled up just as the first partygoers were arriving for the final pre-Valentines night festivities.

—

The unease Rai had picked up in the dorm room just couldn’t be shaken off.

Rip was safe, or as safe as he could be, in the nearby hospital. He had even managed to open his eyes right before he was loaded into the ambulance, and cracked open his mouth to croak that he didn’t need an ambulance. Rai chased Sao into the back of that exact ambulance and they rode with him, Rai showering him with questions, but Rip lost consciousness as soon as the door closed.

They waited a while in a hospital lobby that was probably decorated by the same corporate hand that handled the police station. Rai had experience killing time at hospitals. He broke up periods of waiting with visits to the receptionist to check on Rip’s progress, visits to the vending machine that had nothing good in it, and messaging Omy, who replied saying that he was feeling better, and Happy, who did not reply at all.

Sao managed to spend the whole two hours in one chair. Napping, of course.

Eventually, a security guard kicked them out. A nurse came to tell them that their friend was resting comfortably and they would be contacted if Rip woke up, but Rai was pretty sure he only said that to make him leave.

Rai woke Sao up and they took a bus back to the campus.

The quaint little street of shops and eateries leading to the school gate was lit up like a festival. Every window seemed full of roses and string lights and paper hearts on streamers, with a few demonic cutout bats to go along with them. He didn’t want to think that those beady eyes and blood-tipped fangs were putting him off, but they seemed in such poor taste considering all that had happened in the lead-up to the school’s beloved Valentine’s Day. Then again, expecting the whole town to cut vampires from their branding at this point was probably unrealistic.

The amount of couples agitated him too. He didn’t care to dive into that part of his psyche.

Rai couldn’t think of anywhere else to eat, so he dragged Sao to the Atrium. He could tell Sao was too tired to banter about alternatives. Saki actually raised her head to look at them when they came through the door (and did not immediately drop it in obvious disgust), and within minutes Vee managed to snag them a table in the packed dining section. Rai had to wonder if the two events were related.

“Saki’s warming up to us,” he said.

Sao mustered a smile. “It’s all you.”

For some reason, that amplified the tension in his gut. Rai picked up the menu. “We don’t need to share this time. I’m feeling like a salad. Dinner is on me tonight, so nothing too crazy, but if you want a steak...”

Vee informed them sadly they were out of steaks. They ordered, and opted to look out the window rather than talk. It was a clear, starless night. The snow had stopped, which was a shame.

In the reflection of the window, Rai saw Sao’s eyes close and his head slowly droop.

“Look,” Rai said, “go to Marsh’s place and get some rest after this. I have a feeling Rip will keep us waiting, probably until tomorrow.”

“So we may be here for the big brunch after all.” Sao spoke with his eyes closed, a hand propping up his chin. He always looked bizarrely dignified when he did that; no mashing up his face or jutting out his jaw like a caveman. He had a precise position that didn’t mess with his makeup, Rai supposed.

“Think you’ll be going?”

“I might drop by, just to commemorate the occasion. And Tinsel invited us.” Sao’s eyes opened, and he studied Rai as if he were a mildly interesting bug. “It’s a little poignant, don't you think, how this town has managed to keep hold of us long enough that we’d see the fateful day.”

That did nothing to settle Rai’s nerves. “Well, if it will satisfy some kind of occult ritual that will let us leave, I should find some time to pay my respects too.”

Their two salads arrived, accompanied by their usual coffee and tea. Rai’s side of the table was polished off in under fifteen minutes. He found the lettuce with its heavy garnish of garlic and vinegar settled his stomach a little, and he whipped out his phone to file some progress reports while Sao sleepily worked through his bowl. Typing out what they’d learned, what they’d found in the closet and the confiscated drinks, Rai was unsatisfied, but he no longer felt immobilized. Because they weren’t ending the day empty handed. They had a witness lined up for tomorrow, and Rai was prepared to give Rip a good chewing. And an invader lurking in a closet? That was an criminal straight out of a movie. Would Rip appreciate that? Probably not.

Rai was starting to feel like himself again when out of nowhere, Murnau threw him another curveball.

“We’re closing early,” Vee told them, wringing her thin dry hands. “I’m really sorry but all diners have to be out by ten. The boss needs the kitchen to prepare some stuff for the Valentines barbecue brunch tomorrow.”

“The one everyone’s looking forward to at the school? You guys are catering?” Rai asked.

“I guess so. It was a last minute decision. The ovens at the Alumni House are acting up, or something.”

Sao still had the energy to pull a smile for her. “We may be attending, although not for the whole event. Perhaps we’ll see you there?”

She blushed. “If they ask me to help out. I might go with a friend, even if not…”

“May our paths cross again, then.”

She squeezed the edge of her apron and took a breath. “You have almost half an hour. Take your time.” The oxymoron slowly sank in and she sprinted away to break the news to the next table.

The effort of last minute flirtation almost had Sao collapsing under the table. Rai flagged down another waiter and paid the bill. As they left, he ran his eyes over the bar and saw the stool at the end vacant. Of course Saki would be the first to clock out.

“Do you want to take a taxi?” Rai asked when they were on the sidewalk, Sao teetering dangerously close to the edge.

“No. It’s not a long way.” Sao rubbed his eyes and steadied himself. “It’s warm tonight, too. No more ice.”

“That’s true.” Rai thought of the story Ayer had told them, about the Murnau cold snaps that instantly transformed people on the street to icicles. He tried not to think much more about Ayer for the time being. But the good weather could be an omen…

“What’s on your mind?”

“What I’m going to be doing tonight.”

Sao nodded slowly. “Why don’t you come by Marsh’s house to rest an hour or two before you set out? You haven’t been by yet.”

Rai forced a laugh. He sounded like a coughing dog. “You can’t extend that kind of offer if it’s not your house. I’ll ask him to give me a tour the next time I see him. Anyway, like you said, it’s a nice night. I should use the opportunity to check in at many parties as I can, in case another vampire is thinking of striking.”

That sounded cool, even roguish. It sounded so good that Sao threw a longing look at the campus, the night above the walls glowing from the light of the Row. “I haven’t been to any of them yet.”

“Not your thing,” Rai assured him. “A lot of boozy guys taking off their shirts and yelling and jostling each other.”

“You’re probably right. I just feel a bit ridiculous, heading off to bed while you’re still working into the night. Even Skogul braved one of them…”

“If we start comparing ourselves to Skogul, we’ll be in some real trouble.” Rai gave Sao’s arm a little pull to steer him away from temptation - away from the campus. “You’d better get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was only after he was a block away that he realized he had done something he had always managed to warn himself never to do. He looked furiously at the offending hand in its grimy leather glove, the light around the wrist flickering, mockingly, like it had gotten away with something entirely of its own volition.

He wadded the hand into a fist. Sao didn’t care if it was in a glove, right? He couldn’t recall the face Sao had made when it happened.

Before he could chicken out, he turned to ask - no, apologize. But Sao was already stepping off the pavement and into a taxi, and then he was gone.

—

It was no big deal. It was actually a good sign that Sao hadn’t shown any kind of reaction. Maybe he had been too exhausted to notice. Rai felt like he was developing a cramp. And he had the whole night left to fester with it.

The dorm and club parties were in full swing. They were potent enough distractions, and for a while he kept himself busy looking for Happy and his Investment Club posse. He was directed to Ace’s dorm on the eastern side of the campus, where he found a handful of faces he vaguely recognized from the club pamphlet, but no Happy.

“Ace just left,” one boy told him. “Happy’s gone somewhere else tonight on account of his black eye. Heard he got it in a fight with Ayer.”

He had heard right, but Rai just frowned. “Is that really the reason? Why doesn’t he just cover it up?”

“With what, an eyepatch?”

“Makeup.” Rai could immediately tell he had miscalculated. “Or something.”

The loungers around him devolved into howls of laughter. Rai thought he heard someone hoot so hard they started vomiting.

“Makeup? If Ace heard he was plastering on lipstick and eyeliner, man, Happy would never hear the end of it. Probably take his car to the highway and drive right into oncoming traffic.”

The club members were so entertained by Rai they invited him to play beer pong, using the battered lounge piano as a somewhat uneven stage. After about four rounds where no balls landed in any cups, Rai excused himself. He was given a cold bottle of ale for his time.

He snapped the cap off and drank it while walking. He came up the stairs that took him back to the central field, and he watched clusters of students chase each other around, smack shoulders, grab asses, and pose for pictures with the lighted trees of the Row. He found a fancy Murnau light post to lean against and tried not to think about Ayer, or Sao, or Rip, or frozen corpses or fake fangs or dead flowers.

The dread still clung to him. A creeper in a closet. He wished he could get at least a little drunk.

The library was still open, and a few lights were on in the clock tower. Deans still at work; maybe Marsh was in. The monochrome stronghold of offices, Eggers Hall, only had one light on - a window on the ground floor. Almost five minutes after he spotted it, the window went dark. He saw one of the heavy wooden doors pull open and sprinted over to it. The man exiting had coveralls under his puffed jacket. The janitor.

“Is Professor Triad still in?”

The janitor shrugged but held the door open for him.

The main lights were out and the stone foyer looked downright haunted. The beams of the roof rose into total darkness, and the only light came from the twilight seeping in from outside. That, and the vending machine in the empty lounge, hawking Real Fruit Flavors.

The second floor was deserted. All the doors were closed, and there was no light to catch through the cracks. Of course, Triad’s door looked that way even when he was in.

But there were no footsteps beside his own. Rai knocked anyway, and there was no movement. He leaned back against the windowsill, the one Triad had hurled him into, and drank some of the bitter ale. He should have been relieved - that he wouldn’t be ending the night by facing off against a seven-foot phantom, alone in a dark building.

But that wasn’t why he wanted to be relieved. He saw again Triad’s flailing arms, shaking mouth, the syringe of morphine. After being thrown out of the office and landing in his Snow slushie, Rai had gotten a look at the man’s face, and what he saw wasn’t rage. Those bloodshot eyes had been flush with confusion. He was disoriented. He was sick, and he knew it.

As if it would complete some ritual, Rai placed his bottle on the windowsill and knocked again, hard. “Professor! It’s Rai.” He raised his hand one more time, thought he heard a rustle and almost leapt out of his skin. He braced for the door to be thrown open — but the big wooden slab didn’t budge. Above him, the hanging light fixture on its chain creaked, rocking from the impact of his knocking.

Rai waited for it to stop swinging, and left.

Triad was gone for the day. Sometimes things were that simple.

Why did that conclusion just make him more uneasy?

—

The theater by the police station was running a bunch of classics for the season. The old-fashioned marquee over the entrance was advertising two late night showings; a sappy drama Rai had seen once called In the Clouds, and the more amusingly named Nuts: A Love Story.

He made the mistake of buying a ticket for Nuts, which turned out to be about the fraught romance between a nut farmer and a nut exporter. The industry research was impeccable, the sets authentic, and the story was duller than the dirt the total nuts spawned out of. The film managed to achieve a rare feat, in that it almost got him to drift off.

The rest of the audience was almost exclusively couples. Some of them took advantage of the slower moments to enjoy each other's company. And there were plenty of slow moments.

Rai wasn’t sure what he was feeling anymore when he walked out of the theater, twenty minutes before the movie ended. All of the baggage he had carried into the theater seemed more important than ever, yet at the same time completely irrelevant. He craved peanuts, but concessions were closed.

His phone had one missed call. Rai was pretty good at keeping his phone stowed away during movies, even ones like Nuts. He dialled back and listened. Then he sped out of the theater and into the police station, tapping out a message to Sao as he ran.

—

“Rip said that Triad came up to him after class and assaulted him,” Rai told the sergeant manning the otherwise barren station. “He cornered Rip outside the Languages building at noon, yelled at him and threw him at a wall.”

To the officer’s credit, he was trying to take Rai seriously. “That’s the kid who was taken to hospital. But I thought he was—”

“That was because he was drugged. The drugging was a separate event.”

The officer leafed through some papers. At first Rai thought he was trying to look busy, but he eventually pulled up an incident sheet. “The kid reported that Professor Triad was stalking him and might have been trying to threaten him with dead animal parts...”

“That was yesterday. The person who put bloody plants outside Rip’s room was Ayer, the guy who you have in holding now. He was also responsible for drugging and attacking two other boys. You know, the pictures.”

“Pictures.”

“The ones he admitted to, on Neocam?” Rai searched the man’s calm blotchy face for facetiousness. “Rip was attacked in a similar way last night. We suspect someone took over Ayer’s hit list, either for the same reasons as him, or to try throwing doubt over his guilt.” Rai tapped the sheet in the officer’s hands. “Triad actually put us on Ayer’s trail. But he’s also close to Ayer, his mentor in a way, and might also want to make him look innocent…”

Something wasn’t adding up and the sergeant’s expression told him he should stop while he was ahead.

“Have you been drinking?” the sergeant asked. He was sipping something himself, something dark and brownish that didn’t smell like booze or coffee. Cranberry juice?

“Yeah, but I can still tell something’s fishy. What’s your name?”

The sergeant said something like Lou.

“Alright, Lou. We need to talk to Ayer.” Referring to a ‘we’ seemed misplaced without Sao around. “He’s still here, right?”

“Yes. I’ll wake him up, if you’re okay with that.”

Rai hadn’t considered that Ayer might be asleep. He was just going to have to wake up. Shortly after the officer disappeared into the hallway behind the desk, the glass doors at the entrance slid open and he heard Sao’s voice. He was muttering in a low almost-whisper, gentle, comforting someone. The assurance wasn't for Rai.

Rai turned and saw his assistant accompanied by two familiar faces.

—

“What’s going on, Jin?” Rai closed the door behind them.

Jin was shellshocked. He practically fell into the chair offered to him and put his head in his hands, the black hood of his sweatshirt flushing forward over his shoulders. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

Rai sat across from him. “Is this about Rip?”

Jin was quiet for a moment. “I guess that’s how it started. But not really. What happened was… I had a fight with Professor Triad. You know - Ayer’s professor. But he was just acting really strange. And then he grabbed me and started just screaming and I — I don’t know. I took something and stabbed him.” Jin’s forehead dropped to the table. “I stabbed him and he wasn’t moving anymore so I ran.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. He asked to meet at nine in his office, so around then. It went by so fast, but… I don’t know.”

Rai wished Jin would raise his head. He had no clue what kind of expression was being pressed into the table. “Back up. You were the one who attacked Rip?”

A pause, but Jin couldn’t keep it contained. “Yeah. Yes. I hid in his room and spiked the drinks in there. Then I got him in the bathroom, but I guess he didn’t drink enough and I’m shit with the needles compared to…” He choked faintly. “There was so much blood.”

“Okay, but why did you do it?”

Another pause. “I don’t know. It just felt like someone had to finish the job. But it shouldn’t have been me. I fucked all up. And then Triad… there was so much blood…”

—

Rai traded Jin out for Tinsel, their second visitor, who had been waiting with Sao in the lobby. She was encased in the same hat and the same triple-wound scarf, but her coat was a different one. It was slimmer, sportier, with a lot of zippers and adjustable ties, and covered with bright nylon color blocks like an abstract painting.

She took the seat across from him and Rai wondered if it was actually somebody else in disguise. The hat was pulled back just enough to see the same green eyes, a few freckles, the sidelocks of red hair. But there was something different about her.

“Tinsel? Why are you here?”

In her old wool monstrosity she could keep her hands hidden, but the ski jacket’s wrists were cinched. Her hands clasped each other but were otherwise still. “I needed to talk to you.”

Rai wasn’t sure what to do with his own hands. “Why’s that?”

“Because I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. I’ve done something bad, really bad. I don’t know why I thought I could get away with it…”

“With what?”

“What I did to Rip. I hid in his closet and drugged him and then I finally gave him what he deserved in that bathroom. I messed up, but… you know that, I guess. It was so, so damn stupid of me to even try.” The words seemed to burst out. And she didn’t break eye contact. That should have told him right away to buckle up; the ride was about to flip. “Still, I don’t regret what I did to Rip. But I had to come to you because…”

Rai found any words he had clogged in his throat.

“I think I might have killed Professor Triad.”

Her voice was low, yet harder than he’d ever heard it. The bubble of dread that had been ballooning over him all night finally caved in.