The school on Monday looked exactly the same as it had every other day, but the atmosphere had shifted so completely that my skin recognized it before my mind could name it.

  People moved away from me.

  Not with the casual drift of teenagers giving a new girl space, but with precise, choreographed avoidance, like an invisible perimeter had been drawn around me and everybody had been instructed to treat it like a fence with teeth. And it was wider than ever.

  My gaze scanned the courtyard looking for Ethan, but he was nowhere to be found.

  Nell stood by the doors, arms folded, face neutral. She didn't look triumphant, or relieved. She looked like someone whose body held exhaustion beyond her years.

  When she saw me, her gaze met mine briefly, then flicked past me, scanning, counting, measuring.

  "Morning," I said, and even that felt strange, like speaking too loud in a library.

  Nell nodded once. "Let's walk."

  I fell into step beside her, and the familiar pattern wrapped around my nerves in a way I hated, because it felt like safety and I did not want to need it. As we walked inside, I kept looking around in the quick, corner-of-the-eye way I'd learned since moving here, like I was trying to track danger without admitting to myself that I believed it existed.

  The three girls from the bathroom were nowhere to be seen.

  No Lara with her dilated pupils and her icy desperation, no Tess with her fake friendliness, no Irene with that hungry, slimy smile.

  The emptiness where they should have been wasn't reassuring.

  It meant something had happened.

  I kept my voice low. "Where are they?"

  Nell didn't ask who I meant. "Who?" she said anyway, because she liked control and she liked making me say things.

  "You know who," I muttered. "Lara. Tess. Irene."

  Nell's gaze sharpened, and for a split second her eyes were too flat to belong to a teenager. "Lower your voice."

  "I've already lowered my voice," I hissed, then forced my shoulders down. "And I'm asking a question."

  "They're not here," she said.

  "That's not an answer."

  Nell didn't look at me. "It is the only one you need."

  My fingers clenched around my backpack strap, hard. "Did you do something? Did Ethan?" I wasn't sure which answer I feared more.

  Nell's jaw twitched. "Ethan didn't do anything."

  "But you did."

  She stopped so suddenly I nearly walked into her. Her hand closed around my shoulder, not gentle, not rough, just controlling, and she looked me straight in the eyes.

  "They stepped over a line," she said. "So they got corrected."

  The words were so casual it took me a beat to process them, and when I did, my skin went cold.

  "Corrected," I repeated. "What does that mean?"

  "It is not your concern," Nell said, flat as stone.

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  "It became my concern when they ambushed me," I said, and my voice shook at the edges. "They threatened me, then they disappear, and you expect me to be fine with that?"

  Nell's gaze didn't soften. It wasn't cruel, it was practical. Like she was talking about weather.

  "It has been handled," she said. "That's all you need to know."

  "No," I replied, quieter, because there were ears everywhere. "That's all you're willing to tell me."

  Her mouth twitched, not a smile. She didn't deny it.

  I swallowed, throat tight. "So they're just… gone."

  Nell's eyes flicked once toward the office corridor, quick as a blink. "Of course not. They'll be back. In a couple of weeks, probably." It was supposed to sound assuring, but it didn't ease my nerves.

  We reached Math. The moment I stepped inside, the room did its synchronized adjustment, but now it wasn't the same hungry attention. It was avoidance, quick glances that snapped away the instant they landed.

  It should have brought relief.

  Instead, it made me feel like a leper.

  My gaze searched for Ethan. I found him at his seat, leaning back the way he always did, casual on the surface, except his shoulders were tense, his fingers too still.

  Strangely, he didn't look at me.

  More so, as I walked past, he shut his eyes for a fraction of a second, like he was bracing against something.

  From the doorway, Nell glanced inside once, as if checking for something, then, apparently satisfied, turned around and left.

  Mr. Varga began his tireless droning, deriving equations. The squeak of his marker sounded too loud in the too silent classroom.

  Ethan didn't turn. Not once.

  The bell rang, and he sprung up from his chair. The crowd parted to let him pass, students stumbling over desks just to get out of his way.

  Then he was out. Gone.

  I found Nell at her usual spot by the wall. "What's up with Ethan?" I asked right away. "Did I offend him or something?"

  Nell raised an eyebrow. "Why would you think that?"

  "Because last week all he did was stare at me and hover, and now he wouldn't even acknowledge my existence. Obviously I did something."

  Nell exhaled, annoyed. "It has nothing to do with you personally." She glanced down the hall. "It's him finally getting some sense into that thick as skull of his."

  Insult flashed hot in my chest. "I'm sorry, how is talking to me equal to being out of his mind?"

  Nell's jaw set. She stepped closer, leaning in until her face was inches from mine. The students around us adjusted like we were an island in a river, distance widening without anyone looking like they moved.

  "There are things you don't understand," she said, very low. "Things neither of us are permitted to tell you." Her breath brushed my cheek. "Accept it. Don't challenge it. Don't make this more complicated than it already is."

  My throat tightened. I wanted to ask more, but I knew I wouldn't get answers.

  So I shut my mouth and kept walking.

  I didn't see a trace of Ethan for the rest of the day.

  Only after the last bell, when bodies spilled toward the exit, did I spot him.

  He stood near the trophy case, upright and still, not pretending to be casual. Other students orbited wide, careful not to drift too close. His gaze was on the hall at first, scanning, measuring, then, as if he felt me, his eyes shifted and landed on me with clean precision.

  My breath caught.

  He didn't approach. He didn't move.

  He just watched from a distance, and even from across the hall I could feel the intensity of his focus, the way it reached deep into my space.

  I should have looked away.

  My gut told me to. My brain remembered the bathroom and the word bloodkin and Dad's fear.

  But I didn't.

  At first it was stubbornness.

  Then it became deliberate.

  I kept walking beside Nell, posture normal, face neutral, but my eyes stayed locked on Ethan as if I was daring him to react.

  His expression didn't change.

  But something in him did.

  A microscopic tightening at the corner of his mouth, a subtle flex of his jaw. His pupils widened a fraction, then stilled.

  And then, the tiniest movement.

  A flinch.

  It was so small it could have been nothing, except it happened the moment I made it clear I was not going to look away.

  Something lit in my chest, hot and sudden. It was a burst of triumph that in the space between one heartbeat and the next extinguished into hot, ugly shame.

  Nell's hand shifted at my side. "Don't," she murmured without turning her head.

  "Don't what?" I whispered back, too sharp to be innocent.

  Nell's jaw tightened. "Don't taunt him."

  There was that word again. Taunting.

  The hall carried us closer. The air around Ethan felt denser up close. I angled my head just enough to keep him in view, and when I passed within a few feet of him, I held his eyes and didn't blink.

  His nostrils flared once.

  For one single breathless moment his body angled towards me, like he was going to leap, and then he caught it, stopped, straightened and tore his gaze away.

  But it sent a shiver through my nerves that was half fear and half something I didn't want to name.

  In that moment, I realized something.

  I affected him, not in the harmless way a crush made you nervous, but in a deeper, stranger way, like my presence tangled with him on a level beyond my understanding.

  It should have frightened me. And it did frighten me, in some distant part of my mind that remembered the word claim and Nell's warnings and the way everyone in this town moved like a school of fish.

  But the other part of me, stripped raw by grief and helplessness, latched onto that thin sliver of agency like someone who's been stranded in a desert would latch for a glass of water.

  It wasn't safe.

  Don't bait him, Nell had said, and I had a feeling I wasn't just playing.

  I was pulling on a rope leading into abyss, not knowing what was on the other side. Not knowing if it would pull me back.

  The worst part was, a small part of me liked it. And that terrified me most of all.