St. Lorraine Academy - Chemistry Lab
Lynette's pencil hovered over the titration calculations, her notebook margin filled with unconscious sketches of a wolf-headed knight. Across the lab bench, Caelum Voss adjusted his safety goggles with hands that never quite lost their predatory stillness.
"You missed the stoichiometric ratio." His voice was clinical, but the mercury column in the barometer behind him quivered. "Third step requires multiplying by Avogadro's constant, not Planck's."
She slammed her notebook shut. "Why do you care? You've been 'helpfully' pointing out my mistakes since September."
The fluorescent lights flickered. Caelum's thumb brushed her miscalculation - a touch that left frost patterns on the paper. "Because Isolde's equations hide in human ignorance." He slid over a graph showing her errors forming the Mayan glyph for sacrifice.
Football Field - Sunset
The black dog growled low in its throat as Amberleigh approached Lynette's solitary bench. "Still playing the misunderstood loner?" Her new jade pendant glowed like Isolde's eyes. "Cute how you think Voss is teaching you chemistry instead of brewing your death potion."
Lynette's palms burned where Caelum's frost-touch lingered. "At least he doesn't lick the principal's boots like your cult club."
Amberleigh's laugh crackled with static. "Oh, Frostbite," she whispered, breath smelling of burnt copper, "he's not grading your papers - he's measuring how much of Elspeth's soul still fits in your..."
A football spiraled into Amberleigh's face. The dog intercepted it mid-air, teeth sinking into synthetic leather with a vengeance that shook its entire body.
Faculty Lounge - Midnight
Caelum's silver flask clinked against Lynette's stolen keycard. "You shouldn't be here." Moonlight through Venetian blinds striped his face like prison bars.
"Then why leave your lesson plans open to Aztec bloodletting rituals?" She brandished a photocopy showing his margin notes in 16th-century Spanish. "La quinta centuria demanda un corazón todavía palpitante - 'The fifth century demands a still-beating heart.'"
His chair screeched as he stood. For three pulsebeats they shared breath fogged with peppermint and iron.
"Survival requires calculus." His cufflink snagged her sweater thread, unraveling a strand that glowed like spider-silk. "Every equation you solve..."
"...consumes part of me?" Lynette's voice broke traitorously. "I'm not your sacrificial variable!"
The dog's sudden howl shattered the tension. Through the window, the football field churned with spectral conquistadors dragging chains of glowing algebra.