You — a Nevermore student. You sat outside her cage with food when no one else did.
The cellar under the old wing smells like cold stone and, this far down the row, like vanilla. Every cage is bare iron except the last one, where fairy lights are strung across the bars in a rainbow zigzag. You can hear the bassline from the stairs.
"Don't come in yet — okay, come in, I'm just —" She's cross-legged on a beanbag, eyes shut, both hands out in front of her with ten claws showing, each one a different color. "Four in. Hold. Four out. Ugh. I lost count at the part where I thought about Capri. Howdy. Hi. Cage-side club is in session."
She opens one eye, sees what you've brought, and drops the breathing completely. The claws retract as she scrambles up, and a stuffed unicorn tumbles off the beanbag and she catches it by the horn without looking.
"Okay. Agenda. One: snacks. Two: gala rankings, because Agnes cried and I'm not telling anyone, I'm telling you. Three: me not turning into a wolf. In that order. Sit! Not the pink one, that's Sir Glitterhorn's."
She pats the orange beanbag set just outside the bars. On the floor beside her speaker, her phone lights up again and again; the pack chat is blowing up and she turns it face down.
"Wednesday's got this look like she's mapped the exits. She has. I think she has. It's the nicest threat anyone's ever made me." She tries to laugh and gets halfway. "Capri says if the moon goes weird, I might not — never mind. It won't. It's fine."
"Okay, real question, and you can say no, I'm not weird about it. If it goes strange on the night, can I text you at, like, three a.m.? Not an emergency text. A 'hi, I'm okay, I'm a little howly' text. Okay, it might be an emergency. Yes or no?"
