It was 3 a.m. when Emily Carter was woken by her boyfriend's ringtone. It was Spring Break, so they could have been on vacation somewhere. But given the situations they were monitoring and their positions as Student Council President and Vice President, they'd both made excuses to stay on campus.
Dashiell answered the phone grumpily, not bothering to check who it was first. "Do you have any idea what time it is? What's so important that it couldn't wait until morning?"
Whatever the voice on the other end said made him sit up fully in bed. Emily, roused by the sudden movement beside her, sat up as well, blinking against the dark.
"Are you sure?" Dash said.
Silence while the other line answered.
"Fuck." He rubbed a hand over his face. A longer silence followed. Then: "Fine. I'll see if I can dig up any other leads on our end."
He hung up.
"What's wrong?" Emily asked immediately.
Dash sighed, setting the phone down on the nightstand with more force than necessary. "Our only known lead died two nights ago. Cardiac arrest. He went home for Spring Break and probably got hit with something he couldn't—or wouldn't—complete." He shook his head. "Either way, we've hit a dead end before anyone even managed to talk to him properly."
Silence settled between them as that sank in.
"So," Emily said quietly, "Magnus Chane is our only known lead left."
"Assuming he's still alive," Dash said.
Emily laughed, short and without much humor. "Oh, he's alive. He's with Alex Reyes. They're vacationing and partying with her and Sofia Ramirez's friends at Ramirez's private beach house."
Dash blinked at her. "How do you know that?"
"How else? Social media. They're party girls—there's always going to be pictures." She reached for her own phone on the nightstand and scrolled, tilting the screen toward him. "Also, apparently Chane and a few other guys, probably boyfriends of Alex's friends, got themselves involved in local news stopping an armed robbery at a grocery store."
Dash absorbed that for a moment. "Good to know." He exhaled slowly. "I guess we should make plans to escalate our investigation."
"What do you have in mind?"
"Something technically illegal, and abusive of our powers and positions."
"But desperate times call for desperate measures?"
"Something like that." He nodded, then glanced at the clock on the nightstand and grimaced. "But that's a problem for after we wake up. Right now we should try to get some rest."
"We should," Emily agreed. Her hand, however, trailed deliberately up his thigh underneath the sheets. "But I mean, we're already up."
He looked at her.
"Round two?" she said.
He stared at her flatly. She held his gaze without blinking.
"What?" she said. "It's Spring Break. And we're stuck on campus because of duties. If I can't party, at least let me have this."
"You insisted on staying when I asked if you wanted to take a vacation," Dash pointed out. "Why are you trying to guilt-trip me now?"
She pouted, entirely unashamed of the tactic.
He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, and leaned in to kiss her.
"Fine," he murmured against her mouth. "You win."
***
Tuesday morning began, as usual, with Magnus's suffering (courtesy of Jordan's torture sheet) while his girlfriend slept soundly with a contented smile on her face. The previous night had ended with Alex convincing him into another night of passion, citing his need to level up quickly and the fact that sex had been the one sure way to gain experience with his System. He couldn't refute her, since she was correct on all counts, so he gave in. This had led to another round of couples' competition, which Alex commented was "the beach house's tradition" and "a team building exercise" at this point already.
Magnus thought, for one long moment, whether he should repeat what she'd said to everyone at breakfast. On one hand, it would definitely get Alex flustered and in trouble with everyone, which was a sight to behold. On the other hand, he was fairly sure doing that would land him in the doghouse.
He decided against it, on balance, though he filed the idea away for future leverage.
By the time he finished his workout and came back upstairs to shower, Alex was awake, sitting up in bed with her hair a mess and an expression that suggested she was still deciding whether the morning was worth fully committing to yet.
"Morning," he said.
"Mm." She reached for him as he passed the bed, catching his wrist and pulling him down for a slow, unhurried kiss that had nothing urgent about it — just the quiet kind two people did because they could, because there was time, because nothing was on fire yet.
"You're gross," she murmured against his mouth. "You need a shower."
"You started it."
"I regret nothing." She let him go, flopping back against the pillow with a contented sigh. "Five more minutes."
"You know, you wouldn't be this tired if you'd not insisted on another round last night." He paused. "Also, if you go down there looking like that, Jordan's gonna tease us both about it every chance she gets."
"Worth it. And Jordan's not even here."
"You think she doesn't already have eyes and ears here?"
Alex groaned into the pillow, which he took as acceptance of reality, and he headed for the shower while she attempted, unsuccessfully, to fall back asleep for the five minutes she'd requested.
***
Breakfast had settled into its established rhythm by the time they came down: plates being passed and coffee being fought over. The singles still directed death glares toward the couples' end of the table, but the complaints had mostly worn down into background noise, a formality observed more out of habit than genuine outrage at this point.
"I want it on record," Rachel said, buttering toast with brisk efficiency, "that Aaron and I are simply taking full advantage of Spring Break before med school swallows us whole again. This has nothing to do with anyone else in this house. We'd be doing this regardless."
"Regardless," Aaron confirmed. "Entirely independent variable. Not a competition."
"That's exactly what the losers would say," Camila said, not looking up from her plate.
"Exactly!" Ethan agreed. "Cam and I definitely won. Decisively. Last night was a clean victory."
"There's no scoreboard, Ethan."
"There's an unofficial scoreboard. In here." He tapped his own temple. "And perhaps in here as well." He tapped his left chest.
Maya, slumped over her plate with the specific grumpiness of someone still serving out a sentence, made a noise of general disagreement. "That's only because Chloe and I weren't competing."
"You've got no one to blame but yourself," Chloe said serenely, not looking up from her cereal.
"You banned me for a week over one comment."
"You called me a child."
"I called you younger, there's a difference—"
"You said it counted the same as a child in that context. Your words, not mine."
Maya opened her mouth. Closed it. She had, in fact, said exactly that, and there was no version of this argument where she could win.
"Six more days," Chloe added pleasantly, and returned to her cereal with the satisfaction of someone who had made her point and intended to enjoy the silence that followed.
Miguel, without contributing to any of it, got up and headed toward the kitchen to get more food. Carmen watched him go with the quiet, settled contentment of someone who had absolutely benefited from this competition but didn't care about the drama that came along with it.
"Anyway," Sofia said, cutting through the noise before Maya could mount a proper defense, "does anyone actually have plans today, or are we doing the thing where we accidentally spend twelve hours testing Magnus's powers again?"
The table went briefly quiet, several people visibly considering this.
"I'll have notes prepared either way," Aaron admitted.
"Of course you do," Rachel said, and kissed his cheek.
***
Miles away, back on campus, Dash and Emily let themselves into Magnus Chane's dorm room around midday, using a key they'd "borrowed" from campus security earlier that morning — a phrase Emily had used with the specific emphasis of someone who understood exactly how thin the justification was and had decided not to think about it further.
"We don't have much time," Dash said, easing the door shut behind them. "We need to get this back before they realize it's even gone."
Sunlight filtered through the blinds, cutting the room into pale stripes across the floor. The space was quiet, undisturbed in the particular way a dorm room got when its occupant had been elsewhere for over a week — the kind of stillness that had nothing to do with secrecy and everything to do with an empty room just being an empty room, made heavier by the fact that half of the building was empty too. Spring Break had emptied out the halls along with everything else.
Emily moved through it slowly, taking it in.
"Huh," she said.
"What?"
"This isn't what I expected. From a guy who apparently sleeps with a different girl every week."
Dash huffed a quiet laugh, glancing around from where he stood by the desk. "What were you expecting?"
"I don't know. Something that says 'Casanova.' Framed photos. Cologne collection. A certain… energy."
"You've already met him."
"And he seemed like more than meets the eye."
"Maybe the same could be said about his room."
Emily glanced around again in the full light: the modest desk, the neatly made bed, a stack of textbooks that had clearly been used rather than displayed, a single photo taped to the wall that looked like it was of his mother, and a framed photo of him and Alex on his desk with Magnus looking like he wasn't sure why Alex was kissing him. Nothing performative about any of it. Nothing that suggested the reputation currently circulating through half the campus forum threads.
"Or," she said slowly, "maybe he's not our guy."
"The patterns we've observed all point to him."
"Coincidence?"
"Not a zero percent chance," Dash said, crouching by the outlet near the desk to plant the small listening device they'd brought. "But unlikely."
He worked quickly, fitting the bug into a spot that wouldn't draw a second glance, testing the angle twice before he was satisfied. Sunlight caught the edge of the device for a second before he tucked it flush against the wall. Emily kept watch at the door, phone in hand, glancing down the empty hallway where only occasionally someone would pass by, entirely oblivious. Outside of a handful of international students who had nowhere better to be, the building was nearly deserted. Even the RAs had mostly cleared out.
"Done," Dash said finally, standing and brushing off his knees.
They left the way they'd come — quiet, efficient, and hurriedly unhurried, since there was no one around to hurry for, though they still had to return the key to campus security ASAP — the door clicking shut softly behind them. The walk back across the mostly deserted campus was quick, footsteps echoing slightly against pathways that would normally be full. Neither of them said much. There wasn't much left to say that hadn't already been said, and what they'd just done sat heavier than either of them wanted to examine too closely — technically illegal, technically an abuse of the positions they'd been trusted with, yet also technically the only lead they had left.