"Ughhhhhh." He sighs. "...there won't be a lot of people in the library. Since they'll be in class. Let's just, uh, keep hunting until the bell and then I," and this becomes a mumble again, "pinky promise I'll talk to people."

"... I'll accept that. For now. But next time this happens you're getting immediately marched to the library. Or possibly the workshop, if it's another obvious artifice project."

"Yes, ma'am, it won't happen again, ma'am."

"Ahuh. I'll believe it when I see it. Or when I don't, I suppose."

And so they can continue their merry mal murder spree! If he's actually going to be taking a cut of the spoils for the sake of paying for homework, then she'll need to be the one to work out who gets what. There's a high level of variance, and he sure doesn't know what is or isn't valuable. The short answer is that while the bits of maleficaria are powerful, all of them are finicky, opinionated, malevolent, and difficult to work with. Still, some things are more friendly than others. Well, less angry and filled with murderous rage, really, nothing is actively friendly. The less murderous bits are the more valuable ones. Since Scorpius does most of the direct killing, and will also need to account for people accepting garbage payment from him against their better judgement, he gets the really nice stuff. She's used to sorting through weird and eclectic junk anyway. Maybe it'll even get his enclave off her back about how she's evil and using him or whatever. Or maybe they've got confirmation bias and will think she's bewitched him no matter what she does. One of those.

Either way, his spoils for the day are: one core from the steambeast they fought, this eye from the crystal gazer, and several stingers acquired from larger than usual crawlers.

And when it's lunch time they can go leave Yvette's haul in her bedroom and then go to the cafeteria, where Scorpius will (sigh) sit with New York today.

Poor man. Suffering so.

The rest of her day continues normally, with friendlier-than-normal peers and less of a scramble to find safety in numbers than her typical average. It's nice, even if she's still not used to it. She has more time to do other things. That's pretty nice.

About an hour before curfew, there is a knock on Alexei's door.

Alexei is nothing if not a quick learner, and the most successful kinds of learners in this school are ones who learn from others' mistakes, so he leaves rather a lot of space between himself and then door when he opens it.

Then he blinks in confusion. "Yes?"

"I come bearing gifts!" she says, brightly.

The gifts: mal bits.

He looks down at them then back up at her, frowning. "I will need to evaluate them later," he says, somewhat tonelessly. Because that was a lot of mal bits and where did she even get them?

It didn't take a genius to figure out the answer to that.

"You don't need to evaluate them ever if you don't want to, actually. You are entirely free to throw them to the void if you'd rather. I did say gifts, didn't I?"

Huuh??

She steps in to gently set the collection of stuff on his table, then steps back, smiling.

“Well! I do believe that concludes our business for tonight. Sleep well, don’t let the mals bite.”

And with that, she’s off.

wha

This is a lot of bits of maleficaria. Or, well, not objectively, it's not like it's a cartload of them, but given how mals are trying to kill you all the time, often in gruesome and sometimes explosive ways, collecting mal pieces is hard. You don't fight Sirenspiders as big as the ones that attacked them in the workshop, you run the fuck away, so you mostly don't get their body parts.

Unless, that is, you are Scorpius Lake.

(To be fair to Yvette she is also pretty competent and good at what she does and he doesn't know what her affinity is but given various pieces of indirect evidence it's probably something that also makes her good at killing mals.)

(Not as good as Scorpius Lake, though.)

And he thinks there is no doubt that Lake was involved in this, given the implied size and power level of the mals that produced all of these bits. He doesn't think anyone but Lake (or a specialised group of five to fifteen seniors) could collect all of these in a single day.

Yvette said she had brutally turned him down when he, uh, flirted with her? Made a pass at her? Propositioned? He supposes he doesn't know what exactly she turned down but she said she turned him down. And yet she seems still kind of friendly with him? Friendly enough to go on a, a maleficaria murder date??

He is confused and kind of suspicious and concerned.

What is Lake's game, here?

Alexei's seen him before, and thought he had Lake's number. Always flitting from flower to flower like an overactive social butterfly, never staying anywhere other than New York. Friendly with everyone, friends with no one. Not that anyone is friends here but at least people hang out; Lake will spend a couple of days with someone and then move on. He's friends with seniors and sophomores and freshmen.

(There is very little cross-year socialisation, in the Scholomance, for various reasons such as "physical separation of classes and dormitories" and "anyone younger than you is a lot more likely to die than your peers and you don't want the heartache from getting attached" and the plain old fact that teenagers mature enough psychologically in the space of a single year that they often just don't want to hang out with people of different ages.)

But Lake talks to everyone, he speaks fluent Mandarin despite being American and since you need one of English or Mandarin to get into the Scholomance at all that means he can talk to everyone, and there are four thousand people in the Scholomance and only three hundred and sixty-five days in a year so he definitely can't talk to everyone. And in the couple of occasions when he talked to the Russians he just reinforced that impression, of being someone who doesn't form any attachments, someone who does seem to express genuine interest in your life and care about you except for how he disappears soon after.

(He never forgets a name, though. That is insane. Alexei does not even know all the names of everyone he goes to shop with, but Lake seems to know everyone's names.)

And then Lake took an interest in Yvette-in-particular and there was a complete change in his demeanour. Or, well, not exactly a change, he still seems like a flighty flake, he's too hyperactive and too cheerful all the goddamn time, not even other enclavers are that cheerful in the goddamn Scholomance (and how is Lake so cheerful when he knows everyone who's died, when he's personally met and known the name of every dead kid in here since he got in?), but he's, he seems a lot more...

...it's hard to pin it down and point at what the difference is, but it feels like there's a difference.

And different things are bad, in the Scholomance. When the son of the future domina of the New York enclave takes such a personal interest in someone like he's taking an interest in Yvette, that's...

Well, most people would be pretty happy with that, that's a very good position to be in if you want to join that enclave, but Yvette doesn't. And furthermore, he's pretty sure Lake's aware of this, so whatever Lake's game is it's not about trying to seduce Yvette into NY (for what? is her affinity, whatever it is, that useful? Alexei thinks it probably is but he's really not sure).

The possibility that Lake is just genuinely, personally interested in Yvette occurs to him, and... why now? Why her? What changed, what would make him interested in her all of a sudden when he hasn't been interested in anyone for the past three years?

(Oh, he's fucked lots of people, it's made the rounds, too. Kids in the Scholomance are less fussed about this given that anyone might die tomorrow, carpe diem etc etc, but on the other hand most people are far too busy and exhausted to make time for this, so it happens less often than you'd expect. Taking that into account, Lake is the closest thing here to the famous American archetype of the school slut. But he doesn't seem to have emotional flings with people, only casual ones.)

Also, it greatly upsets Alexei that Lake might be interested in Yvette in that way, especially if she's turned him down already, like, that's violating her boundaries and Alexei will not stand for it. Also he's concerned for her safety and emotional wellbeing.

That is in fact the sum total of the reasons he has for feeling bad about this. There is nothing else under the hood. And if there was, it has been long since buried into being forgotten, a skill he's had years to practise.

So two days later, during the juniors' afternoon work period a little bit before dinner, Scorpius walks up to Alexei in the library and tells him that he has something to trade that he doesn't want others to see.

A little bit sus but not that sus, so he follows along (and it's easy to feel safe around Lake, knowing that nothing is going to get to him and he is definitely not going to die) and hangs just outside Lake's door, waiting.

"...come in? It's kind of sensitive."

...fine. Sofia and Natalya and Nkoyo and Yvette all saw him walk out of the library with Scorpius so if he gets brutally murdered they'll know who to blame. Also Lake spent most of the afternoon with Yvette, too, so maybe this is just more pieces of maleficaria? Alexei is probably not getting brutally murdered by Lake and he should stop being so paranoid.

In he goes, shutting the door behind himself.

Scorpius sits on his bed and says, "I lied."

SUSPICIOUS AGAIN

He lifts his hands peacefully. "I knew you were gonna be suspicious if I just said I wanted to talk but I just want to talk."