Chapter 3: The Boundary Between Silence and Noise
Snap!
Three emerald green snakes burst from beneath Ajax's beanie, tongues flickering like live wires. One of them lunged straight for Vic's finger —
Crunch.
Venom's jaws materialized out of nowhere and closed around the snake's head with the decisive finality of a bear trap.
The entire Quad went dead silent.
Ajax's face drained of color so fast it was almost impressive. "My snake!"
Venom chewed twice, then made a face. "Huh. Tastes like a gummy worm."
Vic clapped Ajax on the shoulder. "Don't sweat it! Venom's got an industrial-grade digestive system. Give it about twenty-four hours and it'll come back out as some kind of — well. Black goo, mostly."
Wednesday observed: "At least it's more nutritious than a Care Bears throw pillow."
"Hey!" Enid stamped her foot hard enough that her sneaker squeaked against the bluestone. "That pillow was limited edition."
Ajax pressed both hands over his beanie, feeling the remaining snake hair trembling underneath. He looked like a man who had just survived a natural disaster and wasn't entirely sure he'd made it out the other side. "I need to go to the nurse's office," he said faintly, and began the long, unsteady walk toward the main building.
Everyone watched him go.
"...We should probably visit him later," Enid said.
"No," said Wednesday.
"What exactly is going on over here?"
A girl with short natural hair and silver-gray eyes strode over, arms crossed, her gaze doing a quick, efficient sweep of the situation the way a detective processes a crime scene.
"Bianca Barclay," Enid murmured under her breath. "Siren. Do not, under any circumstances, antagonize her."
Vic's eyes lit up like a kid who just spotted a roller coaster. "A Siren? Like, actual mythological Siren? Can you do the whole — " He made a sweeping, dramatic gesture that vaguely resembled someone conducting an orchestra over open water.
Bianca looked at him flatly. "Yes. And afterward you'll walk into the lake of your own free will and not come back up."
"Worth it," Vic said immediately, and produced a chocolate bar from his jacket pocket. "Peace offering. 82% cacao — complex, a little dangerous, genuinely hard to handle. Reminds me of your entire vibe."
Bianca stared at the chocolate.
Then she raised her hand —
Smack.
The bar went airborne, spinning end over end before landing somewhere in the ivy.
"I don't do sweets," she said.
Before Vic could react, Venom surged from his shoulder — a mass of black condensing into a massive, jagged-toothed face that hovered approximately two inches from Bianca's nose.
"People who waste perfectly good food," Venom said, its voice vibrating in the chest like a subwoofer, "end up on my menu."
Bianca's silver eyes narrowed. She held her ground — barely — but took one half-step back, which from her was practically a sprint.
From a safe three yards away, Wednesday brought her hands together in three slow, deliberate claps. "Well done."
"Okay!" Enid stepped forward, physically inserting herself between Venom and Bianca with the cheerful desperation of a camp counselor managing an incident. "Who wants to check out the Werewolf Activity Area? It's really cool! Great acoustics! Nobody has threatened anybody there yet today!"
Her fingernails, in the stress of the moment, had extended slightly — and were currently puncturing Vic's jacket sleeve at four distinct points.
"Ow," Vic said, more curious than pained. "Your claws."
She dragged him away by the arm before he could finish the sentence. Bianca watched them go, made a sound of deep contempt, and walked in the opposite direction.
Venom retracted back into Vic's collar, grumbling. "She tastes like overpriced sea salt chips. Completely unacceptable."
In the distance, Weems's voice carried across the Quad. "Wednesday. Your family is at the gate."
Wednesday's gaze swept over the group one final time. "Don't get killed while I'm gone."
She turned and walked, her black dress trailing behind her like a departing shadow.
Only Vic and Enid remained.
Enid exhaled — a long, full-body breath — and became aware that she was still holding Vic's arm. She dropped it quickly, then noticed the five small puncture marks in his jacket sleeve.
"Oh — I'm so sorry." Her fingertips had already retracted to normal, but her voice came out smaller than usual. "I can't always — I don't totally have control over it."
Vic tilted his head and grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand up toward the light like he was examining something rare.
"Dude," he breathed. "Your claws."
Enid blinked. "...What?"
"They are so cool." He turned her hand, completely fascinated. "Can they peel an apple? Open a soda can? Do detail work? Could you carve something with those?"
The nervousness went out of Enid all at once, replaced by something between disbelief and reluctant amusement. "Are you being serious right now?"
"I'm always serious about claws," Vic said solemnly, and produced an apple from his jacket pocket with the ease of a stage magician. He held it out. "Try it."
Enid hesitated. Then she took the apple. Her nails extended — deliberately this time, conscious and controlled — and the sharp tips carved through the skin in one clean, spiraling ribbon.
"Yes!" Vic grabbed the apple and took an enormous bite, juice running down his chin. Venom materialized a small tendril and wiped it away with the resigned efficiency of someone who had done this ten thousand times.
Enid watched him, turning her hand over in the last of the afternoon light.
"I still can't do the full transformation," she said quietly. "Most wolves my age can. I can barely manage the claws, and even those —" she gestured at his jacket sleeve — "kind of get away from me."
Vic tossed the apple core in a clean arc into a trash can roughly fifteen feet away, and looked at her. "So? Venom tells me my brain is structurally compromised on a weekly basis. We're still out here."
Venom: "It's a documented medical opinion."
Enid laughed — actually laughed — and the setting sun turned her hair honey-gold. She reached out and poked his shoulder. "You know what? You're genuinely weird."
"Thank you!" Vic's grin split wide enough to show two slightly-too-sharp canine teeth. "Solid top-five compliment this year."
"Come on," Enid said, and fell into step beside him, leaving just enough space between them that she wouldn't accidentally spike his hand again. "I'll show you the Werewolf Activity Area."
They walked along the stone path toward the west end of the academy, their shadows stretching behind them in the late light — mismatched in every possible way, somehow adding up to something.
Far across the Quad, Wednesday stood at the gate and looked back once.
Like a paper cut-out of something that doesn't quite make sense yet, she thought.
Then she turned and walked through.
Night settled over Nevermore the way it always did — all at once, like something that had been waiting just out of sight.
The hallway noise faded. Somewhere deep in the stone walls, insects made sounds that no entomologist had ever successfully catalogued. Moonlight spilled through the dormitory window and divided the room into clean sections of silver and dark.
Vic was already asleep in his strip of territory by the bathroom door, sprawled at an angle that suggested his skeleton had temporarily checked out. Venom wrapped around him like a black comforter, rumbling something low and satisfied.
Enid Sinclair stood in the middle of the room in her pajamas and fuzzy socks, headphones on, moving to something only she could hear. Small movements — a shift of weight, fingers tracing arcs in the air, a slow half-spin.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Wednesday sat at the edge of her bed, fingers moving across the keys of an antique typewriter, each keystroke clean and deliberate as a sentence being handed down.
Enid spun again. Her heel came down.
Thump.
Wednesday's fingers stopped.
"Enid." Her voice arrived from somewhere several degrees below room temperature. "If your foot hits that floor one more time, I'm going to repurpose your headphone cord."
Enid slid one earpiece off. "Sorry, what?"
Wednesday turned her head. The candlelight on her face did things that candlelight generally shouldn't.
"I said," she repeated, her fingers resting lightly on the letter opener beside the typewriter, "quiet."
Enid pressed her lips together. She turned the volume down — a marginal, technically-compliant amount — and kept moving. Just smaller. Just her toes now, barely tapping.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The two rhythms coexisted in the room like a standoff.
Wednesday stood up.
She crossed the room in four steps and looked down at Enid from approximately the distance of a formal accusation.
"Do you know how the protagonist of my current novel meets her end?" she asked, at a conversational volume that somehow felt like a threat.
Enid considered this. "Natural causes?"
"Torn apart by a pack of creatures she disturbed with excessive noise." Wednesday's expression didn't change. "The description is detailed. I've been told it's visceral."
Enid straightened up to her full height, which was not intimidating but was committed. "You cannot take away someone's right to listen to music just because you want to type your murder novel in silence!"
"I can," Wednesday said. She glanced at Enid's phone screen. Her expression shifted — barely, but perceptibly — into something approaching personal offense. "Particularly when your playlist sounds like a Scooby-Doo episode with a bigger budget."
"That's Beyoncé!"
"I stand by what I said."
Enid's claws extended.
"CHOCOLATE, DON'T RUN—"
Both girls turned.
Vic was flat on his back in his territory, eyes firmly shut, one arm flung toward the ceiling, shouting at nothing.
"Cut it off!" Venom's head surfaced briefly from his collarbone, then submerged again like a particularly stressed submarine.
Wednesday and Enid stared at him for a long moment.
"...At least he's asleep," Enid said finally.
Wednesday looked at Vic for approximately four more seconds. Then she turned back to her typewriter and sat down without another word.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Enid hesitated. Then she turned off her music, climbed into bed, and lay on her back staring at the ceiling, rubbing the edge of her blanket between her fingers.
Moonlight drew a clean silver line across the floor — Wednesday's side, all shadow and specimen jars. Enid's side, soft and color-saturated even in the dark.
The typing stopped.
"If you need music to sleep," Wednesday said, not turning around, "you can use the gramophone."
Enid sat up.
In the corner of Wednesday's half of the room, an old gramophone stood on a small table, a black vinyl record already on the turntable.
"...Seriously?" Enid asked.
"It's preferable to whatever algorithmic catastrophe you were listening to," Wednesday said, and resumed typing.
Enid slid out of bed and crossed the silver line without ceremony. She crouched in front of the record crate and flipped through it — Beethoven... Chopin... Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre — her finger stopped.
"This one's yours," she said. It wasn't really a question.
"It's my favorite," Wednesday said. There was something in her voice — not warmth, exactly, but the place where warmth would be, if warmth were something Wednesday had ever agreed to let in.
Enid lifted the needle and set it down.
The cello came in low and slow, spreading through the room like fog finding its way through a window left open by accident. Enid swayed — barely, just her shoulders — light as a person trying not to wake anyone up.
Wednesday's fingers found the keys again, and somehow the rhythm matched.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Not fighting anymore. Something stranger than that — a truce that neither of them would ever acknowledge out loud, built from a cello line and the sound of a typewriter in the dark.
In his corner, Vic rolled over. Venom raised its head, looked at the two of them, and made a sound that might have been a sigh or might have been something softer.
"Humans," it muttered, and went back to sleep.
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