Satisfaction brewed slow and warm in Tristan's gut the moment the name had left his lips. Of course it would be Constance. Hadn't it always been? It was why her number was one, why she was the ghost that haunted him, cloaked in cobwebs in the back of his mind and watching with frightened, beady eyes, her guilt dripping like dewdrops from the silk-white web she spun. Otto was too blinded by his empathy to see it, and Quinn had overlooked her; simple to do when she was so determined to remain small and timid, silent and out of the way. In the end, none of this nonsense could compare to instinct.

Doubt's niggling voice found a root to wriggle in on. Her hair was dull, dead-ember auburn, not yellow. She didn't wear gold-rimmed glasses. But a disguise was intelligent, and a mask was easy to don.

Savannah's weight on his chest eased as she lifted her head, her shimmering veil of forced tears not succeeding in their attempt to hide the piercing sharpness in her eyes. The delight of finding her answer. She blinked her inky eyelashes. "Constance?" Her head tilted. "She was at Seth's dinner."

Now all eyes were turned his way and the arguments amongst the others had faded, he deemed it safe to extract himself from Savannah's embrace. She didn't protest. "She was," he confirmed, "and she killed him."

Inspector Halley rocked in her slanted, sceptical stance, leaning on one foot. "And what brought you to that conclusion, detective?"

Barbed mockery cut through the title, but Tristan chose to ignore it. He opened his mouth, eager to present the puzzle he'd pieced together when the police clearly couldn't, only to be interrupted by the prancing, blaring notes of a ringtone. The noise seeped from a pocket below Halley's belt.

Her gaze cut down to it, and a sigh blew out through her nose. "I have to get this." She shot Tristan a brief inferno of a glare. "Nobody goes anywhere until I get back. Understood?"

Nods rippled all around. Tristan didn't comply with the same ease, but she was already too preoccupied fishing her phone from her pocket to pay him any more deliberate malice. She tapped the arm of her police-suited colleague, swept them all up in a narrowed glance, then turned a half-circle at the same moment she answered the call. The ringtone vanished abruptly and was replaced by her voice, rapidly quieted beyond decipher by distance.

Kordyn snatched Savannah's arm and tugged her backward, officially distancing her from Tristan. She muttered something sharp in the Dawson girl's ear. Jerking free, Savannah lifted her chin and her shallow-sloped smile in tandem, response falling again too soft to hear. It drew in Kordyn's frown like a string pulled at her brow, though there was a certain warmth entering her cheeks too deep for gentle spring sunshine.

The remaining policeman cast them a funny look and Kordyn's frown shifted immediately into one of blank indifference, one formed in response to a mere stranger. A good act. Savannah bit her lip and looked down at her shoes.

In the drifting silence, Kordyn's stare scuttled along to land on Tristan. "I can't believe you're getting away with this."

Neither could he, really, not in this way. Who would've predicted that someone like Savannah would defend him? Yet their agreement, as far as he could see it, was mutual, and he planned on sticking to that. Savannah dripped genuinity, absent of clogging lies, despite the over-the-top act she seemed to like to equip. He believed her, and he would protect her.

"It doesn't particularly concern you anymore," he remarked to Kordyn. "I'm aware that you're innocent. In a way, I'm helping you."

Kordyn's glower flickered, indecisive but still red-hot. "You still stole from me."

"And you unjustly reported me, so I'd say we're now even."

Her jaw clenched. "Could I at least have it back?"

"I didn't bring it with me," he lied.

She opened her mouth to snap some other comment, but Halley's brisk footsteps brought the conversation to a swift end. A different emotion had swept over her expression, one taught with antsy worry.

"Incident at the uni," she said to her colleague. "We need to head over."

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. It chimed like a silent, reverberating bell in Tristan's ears, ringing with intrigue's resonant notes.

The policeman cocked an eyebrow at her. "No rest for the wicked, eh?" His hand waved vaguely at the gathered crowd. "What do we do about this lot?"

Halley paused, massaging her forehead, mouth set in a flat, grim line. "Well," she sighed, but got no further.

"The solution seems simple to me," Tristan put in.

"Does it now?" she murmured.

"Constance attends the University of Huxholm. This is clearly connected, and I'll be coming with you."

She straightened enough to glare at him for the hundredth time. "Right, she's there along with a thousand other students, and it's your god-given right to do whatever you please. My no is final, Tristan Young."

He shrugged. "I don't believe in any god's rights nor do I think they'd be in any way fond of me, but either way, I think it is in everyone's best interest that I accompany you, Inspector Halley. You'd like this investigation to stop plaguing you, I'm sure? For the case to be solved? For us all to fade out of your memory?"

"That's certainly a prayer I've presented to the gods," she muttered.

"Then take me with you, and I'll end this by tomorrow's sunrise. Sooner, if I can help it."

A tumbleweed of a beat passed, as if a wind stirred out of nothing to keen and creak amongst the trees lining the graveyard. Savannah smiled behind her hand, the Dawson parents cast one another uncertain looks, and Kordyn rolled her eyes, but Tristan didn't let his gaze wander too far from the brusque police inspector. He saw in real time her resolve crumble, falling away like dust through fingers.

Her sigh was long and hard. "Fine. It's best I keep an eye on you anyway."

There were no goodbyes. Halley seized hold of Tristan's wrist, and then they were marching away, past the stone barracks of gravestones, the staring, muttering crowds and the flapping pictures of Seth staring ethereally into the abyss he now belonged to. The church's stained glass window shimmered in an abstract kaleidoscope. For once, Tristan allowed it more than a distrustful passing glance. He didn't recognise the scene it displayed -- he never would -- but it made him think of Constance's silver cross all the same, swaying to and fro, a timer indeed for the way it ticked like a pendulum in his mind.

He thought more of her tearful, horrified face, lit far too much by electric light in the night's low darkness. Her guilt. It formed a thread, and today, he would finally follow it to its source.

•┈┈┈••✦♧✦••┈┈┈•

Huxholm's university was as awash with scattered movement as an anthill kicked by a careless child. Panic frothed in the air, almost tangible.

Another police car had already arrived before them, and so the scene was strung with yellow tape as plentiful as party ribbons, blocking off a paved mini street sandwiched between the institute of arts and the physics faculty. Students buzzed around it, snapping phones waved above heads and anxious voices interchanged as constant white noise. It placed a stutter in Tristan's step as he exited Halley's car and stepped out onto the university's main alley. The building that housed the law classrooms squatted somewhere to his right, though he did his best not to glance its way. Out of all the places, it was somewhat typical that he'd encounter his case's great end at a university.

Halley seemed to share at least some of her displeasure. She slammed the car door shut and adjusted her cap, sweeping wire-straight bangs from her face. "I do hope you're as good as you seem to think you are at this supposed job of yours," she muttered before striding in the direction of the crime scene. She didn't wait for Tristan to follow, yet he was quick to head after her anyway. He had no desire to hesitate.

In some ways, he was rather grateful for her company in this drop of a moment; at the sight of her badge and hard stare, the crowd parted for them both like water, their whispers cresting in volume like the peaks of waves. Tristan kept his eyes firmly on the path ahead.

A group of three more police officers met up with her beside the taped barrier, along with the colleague from the graveyard who'd taken a different route. They were all men, yet their eyes gravitated immediately to Halley, unspokenly naming her as their leader on the spot. She acted like it, too; her chin tilted up and her shoulders squared. "What's the situation?"

A man sporting an impressive moustache frowned at Tristan. "What's he--"

"Ignore him." Halley waved a dismissive hand his way. "Just another problem on the list. Can I be briefed on this one before we start chatting?"

The man nodded without argument, bending to her will. Wry amusement rose in the back of Tristan's throat. He folded his arms and moved back, cradling a steady anticipation.

"The body was found by a second-year student about half an hour ago," the man said, instantly snatching Tristan's attention. He tilted to the side and pointed at the upper reaches of the physics building, startlingly high. What looked like a working telescope stuck out of the roof above. "The top window up there is broken, so likelihood is he was pushed through it. No witnesses to the event itself have come forward yet, but the victim has been identified as a first-year." He cracked open a notebook and peered at a page buried in a creased, fingered page. "Jack O'Connell, according to a couple of his mates."

Jack. It was a common enough name, hardly enough for the complete disregard of a coincidence, but still something suggestive stirred in Tristan's veins. Halley put in another question, but he was no longer listening to the officers' talk. As they drowned themselves in facts and figures, stringing stages of a plan that all meticulously toed the law's line, he slipped away, once again melting into the background. Again, there was a way in which he stood out; he still felt eyes raze over him, accusing him of being different, strange, but it would not hold him back. He ducked past a group of huddled, whispering girls and reached out to touch the police tape, just lightly, as if it would anchor him by sensation alone.

Tacky plastic crinkled as he curled his fingers over it. He leaned forward to look beyond the tape and caught sight of the second dead body of his week.

Glassy eyes, devoid of confidence's brash light, stared up at the sunny sky. Tousled honey-blond hair splayed out amid a deep crimson pool, trickling from a cracked skull. Bloodied and broken as the boy's face was, recognition carved its features. Tristan never forgot the face of a boy who looked at him with that much unrighteous scorn.

"Jack," he murmured, surprised at how soft the name could sound when he rolled it carefully over his tongue. "We meet again."

A faint, panicked gasp pricked at his ear.

He jerked towards the sound of breathing -- an oddly startling sound when initially observing a chest as still and lifeless as Jack's. Shrubbery cowered behind the university's arts building. Within it, a girl shivered. A girl with auburn hair draped in close enough to conceal her cheekbones and white, white clothes. Leaves rustled as she slammed her back into sandstone brickwork, but it was far too late.

They locked eyes. At this distance, her chestnut eyes were roasted to the colour of coal, burning and seething, fear's flame as bright as the sun. Her flinch rocked through every inch of her. Then she was staggering back through the thin copse of trees, nearly tripping over scattered bracken, and stumbling her way into a desperate sprint.

Diving under the police tape, Tristan gave chase.

"Hey!" a voice shouted from behind -- Halley, most likely, given its biting anger -- but he paid it no heed. He was only fulfilling their deal, after all. Knowing the blood coated Constance's pale hands would do no good if she remained lost and elusive.

He skirted around the patch of trees, under another web of tape and swiftly found his way back to the university's cobbled streets. Constance wove behind the faculties of chemistry and mathematics, constructing a deadly complex path. She knew her way around, but unpredictable as it might be, Tristan wasn't all clueless. His memory didn't fail him. He didn't lose her, not even as she shot for a staircased alleyway positioned just to the left of the law building.

Darkness swaddled even her bleached hues as she leapt down the steps three at a time. Tristan tensed against a wince as he caught himself on the railing and used it to drag himself after her, lungs alight. What was beginning to fail him were his legs and his organs. His heart's race was painfully spiky, and exhaustion stitched a burning line up his side, making it increasingly difficult to push through the air's thickness. Flimsy rubber consumed his calves. Panting, throat dry, he jumped from the fifth stair, hitting the stone below a little too hard for his feet's liking.

The path ahead was plunged into dim light, Constance's still-moving form barely outlined by dripping daylight amongst it. He charged in blindly all the same. This passage was one he vaguely recognised; if he recalled right, it was an alternate entrance into the building, hardly used -- as was apparent by the motes of dust he choked on as his breath heaved -- but a quick and relatively simple way to reach the basement floor. A door handle creaked ahead, wailing ominously through the dark. Constance shoved at it and broke into the building with Tristan just too much more than an arm's length behind her. He reached out anyway, knowing all along that his fingers would snatch at only air.

She skidded left, and he found he didn't have quite the same agile reflexes. He flung out a hand and only just stopped himself from crashing straight into the displayed posters on the wall opposite. Almost doubled over, he staggered to a momentary stop.

Think. This wasn't working. He couldn't chase her like this, but he could think. He straightened and adjusted his glasses to examine the corridor he'd broken out into.

Sure enough, here it was: the law building's awful cream-coloured interior, lit plainly and cheerfully, classroom doors either side. At least today it was inhabited by silence. Wednesday meant classes didn't drift into the afternoon, and together with the commotion outside, no-one wished to be trapped in an office down here. He considered for another, vital second, and then ran to the right.

A branching path opened up to the left almost immediately, and he dived down it. Constance's footsteps echoed hollowly from the other side of the building, panicked and irregular but not impossible to place. Another left turn took him to the very back of the building. He slowed his pace to a jog, listening, scanning each door as he did so.

The footsteps grew a touch louder. He pushed open the closest door and charged through into the classroom, dodging a desk and leaping over a trailing laptop cable, before grasping the cool metal of a door handle on the room's opposite side. He let another beat pass, then twisted it and pulled.

Constance was only a couple of short paces away along the corridor. She saw him in time, but was doomed by her momentum. He lunged and grabbed a handful of her cardigan, and the woollen material went taut, yanking her to a sharp halt.

She yelped, exhaustion shrinking her squirms into a useless, breathless tremble. Silver buttons studded her white cardigan. They clicked together and rubbed against Tristan's fingers as he tugged again, pinning her against the wall. Her chest heaved in and out.

"Constance Clark," he greeted her, grateful that he was at least beginning to regain his breath. "The game is up."

Fear flashed bright as lightning through her chestnut eyes. On either side, her hands flattened against the wall and crawled steadily outwards; they were clean, pure, but one didn't need to stain their hands red to push a boy out of a window nor to fire a stolen gun. She kept her innocence as a shield, but Tristan saw through it. He waited for it to crack.

It wasn't budging yet. Face screwing up, she squeezed her eyes shut, mouth flattening. "I know," she whispered, voice barely a sound at all. "I know. J-just get it over with. I deserve it, I know, I know."

Something grew tight in the pit of Tristan's stomach. He ignored it, moving half a step closer to stare at her. "I want to hear you say it."

"Say what?" Her words were barely discernible for how much they shook.

"Say you killed them both. Tell me I won your game."

Her head twisted to the side like she feared he'd strike her, breathing almost a wheeze. "Okay, okay. Yes. I killed them. It's my fault."

Wrongness, maybe that's what the feeling was. Maybe there was something lacklustre about a confession spoken so softly, so easily and yet as brittle as shattering glass. A tear caught the light in crystal hues and slid down her cheek. He watched it fall. "Why did you do it, Constance?"

"You want me to say that again, too?" She cracked a tearful eye open to peer at him. When he answered with stiff silence, she inhaled sharply. "I hated him. I--I wanted to be rid of him. I wanted him to hurt for all the times he hurt me." Something steely flickered through her eyes, quickly crushed into splinters as she closed her eyes again. Her fingers curled around her cross necklace tightly enough to cut her palm. Her lips moved to form a soundless prayer.

Interest kindled a fire that crackled in Tristan's ears. "Seth?"

"Not Seth." The held-back edge of a sob scratched through her voice. She trembled all the more. "Seth was innocent, but I still..." More tears tore free. After another heartbeat, she wrenched open her eyes, staring at him with that fierce, dark stare he'd seen only once before. "I don't care what you do to me, Raphael. I know I'm wicked, and I know I deserve it."

Confusion was a torrent of rain that winked out the flames, his firmness trickling away. He loosened his grip on her cardigan without really thinking. "I'm not Raphael."

The same emotion jumped to her like a charged spark passed between them. She blinked, a stunned look shuttering over to slit apart her fear. "No, you... You have to be. She said Raphael would come for me if I stayed."

"Who?" He felt as if his carefully-knitted puzzle was unravelling at the very seams, and it was suddenly a race to grab those falling strands and twist them into something new before he lost sight of its pattern all together. "Who said that?"

"Sally." Her tone strengthened, though wariness sting clung to it like cobwebs. "Sally Fletcher. The girl with golden glasses. She said..." Her frown deepened. "I... Who are you, then?"

"Detective Tristan Young."

"You weren't lying?"

"I don't lie about facts as simple as that." Slowly, cautiously, he released her, though he remained close enough to reach for her again if she tried to run. "Why, is your name not Constance?"

"No, no, it is, I just..." She dragged shaky fingers through her hair and lifted her chin to properly stare him in the eyes. "You didn't kill Jack?"

He could've laughed his disbelief. "You claimed you did a moment ago."

She really did laugh, a cracking, formless chuckle that ended quickly. "You don't know anything at all."

"I know some things," he said, indignant.

"Not the right things." She dragged a sleeve over her face, collecting herself. "Well, I... I'm sorry." Tense, she dared another glance up at him. "You're really not going to hurt me?"

"You're really not the killer?" he countered.

She hesitated before shaking her head, her guilt still thick and murky. Her arms wrapped her middle. A no, but she bore a burden all the same.

He didn't have time to waste and dwell on it. "Then tell me about this Sally Fletcher."

She jerked. "I--I can't. She'll--"

"She will do nothing." Was that reassuring? He couldn't particularly tell. All he knew was the surety, the sharp desire to find this Sally and to end her game -- particularly when prickling shame reminded him of how much he'd failed in accusing Constance. He sank his hands into his pockets, feeling for that trusty paper. "Tell me what you know, and I'll find her."

She exhaled shakily. "I... don't even know where she came from. She just came up to me last... last Friday, between classes, and told me I needed to go to the dinner. Said she'd get rid of Jack for me, as a favour, because she liked me, but if--if I went and then I disobeyed, her friend would find me. Raphael. You--well, not you." Another glass-shard laugh.

"And where did she go after that?"

"I don't know. I said I had to go to class and ran, and I haven't seen her since. She..." She shivered. "The look in her eyes, it was..."

"Like she'd kill someone?" Tristan guessed.

"Definitely." She fisted her cardigan, and the corridor lapsed back into a brief, staticy silence. She chewed on her lip. "Hey, I'm... sorry about how Jack spoke to you the other day."

It's alright would be a lie, but he waved it away regardless. "Jack was your friend?"

"Boyfriend." The word came with its own wince, a piece of driftwood snapped in two.

"And you hated him?"

"I hated him," she confirmed, then hissed in a breath. Her fist hadn't released her cross this whole time and its grip only tightened now. "It feels... nice to finally say that aloud, but t-that's awful. I shouldn't... hate. I should never have wanted him gone, but I went anyway." Tears glistened in her eyes again, but she pushed them back with a hard blink.

Tristan could only study her, finding himself at an uncomfortable loss. Not a pure girl who dabbled in death, but a girl who dreamed of death, of punishment, an impure girl drowning in terrified remorse. Fascinating in its own way, he supposed. There was something comforting he should say, but it lost itself, buried in a maze so long he forgot why he was searching in the first place.

After all, he only had until sunrise. He had a lead and he had to act fast on it, embedded with feelings or not. "If Raphael has been tasked with finding you," he said, "then I propose we find him first."

Constance shifted. "You know who he is?"

"I have an idea." For my brother, Otto had stated, so defensive, walling off that disconnected Raphael Ratliff. Perhaps Tristan had aimed a number too low. Otto's act was what he should've been breaking all along. "And you should accompany me," he added, somewhat thoughtlessly. "You may be in danger."

She nodded. "Just hold on. I need to--" She drew back, shaking her head as if dismissing her own thought. "Never mind. Yes. I'll come."

He watched her. "What?"

"Never mind." Some trace of a smile had risen to rest upon her lips. Her fist finally released her necklace, forefinger tracing its metallic length before dropping to her side. She nodded. "Let's go."

Chapter Wordcount: 3925

Total Wordcount: 28402

A proper scene with Constance dialogue?? Finally??? Woah. At least now we actually know what's going on with her :eyes:

Also I love making Tristan run and remembering he is a scrawny nerd. Suffer, my friend.

- Pup