As they returned to Victoria's car, Kate began texting her friends back at the academy to figure out where the hell Nathan was. Despite having already bugged him twice in 24 hours, Victoria was afraid that she was going to have to do it again. Because she couldn't be certain exactly how guilty he was, but he was pretty clearly involved in some shady shit.
Neither of them was really confident enough to make any suppositions, so they drove to Blackwell in silence. It was tense and uncomfortable. Dealing with Nathan seemed like a scary enough prospect. But news of a second, mysterious person was particularly worrying, especially because Victoria really didn't have a frame of reference for how someone could mask their scent like that. Probably magical, which meant dealing with a freaking wizard. Those were always the worst missions because some magic-users were basically just humans with hard-ons for power.
Outside the school, Victoria and Kate stood next to her car's trunk, the blonde coughing nervously. "Given our boy's tendencies and philosophy, I think we should split up. I promise this isn't just me protecting you or whatever, this is important. I'm going to go talk to Nathan, shake him down if I have to. I need you to gather up your friends Max and Chloe, plus anyone else with muscles, magic, and a grudge against Rachel's killer. Whoever Nathan's partner is, it sounds like they creep around Blackwell too. Build a network, do some more sniffing, figure out whatever you can."
Kate nodded seriously, and seemed to appreciate being given a legitimate job instead of just being told to go hide and wait. "Yeah, I can think of more than a few people who might have a score to settle. Are you planning on building an army?"
"I really, really hope it doesn't come to that. One person has already been hurt, possibly more. I'm not interested in adding to the body count. That being said, Blackwell is populated by students with way more power than I could ever hope to have. It seems smart to have everyone waiting in the wings."
Kate's phone dinged as she received another message. "Lucky for you, Nathan just went to his room. Ummm, I think... Hayden might know which room is his." It didn't take Kate too much more texting to get the information they needed. "Here we go. Room 111." She shifted her footing, looking around awkwardly for a second or two. "Um, j-just... be careful okay? And if he pulls a gun, just knee him in the balls and come find me." Surprisingly, Kate pushed up onto the balls of her feet and kissed Victoria's cheek before hurrying off to locate her friends.
In something of a daze, Victoria checked to make sure she had her knife on her before striding off toward the dormitory building.
There were a few guys loitering around who gave her weird looks for being on their floor. But Victoria hoped that her determined pace would keep them from bothering her. It wasn't exactly hard to find room 111, and without warning Victoria gave the door a few heavy knocks. "Nathan! My capacity to deal with bullshit grows ever more faint, so you better open this fucking door."
"Jesus, it's unlocked... Christ, come in, just keep it down..." The response was immediate and surprising nonchalant. As requested, she opened the door and stepped inside, closing it again behind her. The room was dim, lit by a single small lamp. Nathan was laying on his bed, hands resting on his stomach, staring at the ceiling. A nearby device was filling the room with the gentle noise of ocean water and whale song. "So, I'm guessing you've found something. Figured you'd get there sooner or later."
"Uhhh, yeah. You were there when Rachel was killed. So I'm gonna need you to start talking." Victoria really tried to be more forward, but the whale song and the soft lights made it hard to be aggressive.
Having apparently expected as much, Nathan just sat up against his headboard and motioned for Victoria to join him. Confused by his oddly welcoming behavior, all she could really do was sit down cross-legged on the foot of the bed, watching him curiously. "My family's been in the area basically since it was settled. It's been a Prescott tradition to take over the town one bit of land and property at a time. I guess so we can eventually run the place like some kind of fucking plutocracy. But dad, he's probably crazier than any of them. You know what he wants? He wants an Arcadia Bay that's populated with nothing but humans."
"Sounds like it would be kind of tough, what with Blackwell being here and all. Not to mention wildly illegal and unethical."
"Yeah, it's... it's not great. It's why my sister got the hell out of Dodge the minute she could. It's why I felt just a tiny spark of excitement when dad told me I'd be going here. So I could hang out with people who weren't crazy hunters. Until he informed me it's because he wanted someone on the inside here so he could take it over more easily. I've mostly just tolerated his insanity, because, what the fuck else am I gonna do? But then he went and hired somebody, told me to learn from him, do what he says. And just when I thought my dad was the real nutbag, this guy, Mark Jefferson, he... h-he's fucked." For a moment, it looked like Nathan might actually vomit from thinking about it too much.
Victoria's head tilted to the side as she tried to correlate everything Nathan was saying with the information she already had. Things still weren't lining up perfectly, but it didn't help that she still assumed Nathan to be a 'bad guy'. "Fucked how?"
"Dad just wants to kick monsters out of Arcadia Bay, run the town. But this guy wants all monsters dead. Worse, he's figured out how to consume them to steal their life force. Like... a necromancer, but worse. Even got a job here at the school so he could start his mad quest by gaining the trust of everyone around him." Nathan reached for a nearby remote and turned off the sounds that filled the room. "He's been wanting me to help him in getting students somewhere he can get them alone. His brilliant plan was to push the blame onto someone else by making it look like a wolf had done it."
Victoria still saw one glaring gap in this story, and as much as her heart wanted to believe that Nathan was ultimately good, there was still evidence that he had been involved in Rachel's murder. "So you brought her to the junkyard and he did the dirty deed?"
Nathan shook his head, and the look of sheer sadness on his face was clear as day. Victoria felt like she was a pretty good judge of character, but even if she weren't, this was unmistakable. "No. What happened to Rachel was... a huge mistake. Jefferson was bugging me to pick somebody, and I just couldn't do it. So I went to the junkyard to cool my head. Rachel was there too. I think... for the same reason. We ran into each other and started talking. Jefferson must have been tailing me and mistook what was happening for me marking her. He turned into a gigantic wolf and pounced, neither of us had a chance to react. I was..." He slammed his fist into the bed with an unimpressive thud. "I didn't have any weapons on me. I-I couldn't do a damn thing! It was over in seconds. He... congratulated me. We cleaned up the evidence, left more obvious clues, and went our separate ways."
"But he's getting antsy again. Wants another fix. Your dad hired me to clean up suspicions from the first murder so that the two of you could move on to the next one. Keep picking off students until the entire bay feels unsafe and every non-human with a sense of self-preservation goes somewhere safer. That's why you've been so jumpy." This was definitely not good. Victoria had assumed her ticking clock was the full moon, but this Jefferson guy could attack at any time in any form. The only clue for his next attack would be almost completely based on how hungry the dude became. "Well, the only person that's gonna die is Marky Mark."
"Better split from the Funky Bunch while I can."
Victoria smirked. Nathan might not have been doing so hot, but he still had a chance at a normal life. "Actually to be more accurate, we're putting together a Funky Bunch. And I think we're gonna need your help."
It was... a very tense meeting.
Everyone gathered next to a totem, supposedly known as 'Tobanga'. Along with Victoria and Nathan, there were the three girls she already knew and a collection of other students. Kate had gathered a surprising number of allies. There was Warren and Brooke, an alchemist and a technomancer; a nymph named Dana; a vampire girl with her hood up and massive sunglasses named Alyssa; Stella, a quiet satyr; and a strange pair, an angel called Taylor and a demon called Courtney.
Not a single one of them was really happy to see Nathan there, and repeating his story to the gathered crowd wasn't going over well. The boy obviously didn't have a great reputation, and regardless of innocence, the revelation that he had helped lead to Rachel's death wasn't helping. Nor was any of them ready to believe that Jefferson was somehow the true culprit.
"That's like... seriously fucking crazy. Jefferson is the coolest teacher we've ever had." Taylor, seemingly speaking for both herself and her companion, looked thoroughly unconvinced.
Alyssa nodded, glaring at Nathan over the top of her glasses. "Yeah, he's always super helpful and really nice. Kinda hard to believe he'd be capable of something like that." The obvious subtext being that Nathan, however, did seem like the type.
Victoria noted that only Kate seemed to be on the verge of understanding. There was definitely something on her mind. She was cautious to speak up, but finally she found a gap in conversation she could use. "At the junkyard, there was something that was seriously bothering me. There was this... I think maybe it was magic, keeping me from being able to smell something. I hadn't been able to place it until right now. I've been having that same experience here, in Mr. Jefferson's room. It's not the most airtight evidence, but it's enough for me to be suspicious. And really, there's only one way to prove if this is true or not." Kate took a long, deep breath. "Nathan, he probably still wants me dead to cover his tracks. Tell him Victoria refused to do it, and point out that consuming a werewolf will probably give him some pretty good power. I can act as bait to draw him out."
As if to drive home the point about how much everyone here liked Kate, they all grew indignant almost simultaneously. For a moment, it was hard to pick out a single voice from the cacophony. At least, until Chloe decided to utilize her supernatural volume. "Hey! Cut that shit out!" Things went silent in a hurry. "We're all practically adults here. We can handle this reasonably. Besides, Victoria knows that if this ends badly, I will straight-up murder her. So I say, trust Kate to trust Victoria to trust Nathan. It's all we've got right now." She cracked her knuckles, just for effect. "Plus, I'm damn sure not gonna let the three of you do this alone. This asshole killed my... my Rachel. And I want a piece."
"Likewise," added Max, her hands beginning to crackle with aetherial energy. Everyone else nodded in agreement.
In spite of everything, it looked like Victoria had managed to gather herself an army. She nudged Nathan gently with her elbow. "What'd I tell you? Funky Bunch." He smirked and playfully slugged her on the shoulder.