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Elliot's voice slammed against Clementine's eardrums the second he got back to their dorm. "Where were you?" he asked from the desk under the window. He sat there with a book in his hands, staring over at him.

          Clementine sighed. What was he going to say? He shrugged as he pushed the door shut behind him. "In the library."

          "You should just bring whatever you're reading up there here like me—or did you forget that walking around alone is literally the stupidest thing anyone can do right now?"

          "Don't lecture me," he complained, heading for his room.

          Elliot stood up. "Wait," he insisted.

          With an exasperated sigh, Clementine stopped in his tracks and looked over at him. "What?"

          "Something weird is going on."

          He scoffed. "You're only just noticing?"

          "No, like..." he paused and looked around cautiously. "I don't know. The whole place just went...freezing. It happened last week—the night Molly died, actually, and I just thought that maybe I'd left a window open, but this time, I know that I didn't."

          So, the entire academy's temperature dropped when that happened? He turned to face Elliot. "You hear the whispers too?"

          He nodded. "It's like...I don't know, maybe this place is—"

          "Haunted."

          "Yeah."

          Clementine shrugged. "Wouldn't surprise me." He headed over to his door and pushed it open. "Did those arachnoids tell the professors about Carmichael?"

          "Not that I know of," Elliot answered, sitting back down. "They're all gonna come after us—I know it." He shook his head and dragged his hand over his face. "I told them it was a stupid idea—I told them this would happen, but no one ever listens to me!" he exclaimed, a look of distress smothering his face.

          With yet another sigh, Clementine took his hand off his door handle and turned to face him. He wasn't exactly the consoling type, but he didn't want to have to listen to Elliot whingeing and panicking all night long. "If they're going after anyone, it's Carmichael, Stanley, and Bernard. You didn't do anything."

          "They're not going to see it that way—I was there! So were you—well...until you weren't. Why did you leave?"

          "Because I don't want to be involved, that's why. I don't need some freaky spider people on my ass."

          "What are we going to do?" Elliot panicked, seeming to miss Clementine's response. "We...we should just...hide, right?"

          He scoffed.

          "No...we have detention on Saturday. If we miss that, we'll be expelled!"

          With a confounded frown, Clementine crossed his arms. "Rather expelled than wrapped up in some webs and sucked of all your fluids, right?"

          Elliot scowled in repulse. "That's gross, Clementine."

          He smirked amusedly. "That's what spiders do."

          "I don't wanna think about it," he dismissed, shaking his head. "And I can't get expelled—I can't...go back to Ripperton."

          "Ripperton?" he asked. "The city?"

          He nodded, looking over at Clementine. "It's just...awful. People killing each other on the streets. My mother worked so hard to pay for me to get here...I can't get kicked out and make that all be for nothing."

          Undeniably curious to know more, Clementine moved over to the table, pulled out the chair across from Elliot and sat down. He'd only ever heard stories of Ripperton from those in his village who had headed out there to do jobs for Marco and his men. Anette had never been, but she'd always wanted to go.

          "She married some rich businessman—he's an asshole, but...well, people have got to do what they can to survive, right?"

          "She married some guy just to pay to get you here?"

          Nodding, Elliot rested his arms on the table. "It's a tradition among my people to like...fight, I guess, over the men. There were six other women lined up for this guy, but my mom..." he laughed and scratched his head, "my mom is awesome. She beat the rest."

          Clementine had never heard of such a tradition, so what Elliot had said didn't help him work out what his roommate was. Should he push his luck? "Who are your people?"

          "You won't have heard of us," he said dismissively.

          He deadpanned. "Try me."

          Elliot looked at him and frowned. "You haven't even told me anything about you," he countered. "Where are you from?"

          "Ulrora Slope," he lied. It was the only other place he knew.

          "Oh, wow. Not too far from here, then. I heard there's a lot of wolf walkers down there."

          "Yeah," he mumbled—he didn't know if that were true or not.

          "Do you have family?"

          "No."

          "Oh...what happened—"

          "They died, like everyone else in this fucked up world," he grunted.

          A wary look struck Elliot's face. "Yeah...no one even really talks about the war that caused all of this anymore, but my mom says we avoided the worst of it."

          That was hard to believe, considering the state of what he'd seen of this land. Itamore had been ensnared in diseased fog, and everywhere else seemed to be just like this academy—kill or be killed. At least the air up here was breathable.

          "I'm sorry about your family," Elliot mumbled.

          "Won't you miss her?" he digressed.

          "What?"

          "Your mom."

          "Oh." He frowned sullenly as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a locket. "Well, I miss her all the time. But she's always with me, I guess," he mumbled, opening the locket to reveal a small photo of him and a woman that looked very similar to him. "He killed her when he found out she had been setting money aside to send me here."

          Clementine's eyes widened a little in astonishment. "What?"

          "Yeah," he mumbled, slipping the locket back into his pocket.

          "What the hell?"

          "Only reason I'm here is because she'd been sending the money to my aunt, who took me in after the asshole kicked me out onto the streets."

          And Clementine had thought he had it bad. "Damn," he mumbled, leaning back in his seat.

          "So, that's why I have to make it. I promised my mom. And that's why I'm so...so freaked about this arachnoid thing. Carmichael and that are the only other friends I have here, and if they get killed or kicked out, it'll be just us, and we'll be easier to take out."

          He had a point.

          Clementine sighed, scratching his head. He didn't really know what to do about the tension that had already risen between Carmichael and the arachnoids...but he could try to help them solve what had happened.

          No...he didn't have time for that. He needed to focus on the Ravenblood.

          But...if he lost the cover of Elliot's group, things would become much more harder than they already had.

          He pondered for a moment. He remembered what he'd seen Molly wrapped up in, and what the arachnoids had used to weave Bernard to the wall, and both materials didn't look the same. So, what if it wasn't the arachnoids that had done that to Molly?

          Clementine sighed and shrugged. "What if it wasn't the arachnoids?" he mumbled. "That killed Molly."

          "Huh?"

          "Well, you're the know-it-all here—surely there are other people that make web stuff, right?"

          Elliot frowned. "I mean...sure, but...Carmichael seems so sure it was them."

          "He's angry," he said simply. "People tend to pounce at the first suspect when they're as angry as he is—they don't think," he said, tapping his head. "That's why it's good they have you, right? So, think."

          Staring at him, Elliot pondered. "Well...I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but if I looked through one of my journals—"

          "You...have journals?" Clementine asked, not sure if he was curious or cringing.

          "I write everything down—it's easier to remember that way."

          He wasn't going to argue with that. "Okay, well...how long is it going to take you?"

          Elliot looked down at the book he'd been reading and shrugged. "Well, I have to study for this music thing tonight, but maybe I can look through them after that."

          "Do you want help?" he offered—a peek at Elliot's journals might help him broaden his knowledge more than the books in the library had.

          But he shook his head. "Uh...no, thank you. Heh, my, uh...journals are private."

          Now he was definitely cringing. "Okay...." He stood up. "I should get to bed anyway."

          "Okay—goodnight."

          Clementine headed for his room. "Yeah," he mumbled, disappearing inside.

          Once he'd locked his door, he made his way over to his bed and fell into it. It creaked under the weight of his fall, and as he lay there, he stared up at the ceiling.

          What was he going to do about Ian and the Ravenblood? He had to think of something as soon as possible. Things were already getting worse in the academy, and soon, he was sure it was going to become impossible to do what he'd come to do.

          He didn't know Ian's schedule—did he always have a class with his friends? Surely they wouldn't follow him everywhere...like into the bathroom or infirmary if he so happened to need to see a nurse. Everyone made mistakes—Clementine knew that better than most. But would someone like Ian, who had just made sure to tell all his friends not to travel alone, be so careless? Clementine could only hope.

          With a frustrated sigh, he dragged his hand over his face. He needed that roster. Not only would it probably tell him who was what, but he might also be able to find out the students' class schedules. If there was a class Ian took with even just one of his friends, maybe Clementine could take them on. He trusted his abilities, and Harrison had been pretty easy to take down. All he needed to do was catch them by surprise.

          Alternatively, he could be...devious. What if he found a way to tie in Ian and his friends to Molly's murder? No...that wouldn't work...would it? If he did that, he'd have Carmichael, Stanley, and Bernard to help him take them out. That wasn't a bad idea, was it? But how would he convince them that Ian was responsible when they were so sure that it was the arachnoids?

          He tapped his chin, pondering. He could lie—he could make something up. He liked to think he was smart, and Carmichael and his friends already thought so, too. He'd also already gotten Elliot looking into other species that used webs or web-like materials. What if he forged some sort of bestiary page? No...he sucked at art, and there was also the possibility that Elliot or his friends might know of the Ravenblood.

          Clementine needed to be extremely smart and cautious about this. If he was going to frame Ian, he'd have to do it in a way where his being Ravenblood wasn't revealed. The only way to know was by their symbol or if they lost control, but would Ian really risk that? No, he didn't think so. He could make Ian out to be something entirely different—he'd tie him into the Molly case, and he'd use Elliot's friends. That could actually work.... But first, he wanted to see whether or not he needed to go down that route. Before that, he was going to go for the roster, and if things were still looking this precarious, he'd pursue his idea of framing Ian.

          That was it. That was his plan.

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