“Jack!” Doug said sharply. He wasn’t just my ride; he’d been Cinnamon’s tutor since… heck, even when she was in the hospital. But I’d not expected him to know more about what was going on than I did. “That was completely uncalled for. Dakota’s a devoted parent.”
“Doug, please,” Jack said, “you haven’t dealt with these parents like… I… ”
He trailed off as I glared at him. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said coldly.
“Jack Palmotti,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Cinnamon’s foster father.”
Fremont shrank back from the two of us. After a moment, I extended my hand to him.
“Dakota Frost, Cinnamon’s adoptive mother,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”
Palmotti glanced between us. “So, Miss Frost… what is your relationship to Doug?” he asked. “It’s low to circumvent a court order by sending a friend in the guise of a tutor.”
“Doug is the fiance of my best friend,” I snapped, “and I resent the insinuation-”
“Please, please, everyone,” Vladimir said, appearing from nowhere, stepping up between us, touching both me and Palmotti on the arm. “We’re all here for one reason: Cinnamon.”
I sighed. He was right. “Mister Palmotti, where are my manners?” I said. “It is my pleasure to introduce you to Doctor Yonas Vladimir, Cinnamon’s math instructor. Yonas, please meet Mister Jack Palmotti. He’s taking care of Cinnamon while the court case is resolved.”
Vladimir and Palmotti froze for a moment. Apparently I’d broken their ‘let’s get everyone angrier’ script by apologizing and introducing them politely. That was nice. Perhaps I should try it more often. Finally it was Palmotti that spoke, directly to me.
“So you know her math teacher,” he said, with a half smile. “That’s encouraging.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry I was snappish. I… just lost a close friend.”
And then I choked off, staring into the distance. Doug put his hand on my shoulder. And then Palmotti put his hand on my arm tenderly. I glared, through the edge of tears, but instantly I could see that he’d lost someone-I guessed, from the pain and the sympathy, his wife.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “Please forgive me my suspicions. I wasn’t trying to make it harder on you right now. And I know it’s hard on you-believe me, I understand.”
Our little group was admitted to Dean Belloson’s office, a double-sized version of Fremont’s office at the end of the row, containing a youngish, pudgy man with thick glasses who I first took to be Belloson’s secretary before I realized there was no office beyond the one in which we now stood. There, the five of us sat in a semicircle of chairs opposite the Dean.
“I understand this may seem precipitous,” the Dean said, “but young Miss Frost has skipped nearly a dozen classes this week, totaling almost three full days of class time.”
“I’m sorry,” Palmotti said, “I just can’t make her do anything, much less go to school.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, it took me a while,” I said. “And precipitous is precisely the word I’d use for kicking a new student out after only a few days of absences.”
“Did you not read the Guide for Students and Parents?” the Dean said. “Didn’t my staff explain it to you at the entrance interview? This is not a public school, open to all comers. We have very high standards. Three consecutive days of unexplained absences-”
“ Unexplained? ” I said. “What do you call that business with Burnham? You can’t expect perfection when she’s just been taken from her mother-wait, scratch that. Why is this even an issue with all that I’m paying you? This is a disciplinary issue between me and Cinnamon.”
“Miss Frost,” Dean Belloson said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead, “it isn’t that simple. This isn’t a warehouse, and we’re not storing Cinnamon for a monthly fee. She’s a person, and a student, but not your typical student. Handling her takes extra effort.”
“You knew when you took her she was an extraordinary needs student,” I said. “Are you or are you not equipped to deal with werekin?”
“That’s not it,” Vladimir said. “Dakota, Cinnamon needs a lot of special tutoring,”
“You also knew she had little prior education, which you personally said was OK,” I said. “And I thought I explained to you we only just discovered she might have Tourette’s.”
“Oh, she’s almost certainly got it,” Vladimir said quietly. “I’ve suspected since she called me a clown in the entrance interview. She was immediately mortified and tried to distract us-”
“Or,” the Dean said, “she could be an uncouth, but clever little-”
“She was mortified,” Vladimir repeated. “Corprolalia-dirty speech, the symptom most famously and a bit exaggeratedly associated with Tourette’s-is not just cussing. It can be inappropriate comments which are hard to bottle in, but don’t reflect how she feels.”
“I’ve seen that,” Palmotti said suddenly. “I’ve almost certainly seen that.”
“I have too,” I said. Damnit. “At least twice earlier that day, in fact.”
“Taken from her home? School shopping? A death of a friend? The more stressful it is, the harder it will be for her to keep a lid on it,” Vladimir said. “But corprolalia often fades past the teens. Tourette’s is more than that-facial tics, for example. On that note, that steel collar of hers-can we lose it? Tight collars can worsen the tics, but I understand it’s locked on.”
“I’ll ask, but I suspect the answer is no,” I said. “It’s sort of her vampire visa.”
“ Vampire visa?” Fremont and Palmotti said in surprised, worried unison.
“Aha!” the Dean said, putting his hand to his head with an expression of disgust. “I knew I recognized that ‘S’ seal from somewhere. That’s a vampire passage token, isn’t it? House of Saffron, correct? The Vampire Queen of Little Five Points?”
“Why… yes,” I said. “How did you-”
“My apologies, Miss Frost,” he said. “If you’ll pardon the pun, young Cinnamon’s been bitten by vampire politics. One thing in her file that forced me to escalate this was a complaint from a parent-but that parent is in the Gentry, vampires in dispute with the House of Saffron. Lord Iadimus’s wife may have seen Cinnamon’s collar and decided to make trouble for her.”
“Charming,” I said. The last thing I’d expected was that the Dean was up on vampire politics-and if Cinnamon simply attending the same school as a child of the Gentry was causing problems, I couldn’t imagine what Saffron was having to deal with working with the Gentry face to face. “And the collar only protects from physical, not political assault.”
“Let’s not lose perspective,” Vladimir said gently. “The parental complaint was not the only thing in her already large file. And it isn’t just tics or cussing, it’s willful behavior. Her corprolalia, and I do agree she probably has it, only explains part of her smart mouth.”
“How can you tell?” I asked sharply.
“Cussing out of the blue might be a verbal tic,” Vladimir said, “but if it sounds like she meant it, she probably said it on purpose. But, honestly, our teachers are professionals. We can handle a few f-bombs. It’s the acting out. It isn’t fair to all the other students in her classes.”
“Well, we’re here,” I said. “What do you want of us?”
“You have to convince her to attend and to behave herself,” he said. “The Dean’s right. I’ve seen this a lot with special needs students-it isn’t that they’re not capable, it’s that they don’t see how school is relevant to them. Cinnamon can be… particularly colorful.”
I sighed. “All right,” I said. “I am more than willing to talk to her, but as I understand the court order, it will have to be here at school, supervised. After school she has to stay in the custody of the Palmottis, and I can’t imagine how hard this is on them.”
“Thank you,” Palmotti said, very quietly.
“I’ll go further,” the Dean said. “You have to convince her to take class seriously. We care about Cinnamon, we really do, but we have many hardworking students here-”