I swallowed a familiar lump of anxiety, a relic of all those years of getting dumped on my mother’s friends. Sooner or later, the Leslies and Cecilys, that nice gay couple in Connecticut, uncles Jeff and Brad, would decide they’d had enough. I didn’t blame them. I got good at making myself small and useful, at fitting myself and Toni into the margins of their lives.
Change the subject. Keep her talking.
“What happened to Dr.Eastwick?” I asked.
“It was very sad.”
I waited. Maybe she’d been stabbed in the back by a jealous colleague. Poisoned by a disgruntled graduate student.
Dr.Norton sighed. “She attempted to pass a mobile housing unit on the motorway when the lorry driver swerved. Morrigan was killed by the, ah, falling house. She died instantly.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
Dr.Norton bent a look at me, stern and beautiful as an angel at the gates of paradise. “Generally speaking, if you were a doctoral candidate and your supervisor suddenly became unavailable, we’d do our best to assign you to another member of staff. But given that you’re barely in the program... Well. It’s a question of finding an appropriate match.”
“I can work under anybody,” I said. An image surfaced—me under Gray—the memory sweaty and shocking in this cool, pale, golden room. “I could work with you.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Dr.Norton said gently. “My administrative duties unfortunately preclude my doing as much personal instruction as I would like. And, of course, I have responsibilities outside the school as well.”
The two little blond girls smiled at me smugly from their silver frame.
“I understand,” I said numbly.
“We have several members of staff who work on the creative writing side of things who might be able to advise you. Dr.Ward is the obvious choice, but... We’ll need to set up a meeting. Where are you staying?”
“The Clontarf.” A real Norman castle. My treat to myself on my first visit to Ireland. I suppressed a little bounce of excitement.
Dr.Norton smiled faintly. “I hear it’s very popular with tourists.”
“It’s only for two nights,” I said. “I’m applying for on-campus housing.”
“You’ll find, if you stay, that very few postgraduate students are housed on campus. But you can certainly explore the off-campus options for international students at the Student Union’s service.”
The lump returned.IfI stay? “I’ll do that.”
“I will, of course, do my very best to resolve this before orientation. You’ll want to check your email,” she added with a touch of astringency—a slice of lemon in a cup of Earl Grey.
“I will,” I promised.
“At Trinity, we want every student to succeed. In the meantime, you should visit the library. Acquaint yourself with the center.” Another smile touched her lips. “Think of us as your temporary home.”
I beamed. “Thank you.”
It took me another minute to realize I had been dismissed. And I had no idea where to go from here, except forward. Because going home, going back, wasn’t an option.
—
It turned out my hotel room wasn’t in the actual castle. The building itself had been completely reconstructed in the 1830s, and the wings, which housed the guest rooms, were even more modern than that.
But still. There was a giant stone fireplace in the lobby and suits of armor in the hall and a stag’s head over the reception desk. “Very popular with tourists,” Dr.Norton had said. Maybe I was wrong to be impressed? But I was. Everything was so different from Kansas. Different and lonely.
I curled on the tufted window seat, munching airplane pretzels and checking my inbox. Both my inboxes. Nothing. Yet.
Two years ago, there would have been an email from Gray. Several emails. No dick pics, no texts, from the author ofUnabridged. He’d courted me for months with long, intimate, flattering letters praising my “old soul and fresh, unspoiled mind” (that was my favorite, I printed out that one), so different from the other students’.
I scrolled down, ignoring the prying requests from reporters inviting me to tell my side of the story. The creepers who wanted sex with the girl who slept with Grayson Kettering. The crazies who wanted to reenact scenes from the novel. (That scene with the horned mask? Especially popular, and we’d never even done that. At least, he hadn’t done it with me.) Then there were the Grayson Kettering fans who wanted me dead because I—that is, Destiny—was a heartless vampire who had sucked the soul of their literary hero. Sometimes the letter writers wanted both: thesex and my death. Usually in that order, although they weren’t always clear.
Finally I found the original email from Glenda Norton asking me to contact the school at my earliest convenience (too late for that!) as Dr.Eastwick was “unfortunately no longer with us.”Unfortunate. Like it was just my bad luck.
