She hopped over it and joined Woodfork in a jog away from it.
Soon they’d be topside again, and Hailey would miss her chance to ask what she really wanted to know. Or not know. Truthfully, she didn’t want to confirmwhat she’d read, and he’d probably just shut her down again anyway, but it was now or never.
“Professor,” Hailey said, gathering her courage as they slowed to a nice walk again, “you wrote in your book that Envoys are emotionless…” She drew a breath but chewed her lip, rethinking this whole line of talk as she envisioned Asher listening in through Woodfork’s head.
“You want to know if Asher is capable of love.”
“Yeah…” she sighed, feeling exposed. “I mean, he seemed to want me here yesterday, but now—” The words stuck in her throat, and she shrugged. “Well, he just kicked me out of the university.”
She looked up at Woodfork, who nodded.
“Not to worry,” he said with a warm smile. “As you’ll read in my chronicles, the Envoys came to this Earth devoid of emotion, but as the centuries passed, they became infected, so to speak, with feelings. It’s new to Asher—these emotions. In a lot of ways, he is emotionally like a child—very easily injured. Be patient with him, Hailey. I believe his feelings for you are genuine.”
The tunnel opened to the Olde Main stairwell, and Dr. Woodfork led them into the darkness behind the stairs, where a large, rusty door hung with the letters I-MET painted in bright white.
Inside sat a crooked reception desk and a few tattered chairs under dim light, like the waiting room of a haunted doctor’s office. The professor tapped a “ring for service” bell, which called forth a shrouded figure, who held his hand out as if he were expecting them.
“This won’t take long,” the professor told Hailey after the ghoulish figure disappeared.
“Do you know where I can find Asher?” Hailey couldn’t stand it when someone was mad at her. Mostly, she wanted to straighten out her expulsion and find out why it was suddenly “unsafe” for her there. Honestly, she thought she’d handled things pretty darn well so far. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more her Irish blood boiled. He had a lot of nerve expelling her!
“The Observatory, I believe,” Woodfork answered as I-MET presented a repaired set of teeny eyeglasses. The ghoul also handed the professor a paperback book.
Hailey frowned as they made their way back to the dark tunnel. “The Observatory’s off limits to students, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and I wouldnotdisturb him there.” He handed her the glasses.
Very gently, she placed them onto the face of the bookworm and set the paperback in front of him. Immediately, the groaning stopped—the worm flipped open the book—and both the book and the worm vanished.
“Where’d he go?”
“The library, most likely.” Woodfork beamed at Hailey. “Well done.”
Following her successful rehabilitation of the moaning bookworm in a dark tunnel, Hailey had every intention of disturbing Asher at the observatory, and headed out the doors of Olde Main via the red-buttoned out-between with quite a bone to pick.
Marching to the Observatory with an increasingly quickened pace, she swatted all thirty-five species of Alaskan mosquitos as she went, trying but failing to reach a particularly hungry one attached to the middle of her back. By the time she reached the off-limits building, she had a full head of steam and a hungry swarm of bloodsuckers on her tail and didn’t hesitate to barge inside.
“Asher!” she called.
She got no answer from the Envoy at the top of the mezzanine, who looked through a telescope in the middle of the day. Ridiculous!
“You’ve got a lot of nerve—ignoring me now…after…” She had to catch her breath. “…if you…think I’m leaving this…place…”
The room swayed a bit, and she staggered.
“…I’m not…afraid of you… You’re…” She couldn’t believe she had to catch her breath again. “…I’m not…” She forgot what she wanted to say and blinked hard before falling to her knees.
Asher landed with a metallic clang on the grating in front of Hailey, and she squinted to see him. Fingers of blackness crept around her eyes as Asher helped her crumple gently to the floor.
“Asher…” she breathed. “…I don’t…feel…” As numbness spread down her legs and pins and needles jabbed her hands, Asher pulled a quill from Hailey’s back.
“It’s poison,” he said with no emotion, and then he paced away from her, looking thoughtfully skyward. “Asher…” Hailey cried between gasps. She tried reaching out to him, but her arm didn’t budge.
“Asher?” she called again, but he didn’t budge, either.
Chapter twenty-seven
The Quill
