She laughed. What sort of question was that? “It’smagic.Wouldn’t anyone jump at the chance to do it?”
He glanced down at his coffee, then back up at her with an expression she couldn’t parse. “Even so, you strike me as an outlier.”
“It’s my research specialty.”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head, “your level of passion goes way beyond scholarly interest. Come on. Why?”
She didn’t want to admit she’d never grown out of a childhood fixation. It was vaguely embarrassing. But she expected answers from him, so it was only fair to reciprocate.
“I loved fantasy adventures as a kid,” she muttered. “They made me feel like I could go anywhere and do anything.”
Wonder of wonders, he didn’t laugh. He just raised his eyebrows in a way that invited more details.
“Of course, I went nowhere and did nothing,” she said. “But it was so easy to live in those made-up worlds for a few hours a day and imagine it was just a matter of time before my turn came.”
He sighed.
The lack of mocking seemed only to underscore what a sorry story this was—that even Hartgrave thought it a low blow to make fun of that. She had to fill the silence with something.
“Everyone believed, once.” She leaned against the table, avoiding his eye. “Earth was a mysterious place. And then it wasn’t anymore.”
“The world is disenchanted,” he murmured.
First Agrippa, now Max Weber. He was clearly better read than his bookcase suggested. That raised heropinion of him for the brief time it took him to sip his coffee, frown and pop the cup in the microwave.
Themicrowave. If she could cast spells, she wouldcastthem, by gosh.
“I refuse to believe you can mend a broken mug simply by willing it but you can’t increase the temperature of your coffee,” she said.
“I could.” He watched the cup turn, missing the stink eye she was giving him. “The microwave is equally good.”
“Asmagic?”There was something insulting about the universe choosing him to bestow its secrets upon when she was clearly the one who wanted them more. “I don’t understand you. You’ve got unimaginable power literally at your fingertips, and you’d just as soon use a piece of technology. I think youprefertechnology. If I didn’t know better ...”
She trailed off, feeling as though she’d been staring at a picture of a vase that turned, in the blink of an eye, into two faces.“Oh,” she whispered.
She had his full attention.
“Technology,” she said, gripping the table behind her. “That’s the answer. Technology is magic.”
Ping!declared the microwave.
The fleeting dismay on Hartgrave’s face was as good as an answer. He crossed his arms and said, “How many times do I have to remind you that you’ve used your question already,” but the damage was done. He’d never expected her to figure it out, and she had.
“Rumpelstiltskin!” She broke into a little jig. “Your name is Rumpelstiltskin—”
The implications abruptly set in. Euphoria dimmed. Magic and the bane of her existence weren’t supposed to have anything to do with each other.
And if they did, who was pulling the strings?
She said, “How”—and stopped, silenced by the dark look on Hartgrave’s face. He took two steps toward her. It was all she could do not to shrink back.
“No,” he said softly—dangerously. And out the door he swept.
It should have struck her earlier, perhaps just after he knocked her head against the floor, but Hartgrave—slouching, aggravating, sarcastic Hartgrave—could manage scary quite credibly. This gnawed at her as she picked her way back to his Inferno, half-expecting him to jump out at her from the shadows.
She thought about turning around and going to her rental for safety’s sake, but certain frostbite was worse than possible doom. He probably didn’t realize she was sleeping here. And perhaps he didn’t mean to be ominous. The way his face twisted could have been a trick of the light.
She just didn’t know. She knew very little about him, really. So she sat at her apparently magical computer—wasn’tthata kick in the pants—and typed “Alexander Hartgrave + Ashburn College” into a search engine to see what details of his life it would serve up. Hopefully nothing involving violent crimes.
