She tried to focus on where she was. A stone corridor—the basement, then.
Abruptly, she remembered. An invader. A door out of nowhere. A man in a secret room, flying.
Magic.
“You might have a concussion.” Hartgrave leaned in, looking at her eyes. “Do I seem blurry? Are you dizzy?”
That man in the room—what had he looked like? She struggled to dredge up details from a brain working at half-speed. A hat, she was pretty sure he wore a hat. And ... and a coat? She stared at Hartgrave. He wasn’t wearing a hat or a coat, but more importantly—it couldn’t have been him, scoffer at all things paranormal. That was beyond laughable.
“Dr.Daggett,” Hartgrave said, the sharpness sounding less like his usual annoyance and more like honest anxiety.
She’d lost track of what he’d asked, but she said “no,” hoping that answer made sense.
He sat back on his heels, letting out a breath. “What’s the last thing you recall?”
Two things struck her: Strange that she was outside the secret room if she’d been attacked inside it; and rather more importantly, the door was gone.
Hartgrave cleared his throat.
Gone.
“Do you haveanyidea how you came to be unconscious?” he said.
She stared at the wall, unable to make her eyes see the small doorknob. It might be cleverly hidden behind a spell cast by a wizard, one who’d knocked her out, deposited her in the corridor and scooted. Or she’d grasped at thin air, at a doorknob that wasn’t, and jerked so hard that she’d knocked herself out against the opposing wall. No wizard. No magic. Just psychosis.
Even while possibly concussed, she could tell which scenario was more likely. Tears welled.
Hartgrave looked away. “It’s all right—you’ll be all right—I had a concussion myself, once. Let’s get you to the campus clinic.”
He grasped her elbows and helped her to her feet. “Can you walk? Hold on ...”
Two things occurred to her as the pain receded enough for higher-order thinking. He was being unusually—suspiciously—nice. And it was nearly midnight.
Then, reaching down with the hand he wasn’t using to steady her, he picked up the bunched-up something he’d put under her head. His long black coat.
Maybe she hadn’t gone entirely around the bend. She glanced up at him and said, as nonchalantly as possible, “Isn’t this well past your quitting time?”
He gave an exhausted half-shrug. “Bad week. I’ve a lot of work to do still. As long as I was in the building, I thought I might give your computer an overhaul, considering—” He stopped, apparently thinking better of the customary insults. “Well, just considering. Shall we?”
“Just a minute.”
He didn’t look inclined to wait, but she pulled free and stumbled to the wall that should have had a door, catching herself with both hands.
“Dr. Daggett,” he said, “I really do have loads of work, so if you don’t mind—”
“Go ahead, then,” she said, running her palms along the wall.
He tugged at her arm. “The fact that you think I might leave you here with possible brain damage is confirmation of it, no MRI required.” Back to full Hartgrave-strength. That was quick. “Come with me.”
“No, I lost something—”
She brushed against it in that moment. Heart accelerating, she grabbed the knob, wrenched the door open—Hartgrave letting go with a startled intake of breath—and rushed in. The room looked even bigger on second viewing, but it was definitely the same place.There, the stone table. There, lying near it, the wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
Her head pounded, her back and elbows ached, and she’d never felt better in her life. Not a hallucination. Real.
Magic wasreal.
And to hide that, someone had tried to make her think she’d gone crazy. Someone had injured her. Someone had an incredible secret and few scruples.
