“Silence!” Ottersock roared. “The pair of you are leaving!”
At once, their attention snapped to him. “Leaving?” they chorused.
“Are you firing us?” Amelia added, her face blanching. Even Caleb felt disturbed. He’d spent his entire life aiming to become an Oxford professor. Without the job, he didn’t know who he might become, but memories of grimy streets, thin gruel, and his father’s death from cholera still haunted him with what he might have been.
Ottersock snatched up the jar of willow bark and began shaking powder directly into his cupped palm. “I’m not firing you. Yet. I’m sending you to the countryside.”
“The what?”Aghast, Caleb was sure he must have misheard. A large moth landed atop Ottersock’s head, but damned if he was going to say anything about it. Even Amelia remained silent, her brain no doubt stuck at the “yet” part of the conversation.
“Countryside,” Ottersock repeated. “The big green place with lots of trees and hardly any students.”
Caleb and Amelia looked at each other, wide-eyed, a silent conversation whipping back and forth between them. Then realizing that Ottersock was watching with roused suspicion, Caleb immediately frowned. “This is all your fault!” he grumbled at Amelia.
She gasped with credible outrage in reply. “Mine? If you weren’t such a—arapscallion—”
“Ooh,” he gibed. “Never have I been so insulted.”
Her eyes flashed. On the desk, the Hereford teaspoon began to tremble.
“Ahem.”Ottersock cleared his throat with such vehemence, he must have strained his tonsils. “Can’t you two stop with the enmity for just one hour?”
They murmured apologies. Ottersock tipped his handful of headache powder into his mouth, swallowing it unhappily. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he scowled at the door behind them. “You can come in now, Miss Tunnicliffe.”
Caleb and Amelia looked back to see a young woman enter the office. She was attractively plump, with her black hair in a fashionably tall knot, and she wore a striped dress suit that didn’t just sayI mean businessbut practically gave a podium speech about it.
“Professor,” she greeted Ottersock. “Professor, Professor,” she added, nodding to Caleb and Amelia. Her tone was crisp, and yet the tightness with which her lace-gloved fingers clutched her reticule suggested nervous excitement behind the poise. She glanced at the moths and the fire-breathing statue, and her eyes widened.
“This is Miss Vanity Tunnicliffe,” Ottersock introduced her. “She is a curator from the British Museum, and has a job for you.”
“Actually, I’m just a receptionist,” Miss Tunnicliffe said bashfully. “All the museum’s curators were at the Minervaeum Club when somedreadfulperson let off a magic bomb. They’re in various states of enchantment, so I was dispatched instead.”
Ottersock’s jaw twitched. Amelia stepped forward hastily, holding out her hand to the young woman in polite welcome.
“How do you do, Miss Tunnicliffe?”
“I am very well, Professor Tarrant,” Miss Tunnicliffe replied, shaking the hand daintily. She spoke like a woman who wielded the Queen’s English in the same conscious manner one wore an especially fashionable hat. “And you?”
Caleb rolled his eyes. They’d be here all day at this rate, and he had important work to enjoy ignoring. “What’s this about?” he interrupted.
Miss Tunnicliffe turned to him, her expression brightening as she took in his remarkably good looks (or so Caleb assumed, disregarding the influence of the lamp behind him). “Professor Sterling, it’s an honor. I attended your talk on the Big Bang last year.”
Well perhaps they could spare a few minutes for small talk. “Ah yes, the explosion of Alfred the Great’s statue in Southwark,” he said, smiling with instinctive flirtatiousness. “I hope you found it interesting.”
“Oh, yes, it was stellar!” Miss Tunnicliffe very nearly tittered but caught herself in time. “I’m here because Sir Nigel Harroway, a private collector of antiques, is donating a substantial portion of that collection to the British Museum. He suspects several of the items are made from thaumaturgic materials, so the museum requests that Oxford University loan us some specialists who can identify and organize the items before they’re transported.”
“Nobody is more specialist than us,” Caleb assured her with a grin.
“Nobody is more annoying than you,” Ottersock muttered. Miss Tunnicliffe glanced at him uncertainly, and he huffed in weary resignation. “They’re really very good,” he conceded.
“The senior curator did recommend Professor Glebe from Cambridge University—”
“No, no!” Ottersock held up his hands as if he could physically repel that very idea. “Tarrant and Sterling are the best. You want to take them, honestly. And keep them for as long as you wish. I promise they’ll do excellent work!” He gave Caleb and Amelia a warning stare. “Not even these two can get into trouble in Cumbria.”
“Cumbria?!”Caleb echoed in horror.
“But—but—” Amelia was apparently too dazed to form a proper sentence.
“But it’s rural,” Caleb supplied, unable to repress a shiver.
