“I think that if I killed my girlfriend on a college campus and I didn’t want to go to jail, I’d think of something fast. And that something might be to pretend it wasn’t me who did it at all.”
I thought back to Grace’s words.She had us all fooled.
But then there was Dani. Her blond hair, limp around her face. Her eyes, so unnaturally dark. And the feeling in that room, like sinking thirty feet underwater. “You didn’t see her, Max. You didn’t feel the energy in that room. I mean, they called a priest.”
I shook my head. “You can’t fake that. She’s not acting of her own free will. Someone did this to her.”
We sat on a concrete bench beneath a mesquite tree, and sunlight filtered onto my hand through the fernlike leaves. A warm wind blew from over the canyon, swirling up red dirt into a miniature dust devil.
The inescapable smell of burning rubber crept under my nose. Everywhere I looked I saw the polka-dotted bra, the pink fingernails tapping on a phone, and every time I closed my eyes, I heard her screams. I shut my eyes tight, forcing the memory down.
Max looked at me. “Then who? And what kind of spell could do something like that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Hexes are tricky. Difficult to pull off, difficult to keep someone hexed for that long. Whoever it is, whatever it is, is powerful.”
He looked down at his phone. “I say we talk to this advisor of hers, Dr. Strauss. Six of her eight classes were with him. Maybe he knows if someone had a problem with her. Maybe someone was harassing her?”
“Good a place as any.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Teacher
The Physics, Astronomy, and Astrological Divination Department was a two-room block at the back of Ridley Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus. A small building, it was composed of fat russet bricks, arched windows, and a white domed observatory at the roof. Inside, the walls were covered with star charts, old maps, and prints of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton.
I filled my Christmas mug with stale coffee from the break room and wrapped my fingers around it. The AC from the rest of the building shunted all the cold air down this wing—another sign of a Magic building that needed an architect. But I couldn’t tell if it was the chill or anxiety that was responsible for the twisting of my stomach. The hallway was completely empty. As our footsteps echoed down it, I had the feeling of walking into a crypt.
When we reached the classroom, Dr. Antony Strauss was hunched over a lab table, back to us. Max knocked lightly on the wall.
“No office hours today,” Strauss said without turning around. “Funny how the sign on the door supplies information. All you have to do is read it.”
“Afraid we’re not here for help with our physics homework,” Max drawled.
Dr. Strauss’s head flicked up, a lock of pale hair falling over one glassy, chilly eye. He slid in front of what he’d been working on. But not before I caught sight of it—a badly damaged miniature recreation of the Sir Isaac Newton statue at Cambridge, dressed in draping fabrics and holding a prism. The thing’s head and legs had been lopped off.
His mouth folded into a smirk, as if more bemused than annoyed by the interruption. “And how can I help you?”
Dr. Strauss was as handsome as I remembered, tall and fit with short blond hair and a clean-shaven face. When he looked at me, I got the same giddy feeling from when I took his class years ago. Though he wasn’t all the same. There was an unsettling intensity to his eyes that wasn’t there before. And beneath the rolled sleeves of his button-up, his skin had an ill, feverish look to it. He yanked his sleeves down when he saw me looking.
Max stepped closer to me.
“We were hoping you could tell us about Dani,” I said.
“Certainly,” he said, not dropping his wolfish smile. “Anything I can do to help.”
“Six of her eight classes were in here?”
I let my hair fall around me like a curtain, blocking out the feel of Strauss’s eyes on me. Something about his glacier-blue eyes reminded me of a predator watching as I stumbled blindly through the woods. My fingers wrapped around my Christmas mug, drawing what comfort I could from it, from Aaron.
“Not in here. Up there,” he said, pointing to the floor above us. We followed him up the creaking stairs to the observatory.
The observatory opened as wide as a whale’s mouth. A twenty-foot white telescope stood in the center of the room, beneath a dome already partially open to the sky. Smaller telescopes were positioned around it and pointed skyward. Taped on the walls were sheets of paper filled with equations.
“You two must have been close, considering how much time you spent together,” Max said.
“I make myself available to all my students during office hours, but I wouldn’t say we were close, no.”
I frowned. When I was a student, Dr. Strauss also served as Dean of Student Affairs. He was beloved by students and staff alike. I wondered if Dr. Robetresse ever regretted the position she’d put him in, if he’d ever used that power and popularity to try to weasel his way into her job. There was certainly the question of why he was no longer on the council.
