“I’d like to see the pall for myself,” she said, and he held his breath. The idea of her within that miasma of death, awful and mesmerizing, making her as sick as he felt now, made him stop short. It cleared the fog the memories of their kiss had drummed up in his brain, and he remembered why he had agreed to her help at all—to keep her from investigating on her own. To keep her safe. Before he could object, she asked, “Is the pall stable?”
“For now,” he said. “I refreshed the ward runes this afternoon. That’s part of why I was in there so long.” Thinking quickly, he added, “Every time someone enters the pall, that protective seal has to be broken. Given its strength, we shouldn’t do it again until there are less people on campus.”
She chewed on her lip as she thought but then nodded. “You’re right. It’s probably best to wait until after graduation.” He released his caught breath.
“Give me a few days. I’ll gather all my research, and we can coordinate our schedules to go over it.” He swallowed dryly. He would tell her the truth about Beltane when they had space. When he wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and grab her by the hand, closing the scant distance that separated them in this godsforsaken office. “Off campus, preferably.”
“Obviously.”
She watched him with that exacting look again, as if she could measure his worth on sight. He met her gaze, feeling the charge running between them. He had wondered at it before, as he’d held her arm, his touch barely a graze and her skin soft beneath the rough pads of his fingers, calloused from years of prep work in his alchemical lab. Now that his memory had caught up with what his body so clearly already knew, he understood whythe space between them buzzed, and it felt like the small damp office was losing air. Could Maggie feel it, too?
But then she turned away, gathering her belongings in the large tote bag she carried everywhere, a leftover from some linguistics conference she’d attended with the Diadhan word foralchemywritten out in the interdimensional phonetic alphabet.
No. He didn’t think Maggie felt it at all.
“Can you make it to your car okay?” she asked as she began turning off the glittering lights on her bookshelf.
“I’m fine.” He said it too quickly and his voice was gravelly, sounding harsh even to his ears.
She straightened, crossing her arms. She wore a sweater with absurdly large sleeves (he realized now to prevent the fabric from touching her burnt forearm) with a neckline cut low across the swell of her breasts. Arthur’s eyes were trained so carefully on her face that he thought he might strain them. “I’m fine,” he insisted again.
“If you faint in the parking lot, I’m not going to retrieve you.” She dug back into that drawer of hers that seemed to contain endless sweets, and held out a handful of ginger candies.
He took them, carefully trying to avoid touching her, and stuffed them into his pocket as she swung her tote over her shoulder. He was waiting for her to leave so he could process this all in peace, without her cleavage distracting him, when she said, “Well, come on. Get your stuff.”
“I told you, I’m fine.” He couldn’t think with her there, not when all he could remember was how soft her lips were, how their kiss had tasted like honeysuckle. But she just rolled her eyes and looked at him expectantly. With a heavy sigh, he tooka step toward his desk. The room spun with the effort, and he steadied himself against the back of his chair, waiting for it to still.
“Fine, he says,” Maggie huffed under her breath.
Arthur dropped another one of the ginger candies into his mouth, focusing on the spicy sweetness that bloomed on his tongue instead of the spinning room. The ginger quelled the nausea that had churned back to life as he slowly picked up the bag he had left, still unpacked, on his desk earlier. The morning felt so distant now, before he had gone into the pall to try to better understand its makeup, to try to find the key to the dissipation spell that would close whatever crack to the underworld he had opened up with his magic that day. It had been a useless endeavor. He didn’t know any more now than he had before, and all he had to show for his time within the pall was a headache he’d still be nursing in the morning.
They walked together in silence as Arthur’s mind spiraled, a confusing mix of memories of Beltane and his experiences in the pall, but Maggie’s clear voice cut through his thoughts.
“Do you live far from campus?”
Somehow, they had reached the split in the path. “I’m over in Atlantia for now.” She scrunched up her nose. He understood the reaction. Atlantia was the closest city to Galloway’s hamlet, sitting on the edge of the ocean just to the south of Brig Beach, but it was far. The drive could be nearly forty minutes on bad days, but his move out to Hawthorn had been rash, and he hadn’t had time to secure living arrangements closer to the school. “What about you?”
“I’m just over there.” She gestured to the set of squat garden apartments that were just off the campus property. The left fork of the winding path skimmed the edge of the Wilds and went to Maggie’s apartment. The right fork curved around Ilex Hall to a parking lot in the back of the building.
“Must be nice to walk every day,” he said in an attempt at casual conversation.
“It was.” She looked up at the solid gray mass of clouds above them. “Until the pall shifted the weather, and I had to start dodging wraiths on my way past the Wilds.” That was an exaggeration, he knew. Despite the ghoul sightings in town, the wraiths and banshees were still avoiding people. Though he had no doubt they were being drawn closer and closer by the pall’s power, they still preferred the shadows of the Wilds. For now.
Still, he grimaced. “I could…” He paused, looking at her in the gray afternoon light. Her hair was swept up in a clip, strands loose and framing her face. She was beautiful.
He’d thought it the first time he’d seen her, at his welcome reception in the fall. She came over with Dr. Hawberry, a wide, warm smile on her face. She didn’t stumble over herself to impress him, hardly said a word about her own scholarship, unlike some of the other faculty he’d met who had fallen over themselves and barely said hello before asking him to consult on their research. A few weeks later, he attended her community lecture and had been so impressed with her work using Diadhan literature as a guide for incantation translation. He’d been meaning to tell her how much he enjoyed it, how innovative he found it, but all the realities of a new professorship at a small college hadtaken over his life. Committees and events and all the grading he was suddenly responsible for since Hawthorn didn’t have teaching assistants.
Still, when he was tasked with assigning office mates, he knew the only person he was remotely interested in sharing a space with was Maggie. Until he realized just how much she hated him, for reasons that were a complete mystery to him. But even that…there was something, maybe, a little bit thrilling about the fact that she didn’t care about him or who he was at all.
“Yes?” she asked. It was lucky he had the excuse of the pall sickness, because he kept losing his train of thought around her.
“I could walk you to your door, if you want.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “I should be offering to drive you home.”
“I’ll be fine,” he insisted, but she didn’t split off on the path toward her apartment, instead following him to the parking lot. He pointed to the rusty truck he was driving, and Maggie’s lips curved into that slightly wicked grin he’d only seen her give Dr. Hawberry.
“Not what I expected,” was all she said.
