She knew she should let it go. It wasn’t personal; she knew that. And if she wasn’t going to let it go, she should confronthim about it. But whenever she thought about bringing it up, thought about having to defend the scholarship she had carved out for herself and was so proud of, she also thought she might cry. She knew from experience what men thought of women who cried out of anger.Unprofessional. Immature. If you’re going to cry about it, maybe you’re not ready for a position in this program after all.No, she refused to cry in front of Arthur Taliesin. She shook her head as she walked down the hall, trying desperately to convince herself that the burning in her eyes was residual pall dust seeping through the floors.
Lost in unfortunate memories, she almost ran into Dean Clearwater coming around the corner. She stopped abruptly, nearly losing her balance in the process. “Ah! Maggie.” He steadied her with a hand on her elbow. “I was hoping to run into you, though perhaps not quite so literally.”
“Sorry, Richard. I’m a little distracted today.”
“The pall is affecting us all,” he admitted, a slight twinkle in his eye alerting her to the fact that his rhyme didn’t go unnoticed. The delight fell away, though, and he gestured to the empty, sunlit classroom to their right. “Would you mind sitting with me for a moment?”
Maggie followed him inside, and they both sat at empty desks. Dean Clearwater angled his toward her like they were students working on a project together.
“I imagine you have read your email by now?” he asked, clasping his hands together.
“Dr. Taliesin has already moved in.”
“Oh, wonderful!” There was far more excitement in his voicethan Maggie felt the situation warranted. He tapped his desk, a pensive look on his face. “Maggie, I know I don’t have to explain to you how important it is to keep Dr. Taliesin happy.”
Maggie thought she needed an explanation very much, but she didn’t say that. The dean wasn’t bad, as bosses go, but he could be painfully out of touch, and what he wanted for Hawthorn didn’t always align with what Maggie thought the college should prioritize. He was so focused on growth and numbers and funding, and she was glad someone was, but she had little patience for chasing those abstractions at the expense of her students’ education.
“As I’m sure is clear,” he went on, “a pall of this size will take some time to remove. A few weeks, at best.” Maggie ran her hand up and down her arm against the chill. It was warm outside, and Maggie wore a short-sleeved blouse, but the temperature inside Ilex Hall had been dropping all day thanks to the pall. She would have been more comfortable in a turtleneck. “The good news is that Dr. Taliesin managed to keep his wits about him to control the spread of the pall.” Maggie barely suppressed her huff at that incomplete assessment of what happened on Friday afternoon, but the dean didn’t notice. “Unfortunately, negative effects are already being felt across campus, and we expect there will be some consequences for Galloway as well.”
“It’s already attracting banshees,” Maggie pointed out. The piercing, crystalline shrieks of the wailing beasts had kept her up the past two nights.
Dean Clearwater nodded grimly. “The important thing is that our students and staff remain safe. With a few more weeksof classes and the immediate need to host families for graduation, we thought it best to fortify the campus wards early.”
Typically, this was a project for the last week of summer, when professors returned to campus. They worked together to ward the buildings, including the student dorms, going door by door. It was always one of Maggie’s favorite weeks of the year. Something about the task, the quiet campus empty of students, and the lingering sweltering heat made it feel like summer camp. “Dr. Li had the brilliant idea to have students completing their capstone projects fortify the wards for us. They’re getting started tomorrow.
“In any case, I appreciate your flexibility.” He paused for a moment, his impressive eyebrows drawing together. “I can’t stress enough, Maggie, how important Dr. Taliesin’s program is to the college.”
Maggie’s lips pressed together, but she nodded as Dean Clearwater went on. “Enrollment at Hawthorn has been down for years, but this year we saw a threefold increase in applicants. I attribute that growth to having someone like Arthur on our faculty. It would be a shame,” he said pointedly, tapping his finger to punctuate each word, “to lose the momentum.”
She had so many questions she wanted to ask the dean—and so many things she wanted to clear up—but they all died on her tongue as she realized what he was implying. He would never come right out and say Maggie’s own tenure hung in the balance, depending on the happiness of the famous, sour alchemist. Of course he wouldn’t. But Maggie was a smart woman who could read between the lines.
“It would certainly be a shame to lose Dr. Taliesin so soonafter he joined us,” Maggie finally responded, and that, at least, was something close to the truth. “Isn’t there somewhere else he would be more comfortable, though? It’s an awfully small office. And damp.”
“I made the same suggestion to him, even offering up an empty suite in Ferox Hall. But Dr. Taliesin wouldn’t hear of it,” he said, shaking his head and chuckling softly. “He didn’t want to receive any kind of special treatment or inconvenience his students by making them walk all the way to the administration building.”
Of course he didn’t.“Well, that’s admirable,” she muttered, but then added with a conciliatory voice she barely recognized, “We’ll make it work.”
“I knew I could count on you,” the dean said, giving her hand a friendly pat. He stood, stretching easily. “I have another meeting on campus and must dash, but thank you again.”
Maggie watched the dean disappear through the classroom doors. When he was out of sight, Maggie put her head down on the desk, letting her arms block out the light, and sighed.
Chapter Five
By Friday, the unseasonably warm weather was gone, and a heavy, cold fog descended on campus and the surrounding village. The damp couldn’t quite be described as rain, but was more like walking straight into a cloud, with a fine mist that left everything wet. Umbrellas were useless, so Maggie gave up trying to look presentable. Her hair fell in uneven, frizzy waves that barely dried by her first class, and she’d taken to keeping dry socks in her desk drawers.
The weather suited her mood. This time of year, sleep often eluded Maggie, but the past few nights had been even worse, and the exhaustion weighed on her. Life seemed to have gone topsy-turvy since Beltane, as if those masks hadn’t only hidden who she was, but turned her inside out, too. She had started to dread coming into work, and she wasn’t sure if it was the looming presence of Arthur Taliesin or if it was the pall itself, casting its unrelenting gloom over her. She would much rather be at home, tucked under her covers, letting her mind wander to the kiss she’d shared with a stranger in the moonlight.
Unfortunately, the week hadn’t eased the awkwardness of sharing her office. Every pair dealt with the office sharing differently. Jim seemed to use his office as an afterthought, only checking with Dahlia occasionally to see if any students hadbeen by. His students seemed to know to schedule meetings with him in advance, which he’d take as he walked briskly from class to the dining hall. It suited Dahlia fine, and soon Jim’s desk was covered in Dahlia’s detritus. Others had come up with schedules so only one professor was in the office at a time. Those seemed like fine plans to Maggie, but Taliesin was uninterested in all of them.
When she suggested he meet students in the library or an empty classroom instead of the cramped office, he had frowned. It was an impressive feat, considering she had only ever seen his eyebrows furrowed and his lips in that downturn that varied between sullen and angry, but his expression deepened. “I take my student meetings in my office,” he said stiffly. “It’s more professional that way. Students know what to expect. Why don’t you meet your students elsewhere?”
She hadn’t dignified that with a response. She wouldn’t meet with students elsewhere because it washeroffice. If he wanted his work interrupted by student meetings, so be it. She wouldn’t have any problem sending him out into the hall when one of her kids showed up for a meeting.
But it also meant that her work was interrupted so often that she found it difficult to concentrate. She supposed she could have worked elsewhere, but she was digging her heels in. She had complained about this basement office endlessly for four years, but she had made it her home away from home, and she would be damned if some pompous asshole from Alchemy and Transmutation was going to take that away from her. So, instead, she had taken to arriving at work earlier and earlier.
With a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and a heavy toteof papers over her shoulder, Maggie walked across the campus. The early fog had barely lifted off the grounds, but bright morning light cut through the gloom until she got to the hawthorn tree. Beneath its branches, the miasma of the pall cast strange, long shadows on the lawn, and the light glimmered an unnatural purple color.
The pall swirled with otherworldly dust and debris. Within the boundaries of the wards, everything slowed down thanks to the drag of the pall’s magic, like time itself moved through a sieve. Shadows took on heft and weight, and echoes of the underworld flashed in the corner of your eye. Unsettled souls who had once found their rest in the next world were sometimes pulled into this world by the force of a pall, and it made Maggie’s heart hurt to think of their confusion and pain if any had found their way into Ilex Hall.
