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“Please,” I say, waving a hand, “spare us your concern.”
“I don’t remember last night,” Lyle says, a hand massaging the back of his neck.
Interesting.
“What do you mean?” Lacie asks, her eyes wide. “You don’t … remember?”
“No … I woke up in the library in the dean’s house. Why? What happened?”
Evan gives a slanting grin. “You ladies want to tell him? Or should I?”
“Some of us might not be ladies to you at all,” I snarl. “I say you close your mouth or I’ll close it for you.”
“Oooh, testy, testy,” Evan sings. “Nah, there’s no chance you’ll see tenure while you’re here. Isn’t that right, Lyle?” He thumps Lyle’s back; Lyle winces.
“Go jump in a fucking lake.”
Lacie’s face has gone slack, her heart beating double-time in her chest. I have to get her out of here before someone says something they’ll regret, and with her slippery grasp on … what she wants from me, it’d likely be her.
“But there are so many other interesting things we could discuss. For instance, how you disappeared at the after-party. Or how Dr. Sims went to the bathroom and never came back out.” Evan drains his cup, raises two imperious fingers to the glowering barista for another, and looks between the two of us. “Just odd.”
My teeth clack together as I smile. “Are you sure Dr. Sims didn’t just go home?”
“The old man would never miss an after-party. He likes the pomp and circumstance, you know. The ritual of it all.”
“You sure he didn’t keel over somewhere?” I reply, keeping my tone airy. “The man must be pushing eighty. You check all the bathrooms yourself?”
Lyle shrugs. “I did, this morning.”
I feign a gasp. “Really, Evan, asking Lyle to do your dirty work? Doesn’t he outrank you now?”
He doesn’t rise to the bait, only looks hard at Lacie. “Where exactly were you two off to?”
“If you must know, I got my period.” Lacie levels her gaze at him.
Evan wrinkles his nose. “Christ.”
In this moment, I absolutely adore her. “What? A little blood make you squeamish? Didn’t you know that menstrual blood is the cleanest, purest blood in the body? Or are you one of those misogynists who thinks it makes a person dirty?”
Evan scoffs. “Who fucking pissed in your coffee? Just came to relate some interesting, probably unrelated events. Since you two left our little departmental fête.”
“I wasn’t even invited to the after-party,” Lacie says. “It was a mistake for me to come in the first place.”
Evan only smiles. “Oh, well, I don’t know about that.” He draws up, puffing his chest like some academic pigeon. “Lacie, we should talk about the upcoming faculty showcase. Publish or perish, and all that. I’ll email you a time.” He tips me a sharp smile. “And Marcella, always good to see you. Let’s go, Lyle.”
Evan prowls off; Lyle only casts a single, mournful look toward us before disappearing into the cafeteria, now bustling as the morning wears on. The collar of his shirt is rimmed with dried blood.
“Is there anywhere we can go right now, Lacie, where we can talk?”
Lacie tosses her cup in the trash, her jaw setting. “Follow me.”
We head back out of the cafeteria, past the ugly postmodern chapel for non-Catholics, and into the Divinity School library. It’s nearly empty, and more what you’d expect of a public library rather than a school like Preston. Motion sensor lights click on as we walk through the shadowed space; Lacie’s heading for a door in the back, gray and heavy.
“What’s this?” I ask. If I had a heart to beat, it would be picking up right about now. I don’t know why; I have nothing to fear, generally speaking, from ghosts and other undead—but this place feels karmically off. Shadows peek strangely around darkened bookshelves, the floor too sterile and shiny. Perhaps it’s that all these books center on religion—or maybe it’s that there’s some mother lode of religious paraphernalia in this building. But it makes me uneasy. My loafers slip along plastic tile as my eyes miss the darkness between aisles.
Lacie pulls the door open. “A safe place.”
A shudder skates across my skin. “Doesn’t feel safe to me.”
