by Martha Carr
The fae pumped her arm and talked out of the side of her mouth. “That’sh the shpirit.”
“Why did we think sharing an apartment was a good idea again?”
Ember’s laughter was so contagious, Cheyenne couldn’t help but join her. Then the fae settled down and shook her head. “Seriously, though. Have you considered that L’zar does just want to protect you? I mean, serving a hundred-year sentence at Chateau D’rahl just to protect his only kid sounds like an acceptable sacrifice to me.”
“He’s not sacrificing anything.” The halfling swung her leg back over the armrest and sat up straight in the chair. “Corian told me the guy’s only interested if there’s something in it for him, and at this point, I’m gonna call that one an accurate assessment.”
“Huh. You really don’t think L’zar would go out on a limb to help anyone but himself?”
“Not if he wasn’t also helping himself at the same time, no.” Cheyenne shrugged and leaned forward. “So, he’s playing it safe until he knows his bargaining chip isn’t gonna drop dead like all the others the second he steps out of that prison, which he could totally do whenever he wants. I’m starting to think he’s having fun in there.”
Ember snorted and pulled her coffee mug out of her lap again before remembering one more time that it was empty. “Any idea what he’s waiting for?”
“Just a guess, that I complete the trials and come into my true power with my very own drow legacy, and L’zar says the coast is clear. He comes crawling out of his little vacation hole, then I’m stuck taking orders from Captain Whackjob instead.”
“Woah.” Ember chuckled. “You’ve got this all planned out, don’t you?”
“Actually, it just came to me.” Cheyenne shot her friend a wide grin before she wiped it off her face a second later. “Honestly, if this whole nightmare-leaking-portal and imminent-O’gúl-war thing wasn’t happening right now, I’d probably stall the trials just to keep him in Chateau D’rahl as long as possible. For fun.”
“You know, I have fun with you, Cheyenne, but beyond that, we have two very different definitions of it.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” The halfling pulled her phone out of her back pocket to check the time. “And...I just talked your head off for an hour. Coffee’s gone. You look violently confused. Time for me to get cleaned up.”
Ember laughed and slapped her hands on the armrests of her wheelchair. “I had no idea violently confused was a thing.”
“You’re one of a kind, Em.” Cheyenne pushed to her feet and clapped her hands together. “It’s kinda weird that I have to ask, but where did you—”
“Towels are in the bathroom.” Ember nodded toward the second full bathroom below the mini-loft.
The halfling froze and blinked at her friend. “Creepy.”
“You are so easily impressed by me.”
Cheyenne just shook her head and waved the fae off as she turned toward the bathroom.
Ember laughed again and drummed her hands on the armrests. “Go get ‘em, Professor Summerlin.”
When the half-drow opened the bathroom door, she slipped inside and turned to poke her head back out into the living room with wide eyes. “Kill me now.”
Her friend’s renewed laughter filtered into the bathroom until it was drowned out by the rush of steaming water.
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Cheyenne parked in the student lot on the Virginia Commonwealth University campus and glanced at the clock on the dash. Fifteen minutes. No wonder Mattie always looked so rushed.
The halfling turned off the engine and paused. “Maleshi. Shit, I don’t know what to call her.”
She got out of her car and slung her backpack over her shoulder before locking the Panamera with that brilliant little chirp. A kid in a brown suit with an afro closed the door to his restored Ford Pinto and smirked at the Goth chick. “Nice car.”
Cheyenne glanced at him and nodded. “Yeah, you too. Goes with the seventies getup.”
“The Pinto’s mine. This is just a costume.” The kid gestured to the brown suit.
Cocking her head, the halfling gave him a crooked smile. “I’m gonna use that line.”
“No, really. Theater Department.”
“Okay. Break a leg or whatever.” With another nod, the half-drow hurried across the parking lot. The kid’s laugh rose behind her, and she shook her head. I played dress-up today too. We’ll see how my new students handle it.
That made her snort, and she quickened her pace as she stepped onto the sidewalk and took the first path across campus toward the T. Edward Temple building.
She heard the conversation of at least a dozen other students, maybe more, before she reached the medium-sized classroom. Another glance at her phone made her sigh before she reached the door. Nobody thought twice about Professor Bergmann showing up a minute or two late. I’m fine.
No one noticed the Goth chick storming into the classroom, even when Cheyenne stopped to pull the door shut behind her with a soft click. Then a girl with half her head shaved who was sitting by herself on the far right side of the front row looked at the half-drow with a raised eyebrow. The halfling returned the gesture as she stepped to the front of the room. Like looking at myself as an undergrad. Weird.
The conversation didn’t falter at all, even when Cheyenne reached the desk at the front of the room and dropped her backpack on the floor. She counted seventeen students in their seats, most of them laughing and joking, two or three besides the half-shaved-head girl reading textbooks or scrolling through their phones.
For a full two minutes, the halfling waited for more than one girl to notice her standing up there. I could do this for the entire class. Okay, not if I want my master’s.
“All right.” Cheyenne cleared her throat, and the students who weren’t talking to someone else looked at her in surprise. A kid with a curly mop of black hair and as much of a mustache as he could grow before he could legally drink folded his arms and frowned. The halfling nodded. “Hey.”
That didn’t have the desired effect either, and Cheyenne thought, Okay. Gauging the attention span.
She glanced at the girl in the front row, who watched her with an eerily familiar deadpan expression, and winked. The girl’s eyes narrowed, then Cheyenne swept her arm back and up in a huge arc before her fist cracked on the desk.
All conversation cut off instantly. Some of the kids jumped in their seats, and all eyes turned toward the front of the classroom.
Cheyenne smirked. “That’s better.”
“Who are you?”
“What, no, ‘Good morning,’ first?” The halfling raised an eyebrow at the short kid two rows back who apparently thought he could bring back button-up plaid shirts and braided hemp necklaces.
“Uh, good morning?”
“Where’s Professor Bergmann?” asked a blonde girl with braided pigtails falling over her shoulders.
There’s Bryl’s human illusion in twelve years. Cheyenne forced herself not to laugh. “Bergmann’s moved on to bigger and better things, so you guys are stuck with me.” She spread her arms and scanned the dumbfounded faces staring back at her. “Welcome to my class.”
“What do you mean, ‘bigger and better things?’” That came from the huge kid sitting halfway back who could’ve doubled as a football player.
The halfling cocked her head. “Kinda self-explanatory, isn’t it?”
“But she’s still teaching, right?”
“Did something happen to her?”
“So, you’re a sub, then.”
Leaning away from her desk and the barrage of questions and ridiculous observations, Cheyenne clapped her hands. The smack cracked through the room, and the voices stopped. She shifted her weight onto one hip, folding her arms. “Okay. Yes. No. Absolutely not.” She shot a pointed glance at the students who’d shouted out their questions and figured one-word answers were enough.
Still frowning, the kid trying to rock a nineties look raised his hand. Cheyenne raise
d an eyebrow at him in reply. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who are you?”
The halfling rolled her shoulders back. “Just call me Cheyenne. That’s good enough. And just so we’re all on the same page, this is Advanced Programming 4200, not Twenty Questions 101. I get it. It’s the fourth week of the semester, and just when you thought you had a handle on things, your whole world’s crumbling apart because Professor Bergmann shucked this class onto someone else. Yeah?”
Thankfully, no one said anything to that one.
“Awesome. So here’s the deal. I’m now teaching this class, and there’s a really low probability that it’s gonna be anything like what you’ve been doing in here for the last three weeks.” Cheyenne tried to hold back a snort and failed. “I’m not gonna take attendance, because I don’t give a shit if you’re here. That’s your job. If you show up, you wanna be here, so we have that in common.” I just called myself out on that one, didn’t I? She shook her head and shrugged. “And if you’re not in class, you better be able to prove you have a handle on what we’re going over and can do the work.”
She blinked and glanced from face to face. Either way I spin that, I sound like a hypocrite. They don’t know that.
“Any other questions? ‘Cause this is the only day I’m answering stuff that has nothing to do with Advanced Programming.”
“How old are you?” Two guys sitting in the back row smirked. When Cheyenne’s gaze darted toward them, the kid on the left leaned over the long desk stretching across the seats and rubbed his forehead to hide his face. The other one stared right back at the halfling and raised his eyebrows once.
“That’s cute. You’d pass with flying colors if I was your How to Be an Asshole instructor. Obviously, I’m qualified to teach that one too, but I hope for your sake you can handle this class even half as well. We’ll see.”
Some of the students laughed and looked at each other with wide eyes. The kid rubbing his forehead glanced at his friend and couldn’t help a laugh, either. “Oh, shit, dude.”
The kid who thought he was funny smirked again, but it looked pissed-off this time. “You’re totally a sub.”
Cheyenne pressed her fingertips on the desk and leaned forward. Wow. Channeling Bergmann. “You sound really sure of that.”
“It’s obvious.” The kid gestured toward her with a flippant wave. “I mean, the school’s not gonna bring on Evanescence full time.”
The guy’s friend stared at him and shook his head.
“Oh. And I even got dressed up for the day.” The black lipstick always seals the deal, doesn’t it? The halfling pursed her lips, the corners of her mouth drawing down as she dipped her head. “Guess I missed the memo about discriminatory hiring based on personal fashion choices. But it doesn’t apply to students, right? ‘Cause, I mean, you’re here.”
The laughter this time was a little less amused and a lot more nervous. Cheyenne stared at the kid glowering at her and trying not to show it, waiting for him to throw another dud her way. He didn’t. Time to tone it down a notch, Cheyenne. You made your point.
With a deep breath, she closed her eyes briefly and tapped the desk with her fingertips. “Look, you’re all here to learn. I don’t care what you look like or how you spend your time outside this class. None of my business. And since we’re all legal adults, I’m assuming you guys can handle the fact this goes both ways. If you don’t like the way I dress or how I teach, you can suck it up and push through one semester, or you can get out and do something else. Your call, and trust me, I won’t lose any sleep over it. But while you’re here, I think I’ve made it perfectly clear that I will call you out for screwing around, even if I have to be an asshole about it. Which, by the way, isn’t my priority. Showing you guys how to write anything and everything your brains come up with is the only thing I’m here to do. We good?”
The students nodded, glanced at each other, and shifted around in their chairs. The kid who thought he was hot stuff folded his arms, pressed his lips together, and stared at her. At least he’s paying attention.
“Okay. So.” Cheyenne clapped again and didn’t know what else to do with her hands, so she shoved them into her pockets. “Professor Bergmann gave me a laughably vague rundown of what’s been going on in here so far. What was the last thing she went over with you?”
The girl with the half-shaved head, her feet stretched out in front of her and one ankle crossed over the other, lifted a finger.
The halfling blinked at her and tried not to smile. “Yeah.”
“Hacking into high-security data mainframes.”
The class burst out laughing. Cheyenne let herself break into a crooked smile and pointed at the girl, who had to be only a year or two younger than the half-drow. “Nice try. This school would throw me out on my ass if I stood up here teaching that.”
“But you could teach it, right?” The girl shot her new instructor a sidelong glance.
Cheyenne wiggled her jaw, then huffed out a laugh. “Let’s start with where you guys are in your infinite undergrad wisdom, huh? We’ll build from there. And any questions about stuff beyond what’s covered in an advanced programming class, which is honestly where the fun starts, should be sent in encrypted emails.”
The girl sitting in her seat, just like Cheyenne had been sitting in hers for the last four years of college, was the only student in the room who seemed to get the joke. “Do you keep office hours?”
“Ha. No.” The half-drow forced herself to drop the conversation right there and instead heaved her mostly empty backpack onto the desk to pull out her laptop. “I’m assuming everybody brought their own. Otherwise, you’re probably in the wrong class.”
Slightly more amused chuckles rose in reply as Cheyenne Summerlin’s new undergrad students pulled out their laptops and charging cords. The room filled with rustling and the click of plastic and fingers on keys. The halfling pulled the chair up behind her, sat, and watched kids who had no idea who she really was as they got ready to learn more than they bargained for.
Serious déjà vu, and a whole new appreciation for Bergmann. Even if she’s not real.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Cheyenne nearly skipped out of the elevator and down the hall to her apartment. She didn’t even think to pull out her keys before trying the doorknob, which was unlocked. Matthew’s laugh echoed through the apartment as she opened the door, and she smashed the skippy feeling down into a tiny box. Gotta keep up appearances, right?
“Hey,” Ember called and wheeled herself around the kitchen island. “How’d it go?”
“Meh. I called a kid an asshole and found a non-Goth version of myself from two years ago.” The halfling shrugged and slung her backpack over the back of the leather couch. “I didn’t have any expectations anyway, so I guess it’s not so bad.”
“You...called a kid an asshole.” The fae bit her bottom lip and frowned. “For real?”
“He asked me how old I was.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, which isn’t automatic grounds for assholery, but he said it just to piss me off. Or maybe flirt with me, I don’t know. Then he made it personal about how colleges don’t hire Goths, so I felt justified.”
Ember snorted and shot her friend a sidelong glance as Cheyenne leaned against the back of the couch and folded her arms. “But they didn’t hire you.”
The halfling slowly shook her head and leaned toward the fae. “But they don’t know that.”
“What didn’t you get hired for?” Matthew wiped his hands with a paper towel and chucked it into the new trash can against the side of the island.
Cheyenne stared at the trashcan, then caught their new neighbor’s gaze. “What’s up, neighbor?”
The guy chuckled as he stepped around the island, either oblivious to the halfling’s sarcasm meter on low or really good at ignoring it.
“She taught her first class today,” Ember answered for her.
Cheyen
ne shot her friend a warning glance. Ember’s gaze darted to the side, but Matthew was still behind her, so she mouthed, “Be nice.”
The halfling rolled her eyes.
“Hey, cool.” Matthew stopped beside Ember and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “Don’t grad students normally get paid at least a little for teaching?”
“For a full course load, probably.” Cheyenne shrugged.
“But they’re not paying you.” Their tall neighbor smirked and narrowed his eyes.
“Didn’t know you were interested in my academic pursuits, man.”
He laughed, shrugging with his hands still in his pockets. “I’m just curious.”
Yeah, but he won’t add the part where it’s none of his business, will he?
Raising an eyebrow, Cheyenne spread her arms. “Yep. I’m teaching one class for free. VCU’s gonna hand over my master’s in Computer Sciences just for teaching one class, so not technically for nothing, but it’s not an internship or volunteer work.”
“No kidding.” Matthew’s eyebrows drew together in curiosity. “That’s all you have to do for your degree?”
So many questions. “I gave you the full rundown, man. Four and a half hours a week for three semesters after this, and I’m walking down that aisle in one of those ridiculous gowns.” The halfling clicked her tongue and waited for the barrage of more questions prying into her personal life.
“Huh. That’s awesome.”
“It’s a compromise.”
Matthew chuckled. “What class are you teaching?”
“Advanced Programming 4200.”
“Really?”
“You sound surprised, Matthew. You heard the part about me calling someone an asshole for thinking a Goth chick can’t teach an upper-level undergrad course, right?”
“Yeah, I heard you.” The man shot Ember a quick glance. The fae stared at the floor in front of her, her eyes wide and her lips pressed together so tightly they almost disappeared as she tried not to laugh. “And I am a little surprised.”
