Goddamn you, Arnaud.
4
Following a change of shirt and a quick grooming, I stole from the faculty bathroom and, seeing that the coast was clear, made a run for my classroom, leather satchel slapping my hip.
I turned a corner and nearly plowed into Professor Snodgrass. The diminutive chairman of my department staggered in a circle and would have fallen if I hadn’t caught him. With a huff, he slapped my hands away and straightened his small glasses. He peered up at me, eyes sharpening.
“Professor Croft,” he exclaimed, cheeks reddening in anger.
“Oh, hey, sorry about that,” I said, showing an apologetic hand as I made to scoot past him. Ever since my hearing the year before, where Snodgrass had motioned to have me fired, I’d managed to stay off his radar. Part of that had entailed getting to my classes on time. The other part had meant avoiding him whenever possible. I’d just managed to blow both.
Snodgrass checked his watch. “Don’t you have a seminar this hour?”
“Right, I’m headed there now.”
“Ten minutes late, I see.” He stepped nearer, sniffing the air. “And what’s that I smell?”
I met his snooty gaze. “Alcohol.”
He blinked twice in surprise before his lips pinched into a smile. “So you admit that you’ve been drinking, that you were preparing to instruct your students in an inebriated state?”
“Do you want the truth?”
“Please, Professor Croft.” He stood back, hands clasped behind the back of his tweed suit. The man could barely disguise his glee. He would finally have a bulletproof case for my termination. The prestigious college would not tolerate a drunkard for a professor.
“All right,” I said with a sigh. “I ducked into a West Village bar to watch the mayor’s press conference.”
“And how many drinks did you have?”
“Drinks? None, actually.” I watched Snodgrass’s smile fracture. “The bartender threatened me with his shotgun, so I jumped onto the bar and made a run for it. He started shooting. Bam! Bam! Glass and liquor flying everywhere, like something out of a Western. I’m fine, obviously—I know that has to be a relief for you—but I did get soaked.” I chuckled. “Hence the smell.”
Snodgrass’s lips trembled. “I can see this is all one big joke to you, Professor Croft, but I assure you, the board takes the matter of alcoholism very seriously.”
“As they should,” I said. “But absent proof, you’d just be wasting their time. Again.”
The final jab was probably one too many, but with my nerves still raw from the mayor’s announcement, not to mention Arnaud’s harsh toxin, I wasn’t in a good place to be fucked with. I stepped past Snodgrass, but I had only gone a few paces when he called to me.
“You might be interested to hear that I’ve done some investigating,” he said.
“Congratulations,” I called back.
“I admit, it baffled me how you were able to get your arrest record expunged by this Detective Vega.” He said her name with bitter scorn. “A few inquiries later and, lo and behold, I discover you’re working as a consultant to her department. On supernatural cases,” he added.
I stopped and turned. “What’s your point?”
“Oh, no point.” He adjusted his bowtie. “Just that I find it all very interesting. A professor of mythology and lore—one who had been serving a probation, no less—suddenly in the pay of the NYPD. That would require a very compelling skill set, I should think. A compelling expertise.”
“So I’ve taken an academic interest in the supernatural,” I said, a little too defensively. “Big deal.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?”
Panic sped my breaths. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Given your grants, the board might be willing to overlook certain … tendencies. But I doubt the same could be said for the parents who are paying their children’s tuition. Especially now that the city has declared war on those with said tendencies.”
“You’re still speaking Urdu, and I’m late for my class.”
“If history has taught me anything,” Snodgrass shouted after me, “it’s that when the leaders fail to act, you go straight to the people.”
I reached my classroom to find the oscillating fan blowing a rattling circuit across the ring of desks—all empty. Dammit. By the college’s rules, students only had to wait ten minutes for a tardy professor. I consulted my watch. My own students appeared to have followed that law to the second.
“Thanks, gang,” I muttered.
I tossed my satchel and cane onto my desk and unbuttoned my shirt to my chest. Taking the fan cage in both hands, I leaned down until the lukewarm rush of air bathed my face and billowed my shirt.
As much as I hated to admit it, Snodgrass’s words had rattled me.
There’s no way the man knows about my wizarding life, I reassured myself. He may have his suspicions, but that’s all they are. Snodgrass isn’t going to risk his reputation by calling up parents and making wild accusations. That would only put his own job in jeopardy.
But I had to wonder. With the mayor’s announcement sure to alarm the public, would merely insinuating someone was a supernatural be enough to alienate him? I considered the ring of empty desks. Of course none of it mattered if I couldn’t get to my own classes on time.
I smiled bitterly, remembering an era when I would have arrived to find Caroline lecturing in my stead. Afterwards, she would have scolded me, insisting it was the “last time”—like she did every time. I had started calling her “Sub,” short for substitute, a joke she eventually warmed to.
Closing my eyes, I imagined her faerie-scented skin from our night together, her soft whispers, her golden tendrils of hair spilling around me. I remembered the way our bodies, our magic, had moved against the other’s. Had that night even happened? A night that was becoming more ethereal with the passing months? But there it was: the ache around my heart, the bruising emptiness, like what I’d felt when I’d awoken alone the next morning.
Yeah. It had happened.
The fan blades chopped up my forlorn sigh and blew it back in my face.
“Is this a bad time?” a woman asked from behind me.
I hurried to button my shirt back up and tuck my coin pendant away. The noise of the fan had washed over the voice, so I wasn’t sure who it belonged to. Someone from administration, with my luck. Maybe Snodgrass was already sowing the seeds of suspicion. But as I turned and the woman in the doorway came into focus, my arms fell slowly to my sides.
“Professor Reid,” I said.
“Professor Croft,” Caroline replied, her lips pressing into a smile.
5
The last time I had seen Caroline was the night she’d come to my apartment. She disappeared the next morning without a trace. When classes resumed after the spring break, I learned she had put in for a last-minute sabbatical. She wasn’t supposed to return until the fall semester, if then. After several calls that went straight to her voicemail, I gave up on trying to reach her.
Now, I took a moment to absorb the impact of her sudden manifestation. Caroline was dressed professionally—white blouse, khaki skirt, thin gold jewelry—but she carried the charged air of the fae, still subtle, but stronger than what I had felt around her the last time. The oscillating fan stirred her hair, which had been straightened, I noticed, and trimmed to her shoulders.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Caroline stepped from the doorway until she was standing in front of me. Her blue-green gaze settled on my chest, and she slid the top button of my shirt free. My breath went shallow, but I realized she was only fixing my shoddy redressing job. When she finished, she smoothed my shirt collar and rose onto her tiptoes. The kiss against my cheek was light, cordial.
“It’s good to see you, too, Everson.”
“You know what I meant.” I tried not to stammer as my face warmed over. “I thought you were going to be away until the fal
l.”
She took a seat in one of my students’ desks and gestured to my desk across the ring from her. She wanted to talk but at a distance. Whether because she didn’t trust me or herself, I couldn’t tell. I complied, affecting a casualness that felt all wrong. Caroline smiled sympathetically. I moved my leather satchel in front of me and propped my arms on it.
“I owe you an apology,” she said.
“How about an explanation?”
“That too.” She clasped her hands on her desk. “The night I came to you, Everson, I was a bit of a mess. This, becoming a faerie, returning to that world … it happened so suddenly, and I … I didn’t handle it very well. When I went to your apartment, it was to talk, to find my center. You’re my closest friend, the only one who would have understood what I was experiencing. But your feelings—they hit me hard.” She studied her hands for a moment. A silver band glistened on her left ring finger. “I’m afraid I let them overwhelm me.”
“So that night was a mistake,” I said numbly.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I went along with what happened. I wanted what happened.” When she looked up, her eyes wavered with emotion. “But it was irresponsible. Worse, it was unfair to you. That’s why I left like I did. As much for the loyalty I owed Angelus as his wife as for the loyalty I owed you as my friend. I needed to—”
“I’m sorry, Caroline,” I interrupted, “but what I felt from you that night went waaay beyond friendship.”
“I know. But it can’t anymore. That’s what I’m saying. I have duties now, responsibilities.”
“Bigger than this, than us?” Having her answer that terrified me, but I needed to know.
“Yes,” she said. “Bigger than us.”
I sensed there was something she wasn’t telling me. “Are you sure?”
Caroline hesitated before nodding.
“Then I guess we’re done here.” I angled my body toward the door, but Caroline made no move to rise from her desk.
“I didn’t just come to apologize,” she said.
“Gee, what else can I look forward to?”
“I’ve been in the faerie realm for much of these last months,” she said. “At times it’s felt like visiting twelfth-century Europe. The realm parallel to New York is a patchwork of feudal kingdoms, with all of the emphasis on lineages, territories, and certain decorums one would expect. Interestingly, the royalty there consider our modern world to be brutish and dirty.”
“Then why spend time here?” I asked bitterly.
“Because of the portals.”
“What about them?”
“They’re vital to the kingdoms that control them.”
Though I continued to hold myself at an angle to Caroline, I considered the implications of what she was saying. From the way she’d explained it earlier, distances scaled differently between our realms. A trip from Battery Park to the Bronx would take about thirty minutes in a cab, whereas in the faerie realm, the corresponding trip might take weeks, and often through hostile territories. “So that explains the fae’s interest in the city,” I said, straightening.
Caroline nodded. “Wars have been fought over those portals, treaties written. Marriages arranged,” she added with lowered eyes. “Angelus’s family has a kingdom in the north, a region that corresponds to a section of upper Manhattan. My mother’s kingdom is in the south. Each kingdom controls a portal. Maybe you’ve noticed a new trucking line in the city?”
“Two Way,” I said automatically. I had seen the green trucks trundling north and south all summer. “Wait, that’s a fae operation?”
“The portals, and our ability to go between them, have not only established ours as the most influential kingdoms, but they’ve also engendered us with a responsibility to safeguard the greater realm. We have to move food, supplies, and forces when and where they’re needed, and often quickly.”
“Fine, but why are you telling me all of this?” I asked irritably. Her explanation of our night together had left me feeling like a cheap toy played with briefly and then tossed away. And now here she was, giving me a geography lesson on the fae realm as if I was one of her students. I wanted to go home and punch something. Instead, I used my fists to wipe the sting of sweat from my eyes. I noticed that Caroline’s skin remained dry, as though wrapped in its own cool atmosphere. The oscillating fan shuddered another circuit.
“The portals have two sides,” she said. “And though the fae are quiet about it, they are in constant negotiations with city officials to grant them exclusive access to the portals on this side.”
“By negotiations do you mean bribes?”
“When they must.”
I thought about the fae townhouse on the Upper East Side, the one I’d tried to force my way into in the spring. I had detoured past it a few times since, in the hopes of catching Caroline coming or going. That must have held the portal to Angelus’s kingdom. The portal to Caroline’s mother’s kingdom would be somewhere in lower Manhattan.
“Ours is beneath Federal Hall,” Caroline said with a tired laugh, as though picking up my thought. “You can imagine the kinds of strings the fae have had to pull over the years.”
I grunted.
A stone’s throw from Wall Street, Federal Hall stood on the site of the first capitol of the United States, where George Washington himself had been sworn into office. The building had been a national monument until about a decade ago when the city wrested it under municipal control—and then promptly shut the site down for repairs. Probably the fae’s doing.
“I still don’t see what this has to do with me,” I said.
“Because of my connections to City Hall, I’ve been in talks with Mayor Lowder. He’s—”
“Wait, you’re talking to Budge? Even as he’s planning to wipe us out?”
“He’s not planning to wipe us out. Just listen,” she said when I started to interrupt again. “Budge saw you and me together at the gala that night back in April. He’s told me about your confrontation in his mansion. I’ve assured him that you’re not a threat, that you’ll be no further trouble to him.”
That damned professorial tone again. Indignation broke hot inside me.
“Thanks, but I can fight my own battles.”
“Not if Penny wakes up,” Caroline said.
“What do you mean?”
“Budge isn’t sure he can control her.”
“We already took care of that,” I said.
“If you’re talking about the information you have on them … Look, Budge covered his bases well. The sympathy campaign protects his wife while she’s comatose. Reveal anything about her werewolf nature now, and the public will eat you alive. That goes double when the eradication program gains momentum. The public will see it as a slander campaign. Meaning if and when Penny wakes up, she’ll have carte blanche to go after you.”
I had already been down that line of reasoning, but I refused to show any more weakness. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” I said.
“For your safety,” Caroline went on, “I think you should come to the faerie realm for a period, as our guest.”
“Our, as in your and Angelus’s?” I shook my head. “Forget it.”
“Just until we can assess the situation, see where the eradication program leads. The fae don’t typically intervene on behalf of non-fae, but I’ve worked out an exception for you.”
I waved my hands for her to stop.
“You’re welcome to bring your cat, of course,” she said.
“Look, Caroline. I get that you feel bad about what happened between us, that you want to try to make it up to me. But I’m not a charity case. I can take care of myself.”
“Not against the kinds of forces that might be gathering.”
The gravity in her voice matched the weight of her gaze: whatever it was she wasn’t telling me. I wanted to press her, but my pride wouldn’t allow it. I stood from behind my desk.
“Thanks for stopping by,” I said.
&n
bsp; “Everson…”
I strode to the classroom door and opened it. After a moment, she rose and walked toward me. “At least promise me you’ll think about it. You still have my number. Leave me a message.”
“I left several back in April,” I said coldly.
She made a tentative move to hug me, but I backed away a step and stared at a spot just above her head. After a moment, Caroline relented and walked out of my classroom and most likely my life.
Good riddance.
“My ice bags are all soggy,” Tabitha pouted as I hung my cane on the coat rack and locked the apartment door behind me.
I looked over at where my cat lounged on her divan, a box fan blowing orange hair from her squinting eyes. Her perch was a cooling system I had fixed up for her: a plus-sized cat bed set atop gallon bags of ice. The bags were water-filled now, one fallen to the floor and leaking.
“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “Hop up, and I’ll change them.”
“This heat is insufferable,” she complained as she stood from the cat bed and stretched. “Can’t you do anything about it?”
“I told you, we’re on a waiting list with the HVAC people.”
She stopped and eyed my approach. “You look like walking death.”
“Just a tough morning at the college.”
“Oh sure,” she said. “Telling stories to an audience of impressionable young women, mooning and batting their lashes up at you. Must be fucking torture.”
“It has nothing to do with my classes, and watch your mouth.” I picked up the dripping bags and carried them to the kitchen sink.
“Do tell.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
I could feel her sharp feline eyes on me as I emptied the bags and scooped fresh ice into them. The heat wave coupled with a dead air conditioner had made Tabitha more antagonistic than usual. She was looking for an opening to needle me. I wasn’t going to give her one.
“Well, if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” she said, “how am I going to help you?”
“You help me?” I laughed once. “That’s rich.”
I returned with the ice bags and a fresh towel, arranging them beneath her cat bed. I used the old towel to wipe up the spill on the floor.
Purge City (Prof Croft Book 3) Page 3
