by Erica Ridley
“Of course.”
After leaving Bubbles some water and some snacks, Trevor led Daisy out the door by her elbow and helped her into the car.
“You didn’t seriously think I’d let you stay home alone, did you? For one, you’ve still got all my teeth. For two, I heard the judge tell you not to come back until you’d put everything to rights. Everything is still wrong. And for three…” He leaned over, hyperconscious of every curve of her body as he stretched her seatbelt across her breasts to buckle her in. “I don’t trust you.”
Her nose lifted, but she didn’t respond. Fine. He didn’t want to talk anyway. She stared out the passenger window for most of the trip before blurting, “I said I would put back the teeth. Won’t that help?”
“Not enough.” He slanted her a dark look before pulling off the bypass onto University Blvd. “The first item of business is to figure out how my office door got off its hinges. If that’s some magical shrapnel side-effect from blasting into another dimension, I expect you to put it back to normal before anyone else starts asking questions.”
Daisy followed Trevor down the gray hallway to the Anthropology lab, careful to stay at least two feet behind him so he wouldn’t singe her eyelashes with his perpetual glowering.
“Fairies first.” He swept open the heavy metal door and ushered her inside with a big show of icy chivalry.
She strode into the lab and took a surreptitious glance around. Windowed walls faced the empty classroom and shiny stainless steel covered the continuous counter, artifacts and skeletons strewn on top. Everything looked how she’d left it.
Well, except for the infamous missing teeth.
“Go do your thing with the Super Cool Tooth Tool or whatever it’s called.” He eased onto a stool, crossed his arms, and glared at her. “I’ll be right here.”
With a quick nod, she turned toward the countertops. At least he wasn’t breathing down her neck. Not that she minded his breath on her skin, but those days were obviously long gone. She rolled her shoulders in a futile attempt to release tension. Right now, she needed to concentrate on matching the teeth with their owners.
She withdrew the first pouch of teeth from her handbag and peeked inside. This one contained the bicuspids. With a guilty sigh, she lined the small dry teeth on the cold metal counter with the rest of the pouches. Sixteen bicuspids. She frowned. Shouldn’t there only be fifteen? Why hadn’t the Pearly States confiscated the one belonging to Angus, age 8? Disconcerted, she pulled the Genetic Teradata Carbon Dentition Spectrometer from her handbag. With a quick flick of the power toggle, the handheld device hummed softly in her hands.
She snuck an over-the-shoulder glance at Trevor. He watched in silence, his expression unreadable.
Hopefully this would impress him. She’d never forget how nonplused he’d been when he learned she’d invented something useful. Granted, before she took a soldering iron to the motherboard, the dentition spectrometer had begun its life as an intraoperative magnetic resonance portable imaging system from a primary school Magic Fair project, but hey. Minor detail.
What she needed to focus on was finding Angus’s tooth. The sooner she had the right tooth, the sooner everyone’s lives would be back on track.
Doing her best to tamp down the ick factor, she approached the closest skeleton. She slid a bicuspid into the spring-loaded dentition spectrometer receptacle and waited. Within seconds, the display panel read: “Adult male. Japanese ancestry. Twentieth century. More? Yes/No.”
Not the right set of teeth. Crap. She perused the specimens displayed throughout the lab. The eye ridges and wide hip bones indicated two of the skeletons were female. One was smaller than average, but might be a child and not an Asian woman. Or not. Daisy frowned and double-checked her pouch. If this were a child, she would have milk teeth, not adult teeth. Yet all the teeth she’d collected were of a uniform size. She’d not only put her trust in her mentor and the Pearly States automated assignment system, she’d also been so focused on confiscating the teeth to keep out of jail, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that the tooth didn’t belong to a child. There would be hell to pay if she’d managed to deliver the wrong tooth all over again. She gulped.
“Hey.” Trevor slid from the metal stool, curiosity erasing the surliness from his tone. “What’s the magic tooth-box say?”
“It says, ‘hold your flying horses.’ Also, I hope this thing is broken.” Gripping the dentition spectrometer with shaking fingers, Daisy gestured across the lab. “Does that skeleton belong to an Asian woman?”
Jaw dropping, he flew off the stool like a flaming chariot.
He made a grab for the dentition spectrometer. She pivoted, jerking the portable machine to her chest. He plastered the front of his body along the back of hers, grabbing the tops of her arms with both warm hands, and forcing her spine flush against him.
His breath steamed lightly against her neck. Then ever so slowly, she peered at the display panel. Her skin tingled beneath the unfamiliar clothes at the heat and hardness of his solid, masculine body. The edge of his jaw brushed against her cheek, inciting a familiar pelvic fire at the feel of his stubble against her face.
“It says… uh…” After a moment of wordlessly sucking in the scent of his aftershave, Daisy gave up and handed him the device.
He let go of her arms but did not step away. Instead, he tilted the display panel toward the light. “Awesome,” he breathed, his voice low with admiration. “You invented this?”
She hesitated. Now would probably be the time to admit she’d merely tweaked the circuitry of the primary processor after coding a new graphical user interface to access her re-designed ontogenetic relational database, but all she could do at the moment was nod her head and try really hard not to kiss him.
“Can I try it?” Without waiting for a response, he rushed to the nearest counter, leaving Daisy’s cheek and arms and back and thighs chilly with his absence.
When she turned to face him, he already had the first tooth out of the spectrometer and a new one sliding into place.
“Sure,” she mumbled, since it was clear he wasn’t listening for a response. “Go ahead.”
Preoccupied, she familiarized herself with Trevor’s lab while he analyzed the first few teeth and seemed to commit every word of the resulting data to memory. He clearly had every intention of taking his time. Too bad she hadn’t brought her wand along for tinkering with. She might’ve been able to work some of the kinks out during her stay on Earth. Judge Banshee had said not to come back until everything was put to rights, but surely someone would notice if Trevor trapped her here forever.
Trevor. Forever. Two words that didn’t belong in the same sentence.
Maybe if he hadn’t been human. Maybe if they’d met under better circumstances. Maybe if he miraculously forgave her for forking up his career, discovered he couldn’t live without her after all, and decided to move to Nether-Netherland to woo her undying love.
“Sweet,” he crowed from across the room. “I’ll have everything put to rights in no time. That is, if it’s not already too late.”
“Yeah.” The ridiculous fantasy disintegrated. It was an illogical hope. He would’ve forgiven her by now if he were ever going to. He would’ve come to her last night if he still wanted her body. And he would’ve let the poor where-frog out of its cage overnight if he trusted either one of them an iota. Daisy leaned back against the counter, elbows propped against the stainless steel. “You can keep the spectrometer, if you like.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll be the Edison to your Tesla and exploit your ingenuity to increase my own fortune and fame?”
“I have no need for money, and humans shouldn’t even know I exist. The fame can be yours. Go for it.”
“Nah.” He exchanged the current spectrometer tooth for another. “I was just kidding. You can have it back when I’m done. I’d never steal anyone’s anything.”
“Except my where-frog.”
“No, he’s te
mporarily detained. Believe me, I’ll be giving him back. I don’t want to have anything to do with Nether-Netherland ever again in my life.”
“Uh… thanks. I guess.” Although an understandable stance, it was hard not to be hurt. Particularly since every molecule of her being was directly tied to home. She had just really, really wanted to be the exception. In a good way, for once. Wanted. She fiddled with her glasses. Maybe she should go back to the Neurophysics Compound. But only after she made fairy. Once people saw she was as accomplished as any of them, she could focus her passion wherever she wanted, without fear of judgment. “All righty then. I’ll be out of your hair just as soon as you’re done with the spectrometer and I pop you with a ForgetMe orb.” When he didn’t respond right away, she couldn’t stop herself from adding, “Right?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She shouldn’t expect him to say no. She shouldn’t want him to say no. She shouldn’t hope—
“No.”
A choked laugh-sob tangled in her throat. Holy crap. He’d said no! Maybe he dreaded her leaving just as much as she did. Maybe she’d read him all wrong.
“No,” he repeated even more firmly, without glancing up from the spectrometer. “Absolutely not. You’ve still got to fix this time-lapse thing.”
She jerked her head toward the far wall so he wouldn’t see her cheeks heat with self-derision. The last thing she wanted was for him to realize she cared. “I can’t. I told you.”
When he finally glanced up, his eyes were hard. “Why not?
She lifted her chin, determined to act as calm as a scientist instead of as a would-be fairy with a crush on a human. “Just think of all the chaos and paradoxes that would ensue if time travel were possible.”
“Well, you have to do something. You can’t just jet back off to Fairyland like you didn’t screw up my entire life. Hey, wait.” He squinted at the non-reflective spectrometer screen. “What did you call me when you first came to the tent? Angus?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you’d be sleeping on someone else’s tooth,” she shot back defensively. “That was not in the manual.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t on purpose. But look here—this must be one of his teeth.” Eyes shining, he hovered over a skull in the corner. “This is the skeleton from the dig. Male, check. Scotland, who knows, but makes sense based on the name if not location. Have to dig into that. Remind me. Twelfth century… Hmm. I’m not sure I can believe that one. Are you sure this is accurate?”
Twelfth century? She sighed. “Fool-proof. It’s a modified copy of the teradata triple-index system currently in use at the Pearly States, which warehouses and analyzes dentition data from multiple dimensions. Don’t worry, I already filed a complaint for having to fetch the tooth of a dead child.”
“Child?” He tilted the glowing display panel in her direction. “There are no child skeletons anywhere in my lab. Look—even your toy says ‘adult’. Besides, only one of these specimens is even from the Costa Rica dig. All the rest are other projects.”
“What?” The sick feeling returned to her stomach. She rushed across the room and grabbed the dentition spectrometer from him. “Please tell me that’s not right.”
“You just said it was fool-proof.” He grinned to himself, his excitement apparently making him forget his anger. “Are the people who run the Pearly States fools?”
“Utterly.” She stared at the digital readout with a mix of horror and confusion. “But Vivian isn’t. The assignment dossier she gave me clearly stated that the collection subject was eight years old.”
He shrugged and tugged the machine from her. “Maybe she made a mistake.”
A mistake? Slimy fingers of doubt slithered inside Daisy’s stomach. Yeah. A silly mistake. Just another bug in the system. Kind of like forgetting which pouch held a ForgetMe orb and which one would unleash a Himalayan Lust Charm. Whoops-a-daisy.
Trevor strode back and forth through the lab, dentition spectrometer in one hand and various pouches of teeth in the other. “Lemme tell you, this thing rocks.” He was down to the last pouch before he glanced over at her again. “What’s the matter? You’re not mad about collecting an adult tooth, are you? You’re a tooth fairy. I would figure you’d collect anybody’s teeth. Does it matter if the… the previous hosts are children?”
“I don’t know.” She narrowed her eyes at the teeth resting innocently on his palm. She had never heard of tooth fairies collecting adult teeth… but his point was well made. Whose jurisdiction would adult teeth fall under, if not tooth fairies? “A mentor could at least warn her protégé of such things. Old and dead make for a bit of a surprise.”
Note to self: Go back to the Pearly States and file a whole stack of formal complaints.
Trevor’s gaze turned contemplative. “If you’re so worried about whether or not she lied to you, why don’t you just give her a truth spell? You know, like the one I got at the jail.”
“Like the what?” she choked out, her stomach full-on nauseous. If that were true, she hadn’t been given a fair trial and Trevor hadn’t been as callous as she’d thought. At least, not on purpose. “Who gave you a truth spell?”
“Vivian. That’s who we’re talking about, right?” He popped another tooth in the dentition spectrometer. “Vivian Valdemeer. Big hair, bigger ego, tiny teeth?”
“Vivian administered a truth spell?” Her stomach roiled. She swallowed with difficulty as the bitter taste of betrayal coated the back of her tongue. “At the Human Containment Center?”
“Right before the trial.” His upper lip curled in remembrance. “What a bitch.”
Normally, a comment like that would provoke Daisy’s automatic “defend the mentor” speech. Not today. As much as she hated to believe anything uncomplimentary about the one person who’d given her a chance to be magical when the rest of the world accepted her relentless mundanity as a foregone conclusion, she couldn’t deny the ever-increasing probability that her glamorous mentor had an agenda of her own.
One that didn't include Daisy succeeding.
Chapter 15
Back in his office after his round of morning classes finished, Trevor scowled over the top of his laptop at the long-legged pseudo-anthropologist idly browsing his bookcase. How was he supposed to get work done with her standing around looking sexy? The dean had been pleased to hear him report Katrina was back safe and sound, but he was still a far cry from having job security.
Berrymellow thought he had the tenure position in the bag, and from where Trevor was sitting, the little worm actually might. And God help the university when Berrymellow ran the program and Trevor was nowhere to be found. The school’s anthropology ratings would be in the toilet in no time, and Trevor would be fresh out of luck.
Daisy had to be able to help him. His life, his students’ education, and the future of the anthropology department depended on it. But how?
He tried to brainstorm in the back of his mind while organizing dig data with the front of his mind, but he caught himself staring at Daisy instead.
With an odd-shaped iPod clipped to her belt, she removed another anthropological tome from the shelf. Cat-eye glasses perched at the tip of her nose. Wispy blonde tendrils escaped a schoolmarm-like bun adorned with one of his pens. She rifled through each reference archive, flipping through every single page in less than thirty seconds before returning it to the shelf and reaching for another. Every now and then, her lips pursed and she gurgled something that sounded like, “Urrrrrgh.” Much like her furry lawyer.
She licked her lips and mumbled. Probably thinking about something mindbogglingly esoteric. Why did he find that so appealing? Maybe because Daisy was just as incredible as the place she was born. That fascinating mind of hers had a unique way of interpreting the world around them. No one else was quite like her. Perhaps that was why he always wanted to be in her presence. Well, that and her kisses.
He dragged his attention back to the glowing flat screen. Concentrate.
Carefully, he scrolled through
the dig photos, double-clicking a thumbnail now and then to pop open a larger image and update its metadata.
Before long, the warm, prickly sensation of someone else hovering around his office while he tried to work began to grate on his nerves. Not just because he remembered in vivid detail the last time they shared a room with a desk, but because if he hated one thing in this world, it was not having his life under his control.
Anthropology was about scientific process. Baseball was based on a strict set of predefined rules. Tenure was the culmination of a systematic series of accomplishments. He liked having set boundaries and a clear path. He liked that everything adhered to the playbook. And he loved the freedom it gave him to guide his own destiny. He well knew that no one else was going to step in and pinch hit. That wasn’t how the game was played. People like Daisy threw curveballs. And people like Berrymellow should get benched.
Trevor opened the next set of photos. He hadn’t gotten this far in life by relying on other people. He’d gotten where he was by relying on the one person he could count on—himself. No way was he letting all that hard work foul out without a fight. But what could he do?
He hit the icon for Slideshow View and watched the dig photos display in slow motion. The excavation jerked forward through time, blossoming like the stop-animation footage of an orchid in bloom. He smiled at the memory. God, he loved every senior trip even more than the last.
There was the team, excavating bits of pottery from the earth. And there, bones poked up through the dirt and rock. Excitement shone in the face of every single student. Excitement and the thrill of victory. They’d played by the rules and were rewarded with a find. A satisfying end to weeks of hard work. Pottery and skeletons were logical artifacts any self-respecting paleo-anthropologist would expect to discover when digging near the site of a known underwater city in the heart of Central America.
