Grey Dawn

by Clea Simon

  And if he was, did that put the spotlight back on Thorpe? Dulcie couldn’t forget how wild eyed – and wild haired – her adviser had looked both nights she had seen him on the street. On one night, Mina Love had been brutally attacked, her throat reportedly cut open. On the other, two nights later, Professor Showalter had been felled by a blow. Granted, hitting someone on the head wasn’t particularly lupine, but Dulcie didn’t know the details. Perhaps Thorpe hadn’t completed his transformation. Perhaps he wanted to subdue her before sinking his fangs into her tender flesh.

  Or perhaps Thorpe was the attacker, but he was not a werewolf. Could job stress lead a man – a noted if not famous academic – to attack women around the full moon?

  ‘Ms Schwartz? Dulcie?’ Dulcie blinked. Josh was staring at her, his round face worried. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Sorry, I was caught up in a thought.’ Dulcie shook her head to clear it, and Josh settled back into his seat. For that moment, he had seemed honestly concerned, and that spoke well of him. Then again, there had to be something attractive about him, or else Mina would never have fallen for him – either for good or ill.

  ‘I was remembering my room-mate’s undergrad experience.’ Suze would forgive her, she knew, if she used her as a sort of stalking horse. ‘There was one girl, one woman, who came from some kind of horrible background. She took all these feminist theory courses, was really involved in political action. But I guess it was really some kind of compensation.’ She paused, ostensibly to reach for a napkin. ‘Suze reached out to her, but this girl didn’t respond. Or maybe she couldn’t. She really needed someone to take care of her.’

  Josh was nodding as he finished the last of her burger, and Dulcie felt a flash of revulsion as he licked his greasy fingers. That was it – that was his rationale. Reaching for another bunch of napkins, he wiped his hands.

  ‘I hate to say it, but I know the type.’

  She held her breath. He was going to confess. Maybe not to attacking her. Maybe not to trying to run her life. But to finding her weak or wanting. He who would contain me within Tyranny’s walls …

  ‘Women who are, well, I don’t want to say handicapped, but who are dealing with other issues. Still, those classes can be great. I think a lot of those women find strength in the political action groups.’ He balled up the napkins. ‘I know Mina did.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Dulcie left lunch more confused than ever, despite the warm feeling that comes from indulging in a tasty – and even moderately healthy – meal. As she had struggled to come up with another, more probing question, Josh had excused himself to use the restroom. Then he’d paid and grabbed his coat, all the while thanking Dulcie for her help at the Mildon. She hadn’t had a rejoinder for that, and had watched him go, unsure of what to think.

  At least, she told herself as she followed him out to the street, Mr Grey would have approved of what she did. Though what she meant by that – whether she meant rescuing Josh from the angry Griddlehaus or grilling him afterward – she wasn’t sure. It was simply a thought that had popped into her head. One that put her in a cheery mood as her phone started to ring.

  ‘Nancy!’ Dulcie was surprised. ‘Are you okay? Was there another … incident?’ The secretary rarely called.

  ‘Thank you, dear, I’m fine.’ The warm voice was calm, but Dulcie wasn’t quite reassured. ‘I am not sure everything is as it should be, though.’

  ‘Oh?’ The warm feeling was dissipating fast, and she turned toward the buildings to hear better.

  ‘It’s Mr Thorpe, Dulcie.’ In the pause that followed, Dulcie began to envision scenarios. Her adviser was dead. Her adviser had lashed out, clawing a nurse. He was …

  ‘He’s very upset, Dulcie.’ Nancy broke in before her imaginings could get worse. ‘He checked out a little after you left, and he has come into the office. But he’s not himself. He’s under enormous strain right now, and I don’t think your little outburst at the health services helped. I understand that he is not always easy to work with, and I do know he has his faults. But frankly, Dulcie, I believe you owe Mr Thorpe an apology.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nancy,’ she replied. ‘I really am.’ The good feeling was gone, and with it, the sense that Mr Grey would approve of her actions. The secretary was right. She had acted on assumptions. Even if she were to be proven correct, the balding scholar would be more to be pitied than hated. It wouldn’t be his fault if he had been turned into some sort of horrible, homicidal creature. She shivered at the thought, despite the broad daylight, and had a thought: daylight and an invitation. She had her opening to find out more. Trying to sound more contrite than curious, she added to her response. ‘I’ll come by and talk to him.’

  ‘I’m glad, Dulcie,’ Nancy’s voice registered her approval. ‘I knew you’d do the right thing. I know he’s difficult. Please keep in mind, he’s only human.’

  Dulcie hoped she was right.

  On Nancy’s advice, Dulcie headed over to the departmental offices. The motherly secretary had suggested she just ‘pop in,’ rather than make an appointment (‘you’ll only scare him, dear’). And Dulcie, who had been wondering if her adviser would decide to take off if he knew she was coming, agreed.

  There was so much going on that she just couldn’t get a handle on. What she really needed was time to think it all through – ideally with the aid and comfort of either Esmé or Mr Grey. Josh, for example. At first the junior had seemed like a nice guy, a fairly ordinary blend of geeky and sincere. Then again, Dulcie acknowledged, that would be what an abusive boyfriend would look like – until one got caught up in his nets. If that were the case, well, then it was possible he had attacked Mina and then Emily, and then switched back into his current caring mode. He might even be in some form of denial about it and not realize he had been the one to hurt them. But if that was the case, how did Professor Showalter fit into it all? Was it that Mina had been interested in her research – even if just to discredit it? Or did it somehow touch on the ancient connection Emily had uncovered between Mina and her boyfriend? No, Dulcie shook her head as she walked. It all seemed too tenuous.

  Then again, was it any more likely, really, that Martin Thorpe was the would-be killer? Logic said no, and a small, persistent voice in the back of her head pointed out that someone who didn’t read Gothic fiction every day would not even have considered the possibility of a lycanthropic malefactor. That voice – which bore a sneaking resemblance to the low, quiet voice of a certain feline specter – also warned Dulcie that she needed to be aware of her own prejudices in the matter.

  ‘I am, Mr Grey.’ She said under her breath. A passing pedestrian turned and looked. ‘At least, I’m trying to be. That is why I’m going to meet with Thorpe now.’

  The response – a sense of questioning, mixed with a bit of doubt if not humor – was not phrased in words, exactly. It didn’t need to be. ‘Well, part of the reason,’ amended Dulcie, ignoring the looks she received as she turned from the busy avenue onto DeWolfe. ‘I’m trying to be fair, Mr Grey. It’s just that …’

  She stopped. This is where it had happened, that first night. Where she had heard that howl – that strange unearthly howl – and then, moments later, seen Martin Thorpe emerge wild and disheveled from the shadows. This was where, although she didn’t know it at the time, a young woman – a student – had been mauled.

  Dulcie took a deep breath, looked around, and made up her mind. She might not understand how, exactly, this had all happened. But she had to keep her wits about her. Something strange was going on, and whether or not he was culpable, Martin Thorpe was involved. It only made sense for her to be careful.

  THIRTY-SIX

  ‘But the problem is, I don’t know if I’ll ever find the section that explains what happened exactly.’ She looked up, breathless and lost. ‘It may never be resolved.’

  Forty minutes later, Dulcie was deep in a different dilemma. Despite her fears, Martin Thorpe had indeed been in his office when Dulcie climbed the ri
ckety stairs. At his invitation, she had trundled into his office and, somewhat unwillingly, into the guest chair opposite his desk. She’d found herself studying the bookshelves that lined the wall as she forced out the words she had promised Nancy she would say. The words that, she knew, were only polite, even if they just might be terribly, tragically wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry if I sounded like I was accusing you of anything untoward, Mr Thorpe.’ She switched her focus to her hands as she spoke. She really needed to stop biting her nails. ‘I know that you are innocent of any wrongdoing.’

  It sounded formal, fake and stiff, but it was the best she could do. And Thorpe seemed content to have it over with.

  ‘That’s fine, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘Everyone gets a little hot-headed when things go wrong around here.’ His acceptance of her rote apology was both so vague and all-encompassing, it led Dulcie to believe that Nancy had primed him for this scene as well, and that he had been as unwilling as she was.

  By the time she was able to look at her adviser directly, his complexion had even returned to something like its normal pallor, leading Dulcie to wonder if she had indeed imagined both those odd episodes.

  When Thorpe had then followed up by asking her to tell him about her latest findings, she was, if not convinced, at least distracted. It was so much more pleasant to discuss the pages she had found, the bits of story she was piecing together. And to have her adviser actually listen with apparent interest … well, it was like catnip would be to Esmé.

  Only now, she had arrived at the crux of her problem: ‘I haven’t yet found the connecting link in the story,’ she continued. ‘So maybe I never will know how it all works out.’

  Thorpe was watching her silently, but Dulcie had more or less forgotten he was there, so deep was she in thought. ‘I wish I knew how the protagonist is involved with Esteban, the young lord,’ Dulcie said. She’d already explained about the strange carriage that appeared to pick her up. And while she had glossed over the howling wolves outside – ‘some kind of threatening noises, probably supernatural,’ she had said – she had let her emotions temper her reaction to the stranger inside the carriage. ‘He’s a good guy, I think. I’m pretty sure,’ she had said. ‘After all, he picks her up and rescues her from … whatever is out there. And he seems to be warning her.’

  ‘About what?’ Thorpe’s voice interrupted her reverie, and she looked up. ‘Couldn’t he be warning her about himself? After all, he seems rather … demonic.’

  ‘What?’ It took Dulcie a moment to reorient. ‘No, he’s not demonic.’

  Thorpe shrugged and looked away, muttering something like ‘as if it were immediately apparent.’ And Dulcie caught her breath. Could Thorpe be talking about himself? But his next question caught her even more off guard.

  ‘Is it truly vital to keep looking for more pages?’ He had switched to his pedantic voice, a little dismissive and little haughty. ‘These so-called “linking pages” may no longer exist. In truth, we have little evidence that a complete manuscript has survived at all.’

  ‘But the Paine letter refers to a complete book. A masterwork, and if it is by my author …’ She caught herself. ‘By the author I’m studying, then its worth would be incalculable.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but time has a very real value as well, and a scholar could spend a lifetime looking for a complete lost work and then proving attribution to a particular author. Could lose a lifetime, too, if the search proved fruitless.’ He seemed much more himself again, in this mode, making notes on a pad even as he spoke. ‘As your adviser, I would be remiss if I didn’t point this out, Ms Schwartz.’

  ‘But—’ Her protest was stopped by his raised hand.

  ‘I understand the appeal of the hunt, so to speak.’ Dulcie swallowed her response, and he kept talking. ‘When the blood is up I, too, have sought to track down the elusive …’ He paused, finished writing whatever it was he was writing, and pushed the paper aside. ‘The elusive prey. But, really, Ms Schwartz, what have you to gain? You’ve already uncovered significant portions of new prose, and you’ve also gone far in making a strong case that these new fragments were indeed penned by the author of The Rampages.’

  ‘The Ravages.’She couldn’t stop herself. He looked up, eyes bloodshot over his glasses, and she shut her mouth.

  ‘The Ravages.’ He looked back down. ‘In fact, if I do recall your précis correctly, your thesis focuses on that earlier, better-established work. What there is of it. This later work, if indeed it is by the same author, was simply going to be a chapter, a speculative chapter posing some hypotheticals about the future life and work of this unknown author.’

  ‘But I want to know what happens!’ Dulcie couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘I’ve read the later bit, where she’s standing over the body. And these pages seem to be earlier, when she’s fleeing from someone – probably from Esteban. I want to know how she got from here to there. What happened between them to cause her to run? Why was the stranger warning her? Did she –’ Dulcie licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry – ‘kill him?’

  It was the wrong kind of question. Unscholarly in the extreme, and in the silence that followed Dulcie felt herself shrinking down in her seat. But although her adviser seemed momentarily taken aback by her outburst, he soon closed his mouth and his eyebrows returned to their customary place behind his glasses. And, wonder of wonders, he smiled.

  ‘You are quite taken with this fragment, aren’t you?’ She nodded, even though the question was rhetorical. ‘That speaks well of your dedication, even if it is a misplaced enthusiasm.’ Those eyebrows arched again, wrinkling his prematurely high forehead in a particularly unattractive manner. ‘And it confirms my initial impression that you have already spent enough – more than enough – time on what will most likely prove a wild-goose chase.

  ‘After all, as a scholar you need to be looking at how this character was created. What literary devices were employed by your putative author that could link her with the dramatic personae of the known work. Not on whether this character – this nameless, fleeing woman – was good or bad, or whether someone killed one person or another. Such distinctions are irrelevant to our purposes – and, ultimately, to your thesis. You need to pursue this as a scholar, Ms Schwartz. You are not, after all, reading for fun.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Dulcie had left soon after that, her spirits as dim as the darkening sky. Thorpe was right, of course. The search for a missing novel could be a scholar’s life work. It might, he had even suggested in a belated effort to cheer her up, become hers. But such a quest would take years, rather than months. And, odds were, it would take the kind of resources that neither Dulcie, nor even the Mildon, could provide. To piece together an entire novel, she’d probably have to search archives up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Even abroad, if she counted in the collectors who might have bought the book when it was first published or the scholars who may have salvaged bits of it in the ensuing centuries. She wouldn’t be able to find the entire book. Not in a year or two, and not here, and if she kept on looking, before she knew it, she’d be entirely off track with her thesis. Instead of a PhD, she’d end up Dulcinea Schwartz, ABD – all but dissertation – looking for teaching jobs at private secondary schools, and wondering where she’d gone wrong.

  The day was giving way to dusk as she made her way home, and the evening chill made her wrap her sweater close. The street was empty, and for a moment she thought of heading back into the Square. She could grab a cab there, or maybe find someone to walk with. The way Thorpe had talked about stalking, about prey, had left her with an unsettled feeling, as had his casual dismissal of her heroine’s involvement in the young lord’s violent death. Yes, it did matter, she wanted to yell out. It mattered a lot.

  She turned the corner and lowered her head as a blast of wind buffeted her, bringing tears to her eyes. She blinked them away, sniffing. Thorpe was more than temporarily off balance, she thought. He was truly a strange man. How could he say it
didn’t matter if someone had killed someone else? Yes, these were fictional characters. But even to say that …

  Another gust, this time carrying grit that swiped at her face like claws. Like the claws of a particular ghost, she realized, ducking into the wind. ‘Mr Grey? Am I that far off base?’ She closed her eyes against the grit, willing a response. The only answer was the wind, which swirled around her, hurrying her along like the clouds it was whipping into the sky.

  It could have been a warning. The full moon may have passed, but an empty street at dusk was not the place to be. Not when women were being attacked, being hurt, and the attacker might be a mere human, evil but mortal. The sky darkened, the clouds gathered …

  And just like that, the wind died away, leaving Dulcie alone and, for now, unmolested. She nodded to herself. ‘You’re right, Mr Grey,’ she said to the fading light. All her fears and fancies were simply her way of avoiding the real issue. She knew that. Martin Thorpe’s main job was to keep her on track. Just because she resisted his discipline didn’t make him an abuser of women … or worse. It just made him her adviser.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘Surprise!’ Chris greeted her at the door. ‘I have the night off.’

  ‘That’s great.’ Dulcie tried to muster a smile. ‘Something smells fantastic.’

  ‘It’s just spaghetti.’ He followed her into the kitchen, where Esmé was already dining. ‘But I made garlic bread, too. Did Trista walk you home again?’

  ‘No, I didn’t ask her to.’ Dulcie threw her sweater over the back of a chair, causing the cat to look up, and headed toward the fridge. ‘Do we have any wine?’