by Martha Carr
She turned on the shower to get hot and stripped down, then washed everything away in the scalding shower. When all else failed, she could just scrub it off.
* * *
Clean, hungry, and dressed in her usual all-black, the halfling put on her slightly-paler-than-her-skin foundation and another round of heavy black eyeliner. Her hair could do whatever it wanted for all she cared. Her first graduate class at Virginia Commonwealth University started at 8:30 a.m., and if she got a move on, she’d still have enough time to stop at the gas station down the street for something breakfast-y and get to Mattie’s Advanced Algorithms class a little early.
The least she could do was try one more time to ask Mattie about the stupid puzzle box. She wrinkled her nose at the copper trinket quickly warming in her hand before stuffing it into the bottom of her backpack. “Maybe she won’t be too pissed if I say please really nicely, as if I actually mean it.”
Last thing to take care of before she stepped out of her apartment for the day was to check on Glen. The trusty computer tower had been running the Bunker nonstop since she’d gotten that encrypted file from gu@rdi@n104. The forum admin might have just been running her around in circles for the last twenty-four hours, but it was the only lead she had—if she could even call it that.
Her main monitor flashed when she woke it up, and Cheyenne stood in front of her tech system, which took up the entire executive desk and pretty much all the space in her tiny living room.
The massive file still hadn’t finished processing, so she didn’t even try to sift through what the Bunker had already unpacked. She drummed her fingers on her desk and nodded. “I’ll be ready when you are. No problem.”
Thinking of the Borderlands forum made her pause, but just for a second. Of course, there were way more magicals scattered across the dark web—in that particular forum or not—than those Cheyenne had met in person, not to mention those she could consider asking personal questions. If Mattie couldn’t give her anything more to go on with the drow puzzle box, it still wouldn’t be an awesome idea to put out feelers about the thing on the dark web. That was too much of a risk, especially when she had no clue what the drow artifact was or what it was supposed to do besides freak her out.
Plus, even if she hadn’t sworn off all FRoE shenanigans, she wouldn’t have gone to them for those answers. “That would make Sir’s freakin’ day, wouldn’t it? He’s got a real soft spot for my father.”
With a wry huff, she gave Glen another pat of encouragement and turned off the monitor again. There was always a way to find what she wanted as long as Cheyenne was willing to do what it took to get there. So far, that hadn’t changed one bit.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder, grabbed her keys off the kitchen counter by the front door, and shoved her feet into her black Vans. Door open, door shut, out into the hall—just another day for the Goth grad student pretending not to be a mythical drow halfling in Richmond. She got down to the ground floor of her apartment building, thinking she’d made really good time this morning. That hadn’t happened in a while.
Only when she caught the surprised, almost terrified confusion on her neighbor’s face—the older man who walked his Australian shepherd a bazillion times a day—did she realize she hadn’t bothered to tape another gauze bandage over the black-magic holes tunneling into her shoulder. The man stopped in his usual route to stare at the halfling’s shoulder, then her face, then back at her shoulder again.
The thick chains wrapped around Cheyenne’s wrists clinked against each other when she lifted a hand in greeting and gave the guy a tight smile. “You should see the other guy. Wild Wednesdays, am I right?”
Her neighbor sounded like he might choke from just being near her if she stuck around any longer, so the drow halfling hoofed it to her car and found herself debating if it was worth it to stop somewhere before class for another homemade bandage. She decided that instead of staring at the scary Goth chick’s face, everyone could stare at the even scarier holes in her arm. Keep ‘em guessing.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
The room for Mattie Bergmann’s Advanced Algorithms graduate class was empty when Cheyenne stepped inside at 8:09 a.m. The door was unlocked, at least, but she had to turn on the lights to get to her usual seat at the middle row of tables lining the room. For the next twenty minutes, she found herself daydreaming of how nice it would be if nobody showed up.
A halfling can dream, right?
That was when the other students started filtering into the room like so many dazed, confused little bugs. There was Messy Bun with her hair done up in the same ridiculous “I spent hours on making myself look like I don’t care how I look” style, rolling her eyes as she tried not to laugh at something that Peter guy said that probably wasn’t anywhere near as funny as they both seemed to think. Cheyenne glanced at them briefly before focusing on her open laptop again. She’d be jealous if she saw my bedhead this morning.
The half-drow smelled the giant guy with the huge beard who sat behind her in half her classes about twenty seconds before he stepped into the room. The guy went back and forth between eau de Doritos and essence of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. For his sake, she hoped the smell came from having eaten one of those things at some point during the day. Others came in: a skinny guy who was so tall that his cargo shorts looked like basketball shorts from the ‘80s on him. A few other students, some of them holding hushed conversations, most of them silently minding their own business.
Still, something felt a little off, and Cheyenne couldn’t put her finger on it. Nobody said anything she didn’t expect to hear from a bunch of normal grad students, and she’d heard it all before anyway. A slow, simmering weight settled over the classroom, like the rippling heat waves rising off the sidewalk or the hood of her car on a hot day, only the half-drow could feel it. Apparently, she was the only one.
“Two minutes late today. I’m right on time.” Mattie Bergmann’s voice burst into the classroom a second before her physical person. The professor had gone with some kind of Renaissance-peasant theme today—on LSD, maybe. Neon-green flowy skirt with something glittery-pink underneath, a weird puffy shirt cut off the shoulders, pastel-purple and silver stripes clashing unapologetically with the skirt, a wide cherry-red belt over all of it, with an obnoxiously large belt buckle the woman could’ve used as a shield, earrings that matched each other only in how far they dangled below her jawline, and a navy-blue bandana covered in white paisley wrapped around the dark hair piled haphazardly on top of her head.
Cheyenne seriously hoped Mattie hadn’t spent anywhere near as much time dressing herself today as Messy Bun had admitted to spending on her hair, unaware that the half-drow could pretty much hear everything in the classroom. And I’m the one getting the jokes about Halloween only being in October. What is goin’ on with Bergmann today?
The professor’s brightly colored Tevas peeled off the linoleum floor with a sticky slurp as she rushed toward the desk at the front of the classroom. Her wheeled briefcase clicked and rolled swiftly behind her, taking its usual place beside the desk with that metal handle sticking up. Mattie scanned the dozen faces staring at her but didn’t meet Cheyenne’s gaze. “Oh, good. Everyone looks as happy to be here as I feel. Bright and early.”
For the first time, it wasn’t clear whether the woman was making another of her dry jokes or if she was serious. Stranger than that was the smell. Cheyenne had gotten a big whiff of it as the woman stormed through the doorway, but it was still there. Like a dried orange peel just beginning to mold mixed with…the closest thing the halfling could compare it to was sweat. But that wasn’t really it.
Mattie whipped a stack of papers out of her briefcase, rummaged violently through the desk drawer for the smartboard remote, and jabbed buttons to get her lesson up and running with tech that was outdated even for the undergrad courses.
Cheyenne folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. She was more rattled than yesterday. Something was wrong.
“S
o.” Mattie clapped and tossed the remote onto the desk before sliding it toward her again. “Who wants to play teacher’s pet this morning and—”
“Professor.” Messy Bun lifted her chin toward the front of the room and leaned forward over the long table and the university-provided computers and keyboards spread out at every station.
The professor’s smile didn’t quite finish the shape it was supposed to take. “Ms. Arcady.”
“I love that skirt.”
The only sound after that was the dull, sporadic tapping of Mattie’s index finger on the surface of the desk.
“Well.” The woman frowned like her student had expressed the opposite sentiment, and her gaze darted around the room. “Thank you. But that was most definitely not what I meant. Who’s got a refresher course from Tuesday for the professor who’s actually teaching said course? In three sentences or less would be fantastic.”
Despite her enhanced hearing, Cheyenne somehow managed to tune out everything the student picking up the teacher’s pet mantle said after that. None of it applied to her anyway; she and Mattie had already agreed that Cheyenne didn’t need this class for anything but fulfilled credit hours toward her master’s. But that sweaty moldy-orange smell and Mattie’s obvious unraveling caught more of the half-drow’s attention and focus than any class she’d taken beyond virtual high school.
Most people wouldn’t notice the switch from eccentric to totally whacko. Then again, most people hadn’t been spending Mattie’s office hours playing “train that halfling” for the last week.
Mattie just nodded in a daze as she looked absently around the room again, her student’s “refresher course” going in one ear and right out the other.
If she could look me in the eye, I might believe it has nothing to do with me.
She had to let it go, though, because scrutinizing Mattie while the woman was already under a lot of pressure wouldn’t help either of them. And they still had those office hours.
Then Cheyenne noticed the three students sitting in front of her, Messy Bun being one of them, had turned around in their chairs and were staring at her. Clearly, she’d missed something extremely important. She raised her eyebrows, and when nobody offered any information, she asked, “What’s up?”
Messy Bun rolled her eyes. The Peter guy sitting next to her smirked; it could’ve been in amusement, disbelief, or some twisted kind of admiration. Who knew with that guy? “I said, you know about that part of JavaScript, right?”
The drow halfling shrugged. “Probably.”
“Right. But the assignment we had on Tuesday, yeah?” Peter glanced at Messy Bun and let out a confused laugh. “We’re trying to put together that last string of code to make the whole thing run. Did you have any problems with it?”
“Nope.”
Messy Bun scoffed. “I call bull.”
“Hey, call whatever you want.” Cheyenne spared a glance at Mattie, who now had all ten fingertips pressed lightly on the top of her desk, eyes closed as she muttered something under her breath. She’s not even paying attention. “I didn’t work on it. Therefore, no problems.”
“Wow. You don’t even care about being here, do you?”
“Well, not as much as some people. More than everyone who isn’t here right now.” Cheyenne pursed her lips. “You know, ‘cause this is such a full class.”
Dorito Breath chuckled behind her, but she was really just hoping Mattie would snap out of it and then snap at everyone else to pay no attention to the girl behind the Goth mask. Not that she couldn’t handle a little misplaced attention, but the halfling was starting to think she’d have to go shake their Computer Sciences professor out of whatever funk she’d fallen into.
“You’re unbelievable.” Messy Bun spun toward the front of the room and opened her mouth to most likely complain, then noticed Mattie’s apparent concentration on her own internal dialogue. The student in the front row turned back toward Cheyenne again and opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Nice game face.
Messy Bun’s gaze fell to the halfling’s shoulder, and the weird expression morphed into shock. “Oh, my God. Your shoulder.”
Fighting back a laugh, Cheyenne looked slowly at the large and alarmingly red holes in her flesh and won first place in the Keep-a-Straight-Face challenge. “Huh. Look at that.”
“Are you okay? That looks awful. What happened?”
It was the most interest the other woman had shown Cheyenne, which wasn’t saying much. The half-drow just couldn’t help herself. “Bear attack.”
“What?”
Not even that level of shrieking tore Mattie Bergmann out of whatever still had her full, slightly panicked attention. Cheyenne stared at the woman, watching for a sign that things were about to get a lot better or a lot worse.
“Oh, yeah,” she muttered, not bothering to look at Messy Bun despite being able to feel the girl’s stunned awe aimed at her. “Just came at me with its claws raised and…”
She mimed scratching at something with two hooked fingers and leaned to the side when Messy Bun leaned toward her, just to keep her eyes on Professor Bergmann.
Peter forced a cough into his fist and turned quickly back around to hide his reaction.
“No way. I didn’t even know they could do that. How did you… I mean, was it hard to escape?”
“Not really.”
“What did you do?”
Maybe Cheyenne took a little too long before answering the next stupid question, but watching Mattie Bergmann’s fingers twisting in complicated patterns across the surface of her desk was a pretty good excuse. Please don’t tell me she’s trying to cast a spell with her eyes closed in a room full of human grad students.
Messy Bun let out an impatient grunt. “Hello?”
“Probably just punched it in the face.” That came from one of the guys sitting behind Cheyenne, followed by smothered laughter. It sucked that Messy Bun had turned this class into a comedy act this morning, but it was a hell of a lot better than any of these students paying attention to their professor’s serious issue—mainly that a little pocket of air in front of the woman had started shimmering, right out in the open for everyone to see.
“Come on,” Messy Bun muttered. “You can’t punch a bear.”
“Why not?” Dorito Breath laughed, his chair creaking dangerously as he leaned his huge frame against the back of it. “It’s just like punching anything else. One good swing…”
“That’s not…no.” Messy Bun leaned toward Cheyenne again, trying to catch the halfling’s eye. “Did you really punch the bear that did that to your shoulder?”
A thin, barely visible line of blue light appeared in the shimmering air in front of Mattie, and that was when Cheyenne realized the woman had no idea what was going on.
“Yeah. You should try it sometime.” The drow halfling slammed both hands on the lab table in front of her and leapt to her feet. The back of her chair hit the table behind her. “Professor Bergmann!”
Messy Bun reeled away from her, someone else’s chair squeaked across the floor, and Mattie’s green eyes flew open. Cheyenne hoped she was the only one who heard the woman’s sharp gasp of surprise before the partially formed spell in front of her vanished. The halfling was positive no one else could hear their professor’s pulse racing through her veins. Blinking madly, Mattie swept another glazed, absent look across the classroom. “There’s hardly ever a good reason for yelling in any college-level course. Anyone care to tell me why it’s happening in mine?”
Her voice was strained, hiding the trembling undertones only from the students without super-drow hearing.
Why won’t she look at me?
Someone cleared their throat. Messy Bun turned back around to face their professor and muttered something under her breath. For once, Cheyenne couldn’t come up with a witty comeback that would mostly cover up what she was thinking of trying to do. It didn’t matter since Mattie clearly wasn’t about to call the halfling out—not when she’d a
lmost blown magic wide open in front of everybody here.
So Cheyenne pressed her lips together, raised her eyebrows, and slowly lowered herself back into her chair. Trying to come up with a viable excuse would just make her look like an embarrassed idiot. Since this whole weird scenario had made her look like an idiot anyway, she might as well own up to it and claim it for what it was.
Mattie cleared her throat. “Well, that was fun. As soon as I’m done talking, I’ll be sending out a group email to the entire class. I hope everyone gets the same kinda kick out of opening that assignment in five minutes and spending the rest of our time in here this morning getting a head start on it before the weekend. You’ll need it.”
That pretty much settled it. Mattie sat for the first time behind the desk, pulled an old, clunky laptop from her briefcase—it had to belong to the Computer Sciences department—and stared blankly at the screen as she typed. The other students either logged onto the lab computers or pulled out their laptops like Cheyenne. She might’ve been the only one after that who didn’t bother to open her email. Her eyes didn’t leave Mattie Bergmann’s face until the end of class.
By then, the professor had already packed up her wheeled briefcase and was the first person out the door. Cheyenne really hoped Mattie made it to her office hours today. I can’t wait to hear her try to explain what just happened.
Chapter Seventy
The second Cheyenne turned around the first corner of the hallway in the IT building, she felt those eyes on her again. Whose? She still had no clue, and it took all her concentration as she moved across campus to her next class not to let out her frustration and slip into her drow form. Sure, a little rage and some black-and-purple magic bombs thrown around would be a nice release, but it probably wouldn’t help her pin the target on the Peeping Tom.
