by Martha Carr
Clenching her teeth, she slapped another handful of water on her face, slammed the faucet back down with a dull thud, and almost left the bathroom before remembering she did have to go.
By the time she finished and washed her hands, every trace of her drow heritage had disappeared beneath the mask of a world-weary grad student who still hadn’t outgrown her Goth phase. “They shoulda seen me in high school. But nobody saw me, did they?”
“What did you do to your face?”
“You’re such a pretty girl. You don’t need all that makeup.”
“I’m sure your mother didn’t raise you to mutilate yourself like that.”
Just a bunch of judgmental crap from the few people who’d she’d been forced to meet in her life. Bianca had kept her isolated in their giant lodge off 653 in Henry County, surrounded by more trees and deer and occasionally black bears than people. That didn’t mean Cheyenne hadn’t gotten out as a kid, just not as much. “And four years in college still hasn’t wiped all the weird out of me. Good.”
With a nod at the mirror, Cheyenne took a deep breath, snatched a paper towel from the dispenser, and crumpled it up irritably to dry her hands. Without looking, she tossed it at the trashcan on her way out the door—she didn’t turn back to see she hadn’t missed. She didn’t miss even when she tried.
When she stepped back inside Bergmann’s classroom, no one stopped what they were doing to acknowledge her return. Not even the professor. Cheyenne quietly closed the door behind her, then went back to her chair in front of her closed laptop, and took a seat. It wasn’t 9:00 a.m., and she’d completed all her other various class assignments over the weekend. So she pulled out her earbuds, jammed the jack into her phone and one bud into her ear, and pulled up an album of Rachmaninoff performed by a pianist who didn’t look old enough to be out of high school.
Nothing like an angry Russian composer to get an angry chick to calm down. Godsmack wouldn’t help right now.
She folded her arms and stared at the back of Messy Bun’s head. The other student couldn’t have felt Cheyenne’s gaze on her, yet she turned around and shot the half-drow a contemptuous glare.
Cheyenne closed her eyes. I bet she uses the word ‘irksome’ in everyday conversation.
One and a half tracks later, Cheyenne didn’t need to look at the clock to know class was over. Other students were packing up, getting ready to move onto some other class where they could gobble up more banal attempts at imparting knowledge.
She didn’t take her earbuds out until Professor Bergmann stood from her chair and announced: “…if you want to get credit for it. And because Miss Arcady brought up an excellent point about not having been assigned the work, I’m telling you all right now that I want these brilliant bits of code in my inbox by eleven fifty-nine p.m. tomorrow night. I hope that’s specific enough.”
Bergmann smiled sweetly at Messy Bun, who returned a faker smile and jammed her bright-yellow folder into her expensive leather messenger bag. Cheyenne slipped her laptop into its sleeve and let it glide right into her backpack, then paused the Rachmaninoff and wound her earbuds around her phone. She wasn’t the last one out, but that didn’t seem to matter to the professor. “Cheyenne,” Bergmann called, “can you spare a few minutes?”
“Uh…” Cheyenne slung her backpack over her shoulder and blinked, feeling a few curious glances her way, although none lingered long. “I have another class at—”
“Oh, so do I. We’re both very busy, I know. It won’t take long.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Cheyenne walked down the row between the long lab tables and stopped to lean back against one. Messy Bun didn’t look at her at all as she sauntered past with her messenger bag thumping against her thigh. Peter raised an eyebrow and tried to smile. Cheyenne’s deadpan stare saw him out of the classroom. When the last student cleared out, Professor Bergmann stepped past Cheyenne and pulled the door shut.
She turned, nodded, and licked her lips. “We have a problem, don’t we?”
Chapter Ten
“What?” Cheyenne stuck her hands through the straps of her backpack over her shoulder and eyed her black-haired professor as the woman crossed the room again. “Did you look at what I sent you?”
Bergmann stopped behind her desk and started packing up her own computer and random academic paraphernalia. The handle of her wheeled briefcase still stretched up to its full length, and Cheyenne had an overwhelming urge to slam it back down into place where it belonged.
“Of course, I did.”
“There was nothing wrong with my code.” Cheyenne straightened away from the end of the lab table and gripped her backpack straps even tighter. “If you looked at it, you’d know that—”
“Only twenty-five percent of it was based on the given directives I laid out in my presentation. Yep.” Bergmann nodded and zipped up her briefcase, then straightened. “That it’s more complex than anything I’ve seen a student turn in, and I’ve been doing this for…well, longer than I’d like to admit. And let me just say that I found your proxy entryway while you were in the bathroom. Threw me for a loop for about sixty seconds, but I did find it. So nice try.”
“Okay.” Cheyenne stared at the handle of the woman’s briefcase. “So what’s the problem?”
“Well, hell, Cheyenne. We both know it’s not your work.” Finally, Bergmann peered at her, stuck a hand on her hip, and laughed. “You might not be able to learn anything from me this semester, seeing as you’re already crushing it with the assignments. Only three classes in. Did you find that code somewhere, or are you telling me it really is yours?”
Cheyenne shook her head. “I didn’t cheat if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Hmm. No, I didn’t peg you as someone who’d enjoy wasting both our time. So, like I said, this class might be pretty useless for you.”
“You want me to drop out?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” The professor laughed again and tucked her dark hair behind her ear. “You can stay. Easy A for you, I have no doubt. If you’re willing to go through the drudgery of turning in work you already understand. Hey, maybe you’ll teach me a few new tricks. But what I can help you with is control.”
Cheyenne cleared her throat. “What?”
“There’s a side of you you don’t want anyone else to see. Right?” Bergmann lifted a hand and wiggled the tip of her own ear, reaching for the handle of her roller briefcase without looking at her student. She glanced at her watch. “Boy, I hate schedules. Look, Cheyenne, I’m going to be late for my next class, which I enjoy slightly less than this one. If you’re interested, I know I can teach you things that have nothing to do with computers or programming. You know my office hours.”
With a fleeting grin, Professor Bergmann nodded and strode toward the classroom’s exit, muttering something about always being late. The door didn’t slam as it had when Cheyenne stormed out for her bathroom break, but it was close.
The half-drow, hands tucked through the straps of her backpack, stared out into the hall. Students and professors and instructors passed by the open doorway, and for the first time in a long time, all the chaos and everything Cheyenne would normally have tried not to notice stayed out of her head.
“Seriously?” She lifted a hand to her ears, which still felt round and human beneath the tight binding of her braided hair. Yet, the professor had looked right at them before Cheyenne burst out of the classroom as if the woman had expected to see dark peaks popping up from beneath her hair. And the rest of the changes, she was pretty sure, had happened in the hall.
“How the hell did she know?”
She realized she’d been standing there like an idiot when she had another class to get to. Hissing through her teeth, she tightened her grip on her backpack straps and hurried into the hall. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to check the time, then shoved it back down again.
“Great. Four minutes to get across campus.”
Somehow, it felt pointless
to be rattled by being late to class in the second week. It wasn’t like she was going to miss anything important in the first five minutes. Something felt like it was about to crash down around her all the same.
Although most of the other students seemed to take Advanced Social Media Network Analysis and Security seriously, to Cheyenne, it was a joke. The instructor was some old bald guy with patches of gray fluff sprouting from the sides of his head and ears.
Cheyenne stared at his mouth as he droned on.
Looks like he cut off the end of that beard and glued it over his ears.
The thought made her snort, which earned her a glance from the professor.
For an hour and a half, the man lectured. Everything went in one ear and out the other. Oh, man. Cheyenne rubbed her hands down her cheeks and stifled a yawn. Everything’s about ears now.
She almost missed it when the instructor excused them at the end of class and said something about them needing to prepare for a pop quiz this week, maybe next week.
Her backpack felt heavy as she headed outside to cross the campus one more time. She had two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, giving her the rest of the afternoon to do whatever. Ten minutes later, she found herself in line at the food court in the Student Center. She didn’t remember walking inside and getting in line, but her stomach’s growls convinced her she’d been on autopilot.
Don’t get lazy, Cheyenne. Three hours of sleep isn’t an excuse.
The guy standing behind the counter nodded at her. “What do you need?”
“A nap.”
He chuckled. “I hear most college kids get their beauty sleep in the library, but you’re up next to order, so…”
“Sorry.” Cheyenne shook her head, then pointed at a plastic container in a triangle shape. “Just one of those.”
“Chicken salad sandwich. You got it.”
She paid the guy and turned away with her boxed sandwich before he could ask if she wanted a receipt. She slumped in a chair at the closest unoccupied table and popped open the container.
The sandwich went into her mouth, and she didn’t taste a single bite.
I don’t need some hippy-skirt professor telling me how to hide. I need to sleep. I need to go home and check my search. I need to find the orc asshole who brought a gun to a…
The chicken salad sandwich stuck in her throat. She forced down the dry, painful lump and coughed. “Magical fight.”
Can a girl get a glass of water?
Cheyenne glanced around when she realized she’d said that last part out loud, then shoved the sandwich container across the table and unzipped her backpack. Professor Bergmann’s syllabus was in one of the three unmarked manila folders, clean and stapled neatly together with the woman’s office hours on top: 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.
“Control the parts of me I don’t want anyone else to see, huh? Yeah, she probably wouldn’t still be so willing to help if she’d seen me last night.” Cheyenne coughed again on the bread stuck in her throat and wished she’d thought to buy a bottle of water.
But if I knew how to control myself, maybe Ember wouldn’t be in the hospital. Maybe she wouldn’t have been shot.
That thought sent Cheyenne to her feet again. The chair behind her lurched back with a grating shriek against the floor, and her hand whipped out to catch it before it fell over. She scooted it in with her foot, strapped on her backpack, and snatched up the rest of her sandwich before heading to the IT building to find Professor Bergmann’s office.
As she wove her way through the throngs of college students with enough money—or a big enough budget on their meal plan—to spend on the food court, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and glanced at the notifications screen through the earbud cord wrapped around it. No phone call from the hospital. No texts or alerts. If Ember was already recovering and headed home, she would have called or texted or something.
I can spare some time for an IT professor who thinks she knows what I am. Then I’ll stop by for their stupid visiting hours.
Chapter Eleven
The door to the professor’s office was closed, but even through the frosted glass window, Cheyenne could tell the lights were on. She’d made it to the office of Matilda Bergmann—typed right there on the removable paper card beside the door—at two minutes past 1:00 p.m. At least she’s not late to her own office hours.
Cheyenne knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
This was a “pull-in” kind of door, or at least it would have been if Cheyenne were standing on the inside of the office. She pushed it open and stepped into the small, tidy space the university had carved out for Professor Bergmann. For a few seconds, Bergmann didn’t glance up from her computer at the L-shaped desk, and Cheyenne took a quick look around. “Huh.”
“Cheyenne.” The professor gazed at her and smiled. “I see the wheels turning, and that one non-word says a lot. What’s wrong?”
The half-drow stuck out her bottom lip and shrugged. “Nothing’s wrong. I…expected something else.”
“You mean, like a sweet setup and a bunch of cool new tech funded by the money this school doesn’t have for its IT professors?” Bergmann laughed and stood, shuffling papers around before lifting herself enough to sit on the corner of the desk this time. “Turns out, I’m a regular professor with a regular office. Sorry to disappoint.”
Cheyenne shrugged.
The room fell silent, and the older woman let out a patient sigh. “I’m glad you came. That’s what I’m here for. I still can’t help but ask why you came, though.”
With raised eyebrows, Cheyenne stepped toward her professor’s desk and stopped to look at the degrees and awards and plaques hanging on the office walls. “I still can’t help but ask what you meant by ‘controlling the parts of me I don’t want anyone else to see.’”
Bergmann’s eyes narrowed above a coy smile. “That’s a very good question. I’m more than willing to answer it, and whatever other questions you might have that aren’t so…academically focused, but I need you to do one thing for me first.”
“What?”
“Shut the door, please.”
Holding the woman’s gaze, Cheyenne lowered her backpack to the floor beside the bench along the wall. She turned and shut the door with a soft click.
“Well, at least we know you can be gentle. With doors, at least.” The professor chuckled at her own joke and gestured toward two narrow armchairs at the far end of her office. “Come take a seat, and we’ll talk.”
“I’m good right here.” Cheyenne folded her arms and studied the woman’s inquisitive smile.
“In case you decide I’m full of it and want to make a quick escape, huh?”
“More like in case I fall asleep in one of those chairs.”
“You know, I have a hard time believing you weren’t able to get enough sleep. How old are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?” Bergmann wagged a finger at her and went to sit in an armchair. “And don’t tell me you spent all night drinking. From where I was sitting last night, you looked very awake.”
Cheyenne’s stomach lurched. “What did you say?”
“In the bar. With that friend of yours, right? The blonde girl in the leather jacket.” Bergmann crossed one leg over the other in the armchair, pulling the edges of her tie-dyed skirt out from under her before letting it fall around her thighs again. “You’re not gonna try to tell me that wasn’t you, are you? That would be boring, and we both know I’m smarter than that.”
With a quick glance at the closed office door, Cheyenne stepped hesitantly across the office toward the armchairs. “You were at Gnarly’s last night?”
“One of my favorite awful places. You bet.” Bergmann winked. “I was there. I saw you and your little bottle-crushing trick. I’m sure it was a mistake, but it caught my attention. We don’t see too many halflings these days. Or ever.”
Cheyenne’s jaw clenched and unclenched as she tried to process what this woman was saying. “Next you’re gonna be asking if you
can touch my ears.”
“Cheyenne—”
“Yeah, this was a mistake. I gotta go.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re the second person who’s called me that in the last twenty-four hours. The first person got shot in the stomach, so it’s safer for you if I head out.” Cheyenne scooped her backpack up. This was a stupid idea. I can’t get into this now.
“Cheyenne!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be in class on Thursday, and we can pretend I’m learning something. No problem.” She wrapped her hand around the doorknob, and a spark of silver light burst beneath her fingers and crackled across the door. Cheyenne jerked her hand away from the electric jolt and stared at the smoking metal doorknob.
She turned around. “What was that?”
“You tell me.”
Cheyenne’s grip tightened on the strap of her backpack, and she stepped away from the door. “I didn’t have to come to your office if I wanted to answer my own questions.”
The professor’s smile bloomed, and her hazel eyes danced with a light that wasn’t the reflection of the track lighting. It looked more predatory than Cheyenne wanted to admit.
“Okay, look.” Bergmann folded her hands in her lap and raised her eyebrows. “I told you to stop by, and I meant what I said. We already established you don’t need my help with your classes or anything I could offer you toward your next degree, which I sense you’ll earn. But I would like to cut the shit on this other topic because what you came to my office to talk about is a lot more important than a piece of paper saying you’ve played the game of higher education. Got it?”
A chuckle of surprise burst through Cheyenne’s lips. “That was magic.”
“Yes. It was. Wanna ask me what kind?”
“Honestly?” Cheyenne dropped her backpack and headed toward the armchair and her computer programming professor. “I want you to tell me what you think you know about me.”
“Sure, let’s cut to the chase. After I tell you to call me Mattie.”
