Chapter 3
Three
By the end of her last class the next afternoon, Dani was highly considering a new patron goddess, one that had some jurisdiction over time. She was drained and bedraggled from both the sheeting rain and the speed-wifting around campus.
The Norns, maybe, she thought to herself as she jogged up the steps to the library. Or Janus. I could be open to a god, if he helped me get to class on time.
She’d set an all-time record, late to not one but two classes today, which officially brought her up to three tardies—the maximum she was allowed per semester while keeping her scholarship.
And her tarot professor had, while not unkindly, firmly declined to consider her already-extended assignment on time instead of late; then Dani had gotten a C on her pop quiz in statistics, dragging her average in the class dangerously low.
She hadn’t expected the gen ed requirements at Fox’s Leap to be as tough as the specialty courses.
All in all, today had not been her finest work so far.
And it wasn’t just that she’d gotten only three hours of sleep—it was that her brain was being assailed by intrusive thoughts about everything that had happened yesterday.
Her anxiety about Silva reared its head every so often, of course, but her main issue was how hopelessly, embarrassingly impossible it was to stop thinking about Kass.
She’d caught her mind drifting to him during every class, reliving the handful of hours they’d spent together.
As soon as she realized what she was doing, she’d reel herself back to the present, only to float away again seconds later.
Now, she was determined to make up for her failings with a productive study session until she had to go to work.
Dani paused inside the doorway of the library to let the entry charm do the work of drying and disinfecting her, a soft glow of warmth passing over her body and leaving her clothes as cozy as if they’d just come out of the dryer.
She stayed a moment longer than necessary, eyes closing, dreaming of all the sleep she hadn’t gotten last night.
“Miss Dani,” a voice called from up ahead. “There you are.”
Dani’s eyes snapped open, her insides turning igneous with dread. No, she thought, glancing around for the owner of that voice, hoping she had misidentified them. No no no—
Yes. It was Professor Silva, click-clacking over from the front desk in a satin pencil skirt and a rose-pink peacoat. Gods, literally everything about her was intimidating, like if Circe was into couture. Her face was unreadable as she approached Dani, who cowered in front of the entrance.
“Sorry if I startled you,” Silva said as she came to a stop.
She was a thousand feet taller than Dani, and her heels weren’t even that high.
Up close, Dani still couldn’t decipher her expression.
She looked a bit like she’d been trying to solve a particularly difficult math problem.
“I was hoping I might run into you today. Could we have a word? It’ll only take a moment. ”
Dani nodded. So she wasn’t being paranoid last night; Silva really had been trying to chase her down. Had the professor been camping out in the library in case Dani came in? Was she stalking her? The idea felt absurd, and yet …
Dani was unable to speak or even really think as Silva guided her into the corner near the water fountain, where a boy was leaning against the wall as he filled up a reusable bottle.
“You’re clearly a very busy person,” Silva said, “so I’ll be brief. You caught my attention last night, and I think you know why.”
Was her vision going black? Dani blinked hard, but she couldn’t stop the surge of acid roiling like a tempest in her stomach. Her worst fears were being realized, and there was nothing she could do but brace for impact.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Silva said, looking over her shoulder at the boy by the fountain, whose back was facing them.
His bottle was nearly full. “I didn’t join your little game night just to relive some childhood memories.
I went because I was hoping that it would attract people with—shall we say, unusual skill sets. And I was right.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Dani tried. The water fountain was still burbling, a torturous ASMR, and it was clearly vexing Silva, who threw another glance in the perpetrator’s direction.
“I’m sure you do,” Silva said, with the sternness of a mother who wanted her child to admit they’d committed some infraction.
“I get the sense that it’s not something you like to talk about, but—” It seemed some threshold of irritation had been reached; Silva spun on her heel toward the boy, whose bottle was overflowing now, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “I’m sorry, but don’t you think you’ve gotten quite enough? ”
She’d touched him only lightly, but the boy slumped over like he’d been pushed, water bottle toppling into the fountain. He caught himself on the wall at the last minute and turned, blinking blearily at the pair of them.
“Oh man, I guess I fell asleep standing up. That’s a first,” he said, wiping his face like he could wipe away the exhaustion.
“Ah, shit.” He rescued the drowning water bottle and capped it before staggering away without acknowledging them further.
When she turned back to Dani, Silva’s face had clouded, the light in her eyes turning stormy.
“We shouldn’t discuss this here,” she said carefully, her tone shadowed with something that hadn’t been there before, like the professor was resisting the urge to tell her more. “But I know you have a hidden talent, and I have a feeling it’s incredibly useful when you want it to be.”
It was like Dani’s larynx had frosted over, rendering her voice completely unusable.
“I’d like to speak with you in private,” Silva said. “Tomorrow, in my office. Perhaps around two?”
Every cell in Dani’s body screamed at her to say no.
Or better yet, to run for cover. But it was too late for that.
She’d been discovered, and in such a way that would probably get her kicked out of Fox’s Leap.
She forced herself to swallow and unstick her voice box.
“I have a class at one thirty,” she said shakily.
Silva blinked twice, waiting, so she added, “But I could come by after that.”
Silva nodded. “Two thirty it is. My office is in the oneiromancy department, past the dream lab. Room number six.”
“Six,” Dani repeated. “Okay.”
“Until tomorrow, then,” Silva said, offering a slight smile as a parting token.
It did absolutely nothing to reassure Dani, who stood motionless as she watched the professor walk away, open an umbrella, and hurry out into the rain.
Dani’s entire body was covered in gooseflesh and the cold slick of fear.
Hecate save me, she thought. No, I’m serious this time. Please save me.
Neither her fear nor the rain showed any mercy for the rest of the day, which meant that when Dani stumbled through the back door of the café at the start of her shift that evening, she was wracked with anxiety and wearing her mustard-colored rain slicker of thrift store provenance.
The coat had come with a guarantee that it had been waterproofed by a mage in its previous life, but the spell seemed to have backfired, because she always felt a little moister after wearing it.
The café was packed. The bar was a hot mess, and so were the two baristas running things, both pink-faced and frazzled.
Dani sent Amelie, the girl making drinks, on break and slipped gratefully into her spot behind the espresso machine while Joel stayed on register.
Six lattes were waiting to be made, there were almost no beans left in the grinder, and only one steaming pitcher was clean.
It was just what she needed to distract her, with her mind tormented by the thought of a professor who could ruin her life with a single report to the school.
Suspension, expulsion, a flogging in the quad—nothing was off-limits in Dani’s hysterical hypotheticals.
Oh, and there was also the matter of the cute boy who said he’d come see her again tonight. Even with everything that had happened, she couldn’t help scanning the crowd. Her jaw clenched with disappointment when the search yielded no Kass-related results.
All she could do was throw herself wholeheartedly into her routine, attempting to focus all her brainpower on foaming milk and pulling shots.
Her flow was interrupted only once, by the appearance of Oliver, but it was too busy for them to say anything to each other beyond a quick hello.
Once the nine o’clock rush receded and she’d restocked everything, she attacked the congealed milk and syrup clinging to the countertops.
The other baristas left around ten, which meant Dani was queen of Quarter Cast until close.
Usually her nocturnal realm was a quiet one, but tonight proved to be surprisingly lively for a Monday.
She made a quad-shot Americano for a regular who worked third shift nearby, a London Fog for a sophomore she kind of recognized from her statistics class, and four PSLs for a study group who camped out at the big table in the corner.
Each customer who came through the door was an excuse not to dwell on her anxieties, but each was also a small act of devastation, because none of them was Kass.
The study group left a little before one, giving Dani an entire hour to close down and fret about everything, especially about Kass.
There was almost certainly a reasonable explanation for why he hadn’t showed up like he’d said he would; one such explanation was that he just wasn’t that interested in her.
And why would he be? She was a C student with no career plans, no free time, no money in her pocket—and now, a high likelihood of losing her scholarship before she’d even finished her first semester.
With great agony, Dani turned off the OPEN sign at 2:01 A.M. It was official: He hadn’t come.
The ghost gave a soft, tormented moan as she leaned against his door and tipped her head back in defeat.
“Me too, buddy.” She sighed. “Me fucking too.”