Chapter 4
Four
The next morning Dani woke in a cold sweat, certain she was late. Gingerbread cawed a reassurance from his nest, eye level with her lofted bed.
“It’s not even nine,” McKenna said from below. She was propped against a gracious stack of pillows, sipping tea and sketching a new dress design for her portfolio.
Thank Hecate. Dani didn’t have class until ten on Tuesdays.
She flopped back onto her mattress, staring up at the vaulted stone ceiling.
Sunset-colored stained glass glimmered on the wall, the upper hemisphere of a rose window depicting the pantheon of Celtic gods.
The girls’ studio apartment was tucked at the back of a refurbished temple a short walk from campus.
It was by no means spacious or well-kept—they had several buckets stationed for leaks in the ceiling—but Dani loved it with a fierceness.
She had never lived in the same place for long, even when she was still with her parents. To her, this was the height of luxury.
The temptation to curl back under her covers was potent.
She probably could have spared a few more minutes, but she’d just spend them ruminating about Silva and Kass, so what was the point?
Dani sat up, dangling her legs over the side of the bed.
Gingerbread chirruped at her for attention, so she reached out to pat his tiny head.
“Morning, sunshine,” McKenna said, sketching a line with especial violence.
“Mrm.” Dani gave the crow one last scritch before she inched her way down the ladder with the grace and attitude of a slug.
She pushed aside the gauzy curtains that shrouded the nook beneath her bed—referred to lovingly by McKenna as her hovel—and tripped over a ring of candles from a week-old ritual as she entered.
“There’s coffee in the kitchenette for you.”
“Bless you,” Dani said. She bent toward the mirror on the wall, her image partially blocked by the books, birth charts, and tarot decks piled on the desk below. Woof. She grabbed her brush and went to town on her tangles.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” McKenna said. “Not since the game.”
Dani was about to protest when she realized it was true. On work nights she usually got home when McKenna was sleeping, and her 8:00 A.M. folk divination class on Mondays meant she was gone before her roommate had even woken.
“Huh,” Dani said. “I guess not.”
“What was your deal that night? You were acting really weird. Weirder than normal, I mean.”
“My deal was—is—Silva,” Dani said, bending over to brush her hair from the underside. “She picked up on our vibe right away. I was worried she’d figure out we were cheating.”
“So that’s why you ran out of there like a banshee from a barn,” McKenna said. “And we’ve been over this. It’s not cheating if it’s your natural-born talent.”
“Sounds like semantics to me,” Dani said.
“Either way, I was right. Silva could tell something hinky was going on. She cornered me in the library yesterday and basically forced me to agree to meet with her this afternoon. Kenz, I’m really freaked out,” she said once she was upright again, turning to her friend.
“She basically said she came to the game so she could find people with special skills, but wouldn’t say why. ”
McKenna finally set her sketchbook aside, frowning. “That does sound rather shady,” she said. “She’s a visiting professor, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. I had her for a few sessions in Intro to Oneiromancy,” Dani said. “I don’t see a way out. She could bust our game in a heartbeat, and—well, you know.”
“I know,” McKenna said gently. “But I think it’s okay to just talk to her. It’s probably totally boring, like studying the dreams of spiders or something.”
“I’ll be thrilled if it’s the dreams of spiders,” Dani said. “Spiders are chill. They make way more sense than weird-ass professors who jump scare you in the library.” Without thinking, she added, “Or boys that say one thing and do another.”
She blinked, realizing what she’d said—her own power didn’t work on herself, but that didn’t mean she was immune to blurting something by accident once in a while.
Hoping the comment would go unnoticed, she turned back to her desk, but McKenna had the hearing of a bat and no interest in letting anything slide.
“What was that now?” she asked. “Something about boys?”
“Buses,” Dani said, starting a braid in her hair. “I said buses. They’re never on time, you know?”
But the image of Kass came into her mind, and even though he hadn’t turned up last night, Dani smiled involuntarily. McKenna caught her eye in the mirror and read the damning evidence scrawled all over her face.
“Danica!” she said in the tone of a scandalized mom. “You don’t even take the bus, babe. Are you smiling about a person?”
“No. Yes. Maybe! Fuck.” Dani abandoned the half-finished braid and buried her beet-red face in her hands. “Don’t look at me right now.”
McKenna laughed: a melodious, husky, ancient-goddess sound. Up in his nest, Gingerbread flapped his wings and squawked. “I’ve never seen you have a crush before. Come on, Dani.” McKenna scooted forward eagerly on her bed. “Warm my cold fairy heart with tales of your mortal romance.”
Dani lifted her head at that, spluttering. “You’re just as mortal as I am.”
“That’s offensive,” the other girl said seriously, then laughed again. “Go on, then, tell me!”
Dani paused for one flushed moment before she burst into an uncensored, giddy smile. “Okay, fine, his name is Kass and he came to Quarter Cast the other night to study, and we started talking and he’s smart and funny and so fucking cute.”
“Did you make out?”
“What? No.” Her embarrassed laugh came out as a snort. “I was at work.”
“I wouldn’t have let such a trifling detail stop me,” McKenna said airily. “So, when are you going to see him again?”
At that, Dani’s face fell, along with all the butterflies in her stomach. “I don’t know,” she said, and flopped onto the edge of McKenna’s bed. “He said he was going to come back last night but never showed.”
“He probably got caught up with something.” When Dani didn’t respond, McKenna leaned over and shook her by the knee. “I’m serious, don’t read into it. He might have already had plans he forgot about! Mark my words, he’ll turn up again. If he knows what’s good for him, that is.”
Dani couldn’t help but laugh at McKenna’s evil grin, punctuated by a supportive caw from Gingerbread. “You’re probably right.”
“Probably?” her friend said, putting a hand to her offended heart. “I think you mean always. I am always right, babe. Now go get your coffee and don’t worry about him for one more second. You have enough on your mind without inventing more things to cram in there.”
On that count, at least, McKenna was absolutely correct.
The day went much more smoothly than it had yesterday.
Bolstered by the coffee McKenna had brewed and the stale pumpkin bread she’d pilfered from the café last night, Dani made it to all three of her classes on time and even managed to participate in a discussion on subversions of the traditional symbolism in the High Priestess card.
Her trepidation about her upcoming appointment with Silva never fully left her, though, and it resurfaced with a vengeance as she was packing her bag at the end of tarot class.
She was already in the oracular studies building, so it only took a few minutes to descend all the way down into the basement, where oneiromancy was.
With its stainless steel surfaces and posh seating, all of which visibly outshone the budget of most other OS disciplines, the lobby displayed the popularity and feverish growth of the department in the last few years.
It was packed with students talking animatedly among themselves or tapping away on their quartzpads.
Dani ducked down the hallway that led deeper into the department.
An enormous window took up the majority of the wall, offering a view of a lab just getting started; half the students were settling down on cots while the other half prepared to observe.
As she passed, the window frosted over, obscuring the class from view.
She felt that all-too-familiar sense of being excluded.
Not that she really wanted to be sedated so that her peers could poke around in her subconscious.
She just wished, like she’d expressed to Kass the other night, that she knew what she wanted to focus on—what she wanted to be when she grew up.
Everyone else here seemed like they had it all figured out, whether they were following in their parents’ footsteps, pursuing a passion, or blazing some exciting new trail.
It was as if they’d arrived at Fox’s Leap with a road map already in hand, while Dani had come here specifically to find one.
“It’s open,” said an accented voice. Dani realized she was now standing in front of room number six—Silva’s office—and that the door was ajar.
The scene crystallized before her: Silva in a smart teal pantsuit and heavy jewelry, unloading parcels from a brown bag onto her desk.
An enchanted skylight much like the one in the library cast spelled sunshine—antithetical to the cloudy day outside—onto her impeccable office and pristinely shaven head.
Her scalp was so shiny it looked like it’d been buffed. “Stai bene, signorina?”
“Oh,” Dani said. “Yeah.” She hoped she was answering that right. “Sorry, I spaced out for a second. I’m just tired, probably.” Definitely.
“And no wonder, with the kind of schedule you must keep.” Silva bobbed her head to beckon her in. Dani stepped across the threshold, acutely aware of her Doc Martens squeaking on the floor. “I picked up some lunch for the both of us. Do you like hummus?”
“Oh.” Dani sat, blinking at the sandwiches. She didn’t know what to do with the professor’s thoughtfulness after how serious she’d been in the library yesterday. Was she trying to disarm Dani before she brought out the real threats?