28. Presenting Dr. Whelan
28
PRESENTING DR. WHELAN
My name upon the winds?—
All omens monstrous and appalling
Affright my guilty mind.
— JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN, “SHAPES AND SIGNS”
“ C assandra Margaret Whelan.”
As my name echoed across Alumni Stadium, at least three taxicab whistles called from the crowd. I stepped onto the stage in the octagonal cap and velvet-striped sleeves that marked my degree.
“Congratulations, Dr. Whelan,” said the dean, a middle-aged man with bifocals and receding hair gelled over a bald spot. A line of sweat trickled down his brow. I wasn’t the only one struggling with the unseasonably warm spring weather, though I was the only one wearing gloves.
I smiled and accepted his handshake as he handed me the diploma. His thoughts were about what I would have expected, wondering how many students were left. The man would have killed for a gin and tonic at the faculty club.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, then walked across the stage and back to my chair on the field amidst the other graduates.
And that was it. Although I had passed my defense four weeks earlier, I was now officially a conferred PhD in Irish Languages and Literature. It didn’t matter that I was sweating like a pig under the blistering sun. It didn’t matter that I was trapped here with thousands of other people whose thoughts and feelings threatened with every errant nudge.
I was done. Finished. Free.
I expelled a long breath, allowing the weight and pressures of the last five months to slide off my shoulders like water. Oh, water. I licked my lips and reached under my seat for my water bottle. Unscrewed the top, slipped off a glove, and dipped my fingers in before taking a long draught. It worked—when the student next to me returned and brushed my shoulder as he sat down, his thoughts slipped over me like they were nothing but a stream. Nothing coherent. Fluid and just as fleeting.
I’d used that trick more than once over the past few months. Even so, a swim or surf sounded amazing right about now.
After my grandmother’s death, my committee members had asked if I needed extra time to finish, even Professor James. But they knew as well as I did that if I didn’t push, I could kiss my new job goodbye. I still didn’t know what I was going to do about my “inheritance,” but Jonathan had told me to live my life as if I knew nothing while I dealt with Gran’s ashes and delivered my mother’s piece to her.
I hadn’t heard from him since leaving Manzanita, the day after the fire. A box containing Gran’s ashes had arrived in the mail two weeks later, along with a note:
When you’re ready, Sybil is too.
— J
Because of course my mother couldn’t be bothered with something as simple as a phone call. She had to send a message through him.
I wasn’t ready to spread the ashes, if that’s what he meant. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be. But I sent a letter to Sibyl telling her I planned to return in May after graduation. I’d fly through Seattle on my way to Oregon, and she could come with me to Ireland to spread Gran’s ashes together if she wanted.
A telegram arrived the following week.
SEE YOU IN MAY - [STOP] - ILL SAY MY GOODBYES IN SEATTLE - [STOP] - SYBIL - [STOP]
And that was that. I went back to thinking about little else besides the Brigid mythology and old Irish. A newly installed safe held Gran’s ashes, her will, and the mysterious black box that I had not been able to bring myself to touch again.Everything was stowed away in the back of my closet and the back of my mind.
That is, until I went to sleep, where a shadowed man and a pair of green eyes lurked just under the veil of darkness. Where sometimes flames licked the edges of my consciousness, and I’d wake up crying for the memories to come back.For Gran to come back.
I took another drink of water and smiled into the rays of sunshine above me. The last few graduates were walking across the stage now. Soon the stadium would erupt in cheers and celebration. I knew I would have to open that closet sometime and make some real decisions about my future, but for now, I was just going to enjoy my moment in the sun.
“Just one more, Cass, come on!”
I leaned down in my robes to wrap an arm awkwardly around Reina’s diminutive frame. My best friend had made the trip across the country to celebrate, and we smiled at Aja, who pointed her phone at us while her boyfriend, Nick, looked bored and ready to go.
“Babe, that’s like the millionth picture you’ve taken,” he grumbled. “The T is gonna be packed.”
Aja rolled her eyes but put her phone back in her purse. I had no idea how she had wrangled Nick as a date for my graduation ceremony, but I gathered her short skirt might have had something to do with it.
Nick offered me a grim smile and straightened his tie. “Sorry. It’s just that we’ve all been sitting here in the sun for five hours, and it’s wicked hot. I mean, you gotta be baking in those things!”
I looked down at my gloved hands. They were just black muslin, but with the cap and gown, he wasn’t wrong.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I have to return this thing anyway, so maybe you should go. I’m taking Reina to the Public Garden for lunch, so we’ll just catch you later.”
Reina and I watched Aja and Nick disappear into the crowd, and then she turned to me with a wryly arched brow. “Are you really going to take me on a whole picnic? Out with people and everything?”
“There’s a pond if I need to jump in,” I joked. “It’s outside. We should be fine. Plus, I know you’re crazy about Make Way for Ducklings .”
Reina grinned. “Good. I did want to see a little of the city before I fly out tonight.”
I smiled back. “I still can’t believe you came. I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”
“Of course, I came. Who else would but me?”
“Well, I did.”
We both whirled around to find another face that had been popping in and out of my dreams for the past months parting the crowds on the football field like it was the Red Sea. But there he was. Dressed in a light gray linen suit and a straw fedora that made him look a little like Jay Gatsby.
Reina blinked with delayed recognition. “Ohhhh, now I get it.”
I didn’t have to ask what she was wondering about. She’s teased me about our almost kiss more than once.
“You could try again,” she muttered beside me.
“Hush,” I said, but I was already grinning. “Jonathan.”
And then, before I could help myself, I tackled him in a bear hug.
He was as surprised as I was, though his arms wrapped automatically around my shoulders and squeezed. Confusion—threaded with joy—rippled through my fingertips. Well, at least he was glad to see me, too.
“I am, yes,” he replied as I stepped away.
Reina just looked between us, looking confused by what had just happened—probably by the hug as much as Jonathan’s response to it—and ability to read my mind with touch too.
“You can still do that?” I asked him.
Jonathan took a moment to look me over as if to assure himself that I too was all in one piece. “It would appear so.”
“Ahem.”
“Jonathan, this is my best friend, Reina West.” I gestured toward her.
“Hello.” Reina managed to look imperious despite being more than a foot shorter than Jonathan. “Not feeling so feline today, are we?”
Jonathan froze and looked at me.
I shrugged. “She’s a seer, and we have no secrets.”
“Then apparently, I don’t either.” He cleared his throat, then turned back to Reina. “But I’d appreciate it if you would keep that particular bit of knowledge to yourself. For Cassandra’s sake, if nothing else.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about me, kitty,” Reina said. “I’m always on Cassie’s side. But you have some explaining to do. Like where have you been for the past three months?”
“ Ma sa aach’ol, aj ke, ” he pronounced carefully with a slight tip of his hat.
Reina stared.
“What?” I asked. “What did he say?” I turned to Jonathan. “What was that?”
“Q’eqchi’,” Reina answered for him. “Pronounced badly, but yeah.” She shook her head. “I haven’t heard that since I was a kid. Where did you learn it?”
Jonathan shrugged. “I’ve traveled a bit.”
“I guess so.” Reina turned to me for answers.
Unfortunately, I had none. Jonathan’s ability to speak an indigenous language of Guatemala was news to me too, though I guessed it had something to do with the spellcasting traditions he had told me about in Manzanita.
“You looked quite the picture up there,” Jonathan said. “Like a proper magician. Come, let’s see the whole thing.” He spun a finger through the air.
“On my way to Hogwarts now.” I twirled around once more, allowing the robes to flap around me. “Actually, I can’t wait to get out of this thing. Can you join us for a celebratory bite? We’re going to the Public Garden for a picnic.”
Jonathan, however, just shook his head. “We have things to discuss. It’s time.”
His meaning was clear: that discussion needed to happen now.
I turned to Reina, and she waved her hand.
“I’ll entertain myself in the park,” she said.
I nodded. “Meet you there?”
She squeezed my shoulder, letting me know she would be watching. Careful with him . He’s a good one, but there’s something dark there too.
Silently, I let her know it would be all right and that I’d fill her in later. Jonathan wasn’t here for nothing. As he said, it was time.
“Jonathan,” she said, shaking his hand. “Nice to see you again. I hope the rest of your trip is pleasant. For everyone.”
A quick frown flashed across Jonathan’s normally placid features, but he smiled back and muttered a bland farewell for himself. I watched my friend disappear into the sea of red and black, then turned back to Jonathan, who was fiddling with his hat.
“You look like a gangster with that thing,” I told him.
He started. “I beg your pardon?”
I just chuckled. “Come on, Daddy-O. Let me get out of these things, and then you can tell me why you’re really here.”
“You’re a shameless flirt at heart,” I said thirty minutes later. “I had no idea. But you charmed your way to the front of the gown return line as well as any siren.”
Jonathan and I were taking the long way back to my apartment, walking around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir where he had first fished me out of the water. I stepped lively and carefree, still buoyed by the high of graduation. Jonathan was a bit more sedate, careful to walk on smooth spots of the concrete path. No cracks, I realized with a smile.
“I’ve always liked Boston,” he said, ignoring my comment.
“Don’t change the subject, you cad.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I was doing you a favor. You didn’t want to wait in that throng any more than I did.”
“I don’t know if I could have strutted like a pigeon to get out of it, though,” I replied.
A few of said pigeons marched ahead of us toward the water. Two of the males puffed up their feathers to nearly twice their size and proceeded to chase a smooth-feathered female. Before reaching the water, she turned and pecked at one of them until he flew a few yards away.
“See?” I said.
“We’re all more animal than we think anyway.”
“You would know, puss.”
For that, I received a dark green look. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“It is genuinely nice here, though,” Jonathan said. “I don’t walk enough during the day as it is.”
“You do your prowling mostly at night?”
“You could say I’m something of a night owl.”
He nudged one shoulder into mine, and a shock of boyish glee skittered through me, causing me to lurch forward a few steps. I turned to catch him back with a shock of my own, but Jonathan simply dodged out of reach, laughing as he darted further up the path.
How different he was from the person who had left me in Oregon. The somber, cagey sorcerer had been replaced by a young man as mischievous as a kitten. I snatched at the edge of his jacket and yanked, causing him to fall back, pulling me with him.
He caught me neatly by the elbows, and another flutter of joy—the kind that only happens with true flirtation—coursed through my arms. I grinned despite my confusion. Honestly, I couldn’t seem to stop grinning. And I wasn’t sure why.
Hadn’t he wanted to stay away? His terror when I’d kissed him floated into my memory. I stood upright, brushing pretend creases from my polka-dotted skirt.
“All right?” Jonathan’s cheeks were ruddy with a slight sheen of perspiration, and his hat was knocked farther askew from the chase. The imperfections only added to his appeal, though.
I turned toward a flock of geese on the reservoir.
“Something the matter?”
“Why are you here?” I wondered, once again preoccupied with the state of my skirt. “Three months ago you couldn’t wait to be rid of me.”
Jonathan frowned. “I wouldn’t say that’s true.”
I rolled my eyes. “I kissed you, and you jumped like I was a leper. Now we’re playing cat and mouse like teenagers. What’s going on?”
“I can’t be happy for you?”
I sighed. “Don’t play games, Jonathan.”
Now he was the one to roll his eyes. The arrogant sorcerer wasn’t completely gone. “Maybe I’m just happy to see you. I do like you, Cass. Unless you forgot that, too.”
I blushed, cursing my fair skin. Not that it mattered. One look with his sorcerer’s Sight and Jonathan could undoubtedly See exactly how much faster my heart beat when he appeared. I hated that it was true. I hated that several of my dreams had featured him in exactly the way he had explicitly avoided three months ago.
A fire.
A smile.
A kiss.
There was something about it I still couldn’t shake. And it was incredibly…annoying.
I sank onto a bench facing the water, quiet while we were passed by a group of runners. Suddenly I had the urge to jump in myself. Not because I was overwhelmed with visions. Honestly, things were oddly calm at the moment. No, it was mostly because I knew the green-eyed man next to me wouldn’t follow. He’d tell me whatever news he had come to give. We could leave the flirtation for another time.
Jonathan came to sit next to me on the bench, laying his jacket over his knees and tipping his hat up so he could survey over the edge and rest his forearms on the rail.
“Would you prefer if I admitted I missed you?” he asked quietly, keeping his gaze on a pair of geese bobbing lazily a few yards away.
I pressed my lips together. “Only if it’s the truth.”
His fingers brushed my arm. Well, it certainly wasn’t a lie.
“I haven’t many friends, and I thought, perhaps somewhere along the line, you became one.”
My breath caught at the emotions slipping through his fingertips. Grief, still. Same as I felt whenever I remembered Gran’s face. Anger at the shadow, Jonathan’s father, the man who killed her. But friendship, yes. And something else?—
He withdrew his hand, thoughts silent once more. I took a deep breath, focusing on the faint scent of waterweeds instead of the instinct to kiss him that just wouldn’t fade.
“All right, you missed me,” I said so softly that my words were nearly lost in the breeze fluttering through my skirts and hair. “Well, I missed you too. Friend.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
I turned. “Still. You said there were things to discuss. What’s going on?”
Any last vestiges of playfulness and flirtation dissipated. Jonathan bit his lip. “I think we should continue back to your apartment. You’re right, Cass. There have been some…developments. And this isn’t the kind of conversation we should be having where anyone—or anything—might hear us.”
In the warm sunlight, a cold shiver traveled down my back. I followed Jonathan around the rest of the reservoir silently, newly aware of the possibility that anything could be watching me with unseen eyes and ears.