Chapter 17 #2
I’m too fair to get any paler, so I probably go white. “Huh?”
Eloquent, Viv, so very eloquent.
“After your stomach ailment.”
“Well—”
“And the food poisoning after that, and the migraines, menstrual cramps…”
“Who says menstrual anymore? You aren’t that old, Fiona—”
“Viv, I’m serious.” She eyes me until I swallow hard. “If something—”
“It’s my mom,” I blurt.
Fiona studies me and waits. She’s fantastically patient like that. Not a crease in her brow. Though that may be the Botox.
You know when you can tell you’re on the precipice of something irrevocably stupid?
How you can feel the words that will doom you rocketing up your throat and resting precariously at the tip of your tongue?
Well, I do. I say or do something irrevocably stupid at least once a month.
Last month it was probably enrolling at Harker Academy for Deviant Defense.
The month before, trying—and failing—to stake a vampire with a Popsicle stick.
This month it’s “She’s asked me to help her with her campaign. Something…kind of private that I can’t share with anyone. In fact”—I swallow—“she asked me not to tell you and just make something up, but I’m such a bad liar.”
Bad liar? Wrong. I’m a great liar. And the big lie I needed to get me out of my Windsor job while I’m at Harker has just left the station.
Fiona’s already-round eyes go even rounder. I can see white on all sides. “I see.”
There’s just no way I can continue to study at Harker and work full-time here for Fiona.
At least, not without failing miserably at both.
But Harker has a winter holiday break right after the Chasm exhibit in November.
If I can just make it until then…“Yep. So I actually need to take a leave until the exhibit. If that’s all right. ”
“You want to take a sabbatical? For the same pay? In a job a thousand young professionals would kill for?”
“It’s for my mom. You know how she gets. Her campaign is everything to her, and I just can’t bear to let her down.” Okay, so the train hasn’t just left the station, it’s been hijacked.
“I don’t know…” Fiona says, fingers drumming on her lips.
“I’m really sorry, Fiona. If my mom wasn’t making me do this, I’d never miss a day.
” When she scowls, I add, “I do actually want to keep working here. For you. You can send me briefs to work through. Paperwork to handle. I can do it from my mom’s campaign offices.
But I’ll miss being here. I’ve actually come to love all the ancient relics, the history and humanity. The stillness…”
To my surprise, I mean every word. I don’t love working for Fiona—getting her morning mocha almond sugar bombs, reminding her when she’s forgotten a shoe before going into a meeting, the ungodly hours—but I guess I do like the Windsor.
And wouldn’t mind being paid a living wage to photograph the exhibits here one day.
Fiona’s looking kind of moved, so I add, “And the AC, of course. My apartment was like an Aztec sweat lodge all summer.”
Fiona makes a face, but I can see the amusement peeking through her downturned lips. “You jest, but I bet you learned about that here in this very building.”
She doesn’t know how right she is. “Nobody has said jest since moats were a thing.”
Fiona hops off my desk with a rueful shake of her head.
“Are you ninety?” I call as she walks down the hall to her office in her clacky heels. “Just give me your dermatologist’s number and I’ll keep your secrets!”
Her door closes with a thud.
And actually, I exhale a sigh of relief.
Train successfully brought to safety. Now I can maintain my meager salary to pay rent and eat on occasion and, equally as important, keep up appearances.
Viv Abbot Darling Daughter will still be working her way up the corporate ladder toward an acceptable and socially pleasing job.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep studying at Harker and looking into my dad. And Kitty…Viv Abbot Huntress Detective just needs a faculty key card to get into those archives.
Which means all I have to do is keep my mom from finding out I’m skipping out on Windsor days and keep Fiona from finding out I’m not actually helping her with a “sensitive campaign issue.” And keep Penny and Fiona from ever discussing my sleeping arrangements.
Luckily, Fiona travels so often, supervising exhibitions on loan from the Windsor and acquiring new antiquities, she doesn’t have enough time for in-depth conversations with her own wife, let alone Penny or my mother.
And yeah, Harker classes are grueling and already leave very little time for doing homework, writing essays, completing research papers, and, of course, training, but I’ll just cram those things into the evenings.
And I’ll see James on the weekends to maintain our relationship.
And meditate between classes to keep a lid on mercurial aeon emotions and bloodlust and also for those nebulous mental health benefits I’ve heard so much about.
And I’ll see my family literally whenever they ask me to, because I’m still fostering some insane belief it can be like it once was between us again.
And I’ll do the things I actually wish I could, like go to Pilates and take photos and hang out with Penny and my new friends—though never together, of course—and bring Hound up to NTC Park and travel and meet someone I actually want to see on the weekends, all in some other lifetime, I guess, because that’s the irrevocably stupid position I’ve put myself in.