Chapter 21 #2
Alex settled into one of the knockoff Eames chairs in front of his desk.
He had a little plaque that could have said Manager or CEO but read in tidy letters, Eat the peach.
The man was predictable to the point of parody.
If you were going to reference Eliot, why start with the poem every dippy high school senior slapped on his yearbook page?
Alex winced. Was she becoming a snob? A few semesters at Yale and she was sneering at a professor’s taste in poetry.
She could have blamed Darlington’s influence, but she didn’t want to think about Darlington.
“I’m at a disadvantage,” said Girard. “Many students but…” He spread his hands out.
But only one Charlie Girard.
Alex restrained an eye roll and smiled. “I take your Shakespeare in Cinema lecture. I think you know my roommate Mercy Zhao.”
The tiniest bob of his eyebrows, followed by another smile. “Of course. A wonderful student and a very lively mind.”
Up close he had fine lines around his eyes, a bit of a sulk to his mouth. He looked like someone who had gotten too much of what he wanted. Alex decided on a direct approach.
“She has a crush on you.”
Girard laughed and leaned back in his chair. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he admitted easily. “But I don’t cross boundaries.”
“I do.”
Again the eyebrows bobbed. “Sorry?”
“I make a business of it. I have what the professionals call a lack of impulse control.”
He held up his hands, panic playing over his face. “I’m flattered, truly. But this isn’t appropriate and I’m not comf—”
“Jesus, you’re arrogant. I’m not hitting on you. I’m threatening you.”
His face spasmed as if he didn’t know whether he was more insulted or relieved. “You are?”
“Let me spell it out. You’re going to be nice to my friend and encourage her to use that lively mind and you’re going to give her a great grade because you know she’ll earn it.
And you’re going to stop there. No compliments about how mature she is for her age or how it’s so rare that you encounter an intellect to match yours.
No late-night study sessions with a glass of wine. ”
“Excuse me? I don’t know what you think you’re doing—”
She kicked his desk hard enough that it juddered backward and he released a yelp.
“See? Boundary issues. I’m telling you to stop fucking your students or I’ll turn your life to rubble.”
He rose. “That is enough. I have never laid a hand on a student and I—”
“Lyla Gill. Jade Gibson. Jen Masami. I can go on. Actually, I might need my notes.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. “Kenia Flores. Maya Newman. Laurel—this one is smudged. It might be Laurel or Laurie. Maybe both.”
“Get out of my office.”
“No.”
“Get out of my office or I’m calling campus security, Miss Stern.”
Now it was Alex’s turn to pause. “I didn’t tell you my name.”
Girard grinned. He put his hands up as if she were holding a gun on him, and she very much wished that was the case. “I guess we can stop this little one-act play, though I was certainly enjoying it. Do the members of Lethe know you’re using your gifts to threaten innocent men?”
“You’ll have to let me know when I find one.” Her voice was steady, but her heart had leapt into a frantic beat. How the hell did this man know about Lethe? Had he been in a society?
“A true cynic. I can appreciate that. I’ve found innocence is overrated.
Though the loss of it can be thrilling. Your friend is smart and an adult.
She can make her own decisions.” He cocked his head to the side, intrigued despite himself.
“You must have talked to Heather.” He sighed.
“I didn’t realize she knew about … Well, I wish she hadn’t cared so much. ”
“About her husband putting his dick wherever he wanted?”
He cast her a disbelieving glance. “It’s sex. It’s something I needed. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. I love her still.”
“How romantic.”
“I’m not interested in discussing my marriage with you so you can render tiresome bourgeois judgments. I know who and what you are, Alex Stern, so stay in the back row of my lectures where you belong and far away from my personal business.”
“Or what?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question. She needed to know.
“Or Alban Reed tells all of Lethe what you can do. Maybe I make sure the rest of the societies know too.”
“You’re Lethe?”
He waved the thought away. “Scroll and Key. Though the nexus wasn’t wobbling in my day.
You don’t want to make an enemy out of Alban Reed.
He knows everyone and he doesn’t need magic to make your life hell.
Maybe he’ll just make you disappear, wipe you from the map and keep you as a pet, pimp you out to every wayward mage and aspiring necromancer in need of a nexus.
” Her shock must have shown on her face, because he said, “That’s right, Wheelwalker.
I know what you are. I’m going to show your little friend the time of her life and you’re not going to say shit about it. ”
How many people knew Alban Reed and were in his pocket?
How many of them knew what she was? He’d said that there were others who would want to use her, and now here was Girard threatening to widen the circle.
The more the knowledge of her ability to create a nexus spread, the more likely someone really would find a way to steal her power for themselves.
She didn’t want to be Reed’s prisoner or anyone else’s.
Alex hadn’t liked letting ghosts possess her, not since they’d started pushing through, trying to take her over. But desperate times and all that. It had been a long while since she had felt this scared and this small, and she needed it to stop.
She reached for the ghost of Heather Girard lurking outside the window, all bruised memories and unfinished business. In a glorious rush, she felt the strength of the dead enter her.
This time she used both legs and shoved the desk hard with her boots.
It slid backward knocking Girard into his office chair.
Before he could get his bearings, she leapt to her feet and seized the edge of the desk, pushing it forward, pinning him to the back wall.
The photo of the mosh pit slid from its hook and bounced off his shoulder.
Girard released a shriek as the desk dug into his belly.
Alex knew she should stop, but she wasn’t going to.
Put an animal in a trap and it would gnaw its own leg off.
Better to take a bite out of the hunter instead.
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
Good to know her brain could quote D. H.
Lawrence in a crisis situation. The benefits of a Yale education.
She felt Heather’s anger, her betrayal, the endless humiliations, the accusations that she was too intellectually soft, that she couldn’t understand a man like him and his needs.
Tell him, Alex urged.
Heather surged forward. It had happened with Darlington’s grandfather, with the kid she’d used to beat up Oddman. She hadn’t given permission either time. This time she did.
Tell him.
Alex slammed her hands on the desk and leaned forward, her face bare inches from Girard’s, and the horror in his eyes told her that Heather had pushed through. Professor Girard was looking into the face of his dead wife.
“You left me alone in that hospital so you could get your dick wet,” Alex spat. But it wasn’t her voice. “You left my fortieth birthday party early to fuck one of your groupies. And you convinced me it was my fault.”
Her fingers closed around a pair of scissors on Girard’s desk. She jammed the blades beneath his jaw.
Alex barely had time to yank Heather back. He deserves it, but I’m not doing time for you.
I loved him. I love him so much.
There was sympathy and then there was stupidity. You chose him. Again and again. Now let go.
She forced the Gray to relinquish her grip and recede. Heather gusted out of Alex in a wail, vanishing into the winter afternoon.
Alex tossed the scissors onto the desk.
“Stop fucking your students or I’ll let her come back and finish the job.”
She had her hand on the door when Girard said, “You have no idea what’s coming for you. Alban Reed already owns you. He’s one of the richest, most powerful men in New York.”
Alex was frightened. She couldn’t deny it to herself. But she wasn’t going to let him see it.
“We’re not in New York, Professor.”
“You’re really too stupid to be scared, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. But you just pissed your pants in your fancy office chair. Tell Alban Reed I’ll be waiting for him right here in scenic New Haven.”