Chapter Six #2
“You’re not missing much,” Maggie muttered with that grumpy, petulant edge she couldn’t seem to shake whenever she talked about Taliesin.
It wasn’t even a true statement. Maggie had been to one of his community lectures, and it was great.
Dahlia looked at her pointedly. “Ugh, fine. He is a genius. If you get a chance, you really should go to one of them.”
“But?” Rodrigo asked.
“He’s annoying!” Maggie practically shouted. “I don’t care if he’s brilliant. He’s a legacy academic who has never worked a real job a day in his life.”
Maggie had gone to school with plenty of people like Taliesin.
People for whom a career in academia was a foregone conclusion.
People whose parents and grandparents were academics or who carried the same name as a building on campus, usually because they had more ambition than brain cells and their families had more money than sense.
Her own academic trajectory was so different that she could hardly relate to most of her classmates who came from that world.
A love of Diadhan had steered her toward academia.
She had been so sure that it was what she wanted—the imagined prestige and influence—that she had worked with a singular focus to get the best spot she could in the best possible program.
It had been grueling, nearly crushing the love she had for the Diadhan language.
Even now, she wasn’t always sure it was worth it.
She had been competing with people who understood the language and culture of academia in a way she hadn’t.
People like Taliesin, who had known from the time they were kids that professor was a job people could have.
Maggie’s parents had always been very practical.
Her father owned a small greenspell business and her mother worked the desk, answering phones and scheduling appointments.
To Maggie, it seemed they saw their only daughter as something strange and not wholly theirs.
She knew they loved her, but, to them, she had little to show for all the stress she went through in undergrad and grad school.
They didn’t quite understand what she had worked so hard for all those years.
There had been times when Maggie hadn’t either.
Dahlia took another sip of her drink, hiding a bemused-but-critical look behind the glass. “What?” Maggie asked, eyes narrowed.
“I’m not sure that’s totally fair,” Dahlia said carefully, and Maggie’s cheeks reddened, burning hotter because of the alcohol.
“Well, whatever happened last week with the pall was absolutely his fault, but he won’t admit it.”
Rodrigo’s eyes grew wide. “That explains it. I’ve had to call the wardsmiths to replace our basement wards twice since Beltane. At least one ghoul got in there and made a huge mess of a sack of sugar.”
The banshee screeches at night were bad enough, but Maggie was glad she didn’t have any ghouls scratching at her windows. She made a mental note to strengthen the lone ward she kept active on her front door. “When did they dissipate the pall?” Rodrigo asked.
Dahlia leaned in and said quietly, “It’s still there.”
“Since Beltane?!” He let out a low whistle. “Yikes.”
“It’s taken over the entire third floor of our building. We’re sharing offices and classrooms to try to make up for the lost space,” Maggie explained.
“And Maggie won the lottery and is sharing her office with the Arthur Taliesin.”
“More like got the short stick,” Maggie grumbled, her burning cheeks forgotten as she ticked off her fingers and went down a long list of complaints.
“He refuses to come up with a reasonable schedule for sharing our office. He thinks his own program is more important than mine. He can’t sit still. He judges the way I teach…”
Dahlia held out a hand, interrupting Maggie. “I need you to elaborate on that last one. What could he possibly have to judge about the way you teach?”
“He overheard one of my phonology students ask for an extension on her paper, and, of course, he told me I was getting taken advantage of.” Dahlia rolled her eyes so dramatically that Rodrigo laughed, and Maggie was thrilled to have Dahlia back on her side.
“You should have heard him.” Maggie furrowed her eyebrows and lowered her voice an octave.
“Our jobs are to prepare them for the real world.”
Before Maggie realized it, Rodrigo had set another drink in front of her and she was sipping on it happily, complaining about Taliesin and blowing off steam.
And when the drink was half-gone and she felt buzzy and fuzzy, she said out loud, “And he just smells too good. It’s not fair.
” Her eyes went wide as she looked to see if Dahlia had heard what she said, and, sure enough, her friend’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“Oh, no, ignore that,” Maggie pleaded.
“I will not. He smells good? Why are you so close you’re smelling him?”
“It’s a ten-by-ten room, of course I can smell him,” Maggie reasoned. “Like you haven’t noticed how attractive he is.”
“Well, sure, I have. I just didn’t know you had. All I’ve heard about is how miserable he is.”
“You can be miserable and hot,” Maggie said, frowning into her cup.
Dahlia tipped her glass toward Maggie’s, and they clinked them together. “I’ll drink to that.”