Chapter Sixteen
The next day, Maggie lifted a pile of Dahlia’s rune-covered scraps of paper off Jim’s desk chair and scooted the chair to sit across from her. Dahlia was, almost literally, buried beneath the grading on her desk, which threatened to topple over at any minute.
“Next year, let’s find jobs with teaching assistants and graders,” Dahlia muttered.
“Deal,” Maggie said, knowing very well that they would not be looking for new jobs. Maggie gingerly set a bag containing one of the Bean There, Done That pastries on the top of Dahlia’s towering pile of papers.
“What’s that?” Dahlia asked with her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Just bringing my friend some breakfast,” Maggie said with a certain nonchalance that she knew Dahlia would see through immediately.
“You barely remember to feed yourself breakfast.”
“Fine. It’s an apology pastry,” Maggie admitted.
Dahlia tore off a piece of flaky croissant. “What did you do? Is Maggie Linden going to finally live up to her troublemaker reputation?”
Only Dahlia could joke about what happened to Maggie after her ex blew up their relationship and her career at Bryn Ridge and make her laugh. It was one of the things that Maggie loved about her.
Maggie took a deep breath and braced herself. She knew exactly the kind of reaction she was going to get when she revealed why she owed her friend an apology pastry. “I had coffee with Arthur Taliesin last night.”
Dahlia sat up straight, shaking the crumbs off her hands over the pastry bag, and squealed before scooting her chair around the desk. “Coffee coffee?” she asked.
“I don’t know what that means,” Maggie lied.
“You are a linguist; you absolutely know what I mean by a little reduplication. Coffee coffee,” she repeated. “Was it coffee? Or was it coffee coffee?”
“It was a working coffee.” She swore that Dahlia’s face fell slightly. Did she want her to go on a coffee date with Taliesin? “I offered to help him dissipate the pall.”
Dahlia took another bite of croissant and looked at her thoughtfully, but all she said was, “Interesting.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it’s interesting! I’m frankly surprised he was willing to accept your help.”
Maggie bit her lip. “Well,” she said, pausing. “I might have threatened to investigate the pall by myself if he didn’t let me help.”
Dahlia shoved Maggie playfully. “See! Interesting. When did this happen?”
Maggie cringed. “Last Friday,” she muttered, and Dahlia gasped.
“So that’s what the apology croissant is for.” She dragged the bag back into her lap, an exaggerated pout on her lips. “I can’t believe you waited so long to tell me.”
“I’m sorry! I’ve been trying to come tell you, but I kept missing you.” She knew Dahlia would be distracted by the details, so she told her about Taliesin showing up in their office near death after spending the entire day trying to dissipate the pall on his own.
“The entire day? Was he trying to kill himself?”
Maggie shrugged. “I asked him what he had against help, and he said he didn’t want anyone else getting hurt.
” Least of all you. The words were burned in Maggie’s memory, but even though she wasn’t in the habit of lying to Dahlia, there were some things that she still wanted to keep for herself.
“And I figure the sooner we get rid of this damn pall, the sooner I get him out of my office. The sooner I can get to working on my translation of Branagh’s Aubade. ”
“So, you—and I just want to make sure I’m understanding exactly how this happened—threatened to put yourself in harm’s way if he didn’t let you help him?” When Dahlia worded it that way, it sounded ridiculous.
“No, not that I would put myself in harm’s way,” Maggie clarified. “I told him I would enter the pall for myself and collect my own data.”
“The same pall that nearly killed him? The one he doesn’t want anyone anywhere near?”
“What are you getting at?”
Dahlia shrugged, pursing her lips slightly, but she had a glint in her eye. “Like I said, I’m just trying to get the facts!”
“The facts are that he’s got a serious case of pathological guilt,” Maggie said, and even though she felt a little mean, she added, “and maybe some mommy issues.”
“I’d have mommy issues, too, if my mother was Rowena Taliesin.
” Maggie couldn’t imagine growing up in the shadow of someone like Rowena.
Rowena, who had come up in academia when it was even more openly hostile to women.
Who didn’t let getting pregnant and having a child derail her career, instead raising her son to be just as brilliant, just as ambitious.
Rowena was a powerhouse, and every woman in academia had looked to her story at some point for inspiration or commiseration, Maggie and Dahlia included.
Maggie told Dahlia more about their agreement and their meeting at Bean There, Done That; about their walk home together. Dahlia was just as fascinated by the revelation that the other side of Taliesin’s family was local.
Dahlia pushed her glasses up. “So,” she began, steering the conversation in the direction Maggie had been trying to avoid. “What was he like?”
Maggie chose her words carefully. “He’s a different person off campus.” Translation: Kind. Generous. Candid. “I don’t think he scowled the whole time we were there.” Translation: She kept catching him staring at her. Making him laugh was the highlight of her night.
“Maybe he just really hates his job. We’ve all been there,” Dahlia said. “Maybe he finds Dean Clearwater to be insufferable. Honestly, that’s a point in his favor if he does.”
Maggie snorted and tried to drive the conversation away from how Taliesin was off campus. “I didn’t come here just to gossip, I swear.” She held up a file folder she had brought home after her meeting with the alchemist. “Will you look over Taliesin’s runes for me?”
Dahlia took the file folder from Maggie and made some space on her desk to lay out the work.
She compared the alchemical equations with the subsequent runes, writing down annotations as she went.
She looked over the spell that went wrong and the variations in the dissipation spells Taliesin had tried.
“As annoying as it is, these are pretty perfect,” she finally said. “I thought there was a calculation error from the original spell, but I found the variable that he was factoring in, and it made the spell stronger.”
“I thought the same thing when I looked at them earlier, but I wanted to make sure a runologist saw them.”
Dahlia reached into the paper bag for more of her apology croissant while she went over the calculations in front of her one more time.
Dahlia looked up at Maggie, tilting her head to the side.
“So, you’re putting your research completely on hold to help him with this?
To spend every working hour with Arthur Taliesin, for what could be weeks of your summer? ”
“Not every working hour,” Maggie hedged, looking away from Dahlia, who was always too good at seeing to the heart of things.
“Did he tell you what happened that day?”
Maggie bit her lip. “He was interrupted during the incantation. A family emergency,” Maggie explained, but she didn’t give any additional details. That wasn’t her story to tell. “It wasn’t what I thought it was.”
“Huh,” was all Dahlia said in return. She popped the last bite of croissant in her mouth, balled up the bag, and threw it in the trash.
Dahlia had the same expression on her face as when she was trying to work out a difficult rune, and Maggie waited for her to say something snarky about Taliesin, but instead, she said, “Oh! I heard from Rodrigo last night.”
Maggie brightened. “How is he? Have there been any more ghoul sightings?”
“No, everything has been quiet. He only called to tell me he hasn’t seen anyone fitting the description of your mystery man, yet.”
She realized then that she hadn’t thought about the Beltane kiss except in passing in days.
It had so consumed her thoughts after it happened.
She wasn’t as invested in finding him as Dahlia was, but even still, the memory of the heat of that kiss, of the way her heart had beat faster as they’d danced, would come to her unbidden, derailing whatever she was doing.
But something had changed. Maybe some of the shine had worn off now that she had other things occupying her mind.
She didn’t want to admit, not to Dahlia and certainly not to herself, that maybe she hadn’t thought about the Beltane kiss because of the strange electricity between her and Taliesin.
There wasn’t room for two men in her brain, and, infuriatingly, Taliesin was taking up all the space.
And if, maybe once or twice, she’d wondered how he kissed, that wasn’t her fault when she caught him staring at her the way he did.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” was all she said to Dahlia, with an indifferent shrug. “I haven’t thought about Beltane in a while. It’s just not in the stars for me and the mystery man, I guess.”
Her friend wasn’t one to let things go unsaid, but Maggie had the distinct impression that Dahlia was holding back when all she said was, “Interesting,” one last time as she returned Maggie’s file folder of runes to her.
—
Maggie ended her last class of the day fifteen minutes early.
“Remember,” she told her students as they packed up their belongings, “you will need fresh chalk for your final next week. Please bring pure chalk—no enhancing decoctions are allowed.” She would remind them again by email next week, but still every year someone tried to use chalk mixed with silver dust or moon water.
Neither of those additions would do anything to help a student who hadn’t studied, but it didn’t mean they weren’t going to try.