Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
The original Thursday meeting had been postponed twice (once for a scheduling conflict nobody explained, once with no explanation offered at all) and folded, eventually, into a session the Dean's office called a "consolidated review," which Josie had learned, over three weeks of watching this university's administrative machinery work, was the language institutions used when they wanted to handle several inconvenient things in one room instead of three.
She'd worn the most professional clothes she owned, a blazer she'd bought secondhand specifically for interviews and never quite worn out since, and had spent the morning rehearsing answers to questions she still didn't fully know the shape of.
"We're here," the Dean began, "to address two matters.
First, the ongoing review of Miss Calloway's work-study eligibility, case four-four-one-one-seven.
Second (and this has escalated the scope of today's session considerably), an allegation, raised yesterday, that Miss Calloway removed sealed archive material without authorization. "
Josie's stomach dropped, a physical sensation, cold and sudden, the way it dropped the one time in her life she'd missed a step on a dark staircase and felt the floor arrive later than her body expected it to.
She kept her hands still on the table in front of her, though she felt the specific tremor building somewhere beneath her sternum, the body's own honest reaction fighting against three years of training herself not to show it.
"That's false," she said. "I've never removed material without authorization. Everything I've accessed has gone through proper clearance channels."
"We have a sign-out log. The registrar's representative slid a photocopied sheet across the table, and Josie's own initials looked back at her from the page: her handwriting, close enough to pass at a glance, wrong in ways she could see immediately because she'd been forming her own initials the same careful way for twenty years and this hand had gotten the angle of the C subtly, consistently incorrect.
"Dated three days ago. A Level 4 sealed folder, checked out and not returned within the required window. "
"I didn't sign that."
"The signature matches your file."
"It's a forgery. Josie kept her voice level with an effort that cost her more than she let show, the same flat control she'd trained into herself for exactly moments like this one, moments where losing composure handed the room an excuse to stop listening.
"Look at the C. I never close the loop that tight.
Compare it against my time sheets: I log to the quarter hour, three years of samples, easily available."
The Dean glanced toward Kestrel, a small deferential motion Josie caught and filed, the kind of instinctive check that told her, more clearly than anything said aloud, exactly whose approval this meeting was actually operating under.
Kestrel's expression didn't shift at all, unhurried, patient, a man watching a scene he'd already read the ending of.
"We'll certainly review the handwriting comparison," the Dean said, in the tone of someone who had no actual intention of doing so with any urgency.
"In the meantime, given the severity of the allegation, I'm afraid we have no choice but to suspend Miss Calloway's archive access pending the outcome of this review. "
"That's my work-study job. That's my income."
"I understand the hardship. The rules don't allow for an exception, particularly given the material's classification level. The Dean's mouth pressed into something that might, in a kinder room, have passed for sympathy. "We'll expedite the review as quickly as possible."
"How quickly," Josie said. "The last review your office promised to expedite has been sitting unaddressed for three weeks."
The Dean's composure flickered, just slightly, an unwelcome fact surfacing where it hadn't been invited. "I can't speak to the specific timeline of a separate matter."
"It's not a separate matter. It's the same case number. Josie kept her voice flat, factual, refusing to let the room hear anything that could be dismissed as emotion rather than evidence. "Case four-four-one-one-seven.
My original complaint, unaddressed past its own promised window, and now, apparently, a misconduct allegation attached to the same number, moving considerably faster."
Nobody at the table answered that directly.
Josie looked at Ferris, who'd gone very still beside her, his own hands flat on the table like he was physically restraining himself from saying something that would cost him more than he was willing to spend on her behalf in this particular room, though she caught, in his profile, the small tight set of his jaw that told her exactly how much the restraint was costing him.
"I want the accession number," Josie said. "The specific box, the specific tracking designation this sign-out slip claims I checked out."
The registrar's representative consulted the sheet.
Read out an eight-digit number Josie recognized immediately, her pen going still against her legal pad: the same box.
The Marianne Faircross box, the one she'd already legitimately signed out and returned two weeks ago, properly, on record, with her actual signature and Ferris countersigning the return.
They'd built the forgery around a real transaction. Overlaid a fake sign-out on top of a legitimate one, timed to suggest a second, unauthorized access that had never actually happened.
She almost said so. Almost laid out, in that room, in front of Kestrel's unhurried, patient face, exactly how she'd identify the forgery and why, but some old instinct, sharpened by three years of learning exactly how much power a room like this held over her and exactly how little it cost them to ignore whatever she said in it, made her hold the detail back instead.
She thought of Declan, waiting outside the door, and the quiet promise he'd made her days ago.
Whatever happens in there, you're not walking out of it alone. She held onto that instead of the tremor working its way into her hands.
Not yet. Not here, in a room stacked against her from the moment the invite went out with a Provost quietly cc'd on a routine hours dispute.
"I'll want copies of everything," she said instead. "The sign-out log, the allegation as filed, the handwriting sample you're comparing against. For my records."
"That can be arranged," the Dean said, and something in her tone suggested she hadn't expected Josie to ask for documentation instead of simply protesting, a small miscalculation Josie intended to make good use of later.
"I'd also like it noted," Josie added, "that I'm requesting these documents specifically to conduct my own comparative analysis. I have three years of verifiable, timestamped handwriting samples on file with this office. I intend to use them."
Something flickered across the Dean's expression: not quite alarm, but a small recalibration, the look of a woman who'd expected a frightened student and was getting, instead, someone methodically building a case of her own in real time.
The meeting ended twenty minutes after that, inconclusively, her access suspended, her case number now attached to a formal misconduct allegation instead of a routine hours review, and Kestrel rose last, unhurried, and paused beside her chair on his way out.
"I did try to spare you this, Miss Calloway," he said, quiet, meant only for her. "I offered your Warden a simpler resolution weeks ago. He declined it on your behalf. I hope, whatever comes of today, you understand where the actual choice was made, and by whom."
"I understand exactly where the choice was made," Josie said, meeting his eyes without flinching. "It just wasn't the choice you're implying."
Something in his expression tightened, almost imperceptibly, before smoothing back into its usual composed mask.
He left before she could say anything further, and Josie sat in the empty room a moment longer, Ferris's hand finally coming to rest, briefly, on her shoulder (the first physical gesture of comfort he'd offered her in three years of working together) and thought that whatever Kestrel believed he'd just threatened her with, he'd made one mistake tonight that she intended to make him regret.
He'd shown her exactly which box mattered enough to fake a crime around.
"You handled that better than most Wardens I've watched testify in front of a review board," Ferris said quietly, once the room had cleared enough that the words felt safe to say.
"I've had three years of practice being underestimated in official rooms. Josie gathered her copies of the paperwork, hands finally steady now that the meeting itself was over. "It turns out that's useful training for something, after all."