Explosions
5
The mulish twist to Hartgrave’s mouth the next evening told Emily he was prepared to hear—and shoot down—a question about technological magic. So in the mildest tone possible, she asked, “Why did you come to Ashburn?”
He blinked. Then he went even more mulish. “No. Next question.”
She gave an inward cheer. Mystery! Definitely a mystery! Next line of attack: “Who taught you how to do magic?”
“Next question that isn’t about me,” he snarled.
Undeterred, she asked, “Why are you living in the Inferno?”
“Why are you living in the Inferno?”
So he had noticed. “Uh ... ”
“Exactly.”
Something about his so there expression made her want to laugh. “Fine. I’ll tell you if you tell me.”
Both sides of his mouth curved up. A smile, an actual smile. “You first.”
Oh. Now that she thought about it, her reason was at least as embarrassing as never outgrowing a childhood crush on books about wizards. She sighed. “I can’t afford to heat my house properly, that’s why. Oh, come on—it’s not funny.”
He composed himself, but the remains of his laugh were everywhere on his face. “And here I assumed you were doing it expressly to annoy me.”
“No, that’s just a side benefit. So? What’s your reason?”
“Unique architecture.” He let that marinate for a few seconds. “The commute’s not bad, either.”
She scowled at him. Every time she thought he might be all right, really, he reminded her that he wasn’t. “You’re supposed to tell me the truth.”
“I always tell you the truth,” he insisted. “And speaking of living arrangements, you might want to stop renting that piece of dreck on Grand Avenue if you’re sleeping here.”
“How did you know—”
“Because, Emily Helena Daggett—age twenty-six, credit score of six hundred, daughter of John and Helen and a lifelong resident of Iowa, college included—I like to know whom I’m dealing with,” he said, crossing his arms .
Her mouth fell open in outrage. But then, he’d simply had more success doing to her what she’d tried to do to him, hadn’t he? She surprised herself—and Hartgrave, by the look of it—by bursting into laughter.
He shook his head. “You’re a very unusual person.”
This just made her laugh harder. “Says the spellcasting IT guy living in a hidden room.”
“Back to my original point,” he said, leaning against the archway to her corridor, making her notice that what she’d taken for a black shirt was actually a dark green. (Flashy, for him.) “Get out of your lease, and you’ll save money.”
“That’s very”—she searched for a word, came upon “thoughtful” and gave the sentence up for lost. “But I am using it. Mailbox, shower, washing machine ...”
He waved this off. “Mail can be delivered to your office. The facilities at the athletic center are open to employees. And there’s a coin-operated laundry a block from campus.”
Holy heck, he was right. And then she wouldn’t be living hand-to-mouth. For the first time in years .
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she murmured.
“Perhaps if you spent less time obsessing over magic and more time focusing on your own life …”
Ouch.
Then he demanded she repay him with a week off from questions. Completely predictable.
What he did the next evening wasn’t.
He showed up.
Well-timed, too, because she was right in the midst of trying to lug her sleeper sofa down the stairs .
“I’m impressed that you took my obviously excellent advice so quickly,” he said, grabbing the other end just as the sofa was about to slip from her grasp. “But what the feck are you doing, moving this all by yourself?”
“I can’t ask my students,” she said, wiping her sweat-slick palms on her jeans and getting a better grip. “And my family’s at the other end of the state, as you probably know.”
He didn’t ask about friends, fortunately. He just helped her carry the sofa to the corridor that constituted her office and now, she supposed, her home.
The sofa was small enough that it fit in the corridor lengthwise, so she arranged it a few feet beyond the computer in a mirror image of Bernie’s setup. There—no one would suspect. Not, of course, that anyone besides Bernie, Hartgrave and the cleaning staff ever came down here anyway.
Hartgrave glanced around. “What’s next?”
“That’s everything, thanks.”
“Everything?”
She shrugged. Sofa, dresser, table, extra bookcase—what else did someone with crippling debt really need?
He eyed the bookcase, not the one with her academic tomes but the one she’d brought in earlier that day, packed to overflowing with her childhood collection of fantasy adventures.
“This,” he said, shaking his head at the books, “does not in any way surprise me.”
She snorted.
He loitered by her dresser, looking at the framed photographs of her parents, of her with her parents, of her parents’ farm. All she could see of him was his back, but his usual slouch seemed almost melancholy. She couldn’t put her finger on why, exactly. His hands deep in the pockets of his long black coat, perhaps, or his silence.
“My mother took those photos,” she said, filling the disquieting quiet. “That’s my favorite on the end—I keep telling her she ought to sell prints.”
The barn, five years past due for repainting, had been transfigured into beauty by sunset. Her parents’ fields stretched to the horizon, a riot of shadow and light—the soybeans actually glowed. That picture was the perfect comeback to anyone misinformed enough to call the Midwest monotonous.
“Iowa,” Hartgrave said with feeling, “is so very, very flat.”
If he hadn’t just helped her, she would have thrown him out.
. . . . .
He reappeared the next evening. Probably his way of subtly taunting her, since she was forbidden from asking questions for five more days.
“Oh, good,” she said, retaliating. “I was just about to page you.”
He made a noise of deep aggravation as he glanced at her frozen computer. “What have you done this time, Daggett?”
“It can’t always be my fault. ”
She expected to hear why it was in fact always her fault, but he said nothing. He hunched over, one hand flat on the PC’s tower, lost in thought. Or waiting for something to happen.
“Oh ,” she said, resisting the urge to slap her forehead. “You’re fixing my computer with magic. You were always fixing it with magic, weren’t you?”
“You should come with a warning.” He hit the restart button. “‘Person before you is brighter than she appears.’”
“Why, I think that’s a compliment.”
“Or an insult, depending on your point of view.”
Naturally his compliments were insulting. She leaned toward him from her spot on her couch and asked, “Do you use magic to fix everyone’s computer?”
“No.”
“Then how come—”
“Daggett .”
“Right. Sorry. Week off.”
So why did he keep showing up?
When he emerged from the shadows the following evening to pick an insignificant fight, the answer dawned on her: He was bored. And possibly lonely. He apparently preferred arguing with someone who got on his nerves to however he normally spent his evenings.
How did he normally spend them? What was he doing at Ashburn?
He would never tell her directly. She needed to attack the problem sideways—she needed to get him talking about his life before Ashburn .
She glanced up to find him waving his arms at her like a traffic cop. “Are you even listening?”
“No.” She tucked her feet under her on the couch. “I have a bone to pick with you: Iowa isn’t all flat. It’s very hilly just north of here, though I’ll bet you’ve never bothered to look.”
Hartgrave made no protest at this change of subject, perhaps because one insignificant fight was as good as another. “Go see Germany’s mountains,” he said, “and then tell me what’s ‘very hilly.’”
Exactly the response she’d counted on. “You miss them,” she suggested, trying not to sound avid about it.
“I ...” He stopped, and she thought she’d crossed some sort of line. But when he spoke—words softer than normal, both in volume and sharpness—she guessed that she’d merely surprised him. “I do miss them. More than I thought I would.”
It made her think better of him, this sign that home called as strongly to him as it did to her. “How old were you when you left Germany?”
“Seventeen.”
“Oh—heading off to college, then.” (As if she didn’t know.)
His reaction was remarkable. His face tightened, his slouch increased and he said “mm” in a tone that did not invite more questions.
“Where?” she asked anyway, unwilling to give up.
He turned and headed out. “It’s my week off, Daggett. ”
“What’s the big deal about telling me you went to Cornwall University?” she called to his back, curiosity and exasperation propelling her to her feet.
His coat flared around him as he did a rapid one-eighty. “What?”
“It’s not a secret—it’s on your profile.”
“What are you talking about?” He rushed back, eyes wide, face pale. “What profile? Where? Daggett!”
She wasn’t trying to keep him in suspense, but his reaction—his fear—had shocked her momentarily silent. “On—on the Ashburn website,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”
But no, of course he didn’t. Otherwise his name wouldn’t have been misspelled.
“Admin handles the website,” he said, dashing out of her office. “ Idiots!”
The Inferno door slammed shut behind him before she could think of a response. She lunged for her computer and printed the profile out, suspecting that some of the details would soon disappear.
She’d underestimated him. When she checked on the profile fifteen minutes later, it was gone—all of it, even “Alexander Hartgarve, director of the Office of Information Technology Help Desk.”
Oh yes, she was definitely on to something.
. . . . .
The history department met for a staff meeting every other Thursday, though Emily had yet to figure out why. It was the academic equivalent of a time loop .
Professor Fletcher, the pinched-looking chair, always offered an update on the humanities building renovation plans that boiled down to “still no progress,” but it took ten minutes at minimum because of questions and objections. Then Fletcher would open the floor, which was worse.
Professor Dettman, the Eastern European specialist, inevitably complained that the department was out of some manner of office supplies. This would set off an argument, because Professor Tanner, American studies, always accused someone or other of filching them.
And then Professor Aldridge, a Marxist with a salary three times Emily’s, would go off about the appalling favoritism toward the maths and sciences at the expense of worthier subjects, example one that the engineering department was just swimming in office supplies.
This happened at every meeting.
Bernie’s advice, when she’d griped to him about it, was not to begrudge the professors their little dramas when “little dramas are obviously all they’ve got.”
This morning, however, she was very begrudging. Never mind the wild urge to figure out what was up with Hartgrave—her previous two classes generated fifty papers, and she couldn’t delay grading with final exams looming. She tapped her pencil on the table and hoped the rest of the group felt the crush of deadlines, too.
“Coffee, m’dear,” said Professor Blair, sliding a full cup in front of her and laying his free hand on her shoulder.
She forced a smile. Blair had been teaching Western Civ at Ashburn for as long as she’d been alive, but he regarded their age gap as if it were nothing. Possibly a side effect of covering six thousand years every semester.
During Fletcher’s non-update, Emily considered the coffee cup and its Ashburn logo—perhaps even the one Hartgrave had convinced back together. How amazing it was that a broken cup could be made perfectly whole. She rhapsodized to herself along these lines until Dettman’s fist hitting the table brought her back to attention.
“Yah, I have an issue,” he said. “I’d rather have a pen than an issue, but oh what a surprise—no pens!”
“And do you know why?” Tanner, of course.
Emily, to keep from rolling her eyes, turned them back to the mug. If it was the magically repaired one, perhaps there’d be some detectable sign. A slight glow? She looked at it without blinking for as long as she could. Then she tried squinting at it.
“I’ve never been so insulted in my life ,” barked Professor Brown, the ancient Greece specialist, whose turn it apparently was to be accused. For the third time that semester, by Emily’s count.
She sighed. How was squinting at cups any less ridiculous than retreading the same argument? Why, with a magic-user for a next-door neighbor, had she let mysteries sidetrack her from the real goal of persuading Hartgrave to give her lessons?
“... and it is a, quote, ‘transgression punishable by the docking of wages’ ...”
She glanced at her watch, recalled that it had once again stopped dead and casually shifted in her seat until she could make out the time on the conference room clock. Half an hour already? It was no sacrifice for Tanner to go on and on, Tanner with her easy load of two classes, but some people had five—
No, scratch that. One person. Just her.
She swallowed a scream.
“... a half-dozen pens in the supply closet Friday afternoon. On Monday morning—none. And when I left Friday, only one of us remained—”
“Two,” Emily said.
Everyone looked blankly at her. This was not in the script.
“I was here quite late on Friday,” she said.
Tanner took a second to consider this and rallied. “Well, that doesn’t count—”
“I had thought when I accepted this position that I would count,” Emily said, heart beating too fast.
Of course Ashburn only hired her for scut work—of course they would use her up and spit her out when her one-year contract was up. She blinked and saw the entire department fixing her with expressions ranging from pitying to patronizing.
Aldridge, perhaps trying to return to familiar ground, said: “If the administration didn’t insist on putting its money into the biology wing renovation rather than the humanities building, you would even now be in a first-floor office.”
“Or perhaps one should have considered academic standing before one chose an inane specialty,” Tanner muttered. “If you don’t mind, I was trying to make a point. ”
Emily leapt to her feet before her brain caught up with her reflexes—or her mouth. “You’ve been making the same point all semester. If you have time to monitor pen movements, I suggest you teach one of the courses I’ve been assigned next term. It would give you something constructive to do.”
“How dare —”
“Also,” Emily said, unable to stop, “I move that we skip these preposterous meetings from here on out!” She hoisted her cup for emphasis. “Can I get a ‘seconded’?”
She got a second of scandalized silence, followed by a terrific crack as the cup split into four pieces and clattered to the table in a pool of cold liquid.
The meeting fell apart nearly as quickly. Emily sat by herself in the conference room, holding the jagged chunk of porcelain still attached to the handle. She’d just had the most disastrous morning of her employed life, and she couldn’t concentrate on how to salvage the situation. She couldn’t concentrate on anything but the former cup.
What had happened was magic. Magic she’d worked.
Her hands shook. Not just her hands, but every part of her body. It felt as if the entire world was shaking.
She’d just done magic .
She wanted to say the words out loud, yell them, jump up and down, dance the tarantella—and she couldn’t wait to tell Hartgrave. He would have to train her. She’d just made something burst apart without trying to—without even wanting to .
Her breath caught in her throat. Did that mean in a fit of anger she might accidentally break other things? Or people?
She looked at the wreckage on the table, then at the clock. Five minutes to eleven. She had to get help before thirty unsuspecting students gathered for her noon class.
She fled to the Inferno and paged Hartgrave. Bernie had a Thursday class from ten to eleven thirty, which left her alone—pacing—until Hartgrave responded to her summons.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask that you keep your computer working for forty-eight consecutive hours,” he said, no real heat to the complaint.
“No, it’s—it’s this .” She held up the cracked-off cup handle.
“If you called me here to fix another of your coffee mishaps—”
“I didn’t drop it! It spontaneously broke apart. In my hands .”
A pained look settled on his face. He gave her the impression of a man expecting trouble but trying to put it off.
“Hartgrave—”
“Come with me,” he said, turning on his heel.
She followed him through dimly lit corridors in a frenzy of anticipation, heartbeat playing a staccato rhythm in her ears. He’d never invited her into his hidden room before, not if you didn’t count their original and short-lived agreement.
But then, she’d never done magic before, either.