Field Trip
8
Emily took Hartgrave’s directive seriously. But it was like trying to hit a home run without a bat or even a clear idea of where to procure one.
She settled in a lotus position on her couch that evening and large parts of the next day, attempting to sense anything unusual about her skin. How could it seem unusual, though, after a lifetime spent wearing it?
She was sending mental commands to her body to just get along with magic, pretty please, when Hartgrave arrived at seven o’clock, punctual as always. Because she could be distracted temporarily, but not forever, she said, “What intentionally evil uses has magic been put to?”
“No, no, no. I’m here only to see how you’re getting on with your aura. ”
“You owe me an answer a day, you know.”
He narrowed his eyes. “If I owe you anything, it’s merely something you want, and lessons—if you’ll recall—were higher up your priority list.”
Magic lessons, not instruction in how to be more ordinary. She let out an exasperated breath. “You’re not the least bit afraid I’ll tell on you, are you?”
“No.” He smiled—all teeth. “Do it to me and I’ll do it to you.”
“What?”
“Your living arrangements break half a dozen school rules.”
She gaped at him. Not because she didn’t know it was against the rules, but because she’d never considered that was precisely why he’d suggested it.
“I can’t believe you had the unmitigated gall to imply you were helping me when you told me to move in here,” she said.
“I was helping you. It just happened to help me, too. Do you want lessons? It’s either that or the daily Q&A, but not both.”
Unfortunately, she did want lessons. Needed them, really. She gave a sour nod.
“Come with me to my room, then.”
She hadn’t expected that. She zigzagged the corridors with him, indignation tinged with curiosity, and headed for his chair after he let them in.
“No, sit on the bed,” he called out. He crossed the room and did likewise. “Give me your hand. ”
Sitting next to Hartgrave (on his bed, no less) and holding hands—while aggravated at him—was not her idea of a good time.
“Stop glaring at me, I’m not going to ravish you,” he said. “This is purely for”—he grabbed her hand—“bloody buggering hell!”
Essentially her reaction, too, though it came out as an incoherent noise. At least the agony of contact was quick. She pulled away with the speed of a person discovering the stovetop was on. “What did you think you were doing?”
“I didn’t expect that,” he protested. “I thought you might find it helpful if you could feel the process of magic dispersal, but—”
“Only if by ‘helpful’ you mean ‘searingly painful’!”
He threw up his hands. “I hadn’t started yet! I let my magic build up a bit, that’s all. And not nearly as much as I did that last time here, so I didn’t count on anything worse than mild irritation.”
“An explanation would have been nice. Ahead of time,” she added, anticipating him. He closed his mouth, temporarily silenced. “But—well, all right, it was a good idea. Could you disperse a small amount now and try again?”
After a second or two, he held out his hand. She took it, teeth gritted. But the sensation was so much better, it was almost as surprising as the first attempt. Every spot where his palm and fingers touched hers was prickling, smarting, but not truly hurting.
She stared at him. “That’s a small amount gone? ”
He nodded, lips twisting into a thoughtful frown. “Uncharted territory, remember.”
“What happens now?”
“I’ll push more magic away. Pay close attention.”
She closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling. Slowly, subtly, it diminished to an itch.
“Oh,” she whispered, enthralled.
“A significant difference, isn’t it?” His voice was nearly as hushed. “Now I’ll reduce the magic in my aura again. It’s a mental push . I could use the magic up by casting a minor illusion or other small spell, but in this case I’m only trying to cast it off, so ...”
In a handful of heartbeats, the itch flattened out into a tactile hum.
This trivial bit of magic affected her more deeply than all the spells she’d actually been able to see. This one felt like participating. Like being enchanted. She sat stock still, hardly breathing, as her left hand tingled everywhere his skin pressed against hers.
He cleared his throat. “Daggett ...”
“Mm?”
“Would you care to give it a try, or do you intend to simply sit here all night, holding my hand?”
That broke the spell. Figuratively speaking. She opened her eyes and found him considering her with a half-smile.
It was profoundly disconcerting in a way she couldn’t fully articulate.
She pulled free. “Of course I want to try. I’m just waiting for instructions.”
“Oh? All right. First: Give me back your hand. ”
“We’re done with the show and tell, aren’t we?”
He elbowed her. “How do you think you’ll know if you’re pushing any of your anti-magic away? Wouldn’t it be handy to have a method for checking?”
Indisputable. Also a terrible pun. (Which, OK, she loved.) She suppressed a snort and slipped her fingers around his.
“Next,” he said, “you’re on your own. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to get anti-magic to do anything. Perhaps you’ll have more luck—it’s yours, after all.”
She focused on their entwined hands as she visualized the hum turning to nothing. He had very long fingers—pianist hands, her mother would say. She could easily imagine them racing up and down the keys, playing something stormy by Rachmaninoff.
Except that wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking about, so she stared at the wall instead. What must it have been like for Hartgrave to find this room for the first time? He surely would have been—no, no, no, she had to focus .
When she caught herself contemplating his head, thinking shaved-bald was a smart move if you believed in contagious magic and its precept that your hair in the wrong hands could doom you, she decided she’d better just close her eyes.
A long while later, she’d reached Hartgrave-level tetchiness. Nothing was working. If anything, the humming had advanced toward itching. Her back hurt, her hand was going numb, she was very aware of him sitting next to her—and she was starving .
“Thank you for trying,” she said, “but I think we’d better call it a night.”
“Giving up so easily?”
“No,” she said. “Giving in to extreme hunger.”
“All right, then.” He stood, stretching. “I could eat. Let’s go.”
Wait, did he just invite her to dinner with him? Was this some sort of surreptitious date?
“Well? Are you or are you not starving?” He raised a challenging eyebrow that in no way implied tender feelings.
She laughed at herself—picturing Hartgrave falling for her required a more active imagination than even she had—and followed him out of the Inferno.
Ashburn closed its cafeteria during winter break, and she’d heard that just about everything near the college was similarly shuttered—business was glacial when the students went home. But Hartgrave seemed to have a destination in mind, so she let him lead the way off campus.
They walked five blocks through empty streets before coming upon a hole-in-the-wall with a neon sign that, thanks to an unlit “d,” declared the establishment to be “Mexican Foo.” She’d passed by once before, perhaps a month prior to moving into the Inferno, and had managed a sort-of laugh at the thought that she couldn’t afford to eat there. Now she could. Not, of course, that she wanted to.
Hartgrave stepped up to Mexican Foo’s door and opened it.
Oh, no . Was he serious ?
Apparently so. He walked past an unmanned greeter’s stand to a corner table near the kitchen door, putting in her hands a menu he’d swiped along the way. They were the only customers in the place. Maybe the only people—no sign of the wait staff.
She perched on a chair, feeling like an interloper. “Are you sure this restaurant is open? I mean, where is everyone?”
“It’s past eight. All good Iowans are tightly tucked up in their beds.”
“The next time you insult my state, you snobby European—”
“You’re such an easy mark, Daggett.” He flashed a there-and-gone grin, looking thoroughly disreputable with his black wool cap pulled nearly to his eyes. “Hurry up and decide what you want.”
She snorted. “I don’t see what good it’ll do to decide, what with no waiters.”
“Hey!” His bellow startled her so badly that she hit her knees against the table. “Du hast Kundschaft, du Idiot!”
“Ich hab einen Idioten als Kunden ,” a male voice bellowed back.
A moment later, the owner of the voice emerged—a ruddy-faced man, perhaps mid-forties, with an enormous stomach that rolled over his belt and hung there impressively.
“Ich dachte, du kommst heute nicht ,” the man said, coming through the kitchen door, but then he caught sight of her and broke into a broad smile. “Aha! H?chste Zeit, dass du dir ein M?dchen zugelegt hast. Blo? schade, dass sie verrückt ist .”
“Nein, nein, sie ist nicht mein M?dchen ,” Hartgrave muttered.
The man issued a booming laugh. “Noch nicht, was?”
“I” and “girl” and “no” were the only words Emily caught in their rapid-fire delivery. She blinked at the Germans—Hartgrave had never before seemed so German—and felt lost.
Hartgrave gestured to the man. “Daggett, this charming restaurateur is Wilhelm Durr. Willi, Dr. Emily Daggett. Kein Wort ,” he added as Willi raised both eyebrows in his direction.
She offered Willi her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“It is a rare honor,” he said, accent thick as a good milkshake, “to have someone so beautiful as you for which to cook.”
“Whom,” muttered her companion. “For whom.”
That didn’t strike her as the biggest error in Willi’s declaration, but perhaps Hartgrave thought he had sufficiently covered her lack of personal charms already. (Or maybe he didn’t want to be called a vulture again.)
Willi gestured to her menu with the spatula he held in one hand. “What would you like to eat?”
“Oh—um ...” She dove behind it.
“I wouldn’t order the burritos if I were you,” Hartgrave said. “Or the tostadas. Or the enchiladas.”
She looked up in time to see Willi swat him on the back of the head with the spatula. She definitely liked this man.
“How about fajitas?” she asked .
“Not awful,” Hartgrave allowed, shooting a furtive look at the kitchen implement.
But Willi was already bustling off to the kitchen, whistling a merry tune and waving the spatula like a conductor’s baton.
“And I’ll have the usual, you mannerless Einfaltspinsel ,” Hartgrave called after him, getting nothing but a wafting chuckle in answer.
The food arrived quickly, and more than they’d ordered. Willi pulled out a chair for himself and set a heaped-full plate in front of it.
“It’s lucky you came now, Alexander,” he said to Hartgrave, who gave what seemed like a wince at the use of his first name but didn’t object. (Remarkable, since he objected to everything.) “Any later, and you would be missing the chance to eat with me.”
“Ach ,” Hartgrave said, making a taco disappear. “So close.”
Willi rolled his eyes in her direction. “You see what I put up with?”
These men were clearly friends despite the insults. Which, perhaps, meant Hartgrave considered her a friend.
The front door opened with a rattle. A familiar voice called, “Anyone home?”
“Bernie!” Willi pushed himself to his feet. “Come here, sit, while I am bringing you something.”
Emily waved to her co-worker as he came around the bend in a bright-blue newsboy cap. “Fancy seeing you outside the madhouse! ”
“Likewise,” Bernie said, blinking in evident surprise, which only grew as he caught sight of the other person at the table. “Oho —so you won’t go to dinner with me, but you’ll go with him?” He clutched at his heart, a gesture ruined by his mischievous grin. “I’m crushed.”
She couldn’t think of an explanation that would keep Bernie from teasing her the entire spring semester. Certainly we were hungry after spending an hour on his bed wouldn’t do.
But her newly appointed tutor stepped into the breach. “Perhaps if you’d remained on campus long enough to be on hand when she was starving and helpless, you would have had more luck.”
Masterful response. It sounded specific but wasn’t—and yet no one could accuse him of lying. She shot a relieved smile Hartgrave’s way, which turned to a frown as she wondered how often he had put this skill to use with her.
Also: “Helpless?” She wrinkled her nose at him.
“So, then,” Bernie said, glancing between her and Hartgrave, grin still in place, “does this mean—”
“No,” Hartgrave said. Firmly.
She suppressed a snicker. Yep, definitely not a date.
At that point Willi arrived with a plate of nachos, which probably saved them from an escalation of nosy questions.
The food was surprisingly good. (She mentally apologized to Willi for judging his restaurant by its exterior.) For several minutes, they did nothing but eat.
Then Bernie said, “Doing anything for Christmas, Em? ”
She swallowed the last bite of her second-to-last fajita. “Going home to visit my folks.”
Hartgrave looked up, frowning. “Oh?”
“I haven’t seen them all semester,” she said, wondering why she was justifying herself.
“How are you planning on getting there?”
“Well, it’s a three-or-so-hour drive ...”
He raised an eyebrow. “Does your vehicle often break down on you?”
She gasped. She so rarely went anywhere that she hadn’t thought of the inherent problem: Her car, even at twelve years old, was a complicated piece of technology. Magic was probably shot right through it.
She’d driven to Ashburn without mishap, if you didn’t count the radio display refusing to display anything, but what if something important broke halfway home? What if—oh God—the brakes failed?
She pushed out of her seat, unable to put more food into her churning stomach. Both Bernie and Willi stopped eating to look at her.
“I—I’ve got to go,” she croaked. “I forgot to take care of something at work.”
“Stay, eat,” Willi insisted. “All this food—”
“Share it with Ballantine,” Hartgrave said, shrugging on his coat as he rose. He held out several bills. “Thank you for dinner.”
“Nein, nein, nein .”
“Willi, I am paying you.”
“He insults my hospitality!” the man growled, looking angry for the first time in an evening of many insults .
She thought of tucking what she owed under her plate, but she was diverted by the sight of Hartgrave darting behind Willi and stuffing his money down the back of the man’s shirt. Well, that was one way ...
“Let’s see you get that out in time to throw it at me,” Hartgrave said, grabbing her elbow and towing her toward the door.
“Wait,” she said, looking over her shoulder.
“Yes, you better run!” Willi’s attempt to untuck his shirt was undercut by his decision to also shake a fist at the man. “Mistkerl!”
“Have a safe trip, Em,” Bernie called into the fray.
“You are welcome of course anytime, Dr. Daggett,” the voice of the proprietor declared the moment before the door slammed shut behind them.
“Well,” Hartgrave said, letting go of her, “that was better than usual.”
She threw up her arms. “But my bill!”
“I covered it.”
“Oh. Well—here’s my share,” she said, holding out thirteen dollars.
He waved it away and set off toward campus, head down against the wind.
She caught up with him. “Don’t make me stick money down your shirt.”
“Next time, you pick up the check.”
Next time?
“Now, as I’d like to collect on that IOU, let’s discuss this trip to your parents’ house,” he said .
She stuffed the money into her coat pocket. “What am I going to do? It never occurred to me that there’s magic in cars.”
“Has yours ever done anything inexplicable?”
She nodded. “I’ve never gotten into an accident, but I haven’t driven it much.”
He lapsed into his middle-distance researcher stare. As the seconds turned to minutes and they crossed onto campus, she could take it no longer.
“Please, there must be something I can do,” she said. “I can’t stay here over Christmas—I really can’t. They’re expecting me, and I miss them.”
He sighed. It sounded different, somehow, from a huff of irritation. Almost sad. “When are you leaving?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“And tomorrow? Do you have plans?”
Working on her research paper. But rather than get into that, she simply shook her head.
“You do now,” he said. “Expect me at 8 a.m.”
Grateful and horrified in equal measure, she said, “You’re going to give me lessons all day?”
“I am.”
She groaned. “I’ll just be wasting your time—I’m getting nowhere.”
“Perhaps you simply required a deadline,” he said.
She groaned even more deeply. How many deadlines carried a risk of actual death if you missed them?