Chapter 9
“Well,” Natalie said. “I still don’t like her.”
Lucy wrapped her sweater tightly around her shoulders.
The wind felt more like autumn than late August. The temperatures would soar back to the eighties later in the afternoon, but Lucy was finding that she didn’t mind the frostbitten mountain mornings.
The clear air made for a clearer head. “I don’t have to like her,” she said.
“If she keeps me from turning into a vampire, I’ll kiss her on the mouth. ”
“Yes,” Natalie said. “I can tell it would be a real hardship for you to kiss her on the mouth.”
Lucy flipped her a double-middle-fingered salute.
Clearly she was right. And clearly Lucy could stand to make more of a secret of that.
But it wasn’t worth thinking about Mila’s steady confidence and tragically sculpted arms anymore.
For one, Mila was at the ready to kill Lucy if things went south.
Also, even if they weren’t in this situation, it would have been doomed anyway, since Mila wasn’t allowed to date a resident.
Although if they weren’t in this situation, maybe Mila wouldn’t have been an RA at all. Maybe she’d still be that long-ago people pleaser, trying to figure out how to break up with poor Jon. Maybe she wouldn’t have come to Rollins to begin with.
Athena had been a transfer student in her sophomore year.
Jon had been hundreds of miles away from the girl he thought he’d be with forever.
Even without knowing Addison’s or Sadie’s circumstances, Lucy thought she was starting to understand how Vanya operated.
That he gravitated toward those on the edges of the crowd.
In any case. She put Mila, who was back at her dorm catching up on sleep, out of her mind for now. She’d been left in Natalie and Athena’s custody for the morning.
She glanced back to Natalie, who was warily looking at the path ahead. “So Athena’s sure that the campus radio station is safe?”
“I don’t think Athena goes anywhere she’s not sure is safe,” Lucy said.
Although Athena seemed to have a more optimistic view of Lucy’s chances than Mila did, Athena struck Lucy as the more cautious of the two.
Which was saying something, given how cautious Mila was.
“The steam tunnels don’t pass under the studio. And also…”
As they approached the gray, vaguely Brutalist multimedia center, Lucy stepped past Natalie and withdrew her ID card. She tapped it to the card reader, waited for the “click” of the lock, and then eased open the heavy door.
“…we’ve been added to the guest list,” Lucy finished. “Athena said everyone who uses the multimedia center gets a similar message to the one they sent to Quincey residents about an abusive ex on the loose.”
Natalie gave the card reader an unusually intense once-over as they passed.
Lucy made a questioning noise. “Oh, nothing,” Natalie said.
“I was just thinking…the vampire had some power over you even before he bit you, right? He told you to hold still, and you did. Telling people not to invite anyone in is one thing, but—”
“But what if he just tells them to do it,” Lucy mumbled.
“Good question.” And one she was sure Athena and Mila would have thought of before.
Vanya had been stalking Athena for years now.
He was desperate enough to get to her that he had, apparently impulsively, turned Whitney.
Thinking of all that he’d done so far, the radio station’s modest protections didn’t seem like much of a barrier.
Maybe there were limits to his power. That would be nice, if that was true.
Or he had patience. Which was a much less promising thought. But the more Lucy thought about it, the harder it was to shake the thought that Athena had been unreasonably lucky so far. Maybe unrealistically lucky.
The two fell quiet as they made their way to the corridor of soundproof suites that housed Pallas Radio.
Lucy could see other occupants through the tiny windows—one student practicing trombone, another recording some kind of video essay—but the thick walls did their job.
The hallway was silent. Without Lucy’s unnaturally sharpened hearing, she might not have caught the muffled conversation coming through the cracked-open door of suite number thirty-two.
“—give me a minute?” Athena’s voice, first. But it was neither her Pallas Radio voice, nor the soft, even tone with which she spoke to Lucy.
It was a voice Lucy knew intimately after her many years behind the counter of the hardware store.
The customer service voice. “I think I actually have a call coming in.”
“You can let it go to voicemail.” The other voice was older.
And as they drew closer to the door, Lucy caught sight of Athena’s conversation partner: an older white woman in a navy-blue blazer-and-skirt set.
“Athena…it’s not as if we don’t appreciate your creativity here.
But after three years of this, are you sure you don’t want to pivot this project at all?
The Campus Community-Building Grant wasn’t really intended for—works of fiction. ”
“Pivoting would defeat the purpose, ma’am,” Athena said. “The committee was very enthusiastic about the concept of building community through audience participation in an immersive narrative. It doesn’t work if I switch gears in the middle of the story.”
Natalie let out a little hum under her breath, presumably at that very smoothly delivered bit of bullshit. The navy woman flashed a sucked-lemon smile back. “And…you have an ending for that narrative in mind?”
“I hope so,” Athena said. “But we’ll see.”
There was a beat of silence. The tension roiled like a summer storm. At length, the navy woman said, “Just take care to devote as much time to your own studies. Dr. Conners said it’s not too late if you’d like to rethink taking on a senior project.”
Something shifted in Athena’s polite, closed-lipped smile. It looked more genuine, but not more friendly. The smile, maybe, of someone who knew she’d won.
“Thank you, Dr. Horne,” she said. “But I think my schedule is all set this year.”
Dr. Horne turned slightly toward the door. She didn’t look at Lucy or Natalie fully, but she clocked, at least, that she was being watched. That seemed to be enough to force her surrender.
“I’m always here if you need to talk,” she said.
Athena’s pleasant front didn’t waver. “Of course, ma’am.”
Dr. Horne squeezed Athena’s shoulder just a touch too forcefully—muscle tension apparently had a sound, and it scraped unpleasantly at Lucy’s ears.
Maybe Lucy didn’t manage to hide her grimace quickly enough when Dr. Horne swept out of the room.
When her gaze flicked to Lucy and Natalie, her own nose was crinkled with slight distaste.
She clicked briskly down the hall in her heels, and eventually out of sight.
Athena didn’t look very pleased herself as Lucy and Natalie stepped into the suite. There was an uncharacteristic sharpness when she spoke. “Dammit,” she said. “She made me miss a call.”
Natalie glanced around as Athena strode over to the phone, as if there might be someone else hiding in the room that they could have missed. She shut the door before she asked, “Who was that?”
“Dr. Horne. The Vice Provost of Student Events and Activities.” Lucy wouldn’t have thought that Athena’s gentle voice was suited to sarcasm, but the title dripped with it. “Even though I have this grant now, she’s still here every other week trying to find some new way to derail me.”
“How is that her business?” Lucy said.
“She thinks I’m using fiction to run away from the trauma of my attack.
Which, even if I was, would still be none of her business.
I thought getting my own funding would help.
The grant is through a campus life nonprofit.
But the money gets sent to me through the student activities office.
Which means I have to smile and nod every time she decides she wants to climb up my ass.
” Athena audibly took a deep breath to steady herself.
“Sorry, Lucy. Can I listen to this voicemail really quick? I’ll be with you in a second. ”
“Take your time,” Lucy said. Athena looked like she wanted to seethe for a few seconds longer. And as someone who’d spent most of her life keeping a lid on her frustration, Lucy recognized one of her own.
Athena took another beat before keying in the PIN on the ancient campus landline. There was a brief silence as the message loaded. And then there was a cheery voice, a little tinny through the speakers.
“Ms. Pallas Radio!” said a lovely, lilting voice.
It was a man’s voice: probably older than an undergraduate, but not too old.
A graduate student, maybe. “Sorry I missed you. I should probably know better than to call the nocturnal among us during the day, right? I know you’ve told us not to mention names on the air, but I wanted to run one by you.
I don’t really have anything definitive to report, but the guy really had a vibe, you know?
Kind of spooky. And it was near Falls Quad on Friday night. That was where that party was, right?
“Anyway: the name. The guy introduced himself to me as Ivan Volkov. V-o-l-k-o-v. Sorry I don’t have more than that, but I hope that’s of some help. You stay safe out there, Ms. Pallas. Bye.”
Athena let out another breath as the message shifted. This time, it sounded far more tired than tense. “Well, I’m glad Dr. Horne didn’t overhear that,” she said. “The last thing I need is for her to think I’m about to whip up an angry mob on a man with spooky vibes.”
“You don’t think it’s real?” Lucy said.