Chapter Fourteen
For a clandestine mission, the setup was relatively low-tech.
Athena would call Lucy. Lucy would keep a single earbud nestled in her ear.
And the call would remain open the entire time so that Athena could listen in.
Ostensibly so that she’d know if they needed help.
Though, of course, if they needed help, who was there for Athena to call?
Athena looked miserable. Miserable that she would be stuck at the studio, miserable that they hadn’t listened to her, probably miserable wondering if this would be the last time she saw any of them.
She apologized that she wasn’t going with them, though to Lucy, that was a given from the start.
The last thing she wanted was to put Athena in Vanya’s reach.
Well. Maybe putting herself within Vanya’s reach was the last thing. But next to Athena, Lucy had the dubious honor of being a secondary consideration. She was an appetizer. She wasn’t the prize. And if Vanya wanted to use her to lure Athena out, maybe he had some slight use for her alive.
They said goodbye to Athena, and started the call. “I’m sorry,” Athena said again as she saw them out the door.
“You can avenge us if we all get eaten,” Natalie said.
“Don’t joke,” Athena said.
“Who’s joking?” Natalie said. “I’m contingency-planning.”
Mila was the last out the door. And watching her, Lucy really felt the limitations of her new senses.
She could feel the tension in Mila’s jaw, in her shoulders.
She could hear her heartbeat, nearly as quick as Athena’s now.
She could read feelings, or at least, she could read how they manifested themselves physically.
But she wasn’t Hiro, and she definitely wasn’t Vanya.
The thoughts behind those heartbeats were as unreadable as they’d always been.
“Don’t worry,” Mila finally said.
Athena attempted a smile then. “Too late.”
She hovered by the door as they started down the hill to lower campus. When Lucy glanced back, she was still there, as if she were watching a doomed voyage depart from the dock.
Lucy met Natalie’s eyes. They didn’t say anything, not with Athena on the phone in Lucy’s ear. But they exchanged uneasy grimaces.
Mila adjusted her bow’s carry bag across her shoulders. Natalie looked relieved to find something else to occupy her attention. “No quiver?” she said. “Oh—are you going to decapitate him with the bowstring or something?”
It was enough to jar Mila out of her silent misery. “How strong do you think bowstrings are, exactly?”
“How can I know when I haven’t seen you in action yet?” Natalie said.
It actually jarred a laugh out of Mila. “The quiver would be kind of conspicuous at a department mixer,” she said. “But I always keep an arrow or two in the bow’s bag in case of emergencies.”
Lucy surveyed the bag. It did look pretty unassuming; she doubted any present or future philosophers would notice that one of the attendees was toting a deadly weapon around the drinks table.
Except perhaps one. If Vanya had spent all these years watching Athena, she doubted that Mila had gone unnoticed.
As they neared the building, Mila said, “All right.” And with just those words, she was the hunter again. “Natalie—when we get in, I want you to stay by the door.”
“Hell no,” Natalie said. “I came here to help.”
“And you can help if one of us gets in trouble,” Mila said.
“Lucy will need to be in the middle of things to try to lure him out. I’ll need to stay by Lucy, but not too close.
So if something goes wrong, I want you near the sunlight where he can’t get you.
If anything happens to us, get back to Athena as fast as you can. ”
Natalie looked dubious but didn’t argue. “What about the other students? If things go wrong, should I try to get everyone out?”
“I don’t think he’ll risk a scene,” Lucy said. As strong as Vanya was, he didn’t chase groups. He got people alone. Which meant even he was conscious of being outnumbered.
“But by all means,” Mila said, “if you see blood, pull the fire alarm.”
Natalie shrugged blithely. “That’s generally my philosophy anyway.”
Despite the obvious wear and tear on the walls and fixtures, Lower Alton was a bright, airy space, full of sunlight and floor-to-ceiling windows.
There was a door leading straight into room number 105 from the outside, and it was not hard to spot the philosophy majors, clustered up ahead around some pizza.
This was a decidedly medium-sized event, taking up less than half of the atrium ahead.
The scene couldn’t have been further from the dark neon crush of Natalie’s party.
It wasn’t a group large enough to hide anyone, let alone Vanya.
Even so. Standing a ways back from the other students, Lucy couldn’t help but think of Natalie’s kitchen, the party behind her and the turned back of Ivan Volkov ahead. She hadn’t been expecting him then. She was expecting him now.
“I’ll be here,” Natalie said under her breath.
Lucy attempted a smile. “We’ll be back, hopefully.” And then she fell into step with Mila, and left Natalie behind.
Mila leaned in as they approached the table. “Let’s chat with them for a bit,” she said. “Get the lay of the land. Make sure to keep me in your sight. And this probably goes without saying, but don’t get anywhere near the basement stairs.”
Mila had been right. That went without saying. “Oh, hey,” Lucy muttered, as they passed the cheese and fruit table. “Garlic crostini.”
“Pocket one to throw at him,” Mila said. “You never know.”
They fell silent as a girl with a blazer and a crisp smile spotted them coming.
She hurried over to shake hands, like they were at some kind of business meeting.
“Come on in, grab some pizza,” she said.
“Ah, you two don’t look like first-years—are you thinking of changing your major? Or are you prospective minors?”
“She’s a first-year, actually,” Mila said, as smooth as ever. “I’m just along for the ride.”
Lucy felt a little pang, looking into Blazer Girl’s bright, enthusiastic face.
It hadn’t been that long ago that Lucy would have happily listened to her talk about her hyperspecialized thesis or self-designed major.
The question of Lucy’s future major had seemed so overwhelming, just a few days ago.
It would have been nice if that were still her biggest problem.
“I was talking to one of your grad students the other day, actually. He got me really interested in the program,” Lucy said. “Do you know Luke Thompson? He said he’d be here.”
“Whoa,” said a curly-haired man over Blazer Girl’s shoulder. He looked older than her, maybe grad-student age himself. “You actually saw Luke? Like, in the flesh? He’s been in his dissertation cave for so long, I was kind of worried that he died in there.”
“Oh!” Lucy said, as if her stomach hadn’t just crawled into her throat. “Do you know him?”
“Only a bit,” the man said. “He started his PhD at a smaller university that shuttered its program, and one of his advisors got him transferred here. Super nice guy. But by the time he got here he was already done with coursework, so we don’t get to see him much.”
Lucy carefully avoided Mila’s eye. Athena had been right.
Vanya did have an identity here—one he had designed well.
A graduate student in the midst of his dissertation: Who would notice if he kept odd hours, or didn’t socialize?
What student would second-guess him if he reached out, hoping to collaborate?
Lucy thought of Whitney, of all the weird, passionate people of Rollins University, and felt sick.
She had to protect them. She had to try, anyway.
But what Blazer Girl said next knocked every other thought out of Lucy’s head. “Isn’t he coming today?”
“Is he?” Lucy said. It was a miracle she got the words out of her mouth without throwing up. “I was really hoping I could talk to him again.”
“I mean, I don’t know if he’s here now,” Blazer Girl said. “But he definitely registered for the event. I printed a name tag for him.”
“If you’re talking about Luke, he’s definitely here.” Another girl leaned over. “I saw him in the seminar room earlier. Scared the hell out of me, actually! I didn’t hear him come in at all.”
Somehow, Lucy summoned a polite smile. “I’ll check there for him, then,” she heard herself say. “Thank you so much.”
“We’ll be here if you have any other questions,” Blazer Girl said. And then she turned back to a clutch of impossibly young-looking undergrads, leaving Lucy and Mila facing the door her classmate had indicated, in the corner of the room.
Lucy took a step closer to the seminar room. It looked dark and still. Like no one was in there at all. “I’ll be right back,” she said faintly over her shoulder, in case any of the others could still hear them. “I just need to make a quick call.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Mila said.
More than anything. But good bait didn’t bring company. “No,” Lucy said. “I should only be a minute.” She hoped she’d only be a minute, anyway.
As she stepped away from the crowd, the sound of breathing in her ear startled her. She’d almost forgotten that Athena was listening in. “Lucy?” she asked.
“Still here,” Lucy whispered. For now.
She drew closer to the dark seminar room.
She could feel Mila behind her, trying to stay close but far enough away.
The way they were moving was all wrong, she thought.
Predators cornered prey, not the other way around.
But there weren’t many examples in nature of what they were trying to do, were there?
Survival so often depended on evasion. Being poisonous, or being hidden, or being able to run.
Unfortunately, Lucy had already decided that she was sick of evading. And steps from the seminar room door, there wasn’t anywhere else to go.