Chapter Sixteen
The name hit the room like a thunderclap. Lucy looked to Athena. The shock didn’t show on her face. But as always, her heartbeat betrayed her.
“Dr. Horne,” she said tightly. “Here I thought you didn’t listen to the show.”
“A tremendous waste of my time, by the way,” Dr. Horne said. “But Ivan insisted that I keep listening, just to keep an eye on you. I don’t know which of you is more obsessed with the other.”
Lucy stared, still not quite comprehending what was happening. Dr. Horne’s own heartbeat pattered irritably. Air whistled in and out of her mouth. She shifted her weight, and the sunlight through the blinds glinted through her bob. “You’re not a vampire,” Lucy said.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Dr. Horne snapped. “Of course I’m not a vampire, you idiot.”
It sank in, then. Laurentius did say the first time they met: that Vanya was being enabled to be at Rollins. Which meant that someone from the administration had to be involved.
Dr. Horne arranged her shoulders like an offended bird might ruffle its wings. “If we’re going to have a conversation, Ms. Barnes, I’m going to ask that you take a step back from your recording equipment.”
Athena’s heartbeat picked up, and her fists were faintly shaking at her sides. She didn’t look scared anymore—she looked deeply, profoundly furious. Lucy’s heightened senses felt it like a charge in the atmosphere.
“So that’s why you’ve always been so fixated on my show,” Athena said. “You don’t care whether I do a thesis. You’ve been trying to protect him this whole time.”
“I care about both, to be clear,” Dr. Horne said. “Your advisors think you have quite a bit of promise, you know. You’re going to reflect very well on Rollins one day. Why do you think I’ve asked Ivan to stay away from you?”
Lucy saw the moment that landed in Athena’s eyes. The answer to her burning question, the thing that scared her the most. It really wasn’t all her planning, or all her precautions that had been protecting her. It was someone who thought she would be useful to Rollins one day.
But it was beside the point. “He hasn’t stayed away from her,” Lucy said. “He’s been tormenting her since the moment he saw her. He’s never stopped.”
Dr. Horne shifted her attention back to Lucy. And Lucy could see, in that moment, just how different they were in her eyes. Athena was a necessary annoyance. A bureaucratic hiccup. But Lucy was nothing.
“You must be aware by now how difficult it is to make a vampire do anything,” she said.
“I’ve done my best, haven’t I? He has agreed to conditions to be here.
He—limits his hunting on the Rollins campus.
He likes to tease Ms. Barnes, that’s all.
It’s his old-fashioned sense of humor. All she ever had to do was ignore him. ”
“Sounds like a lot of trouble,” Athena said, taking a carefully controlled breath.
Lucy didn’t need Hiro’s gift for mind reading to guess that Athena had recognized an opportunity to gather information.
“Surely your job would be easier if you didn’t have to cover for the disappearances of new students every year. ”
Dr. Horne seemed to understand exactly what was happening.
It didn’t stop her from answering. “Oh, sure,” she said.
“There are a lot of things that would make my job easier. But do you have any idea of the state of our endowment? Do you know how difficult it to raise money when half of your student body is devoted to inventing new fields of study? No one’s going to fund a research project on the Eurocentric bias in the written history of the clarinet.
It looks nice on the brochures, but it doesn’t keep the lights on.
Our award-winning starving-artist alumni aren’t donating buildings. Our funds have to come from somewhere.”
Lucy’s stomach churned. Dr. Horne wasn’t there to hurt them. Lucy felt sure of that now. But she also didn’t seem to expect any consequences from telling them all of this. “He’s donating to the school?”
“He’s got plenty to burn.” Dr. Horne flashed a queasy smile. “He’s old money, if you’ll pardon the joke.”
Athena clearly did not pardon the joke. “So he’s paying you. You’re literally taking bribes to look the other way while he hunts your students.”
Ms. Horne looked unmoved. “You pay tuition to be here. Is that a bribe? I gather he learns some philosophy, from time to time. It sounds as if you learned that yesterday evening as well.”
“If you know that we went to that party,” Lucy said, “then you know what happened there. He tried to murder our friend. Aren’t you supposed to be limiting his hunting?”
“As of now,” Dr. Horne said, “Mr. Volkov has not violated the rules I’ve set out for him. I suppose I never told him he couldn’t sample more than one student before making his choice.”
“Sample?” Athena spat out. “You’re disgusti—”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Dr. Horne continued. “There was someone who may have violated a rule this week. And that was you, Ms. Barnes.”
Athena’s stare could have melted iron. “And what rule is that?”
Dr. Horne glanced toward the answering machine on Athena’s desk.
Then, very carefully, she withdrew a folded piece of paper from the inside of her blazer.
“I reviewed the funding terms you agreed to for your…radio show, here,” she said.
“I specifically recall a member of your committee sharing his concern that real students would be named in your fictional project. You’ve agreed to avoid doing so in your contract here.
‘The contents of Pallas Radio shall be entirely fictional. No students, faculty, staff, or departments will be named or featured on Pallas Radio without written consent of the contributor.’”
Athena stiffened. “I’ve never used real names on my show,” she said.
With a sigh, Dr. Horne withdrew her phone from her pocket and loaded the Voice Memos app on her phone. “And the names of real departments?”
As she clicked play, Athena’s breathless voice cut in almost instantly.
“—one is okay, physically, at least,” she said.
“But we can no longer ignore that our friend with the cold hands has grown significantly bolder. A student’s life was threatened, in broad daylight.
I could easily be reporting another disappearance to you today.
Thankfully I’m not. Instead, I come to you with a warning.
I encourage all of you to exercise extreme caution at philosophy department events.
And to all philosophy students, please watch your backs.
It’s not always so easy to know who your classmates are. ”
Dr. Horne had a wry look on her face as she stopped the playback. “The philosophy chair is very curious to know why you’re using a community-building grant to defame his department.”
Her hard, birdlike eyes watched Athena closely, as if waiting for her to be ashamed. It seemed Athena wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. “And did you remind Professor Baek that this is a work of fiction?” Athena said.
“Hmm. Well,” Dr. Horne said. “We’ll leave it to the grant committee to decide how far ‘fiction’ is permitted to go. But that kind of review will take time. And I’m sure you’ll understand that we can’t let you keep going with the show for the time being.”
Lucy stepped forward. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Athena grab for her hand, but she sidestepped it. She wasn’t going to hurt Dr. Horne. No matter how much she wanted to.
“He’ll get bored with you one day, too,” Lucy said. “And when he does, I hope you feel every bit as helpless as those kids you served up to him.”
Dr. Horne’s lip curled. But the words landed. Lucy heard it in her heartbeat. “You’re going to be a delight to deal with for the next four years, aren’t you. Maybe he’ll drain you dry and spare me the trouble for once.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Lucy said.
“Sometimes life goes in a different direction than we anticipate, Ms. Easting. It’s not as if I expected any of this when I earned my PhD,” Dr. Horne said.
“Let me tell you this. Ivan Volkov doesn’t particularly like me.
The feeling is mutual. But he’s never going to get bored, as you say.
Whatever his flaws, he’s a man who understands the convenience of doing business. ”
She turned neatly to Athena, her heart rate back in perfect rhythm.
“I’ll deliver the committee’s decision in due course,” she said.
“But as you know, they’re busy people. They may need to review past broadcasts, and you’re quite the…
prolific creator. It will take time. Possibly through the end of the academic year. ”
“When I graduate,” Athena said.
“Goodness,” Dr. Horne said. “You say that like that’s my intention.”
“I notice that you’re not denying it, though,” Lucy said.
“No point in that, is there?” Dr. Horne made her brisk way across the room.
When she reached the door, she paused. “I’ll leave you with a word of comfort, if I may.
You might think I’m a monster. But I don’t disagree with you on everything.
It’s unseemly, the way he drags these things on.
It’s cruel.” And with that, she was gone.
Athena watched the empty space she’d left for a long time. When she spoke again, her back was still turned to Lucy. “For a second, I thought you were going to hurt her.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Lucy said. She didn’t love hearing that uncertain note in her own voice.
Athena’s face was darkly wry when she finally turned. “I’m starting to wish you had.”
Lucy laughed. Suddenly exhausted, she positioned herself next to one of Athena’s floor cushions and folded herself onto it. Athena hesitated before perching opposite her.
“It was stupid of me,” Athena said quietly. “The broadcast. But after what happened to Natalie—I don’t think we can trust that you and I are the only ones he’s after anymore.”