“Or Rabbit’s a special case.” Strike spread his hands. “Nobody knows. Besides, it’s just a theory.”
But the way he said it made her think it was more than that.
“Damn.” She sat for a second, then frowned. “If that’s the case, why put Rabbit out in the field with us, especially given that this Xibalban—if that’s what he is—is after the artifacts too? Isn’t that taking a needless risk?”
“Not needless. Calculated.”
She froze at the possibilities . . . and the complications. “You want to see what happens if we put Rabbit and the new guy in the same room?”
Strike gave a yes-no wiggle of his hand. “Hopefully nothing’s going to happen. Best-case scenario, this Mistress Truth character sells you the knife with zero issues and you get your asses back here.
Meanwhile I’ll be having a little sit-down with Patience and Brandt, and make sure that what’s going on with them doesn’t turn into a thing.”
Alexis didn’t ask, didn’t really want to know. She’d prefer to go on thinking that Patience and Brandt had the perfect marriage, the perfect love affair, because if the two of them, who fit together like halves of a whole, couldn’t make it work, what kind of a chance did anyone else have? So she focused on the fact that Strike was in her sitting room, offering her a chance to prove herself. She wasn’t going to screw it up. “I’ll do my best to keep him safe, best-case or worst-case, Nochem.”
He winced at the honorific for king in the old language—he was still settling into his title, just as the rest of them were still getting used to being part of a monarchy. But instead of telling her not to call him that, which was his usual response when one of them nochem ed him, he said, “Rabbit’s a good kid who’s had some tough breaks. Use him if you can; protect him either way. To be honest, I’d rather keep him here, but he’s eighteen and itching for a fight. If I don’t send him somewhere soon I’m afraid he’s going to go looking for action on his own, and I can guarantee he’ll get into trouble if that happens.” He paused. “Take care of him for me, okay?”
Alexis nodded. “I will.” They shook on it and he headed for the door. But as the panel swung shut behind him, she couldn’t help thinking that she might’ve just agreed to way more than she was sure she could deliver.
After his disaster of a thesis defense—and the way he’d gone after Anna in the aftermath—Lucius went for a walk, trying to burn off the restless, edgy anger that’d been dogging him for weeks now, maybe longer. By the time he looped back to the art history building, he was calm enough to feel seriously ashamed.
His father had been right all along: He was a loser. It’d just taken him longer than the rest of them to figure it out. But what else could he call himself when he’d singlehandedly torpedoed the degree he’d spent the last five—okay, closer to six—years working toward? Anna had flat-out told him not to mention the Nightkeepers, and what’d he done? He’d gotten in the Dragon Lady’s face over it, even knowing—when apparently Anna hadn’t— that Desiree was in full-on woman-scorned mode, with Anna as the target. Worse, he’d compounded that monumental screwup by striking out at Anna. They might not be as close these days as they had been before, but that was no excuse. He’d been embarrassed and ashamed, and he’d lashed out.
Which meant he owed her an apology, he thought as he crossed the cement bridge leading to the partially concealed main entrance of the art history building—a squat, dark concrete shape right out of the seventies. Her first-floor office was locked, which probably meant she’d gone home for the night.
He really didn’t want to put off the apology until tomorrow, though; he’d screwed up too badly. But was calling—or driving out to—her house any better? It was late, and he wasn’t the Dick’s favorite person to begin with, never mind him having been the one to drop the Desiree bomb. Which meant . . .
Hell, he didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t know what anything meant anymore. Things that used to make sense didn’t, and things that shouldn’t have made sense kept seeming like they did.
“Damn it,” he said, and headed for his small office because he couldn’t think of a better alternative.
When he got there he saw that the message light on the landline phone was blinking, which was weird.
Anybody who was anyone would’ve called his cell. Unless it was official university business, he thought, gut churning. That’d probably be done by landline, by some dean’s secretary deputized to tell him he was out on his ass.
Wishing he could pretend he hadn’t seen the blink, he hit the button, braced for the worst.
“Meet me in my office in fifteen minutes,” Desiree’s voice snapped. “And come alone.”
“Shit!” He checked the time stamp on the message and saw that he was already an hour late. It didn’t matter whether she’d called to kick him out or give him another chance; being late wasn’t going to help. When the boss called a meeting, you showed. Or at least made a good effort to show. Stomach clenching on too many awful possibilities to name, he headed for her corner office. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or bummed when he saw that her lights were still on, the door open.
He knocked on the doorframe, and the Dragon Lady— Dr. Soo , he corrected himself—looked up from her seat behind a wide desk. He couldn’t read her expression when she saw who it was. “Come on in.”
Her office was professionally done up in rich-looking blues and golds, accented with accessories that reflected her specialty of ancient Egyptian art. He wasn’t sure, but the delicate faience bowl set in a case just inside the door looked real. Not willing to chance knocking it over, he gave the thing a wide berth as he stepped over the threshold.
“Shut the door,” she ordered, returning her attention to her laptop computer screen. Her tone didn’t make it sound like she’d reconsidered her decision on his thesis—more like she was getting ready to kick him out. He was pretty sure she couldn’t do that without Anna’s okay . . . but then again, it was entirely possible that Anna had okayed it and hadn’t had the guts to tell him herself, he thought on a low burn of anger that was both foreign and tempting.
“Sit.” Again with the orders, but he wasn’t about to argue. At least not until she said she was kicking him out.
He took one of two chairs set opposite her desk, both of which were made of dark, carved wood and somehow managed to be big and imposing at the same time that they were delicate and feminine. The chair creaked under his weight; that was the only sound in the room for close to five minutes, as she kept reading and he sat in silence, partly because he wanted to wait her out, partly because flapping his trap had already gotten him in enough trouble that day.
Finally the Dragon Lady hit a couple of keys and pushed the laptop away, then looked him up and down and up again, until he started twitching under her scrutiny. Just when he was getting ready to break the silence, she said, “You know something, Lucius?” She tapped one high-gloss nail against her lower lip. “I like you.”
On a one-to-ten scale of what he’d expected to hear, that ranked about a minus fifty. “Excuse me?”
“I like you,” she repeated, “which is why I’m going to do something I almost never do. I’m going to give you another chance.”
If anyone else on the faculty had said that, he would’ve thanked the hell out of them, and then asked when they should reschedule his thesis defense. Given who he was talking to and what she’d been up to lately, his first and potentially suicidal response was, “What’s the catch?”