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After this morning, I arrive a few minutes early.
Although this is the only office of a professor’s I’ve been in, it’s not welcoming. Like all the other wood on campus, everything in here is made from Mahogony: the large desk, the second table by my side, and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The floor is a pale marble, which reflects the light from the large window behind Dr. Wright’s desk, but with the few belongings in here, everything seems clinical.
Dr. Wright is standing in front of the window, staring out of it. He turns when I’ve shut the door behind me, locking his gaze on me. His jacket is hanging on the coatrack in the corner of the room, and he’s rolled the sleeves of his green paisley shirt up.
Most of the girls in my Mass Comm class think the man is hot. I don’t think he’s that much older than us—maybe thirty at the most—which makes him the youngest professor on campus. Last week, he had a buzz cut with the edges in precision-straight lines. At some point over the weekend, he took it further and now he’s bald. While I will not be admitting anything out loud, it has made him hotter.
His skin is a deep, warm brown, but his eyes, although deep and brown too, are anything but warm.
But they do seem to have thawed a little from the ice they had been earlier.
“Have you found anything?” Dr Wright asks.
“About Cole?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Or Lucy.”
Lucy Barnes. The mystery woman who was the source of his resentment towards me.
According to him, James Patrick Keyingham wasn’t my brother’s only victim. Apparently, he’d murdered this woman, too.
With a sigh, I let my bag slide off my shoulder and set it down on the table. “I got into Denali House yesterday,” I told him.
“Exactly.”
I stare in disbelief, my mind whirring over the last twenty-four hours, and when I could have possibly done anything.
Does he really think I’d have something so soon? Or does he think I don’t understand the importance of what I’m doing?
Dr. Wright presses his lips together as he walks over to me. “Regardless of whether or not you were late this morning, I was going to make you my T.A. for this reason.”
Whatever the link is, I’m failing to see it.
“You’re in that house to look for answers, and yet you’ve allowed yourself to be distracted by ‘hot boys.’” He raises his hands to make air quotes. “Clearly, you need some accountability. Given your ranking in my class, it would seem strange for you to be reporting to me so frequently unless you have a good reason. So I’ve given you one.”
“Do you think I’m having fun doing this?” I ask him, incredulous.
He gestures vaguely to my body. “The new clothes and jewelry are hard to miss.”
New clothes and… jewelry…?
Does he think this thing around my neck is some kind of fashion statement?
Dr. Wright turns and walks the few paces to his desk, picks up a sheet of paper, then walks back to me. “I’ve looked at your schedule and found times where we can meet twice a week, which is what that idiot Harrington did. For the sake of appearances, you will need to be present in some of my other classes, but it looks like most of your free periods coincide with when Synclair Keyingham has his class with me.”
I take the paper from him and stare at my new timetable. The number of free periods that I had has dropped by half now, and there are two evening sessions that conflict with dinner times.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I tell him. “Syn allowed me to be an initiate with the near impossible expectation that I’m doing everything that sixteen people were doing. If I’m not there in the dining hall to serve him, he’s going to throw me out and then I’m never going to get the answers I need.”
“Leave that to me.”
XIII
Tori
By the time I sit down in my computer science class, I’ve already received a notification to let me know my new “work” timetable has been updated in the JKUFacultyApp.
He’s also emailed me a copy of Syn, Royal, and Gemini’s timetables. The three of them share a very similar schedule, even though they have different focuses. And the very small shining light is that all of their last classes are after mine.
