Lennox steepled her fingers, tapping her nose. “Tad…with the controversy I’m dealing with already—these murders, andMax…you want me to defend this girl’s investigations of illegal magic? Even academically—”
“It will be a couple years before she’s ready to publish,” he said. “And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think she was a uniquely capable student. Who will someday be a great teacher and, even more important…a researcher and a writer. The originality of the rituals she’s designed…Honestly, I believe Ellsbeth could do more for our field than either you or I ever did.”
“You must think she’s very special, then?” Lennox eyed him knowingly.
Rawlins tried to keep his voice impassive. “She’s brilliant, and talented, and ambitious. Just like you were. I’m only asking you to make sure she gets the same chance at realizing her potential that you did.”
Lennox considered him, folding her hands on her desk. “Does she know about Max?”
Rawlins sucked his teeth for a moment as he considered lying, but he saw no benefit in it. “She’s the only person I’ve told in twenty-six years.”
Lennox looked away and sighed in exasperation, thinking for a moment. “You were close with her…like you and I were close?”
Again, Rawlins considered a lie but saw no point. “We were close.”
“Jesus, Tad…” She exhaled heavily.
“You owe me this, Maggie,” he said. “After the way things ended between us…this is your chance to make it right.”
Lennox rubbed her temples for a while, until—apparently failingto come up with another excuse—she finally conceded. “I’ll do what I can.”
Rawlins smiled. “Thank you, Maggie. That’s all I’m asking. And I promise: She’ll make you and Newlyn look good.”
The January days were soshort that by four, the sun was already starting to dip as Rawlins began packing up his things to leave Newlyn for the last time. He moved quickly to complete the task before darkness fell.
From Lennox’s office, he’d gone straight back to his own. He could have the department get a mover to pack up and deliver his books, but he needed to clear out his personal effects. He took diplomas and commendations off the walls now, stacking them in a box, then went through the drawers of his desk, finding it remarkably easy to toss almost everything in the trash. The accumulated memorabilia of an illustrious career—and it all felt like junk.
As he prepared to leave, his gaze settled on his dish of black licorice candies—paired now, eternally, with the only student he ever had who seemed to like them. He saw her so clearly, taking one the first day she had come to his office, with that curious mix of nervousness and bravado on her face. The memory aroused the particular strain of desire in him only she could ever evoke—but now it was undercut with an ache of emptiness, an unfillable hunger. He popped a candy into his mouth on the way out, savoring the bitterness, letting it get caught in his teeth.
Rawlins kept moving, trying to escape the specter, but found that the entire campus was haunted now, her ghostly presence grazing every place he looked.
He passed through the garden where she had first asked him to be her adviser, and could see it through hazy double vision; in the present, blanketed with snow, spindly tree branches reaching into the gray sky…and at the same time in the past, just as vivid, with flowers in bloom, and Ellsbeth beside him on the bench, trying to control her emotion as she told him about her sister. His chest burned with the thought of how callous he had been to her then.
He stopped by the Practicum to return his logs of elementals for whoever was assigned to take over his role. With the lights low, he could almostseeEllsbeth, standing at the center of the ritual circle. Vulnerable and trusting. He stepped into the space, closed his eyes, and could feel the weight of her bound hands resting on his shoulders the first time they almost kissed.
Last, he visited the auditorium where he taught his freshman lecture, retrieving the dog-eared copy ofThe Arcane and the Ordinarythat he kept under the lectern for giving assigned readings. He stood there for a moment and his eyes moved to the place where he had first seen Ellsbeth, wearing that unfortunate red sweater. When she was only a girl in a crowd, looking both wide-eyed with curiosity and more mature than the students around her. Before he could have possibly imagined her talent and potential—much less that she would tear his heart open and change his life forever.
He carried his possessions back to the car, the load growing heavy, and left the Newlyn campus for the last time, turning on his headlights in the half-light of early dusk. His hands felt stiff and icy on the steering wheel, and he decided to stop at The Puddle Jumper to get a hot tea on his way home.
Some corner of his mind may have also seen it as the final stop on his tour of all the places that Ellsbeth’s memory haunted. He paused at the glass door, looking into the cozy well-lit café at the table they had once shared. The one where she had pressed her leg against his and started all this in motion.
Then his breath caught in his throat. She was there. Not only in memory but in bodily presence, undeniable. The gray peacoat she’d acquired as part of her project of dressing like a “proper academic” was draped on the back of her chair, and she wore a cream-colored sweater rolled up to her elbows. She leaned over a table cluttered with notes, focused and diligent, hair tucked behind her ear.
He smiled; he knew the expression on her face well. The way she looked when she was deep in thought, lightly nibbling her bottom lip, practically begging to be interrupted with a kiss. Her mouth moved wordlessly; she was reading something she had written aloud to herself.
This was his chance. A run-in at a shared public place. Perhaps notentirelycoincidental, since she would not have come here and sat at that table if she were not hoping he might find her. And he had.
Yet he hesitated out in the cold. There were a million things he wanted to say to her…but where to begin?
He could at least ask her the question that had plagued him for a week before her kidnapping: Did she use obscuration on him? Had his emotions been puppeted by a ritual? But as he looked in at her, he realized he already knew the answer. Desire like this was not the product of any ritual. As inconvenient and unreasonable as it may be, his love for Ellsbeth was the most real thing he had ever felt.
He could talk to her about the future, he supposed. Or really, their respectivefutures,since they would not be shared. He had set his course already, and he would be leaving Newlyn the next day; he had to go his own way and she had to go hers. Immediate legal threats surrounding the investigation demanded they steer clear of each other—but even beyond that, he could not be part of her life. He was disgraced—and if they were together, his reputation would follow her everywhere. With every paper submitted for publication and every interview for a teaching post, no one wouldmentiontheir connection, but everyone would silently assess: Do we want to link our institution with all that ugliness?
Even if he explained all of that to Ellsbeth, she would notacceptit; she would tell him it was unfair, and she would not base her life decisions around gossip. But he knew the way the academic world worked better than she did. He would not allow himself to limit her potential, and he could not possibly ask her to wait for him.
Which meant there was nothing to say but goodbye. And in truth, their goodbye had been said already, in the Banestooth basement. Amid the scene of unspeakable violence, when Ellsbeth, her skin sticky with evaporating sweat and shivering under the jacket he put on her, had collapsed against him, burying her head in his chest and surrendering to her sobs. When he held her close and whispered into her hair, “You’re all right…I’ve got you…”
He did, at that moment. He had her. But he knew that he could not any longer. As the sirens approached, he knew he needed to let go. She was no longerhis,in any sense.
