Page 34 of Monsters in the Museum

“Sorry to interrupt,” Nora said.

“I welcome it, actually.” Adam stepped back and ushered her into his office. While it wasn’t small, the large desk and overflowing bookshelves and filing cabinets made it feel cramped. Nora smiled at the sight of three separate mugs on his desk, each apparently forgotten before the beverage within was finished.

“I don’t know. You sounded like you weren’t thrilled to have a student knocking on your door,” Nora pointed out as she looked around the space.

“Only because I will never get their papers read if they keep interrupting me asking about when they will be getting their grades. You would think college students would be smart enough to know that constant interruptions would only slow me down, but…” He shrugged as he slumped down in his chair, pushing up his glasses on his nose. Apparently, he had gotten them replaced.

His complaints were so mundane—so comfortably boring—that her heart squeezed wistfully.

“Take a seat,” Adam offered, gesturing around vaguely. “I’m sorry I don’t have the texts together yet. I was distracted. Just give me a few minutes to gather them up.”

Nora looked around her, finding the one spare chair in the office occupied by a stack of paper so high that it threatened to topple over at any second. She looked around for an alternative to attempting to move the teetering tower, finding the clearest surface in the small room to be the desk where Adam was gathering papers into stacks.

With a shrug, Nora planted herself on the corner of the desk, letting her feet swing. The thick soles of her boots clunked against the wooden back of the furniture, and Adam jumped.

“Sorry,” Nora said.

Adam’s gaze darted up from the sheaf in his hands, taking in Nora’s casual posture on his desk. She almost moved to stand up, wondering if she shouldn’t behave in such a way with him. Maybe the casual working relationship that had begun with them in a cramped café had been a sham, burned away in the fire at the museum. Perhaps an immortal sorcerer commanded more formality, now that she knew who he really was.

Before she could move, a smile curved Adam’s lips, and Nora realized that he had the audacity to have dimples.

“Not at all,” he said. “Having a dearth of seating in this office is one hundred percent on me. I tend to get preoccupied when I’m working, and the next thing I know, I have all the books off my shelves and sticky notes on every available surface.”

Nora snorted. “Did you not see the tower of books taller than me next to my desk at the museum?”

Adam smiled as he finally set aside the students’ papers, now organized into a manila folder. “I may have, but I was a little preoccupied by the fire alarms and the Shadows.”

Nora’s smile slipped a fraction, but she held it in place as best she could. “So what are these texts you were going to give me?”

“Right!” Adam stood from his chair and turned to a cabinet behind him. “I gathered these from my… personal collection. I also put together some notes on the sections I think you’ll find the most useful to your research.”

When he turned around, he held in his arms a stack of leather-bound books interspersed with composition notebooks. Brightly colored sticky notes sticking out of the notebooks stood out starkly against the parchment-yellow of aged paper.

Nora’s brows crept up her forehead. “Personal collection?”

“I, um… have managed to hold onto a lot of books throughout my life. I have access to a lot of editions that have since gone out of print,” Adam hedged. He held out the stack to her, and she plucked one of the notebooks off the top of the stack. Thumbing through it further, her eyebrows rose even higher, finding pages filled with cramped script and annotated quotes.

A low whistle escaped her. “This must have been a lot of work.”

“I do like history,” Adam shoved his hands in his pockets with a shrug as Nora relieved him of the rest of the stack. “And—well… I felt like it was the least I could do. Considering everything.”

Nora’s heart sunk, despite some of the excitement she had felt at all the knowledge now in her possession. Coming to this office had reinforced in Nora something she had suspected when Dr. Adam Scott’s eyes had lit up at the idea of seeing newly discovered artifacts: she and the professor would get along swimmingly. She could picture late nights of tea and coffee with intellectual discussion, huddled over a manuscript or artifact on one of their desks. Maybe he would loosen his tie and take off his blazer as the night crept on, and she would get a glimpse of the strong but wiry arms he hid underneath as they talked.

She quickly derailed that train of thoughts, barreling quickly toward some debauched professor-related fantasy. It seemed that Odelle’s teasing about sexy professors had infected her psyche.

Because the truth was, that was not who Adam was. Dr. Adam Scott was a ruse. A cover for a person of immense power, almost older than she could conceive of. It didn’t matter what she thought might be possible between them, for it was all artificial. What amicability was between them was borne of Adam’s feelings of responsibility for upsetting her life.

Nora should keep her distance, and not torment herself with imaginings of things that might be if Adam Scott was who she originally thought him to be.

“Thank you for doing all of this.” Nora hugged the books tighter to her chest.

“If you need more sources, we can dig through the library at the Sanctuary.”

Nora’s traitorous heart warmed at the idea of spending an afternoon in a library with Adam.

“I’ll reach out if I need help,” she said, promising herself it was a lie. She took a few steps backward towards the door.

A furrow formed between Adam’s brows. “You don’t want to stay and look through them together?”

Nora shook her head. “I’m headed to meet with Ezra actually.”

It wasn’t a lie exactly, but Ezra wouldn’t be expecting her for another two hours.

“Oh, good.” Adam’s tone of voice seemed artificially cheery, but Nora tried not to read too much into it. “I’m glad you’re making progress on learning how to protect yourself.”

Nora mustered a smile in response. “You won’t have to concern yourself with my safety much longer.”

Something unreadable flickered in Adam’s eyes. Nora ignored it and offered him a wave goodbye as she stepped out of his office. As she trudged back across campus, she tried not to think about how things might have gone differently if Adam was just a charming professor, and if they had met under different circumstances. After all, the early rapport between them that had planted the seedlings of a crush in her had likely been for show. He would have been charming to whatever historian discovered his old weapon.