Page 14 of Malice in e minor

All the dancers just laughed.

“Girl, you weren’t a threat as soon as we heard you played the violin, but now we’re all curious and you’re going to have to come to The Nutcracker cast party and show us all how Lurch dances,” Cullen said.

I just laughed and left them to their stretches. I had no problem showing a bunch of highly trained dancers how terrible I was at their craft. The music department was probably going to have a massive problem with me, despite how my schedule ended up, but at least the dancers were cool.

I found the office easy enough, but something told me getting past the older lady sitting at the desk in front of the door was going to be like breaking into Fort Knox. She was glaring at me like I was lower than dirt. I had a feeling it had nothing to do with how I was admitted and everything to do with my vibes. She had that look on her face like she thought I was a Satanist because of how I was dressed.

“You’re late,” she snapped. “He’s been expecting you.”

Well, excuse the fuck out of me, but if he’s sent a text or email, I wouldn’t have spent that long making friends with the dancers. I was planning on having a chat, but I wasn’t aware I had an appointment.

“Why are you staring at me like a fish? He’s an important man and doesn’t have all day. Knock, announce yourself, and go in.”

Ugh. It was like that. It was also something I knew how to manage and not just from undergrad. Waiting tables built all kinds of social skills dealing with difficult people. Especially when you worked at a restaurant that didn’t list prices on the menu and some of the wine cost more than two months of my rent.

I did a respectful but firm knock and waited.

“Who?” he called.

“Harlowe Lopez.”

“Come.”

I hoped the rest of this conversation went better than one word grunts from my headmaster. Oh, wonderful. I could tell when I stepped into this office that this was a power play. I saw one side of him in the subway and now I was seeing him. Johann Faustus absolutely did not appreciate being tasked with fetching me in the subway.

And I knew then even with how my schedule worked out, I was going to have a hard time here. I didn’t go through the same rigorous audition process to get in. I wasn’t even trying to get in. I just got extremely lucky. But that was the thing. A lot of being successful in the arts was just being in the right place at the right time.

“Sit,” he ordered.

More one word grunts. Wonderful. I needed to get everything out about making sure I was safe here and I had about a million questions about why I was here now as opposed to the beginning of a semester. I knew why I had to wait to say any of that. I was going to say it and it might piss him off, but right now, he needed to feel like the most important person in the room.

“So, I was told you wanted to see me,” he said.

Not what I was expecting, but how did he even know that? It should have been a given how everything went down, but he seemed put out. Dr Faustus also wasn’t looking at me. He kept staring over my shoulder like there was something back there that scared him. I wanted to turn and look, but you couldn’t show fear around men like this and I didn’t see anyone else in the office when I came in.

“Well, yeah. I was just trying to make my rent and now I’m here, weeks before finals instead of the beginning of a semester when new students usually start. Someone managed to find out things about me that should have been impossible and the brother of the man responsible for this is a creepy stalker who thinks his brother is the devil and someone here is going to try to buy my soul. He managed to find out I was offered a place here and even what train I was going to be on to give his demon speech.”

His face didn’t change for the most part, but I saw his forehead twitch just above his eye.

“You met Gadreel? What about the other brother, Ramiel?”

“No. Gadreel was enough. Is my benefactor really named Lucifer or was Gadreel just on something? And what kind of security is there to keep him away from me?”

“Gadreel can’t set foot on this campus, but he may pester you if you leave. He’s harmless. He won’t get violent, he’ll just proselytize your ear off. You’ll probably meet the other brother, Ramiel. He’s the exact opposite of Gadreel.”

“It’s a lot of family drama and I wasn’t exactly given a lot of time to think about any of this.”

“Miss Lopez, you’ll need to worry about your own drama while you’re here, not what’s going on with people who won’t be on these grounds. You should have been extended an invitation to come next semester. It was entirely too much work for one student to get you here now. The man paying your way didn’t want to give you time to talk yourself out of coming.”

“Is that entire family okay? Because if you’d just sent me an email that someone from Blackvale saw me performing in the subway and you would like to offer me a scholarship, none of the weird shit that has me talking myself into leaving would be happening.”

“The entire family is strange and frankly, a pain in the ass. One of them also sees something in you and decided to fund your education. He’s going to be a pain in my ass about it, for the most part. The Dean of the Music School should have chosen your advisor and you should only have one. Your benefactor handpicked both of yours because he wants you playing and writing.”

Which was controlling ass fuck since no one asked me what I wanted to do. Since I wanted to play and write and he was footing the bill for all the extra classes, I wasn’t telling Dr Faustus exactly what I thought about a man thinking he knew what was best for me.

Still, I had limits and boundaries were important.

“I’m agreeing to that because it’s also what I want to do, but he’s not planning on dictating the rest of my life because he’s funding my education, right?”