Page 50 of Tidal Creatures

“We all know belief powers the manifestations,” says Judy. “That’s not news.”

“No, but it explains why there are so damn many Dianas,” says Anna.

“We should talk to the one we have,” says Judy. “We should at the very least see what she has to say about the key situation.”

“I’d really rather go looking for alchemists,” says Anna.

They both turn to David, expressions questioning. He grimaces.

“Do I have to be the tie-breaker?” he asks.

“That’s the nice thing about having three people,” says Judy. “We can actually vote on things when it’s a choice between two terrible options. Because let’s be honest here, both of them really suck.”

“Yeah, they do,” he says wearily. “I don’t like Diana. She makes me nervous. But both of you make me nervous too, and I have class in an hour. I’d rather go see the lady who makes me nervous already than some stranger who makes me nervous and might want to murder me. I’m with Judy. We go see Diana.”

Judy resists the urge to punch the air, and instead turns to smile at Anna, choosing to be a gracious winner. “Come on,” she says. “I know her schedule.”

She starts walking and the others follow, a small, unremarkable cluster of students walking back across the tangled outline of the campus toward the art classes. No one gives them a second look, and why should they? The most noticeable thing about them is that they’re all graying prematurely, and this is higher education: going gray before your time is nothing new. It would almost stand out more if they weren’t showing signs of aging most often associated with stress.

They make it down Piedmont to the main campus without incident, and are almost to the building where Professor Williams teaches when disaster strikes. Judy walks straight into a tall brown-haired man in a tweed jacket—or maybe he walks into her, so distracted by the book he’s reading that he doesn’t see her until it’s too late. It doesn’t matter who’s responsible for the impact; papers go flying everywhere as he loses his balance. Judy is knocked backward into David, who grabs her shoulders and steadies her before she can fall.

The man was walking by himself, and isn’t quite as lucky. No one catches him. He staggers back, then falls as his knees buckle, dropping him onto his backside in the middle of the walkway. Judy gasps, clapping her hands over her mouth, and leans back against David, a show of fear and familiarity that clearly startles him, as he keeps hold of her shoulders, providing a steady backdrop.

Anna looks at the two of them, perplexed. “What? You knocked a guy down. It happens.” She moves toward the man on the ground, already offering him her hand. “Sorry, sir. You probably shouldn’t be reading and walking at the same time.”

His hand closes on hers as he lifts his face to focus in her direction, and Anna gasps, trying to pull away. He doesn’t let go.

“No,” he says instead, and his voice is warm and kind, and filled with strange harmonics that scrape and itch against Judy’s brain, all her linguistic training telling her that some of those sounds aren’t possible, the human larynx can’t make those sounds, and if it could, it would need more than two letters. She’s hearing the words around the word, the unspoken shadows of the words that could have been, and she hates it as she has never hated anything in her life.

“I probably shouldn’t,” he continues, and pulls himself to his feet, still holding Anna’s hand. He’s shorter than David, taller than Judy; just tall enough to be unremarkable in the local population. Combine that with his hair, which is a brown so ordinary that it doesn’t seem to want to catch the mind’s eye, save for a pure white streak running from the crown to the front, which hangs slightly askew next to his face, and his generic “college professor from a romantic comedy” attire, and he’s a man who could disappear in an instant if they look away.

Judy wishes, desperately, that he would do exactly that. Just disappear, fading away into the chaos of the campus and leaving them free of this ill-timed interruption.

Sadly, she’s never gotten anything by wishing for it. He turns to look at her and David, and his eyebrows lift. Behind the wire frames of his glasses, his eyes are a pale, foggy gray, like the sky above campus in the morning, after the sun has risen but before its rays have burned the clouds away.

His eyes were made to hide the moon.

“I know you,” he says, sounding just a little perplexed. The words around the words ask for explanation, for clarification, for detail piled upon detail. They want her life story, they demand everything she is, and Judy swallows bile and babble at the same time, forcing the words down her throat like stones to weigh her belly down. She meets those foggy eyes and steps up, just enough to feel her own eyes flash peach before she steps back down. If this were a normal man, she would never dare. If this were a normal man, she wouldn’t feel like meeting his eyes risked dragging parts of her into the light that were never intended to be seen.

He smiles as if he’s had something confirmed, and finally lets go of Anna’s hand. “Thank you,” he says. “I wondered why you always ran out of the room at department meetings when I came in, but I’ve never been able to get close enough to ask. Miss … Kong-Jones, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Professor Middleton,” says Judy, miserably.

“Are you going to introduce me to your friends?” he asks, and the words around the words whisper how easily that could be a command rather than a mild suggestion with the intonation of a request, so Judy takes a deep breath and begins.

“Anna, David, this is Professor Middleton, the chair of—”

He cuts her off before she can finish. “No, I mean introduce me to your friends.”

It takes everything she has to swallow her words a second time, tilt her head, and say, “Not here. Not in public. There are too many people around.”

He blinks, apparently taken aback by her refusal. “I … All right.”

“Good. Thank you.” Judy finally steps away from David, her attention staying fixed on Professor Middleton. It’s like she’s afraid that if she looks away he’ll strike, and on some level, maybe she is; on some level, he’s the biggest predator she’s ever seen, and he could wipe her from existence if he wanted to. It’s always been a risk, staying on this campus with him around, but she’s done her best to stay off his radar, and as long as she’s here, one of the Lunars knows the threat he represents.

Diana knows too, of course. Diana has to know. Professor Middleton’s manifestation had been the quiet talk of the undercampus as soon as it happened, everyone who had ever even brushed against the incarnate world making sure the news got around. But Judy’s not sure the gossip has continued in the days since then. Anna and David don’t look nearly worried enough about what they’re standing in front of. David looks confused, and Anna seems wary, as if she got something when he touched her hand, but neither of them has reacted as much as they should.

“My office?” he suggests—and it is a suggestion. Nothing in the words around the words tries to say that it’s an order, or even that it’s a good idea.