Page 48 of Fatality on the Field

I hang up and turn back to the group. “Jackson is sending a healer he knows nearby to the hospital. He’s gotta figure something out for the plants, but he said no one in or out. So you can’t go in, Kimmi.”

“Good,” Morgana says, lips twitching in a faint smile. “Now we have to split up so we can keep the rest of the campus safe.”

I look around at the chaos—papers, books, frowns, and five people running at redline to keep a disaster from turning into an apocalypse.

“I will stay here with Kimmi to make sure no one goes into the hazmat zone—even her,” I say softly. “I’m very convincing if I have to be.”

Morgana’s expression is grateful as she nods. “Okay, but please be careful and let us know if Jackson calls back. Iggy, you can drive Channing and me to the hospital to meet the healer Jackson is sending. Perhaps we can get this mess cleaned up without the entire world crumbling around us.”

My parents hated lawyers, but I have to admit it—Jackson Thorne is the most useful one I’ve met.

twenty-nine

MORGANA

Iggy’s car is one of those cars you assume must have been purchased by someone trying to overcompensate for a tragic lack of personality or, failing that, a micro-dick. It’s glossy and pricey, with leather seats that smell like book glue. The interior is immaculate, which means every speck on my pants or stray thread from my jacket shows up like a bloodstain at a crime scene. The dashboard glows with shining chrome that screams money, as does every other piece of hardware in the damn thing.

Normally, I’d give him shit about such an odious display of his inherited wealth, but not today.

I’m riding shotgun, Des coiled loosely at my left ear. She flicks her tongue at Iggy’s headrest with such regularity that it feels intentional. I resist the urge to correct her because I know that the gorgon inside me is thirsting for vengeance on the people who are wreaking havoc on my campus. While State University is not my lair or my perch—in terms of my supernatural sides’ urge to claim homes—it is my responsibility and I take it much more seriously than my asshole ex did.

Channing sits directly behind Iggy, her knees pressed together to balance her tablet as it vibrates with our pending disaster. She wastes zero time pretending we’ll make small talk or, Medusa forbid, listen to the radio. “So,” she says, stylus already in hand, “what do you actually know about Kimiko Nakamura? I believe that is the first order of business we should cover.”

The name lands in the car like a dropped anvil. Iggy doesn’t react at first, but then his knuckles flex around the wheel, going from tense to nearly bloodless in half a second. His jaw muscles shift, and his eyes lock onto the road so hard I wonder if he’s using a spell to keep them from straying. He won’t jump in unless one of us gets a detail wrong.

Maybe he really did learn his lesson when he had to apologize to the woman before.

I hum, stretching my legs and making sure my shoes leave a wet ring on his immaculate floor mat to be contrary. “Literally nothing, except that she was angry at Iggy for being a dick and has about three times as many degrees as her job requires. I got the feeling she isn’t a fan of most people, which I can respect.”

My friend snorts, flipping through something on her screen. “She likes people fine, but she believes they’re unreliable and poorly maintained. Her focus has always been on her greenhouse, her research, and her students. The information I have in her personnel file states she often gets into situations with other staff members because she’s too blunt in her interactions with them.” Channing glances up, her eyes catching mine in the rearview. “She’s also one of the handful of senior faculty who didn’t bend the knee to Magnus. He tried to bring her into the fold during the third year she worked at State University, but she must have told him to get bent. That’s when the negative reviews in her file began.”

“Smart woman,” I mutter, and Des makes a pleased hiss that probably means she agrees. “But she wasn’t savvy enough to realize Magnus would gather his troops to ensure she didn’t advance any farther than she had by the time he offered her membership in the crooked club. She had tenure, so he couldn’t fire her, but he definitely could limit her success.”

“Her type of smartness comes with… less people-skills than you’d want in a disaster such as that,” my assistant says. “It seems Kimiko has very clear lines with no tolerance for fuckery. I’d trust her before I’d trust other staff at State U based on these complaints. That is all to say that if she said she can contain the spore issue, I believe her. If she says we’re all going to die, I believe that too.”

Iggy makes a tiny, involuntary ‘hmph’ noise. Not enough to break in, but loud enough for both Channing and I to notice.

“Would you like to add anything, Ignatius?” I ask, not even trying to hide my smug tone. “Something we should know about the woman you scorned?”

He shakes his head, eyes forward. “She’s so good at her job that other professors and department heads would have disliked her anyway. Kimmi doesn’t care about awards or recognition that isn’t from serious academic sources. You can’t bribe her, you won’t persuade her to do things that are shady, and she doesn’t give a single fuck about popularity. Magnus just helped the jealous people along by offering them shit to report things that didn’t matter.”

The car is silent for a moment, apart from the hiss of the air vent and the rhythmic sound of the blinker as he makes a left through traffic. I’m surprised he was so full of praise when he discarded her so carelessly, but Channing doesn’t look shocked at all.

“All of that is code for ‘she’s threatened my world view and I was too pansy-assed to deal with it’, right, Iggy?” My friend chuckles and shakes her head. “Good thing you’ve gotten over that now, or you’d be missing out on your mate, buddy.”

Ouch. She hit him hard—I like whatever confidence juice my girl is sipping.

The steering wheel twitches under Iggy’s hands. I see a little muscle leap in his cheek. “That’s not relevant to⁠—”

“It is,” I cut in, folding my arms across my chest. “One, if Kimiko thinks you’re a lying idiot, despite the apology, she won’t work with us as easily. Two, it explains a lot about why you fought so hard when I first got here. You already fucked up a smart, no-nonsense woman once and it scared you shitless.”

He exhales, not quite a sigh, but not quite a growl, either. “There was a… misunderstanding, to be certain. I was asked to show her around campus, and I did. I asked her out for a drink, and she interpreted my behavior as—” His voice catches, and for a second, I think he might just lie outright. “She thought I was more interested than I was based on a one-night stand that neither of us called anything more than that at the time. My mistake was that I didn’t correct her assumption for a few weeks because I was worried she’d complain to HR or something. Eventually, she confronted me and I told her the truth, which she didn’t appreciate.”

I roll my eyes at him in absolute disgust. “You were afraid she’d join the crowd of women you’d banged and run off on, possibly causing a scandal. She didn’t even hint that she would, but you ignored her, hoping she’d go away, which hurt her. That’s why you’ve been banned from a necessary area of campus for years until we had you go apologize? Iggy, you’ve been a damn fool.”

“Look, it was a greenhouse. I can get plants elsewhere and I didn’t feel like dealing with my father if there was a scandal,” Iggy says, and it’s more defensive than I expected from him. “As we’ve discussed, he’s not exactly friendly nor is he forgiving. It seemed like letting sleeping botanists stew was safer.”

Channing snorts. “Kimiko is the least complicated human being on this side of the planet. She wants to know the rules, she follows the rules, and if there’s ambiguity, it’s because someone is hiding something. If you’d just said ‘I’m not interested’ or ‘I’m just being polite,’ she would have moved on. You left it hanging, and when it crashed down, you made her look like an idiot.”