AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"I'll take it," Dr. Blanton said. She'd been renting the same small house near campus for the past five or six years, so of course it made sense that she would keep the book. And, I reminded myself, it was her dig, after all.
"Just for now," she went on. "Until we know more of what we're dealing with."
"I think that is best," Luca said, nodding. "Once we know more—of course, then it can be shared."
He looked at me then, a quick glance at the end of his sentence. It wasn't more than a split second, hardly long enough for our gazes to lock, but I saw it, unmistakably.
Luca was lying.
I couldn't sleep.
It was well past two in the morning, and all I could think about was the book. The curiosity was absolutely killing me. Dr. Blanton had packaged it herself in tissue paper and a polyethylene bag, then placed it carefully in a cardboard box lined with Ethafoam. Watching her tape the flaps closed was almost painful. She'd driven away with the box tucked behind the passenger seat of her tiny car, and I felt like a part of my brain had gone with her. I replayed the night before in my head over and over: the smooth, rich leather against my fingertips, the way the pristine cover had creaked softly when I’d opened it.
And that flash of light—that heat—
I rolled over for what was probably the four hundredth time, tangling my legs still more in the sheets. The air in our room was stagnant and too warm—there was no air conditioning in the dorms, and my skin was damp with sweat. At this point, I wondered if it made more sense to just get up and resign myself to a long, exhausting day.
I reached for my phone, my thumbs hovering over the contact list. I could text Theo. For that matter, I could call him.
But for all I had been thinking about Theo that morning, now all I could picture was the expression on Luca's face when he’d glanced at me. I knew—I knew—that he had absolutely no intention of letting Dr. Blanton send the book to the university.
What I didn't understand was the reason why.
I needed to get closer to him. I needed to find out more. Did he know something about the book? And who was he, anyway? He'd told us almost nothing about himself. I didn't even know how long he'd been in Velarta.
I found my thoughts drifting, strange and aimless. Green eyes. Curling mist, and roiling clouds, and the smell of leather. I closed my eyes.
Breathed out.
Slept.
My dreams were a jumble of images I couldn't untangle. A brush of warm skin against mine, hot breath by my ear, a whisper I couldn't quite make out. Green eyes, piercing as they stared into mine, trying to tell me something. Then they faded to brown, rich and warm, Theo's dimpled smile. A flutter of pages.
A piercing tone, over and over, that eventually resolved into Vanessa's alarm clock. I pulled my pillow over my head.
Finally the alarm shut off and I breathed a sigh of relief, squeezing my eyes shut and attempting to drift back to sleep. There was a low murmur of voices from across the room, and a few moments later my pillow was ripped away.
"Rise and shine," Vanessa chirped, looking far too perky for this hour of the morning. "I've got good news and bad news."
I blinked up at her. "I'll take the good news. You can keep the bad."
She pointed at the dorm's small window, where rain sheeted against the glass. The sky was dark and heavy with clouds. "The good news is no digging today. It's a lab day."
"Okay, what's the bad news?"
"The bad news,” she said, “is that Blanton has decided to go ahead and get a date on that book. She wants two of us to take a sample of the leather down to the closest mass spectrometry lab, which just so happens to be in Palia."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "And how is this bad news, exactly?"
She grinned. "Well, it means that Raheem and I get to go spend the day living it up in Palia while you're stuck here in the lab all by yourself."
I let out a groan. Damn her seniority. "What's Blanton doing all day?" I asked. "Why can't she take it there herself?"
Vanessa shook her head. "Raheem said she called in a couple of experts from back home. She’s sticking with people she knows rather than involving the locals just yet." She shrugged. "I guess she was serious about keeping it under wraps. But anyway, they got a late flight out so she's going to go pick them up at the airport this afternoon. So you're on your own for the day."
I heaved a sigh, staring out at the storm-dark sky. Well, at least there wouldn't be too many artifacts to process from the chapel site yet, so maybe I could finish up early and take a nap. I felt like I'd barely slept at all.
Vanessa rose, grabbed a change of clothes, and headed into the bathroom. "Oh, and Blanton says when you're done you can help finish up the artifacts from the barracks, too."
