After we found Miranda and returned her key, Darius took me out to an early dinner at a sit-down restaurant where a lovely waiter not only took my order, but assured me they would bring my food out to me shortly. I couldn’t have been more grateful.

While we were waiting, I asked Darius how his day went.

“About as well as can be expected.”

He’d only been able to talk to Miranda for a half-hour before she went to class. That had revealed nothing significant.

“What were you hoping to learn?” I asked.

“It doesn’t work that way.”

Darius sipped his coffee. It was the only thing he’d ordered. It seemed to be the only thing he consumed regularly—at least, in public.

He went on, “When we’re looking for leads and information, we try to interview everyone we know for all the details we can get. That means we get a lot of boring and irrelevant information. Nothing seems significant now, but any number of facts might lead us to the scroll.”

After that, he had waited around until he could make an appointment for tomorrow with Frost. Then he’d gone back to Detective Moran to get even more paperwork and information, and he’d spent the rest of the time combing through it.

I felt kind of guilty about my six hour nap.

“So what happens next?” I said.

“Next we meet the Dead End.”

“What? Already? I mean, shouldn’t we interview Frost first? He was Wayde’s friend! He might know something.”

The vampire smiled and sipped his coffee.

My eyes narrowed. “Are you enjoying a joke that isn’t funny?”

“It’s a club, Emerra. It was the club that Trevon Wayde went to on the night he died. They call themselves the Dead End Club.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Frost introduced me to one of the members, but he only had enough time to tell me where they were meeting tonight before he had to rush off. They’ll be expecting us.”

I fidgeted with my fork and stared up at the Edison-style light bulb hanging above our table. “The Dead End Club?”

“You can ask them about it when we get there.”

I did. It was the first thing out of my mouth, and I almost talked over Darius’s introductions to get it out there. I get six hours of sleep, and suddenly I have a little energy.

All three men at the table smiled when they heard the question.

Newton said, “Inquisitive. I like this one.”

“Sit down, Miss Cole,” Huff added. He eyed me. “You don’t look old enough to drink.”

I shook my head.

“Have you ever had a cran-soda?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll buy you one as a welcome to the club. Agent Vasil?”

The vampire pulled out a chair for me to sit down.

Pulled. Out. A. Chair. Like some Victorian gentleman.

Delight bubbled through me. I felt the urge to curtsy and say, “Oh, thank you, dear Count,” but I refrained, mostly because I didn’t have a skirt to sweep out to the side, but also because I wasn’t sure if Darius realized he’d done it.

I took my seat and kept my modern, skirt-less mouth shut.

Vasil sat in the chair beside me. “I’m afraid I’m on duty.”

“Two boring drinks for our guests then.”

Huff flagged down a waitress while Newton leaned forward.

“We few and honored men,” he said, “have a clear knowledge of our fate in this world, and so we can celebrate our freedom from expectation and ambition. We all made it to professorship, we all have tenure, but for various reasons, we know we’ll go no further. We will all likely die as professors.”

“Like Professor Wayde,” the last man added. It was Stokes. I remembered he was the history professor.

“To Wayde!” Huff added, turning back to the table.

They all raised their beers and drank.

“What did you do to get black listed?” I asked Huff.

“You promise you won’t laugh?”

“He’s being defensive again,” Newton said. “Come on, Huff. You’re among friends here. Of course we’re going to laugh.”

“I think that there’s enough evidence for creationism that it should be admitted into consideration and debated, the same as evolution, and I was dumb enough to admit that to one of my colleagues. Not only has it tainted my director’s view of me, but now people will not shut up about it.”

“It’s an outlawed topic here,” Stokes said.

I thought back to our introductions. “Aren’t you a physics professor? Why would your opinion on evolution matter?”

Newton said, “Well, there’s that whole matter of the beginning of the Universe.”

“I believe in the Big Bang!” Huff said. “The evidence is compelling enough.”

“Outlawed!” Stokes reminded them.

The waitress returned with our drinks and set them in front of us before leaving.

I pulled my glass toward me as I asked Newton, “What about you?”

“I? I am but a humble student in the glorious field of philosophy who had the role of teacher thrust upon him. Without any other guide, I took my lead from Socrates, modifying his technique, only a little, to match my personality.”

I gazed at him, confused.

“He argues with everyone instead of asking them questions,” Huff explained. “Whatever side of the debate you’re on, he takes the opposite.”

“Yes,” Newton grumbled, “and it turns out that if you play the devil’s advocate too often, it annoys people.”

“But you still do it?” I asked.

“Of course. There is such a thing as intellectual integrity.”

“He enjoys it,” Huff said.

“I don’t think he could stop himself at this point,” Stokes added.

“And you?” I asked.

Stokes cleared his throat. “I…uh…I’ve had maybe one or two affairs—no students or anything—but…married women. It caused some trouble.”

Newton grinned. “There has never been a philosophy that could solve the problem of men and women.”

I liked these dorks. For a bunch of middle aged men, they were pretty entertaining.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“What about Wayde?” Darius asked.

The three friends sobered.

“So we arrive at the heart of the matter,” Newton muttered.

“Do you know why Wayde was a Dead Ender?” The vampire asked.

Huff tapped the side of his glass. “He didn’t get along with his director.”

“That’s no good,” Newton said. “Even if Kiel had loved him, Wayde probably couldn’t have gotten any further.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted to,” Stokes said. “He loved his position.”

“Gentlemen.” Darius prompted.

Newton sighed. “Wayde was a good man. He had morals. But people with real morals—morals born from their own conscience, instead of dictated by rules—they don’t always worry about the rules because they already know what’s right and wrong.”

“Can I get a slightly less philosophical explanation?”

Huff said, “Wayde would help students who had problem artifacts. I don’t know how it got started, but as more students heard about it, they’d go to him.”

“What’s a problem artifact?” I asked.

“For an anthropology student? Anything that doesn’t have proper paperwork. Real, fake, stolen, bought, in the family for over a hundred years—it doesn’t matter. If you couldn’t prove that you had a legitimate right to own it, it was a problem. Depending on how strict you were, that would include having permission from the people who created it.”

I cast my mind back over what little I knew about history. “That doesn’t seem to leave many non-problem artifacts.”

Huff motioned to me to acknowledge my point.

“What would Wayde do with these artifacts?” Darius asked.

“He’d take them, no questions asked, and help to get them appraised properly,” Newton said. “He’d try to find out their history, and sometimes he’d advise the students on what to do with them.”

“How many times did he help students like that?”

The three men looked at each other.

“Over the years?” Newton asked.

“Dozens,” Huff said.

“Hundreds?” Stokes added.

“The truth is, we aren’t sure,” Newton finished. “But it was a lot. Peter Kiel found out about it once, back when he and Wayde were new professors. Kiel, of course, disapproved, and Wayde, of course, didn’t care. It never occurred to him that Kiel would be promoted over him.”

“Why of course?” I asked. “Why would Kiel care?”

“Kiel has never met a rule he doesn’t like. He’s the kind of man that would take etiquette suggestions and scrawl them in stone.”

The other two Dead Enders nodded.

“I know it’s reaching outside my field,” Newton said as he leaned back in his chair, “but I think Kiel resented Wayde’s popularity. Wayde was a man that, as far as Kiel was concerned, ought to have been burned at the stake, but everyone else seemed to love him.” He shrugged. “It would get under anyone’s skin.”

Darius said, “Did Wayde ever keep the artifacts the students gave him?”

“Sure,” Huff said. “He never bought them if they were real, but he loved to get his hands on the fake ones.”

“The fake ones?” I said.

Huff smiled. “Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But he thought they were great. ‘A testament to human ingenuity,’ he’d say.”

“He also said that in time they’d be just as legitimate an artifact as the real ones. Made by a human. Old.” Newton slapped the table. “He was a long-term thinker.”

“‘Give it a few hundred years,’” Stokes recited, “‘you’ll see I’m right.’”

“The real and fake game,” I muttered.

“Oh!” Newton said. “Have you played?”

I shook my head.

“That was a dumb game,” Huff said.

“What’s this game?” Darius asked.

“Have you seen his study?”

“Yes.”

“Wayde would pick up some random item, hand it to you, and then stand there, smiling, waiting for you to guess if it was real or fake. The only people who had a chance at it were experts, and even they didn’t always get it right. I’m a physicist! How should I know what a real kachina looks like?”

“Did he play this game a lot?”

“With anyone who walked into his house,” Stokes said. “Hell, if someone delivered a couch to him, they probably had to play it.”

“About how much of his collection was fake?”

Once again, the Dead Enders glanced at each other.

“About half?” Newton ventured.

Darius toyed with the straw the waitress had left for him. His cran-soda was untouched. “Did Wayde ever mention a scroll to you? Something written in Late Egyptian?”

Stokes and Newton shook their heads.

Huff said, “If he did, I don’t remember it.”

“Could he have gotten it from a student?” Darius asked.

“It’s possible. He didn’t tell us about everything he got.”

“Detective Moran and I have been going through Wayde’s financial records. Around the time he would have acquired this scroll, there was no unexpected money changing hands.”

“Okay. And?” Newton said.

“The scroll was a fake, but he didn’t buy it.”

There was a short silence at the table, then Huff said, “A student might have given it to him for free.”

“Did that happen often?”

Huff squirmed. “Not often, no. Professors aren’t supposed to accept gifts from students, so he preferred to buy them. But it’s not impossible…” His voice trailed off.

“If Wayde was willing to buy them, why would a student give it to him for free?”

After a second, Newton said, “I don’t think we can help you there, Agent.”

“That’s fine, gentlemen. I’ll ask around. I understand that Trevon Wayde was with you on the night he died.”

“He was with us here,” Newton said. “We were probably the last to see him.”

“Did he come to the meeting every week?”

“Every week. I think he only missed a meeting or two when he was sick. He was the most dependable of us.”

“But he left early last week.”

“Yes, that was weird. He barely had time to finish his first drink.”

“Did he say why he was leaving?”

“He said that he was going to meet someone.”

My eyes darted over to Darius, but he was too intent on Newton to notice.

“He didn’t say who?” Darius asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Did he get a message or a call before he left?”

“Not that I noticed.” Newton looked at his two friends.

“He didn’t,” Stokes said. “He never looked at his phone.” Stokes nodded toward something behind our backs. “He checked the clock to see what time it was.”

I looked over my shoulder. A large, decorative clock declared it was almost six-thirty.

“Did he seem upset?” Darius asked.

“No,” Huff said. “If anything, he looked happy.”

“Happy?”

“Smiling, laughing—you know, happy.”

“Mind you,” Newton said, “Wayde was normally pretty cheerful.”

“Yes, but that night he seemed more happy than usual.”

Darius looked at Stokes to see if he had anything to add. He only shrugged.

The vampire sat back and thought, then said, “He never mentioned the scroll?”

“No,” Huff said.

“Then none of you would know who he got it from?”

Newton said, “I’m afraid not.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Darius said.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all for now. You’ve talked to the police?”

“Yes.”

“And they have your contact information?”

“They do.”

“I’ll call you if I have any other questions.”

I didn’t feel too bad leaving my drink behind. It was too bitter for my tastes.

Once we were in the car and driving home, Darius said, “Emerra, when did you hear about the real or fake game?”

“Huh? Oh. Miranda mentioned it yesterday…while we were in the kitchen together.”

My voice got smaller toward the end of my sentence. When I was done, I waited to see if I was going to be berated again. Yesterday Darius had been so busy chewing me out for chasing after the thief, he’d never gotten around to yelling at me about leaving the study.

After a second of silence, Darius muttered, “That’s my fault. I was distracted yesterday. I failed to ask you for your report on the conversation.”

His fault? Well, okay. If he insisted.

“Was she willing to talk to you?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad.”

“Did you think she wouldn’t be willing to talk to me?”

“I thought she might find it hard to talk to anyone associated with the police or the FBI.”

“Why?”

“You do know that she’s the primary suspect in a murder investigation, don’t you?”

“What? Why?!”

“She’s the only one who benefits from Wayde’s death.”

“Benefits! She lost her only ally!”

“Maybe she needed money more than she needed support.”

“That’s a load of crap, and the only people who’d say that have never been friendless.”

When Darius glanced at me, I squirmed. His gaze was a little too perceptive for my comfort.

The vampire said, in an offhand voice, “Do you know what Louis Summer said to Miranda while we were in Wayde’s office?”

“No. They were across the room, and he was whispering.”

A closed-lip smile appeared on the count’s face.

“What did he say?” I demanded.

“He said, ‘Does the FBI think you did it too?’ Miranda St. John is scared, and she’s been through a lot. It’s no wonder she wouldn’t be eager to talk to us. All I’m saying is that I’m glad she was willing to talk to you.”

I fidgeted with my fingers. “I don’t know if it was me she was talking to, so much as the rather attractive Joel Aubert, but me being there didn’t stop her.”

“Can you tell me what they said? Try to keep it in order, and in as close to the same words as possible.”

Oh! I could do that. I’d always had a good memory for conversations. It was nice to know it could be useful.

Darius said nothing through my whole recitation.

When I finished, he still said nothing.

I tried to give him all the silence he needed to think, but eventually I had to say something or my ears would rupture from the lack of stimulation.

“Are you wondering about the real or fake game?” I said. “The way Miranda talked, she made it sound like Professor Frost knows more about the collection than anyone.”

“I am looking forward to talking to Frost tomorrow. Maybe he’ll know if Wayde had a girlfriend.”

“Huh?”

“You said that Miranda only ‘thought’ he did.”

“That’s what you got from all that? I mean, gosh, nevermind the fact that a sweetheart like Miranda’s been disowned by her crazy mother—Trevon Wayde might have a girlfriend!”

“If I have any questions about the drama between Miranda and her mother, I have no doubt I’ll be able to find the answers. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard about a possible girlfriend. I’d like to know more about her.” After a pause, he added, “Of course, Miranda might have been wrong. I’m also wondering why the thief was pawing around for so long. They had the scroll, why didn’t they leave? ”

Darius’s phone rang. He reached out to where it was attached to his dashboard and put the call on speaker.

“This is Special Agent Darius Vasil.”

“Darius!”

“Iset?”

The name on the screen said it was her; Darius must not have had a chance to look at it.

“I finished the translation.” Her voice sounded strained.

“What’s wrong?” the vampire demanded.

“After the standard warnings, there was a section on what the scroll was for. Darius, it claims that it’s about how to give a mundane person magic power.”

The steering wheel creaked when Vasil’s grip tightened.

“That’s impossible,” Darius insisted.

There was nothing but silence from the phone.

“Iset?”

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of Ashworth and Reynell, and there are a few other theorists I want to talk to, but given everything, we may have to assume it’s not as impossible as we thought. Did Wayde know what the scroll said?”

There was a short silence.

Vasil said, “Trevon Wayde was not an Egyptologist, and from everything we know, he shouldn’t have been able to translate it himself. But I got to look at his internet history today. He might have been trying to.”