Many things could be expected in life, but food popping through tables wasn't one of them. Not long after Elise had pulled up to Table Seven, the middle section of it clicked down and away. None of the other students seemed to care about this curious occurrence, but a few of them smirked or rolled their eyes at her jump. Marek, who had been sitting across from her usual place before she reached it, only glanced at her over the top of his book, then returned to his customary mealtime reading. She leaned forward to examine the gap at the middle of the table. The center reappeared packed with both dinners and desserts. She jumped again.
"You're smart," said a cutesy voice. "The ones who aren't usually put their fingers in the dumbwaiters, and then: snap."
Something draped over Elise's shoulders, startling her a third time. An arm, a bony one, had coiled around her. It belonged to an elfin girl with a mass of curly ash blond hair. She might have been the same age as Elise.
"Does it always do that?" Elise said. "The table, I mean."
"Yeah, but I'd like to know how you ever missed it."
"I was late to my other meals." Leaning back, Elise could see that the table had a single pedestal at the middle, one so thick that it obscured the other side all the way down it its foot. "The ones that I remember, at least."
The girl leaned in close, blinking at Elise. "Right, you're Miss Amnesia," she said. "Oh, you're prettier up close."
How best did one respond to a compliment that was also an insult? Everything that came to mind might have escalated things into an actual argument, so Elise picked something else. "You're pretty, too."
And the girl truly was cute — in the way that a lion cub might be cute. Sharp, dangerous things lurked in her freckled pink face. Despite that, her wide eyes were fascinating, for their vivid orange-yellow color resembled the petals of an exotic flower. She shifted so that her forearm rested against Elise's throat. "Aw, don't spoil me," she said, tapping her fingers against Elise's shoulder. Her pouty pink lips parted with an adorable smile. "If you're too sweet, I'll want to keep you this close all the time."
On the other side of the table, Marek's book convulsed in his hands. He didn't look over it, not even as he spoke. "Don't make waves among polite society," he murmured, with a singsong edge.
If that had been an admonition meant for the curly-haired girl, she didn't seem to care. Her restless hand settled on Elise's shoulder, then squeezed. "There's nothing wrong with getting a little wet." She turned her attention to Elise, then said, "Is there, honey?"
Warmth crept into Elise's face. She squirmed against the girl's arm, though the weight of it wasn't exactly uncomfortable. What was the matter with her? "Um, I guess not?"
The curly-haired girl gave a breathy, captivating laugh, one that raced all the way down to Elise's toes. "You don't even know what you're saying." Her mouth was soft and warm as she pressed a big kiss high on Elise's cheek. "Let's be pals, you and me, what do you say? Real good pals."
Marek smacked his book down next to his place setting.
"Dear me, it looks like I've upset our darling boy," the girl said. She unwound herself from Elise.
He didn't look upset. With his usual unhurried precision, he took his eyeglasses from the pocket of his sport coat, then put them on. He didn't speak, he didn't look at anyone, he just piled food onto his plate, so much of it that he couldn't have finished it if he had been two people — or Elise. The giveaway was, as it had been a time or two before, the hard set of his jaw.
"Why would he be upset that you're talking to me?" Elise said. "Have we never done that?" Never mind that he had no right to be when he kept insisting he didn't know her.
"Not really." The other girl got herself a big helping of roast beef from the center of the table. "You keep to your little corners and I keep to mine."
Elise reached for the nearest dish, which happened to be the same cabbage rolls Marek had taken for himself. They looked Polish-style, though there was a dish of German ones nearby. Which one should she choose? Or was the better question which one she had liked? Her hand wavered between the two. Why could she remember what these were, but not if she had ever tasted them?
The curly-haired girl snatched up a pair of serving tongs, then plunked both types of cabbage rolls on Elise's plate. "Try whatever you want, that's what I always say." She chose other things for Elise seemingly at random — Salisbury steak loaded with mushroom gravy; stuffed dill pickles; potato casserole; corn pudding; cheese balls rolled in minced nuts; peas and pearl onions; tiny, savory tarts; roast lamb; pillowy Parker House rolls; tropical fruit salad; and broccoli with toasted bread crumbs. When she stopped to look at the arrangement, she pouted. "It's missing something."
Although Elise could eat a lot, there had to be some harmony between her dishes. "That's all ri —"
"I know!" The girl snapped her fingers. "Soup and a salad."
A chowder full of fish heads was ladled into Elise's bowl. The salad of mixed greens looked edible, but it was stacked so high above its designated plate that it teetered dangerously. "Thank you," she said, before anything else could be added to her plate.
"Welcome." The girl smiled, then stuck out her hand. "Since you've forgotten who I am, I'll tell you: June Foley."
Elise shook hands with her. "It's very nice meeting you, June."
"Likewise." June sneaked a glance at Marek, who looked as if he was trying to stab his mashed potatoes to death. Was June another one of his enemies? She let go of Elise's hand. "Well, we oughta eat before we get any demerits from budding dictators — whoops, I mean, power-inclined Underseers."
The tightened muscles in Marek's cheek ticked a little faster. Yes, maybe June was one of his enemies.
"Demerits?" Elise said. Marek had given them to Romilly, but she couldn't remember what they were for the life of her. She spread her napkin over her lap. "Those are mentioned in the University's handbook, aren't they?"
"Maybe, but I never read that thing," June said, filling her own dishes with a disturbing array of foods. "You get them when you're naughty. Get too many of them and you're in trouble."
"How many is too many and what's the trouble?"
June placed three rolls on her plate, apparently finished serving herself. She began slathering them with butter, which she literally took out of the hands of a frail green-skinned boy. "Five's the limit in a month, and it earns you a note on your permanent records." She lifted her pale eyebrows at Elise, waggling her stolen butter knife. "Why do you wanna know? Gonna break a few rules?"
Elise almost dropped the fork she had just picked up. How had June guessed such a thing? No one else could have heard what Elise and the rest of the Herald staff had planned to do in pursuit of Charlotte's records. No one, unless June had the power to hear things at a distance, and that was a very real possibility in this town. Elise's fingers tightened on her fork, knuckles whitening.
"Look at your face!" June finished buttering her rolls, and slapped her knife onto the table. "Don't worry. I know you must have a lotta questions after what happened to you, so I was just having a little fun."
"That's all right," Elise said, though it wasn't. The joke had shaken her. It had hit unknowingly on the truth.
She poured water into her glass, and June did the same for herself. That seemed to be the end of their conversation. Opposite them, Marek returned to eating his dinner instead of just mutilating it, taking in one mechanical forkful after another. She followed his example by making quick work of the food she had been given, avoiding the soup altogether. Those fish heads seemed to stare at her with accusations in their cloudy eyes. Only after she cleared her dinner and dessert plates three times did she finally feel satisfied enough to leave the table.
As she headed off, her newest friend joined her. At Elise's look, June said, "We're going the same way, so we might as well go together."
Elise barely suppressed a groan. For Pete's sake, if she wasn't dealing with one strange person, it was another. Well, at least this one was nicer than some of the others had been — more importantly, the name June Foley hadn't been on the suspect list.
Then again, June was a little too affectionate for a stranger. How was Elise supposed to get away from this odd girl without being rude? She couldn't speed off; despite her healing body, her vigor had faded by this hour much the same as it had yesterday, unaffected by food. And she still had forgotten to ask anyone why that was the case.
"Yes," she said. "We might as well."
As she and June joined the last of the other diners trickling out of the Refectory, she skimmed the crowd for familiar faces. No Willow, no Ian, no one at all that she knew, except for Gerver.
The mere sight of the professor drew Elise's back up, but he was her only choice unless she swiveled around in search of Marek. That might be a bad idea considering the way he seemed to despise June. Witnessing another fight was the last thing Elise wanted to do. Besides, Gerver was on her list of suspects, too. Keeping an eye on him was necessary no matter how distasteful. She latched her gaze to his back, not a difficult thing to do when that greatcoat made him stand out like a dark beacon. Once she finally squeezed her way through the doors and into the corridor, she pressed into the gaps of the dispersing crowd after him. June kept up with her.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Gerver hooked down a narrow corridor, forcing her to follow. His pace picked up. Any faster, and he would be going at a slow run. She would never catch him then.
"Professor!" she called.
He jerked to a stop like a marionette whose puppeteer had suddenly forgotten how to work strings. His coat settled around him, yet he did not turn. "I don't have all evening to wait, not even for invalids," he said.
"Jeez, he's more of a jerk than usual," June grumbled. "What'd he eat for supper, a bent knife?"
Elise let that go without comment. "I have a few questions for you, sir."
"And I have a busy schedule," he said. "Speak quickly."
June sighed. "Well, this is where you and me part ways," she said, in such a feminine copy of Marek's joking tone that Elise couldn't help but stare at her. June giggled, then patted Elise on the top of the head, saying, "Don't look sad — you'll see me around, kitty-cat," before she skipped off into the main corridor.
Now it was just Elise and Gerver. Though he might be a killer, her anger from their last conversation hadn't ebbed; it grew as she shortened the distance between them. Such turmoil was at odds with their surroundings. Night flowers began fanning open on the walls, their pale petals glowing under wallpaper starlight. Moths wobbled from one bloom to the next, coming away dusted yellow by pollen. A sensual floral scent filled the air, with sweet and smoky notes beneath, as if a thurifer had passed through half an hour ago swinging a censer. The dark aroma slipped deliciously down her throat, settling in her lungs. She knew this perfume. Had worn it when —
Warm fingers stroked her face and curled in her hair, light yet steadfast. Lips tasted hers with a hunger that spilled over into her, overflowing wine poured from cup to cup.
The momentum of her wheelchair carried her only a little farther, for her hands were on her face and in her hair, trying to push away the phantom's caress.
When had she worn it, that perfume? It hadn't been on the vanity in her room; she had gone through all those things. She would've remembered such an aroma, in any case. It hadn't been Charlotte's scent. Had it belonged to another woman? Was that the person she remembered kissing her? Or had it been someone else, and that perfume somehow hers? Elise dropped a hand to where the ghost of another mouth had just supped.
"Why do you haunt me?"
She lifted her gaze to Gerver, who had come closer. "Wh-what?"
"Perhaps 'haunt' isn't the proper word," he said. "The living don't have the courtesy to melt away in daylight, as the shades do."
Several choice words for him came to mind, everyone of them bad enough to have earned her a demerit or two. "I came for questions, not a lecture."
He took a half turn away from her, starting his usual hunt for his cigarette case and lighter. It was a quick search.
"Did you smell that perfume just now?" she said, forcing both her hands to drape over her lap. If she kept them on the wheels of her chair, she might be tempted to escape.
His cigarette jounced between his lips as he spoke. "Miss Foley's perfume preferences are of no interest to me."
"No, it wasn't hers; it came from the wallpaper." The plain black wallpaper that showed no hint of a pattern now, animated or not. Why had it changed?
Flames failed to spark off his lighter. "A visit to the clinic might be in order."
"It was real, I know that it was," she said. "It came from the paper, or —" She shook her head. What she had seen hadn't been on the wallpaper, had it? "No, that's not right. I remembered it. A memory that wasn't strong enough to make me have an attack, but a memory all the same." That sounded right. "A garden at night, full of moonlight, moths, and flowers. Then someone kissed me ..."
His lighter jumped from his hand. It hit the floor and spun, spun, spun in the space between him and her.
God, why had she mentioned the kiss? She tucked her chin towards her chest, avoiding whatever look he might be giving her. A stormy one, in all likelihood. "Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you that."
After a moment, he leaned down to seize the lighter off the floor. As he snapped upright, he said, "No, for Christ's sake, you shouldn't have told me that." He took his cigarette out of his mouth, thrusting both it and the lighter back into his coat. "You shouldn't have done, but you did, El —"
Gerver shook his head, mouth pressing together in an ugly grey line. Voices drifted by in the corridor behind her, loud and joyous and stupid. He tracked the passage of their owners over the top of her head, never once allowing his stare to settle on her. Their merry conversation echoed like a bad radio signal long after their footsteps had dispersed. The professor waited until the final static burst of laughter had disappeared before saying a word.
"What do you wish to ask?"
"Three things." There were really four, but she would select the third depending on his answer for the second. "Why do I feel tired? Shouldn't eating cure sleepiness the same as curing broken bones?"
He finally gave her a sidelong — and incredulous — glance. "I should have known you'd ask something so inconsequential."
This man never changed. Pure kindness and consideration seemed beyond him. "It's not inconsequential to me."
Gerver eased his gloved hands into his coat's pockets. "Your body is reversing its damage, so it's only natural that you feel tired," he said. "Meals are your bricks and mortar, but the housebuilder is your power, and it doesn't work without payment."
Why did that have to make sense? Couldn't he have just lied instead? Things would have been much easier if he could give her a firm reason for his name being on her list of suspects. Or perhaps he was lying with such finesse that she hadn't doubted his explanation until this very second. No, wait, if she couldn't tell, then she shouldn't bother trying to. She could listen to his answers without trusting them. The important part of this conversation was building some sort of rapport with him. If she could do that, she might be able to eventually cross his name off her list ... or cross all the others off, and leave his.
"Can I die?" she said.
His posture stiffened. "Your official files only mention you as very difficult to kill." Now he met her gaze. "It's an odd way of wording things, don't you agree?"
Read between the lines, he was telling her. If her official files mentioned her as difficult to kill, then there might be unofficial files that said she couldn't be killed. She would have to confirm this, of course, but if it were true ...
"One more question." He turned away from her. Being in profile made him more bearable to look at. "You had three, and we've come to the last."
If he had said that she was able to die, she would have asked him what he thought the reason for her attempted murder had been. But her final question was the other option instead. "Why would anyone try to kill me if I can't be killed?"
"That," he said, "is a very good question. So good, in fact, that I'm sure you've already come up with its answer."
He had an annoying habit of being right, damn him. Or half right. She had come to a partial conclusion. "It doesn't make sense unless Charlotte's killer is a complete idiot," she said. "My power doesn't seem to be a secret, even if the specifics of it are. So if murder wasn't the point of my 'fall,' then something else had to be."
The full answer revealed itself before she finished speaking. How could she have overlooked it? No, no, there was no point in thinking like that. She wasn't really sure if she was immune to death or not right now, so this was all speculative until someone else, someone more trustworthy than murder suspects, could corroborate Gerver's claim of her deathlessness.
But the answer still weighed on her tongue. "Erasing my memories, that was the point," she said, and those words sounded just as right as the ones that he had given her.
"That's assuming that whoever killed Miss Cooke is the same person who had manipulated your mind," Gerver said.
"What makes you not assume it?"
"Assumptions kill ... Or sometimes one wishes they do."
He seemed more to be speaking to himself than to her. Had he wished to have been killed? Why? Because of the way that he looked? No, that didn't fit. While he was aware of how he looked, he didn't seem despaired by it. Something more would have had made a man like him desire death. But what, exactly?
Well, what did she know about him? Not much, but he was what Marek had called a stacker, someone with more than one power. Too many powers, Gerver had said. But perhaps that is my price for surviving what killed worthier people, his memory reminded her. Her eyes roved over his gruesome face. He was an Addy, and Addies were made, not born. Yes, he might have wished to die for whatever had turned him into a monster, yet had killed others. Especially if an assumption had led him to it. That would have meant it had been his fault, or that he felt it was.
"It must entertain you, staring at me," he said. "You do it often enough that I should start charging for it. My going rate should be about the same as that of a freak show. That suits me, don't you think?"
Her cheeks scorched with shame. She shouldn't have watched him for as long as she had, but did he have to be so rude? No, that wasn't true. He had often been rude to her even when she hadn't done anything wrong. Cruel, too. "I wasn't staring. Not the way that you meant it."
"Intentions and actions frequently diverge."
Now she stared at him in the way that he had meant it, as if he had just shambled from a circus tent. Come see the man who lived on bitterness alone. "Why do you hate me?"
"There it is, the deadly assumption," he said. "It's also an extra question." He dug his cigarette and lighter out of his coat again, which seemed more a habit of nervousness than vice. "But you know the answer." He failed to bring up a flame. "It's there, inside your skull." A flame appeared on his lighter and finally lit his cigarette. "Just find it. Find everything, and then you'll know what you've done."
She had done something? What could she have done to anger him? Had it been that supply depot Marek had told her about, the one that had been robbed? Could she have really done that? Gerver was Chief of Security, so he might have suspected her. That could be a reason to hate her.
Yet something about that rang hollow. Had she some hidden life of crime, he might have warned her to keep her nose clean. His dislike of her seemed emotional, not clinical. She must have earned his wrath in another way.
Elise said, "If I offended you, or, or, or if I wronged you somehow in the past, I'm sorry for it."
"You can't be," he said. He drew off his cigarette. "You're not who you were, so you can't truly be sorry for what you've done."
Okay, she had enough of him for one day. No, for a lifetime or two. Three, even. Attempting to keep a close watch on him would been impossible when he was constantly stabbing her with vitriol.
"Fine," she told him, "I won't be sorry."
He didn't stop her as she set off. She had lied. She was sorry, but not for offending him. She was sorry that she didn't know what kind of person she had been. As she turned into the main corridor, she almost ran into someone. She gave profuse apologies. Her words fractured at the sight of Josephine Wong staring down at her.
The University's president looked even more astounding up close: her eyes were the same color as her jaw-length waves of violet hair, and her fair skin was dotted with speckles in various shades of purple. Her clothes, another women's suit, were stark black, and they made her look austere. She might have been in her forties or fifties, which seemed awfully young for the president of a university.
"I'm sorry!" Elise said, finally coherent again.
She seemed mildly amused by Elise's panic. "Yes, I heard you the first time."
Anyone could have heard Elise. Her apologies, though full of stuttering, had echoed down the corridors just moments ago. "No, I mean, I'm sorry that I fell asleep on the night Gerver — Professor Gerver — went to go find you."
"I have no issue with you there," Wong said. "I would have gone to the clinic whether you had been awake or not. After all, an attack on a student is an attack on my school."
"You believe that I was attacked?" Elise didn't allow herself to give into relief, because other people believed she had been attacked, too. Those same people believed that Charlotte had been killed, but her death was still officially an accident.
Those violet eyes narrowed the slightest bit. "What we believe and what we can say are not always the same things." Wong relaxed her expression. "Now, you'll have to excuse me; I'm a very busy woman, my dear."
Much as it felt like it sometimes, Elise wasn't the only person in the world. It was only natural that the president of an entire university have other matters to tend to. "Oh, of course. Goodbye."
Wong bid a curt goodbye in return, then walked down the corridor that Elise had just left. The girl craned her neck to watch the president meet Gerver, who stood far from the spot that Elise had left him. Had he followed her, intending to talk more? He looked none too pleased to see Wong, so perhaps he had.
"Halston, I'm glad to have found you," Wong said. "We need to discuss the ordeal."
He started to reply. Elise made her escape, and did not look back. Any delay might have meant Gerver catching up to her, if that was what he had intended to do.