Page 59 of Dead Beat

She kicked his desk hard enough that it juddered backward and he released a yelp.

“See? Boundary issues. I’m telling you to stop fucking your students or I’ll turn your life to rubble.”

He rose. “That is enough. I have never laid a hand on a student and I—”

“Lyla Gill. Jade Gibson. Jen Masami. I can go on. Actually, I might need my notes.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. “Kenia Flores. Maya Newman. Laurel—this one is smudged. It might be Laurel or Laurie. Maybe both.”

“Get out of my office.”

“No.”

“Get out of my office or I’m calling campus security, Miss Stern.”

Now it was Alex’s turn to pause. “I didn’t tell you my name.”

Girard grinned. He put his hands up as if she were holding a gun on him, and she very much wished that was the case. “I guess we can stop this little one-act play, though I was certainly enjoying it. Do the members of Lethe know you’re using your gifts to threaten innocent men?”

“You’ll have to let me know when I find one.” Her voice was steady, but her heart had leapt into a frantic beat. How the hell did this man know about Lethe? Had he been in a society?

“A true cynic. I can appreciate that. I’ve found innocence is overrated. Though the loss of it can be thrilling. Your friend is smart and an adult. She can make her own decisions.” He cocked his head to the side, intrigued despite himself. “You must have talked to Heather.” He sighed. “I didn’t realize she knew about … Well, I wish she hadn’t cared so much.”

“About her husband putting his dick wherever he wanted?”

He cast her a disbelieving glance. “It’s sex. It’s something I needed. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. I love her still.”

“How romantic.”

“I’m not interested in discussing my marriage with you so you can render tiresome bourgeois judgments. I know who and what you are, Alex Stern, so stay in the back row of my lectures where you belong and far away from my personal business.”

“Or what?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question. She needed to know.

“Or Alban Reed tells all of Lethe what you can do. Maybe I make sure the rest of the societies know too.”

“You’re Lethe?”

He waved the thought away. “Scroll and Key. Though the nexus wasn’t wobbling in my day. You don’t want to make an enemy out of Alban Reed. He knows everyone and he doesn’t need magic to make your life hell. Maybe he’ll just make you disappear, wipe you from the map and keep you as a pet, pimp you out to every wayward mage and aspiring necromancer in need of a nexus.” Her shock must have shown on her face, because he said, “That’s right, Wheelwalker. I know what you are. I’m going to show your little friend the time of her life and you’re not going to say shit about it.”

How many people knew Alban Reed and were in his pocket? How many of them knew what she was? He’d said that there were others who would want to use her, and now here was Girard threatening to widen the circle. The more the knowledge of her ability to create a nexus spread, the more likely someone really would find a way to steal her power for themselves. She didn’t want to be Reed’s prisoner or anyone else’s.

Alex hadn’t liked letting ghosts possess her, not since they’d started pushing through, trying to take her over. But desperate times and all that. It had been a long while since she had felt this scared and this small, and she needed it to stop.

She reached for the ghost of Heather Girard lurking outside the window, all bruised memories and unfinished business. In a glorious rush, she felt the strength of the dead enter her.

This time she used both legs and shoved the desk hard with her boots. It slid backward knocking Girard into his office chair. Before he could get his bearings, she leapt to her feet and seized the edge of the desk, pushing it forward, pinning him to the back wall. The photo of the mosh pit slid from its hook and bounced off his shoulder.

Girard released a shriek as the desk dug into his belly.

Alex knew she should stop, but she wasn’t going to. Put an animal in a trap and it would gnaw its own leg off. Better to take a bite out of the hunter instead. I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. Good to know her brain could quote D. H. Lawrence in a crisis situation. The benefits of a Yale education.

She felt Heather’s anger, her betrayal, the endless humiliations, the accusations that she was too intellectually soft, that she couldn’t understand a man like him and his needs.

Tell him, Alex urged.

Heather surged forward. It had happened with Darlington’s grandfather, with the kid she’d used to beat up Oddman. She hadn’t given permission either time. This time she did.

Tell him.

Alex slammed her hands on the desk and leaned forward, her face bare inches from Girard’s, and the horror in his eyes told her that Heather had pushed through. Professor Girard was looking into the face of his dead wife.