Page 54 of Strength of Desire

He snorted. “That doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

“Well, you could have fooled me.” I looked away, snowflakes dazzling my eyes.

He sighed. “Cory, I’m your teacher. An authority figure. I want to keep you safe, for God’s sake.”

“Not all authority figures feel that way,” I muttered, thinking about my dad.

“What?” Noah said, and I realized I hadn’t been quiet enough.

“Forget it.” I forced myself to stand up. “I should go.”

“I’m coming with you. No, don’t argue. I didn’t save you from falling off a roof just to have you break your neck falling down the stairs.”

It was hard to be angry at that comment when I knew I deserved it. I laughed in spite of myself.

“I guess that does seem like something I might do,” I acknowledged.

I grabbed the doorknob, then looked back over my shoulder. Snowflakes swirled in front of Noah’s face, but I could see his eyes just fine. His gaze was firm and unwavering, but not actively hostile.

Maybe that was progress?

14

NOAH

After the night on the roof, I redoubled my efforts doing Isaac’s spy work. Anything to keep my mind off Cory.

Cory, who I couldn’t get out of my head. Cory, who kept turning up like a bad penny. Cory, who’d appeared that night just as I was imagining coming down his throat.

I definitely needed something to distract me. And with the whole campus gearing up for Imbolc celebrations, I hoped the wardkeepers might be a bit distracted too, making it easier to avoid their notice.

Unfortunately, getting into Sheridan’s quarters was going to be more difficult than Teresa’s. His rooms were on the second floor, off a busy hallway close to the grand staircase that connected the four main floors of the manor. I loitered as much as I could, but I never once saw any cleaning staff go into his rooms.

Either he didn’t want cleaners coming in, or they only did it when I was teaching. Either way, it was going to be hard to sneak into his quarters with all the foot traffic around. Which just meant I’d have to do it boldly instead.

Sheridan went to dinner at Angler’s Rest with Orlando Moyano once a week on Thursdays. ‘Mingling with the hoi polloi,’ I’d heard Sheridan call it once. I couldn’t imagine there were that many people to mingle with at a fishing resort in January, but it didn’t matter.

The important thing was that they left at the end of Fourth Hour, and that Angler’s Rest was a good twenty minute drive from Vesperwood along twisty, forested roads. That meant that if I waited to break into his rooms until 5:45 p.m., Sheridan would be safely ensconced at the bar by then, mingling with his unwashed masses.

If Sheridan didn’t ward his rooms, then none of this mattered, but I had to assume he did. If I tripped his wards at 5:45, then I had fifteen minutes, assuming Sheridan sped home, to thoroughly search his rooms before he arrived back at the manor to find out what had happened.

At least my little adventure with Cory on the roof had yielded one positive outcome—it had given me the idea for what my excuse would be, when Sheridan ran back into his rooms to find me standing inside them.

I wasn’t positive Sheridan and Orlando would be going out for dinner this Thursday, since it was the same night as Imbolc, but when I heard them talking about it in the faculty lounge on Wednesday, I knew tomorrow would be my day.

On Thursday morning, I got to the gym earlier than usual to select my weapon. I scanned the wall, my eyes sliding across katanas, battle-axes, longswords, and spears, to the more creative maces, flails, and stilettos, before landing on the cross-bow I needed.

My plan called for a projectile, not a blade. I didn’t have to be particularly accurate, which was good, because it would be dark by the time I was shooting, but I needed a weapon with enough heft and range to be worrisome, to Sheridan in particular.

After setting the crossbow and arrows in the crook of a white pine where I could pick them up later, I strode back to the gym. Out on the back lawn, a group of young women completed a complicated, circular dance in the snow, under the watchful eyes of two professors. Their voices rose high into the winter morning, singing a lilting tune that mingled with the frost. The beginning of the day’s Imbolc celebrations were underway.

I was grateful for the darkness, by the time five thirty rolled around that evening. Part of my plan required blaming a mysterious group of students who would dematerialize into the shadows, and that wouldn’t work if anyone noticedmeskulking around the grounds tonight instead.

I wound my way around the manor, staying just inside the treeline, in case anyone was looking out the windows. I doubted anyone would be, what with the feast being thrown in the ballroom, but it was good to be careful. We’d had snow again the day before, and I hoped no one questioned my story enough to look for footprints. They wouldn’t find any but my own.

Sheridan’s windows were in the back center section of the manor, just behind a low crenelation that ran around the building. This morning, I’d made my way up to the thin stretch of roof behind the crenelation and placed three cans of Milwaukee’s Best on the fanciful merlons that had been carved from it. The snow blanketing the grounds helped create a glow that made the night a little brighter, but I was still shooting in the dark. It would be a wonder if I actually hit any of the cans, though that didn’treallymatter.

I’d never liked crossbows, to tell the truth. They weren’t made for the type of fighting I was used to. They did the most damage when used defensively, from the kind of rampart I was now shooting up at. But the bolts were heavy, designed to penetrate armor, and they’d work for my purposes now.

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