Page 17 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“Laoghaire. You want some?”
I shook my head, smiling. “I had enough of that in my second year. I have to translate some Luccreth before bed and work on some revisions for James.” I sighed happily. It was actually nice to have the mundane work of my dissertation ahead of me after yesterday’s events.
The kettle whistled, and I finished pouring my cup. After I was done, I paused on my way back to my room.
It would just be an experiment, I told myself. Things were abnormally calm today. It wouldn’t hurt to try.
I laid one hand across the back of the couch so that my fingertips just brushed the back of Aja’s shoulder. She shrugged as if tickled but didn’t notice. Her thoughts immediately filled my mind: a deluge of Irish poetry as she scanned the page, locating her previous position, idly considering what she wanted for lunch while she went through the familiar text.
It wasn’t quite a deluge, but her thoughts were just as jumbled as anyone’s. Nothing like the clarity of the stranger’s in the car.
So, it was just him.
But that wasn’t what I wanted to know.
“Aj, I was thinking about the guy you met in the bar the other night. Do you happen to remember what he looked like? Maybe I know him.”
“Hmm? What guy?” She was listening, but only barely registered my query as she tried to remember what áilleacht meant again.
“Beauty,” I murmured.
“Huh?”
“The guy,” I pressed. “The one who asked about me at the bar. Do you remember what he looked like?”
Her thoughts were coming faster now, louder and even more fraught with emotion. A bit longer, and it would be more than I could handle. Deepest desires, animal instincts. Id-level thinking, which could be disturbing even with the most regular-seeming people.
Aja scrunched her brows and squeezed her lips together as she tried to recollect the man’s face. I watched as several people from the club appeared in her mind: her boyfriend, Nick, mostly, along with the faces of bouncers, bartenders, and a few other fans that became increasingly blurred the more she drank. Bythe time she recalled the incident in the crowd, the stranger’s face was all but completely obscured by the combination of her poor, intoxicated memory and the dim lighting. I sighed and pulled my hand away.
“I’m sorry, Cass, I just don’t remember. I honestly think I imagined it all. I did have a lot to drink,” Aja said, turning back to her poem.
I stood up, tea in hand. “Don’t worry about it. It was probably just a student or someone like that. Forget it.”
I went back to my room, where the mysterious cardboard box was poking out of the bottom of my closet. Gran still hadn’t called me back after I’d tried her last night, but right now, I wasn’t up to the inevitable lecture that I was sure I’d get when I told her what happened. Instead, I lay on my bed and picked up the soft wool blanket she had made me last Christmas, burying my face in the familiar scent of rosemary oil and baking bread that permeated our house in Oregon. I closed my eyes and focused, trying to capture a glimpse of her.
But if yesterday had been too much, right now I had nothing at all. Just the dull shade of black under closed eyelids.
“Cass?”
Aja’s soft knock yanked me out of my concentration.
I sat up. “Yeah, what is it?”
Aja opened the door and poked her head in. “Sorry. I know you don’t like being bothered. But there’s someone here for you.”
I frowned. “Who?”
She held her hands up. We both knew a social call was utterly out of the question.
Is it?My voice again, this time accompanied by another flash of those green eyes. Mentally, I waved them away. The stranger, whoever he was, had made his disinterest absolutely clear. Why was I still thinking of him?
“Some kind of delivery,” Aja was saying. “You have to sign for it.”
I followed her down the hall to where a man in a blue uniform was standing at our door with a clipboard and an envelope.
“Cassandra Whelan?”
I pulled on a pair of gloves, ignoring his curious looks. “Yes, that’s me.”
