Page 83 of Suspicions on the Stage
The tragedy is that I didn’t—and still don’t—know how to handle that.
He’s not angry now, just...empty. Running the notes because if he stops, there’s no telling what will pour out. I hate that, and I wish I knew how to make it better, make him feel safe again on campus.
I scroll my phone and try not to make it obvious. Eli has already posted a summary of everything from yesterday to the encrypted group chat for Jackson’s team. Morgana responded at four a.m. with a string of directives, and one line for me.
Morgana: Iggy, see what you can get from your father on the Beauregards, re: bloodlines and rumors.
Now that I’ve seen it, I respond with a thumbs-up. It’s a pointless charade—my father would never speak to me before noon, not unless there was a family PR disaster—but Morgana likes her ducks in rows, so I’ll work on that once he’s in a place where I can have a reasonable discussion with him.
Slade pauses, sets the flute across his lap. “You’re thinking so loud I can hear it,” he says.
I startle. “Sorry. I’ll go?—”
“No, you’re fine.” He stares straight ahead. “I just wish you didn’t have to try so hard.”
I don’t know how to answer that. So I sit, and we listen to the fluorescent hum, and I let the moment stretch as long as it needs to. After a while, Slade plays again, softer this time. I sit thereuntil he’s done, until the next wave of students filters in and I know he’s not alone.
“I’ll see you tonight?” I ask.
“If the world survives,” he says, and for the first time all morning there’s a tiny, real smile. “Thanks, Iggy.”
He goes back to his music, but after I leave, I linger in the hall for a full minute then head for the stairs and out into the cold, the taste of menthol and adrenaline sharp in my mouth.
Whoever sent the ‘dead body’ message yesterday—whoever thought they could fuck with us—I hope they’re ready for the response.
Once I’ve gotSlade ensconced in crowds, I plant myself in my office and try to get work done. There are four unread emails from Morgana, five from the provost, and something like fifty from students, most of whom are trying to reschedule exams because their emotional support peacocks are under the weather. I triage, delete, move everything marked ‘urgent’ to a folder called ‘Not My Problem.’
That feels fantastically productive, but I need more distraction.
The look on Slade’s face at the crime scene and the heavy implication that none of us are safe is still bothering the hell out of me. There’s a brittle sensation in my chest that refuses to shift, and the only thing that will make it better is a stiff drink or an honest-to-god memory hex.
Or—Merlin help me—a conversation with my father.
I look at the clock, seeing it’s now just shy of eleven a.m. This isn’t an optimal time to reach out yet. He’ll be three cups deep into the fortified Turkish coffee he drinks in place of water, and if he’s not already on a conference call with the board, he’s probably haranguing the gardener about the unevenness of the hedge maze. Still, Morgana wants intel, and I am nothing if not a dutiful errand boy.
Especially because I have shit to make up for and I intend to do so thoroughly.
I tap the contact, and listen to the cold, recursive ring of the Briarton family line while I brace for impact. He answers on the second cycle, as though he’s been sitting in the study waiting for bad news.
“Septimus Helios Briarton the Fifth, at your service,” he barks, his voice like gravel and dry leaves.
Christ, he’s such a stilted old windbag.
“Father,” I say, trying for lightness and failing. “It’s Ignatius. Didn’t it show me on the caller ID?”
There’s a pause, long enough to register as an insult. “Ah, so youdoremember you have a father. I wondered, since it’s been, what, six months? Since the Spring Solstice debacle?”
Here we go—the old ‘you’ll never measure up’ song and dance.
“I had finals to grade,” I say. “I have a duty to my students, and now that there’s a new Dean… I simply haven’t been able to make time for anything.”
“Ah, the new regime. The Society’s version of parole that’s darkening our ivory halls of education with a murderous blight. Morgana LeCiel… from nothing yet she felt she could taint thereputation of illustrious and well-loved Coronas.” The way he says her name, you’d think she was an off-brand detergent. “Tell me, Ignatius, how is it you can find time for that, but not for your own blood on the important mage holidays?”
Because even the bullshit here is better than a Briarton family occasion, you jackass.
My teeth clench as I grit out, “I didn’t skip Samhain on purpose. There was—there was an incident with a student. The campus has been extremely busy with revamping security and the investigations.”
He snorts. “You have a knack for collecting lost causes, son. Is that why you’re still languishing in a mid-level posting?”
