Tales of the Otherworld (15 page)

Any other student would have been content to sit and chat with a prof. Well, she would if she was being paid eight bucks an hour to do it. But Elena expected to work. That was obvious when her shift ended and she thanked me, not for the stimulating conversation, but for the “background.” That’s how she saw it. That’s what she was comfortable with. Still, it was a start…even if it did mean I’d have to find actual work for her to do.

When Elena came the next day, I let her file. Can’t say I really understood why this seemed so important to her, but no one has ever accused me of being intolerant of other people’s eccentricities. So I let her put my papers into neatly labeled folders. Since my handwriting was somewhat indecipherable, I had to stick close by and explain each page to her so she could file it properly.

When she finished, I had a file drawer every bit as beautifully organized as the file cabinet at Stonehaven. Not that I’d seen the inside of the one at Stonehaven lately—it’d been locked ever since Jeremy made the
mistake of asking me to retrieve the property tax records, and spent nearly a week refiling the mess.

I’d be more careful with this one. First, though, I’d have to figure out where she’d put everything. Still, the desktop looked very neat and clean, with the pencils and pens in a mug, the stapler and desk calendar arranged just so. Jeremy would have been impressed. Well, actually, he’d probably have a heart attack, but he made it a rule never to visit me during one of my human-world sojourns, so I didn’t need to worry about him seeing it.

After that, we had thirty minutes of Elena’s shift left, so I spent it making a semipermanent schedule for her. I took into consideration her course load, extracurricular activities, and study habits, giving her a flexible schedule with short shifts, sometimes two per day to reach her goal of fifteen hours a week.

“Wow, that’s great,” she said, reading it over. “This will work out perfectly.” She smiled up at me. “Thanks.”

I’d have enjoyed that smile more if I hadn’t known that I’d split her shifts to guarantee I’d see her at least once every weekday. And because it’d given me the excuse to ask her a ton of personal questions—what courses she was taking, what sports and activities she enjoyed, etcetera. Good enough, though. For now.

I soon discovered that my ingenious “teaching assistant job” plan was not as foolproof as I’d thought.

I was heading for the cafeteria to grab a second dinner, when a hand thudded onto my shoulder. I wheeled, jerking away.

“Professor Danvers.” My assailant flashed a greasy smile. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

When he sidled closer, I stepped back and crossed my arms. He moved closer still, checking over his shoulder for students, as if thinking I was getting out of their path. As body-language illiterate as most humans.

The man was middle-aged, dressed in corduroy pants and a tweed jacket that wouldn’t have buttoned over his gut no matter how hard he sucked it in. A professor. Had I met him yet? Maybe, but obviously not someone I’d deemed important, or interesting, enough to remember.

“I hear you have a new teaching assistant,” he said.

“What?” I hadn’t told anyone on staff.

He laughed. “Rumors travel fast. One of my students went by your office yesterday to see whether you needed a TA and you told her you already had one.” His fleshy features twisted into a mock frown. “Which seems odd, considering the department has no record of such a position being offered.”

“It wasn’t. I hired her myself. I’ll be paying her myself.”

“That’s…generous of you, Dr.—may I call you Clayton?”

I settled for a shrug he could interpret as he liked.

He continued, “While we appreciate you funding your own TA, surely you can see where that might raise certain questions.”

“Of what?”

He gave me a look, as if to say the answer should be obvious. I stood my ground and met his gaze with a level stare. He broke first, beads of sweat popping out across his broad forehead. I took a slow step forward, closing the narrow gap between us.

“Of what?” I said.

His gaze flicked to mine, then skittered away. Confusion fluttered behind his eyes, instinct warning him to back down, human reason wondering why.

“I hired her myself because she’ll be working for me,” I said. “As a research assistant for studies unconnected to the school. That seemed the only fair way to handle it.”

“Yes, well …” The man blinked, struggling to recoup his composure. “That’s all very sensible, I suppose, but there’s another problem. She’s taking one of your classes. If she graded papers for her own class—”

“She won’t.”

“Perhaps if she dropped out of your class—”

“That isn’t necessary. She won’t mark or grade papers or do any other teaching assistant duties for that class.” Did that mean she couldn’t cover my office hours? Shit.

A slow, reluctant nod. “I suppose that would be acceptable.” His gaze rose to mine. “But, remember, we must always take care when dealing with students, particularly attractive young women.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

He clapped me on the back. “Of course it won’t. I just thought I should mention it. Eyes will be watching. Eyes are always watching. And minds are always thinking—usually the worst. Don’t forget that.”

The next day I told Elena about her job changes. When I finished, she busied herself hanging up her backpack.

“Okay,” she said. “That makes sense. I guess I should have known that—”

“
I
should have known,” I said, boosting myself onto the edge of my desk.

A brief smile, one that almost met her eyes. “Not your fault. You’re as new at this as I am. So, uh, I guess we’ll need to rework that schedule. How many fewer hours—?”

“That won’t change. I’ll just give you more research work.”

The smile grew a quarter-inch, still hesitant. “Really? I mean, you don’t need to—”

“More time for research means more research I can do. Publish or perish, that’s the law of academics. We’ll stick to the original schedule, and if you need more hours, just ask.”

Her smile flashed full strength, so brilliant my breath caught.

“Thank you,” she said, started to turn away, then stopped. “Oh, and what about your student drop-ins? That’s more reception work than teaching assistance, right?”

“It is.”
Whew.

“We’re all set then. So—”

Someone rapped at the door. I inhaled and scowled. Student. One who’d been here before, on business no more pressing than a sudden need to have me confirm, in person, the test schedule I’d handed out on the first day.

Elena pointed at herself, then the door. Did I want her to answer it? My nod was so emphatic she choked back a laugh. Then she arched her brows and pointed to a spot behind the door, mouthing “Wanna hide?” with lips twitching in a teasing grin. When I hopped off the desk and ducked behind the door, a small laugh finally escaped her. She tossed me one last breathtaking smile, then answered the door.

Over the next week, our working relationship hit a comfortable stride. When it came to any type of personal relationship, though, the ramparts stayed firmly in place. The moment I worked a conversation away from business, her body language cues were strong enough for a blind man to read, and they screamed “Back off.” So I did.

But that left me with a quandary. I didn’t just
want
to get to know her better, I needed to—a need that gnawed at my gut worse than hunger, that woke me up in the middle of the night.

As for why I wanted to know so much about her, I tried not to think about that. It made me nervous. A weak word, but there’s no better way to describe it. Trying to understand my interest only brought on a strange feeling of apprehension. So I settled for accepting the situation at face value—I found her intriguing, and I was alone in Toronto, lonely, missing my Pack, and in need of companionship.

Yet it soon became obvious that she wasn’t letting our relationship deepen until I’d earned her trust. And that, I suspected, would take a while—at least as long as it would take me to learn to trust a human stranger. But the need to know more was so overwhelming that within a week it took me to a place I’d rather not have gone. I started following her.

I’m not proud of that. Studying her when she was in my office or classroom was one thing, but I crossed a line when I started to follow her. I told myself it wasn’t stalking. I didn’t want to hurt her or scare her. I just wanted to learn more about her.

Despite my best justifications, I hated the way that following her made me feel, and after only a few evenings of it, I vowed to quit. Whether I would have been able to stick with that vow is debatable, but on that final night, fortune favored me with an alternative.

That evening, I spent an hour in the Laidlaw Library, sitting in a carrel, pretending to study a book I’d grabbed off the shelf. My real object of study sat at a table twenty feet away. Elena was working on an essay, driven from her dorm room yet again by her selfish roommate.

Her writing was going badly, a sentence stroked out for every two written, the strokes becoming harsher, angrier, each time. Any second
now she’d give up and…And then what? I knew how I’d work off my frustration, but how would she?

I peeked over my book. She leaned back, pen in hand, staring at the paper. Then she shoved the pages into her backpack, threw it over her shoulder, and strode out of the study area. I counted to ten and followed.

When Elena returned to her dorm, I felt a trickle of disappointment. Was that how she resolved her frustration? Give up and go home? Maybe she’d gone upstairs to blast her roommate, tell the brat that this was her room, too, and she wasn’t being run off. That’s what I would have done, but I suspected Elena wasn’t ready for that.

I’d just started back toward my apartment when I caught Elena’s scent on the breeze. I turned to see her hurrying across the dorm lawn, backpack over her shoulder, but carried higher, as if she’d emptied out the load of books. She crossed to the sidewalk, jaw set, gaze forward, ponytail bouncing with each firm stride, moving fast into the gathering darkness. I waited until she vanished around a building, then followed.

Elena cut through the campus up to Bloor Street, then headed west. Although many of the small stores had closed, the nightlife was heating up as people spilled from restaurants and wandered the streets looking for entertainment.

Elena had already eaten. Was she heading to a bar? A date maybe? The question brought a now familiar tightening in my gut. Of all the questions I had about Elena, this topic obsessed me more than most.

I was pretty sure there was no steady boyfriend at school. I’d managed a few casual questions about Friday- and Saturday-night plans, and usually found that they entailed hanging out with friends.

I’d never smelled a man on her. Did that mean there wasn’t one? Maybe he was going to school elsewhere or was working back at home…wherever Elena’s home was.

The answer to
that
question had proved the most elusive. She had to have someone who’d raised her, someplace she called home. Whenever I broached the topic, though, she changed the subject.

Elena passed through the bar and restaurant district without slowing. As the crowds waned, I had to pull farther and farther back, until I
was following her by scent, catching glimpses of her distant form only when she passed under a streetlight. Dusk had deepened to dark, yet she kept walking. At least two miles passed before she turned off. When I saw where she turned off, my heart did a double flip.

As I followed her trail into the park, I had to check my pace. I kept speeding up, anxious to see where she was going, hoping that I knew. I told myself I had to be wrong. Surely there was another good reason why she’d be here.

Like what? Nighttime lawn bowling league? Moonlight skinny-dipping? I knew where she was going.

When she ducked behind a building, I thought I was wrong. But then she stepped out again, the jeans and long-sleeved jersey gone, replaced by shorts and a T-shirt. She looked around the dark, empty park, then headed for the hiking path.

Near the head of the trail, she stopped. Another scan of her surroundings, more careful this time, head tilting to listen. She took something from her backpack, and tucked the bag beneath some undergrowth. When she straightened, she gave another long, careful look around. Then she held out the small cylinder she’d removed from the bag and pressed a button. A blade shot out. A nod of satisfaction, and she snapped it shut again, cupped it in her palm, walked to the head of the trail, and began her warm-up exercises.

When she finally stopped her stretches, she looked around one last time, then faced the trail, took a deep breath, and vaulted forward, off and running.

For a moment, I stood there, hidden in the trees, watching her. Only when she disappeared around a corner did I snap from my reverie and find a changing place of my own.

I
CHANGED IN A SMALL CLEARING, AS DEEP IN
the strip of woods as I could get. When I finished, I stretched, front paws sliding out as far as I could reach. My skin itched, like clothes kept in the closet too long, dusty and stale. More than any other, I hated this part of being away from home—Changing in the shadows, furtive, always on alert. A dangerous undertaking, meaning it couldn’t be undertaken any more than necessary. Not like at Stonehaven, where I could Change anytime the urge struck.