ironically—Thor; a cheerful, round-cheeked classics professor named Holly; and a gaunt, aged relic of an art historian whom everyone called Dr. Young. Anna was pretty sure that wasn’t his name, more of a joke that’d stuck. The committee members acknowledged Anna when she came through the door, with nods from the two men, a little wave from Holly. Desiree made a mean little moue.
Lucius, on the other hand, whipped around in his chair and gave her a where the hell have you been? look liberally dosed with nerves.
He was tall and skinny, and typically moved with an awkward sort of grace. Now, though, sitting folded into the conference room chair, he looked pointy and angular, like a praying mantis that someone had bent the wrong way. Or maybe that was the strangeness of seeing him in a shirt and tie rather than his usual grad student uniform of bar-logo tee and ratty jeans. He’d traded his sandals for hiking boots that made a stab at formality, and somewhere over the past twelve hours had subjected his normally shaggy brown hair to an unfortunate trim that screamed “eight-dollar walk-in.”
The overall effect was one of quiet desperation.
Lucius had grown up in middle America, a dreamer misfit in a large extended family of jocks. He’d escaped to the university on a scholarship and had discovered Mayan studies when he’d taken an undergrad intro course on pre-Columbian civilization as a frosh, in a bid to avoid the foreign language requirement. In the nearly ten years since—four years as an undergrad and almost six as Anna’s grad student—he’d proven to be both the best and most frustrating student she’d ever dealt with. He was an intuitive epigrapher, able to tease out the most worn inscriptions and decipher them into translations that stood up remarkably well to scrutiny from even the toughest of critics, including her.
Unfortunately, that same level of intuition caused him to see patterns where there weren’t any—or, as in the case with the Nightkeeper myths, in places where she’d rather he not see them. When he saw such patterns, his scientific method sometimes went out the window while he focused on the answer he’d convinced himself was right, searching for evidence that proved his theory and ignoring anything that suggested otherwise.
That was not a good trait in a scientist, regardless of the field. Add to it his penchant for playing fast and loose with personal-property laws—like the time he’d broken into her office and stolen the codex fragment bearing the transition spell that’d nearly turned him into a makol—and he was something of a loose cannon.
The thing was, he was her loose cannon. He was sweet and funny, and when things had been at their worst with Dick, Lucius had been there for her to lean on. And if there had been a spark or two, neither of them had acted on the temptation. Instead they had let it deepen their working friendship until it was a strong, steady piece of her life. That, along with knowing he wouldn’t have come into contact with the codex fragment if she’d been more careful about keeping it hidden, meant there had been no real choice to be made when she’d faced Strike and Red-Boar over Lucius’s rigor-contorted body, while his eyes flickered from luminous green to hazel and back. She’d traded her normal life for his, and though she regretted the choice, she wouldn’t undo it. Nor would she admit to Strike just how much Lucius had changed in the months since his partial possession, becoming withdrawn and secretive. Hell, she was doing her best not to admit it to herself. What she hadn’t been able to ignore, however, was how Lucius had started focusing his research more on the things she’d managed to steer him away from in the past . . . like the zero date, and the few sketchy rumors of a superhuman race of warrior-magi sworn to protect mankind.
She’d made him promise not to go there during his thesis defense, knowing that Desiree would crucify him if he so much as breathed a word about things the establishment considered barely a step up from tinfoil hats and Area 51, namely the 2012 doomsday and the Nightkeepers. Which was why she sent him a warning look and mouthed, You promised.
He nodded, but there was something in his eyes that made her wonder whether he was accepting her warning or telling her to mind her own damn business.
“Since we’re finally all here,” Desiree said pointedly, “I’d like to get started. If that’s okay with Anna, of course.”
Bitch, Anna thought, but didn’t say. Instead she took the chair beside Thor and nodded. “By all means, let’s get started.”
By the time Lucius was about twenty minutes into his presentation, Anna was starting to relax a little, because he was sticking to the script, thank the gods. Then Desiree held up a hand, interrupting.
Lucius broke off in the middle of explaining his translation of a panel deep within the Pyramid of Kulkulkan at Chichén Itzá. “Yes?”
Desiree pointed to a badly eroded glyph at the lower right corner of the screen. “What about that one?”
Anna stiffened and tried to catch Lucius’s eye. Don’t do it, she mouthed. Say you don’t know.
He avoided her gaze, but answered carefully enough. “There’s some debate about that particular glyph.”
“We’re working on it,” Anna interjected. “As you can see, it’s not in the best condition, which unfortunately means that we may never have a conclusive answer. Or maybe we’ll find a second occurrence of the glyph in the future. Regardless, it should be considered outside the scope of this project.” Which was academia-speak for back off, bitch.
“Your opinion is noted, Professor Catori.” Desiree didn’t even glance at Anna; she kept her unblinking focus on Lucius, a predator sensing weakness. “However, it’s not really a question of scope; it’s a question of propriety. I’m well aware of what Mr. Hunt thinks this glyph represents, and frankly I’m not convinced that the university is best represented by an academician who publicly defends the validity of the Nightkeeper myth.”
Lucius’s color drained, and he sent Anna an oh, shit look.
“With all due respect,” she said quickly, “that is absolutely beyond the scope of this thesis. There’s no reference to that particular myth anywhere in the text or supporting material.”
“With all due respect,” Desiree parroted, “it’s my call what is and isn’t within the scope of this committee meeting.” She shuffled through a small pile of papers, pointedly pausing at what looked like a printed screen capture of a message board dialogue. Glancing at Lucius, she said, “You go by the screen name ‘LuHunt’ on a number of the 2012 doomsday bulletin boards, right?”
Anna would’ve protested again, but didn’t figure it’d get her anywhere. The best she could do would be to sit back and let this play out, hoping Thor, Holly, and Dr. Young would see there was an agenda at work that had nothing to do with Lucius’s skills as a Mayanist . . . and further hoping they’d say as much when she brought a formal university complaint against Desiree.
Lucius looked at her as if he expected her to say something, to defend him, but what more could she do? To an extent, he’d dug his own grave. She’d told him to stay the hell away from that crap until after his defense. If he’d been posting on message boards with the dooms-dayers, there wasn’t much she could do about it now.
When he saw there would be no help forthcoming, his expression darkened, something shifting in his face so he almost looked like a different person—older and less open—as he met Desiree’s smirk with a glare. “I don’t see how my online presence should concern this committee. I’ve never put myself forth as a representative of this university or a member of Professor Catori’s staff while on those boards.”