By Jove (29 page)

Julian tried to pull her into his arms, but she struck out with her fists and jerked away from him. “My dearest Theodora,” he soothed. “I wasn’t lying. I
have
been nearly sick with longing for you.”

“So you pulled the cheapest, meanest trick you could possibly think of—oh, God, and I thought—I thought it was my G-Gr—” Nausea gripped her stomach.

“Just as someone cheated me?” He held a hand up and waved it. Theo looked up and lunged for it, but he yanked the hand holding Grant’s ring out of her reach and laughed. “No, no, little tigress. It’s mine now. No more midnight trips to visit Mr. Proctor’s dreams and look for his hiding place. I’m getting most annoyed with this ‘Friend’ who keeps telling you things he shouldn’t. Now I’ll have to hide this little trinket someplace else. But won’t I have some interesting new memories to share with our dear Grant?”

She lunged at him again, but he caught her wrists and held them imprisoned. “It’s too late, Theodora. Give up now. You’re not going to win. How can you, against me? It’s less than three weeks until commencement, and you’re no closer to finding our esteemed Mr. Proctor than you were in March.”

“All right, then. Assuming I don’t find Grant, what’s to stop me from just leaving on May 14? What if I just get in my car and—” Theo stopped. Julian’s ring on her left hand was starting to glow. Before she could do more than register the fact, thin silver cords sprouted from it like predatory vines, binding her. She stared at them in horror.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, for obvious reasons. That particular little enchantment doesn’t need me to be present to work. As soon as you made any attempt to leave me, something similarly unpleasant would happen. And if you do somehow depart before commencement and break your agreement, I will also break mine, and Mr. Proctor’s eventual mortality might not be so eventual. Do I make myself clear?” He gestured, and the cords vanished with a little puff of silvery smoke. Theo rubbed her arms, feeling sick.

“Oh, while I have you here,” he continued in a conversational tone. “I just wanted to make sure that your passport is up to date.”

“My passport?” She stared at him. “What does it have to do with any of this?”

“Our trip to Greece this summer, of course. It’ll be so much easier if we’re not worrying about such mortal nonsense as passports at the last minute. Our minds will be on other things. At least mine will.” He blew her a kiss and vanished.

Theo rose and showered, unable to face returning to her bed where the rumpled bedclothes mocked her, and walked the campus until dawn.

Chapter Twenty-One

Somehow—later she was never quite sure how—Theo stumbled through the next weeks of papers, exams, and teaching duties in her first-year class. Olivia helped by grading her class papers and figuring out rough grades based on homework and tests, and Dr. Waterman didn’t require a paper or exam from her for his Rhetoric class. He called her into his office the day after her horrible encounter with Julian.

“Your first-year class’s success is more than sufficient proof that you are a master of the language. Not to mention your performance in my seminar. Besides” —his voice dropped, and he turned to peer shyly at one of the fish tanks in his office— “it’s the only thing I can do to help. I wish there were more. Have you had any luck?”

Theo shook her head. “I don’t want to say anything, Dr. Waterman. I don’t want to get you into trouble the way I did Marlowe. Amphitrite would never forgive me.”

“She would, and more. She and I both hope you’ll come to visit us this summer, no matter—no matter what happens.”

Still, there were papers and exams for her other classes to worry about, not to mention Julian’s continued psychological warfare. A week before commencement, Theo was horrified to find an invitation in her mailbox to a final department symposium, issued in her and Julian’s names in celebration of their union, to be held on the day after commencement. Paper-clipped to it was a note in Julian’s hand, offering to help her pack up her things and move them to his house “to save time”. She glared so hard at the note that it burst into flames, and June tutted and frowned and made a great show of turning on the fan in her office to disperse the smoke and smell.

Theo went outside to sit on the garden bench next to Marlowe’s vine. She had set a ward around it to keep the university groundskeepers from cutting it back, and had conscientiously fed it ambrosia each week and watered it daily, and it had grown lush and leafy. She wondered with a sad little smile if Marlowe would be a foot taller and have a beard to his knees when he took his proper form again in a few days.

Olivia walked past her into Hamilton Hall, head bowed in thought, but Theo did not call out to her. They’d had an uncomfortable discussion the night before when Theo, nearly in tears, had asked Olivia if she thought Julian would let her say good-bye to Grant on commencement day.

Olivia had rounded on her angrily. “I’d thought you’d be saying good-bye to Julian, not Grant. Are you giving up?”

“No! But—” Theo looked imploringly at her, and saw her own sadness and weariness reflected in Olivia’s eyes. She had taken over the bulk of searching these last days while Theo had slogged through her schoolwork. If Olivia was relying on
her
to keep their hopes up, then she must be despairing as well.

Theo sat for a few more moments by Marlowe, smiling sadly again as his leaves rustled softly at her on this windless late afternoon. “Thank you,” she whispered to him. “I know what you’re trying to say.” She patted his trunk, and went back to her room to sleep. Only in sleep could she escape the sense of impending doom that hung over her, closer with each passing hour.

…

On the day before commencement, Theo sat alone in the faculty lounge, not eating a salad. Well, there was one thing. She’d had so little appetite lately that she’d lost five of those extra fifteen pounds she’d been wanting to lose. But further reflection that Julian would be the only one to appreciate this fact merely removed the little cheer she took from the thought. Besides, Julian admired her figure. “Modern women are far too skinny. Nothing to hold on to,” he had commented once, sliding his hands appreciatively over her. “You, however, my lovely Theodora—” She resolved grimly to lose another twenty, just out of spite.

It was lonely sitting by herself. The indefatigable Olivia was out searching the Biological Sciences Building again, now that the labs were mostly closed with the end of classes. Marlowe of course was not there; she had not seen Renee for days—even Paul Harriman might have been nice to have around just now, if only for distraction’s sake. She slumped in her chair and closed her eyes.

“Is this seat taken?” said a chilly voice.

Theo opened her eyes and nearly fell off her chair. June Cadwallader stood next to her table, carrying a diet soda and surveying her with a disapproving stare. She took a quick glance around the room: it was nearly two, and most of the tables were empty.

“Er, no it’s not,” she replied uncertainly, and sat up as June seated herself and opened her soda. She took a drink and stared meditatively at Theo for a few minutes.

“You’ve given up,” she announced.

Theo stared back. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. You’ve given up. I can see it in your face. You’re going to let him win. I’d expected better from you. It was hardly worth the effort I went to, then.” She shook her head contemptuously.

“The effort you—?” What interest could June have taken in her search? Unless— “You sent the notes from A Friend,” she said slowly.

“Of course I did, stupid girl. Who else would have? I thought you might have gotten further than you did, with Olivia helping you. I suppose Proctor’s diminished mortal state made it hard for him to help you find him.” She shook her head once more and tsked.

Theo swallowed hard. “But why help me? I thought you hated me?”

“I do,” June replied calmly. “I loathe you. But I loathe the thought of Julian’s winning at anything even more. If I can’t have him, I don’t see why he should have anyone else. That’s why I’m going to help you again, though you don’t deserve it.”

Theo’s head began to whirl. She opened her mouth to speak, but June forestalled her. “Eat that lunch. You’re going to need your strength. You’ve let yourself get into such a state that I doubt you have the fortitude right now to rescue a pencil stub.”

Theo took a bite of her salad, her mind racing. How could she eat now, when there was hope of finding Grant? And June—how did she know where Grant was? Had she misjudged her all these months? She started to float above her seat, just an inch or two, and yanked herself back down, holding onto her chair with one hand.

June watched her with a grim expression. “Don’t get any false impressions. I’m not doing this because I like you, or because I feel sorry for you. I just want you out of my hair.”

Theo put down her fork. “All right, if we’re being so honest—why do you want to get rid of me so badly? You and Julian have been apart for seventeen hundred years, according to him.”

June’s face remained impassive, but one of her hands clenched slightly. “I want you gone because I don’t want things to change. Life has been very comfortable here for a good hundred and fifty years. If you and Julian go off and drop your litter of so-called heroes, our nice quiet existence here is finished.”

Theo looked at her. “And?”

“And?” June imitated her rudely. Then she looked down at her soda. “And I don’t want to see you as the new queen of the Gods at his side. So long as things stay as they are, I’ll be the one who’s remembered as the queen of Olympus. Not some upstart once-human wench who can barely control her own powers.” She looked pointedly at Theo’s left hand, which was still tethering her to her seat.

“Thank you,” murmured Theo, savagely spearing a piece of cucumber. She was not sure whether or not to believe June. This could be her—or even Julian’s—idea of a joke. She looked up and met June’s cold brown eyes.

“Tell me something. How is it that you can help me, when Marlowe got turned into a grapevine just for talking to me, and when everyone else has been avoiding me like I’m infectious?”

For the first time, June smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “Because I wasn’t at Julian’s awful little party. I’m not bound by the rules he set that night. Olivia was right about that: even the king of gods and men can sometimes make mistakes.” She smiled again, and Theo felt a surge of something that she had never again thought she’d feel: not just hopefulness, but real hope.

She pushed back her seat and stood up, clutching the table edge to keep from levitating again. “All right. I’m willing to believe you. Will you help me again, please?” she said, making a clumsy bow.

June looked at her. There was a reluctant hint of approval in her eyes. “At least your manners are good. All right. Come back to my office with me. There’s something there I need to give you.” She rose, waited while Theo paid for her lunch, and stalked out of the room, not looking behind her.

As they headed up the stairs in Hamilton Hall to the offices, June motioned her back behind while she peered through the door. “All clear. Come on.” She moved swiftly and silently to her office, and closed the door behind them.

“Try not to be seen by anyone. You know that Julian will be on his guard so close to tomorrow,” she said, fumbling in a desk drawer.

“I’d guessed that,” Theo said quietly, but her heart was starting to pound and her palms sweat. Was Olivia back yet, so she could help? Surely she must be done in the Biology Labs by now. She closed her eyes and prepared to send out a call to her.

“Stop that!” June hissed, looking up with a ferocious scowl. “Do you want everyone in the building to hear you?”

“But—”

“But nothing, idiotic girl. If Olivia doesn’t get back here on her own, you’ll have to go alone. Here.” She finished digging in her drawer, and pulled out something round and brown.

It was a ball of twine.

Theo had seen her and Andrew Barnes using miles of it to pack up items from the museum being lent to other institutions. She had also found it wedged into her mailbox at least a dozen times. But why twine? What significance did a ball of twine…then it hit her. She took a deep breath. “It
is
a labyrinth, then.”

June looked faintly surprised. “You knew that?”

“I’d guessed. This just clinches it.”

“Then why haven’t you gone to find him yet?”

“Because I don’t know where it is. I thought it might be one when I went back and looked at where Julian stood before he made Grant disappear—I saw a picture of Theseus and Ariadne in the mosaics.”

“Not bad,” June said grudgingly. “But I’d go back down and have another look, if I were you.”

Theo paused and frowned. “I thought you said that you weren’t there that night? How do you know where he stood and what he might have seen?”

June sniffed and patted the knot of hair at the back of her head. “I wasn’t there. Not in person, anyway. Do you take me for a complete fool? Who do you think hires—and pays—the fauns to serve at symposia? Go and look again. But be careful.”

Theo slipped down the stairs to the Great Room, her feet barely touching the ground. The miserable old cow could just have told her, couldn’t she, and saved her some time? But then she couldn’t keep calling her names. At least she wasn’t going down without a fight. She chucked the bust of Octavian under the chin as she passed it on the landing.

The Great Room was empty, save for the usual beautiful golden afternoon light. She hurried around, staring intently at the floor. Where were Proteus and Theseus again? Julian had been—hmm, there, was it? Damn, that was right—she’d have to move the furniture again. An impatient wave of her hand sent the chairs and sofas scurrying into a corner, where they huddled nervously. The tables quickly followed, but the lamps, still tethered to the walls by their cords, flung themselves upward and out of her way, hanging in the air like oddly shaped birthday balloons.

There. Not far from the fireplace Theo found Proteus, and then the wreath pattern where she guessed Julian had stood. Yes, to her right were Theseus and Ariadne. So where else should she look? There was nothing ahead of her…She stood for a moment in a square of sunshine from one of the windows, and thought. What about the wreath itself? She backed slowly away from it, still staring. No, it was just nondescript leaves in a stylized pattern. What, then? What had she missed? She frowned down at the floor, and then she saw it.
Stupid girl
, she could hear June’s voice say, and she nearly agreed with her.