I stared at him until he shut the door behind him, and bitterness curled around my rib cage until I couldn’t breathe.
I dropped the candy into the trash and dug my flask out of my suitcase.
Chapter 20
“My ass is gonna be so flat by the time we get out of this car, I’m going to have to blow it up with a bicycle pump.” Lily leaned forward to rub her lower back.
I bit my tongue to keep from telling her that nothing would make her ass less than perfect. It was too early to get coldcocked, especially by a hot girl.
Instead, I fished for my hat on Em’s floorboard, retrieved it, and pulled it down over my eyes. My sunglasses weren’t doing enough to fight the remnants of last night’s poor choices.
Dru had a college friend who worked at the Peabody Hotel, and she’d comped a suite for us. Em made us leave at the crack of dawn so we could go straight to the school. It was still early when we parked outside the administration building. Bennett University sat on the eastern outskirts of Memphis, and the boundary surrounded almost a hundred acres of forest and academia.
“It’s like I’m in the English countryside,” Lily said as we drove through the open iron gates that led onto the property. The campus was more fairy-tale village than college. Gothic arches, dark patches of forest, cobblestone sidewalks. Everything was green, gold, and shades of red.
I slid out of my seat and walked around to open Lily’s door. She managed to tear her eyes away from the scenery. “What is this? Chivalry?”
“No. You have the Hot Tamales.” I held out my hand. “I need a hit.”
She shoved the box into my stomach and the connection made a loud crushing noise. “Hot Tamales. Atomic Fireballs. Sizzling Cinnamon Jelly Bellys. Red Hots. I’m surprised you have any taste buds left. Or teeth.”
“Do I make the obvious hot-stuff joke here, or refrain?”
“Refrain.”
She grabbed a square, padded canvas bag from the glove box and slid out of the car. After unzipping the bag, she took out her camera, unscrewed the lens cap, and started snapping.
“Shouldn’t we be thinking about what we need to do next?” I asked Em, watching Lily walk away.
“No. Let her go,” Em said from beside me. Michael was still in the car. Checking in with Dad, I was sure. “She’ll get the buzz out of her system in a minute or two.”
“Is she always like this?”
“Yep. She gets kind of possessed. Or obsessed.”
Even though she was in earshot of the conversation, Lily never wavered, focusing her attention on a single yellow leaf hanging on to the end of a tree branch. She lay flat on her back in the grass to take a shot from below, and then climbed halfway up the trunk to take one from above.
“She’ll catch a glimpse of something she wants to shoot and she’s gone. If not physically, like hanging off the edge of a building or scaling the side of a mountain for a perfect shot, then mentally. She frames shots and fiddles with depth of field and apertures and generally does her thing until she realizes a world exists outside her pictures.”
“Is she good?”
“Unbelievable.” Em smiled like a proud parent. “You’ve seen the photographs in Murphy’s Law.”
“Those are hers?” I asked, remembering how amazing they were. “Those photos are masterpieces.”
“Yes, they are.”
Finally, Lily walked toward us, shaking bits of leaves and grass from her hair, grinning from ear to ear. Her joy was contagious. I was smiling, too.
“I could spend days here. All those curves and lines and shadows. How did I not know about this place before now?” She shoved her camera into her bag, pulled out a tangerine, and made an apologetic face at Em. “I’m sorry. You know how I get excited.”
“And that’s why we love you,” Em said.
“You okay?” Michael stepped out of the car, shut the door, and approached Em. He massaged her shoulders and neck. “I wish you’d let me drive part of the way.”
“Driving helped me focus on something besides what we’re about to do.” She relaxed under his touch.
“Can we go over the plan?” Lily tossed the tangerine peel, which she’d pulled off in a perfect, complete spiral, into the woods. The calm she’d managed to maintain in the car was fading. “I assume we’re still looking for information about Jack first, rather than Jack.”
“Do you still know where he is?” Em asked, tension entering her voice again. “Or where the pocket watch is?”
Lily popped a section of tangerine into her mouth and nodded. She’d held the atlas open the whole way in the car, her hands constantly returning to the page. “By the river. I think I’ll know exactly where, once we get closer.”
“Lily and I will go check in with the admissions office, and then try to find Jack’s paperwork.” Michael held up the key card Dune had made for him. It was supposed to guarantee entrance to the file storage room. “Kaleb, I think you and Em should go to the physics department to see if you can get any information about Jack and his time here and, if the opportunity presents itself, maybe get some information on Teague and Chronos.”
“Why are Kaleb and I going together instead of you and me?” Em leaned back on his chest and looked up at him.
That didn’t burn.
“Because if I go with you, we can both ask questions, and that’s it. Kaleb’s perception is invaluable in a situation like this.”
“Aww, thanks for noticing,” I said.
“As long as Lily’s cool with it.” Em shrugged.
Lily nodded. “Fine.”
“Okay.” Michael sounded relieved. “The head of the physics department is named Gerald Turner. He’s on campus today, and he has office hours right now.”
All the curves and lines and shadows Lily was so excited about became even more evident as we crossed the campus to the science building.
Gothic architecture, pointed archways, and cool gray stone made me feel like I was in another place and time instead of five minutes away from downtown Memphis. “Hey,” I said, pointing up. “There’s a bell tower. Where’s Quasimodo?”
“Look,” Em said, also pointing up. “It’s a flying buttress!”
“A what?” I cocked my head to the side.
“Never mind.”
We entered the building and approached the science department. I took Em’s arm. “Walk behind me.”
“Kaleb Ballard. That hurts me in my feminism.”
“It has nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with the fact that a girl is sitting behind the counter,” I whispered, reaching for the doorknob.
“How do you know you’re her type?” Em asked doubtfully.
“I’m every girl’s type.” I ignored Em’s snicker, since I’d totally set myself up for it, and opened the door.
We made it past the gatekeeper in record time. Em’s snicker turned into an eye roll.
The bluesy sound of Muddy Waters poured into the hallway as we approached, along with the faint scent of pipe tobacco. We paused outside the cracked door, jumping when we heard a gruff voice.
“I can hear you lurking. Don’t just stand out there. Come on in. Office hours are posted; you’re well within the time frame.” The voice was deep, that of a lifelong smoker, or possibly James Earl Jones’s younger brother. “Twenty years in this department, and students still think my office hours are some kind of cosmic joke.”