Spell of the Highlander

Page 8

Sure enough, the professor had left her another message while she was in class, bringing his total in the past twenty-four hours to five (would somebody please either take that man’s phone away or knock him out with sedatives?), and thanked her for being “such a lovely assistant and helping out. Mark really does have his hands full, and I told him you would be happy to assist.”
Right. As if anyone had given her a choice. And as if Mark’s hands were any more full than hers. But the world of academia was, like the rest of the world in many ways, still an Old Boys’ School, and anytime Jessi began to forget that, life invariably gave her a refresher course.
Nudging the door open with her hip, Jessi pushed inside, leaving it ajar. Skirting the desk, she headed straight for the wall of bookshelves. She didn’t bother turning on the light, partly because she’d organized the office herself and knew exactly where to find the two books on Celtic Gaul that Professor Keene wanted, and partly because she was determined not to get distracted by the mirror, and the slow, relentless burn of questions it had ignited in her mind.
She’d made peace with that weird little trick of the eye she’d suffered on Friday—a product of nothing more than low light and exhaustion. But she was dying to know if the mirror was a genuine relic. How had the professor come across it? Was its origin provable? Had any valid dating been done? What were those symbols, anyway?
Jessi had a sticky memory—a useful ability in her field—and several of the symbols had gotten embedded in it from her single, cursory inspection. She’d been subconsciously pondering them since, wondering why they seemed so familiar, yet somehow . . . wrong. Trying to pinpoint where she’d seen something similar before. Her specialty was the archaeology of Europe from the Paleolithic to the “Celtic” Iron Age. Though the mirror was clearly of recent manufacture, she was titillated by the possibility that the frame might actually date to somewhere in the late Iron Age.
She knew herself well enough to know that if she took another look at the relic tonight, curiosity would get the best of her and the next thing, she’d be digging through the professor’s reference books trying to determine what the symbols were and doing her best to guesstimate a date. Been there, done that, she thought wryly. Blew an entire night without even realizing it, poring over one artifact or another, especially on those rare and glorious occasions the university was briefly entrusted with a collector’s piece for study or verification. She always paid for it double the next day. With that infernal stack of papers waiting for her, she couldn’t afford to waste any time. In and out, swift and efficient, was her plan and she was sticking to it.
She was just reaching up to pluck the two thick volumes from the shelf when she heard the soft snick of the door closing behind her.
She stiffened, froze midreach.
Then snorted and pulled the first book from the shelf. A draft. Nothing more. “No way. I am not getting all freaked out on campus again tonight. That blasted mirror is just a mirror,” she told the bookcase firmly.
“Actually, it’s not,” a smooth, faintly accented voice murmured behind her. “It’s far more than a mere mirror. Who else knows it’s here?”
Jessi gasped and turned around so fast that the book went flying from her hand, hit the wall with a solid whump, and slid to the floor. She winced. The professor was going to kill her if she’d spindled the spine; he was funny about his books, especially his hardbacks. Across the office, in the dim light afforded by the computer, she could just make out the silhouette of a man leaning back against the door, arms folded across his chest.
“Wh-what—wh-who—” she stammered.
Light flooded the room.
“I startled you,” the man said softly, dropping his hand from the wall switch.
Later Jessi would realize he’d merely noted a fact, not apologized.
She blinked against the abrupt increase in wattage, taking him in. His arms were crossed again; he leaned casually against the door. Tall and well built, he was extremely attractive. Longish blond hair was pulled back from a clean-shaven, classic face. He wore a dark, expensive tailored suit, a crisp shirt, a tasteful tie. His accent held distinct Slavic undertones, perhaps Russian, she mused. A young professor visiting from abroad? A speaker engaged by the university? “I didn’t realize anyone else was still in this wing,” she said. “Are you looking for Professor Keene?”
“The professor and I have already had our time together this evening,” he replied with the ghost of a smile.
An odd way of phrasing things; his comment passed through her mind absently, as she was still hung up on his opening gambit. She pounced on it, pursuing it eagerly: “What did you mean, ‘it’s far more than a mere mirror’? What do you know about it? Where is it from? Are you here to authenticate it? Or has it already been? What are the symbols? Do you know?”