40

The Lit building was one of the oldest on Milton’s campus, and the professors’ offices were shoved into the basement level, each boasting a sliver of a window at sidewalk level. Rindt’s office was at the far end of a dark hall.

Lexie suspected the literary types on campus liked this subterranean lifestyle, cozy in their caves, safe from the glares and blares of the outside world. Walking the dark and echoing hall, Lexie thought she might like it too. She briefly contemplated a literature major, which would mean three more years of reading, Lexie thought with a grimace. Then she recanted; three more years of anything would be nice.

Lexie’s homework had done itself, or at least it felt like it had. She had copied down the script from her mother’s quilt, character by character, and then—in a different font—typed out the translation.

As an epilogue to her paper, she explained the origin of the quilt and tried, obliquely, to describe her translation process. Her least ambitious hope was that it would impress Rindt. Her greatest was that it would make him trust her enough to admit he left her the book and the note. Some small part of her believed that if she ingratiated herself to him, he’d pick up the phone and call off tomorrow night’s Rare wolf attack. He spoke their language; he must be able to level with them.

Lexie was too caught up in her absolution fantasy to notice the scent bathing the hallway. Werewolf senses were ineffective when distracted by the imagination of a desperate girl.

Rindt’s office light cast a rectangular shaft through the frosted glass of his door. It slashed across the flecked linoleum floor like the harsh cut of lamplight in a noir film. Lexie was the troubled dame—she couldn’t cut it as the femme fatale. All she had to do was walk through that door and dump her problems into someone else’s lap.

“Professor Rindt?”

She knocked first, and then she turned the knob. Her imagination was no competition against the scent now. The ammonia of piss, the musk of sweat, but most of all, the metal tang of blood, pummeled her.

She flinched, not against the scent, but in preparation for the gory sight sure to follow. But there was no body, only a splatter of fluids on the floor and bits of hair and bone. Lexie bent to her knees and peered into the puddle like she was scrying. Smooth streaks of clean floor interrupted the brownish-crimson puddle. Tongue marks. The blood was licked clean.

Lexie staggered to her feet, choking back bile. Professor Rindt had been eaten. She reached for the door and slammed it. She sniffed hesitantly. It had been over a day since the Rare had been here. She scoured the room for clues, skirting around the puddle. Beneath the bookcase she found a tooth. With a grimace, she pocketed it.

The upper-left drawer of Rindt’s desk was locked. Lexie jimmied it. When it wouldn’t budge, she took her knife and slid it into the latch, torqueing it. It popped open with a metal clang.

Lexie half-expected to find another coded note when she opened the drawer, a posthumous set of instructions. Instead she found a pewter letter opener, two hundred dollars, and a photograph. Lexie flipped on the desk lamp. The photo was self-taken; Rindt’s blurred bare arm filled the left side of the frame. He was shirtless, his vividly-colored tattoos even more elaborate than Lexie would have guessed. He whispered into the ear of a young woman nestled in the crook of his free arm. She wore a white bra and a bright smile. Bree Curtis.