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Augustus had very little time to react. But—he couldn’t run all the way back to Fitzfleming’s without drawing attention, and even heading back to his office so quickly might be noticed, especially if it looked like he was running from the research assistant block.

Nevertheless, appearing right outside the door would be too suspicious even for him. He quickly turned and sprinted down the hall to round the corner, waited a few moments until he heard the door open and close, and then came back around casually. Yujin seemed surprised, and Augustus fixed a similar expression on his own face, which he allowed to melt into a smile and a wave.

It wasn’t the least suspicious thing he could do, but he was trading one suspicious option for another, and he was fine with being a little suspicious. 

After all, apparently Yujin thought he was ominous or whatever anyway. He still wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or annoyed by that.

“Sir? I thought you were going to talk to Fitzfleming,” Yujin said, coming over. “Was she out?”

Augustus didn’t have to pretend to be annoyed about this. He wrinkled his nose, shaking his head. “Unfortunately, she was in. She didn’t want to talk to me, though. She kicked me out.”

Yujin seemed to let out a breath at that. “Well … that’s better than it could be,” they said. 

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a lot to tell you,” Yujin said. “Maybe not here.”

Augustus nodded. Everything was falling into place. “Let’s go for lunch, my treat,” he declared. “I have to eat something quick before office hours anyway.”

Yujin seemed surprised. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure the last time he’d treated them to anything. Maybe a coffee a few months ago? It couldn’t have been longer than that, could it? But then again, hadn’t it been to warm up from the snow? Maybe it was longer than he’d thought. “Sure,” Yujin said, after a moment. “I’d love lunch.”

The best place for lunch was The Magician’s Appetite, a little café just off campus—but very near the professor office block, since he’d be cutting it close to get back. Augustus gestured to Yujin to walk with him and began leading the way there. “What do you have after this? Just working on your own things for a while?”

“Yeah, for the afternoon,” Yujin said. “Nothing too exciting, I don’t think.”

“Anything else later?”

“Why, do you need me for something?”

Hmm. Avoidant. Then again, he’d probably be the same if his older professor was asking about his hobbies, when Augustus was Yujin’s age. He was fairly sure he had not had good hobbies back then. “No, not at all. I just realize I don’t ask you much about your life, and that’s wrong of me. I know I demand things from you at all hours, and I don’t want it to impact your life in a negative way.”

Yujin didn’t seem to know how to react to that, watching their feet as they walked. “O-oh, that’s …” 

To Augustus’s surprise, he found he meant what he was saying. “I’ve noticed you’ve been very antsy since the break-in. And that’s understandable. I’m on edge too. But is there anything I can do to help you?”

Yujin almost jerked their head around, staring at Augustus with eyes that Augustus realized were quite uncanny, with an unusual white line around the edge of their dark irises. Had he never looked them in the eye before? “O-oh. I … thank you.” They sounded genuinely moved, almost a little choked, and turned away again quickly, ducking their head again. “I’ll be fine, I think. Nothing like a robbery to put you on edge.”

One they’d committed, or one they’d stumbled over the end result of? Or both? Interesting that they were so moved, though. 

They arrived at the café before he could decide how to follow up on that, and they both placed their orders at the counter before going to sit. Yujin placed a remarkably large order—an amount of food that Augustus would have for dinner, and he never skimped on his own meals. He didn’t comment on it; he was curious if the extra snacking had some sort of magical origin, of course, but Yujin was a young adult and people needed to eat to live. Heaven knows Augustus enjoyed doing so, and people who had decided it was their business to make comments about it were the bane of his existence when he was younger. “Now,” he said as they sat. “Tell me what Feather told you about Soren Kincaird.”

Yujin nodded, doing so, continuing to talk between bites as their meals arrived.

The gist of it was that Soren had gotten his undergraduate degree at the Twent College of Arcane Arts, as Augustus had assumed. He had taken seven years to get through the program, because he had a gap in the middle. He got his Doctorate at Jollifer’s University after another two-year break between degrees. Both were good schools, with excellent reputations, and to Feather’s understanding, he’d done quite well at both.

Feather hadn’t know the cause behind either of the gaps. She’d pointed out (Yujin said) that undergraduate school could be hard, especially in arcane arts, where you had to have such a strong mastery of multiple fields even to move into magics. He could have had an ailing parent, or have been sick himself. She wasn’t going to pry into her professor’s past like that.

Beyond that, there still weren’t too many specifics. He’d  worked at Twent prior to this job, but abruptly left. Feather didn’t know why—maybe von Beekeeper had found a way to lure away a promising professor, or maybe something else. Feather had added—something Yujin said they found interesting, and Augustus had to agree—that Soren had apparently come to this school due to “personal reasons”, which he hadn’t told Feather about. She’d thought it was weird, but not enough to pry into. 

Soren’s personal research appeared to be in the space beyond the planes, “which I thought was interesting because it’s sort of what you’re working on too, just from a different angle,” Yujin said. “He’s apparently working on a paper about why nobody has ever successfully summoned anything from beyond the known planes, and if it means there’s nothing out there after all, just a void. But Feather also said that none of the stolen books ended up in his office, so it doesn’t seem likely that he’s the thief. She said that Fitzfleming had asked after one of them, though.”

“Fitzfleming again,” Augustus said, finishing his meal. “Suspicious.”

“Definitely,” Yujin agreed. “You said she kicked you out? Did she say anything first?”

“She said she disagreed with me academically for personal reasons,” he said slowly. “And it would be better if I were in a different field. But that just is Structural Spiritualism talk. Perhaps.”

Yujin shook their head. “I don’t like it,” they said. “But it’s not evidence either. Unless you think it’s enough to take to the authorities?”

“I don’t know,” Augustus admitted. He sighed, pushing his plate back. “Thank you, Yujin. I’ve got a lot to think about. I’ve got to go but … listen.” He made eye contact with them again, deliberately. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

They seemed to tear up, blinking rapidly. “I … no, not really,” they admitted in a small, airless voice. “I’m dealing with a personal issue right now. But I will be fine, and I don’t want to talk about it. It shouldn’t affect my work. Okay?”

He didn’t have the time to push now. He had to get to his office. “Okay,” Augustus said gently. “But if you ever want to talk to me, I’ll listen.”

Yujin didn’t answer, so he just got up, patted their shoulder as he passed, and then hurried to his office.

Olivia was already waiting outside when he got there, arms crossed, tapping their foot. She lifted her brows as he hurried up. “Your doors say you have office hours now,” she said, with no greeting. “Are you sure now’s a good time to go meet Kincaird?”

[What should Augustus do? Comment with details.
If you go with Olivia, you’re likely to meet Soren. What do you want
to ask him about, and how do you want to approach the meeting?]

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Augustus had almost never been so tempted to commit mischief, and he had certainly gotten up to his fair share before. It would be so funny to take the book and put it back in his office in an obvious place, just to watch Yujin sweat. Yujin did know that he had keys to their study room, sure, but he never used them (given that it would be incomparably rude to go through Yujin’s space while they were out), so they probably wouldn’t even think about it. It’d be very ‘murderer hallucinating bood, that guilty stain and proof of your crime’ of him to do. And there’d probably be some real data he could get from Yujin’s reaction.

But … however fun that option was, he knew the more cautious idea was likely to just put the book back where he’d found it. If he needed it later, he knew where it was, and it allowed him to hold back from confronting Yujin with the information he had. He still had an incomplete picture of what was truly going on here, and being able to choose when to reveal that he knew Yujin had the book would likely give him more options. Besides, he probably didn’t need to absolutely torment his poor assistant to get answers. 

Regretfully, he carefully wedged the book back in behind the side drawers, and gently slid the middle drawer shut. Then he headed out of the room and locked back up—leaving no sign of his passage.

Now, to go eavesdrop on the tail end of Yujin’s conversation with Soren’s research assistant, Feather St. Saint. 

Augustus continued along the hallway of the  research assistants’ study room block, keeping an eye out for the names next to the doors, since he wasn’t familiar with where she worked; he’d only just happened upon her name when he saw the shared workroom door open down the hall, and a vaguely-familiar research assistant exited, coming back this way.

It would be too obvious now if Augustus stopped and listened, and there was nothing in the hall that he could pretend to be occupying his attention with. Instead, he continued down the hall, nodding at the assistant as they passed each other—he was one of the ones who Augustus had eavesdropped on at dinner, Olivia Spiders’s research assistant, River Brooklake. He continued down the hall until a glance back showed that Brooklake had disappeared into his study room, then looped back quickly to plant himself outside of St. Saint’s room, leaning against the wall and straining to listen.

“—did you need all that for anyway?” a young woman, who he presumed to be St. Saint, was asking. Augustus had clearly missed all of the sharing of biographical information, but Yujin was going to report that back to him anyway.

“I wish I knew,” Yujin said ruefully. “My boss wants to know, so here I am. I don’t know that it’s actually about the missing books, he said it like he was trying to get one over on me, but I can’t figure out what else it’d be about. Unless he’s into Kincaird and is trying to get information to increase his chances or something.”

“Wait, missing books?” St. Saint sounded alarmed.

“Yeah, haven’t you heard? Most everyone is talking about it at this point, Pennywright’s been going around talking to all kinds of professors about it. Someone stole a bunch of his books. I was the one who noticed, actually. It really freaked me out,” Yujin added, voice dropping into an uneasy tone.

“Why? ‘Cause what if you’d been there?”

“Yeah, exactly! I was in on my day off to drop off a paper for him, and like, I do that sort of thing all the time. I’m always in his office at weird hours to help find him things or put things back at his request or making notes for him while he’s off calling his mysterious husband. What if the thief had shown up while I was there?”

“You’d probably just have scared them off?” But St. Saint sounded even more uneasy now, likely imagining being in that situation herself. “But …”

“Right, we don’t know. This person could be armed.” Yujin’s voice dropped lower, so Augustus had to strain to hear. “And if it’s one of the other professors, they wouldn’t want it to get out that they were a thief. They might get dismissed. You know half the people here wouldn’t think twice about murder.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Damn, Yujin. So which books were taken? Was it all one subject? Kincaird studies the same field as your guy, so someone might try to get into his office too.”

“Shadows of Fear in the Fearful Shadow, or whatever it’s called, by Mahogany Mahoney. And some small folios and books about planar entities? It’s hard to say exactly since I was just noticing that things were missing in most cases, rather than remembering what was supposed to be there. But they seemed to all be about planar creatures and what places they come from.” 

A pause then, probably them sharing their reactions through expressions alone. Augustus noticed Yujin hadn’t mentioned the missing ghost book, though technically it might fall under that vaguely descriptive umbrella. 

Yujin continued finally: “Part of the reason I was so freaked out is I’d just dropped Fear-Shadow off the day before, so it was just such a narrow window that the thief could have broken in. Anyway, keep your keys on you. I’m pretty sure someone got ahold of mine and either used them or made copies. Hoping they didn’t have copies, though, that’d mean they could get into my study too.”

“You armed?” she asked.

“I’ve been carrying a knife now, yeah. Not that I know it’ll do much good. Anyway, you think someone’ll target your boss too?”

“I don’t know!” St. Saint sounded pretty freaked out. “Kincaird hasn’t built up much of a collection since coming to this school, though obviously he has some books of his own. Did you say Shadows of Fear from the Shadow Fear … uhhh, that’s not the full title. But like. That one?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Fitzfleming asked last week if Kincaird had a copy of that!” 

“Fitzfleming did?” Yujin asked. “Oh no, my boss is talking to Fitzfleming right now. I hope he’s okay.”

“Should we—check?”

“I don’t know. If they were fighting, I guess the whole school would know about it,” Yujin pointed out. “I’m sure it’s fine … I’ll go there right after this, though. I was going to meet him again anyway. It’s weird that Fitzfleming would want it, though, right? She doesn’t really work in that field. She’s all about the spirits of this world.”

“Yeah, I thought that too,” St. Saint said. “But then again, she did recently write that paper about maintaining the academic divide of earthly spirits from unearthly ones, I just figured she might want to write an addendum or something.”

“Mm,” Yujin said, in a kind of pained voice. “It’s probably just that, but everything looks suspicious now. Fitzfleming and Pérez know that I’m the one who sources books for my boss, so they’re always bothering me about what I’ve got hold of. So I’m surprised Fitzfleming didn’t ask me first. Even Spiders got in on harassing me recently.”

“Spiders?!”

“Olivia.”

“Ohhhh. I thought—”

A snort. “Yeah. She was really questioning me about my boss and what he’d been up to lately. If I’d noticed anything weird.”

“Like you’re doing with mine?”

“Yeah, but I get paid to do it and you’re not going to tell anyone,” Yujin said. “Otherwise why would you have answered my questions?”

“I guess I can keep it under my hat,” St. Saint allowed magnanimously. Augustus tried to decide if he should be worried about that. “So had you noticed anything weird about your boss?”

“Yeah, I mean … I guess I have. But I didn’t tell Spiders that. And the problem was …”

“… the problem was?” St. Saint prompted, when Yujin didn’t continue.

“It’s nothing.” 

Oh come on, Augustus pleaded silently.

“No, seriously, what’s wrong?” St. Saint asked, apparently alarmed by whatever she was seeing.

“Sorry … I’m fine. They just said something that read as kind of … threatening me,” Yujin said hesitantly. “But professors do that all the time. I don’t think they even know they’re doing it. Even my boss does it. And, like, Pérez threatens me whenever we talk. It’s like he needs to do it to live.”

“I’ve noticed that about Pérez,” St. Saint agreed. “It’s like those sharks that have to keep moving to breathe. If he’s not superior and ominous at least once every sentence, the curse will get him.”

“You probably don’t get to be a professor unless you like being ominous,” Yujin said with a tone of finality. 

“Kincaird doesn’t tend to be ominous,” St. Saint said. “Or he hasn’t been yet, anyway. You sure you don’t want to stay for another cup of tea?”

Yujin groaned. “No, I should be going. I need to go rescue my boss from Fitzfleming, I guess. And I don’t want to take too long with it, I’ve got a date later.”

“Well, cheers,” St. Saint said.

That was the sound of Yujin’s chair scraping back. Augustus took a step back from the door, trying to decide what to do. Should he act like he’d just shown up and was waiting for them, or run all the way back to Fitzfleming’s? Or go to his office and pretend like he’d been there since Fitzfleming had kicked him out early? Or just… avoid Yujin, to give himself more time to think?

If he did talk to Yujin now, what should he ask about—beyond getting the obvious rundown from them about Soren’s personal history, like he’d asked for already?

Also, Augustus was becoming rapidly aware that he needed lunch, but he’d used up a bit more time than he’d meant to. Olivia would probably be heading to his office relatively soon to come introduce him to Soren … 

[What should Augustus do? Comment with details.
Also, yesterday I posted a summary of all info learned to-date — check it out!]

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Hey all! Bad migraine today, so I’m afraid I’m having a break night! Take the chance to get caught up on all the crazy investigating we’ve had Augustus doing so far, and buckle in for a wild ride on Augustus’s bad decision academic rollercoaster. Please turn in your Day 14 Suggestions by October 16, 4 pm PST. Don’t worry — if I need to go a few days late to get us to a satisfying ending despite having a break here and there, I totally will!

QUESTION TIME
We’re at about the halfway point through the month, and so far Augustus has come across a variety of things: Missing research, certain fellow professors or research assistants acting weird, his demon husband noticing someone calling from the material plane to the unstudied void beyond planar space. A helpful summary of the things you’ve learned so far can be seen below the cut. Totally optionally (i.e., if you’re caught up and feel like it) feel free to discuss in the comments what you think might be going on based on information you have so far–and what you think Augustus might start to suspect because of it. No turn-in deadline on this, it’s just a casual midway point chat if people feel like doing it!

SUMMARY OF INFORMATION LEARNED SO FAR:

• Augustus (he/him) has a period of a few years entirely missing from his memory, set during his undergrad years. Sometime after that, he summoned a demon lord to try to get answers, and ended up falling in love. His demon husband hasn’t yet been able to find it, but is hoping to find people or things from that time to help triangulate, and suspects it relates to something from the area outside planar space.
• His demon husband, Enmity (aka Emmet Darkfire) (he/him) hopes to use Augustus’s studies (ie that ‘this plane’ and ‘the demon realm on the outer planes’ are two parts of one thing, instead of viewing them as opposed states of being) in order to claim territory on this world and then take it over. His priorities are thus to a. have Augustus’s studies come to fruition and b. to fulfill his agreement to Augustus to help reveal his past.
• His research assistant Yujin (they/them), whose personal research field is Conjuration: Ghosts basically, came into Augustus’s office on Restday (ie Sunday) to drop off some research, found a bunch of Augustus’s work missing. Since then, they’ve been acting weird. Augustus found one of his missing research books, the one about ghosts, in Yujin’s study room (along with a lot of snacks.)
• Two other professors, Ivory Fitzfleming (she/her) and Cordero Pérez (he/him), forced their way into Yujin’s study room at some point, and Yujin said one of them might have taken Yujin’s keys without them noticing. 
• Cordero Pérez works in Wards and Protections, who tend to think Conjurations play with fire, but also rely on them to help develop their field. He’s very vain and seemed easily manipulated by Augustus.
• Ivory Fitzfleming works in Structural Spiritualism, viewing Conjurations as kind of historical nonsense. She is normally no-nonsense but according to her research assistant (and as observed by Augustus), she’s been acting weird lately, very emotional. Something is definitely wrong for her and she seems bitter toward Augustus.
• The research assistants also say that professor Olivia Spiders (she/they; Conjurations – Spiritual Contract Law) has been acting weird lately, mostly things like being late to class. Olivia says it’s because the dean won’t stop riding their ass to get more papers published. She also is somewhat familiar with Soren and has offered to introduce them; in addition, Olivia seems to have recently researched ways around anti-theft spells, to help make things more secure for her sister who owns a jewelry shop.
• The Dean, Reginald von Beekeeper (he/him), has in fact been pushing Augustus to publish soon too, as he’s apparently worried about department funding.
• Soren Kincaird (he/him) is a relatively recent hire to the university. He has a photograph on his desk from his undergraduate school days where he was standing next to Augustus, who was leaning on another (unknown) student. Augustus does not remember this period. Augustus feels like he knew Soren but so far hasn’t actually met him. Augustus is currently having Yujin ask Soren’s research assistant, Feather St. Saint, about Soren’s background. (Augustus stole Soren’s mug to hopefully give some of his spit to Enmity but hasn’t ruled out kidnapping him.)
• So far, nobody else has seemed to have anything stolen from them. The librarian, Jacinta Maria Fernandez (she/her), has agreed to let him know if she hears anything.

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One way or another, he was going to be pushing his professional boundaries with his research assistant, but it was so hard to decide which act of boundary-pushing to do. Augustus supposed that he should pick the more lucrative option—so it came down to whether following Yujin or slipping into their empty office would net him more information.

Well—ultimately, whatever Yujin and Feather talked about, he was supposed to get all the details anyway. He could always quiz Feather later and see if Yujin had left anything out. However, he couldn’t easily guarantee finding another good time to check out Yujin’s room without arousing any suspicion. So better to do this one now; if he were fast enough about it, he still might be able to eavesdrop on the tail end of the conversation.

Not if he wasted any more time though; he produced his keys quickly, unlocking Yujin’s door and slipping inside.

Augustus’s first impression of Yujin’s study room, now that he looked around it, was messy. It wasn’t terrible—he hadn’t been much better at that age, and for all he had a several-year-long gap in his memory, he remembered both before and after it fairly well. But Yujin was clearly too busy to bother to keep everything nicely organized in this room, and it showed. It didn’t read to Augustus as if they’d been throwing things around or any similar frenetic activity; there were just too many mugs and plates, too many stacks of paper, crumpled pages that had missed the garbage can.

These he checked first, in case Yujin were disposing of some kind of evidence, but they seemed to be notes on Yujin’s own research, which was primarily about the summoning of human spirits who had moved onto the realm of the dead. It was a very popular field of Conjuration research as it both allowed for the possibility of the permanent movement between planar realms based on certain statuses of being, and also the possibility that the things which returned were not human spirits at all and merely were very good at pretending to be them. But the crumpled garbage papers were half-finished pages on what was clearly their current paper that they were hoping to have published, so Augustus carefully re-crumpled them and deposited them, wincing, outside the garbage bin where he’d found them.

Next, he checked their desk drawers. The first few turned up nothing notable—snack stashes, papers, writing supplies, and so on—but the main center drawer gave him pause. There were magical materials here; spools of copper wire, chunks of quartz, sticks of charcoal and chalk, bundles of herbs. That wasn’t theoretically unusual for a research assistant to have access to. However, since the research assistants didn’t have individual workrooms, they had a public workroom that they shared, with materials stocked in it by the university itself. They shouldn’t be taking it out of the workroom, as their study rooms were nowhere near as well warded. Augustus wouldn’t attempt most practical spells in his office, and that was still better set up than an assistant’s study room. 

  Augustus made note of the materials he found there in case he could cross-reference them for some intended purpose, and shut the drawer carefully again. It jammed a little, so he reached further back and found that, in the gap between the drawer to its right and the back of the desk, a book had been placed. It was invisible when he’d opened those drawers, but it was accessible from this one, and must have shifted as he’d examined the materials.

Very carefully, he extracted the book … only to find that it was one of his: the book about ghosts and possessions from the perspective of material-vs-spiritual analysis. He frowned, putting it down, and began a more thorough investigation of the room.

It made sense for Yujin to have a copy of this, but he was very sure it was his copy; he knew that scratch along the back cover where he’d carelessly left a knife on it a year or two back. It made sense for Yujin to have wanted to borrow it, though why they wouldn’t just ask, he had no idea. If the rest of the books were here, too—

They weren’t, though. Augustus checked under rugs, under chair cushions, behind the rest of the drawers, checked for loose floorboards, and of course searched the shelves. There was only this single book here out of all his missing research. 

Why had so many books been stolen, yet Yujin only had one? Had Yujin taken all of them and somehow since got rid of them, but had decided to keep this one? Had someone planted this here to frame Yujin? Or had Yujin borrowed (or stolen) just this one coincidentally and were worried they were going to be blamed for all the others going missing as well?

Whatever the reason, nothing else seemed out of place or unusual here, minus all the snacks and dishes implying that Yujin’s been surprisingly hungry lately. They were a young adult, though, and he remembered how he‘d eaten in his early twenties. 

Augustus knew he should head out now if he wanted any chance of overhearing the end of Yujin’s conversation. But the real question was: Should he take his stolen book back with him to quietly return it to his shelf, or to confront Yujin with it? Alternatively, should he leave it here? And if he left it here, should he slip it back into its hiding place make it look like nobody had been here, or should he leave it out on the desk to really fuck with Yujin? Or— 

Well. The opportunities were endless.

[What should Augustus do? Comment with details.]

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Best to start by pretending nothing unusual was happening, and slowly turn up the heat. You could boil a frog or damn a soul that way; why wouldn’t it work to get an apparently-stressed professor to talk? “Oh, I’d like to pretend it’s all social, but I was wondering if I could pick your brain about something,” he said cheerfully.

“Pick my brain? I can’t imagine that I have anything that you’d want to know about,” she said, voice tight. “In fact—” 

Augustus tuned out the rapid patter of remonstration. Now that he was thinking about it, Fitzfleming wasn’t the only person who’d been acting odd lately. Olivia Spiders had been unusually late to class, though they’d had an excuse when he’d talked to them. And Yujin had been acting odd too, actually; they were always a little weird—and who wasn’t, at this university—but they were more skittish than usual. It could just be paranoia caused by thinking someone had taken their keys to rob their boss, of course. 

He wondered if other people around the place were acting strange now too, or if they always were and he’d just never noticed it. But it was still odd. Worth thinking about. 

Not now, though; Fitzfleming had fallen silent and was frowning at him. Best to pay attention. “It’s really nothing like that,” he said, to whatever they were saying. “You don’t need to be so strict about it. I know you’re not in our department, but I was wondering if you knew anything about that new professor? Soren Kincaird?”

“Soren Kincaird?” she echoed. “Wouldn’t you know more than I would? You two went to the same university.”

“Did we? I hadn’t heard that,” he said, which was technically not a lie; he was doing great on the technicalities today. “Undergrad?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I would have thought you two might know each other.”

“Conjurations is a big field,” he said, demurring. 

“And I cannot imagine why it’s so popular,” she snapped sharply. “It’s a locked study. There’s nothing more you can discover about conjuring monsters from beyond that wasn’t originally discovered hundreds of years ago. You’re just refining things, and honestly shouldn’t, given the things you work with.”

He nodded. “Right, you just published a paper about that, right? Defining the difference between natural spirits, those belonging to this plane, and the ‘unnatural’ ones from beyond. What was it—ah, yes, Spirits Inherent and Eidolic Idolatry, right? I understand that disagreeing with us is your specialty. I don’t take it personally.”

“Perhaps you should!” she said, tense. But she didn’t look angry; she looked miserable. “The things you do are less than useless, which is why your department funding’s in danger. If you got out and shifted focus to a better area, things would be better for you. At any rate, I barely know Kincaird; I greeted him when he came around to introduce himself; he said he was interested in the spirits of this world as well as those beyond, which is more than I can say for most of your lot.”

He lifted his brows slowly. Time to turn up the heat. “Is everything all right, Ivory?” he asked, softly.

“Wh-what?” That took the air out of her more surely than a blow would have. “What—of course—” 

“You seem very tense. Upset,” he said. “Listen, I know we’ve never been friends, but if you need someone to talk to, I’m happy to be a neutral ear.”

Fitzfleming bit her lower lip, and just like that, he was sure something was wrong for her. She had the look of someone who wanted sympathy but who found it almost an unknown quality when she was receiving it. For a moment, he was sure she was going to open up to him. But she began to harden again almost immediately, though. “I’m fine. Thank you.” But her words were too tense, too airless.

“If you change your mind, I’ll be here,” he said. “I know we all have things going on at home—” She shook her head briefly at that. “Not at home? Is it something here?”

“Enough, Pennywright! I said I’m fine!” she said, an air of desperation to it.

The knife was in, to mix his metaphors; he could twist it and see what way she jumped. “All right, of course. It’s just that I’m not the only one who’s noticed. I’ve heard people talking about it, and I’m worried that something might happen. The students have already noticed; they might take advantage to try to manipulate their grades. Or—well. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there are thieves around recently,” he added, innocently. “I’ve had some things stolen from me. I’m worried similar things might happen to you, if you’re not alert—”

“Get out!” she snapped, half rising behind her desk, slamming her hands down on it. “Get out of my office! I said enough, and if you don’t listen, I’ll have you thrown out!”

He rose, hands raised. “Of course,” he said mildly. “I’m sorry to upset you, Fitzfleming. But keep in mind, I mean you all the best.”

Augustus left before she could actually kick him out, and walked a little ways down the hall to ponder one of the bulletin boards there without seeing it. That was interesting, he decided. He wouldn’t be surprised if she were the one who had taken his research, based on how she’d reacted to him—though why she’d want it at all, he couldn’t say. But she implied something between them was personal. Implied things would be different if he got out of Conjuration. Whether or not she was involved, she knew something.

Then again, he’d thought she was about to open up to him, and something had scared her off from doing so. He wouldn’t expect that if she’d stolen from him out of malice.

Well, he was out of her office far earlier than he expected. He could try to see where she might have stashed his things, if she had done so—it hadn’t seemed to be in the office, though, so he’d need a plan of attack to try to get into her better-protected workroom or her home. 

Then again … the way Yujin had been acting was preying on his mind, now that it had occurred to him. And he knew where Yujin was theoretically off to right now. He could stalk them there and try to listen in on the conversation with Feather St. Saint. Or he could go to Yujin’s office himself while they were out, dig around, see what he could find there. He had the keys, even; it’s just that he’d never had reason to use them.

Perhaps it would be better to just let them be and do something else in the meantime, as he’d originally planned. Find out more about Soren. That would make the most sense for his goals. 

And yet … he’d never been good at resisting temptation.

[What should Augustus do? Comment with details.]

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