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I did not usually bring my correspondence to breakfast with Wendell; he had a tendency to sulk if he felt he did not have enough of my attention, and a sulking Wendell was entirely too likely to steal said correspondence in an attempt to gain my attention back. This would have been a less alarming prospect if I could have been entirely sure he would remember to give it back sometime within the next fortnight.
Today’s correspondence, however, had been too potentially urgent to ignore; I had requested a copy of Felix Berger’s lecture on sightings of kelpies in Eastern Europe from the University of Vienna[1], and the thick packet I had received from Austria in my mailslot had given me reason to hope that I had finally received it.
If I had, it could provide another link in the chain that might someday lead to the discovery of Wendell’s door, a fact I impressed on him firmly when I arrived at his favored cafe with the letter in hand.
“I will be the model of patience, Em,” he promised me solemnly, immediately striking up a pose in his chair that must have been what he imagined patience looked like.
It was a ridiculous pose, and it was the only reason I had any hope he might have patience for more than two consecutive minutes.
I most certainly did not smile at it.
I was undisputedly not smiling a few minutes later. The promising letter did not contain the awaited essay despite my hopes; instead, my contact at the university had sent the most long winded collection of apologies and explanations imaginable. I was, it seemed, just barely too late; their copy of the lecture had been one of the university’s many recent victims of poor archiving, a cursed artifact, and the usual consequences when the two were combined. Berger’s curse, it seemed, had struck again.
I was quite ready to give the whole letter up to Wendell’s depredations until I reached the postscript and managed to salvage some bit of merit from the whole mess.
Wendell’s pose of patience collapsed immediately. “That is not your triumphant look,” he observed. “But you don’t appear to be preparing to march off to war with the latest obstacle either.”
“I’ll have to sooner or later,” I said with a sigh, at last succumbing to the necessity of a few sips of the tea cup Wendell kept nudging toward me. “Professor Leitner was singularly unhelpful. He did have an interesting bit of news, however; apparently he’s also been corresponding with Leopold.”
I claimed a pastry.
Wendell’s expression, I noted belatedly, had gone very peculiar. “Leopold,” he repeated.
“Yes, apparently he’s thinking of coming back here to Cambridge. It seems his research has taken a turn that would be better served with our library. He’d have to wait for an opening, of course - “
“Absolutely not.”
I paused in the middle of a bite of my consolation pastry. Wendell, I had to admit grudgingly, did have good taste in cafes. “Why wouldn’t he have to wait for an opening?”
“You know perfectly well - What business could he possibly have coming back here?” Wendell looked positively indignant.
“The library,” I repeated slowly since Wendell had apparently neglected to listen the first time.
“The library,” he said back scornfully. “Of course.”
I blinked at him. “Well, what else could he come for?”
For one moment, I considered it entirely possible Wendell’s eyes might catch fire. His mouth was halfway open, some dark emotion visibly building on his face -
And then he snuffed it out and buried his face in his hands. “The library, of course. What else could it possibly be?”
“Exactly,” I said, unaccountably annoyed.
“I don’t suppose you’re feeling any more in the mood to marry me?”
Considering that his head was still buried in his hands, this did not rank highly among the list of proposals he’d given me.
It did, however, allow me to finally catch on to the true source of the problem.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I informed him sourly. Ridiculousness was not an unusual state for Wendell, but it bore repeating.
“Of course I am,” he said with a sigh. “And I suppose if I told you that an old flame from my youth would soon be arriving here, you would feel nothing at all.”
A hot stabbing pain struck somewhere in my chest. I ignored it. “Of course not,” I snapped. “I would be deeply concerned.”
He perked up immediately, head lifting enough for me to see him blink. “Really?”
“Wendell, any old flame from your youth is presumably from your kingdom, and thus there would surely be at least some danger that your stepmother had sent her to assassinate you.”
He slumped back down, though at least this time was in a different direction; he had flung himself back against his chair instead of down into his hands, presumably so I could properly admire the tragic expression on his face. “She’s not going to assassinate me. I’ve told you.”
He had. I thought it better to err on the side of caution when it came to his life, especially when the fairy tale logic he was relying on had so many potential loopholes.
Speaking of which: “If he does come here,” I said, not quite sure how to phrase this, “you won’t . . .” It felt unfair to ask him if he would resort to any of the fae’s usual solutions to jealousy when he had shown relatively little inclination for their more homicidal mayhem, but it felt equally incautious not to check.
Wendell looked wounded. “I’ll be the height of decorum.”
I looked at him doubtfully.
“Of course, if you wanted to stick close to make sure of that, I am sure I wouldn’t be too offended.”
He smiled at me hopefully.
I very decorously resisted the urge to throw the crumbled remains of my pastry at his face.
1The lecture was part of a larger series on European lake dwelling fae; at one time, the lectures were compiled into a collection (On Water Fae and Their Variations). Sadly, this collection is now almost impossible to find after Berger encountered an as-yet unidentified fae - immediately after which both Berger and all his works acquired a curse of near unshakeable ill luck. [ return to text ]