Page 8

“Please, it’s 5th Avenue.”

“Well, garbage, marinara, and Dior then.”

She scoffed at him, even as a stray cat jumped onto the sidewalk right in front of them. Magdalene recoiled and sidestepped the mangy creature with great care while Timothy, surely to piss her off, crouched and gave the animal an ear scratch, probably catching seven different incurable diseases in the process.

“Do not dare touch me with those hands!” She blew her bangs out of her face and walked faster, the pedestrians parting like the Red Sea in front of her.

Her heel caught in a crack on the sidewalk, the shoe slipping off her foot. On pure instinct of having had him near for years, she reached out, but Timothy wasn’t there to hold on to.

Magdalene, by some miracle, managed to catch herself on thin air, stopping in time to stand tall, and put the shoe back on. Timothy, having abandoned the cat, was a few steps behind her, handing some woman into a cab. It only made her angrier. Not the shoe so much as the fact that she’d still reached for him—and he’d still not been there.

She sighed as Timothy’s laughter sounded closer. He waited for her to pick up speed after her slip-up and fell in step yet again as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Your aversion to cats is one of the least explainable things about you. You basicallyarea cat. Same demeanor—”

She did not spare him a glance. “Timothy, I’m not in the mood to be insulted on my walk. It’s a nice evening. If you want to keep up your little jokes, maybe take a cab?”

“Okay, okay, I’m just saying. That is a perfectly nice cat. There is no doubt she enjoyed being scratched.” At her low growl, he chuckled and finally dropped the ridiculous subject. “What has gotten into you, though? I thought the meeting went exceptionally well. It’s always a great show when you filet a group of very distinguished and very inept men. It’s one of my favorite sights to behold. Magdalene destroying men. I should’ve had a painting commissioned. All red and silver oils.”

Magdalene allowed him to speak, choosing to keep her pace rather than interrupting his apparently well-rehearsed monologue.

“They loved you in the way a masochist loves a whip, dearest. You were a hit. They want you and are scared shitless of you at the same time. So what is going on? You are the new Headmistress of The Three Dragons.”

Her stride faltered just a second and, not wanting to risk another slip, Magdalene stopped. Next to her, Timothy mirrored her actions.

“I have not said yes.”

She knew he was right. They would send her boxes and boxes of files, followed by a substantial contract, and even submit to most of her demands. She would make some ridiculous ones just to drop them again at the last moment. It would allow them to pretend to save face and that they’d actually had a chance to “negotiate” with her.

So why was she this edgy, this uncomfortable and disquieted? Nervous energy coursed through her, and she felt like a puppet, strings being pulled by an invisible hand.

The wound in her chest clenched, or maybe it was just her heart. Nerves and discomfort and everything else be damned… The Headmistress.

No, she hadn’t said yes. But as Timothy gave her one last long look before falling behind and out of sight, they both knew it was only a formality.

The new Headmistress of Three Dragons Academy for Girls clicked her way down 5th Avenue on her favorite pair of Louboutins, turning heads left and right.

4

OF SERENDIPITOUS POETRY & MOMENTOUS DISCOVERIES

It had hit her like a ton of bricks.

A familiar yet elusive feeling when her eyes met the intense gaze of the gray ones across the bar. Like banking coals, there’d been a certain fire in the darkened depths that took Magdalene by surprise. Along with that feeling… One she couldn’t name, even if its appellation was right on the tip of her tongue.

Unnamed, the sensation had settled all around her, like fog, like a blanket, one of calm and warmth, despite the noisy and heavily air-conditioned bar.

No, Magdalene couldn’t pinpoint the emotion the stare was eliciting in her, but she knew exactly why the eyes had stood out.

* * *

She’d been preoccupiedand slightly annoyed with herself for promising to attend the pedagogical conference held by the Association of East Coast Private School Teachers only to have her speaking engagement continuously postponed, largely due to the level of disorganization and general lack of professionalism of the event organizers.

Magdalene had half a mind to quit the entire thing altogether. After all, the way they were treating her was unseemly. But she had busied herself with studying the multitude of files sent over by The Three Dragons’ trustees. The printouts and spreadsheets prepared for her by the ever-efficient George filled her hotel room, and after two days of poring over them, she could have sworn she smelled printer ink just about everywhere she went. The results of her deep dive were sobering, if not to say utterly terrifying for the school.

A break had been in order, and tired as she was, Magdalene decided on the less than auspicious bar she now found herself in as her refuge. Despite her deliberate choice of a hotel a few blocks away from the one where the conference was being held—and hence where the majority of attendees were staying—Magdalene immediately realized she’d picked the wrong place regardless.

She regretted her decision the moment she crossed the worn-out threshold and twenty pairs of eyes turned to her with avarice. Men and women in various states of drunkenness openly ogled her.