Page 10 of Monsters in the Museum (Defenders of the Light #1)

Chapter ten

T he following days fell into the same pattern of work and training. Today, as usual, Nora burst through the doors and scanned the broad steps in search of Thad, able to pick him out easily in an oversized fur stole with his face obscured by the largest sunglasses she had ever seen.

“A fashion icon as always,” she commented as they fell into step, enjoying the easy comradery that had sprung up between them. However, a tiny piece of her heart always sank when Thad met her on the museum steps. She tried to squash the quiet voice in her head telling her it was because she hoped one day Adam would be the one to escort her to the Sanctuary. After all, he had his own day job on the other side of town. To placate herself, Nora asked Thad if he had any stories of him and Adam when they were younger.

Thad launched into a story about the time he and Adam had drunkenly decided to attempt to make all the books in the library fly on wings made of their own folded pages, and she found herself chuckling at his antics. Nora had the fleeting thought that she would have given almost anything to know Adam when he was younger and more carefree.

As usual, Thad left her in the training yard with Ezra, who offered her barely a greeting before barking at her to fall into her stance. She fell into it more naturally than she ever had before, and she patted herself on the back for practicing the position in front of her narrow bedroom mirror the night before.

Nora began to move through the increasingly familiar forms, resuming her habit of counting how many times she managed to sprawl across the training ring floor. When she finished her exercises, she had fallen a record low of two times, and she even saw Ezra nodding approvingly out of the corner of her eye when he thought she wasn’t looking, but that might have been her imagination.

Still, when she flopped down on the ground to do her stretches, she thought she had earned the opportunity to ask him a few more questions about the culture of the Eteria.

“What’s the meaning of the tattoo?” she added, nodding toward the band around his bicep.

Ezra sighed and seated himself on the edge of the fountain, resigning himself to her curiosity.

“It is a symbol of our commitment to the Eteria, and each person chooses their unique pattern as a reflection of their individuality and skill set.”

Nora snorted the word “creative” under her breath as she glanced at Ezra’s plain black line. While the furrow between his brows deepened at her jibe, she thought she detected a faint spark of amusement in his gray eyes.

Taking that as a sign she could ask another question, she chewed at her chapped lip as she considered what to ask.

“Why weren’t there any shields or crossbows in the armory? They were pretty popular weapons around the time of the fall of the Eteria.”

“We don’t need them,” Ezra answered as Nora pulled a leg up to stretch her hamstring. “Our Warriors use weapons as a conduit for the Light more than anything else. That is why they are made completely of bronze, because it is a better conductor of Light than wood or steel.” Noticing that she had opened her mouth to ask another question, he cut her off, saying, “Don’t ask me why. It’s all very complicated, and only the Smiths know the answer to that question.”

Nora snapped her mouth shut as Ezra continued. “We don’t use shields because we form our own much more durable defenses using the Light. And crossbows are just impractical. It seems silly to go to all the trouble of imbuing a bolt with magic only to shoot it far away, when you could just use the Light to incapacitate your enemy from a distance anyway.”

“So why use weapons at all, then?”

“Because,” Ezra groped for the proper words. “Having a weapon makes it easier to… focus the energy. The Light is always there, nebulous and undefined, until you shape it for a purpose. It is easier to shape it around a physical object, to ground the power. It’s why Defenders almost always use swords for creating wards, even though they rarely enter direct combat.”

Nora sat up and examined the array of bruises on her forearms. “Then why all the combat training if you are just going to use the Light anyway?”

“It builds character,” Ezra stated matter-of-factly. “Sometimes a soldier is unable to channel the Light, but they can still do some major damage at close range, like Adam did with his sword at the museum. He fought back the Shadow without using the Light at all, relying on his weapon.”

“Hmm, what about cavalry? I only saw armor for ground soldiers.”

“We don’t ride horses into combat,” Ezra answered as though it should be obvious. “The magic scares the horses.”

“Oh,” Nora was taken aback. “I thought you would have some sway to train the horses to not be afraid. You know, be the Warrior heroes with your trusty steeds charging bravely into battle.”

Ezra frowned. “You read too many fantasy novels. This is the real world.”

Nora double-checked the address on the screen of her phone as she attempted to weave between jostling crowds of college students. They dominated the paths with their backpacks in tight-knit groups, and Nora tried not to scowl at them for not keeping to the right side of the sidewalk. It didn’t seem like that long since she had been finishing her doctorate, but the undergraduates on Northwestern’s campus looked even younger than she remembered.

Thankfully, the crowds thinned as she made her way towards an old-looking building on the far side of the quad. Climbing vines decorated the aged brown bricks and framed the sign, marking this as the building that housed the history department offices. Nora smiled wryly at the thought that Adam would fit in perfectly in an office like this with his tweed blazers and the round tortoise-shell glasses he wore as part of his professor persona.

That thought sobered her as she pushed through the door and followed the signs to the stairs. While meeting an academic contact to gather some historical texts was a perfectly reasonable part of her job at the museum, Adam was much more than a professor. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—or rather, an immortal sorcerer in an argyle sweater.

She located his office on the third floor, pausing to read the brass plaque on the door bearing the credentials of Dr. Adam Scott . The sign looked new, strangely at odds with how ancient Nora knew the man it introduced really was.

She knocked quietly, trying not to disturb the peaceful silence that seemed to live only in places of learning—universities and libraries. Shuffling drifted through the door.

“Office hours are on—” Adam came up short as he opened the door and found that it was not a student who disturbed him.

“Nora,” he greeted. His voice was a little breathless, as if he had been running, although nothing in his office suggested he had been doing anything but sitting at his desk.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Nora said.

“I welcome it, actually.” Adam stepped back and ushered her into his office. While it wasn’t small, the large desk and overflowing bookshelves and filing cabinets made it feel cramped. Nora smiled at the sight of three separate mugs on his desk, each apparently forgotten before the beverage within was finished.

“I don’t know. You sounded like you weren’t thrilled to have a student knocking on your door,” Nora pointed out as she looked around the space.

“Only because I will never get their papers read if they keep interrupting me asking about when they will be getting their grades. You would think college students would be smart enough to know that constant interruptions would only slow me down, but…” He shrugged as he slumped down in his chair, pushing up his glasses on his nose. Apparently, he had gotten them replaced.

His complaints were so mundane—so comfortably boring—that her heart squeezed wistfully.

“Take a seat,” Adam offered, gesturing around vaguely. “I’m sorry I don’t have the texts together yet. I was distracted. Just give me a few minutes to gather them up.”

Nora looked around her, finding the one spare chair in the office occupied by a stack of paper so high that it threatened to topple over at any second. She looked around for an alternative to attempting to move the teetering tower, finding the clearest surface in the small room to be the desk where Adam was gathering papers into stacks.

With a shrug, Nora planted herself on the corner of the desk, letting her feet swing. The thick soles of her boots clunked against the wooden back of the furniture, and Adam jumped.

“Sorry,” Nora said.

Adam’s gaze darted up from the sheaf in his hands, taking in Nora’s casual posture on his desk. She almost moved to stand up, wondering if she shouldn’t behave in such a way with him. Maybe the casual working relationship that had begun with them in a cramped café had been a sham, burned away in the fire at the museum. Perhaps an immortal sorcerer commanded more formality, now that she knew who he really was.

Before she could move, a smile curved Adam’s lips, and Nora realized that he had the audacity to have dimples.

“Not at all,” he said. “Having a dearth of seating in this office is one hundred percent on me. I tend to get preoccupied when I’m working, and the next thing I know, I have all the books off my shelves and sticky notes on every available surface.”

Nora snorted. “Did you not see the tower of books taller than me next to my desk at the museum?”

Adam smiled as he finally set aside the students’ papers, now organized into a manila folder. “I may have, but I was a little preoccupied by the fire alarms and the Shadows.”

Nora’s smile slipped a fraction, but she held it in place as best she could. “So what are these texts you were going to give me?”

“Right!” Adam stood from his chair and turned to a cabinet behind him. “I gathered these from my… personal collection. I also put together some notes on the sections I think you’ll find the most useful to your research.”

When he turned around, he held in his arms a stack of leather-bound books interspersed with composition notebooks. Brightly colored sticky notes sticking out of the notebooks stood out starkly against the parchment-yellow of aged paper.

Nora’s brows crept up her forehead. “Personal collection?”

“I, um… have managed to hold onto a lot of books throughout my life. I have access to a lot of editions that have since gone out of print,” Adam hedged. He held out the stack to her, and she plucked one of the notebooks off the top of the stack. Thumbing through it further, her eyebrows rose even higher, finding pages filled with cramped script and annotated quotes.

A low whistle escaped her. “This must have been a lot of work.”

“I do like history,” Adam shoved his hands in his pockets with a shrug as Nora relieved him of the rest of the stack. “And—well… I felt like it was the least I could do. Considering everything.”

Nora’s heart sunk, despite some of the excitement she had felt at all the knowledge now in her possession. Coming to this office had reinforced in Nora something she had suspected when Dr. Adam Scott’s eyes had lit up at the idea of seeing newly discovered artifacts: she and the professor would get along swimmingly. She could picture late nights of tea and coffee with intellectual discussion, huddled over a manuscript or artifact on one of their desks. Maybe he would loosen his tie and take off his blazer as the night crept on, and she would get a glimpse of the strong but wiry arms he hid underneath as they talked.

She quickly derailed that train of thoughts, barreling quickly toward some debauched professor-related fantasy. It seemed that Odelle’s teasing about sexy professors had infected her psyche.

Because the truth was, that was not who Adam was. Dr. Adam Scott was a ruse. A cover for a person of immense power, almost older than she could conceive of. It didn’t matter what she thought might be possible between them, for it was all artificial. What amicability was between them was borne of Adam’s feelings of responsibility for upsetting her life.

Nora should keep her distance, and not torment herself with imaginings of things that might be if Adam Scott was who she originally thought him to be.

“Thank you for doing all of this.” Nora hugged the books tighter to her chest.

“If you need more sources, we can dig through the library at the Sanctuary.”

Nora’s traitorous heart warmed at the idea of spending an afternoon in a library with Adam.

“I’ll reach out if I need help,” she said, promising herself it was a lie. She took a few steps backward towards the door.

A furrow formed between Adam’s brows. “You don’t want to stay and look through them together?”

Nora shook her head. “I’m headed to meet with Ezra actually.”

It wasn’t a lie exactly, but Ezra wouldn’t be expecting her for another two hours.

“Oh, good.” Adam’s tone of voice seemed artificially cheery, but Nora tried not to read too much into it. “I’m glad you’re making progress on learning how to protect yourself.”

Nora mustered a smile in response. “You won’t have to concern yourself with my safety much longer.”

Something unreadable flickered in Adam’s eyes. Nora ignored it and offered him a wave goodbye as she stepped out of his office. As she trudged back across campus, she tried not to think about how things might have gone differently if Adam was just a charming professor, and if they had met under different circumstances. After all, the early rapport between them that had planted the seedlings of a crush in her had likely been for show. He would have been charming to whatever historian discovered his old weapon.