Chapter Two
Professor Broussard’s office was on the fifth floor of the Earth Science building, which at five-o’clock, was good as abandoned. The dim florescent lights buzzed from a ceiling that was missing more than a few tiles and spiders took up residence in dark corners and doorways. It was an oven. Sweat gathered over my shoulders and collarbone and slid down my sternum. A phone rang on the other side of the office door and I heard papers shuffle and then the muffled voice of my teacher.
The clock on the wall was covered in a visible layer of dust, and the second hand wasn’t moving. I pulled my phone from bag. Where was Blaine? He was the type of guy who took his word very seriously—so I knew if he wasn’t here yet, it was because something was holding him up. Still, I couldn’t help but wish that we’d have planned to meet somewhere and walk together. Even though part of me knew I was over-reacting, I did not want to face Broussard alone. I didn’t trust myself not to fall apart. I’d never been good at confrontation. Not the giving end or the receiving end.
It didn’t happen often, but sometimes I could tell what a person was feeling. No. That isn’t right—when it happened, my sense was stronger than being able to tell, it was more like, sometimes I was hit over the head by a person’s emotions. It was like I had an antenna that was also a magnet, and once it sensed a person’s feelings it then hoisted them onto myself, amplified and unwelcomed. This was fine in happy moments, though it still often took me by surprise—a wave of unexpected joy when you are busy minding your own business can be unnerving—but in moments of duress, it was too much.
One time, when I was a girl, Mama got pissed at Cheyanne. I listened from behind the locked door of our dingy trailer bathroom, my hands pressed over my ears, as they screamed at each other. I squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to keep the feelings of anger and shame that rolled off of them from piercing my skin like fish hooks. Next thing I knew I was lying on the floor with a tiny trickle of blood leaking from my nose.
Since that night, I’d often wished I’d had a mundane ability like Cheyanne, who could feel the weather in her molars, or something useful and cool, like Marchland, who could use tattoo ink to alter a person’s esteem. Neither Cheyanne nor Marchland’s abilities controlled them, while I was at the mercy of an invisible and sporadic sixth sense.
My phone buzzed from where I’d stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. I pulled it out and checked my message. It was from Blaine.
Got held up at the library. OMW.
I sent back the eye roll emoji.
When I was still alone at 5:25, I decided coming was a bad idea and turned to leave.
Professor Broussard’s door opened and he walked into the hallway. The look on his face said he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“Ms. Murphey, I’d given up on you.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “I still have a little time. Come on in. We have a few things to discuss.”
I looked down the hallway one last time, wishing that Blaine would appear from the shadows. When he didn’t, I scrambled to think of an excuse to leave, but Professor Broussard’s hand landed on my shoulder and he guided me through his office door.
I sucked in a nervous breath, filling my lungs with air in an effort to calm my nerves as the door clicked shut behind me. I’d grown up with a mama whose bedroom had a revolving door for sketchy men, and it had given me a wariness of being alone with males I didn’t know. My heart picked up its pace and I silently ordered it to calm down. I was in my professor’s office for a meeting, there was no reason to be afraid. Nervous, definitely. But not afraid.
The cinderblock walls were painted a sickly yellow, and one wall was cluttered with mismatched shelves that were crammed with books, papers, and more than a few large rocks. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like streamers decorating a party that I did not want to attend. I guessed that the faculty of the Geology department weren’t exactly the rock stars of the school, because I knew Broussard was tenured, but his office sucked.
“Ms. Murphey,” his accent was pure good ole’ boy, and thicker than pine sap, “we have a few things that we need to discuss. Now, I don’t get involved in my student’s lives outside of the classroom. What you do is your own business.”
I nodded, and hugged my arms across my waist. I’d shrugged off my jacket and book bag in the hallway, and the thin fabric of my black t-shirt clung to my sweating frame. I felt exposed. As burning hot as I was, Broussard appeared cool and comfortable beneath his tweed jacket and full, graying beard. He pulled his wire-framed glasses from his face and placed them carefully on the scarred desk that took up the majority of the office. He rested against the edge of his desk, and stared at me with unblinking eyes of a hawk, as he folded and unfolded his arms over his belly.
I grew uncomfortable with the silence and wished that Blaine was here. The hairs on my arms prickled, and an itch tickled the back of my throat. No. No, not now. Slowly—oh so slowly—a hot, sticky feeling began to creep over my skin. A feeling of disgust. Of lust. The burning undercurrent of hatred seared dully against the backs of my calves and worked its way to my ears.
I had to stay calm until my secret ability ran its course.
Sucking in as much air as my lungs could hold, I rocked on the heels of my flip flops, looked at the desk, just to the right of Broussard, and eased the breath out, counting backward mentally from ten to one.
“Ms. Murphey, as I watched you in class today, I kept going over in my mind how this conversation would take place. How I could bring this up to a sweet, quiet, frail girl such as yourself.” Broussard stepped away from the desk and began to pace the tightly packed room. He walked to the right of me, and without thinking, I turned to face him.
Alarm bells sounded in my mind. I did my best to ignore them—just because this man secretly hated me didn’t mean I was in danger. I’d learned through the years that some people hated everyone. That this disgust could stem from anywhere and my alarm bells often sounded whenever I was forced to stand this close to any man I didn’t know. Thanks mom.
Broussard watched me, and I realized he was waiting for me to speak.
“What do you mean?”
His lips separated into a serrated smile that brought to mind jack-o-lanterns and knives. “I mean, Ms. Murphey,” he continued to walk and I continued to face him, awkwardly turning, until he stood between me and the door. The alarm bells gained volume. “That I couldn’t get your perky little breasts out of my head. I couldn’t stop thinking of your tight ass or that delicious patch of hair.” He reached out with a hand, as if he were going to touch me between my legs. With a yelp, I jumped back, bumping into the desk.
“Professor Broussard,” I started, my eyes rounding into bowls. I threw my hands in front of me to widen the space between us.
“I like hearing you say my name,” he said, pushing my arms to the side and closing the gap between us before I could move.
“What are you doing?” The words caught in my throat and I hated them. I hated how weak I sounded; how small I felt.
A meaty arm circled my waist, pulling me to his body, while a stubby hand clawed at my chest. I tried to scream, and he clamped his hand over my mouth. Panic pounded through my veins. What was happening?
“I knew you were screwing Jonathan. That boy is neck deep in all the snatch a man could want—but when he sent me those pics of you, I knew you were unique. Your doe eyes. That slim body… it does things to me. How could you expect a man to not react when you shove it in his face like that?”
My head swam, my eyes darted over the room. There had to be something I could do. I needed to bite and scream and kick. I remembered when I was little, after one of Mama’s creeps had been caught spying on Marchland, that Cheyanne told me if anyone ever tried to do anything bad to me, that I should yell. That I was to do whatever it took, to pee on them if I had to. To do anything to get away.
At that moment, my body and mind failed me as I stood frozen, unable to fight. The putrid secretion of B
roussard’s disgust slammed into me, and popped bright yellow behind my eyes. I reached for something to catch myself, but found nothing and stumbled on week knees.
Professor Broussard hefted his weight against me, backing me toward the shelf-covered wall. The earthy, stale odor of books and rocks encased me and textbooks and fossils shook as my head slammed against a shelf in my effort to scramble away on legs that refused to work correctly.
I opened my mouth to scream again. A scared, choked noise was all that escaped before the man shot out a hand and closed his fingers around my neck. He pinned me to the shelves, which dug painfully into my spine and ribs. I shook with fear, as hatred and lust turned the air to smog and I struggled to breathe.
“I know you want me to forgive those absences. I know you need to pass. And a girl like you—a pretty girl who sends photos like that—you know how this works.” His smile broadened. “You masquerade as this innocent, but I know who you are. I knew your Mama, did you know that? It took me a while to place why your name was familiar, but after seeing those pictures you sent Jon, I did a little digging. It all makes sense. Your Mama was the best fifty dollars I ever spent and you even kind of look like her.”
If I was Cheyanne, I’d have had my phone set to record and used this incident to control the man for the rest of his life. I’d ruin him. If I was Marchland, I’d have never gone into the room alone. But I was neither cunning like Cheyanne nor wise like March. I was only me. And I was terrified.
Scream. Scream. Scream. The thought pounded through my synapses, but his hand still clung at my throat, not quite cutting off my air.
As he continued to talk, he began caressing my cheek and I seized the opportunity. With every ounce of strength I possessed, I jerked my head to the side and chomped down, catching his index and middle finger with my teeth. He jerked his hand away, leaving some of his skin in my mouth, and the salty taste of his blood covered my tongue. I let out the loudest wail I could muster.
Professor Broussard brought the back of his hand across my cheek, knocking my head sideways, before again clamping my mouth shut.
This man is going to rape me. The realization slammed against me. Maybe it was from shock, but it took that long for the thought to actually form into something cohesive.
No. No, no, no…
The door to the office slung open and Broussard turned just as Blaine flew into the room.
My eyes locked on those of my best friend. “Bradley?” he breathed my name.
Again I tried to scream and Blaine launched himself at our professor.
Broussard dropped me to defend himself from the blows that Blaine was raining down upon him.
The men, a tangle of punches and thrusts, slammed me into the shelf again and large hunk of limestone covered in the ancient imprints of fossilized brachiopod shells shook forward, as if calling to me.
I looked to where Broussard had his hands locked around Blaine’s neck. Blaine was punching him in the side of his head but Broussard was not the out-of-shape older man he appeared to be. He fought ferociously.
Without a plan—without a thought to the consequences or to what I was doing—I hoisted the chunk of limestone, and with all of my strength, I brought it against the back of Professor Broussard’s skull.
There was a sickening thump, and the man crumpled to the ground. The feeling of hate and disgust that had filled the room disappeared all at once, releasing me from its horrible spell.
I dropped the rock and fell to my knees. Blaine scrambled away from the professor and came to kneel beside me. “Bradley. Brad, are you okay? He didn’t… he didn’t…”
“No. But he was going to. God, Blaine.” I sobbed. My tears fell in fat drops. “What just happened? Why… why would he do that?”
Blaine rubbed my back. “Shh… I don’t know.”
“Do you think… is he…?”
Blaine’s eyes widened at the words I couldn’t say. “No. He can’t be. You just knocked him out. That’s all.” He checked Broussard for a pulse. He moved his hands quickly, from the unconscious man’s wrist, to the side of his neck. Blaine said nothing as he frantically rolled Broussard to his back, and felt his chest. “Shit.”
I watched from the floor, my knees pulled to my chest and tears still falling from my eyes, as Blaine pressed his ear to the Professor’s chest.
I knew. I knew before he looked at me with that panicked expression or opened his mouth to utter those terrible words. I knew the moment I felt the crunch of his skull under the weight of my fossilized weapon. I knew the moment the feeling of lust and hate had released me.
Our eyes locked over the body.
I finally broke the silence. “Should we… I can call the police. You didn’t do anything. You could leave…” My breathing became even more labored, the air burning my chest as if I were trying to breathe water, and my heart thrummed in my ears like the distant roll of thunder.
Blaine didn’t speak. He only looked down at the body.
When he looked up at me, his eyes possessed an intensity I’d never before witnessed. “No. No we aren’t calling the cops. This was a bad man.”
“I… I know. But if I call the cops…”
“If you call the cops then you run the risk of jail time. No. That isn’t how this is playing out.” Blaine’s panic brought to the surface the accent he worked hard to conceal.
I struggled to my feet, using the shelves to steady myself. “So what are going to do? We can’t just leave—he announced to the whole class that I had a meeting with him. And I’ve watched enough crime shows to know they can tell time of death.” Even as I spoke, an idea was forming. I could fix this. My sisters could fix this. They owed me… “Do you think you can help me get him to my house?”
Blaine’s features contorted in confusion. “No. That is the last place we need to take him, Bradley.”
“Listen to me—I can’t explain now, but I know how to fix this. Can you help me or not?”
Blaine again stared at me blankly. “You go to the library and pretend to study. I will lock him in here. When I am finished with work tonight, we can come back and roll him up in something and take him to my car. I have a key to the building and it is deserted by the time I am finished with my job.”
I looked down at the slack, ashen face of Professor Broussard. I hadn’t meant to kill him. He was a bad man—but I was not a murderer. Marchland would know what to do. Cheyanne… she would help.
I nodded. “Okay.”
Chapter Three
Getting Broussard to the trunk of Blaine’s car had proven easier that I’d thought possible. Just as Blaine had said, at 10:30 this section of campus was a ghost town. Blaine produced a blue tarp he’d swiped from some supply closet somewhere and we’d wrapped the body and taped it tight with shiny silver duct tape, then dragged him to the elevator. I pulled the car to the steps and we loaded the body and slammed the trunk shut. Blaine would come back and clean the office after he’d helped me get Professor Broussard to my house.
“I don’t understand why you are taking the body. I know somewhere we can dump it. A bayou not far from my family’s place down in Cut Off. We can weight it down. Let the gators handle the dirty work.” He paused, not taking his gaze from the road in front of us. “My family will help keep people away. My mama… she… when she was in high school she was attacked by a man. If I tell them it’s the body of a rapist, they will do their damnedest to make sure it is never found.”
I shook my head as I stared out the passenger window. Colorful, double-galley homes eased by, giving way to the larger, crumbling homes near Granny’s neighborhood. “No. No, I have a plan.”
“Yes, but what, Brad? If I am helping you hide a body, then I deserve to know what is going on. How can I protect you if I don’t know what we are doing?”
I shifted in my seat and peered at Blaine. “I don’t need protecting. Everyone is always trying to protect me—I got it covered, thanks.” I totally did not have it covered. If Blaine hadn’t ba
rreled into the room when he did….
“Bradley, that isn’t what I meant and you know it. Just come on. I think I have proven that you can trust me.”
I sighed. He was right. “Those stories, the ones about my granny? I know you’ve heard them around. The ones I wrote about in creative writing? They aren’t just stories.”
“What do you mean? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” I bit my bottom lip and wondered if I was making a mistake. I’d never tried to hide my family’s situation. We lived in New Orleans. Everyone knew someone who had a relative that claimed to be a witch. Magic wasn’t only our culture—it was a part of our economy. But Blaine was no yankee tourist coming to have cards read and gawk at the tomb of Marie Laveau. He was born and raised running the bayou. “I’m saying that those stories are true. The rumors? They aren’t just rumors. Well, not most of them anyway.”
Blaine worked his jaw, clenching and unclenching, and clenching again. At the next light he unwrapped another dum-dum and popped it in his mouth, then gave his blinker to turn right—the opposite direction of where I needed to go.
“Blaine? Where are you going? What… what are you doing?”
He continued to drive in the wrong direction. “Look, I think you are stressed—”
“You think I’m stressed? You think I’m stressed? Good god, Blaine! Of course I’m stressed! What does that have to do with anything?”
He shook his head. “I think it’s gotten to you. I think we better go with my plan.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“I mean, I did this, so we are doing what I say. Turn around at the next driveway and take me home. You can come or go—but either we take the body to my house or I call the police and turn myself in. Blaine, I can’t let you dump a body for me.”
He said nothing, but at the next driveway, he gave his signal and changed direction.
Blaine helped me move Granny’s antique, cypress coffee table to the side, and we unwrapped the corpse of our Geology professor and spread it in the middle of the living room. I couldn’t help but imagine what Granny would have said about a dead man resting on her favorite area rug. As girls, we hadn’t been allowed to carry snacks into the living room, and now here was my professor leaking fluids that would probably stain.
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