She shrugged uncomfortably. “That’s my problem, isn’t it? I could tell them I met a guy, which is technically true. Though they’d rather a Miskatonic brat.”
“You could stay out here for a few years while you finish school,” said Caleb. “We’ll be learning too. And sooner or later, Aphra does have to come back to the Atlantic.”
“Wherever we go,” I said, “we’ll all have things waiting for us elsewhere.”
*
Eventually, the conversation turned from Innsmouth to Innsmouth’s books, and whether even our elders might be able to overcome the greater barriers we now faced. We considered probing Trumbull’s increasing frustration with the current situation. I hoped that would change her mind, for she could make an even more formidable barrier than Barlow—and one the elders might not willingly cross.
When at last hunger drove us downstairs, Neko curled alone on the couch, reading more of the Plato.
“Did you notice anything odd with the weather?” asked Audrey.
“I was reading. Is the weather broken?”
“Not at all. I’m going to find lunch.” Audrey went into the kitchen, while Neko got up and peered out the window.
“Good, you didn’t break it,” she said. “And you wonder why I don’t want to spend my time practicing magic.”
I lingered as the others went after Audrey. “Neko, do you know what you want to do after this? I mean, after we’re done in Innsmouth?”
She turned from the window. “Caleb and I were talking about that, too. He wants to stay here, I guess he told you? What about you?”
“I’m willing to help rebuild. And I suppose that means children, though I’m not yet sure of the least horrible way to go about that. But I’m not ready to move back to Massachusetts. Our family in San Francisco—that matters too. I wish I could have everyone together.”
She perched beside me on the couch. “You’re so much better at family than I am. Mama will be happy about that, even if Caleb isn’t coming back. I still want to find space for myself, somehow.”
“Do you have any idea where?”
“I don’t want to go away forever. But I wish I had more good excuses for travel.”
“Maybe even to more exciting places than Arkham?”
“Maybe. But I don’t need adventure. If I wanted that, I’d go chasing after you every time you do crazy things. I just want different.”
CHAPTER 22
We were still at the dining room table, finishing the last of our leftovers, when Trumbull stalked in.
“I despise faculty meetings.”
“And yet,” said Audrey, “you went to one.”
“If I don’t, they assign me extra classes. Or nonsense secretarial work. Or advisees. Today, at least I got to watch Skinner trying to pretend he wasn’t upset about the library. And trying to decide whether to pretend he had nothing to do with Barlow’s arrival, or to claim more control over the creature than he actually has.”
“Are you certain this place is as stable a repository as you thought?” I asked tentatively. “We have decided to rebuild Innsmouth.”
“No place outside the Archives is truly stable. Nevertheless, this isn’t mere unreliability. Oaths were made to keep the records safe and available, and the Miskatonic librarians are violating that trust. If Mr. Spector cannot check his wayward colleagues, we may indeed need to consider alternatives.” She fixed me with an amused look. “After some other appropriate sanctuary is built, not before. Better that some of our documents should be inaccessible for a few years than that they should be exposed to the vagaries of climate and weather.”
It was a start, though Caleb’s closed expression suggested he found it less than sufficient. Dawson’s hand hovered near his arm a brief moment, before she glanced around and let it drop.
“So what constitutes an appropriate sanctuary?” I asked.
She smiled, not kindly. “We’ll send an architect, of course. There are a few decent designers among your elders, but the libraries of R’lyeh and Y’ha-nthlei don’t have to hold paper.”
I resisted the urge to point out that Innsmouth had held those documents for centuries in buildings of common brick and wood, that they’d been stolen through no fault of those protections. But stolen they had been—and it occurred to me that it might well have been a Yith, nervous over the fate of those abandoned materials, who informed Miskatonic when our books sat unguarded.
And now it was entirely in her power to set the conditions under which we could be trusted to reclaim them.
I was still pondering this, trying not to let it show on my face, when Spector walked in.
“Well, that was useless,” he said. He took off his hat, started to hang it on the rack, looked at it a long moment. Then he turned and went back out the door. I hurried after him.
I found him still on the porch, glowering. He looked ready to hit something, if he were the sort of man who lashed out in anger. When we’d first met, when I attacked him in unthinking fear, he’d simply held me off—more self-control than Chulzh’th had shown.
Reminded of the results of Chulzh’th’s temper, I touched my sleeve above the cut-in sigil. Elsewhere, Sally changed position, fearful and angry and determined. She itched with frustration. I guessed she was still at the hospital, and hoped Grandfather didn’t expect me to divine her precise actions and intentions through this thin connection. Perhaps if I were older and better practiced, I’d get more from it. Presumably betrayal, which it was designed to detect, would be announced in clearer fashion than the background hum of fretfulness over her wounded lover.
“I’m sorry,” Spector said, words falling as if strung on wires. “Professor Trumbull—I didn’t think I could speak civilly to her.”
“Why not?” Though in my current state, it seemed entirely understandable.
“I’ve spent the morning dealing with enough indifference. A dozen people have reminded me of all the processes”—that word pushed through the restraining wire, a hurled stone—“that keep Barlow’s team in the field once they’re assigned. A half dozen others are trying to break through those processes, but I’m here, and can’t do more than I already have to speed them along.”
“What Barlow’s people are doing…” I was no Audrey to find precise and slippery words that would allow Spector to deny their meaning. I forged ahead. “Would your masters—their masters—care, if they set that alarm themselves? Or are they permitted such things for the sake of their research?”