Page 261 of The Blairville Legacies

Mr. Suspicious pulled up the right corner of his mouth, showing one of his dimples.

And I hated myself for the warmth in my cheeks.

“In fact, I encourage you to question the very things that societyminimizesorlabelsasuntrue.” He looked around the room. “All the creatures of legend:Witches, vampires, werewolves...All thesemythshave their originssomewhereand if you take a closer look at these topics with the help ofscience, you will quickly realize that behind every so-calledconspiracy theory...” He looked at me again. “...there is a truth.”

Great, Julie.Now he was building a castle of arguments on top of your rescue attempt. And there was onlyone wayto bring down this castle of sand.

“Don't you think it'sunscientific, after so much evidenceagainstthe existence of such creatures and things, to still insist on it and link a subject likeneurobiologytomythology?”

It wasn't a precise counter-argument, but it was a considered attack that could make others question his respectability as a grown man with a PhD.

“God, Julie, leave him alone,” Amber hissed.

I looked at her, feeling confusion rising within me.

She must have decided to just let the professor talk andlet the dust settle, as Grace always liked to say. She didn't seem to realize how close this man was to the truth.

“No, I don't think it's acceptable for ourhonored professorto keep putting the actual subject of the seminar in the wrong light with his second degree.”

Amber's jaw dropped, which gave me a lot of encouragement, and I looked ahead at the professor, who glared at me suspiciously.

“Neurobiology is not the study of mythological thinking.”

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't dying inside, because Mr. Suspicions’ gaze buried itself in mine as if he could see straight into me.

And I regretted ever exposing this man like that as the cold spread through my hands and I felt them freeze...solid against the chair beneath my legs.

I had to calm down. And I could only do that by distracting myself, which worked best when I was dealing with scientific topics.

“Mythological stories merely serve as metaphors or allegorical representations of important human themes such aslove,loss,heroismormoral dilemmas.”

You can do it Julie. Just keep talking.

“Science, on the other hand, should deal with demonstrable things because demonstrability is a fundamental principle of scientific thought.Objective knowledgebased onobservable factsandverifiable evidence...Theseare the things you should be teaching us.”

My hands became wet because the cold disappeared.

“Oh, shit...”I heard one of the human girls whisper. “Shedidn'tjust do that.”

Sometimes I found it difficult to maintain eye contact, but the gaze of the man ten meters in front of me became fixed in my subconscious, and it was as if I wanted to detect every little facial expression and memorize it in order to understand what he was feeling.

The twitch of his left eyebrow, the pressed-together lips, the jaw grinding against his taut skin.

I found it difficult to interpret what was behind that complicated look, what thoughts were circulating behind those warm green eyes.

Had I revealed something? Did he alreadyknowwhat I was? And did he want medead?

The professor cleared his throat and pushed himself away from his desk.

“I'm open to suggestions for improvement, Miss Blair,” he said, finally cutting eye contact. “However, I will not stop combining my two favorite disciplines.”

This time,Ipressed my lips together.

And inthatmoment, Iknewwhat he must have felt.

Inner tension.

For the rest of the seminar, I avoided his gaze and tried to ignore all sorts of comments about conspiracy theories and their supposedkernels of truth, drawing lines in the margin of my notepad for each of them, so that by ten minutes before the end of the seminar, I had drawnfifty-five linesand felt like a prison inmate.

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