Page 8 of Wildfire

He’d become a professor, for fuck’s sake. If he were the kind of man who wanted to kill people, he wouldn’t have gone into teaching.

Still, as humiliating as it was, he couldn’t blame the police for suspecting a man who’d found two dead bodies in a single day. So he’d answered over and over again, exactly what he’d been doing.

Well, almost exactly. He told them he’d gone to the bathroom, which was technically correct.

What? He couldn’t tell the cops that he’d gone into the bathroom and had a sexual encounter with the man he half-suspected was involved in the killings. What he had told them, was that the brother of the owner of the bar had been standing over the body when he’d come out of the bathroom.

Let Hermes tell them about the sex if he was so inclined... but fuck did Wilder hope he wasn’t.

That was not the reputation he needed.

He didn’t get home until four in the morning, and when his alarm went off at seven to let him know it was time to get up and get to his Saturday classes, he thought about smashing it. Except, well, it was his phone, and he needed it.

So he dragged his ass out of bed, threw on the first suit his hands found in the closet, and headed for work. It was only after he stopped for a triple redeye that he realized he’d worn brown shoes with a gray suit.

Ugh.

And the belt? He tried to be subtle as he checked, for whatever it was worth. Also brown. Of course.

He didn’t bang his head on anything, but that was only because he was walking down the middle of the street and didn’t have anything handy. He dropped by the office before heading to class, but of course Helen was there. He wondered if she ever went home.

She turned to him, eyes bright and a manic smile on her face. “My, don’t you look festive today?”

He blinked at her, turned around, and left.

Wilder had no idea what the hell festive was supposed to mean, and he didn’t want to. He was not now, nor had he ever in his entire life been festive. Theo Ward had never called him festive. He’d just sat quietly at his desk, grading papers, like an office mate was supposed to.

If anything, Wilder had been the one who talked too much between the two of them. He was struck by the urge to apologize to Ward. Hell, the man was probably the closest thing Wilder had to a friend, and not just at the school. Anywhere in DC.

Wilder was distant and more than a little arrogant, and he knew it. He was... saying “an acquired taste” put it perhaps too mildly. He was an asshole. But Ward had always been decent to him, and frankly, in retrospect, he wished he’d done better himself.

He drifted through his class. It wasn’t an important one, just a practice session, mostly. The Saturday classes were for high-level elementalists—it was safer to summon fireballs and throw icicles on the weekend, when there were fewer people in the building. It was almost a physical education class, teaching them how to move their bodies so as not to hurt themselves or others while casting with dangerous mediums.

They had a target range that was fire resistant, and it usually worked well, but invariably, some child would ignore the safety warnings and wander into the area. So they held the classes on Saturdays.

“What do you think, Professor Pratt?” one of the advanced students, Marco, asked, dragging Wilder’s attention from his coffee.

Given the fact that he hadn’t been paying attention, he had two choices. Act like he knew what was going on and try to fake it, or admit the truth.

Well, a half-truth. He wasn’t awake enough to pretend he knew what was going on.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Think of what?”

Elise, the woman Marco had been talking to, turned to Wilder with a frown. “He thinks that creepy guy on campus yesterday was a government recruiter. I think he was just a weirdo.”

Immediately, Wilder thought of Hermes. But a government recruiter? Never. Even Marco, who was obsessed with getting into the military’s force of mages, wouldn’t have seen that in Hermes.

“I think I missed him,” he admitted. He almost mentioned Matthew, but he didn’t know if the young man’s family had been contacted yet. He wasn’t there to gossip, but to teach.

“Super weird guy, covered with snake tattoos,” Elise said, curling up her nose with distaste. “I’m pretty sure they don’t let even mages in the military have all that ink.”

“It just has to be covered by the uniform,” Marco mumbled, rubbing at his chest defensively. Wilder knew full well he’d gotten a wolf made of fire tattooed there the year before.

Sometimes, Wilder wished he knew quite a lot less about his students. It was inevitable, though, with the elementalists in their last two years. They were few enough, and he one of the only teachers with the right skill and power set, that there wasn’t another option.

After his classes were done, he started back across the quad toward his office. Then, of course, he saw Helen pace in front of the window, and gods help him, he just could not.

Maybe he’d find an empty, unlocked office somewhere else in the building. Or maybe he could talk the janitorial staff into unlocking one...

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