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scholar. Because he’s just as insistent. He wants to meet.’
    â€˜I don’t think you have much choice, Dulce.’ Chris had the decency to look concerned.
    â€˜No, I don’t,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘And I don’t think Lucy has any particular insight into Thorpe or the whole Sloane Harquist situation. I just, well, I guess I was hoping that I’d wake up and it all would have gone away. And getting a warning doesn’t make it any better.’ Especially because of the strange timing. ‘My mother even said something about this not having happened for two hundred years.’
    â€˜Dulce, I know Lucy loves you, but I wouldn’t give too much credence to anything she says.’
    â€˜You’re right.’ She bent to kiss her boyfriend. ‘Let me call old Thorpe back and then go face that particular dragon.’
    â€˜May the stars align!’ Chris had the inflection down perfectly. ‘Blessed be.’
    â€˜Blessed be yourself.’ Dulcie found herself smiling, despite everything that awaited. Neither of them noticed that Esmé had stopped eating as Dulcie spoke. And that the little cat’s back was now arched in horror – her fur rising, as if size alone could ward off an attack.

SEVEN
    â€˜I knew you should have been writing more quickly. Should have been sending papers out for review, for publication last semester. Last year, even. I blame myself, really.’
    From the way Martin Thorpe was fretting, Dulcie almost believed him. Her adviser made another circuit of the small, worn rug, muttering about journals and opportunities missed. Dulcie had never seen him so upset. ‘I shouldn’t have let you lollygag so. Lost essays, a lost novel . . .’ He shook his head, which even in the bad office light was visibly glazed with sweat, and mopped it with a handkerchief. ‘Wildgoose chases.’
    â€˜Only they’re not.’ After twenty minutes of Thorpe’s nervous pacing, Dulcie was getting dizzy. It was worth interrupting him, if only to make him hold still for a moment. ‘Wild geese, that is.’
    Thorpe stopped short, right on the carpet’s fringe, and stared at her. Dulcie swallowed. The balding scholar might be tightly wound, but he was her adviser – and the interim head of the department to boot. And, despite his words, Dulcie knew that if one of his tutees failed to produce a publishable thesis, he wasn’t going to shoulder any of the blame. No, he would place responsibility for this debacle squarely on her.
    â€˜I did identify some previously lost writings, and I got one good paper out of them already.’ As Dulcie spoke, she gained a little of her confidence back. ‘I think I’ll have more soon, too.’
    He looked up, beady eyes quizzical behind his glasses, and Dulcie faltered. She hadn’t had a moment to check her laptop, to see if Chris’s software had uncovered any similarities between that one passage she’d copied down and any of her author’s known writings. She couldn’t now. Thorpe didn’t know about the program, and this wasn’t the time to introduce it. He already thought she was lacking as a scholar. ‘I mean, if I weren’t on the trail – if there wasn’t a lost manuscript – well, then why would this Sloane Harquist person want to go into the Mildon? I figure she must have found something referring to additional work.’
    Without revealing her secret, it was the best argument she could make for herself – and for her thesis. And so she sat back, blinking, and waited for her sweaty adviser to pronounce her fate.
    â€˜It’s not that simple.’ He was prevaricating also, she recognized the signs. At least he had stopped pacing, freeing her to breathe almost easily. ‘I did sign off on your current semester.’
    Dulcie looked up at that. She knew her adviser had approved her continuing work,