Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance
Nocticadia: Chapter 21

It took a damn week to get a meeting with Dr. Bramwell. The guy never answered his email, nor the phone number he’d listed on the syllabus. In lamenting to Jayda, she told me to be audacious in my dealings with men in power positions. So, five minutes into his lecture, I’d boldly asked him if I could make an appointment, and in return, he’d pinned me with a dagger-hurling glare.

Then agreed to meet with me after class.

Palms sweating, I trailed after him from the lecture auditorium, all the way to his office. Knots wound impossibly tight in my stomach, and as delicious as his cologne smelled, it only heightened my nausea.

Eyes focused on the surrounding rooms kept me from staring at the way his ass moved in his black slacks. Undoubtedly firm, given what little I’d seen of those ass-hugging jeans he’d worn back at the cliff.

Stop it, Lilia!

Wincing, I mentally insisted that my eyeballs not veer back for another look, but that was the problem with my brain. Once I’d thought it, I couldn’t unthink it, and it became a dangerous game of trying to ignore the issue.

Thankfully, we reached his office, where he stuffed a skeleton-looking key into a black iron lock and swung the door open on a creak. The interior was relatively small but brimming with medical texts and journals that lay in neat stacks on his desk and floor.

The man liked tidiness.

I took a seat in one of the chairs across from him, as he fell into his seat on the other side of the desk.

“Miss Vespertine, I’m allotting fifteen minutes for this meeting. Make them count.”

I didn’t waste any time. “I understand Noctisoma is rare in humans. How was it introduced?”

Easing back in his chair, he steepled his fingers, staring at me, and I realized right then that I hadn’t quite calculated just how intense his undivided attention would feel. How utterly consuming and threatening at the same time. “I will be covering the history of Noctisoma in an upcoming lecture.”

“I understand, and I am looking forward to that section, but according to your syllabus, you don’t cover it until December.”

He quirked a brow. “And?”

“Well, it’s for personal reasons that I ask.” Mostly, that the class was a full two semesters back-to-back, and I might not get the information I needed, if for some reason my tuition didn’t cover a second semester.

Annoyance colored his expression, and he sighed. “In the colonial era, the disease was believed to have been spread by the natives, who shot the larvae using blow darts into those they deemed a threat. It’s hard to say how many cases emerged after the fall of the tribe, seeing as the island remained abandoned for a number of years. It re-emerged about thirty years ago, when a wanderer camping in the woods stumbled upon the noxberries and consumed them.”

“You’re working on a cure for it, aren’t you? In your lab? Is that why you remove the larvae?”

He stared at me silently for a moment, and as much as I wanted to look away, because goddamn the man was intimidating, I didn’t. “Your questions have begun to traipse a delicate line, as they relate to my activities.”

“Sorry. I’m just curious, is all.”

“Curiosity often leads us down a precarious path.”

“You say that as if you’ve walked it yourself.”

The corner of his lips twitched, and he leaned forward, resting his elbows against his shiny desk. “To answer, I am studying the organism to gain a better understanding of how it affects the human body.”

Instead of blurting off the first question that popped in my head—namely, how the hell had my mother become infected?—I considered my words carefully. “Do you get many cases from the mainland?”

“No.”

“If one were to contract it, though, is it spread person to person?”

“Rarely.”

I frowned at that–how the hell else would my mother have gotten it? I’d never seen a noxberry in my life until I came to Dracadia. “Well, it must be.”

“Are you asking questions, or trying to convince me, Miss Vespertine?”

“My mother died of Noctisoma.” I dared him to argue that.

“Our facility would have been the one to confirm such a diagnosis, if it had been properly diagnosed. What’s her name?”

“It doesn’t matter. She refused to see a doctor.”

“And the autopsy?” he asked in an almost bored tone. “Surely, it would’ve shown evidence of Noctisomal pathology.

If it had, it’d been encrypted in coroner language that I didn’t speak. “What kind of pathology?”

“Bone striations and liver decomposition, most notably.”

I couldn’t recall seeing any of that. The most notable issue, aside from blood loss, was fluid in her lungs. “Perhaps they missed that.”

Jaw shifting, he narrowed his eyes. “Is your mother from the island?” he countered.

“No.”

“Did she attend Dracadia? Visit here? Live here for any length of time?”

I didn’t like the way he was ruling it out before my very eyes, but I answered honestly. “No.”

He gave an insouciant shrug that made me want to reach across the desk and smack him. “Then, chances are, it wasn’t Noctisoma.”

“I know what I saw, Professor. Black worms. Like the ones in the Midnight Lab. I saw them crawl out of her body.” I gestured toward my mouth. “Like they were trying to escape.”

“Death can be difficult to process, Miss Vespertine.”

Frustration curled in my stomach with the way the guy was trying to refute everything, like I had imagined it all? I’d gone too many years believing that lie. To hell with that. And to hell with him. I hadn’t imagined any of it–I knew that now. “It was not shock, or hallucination. It was real.”

Maybe I looked to be on the verge of crying, because he eased back in his chair and let out a long, exasperated exhale. “Very well. It was real. Unfortunately, I did not examine your mother, so I can’t say for certain how she may, or may not, have become infected. I’m only sharing what decades of study have taught me.”

Releasing a sigh, I nodded. I’d gotten worked up again, and he was right. Maybe I had gotten caught up in trying to convince him. “My apologies for getting upset.”

“If I’ve answered all your questions, perhaps you might let me return to my work.”

“May I ask one more question?”

“Of course.”

My mouth suddenly turned dry, as the strong possibility of rejection needled me. “I wondered if you might have any lab assistant positions open?”

“Ross can direct you to available positions, but they fill quickly.”

“I don’t mean general lab. I mean …” Be audacious. “I mean working with you.”

He didn’t even give the question enough time to linger before he batted it away with a swift, “No. I’m afraid not.”

“It wouldn’t have to be the whole semester.” I scooted forward in my chair, the desperation goading me to sound like a whiny beggar. “I’m happy to be a dishwasher, or prep reagents. Maybe just–”

“No, Miss Vespertine. I do not take student assistants in my lab, in any capacity. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to return to my wor–” He let out a grunt, and his hands flew to either side of his skull. Eyes screwed shut, he clenched his teeth, and a hiss of a moan was the only sound he made before tumbling from his seat to the floor.

“Professor!” Dropping my bag, I rounded his desk to replace him curled into himself, his hands covering his ears.

“Fuck!” He pressed the heel of his palm to his temple.

My whole body shook with adrenaline, my heart racing in my chest. The scenario took me back to the nights when my mother would suffer horrible headaches. Not knowing what else to do, I dropped to the floor beside him. A look of agony claimed his face, his body shaking uncontrollably.

Seizure. It was a seizure.

I mentally ran through the checklist of what I remembered reading about seizures in one of my medical textbooks. Remove anything dangerous.

I pushed his chair out of the way, and as I glanced around the room, tip number two came to mind. Nabbing his suitcoat draped over the arm of a leather couch, I crumpled it into a ball and gently pushed it under his head. After that, I loosened his tie and unlatched the top two buttons of his shirt. While part of me felt strange, another part didn’t feel or think, at all. I ran on pure adrenaline in that moment.

He trembled and shook, as I gingerly pushed at his shoulder to turn him on his side.

Biting my nail, I looked up at the clock to see that it had already lasted about four minutes. I slipped my hand in his, just to let him know I was there, as I’d always done with my mother.

He whispered something, and I leaned forward, trying to make out what he’d said. “Impervious,” he whispered again.

Impervious? Had I heard him right?

The trembles slowed. His breathing slowed. Beads of sweat had gathered on his forehead, and his face had turned ghostly white, but it seemed the seizure had subsided.

“Professor?” I gave his hand a light squeeze, and his eyes shot open.

He jerked back, nearly cracking his head on the desk. “Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!” The command arrived as a growled warning, and I tumbled backward, kicking myself away from him.

“I’m sorry. I … I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Wearing a mask of confusion, he pushed to a sitting position and looked around. As his gaze landed on his balled-up coat, his jaw hardened. “That’s a five-hundred-dollar coat crumpled on the floor,” he said, tossing the jacket onto his chair. “Next time you decide to crumple something, consider using your own.”

Any sympathy I may have had drained out of me right then. “Seriously? You just had a seizure in front of me, and you’re worried about a little dust on your coat?”

“Welcome to my Tuesday. This is nothing new.” He pushed to his feet until standing over me.

I didn’t like the dynamic of him looking down on me right then, so I jumped to my feet, as well. “I guess I shouldn’t have bothered to stick around, then.”

“I guess you shouldn’t have.”

Assholeprickbastard! “Forgive me for being a decent human being.”

“A decent human being would’ve given a man some dignity by leaving when she was excused.” He ground the last word through his teeth.

It occurred to me then, he wasn’t angry at me, per se, but perhaps a bit embarrassed. In spite of the urge to verbally duke it out with him and not back down, I softened my voice. “My apologies. I sprang into action without much thought.”

“You certainly–” His jaw hardened again, the muscle ticced, as he clearly fought to restrain his words. On a sharp breath, he buttoned his shirt and adjusted his tie back into place. “A bit overboard.”

With a shrug, I clasped my hands so that he wouldn’t see how badly I was shaking right then. “I was just trying to make you comfortable, is all. Sir.”

His eyes skated to me on the last word, his jaw shifting. “You may leave now, Miss Vespertine.”

With a quiet nod, I gathered my bag. I didn’t know why I felt disappointed leaving his office, aside from the fact that my plan to assist in his lab had been savagely turned down. It wasn’t like I was expecting him to wrap me in a hug for sticking around through all of that.

A thank you would’ve been nice, though.