Liam Davis & The Raven (7 page)

“Look man, I spilled my coffee before. I know I have sticky hands
—I’m assuming that was the reason for wiping them.”

“God, yes, it was.” Mitch rubbed
the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry it came across differently . . . ”

“No worries.”

I made my way to the bathroom and dried my pants as well as I could under the air dryer. After a couple of minutes and a rather quizzical look from an elderly man, I gave up. The pants would have to go into the wash as soon as I got home anyway, and home was only a quarter-hour walk. I’d say my goodbyes and leave. Maybe this was a sign that I should be home working.

I
left the restroom and paused this time as I passed Hunter and Mitch. Mitch’s gaze slowly travelled down Hunter’s tattooed arms. He gave him a cute, crooked smile. “Well, have a good day!”

Hunter flexed his arm muscles as if he were aware of their appeal. “
Yeah, you too.” He rolled back in a swift move, and I jumped to avoid colliding. “Liam. Nice friend of yours. Sorry about the drama.”

“I was tempted to pull out my notebook and start recording it all.”

He laughed.

I actually wasn’t joking.

We approached our table. Quinn’s voice rumbled through the air, his words hitting me with a slam.

“There’s just something . . . off about that Liam guy. He’s too stiff and awkward. For all his brains, he doesn’t have an ounce of smarts around people. I mean, you saw him just now. He couldn’t even stick up for that guy. It’s no wonder he seems not to have any friends—” Quinn jerked in his seat. “Ouch, what’d you kick me for, Shannon? That’s going to leave a bruise.”

I stopped at the table, but didn’t bother to sit.
Why stay where I wasn’t wanted? And besides, I had more important things to worry about. Like getting out of these pants and writing my column.

“Ah, crap.” Quinn
saw his mistake. I stopped him before he gave me an insincere apology. If he was sorry at all, he was just sorry he got caught.

“No, it’s okay, Quinn,” I said
. “For all your social ease, you don’t have the brains to know when to shut up. I get it.”

His mouth dropped open, and Hunter slapped the back of my leg. “Oh, we’re going to get
along really well.”

I
tilted my head at him. “I’ve got to get going. The party page won’t write itself.”

With that, I left.
Back to my big, cold apartment to hang out with Old Faithful, my laptop.

Chapter 4

At nine o’clock on T
uesday evening, only Hannah, the chief, and I occupied the
Scribe
’s offices. The bright fluorescent lights flickered tiredly above us, as if complaining about the long day. My fingers ached from typing, but I still had tasks to accomplish. I could work from home, but I cringed at the idea of hearing my clacking fingertips echo in the emptiness; at least there was a coziness here that absorbed the silence.

A
fter rewriting my third party page piece a fourth time, I submitted the print-ready version to the chief.

One thing down, now
on to the next: telephoning Beckman Hall.
I was going to find out everything I could about The Raven and make one heck of a column out of it.

Hannah startled, drawing my attention to her. “Liam!” She
tucked a strand of mahogany hair behind her ear and bit her bottom lip as she glanced at a piece of paper in her hand. “Come take a look at this.”

I stretched out of my chair and moved around to her desk. Peering over her shoulder, I read the typed letter addressed to the
editor of the opinions page.

The Raven’s gonna lose his wings

We’ll smile while he sings and sings

Then we’d love to watch him fly

Through a deep, dark, angry sky

“Who sent this?” I asked, grabbing the torn envelope.
No return address or postage. Whoever wrote it had to carry it into
Scribe
’s offices.

“I cannot and will not publish this,” Hannah said as I lifted up her phone and dialed
the chief’s extension.

He answered gruffly, and I briefly summarized the threatening letter.

“Bring it in,” he snapped, “and I’ll take a look.”

I hung up the phone. “Chief wants to take a look. Can I take it to him?”

“Yes, of course.” With trembling hands, she handed it over and I scanned it for clues. Surely the police would have some tricks to figure out who wrote this? They’d dust for prints and record the threat, should anything ever happen to . . .

I shook off the thought and strode into
the chief’s office.

He took one look at the letter and sighed. “It’s not the first threat that has made its way to the opinions page.” He stroked his beard as he read it
over once more. “I’ll file a report with the police, and we’ll do whatever we can.” Looking up at me with regarding eyes, he said, “It isn’t just these guys”—he hit the letter with the back of his hand—“that want to find the vigilante. The police do as well. Whoever The Raven is, if he doesn’t stop what he’s doing, he will eventually be caught and brought to justice.”

“Justice!” The cry came sharply, and my stomach clenched. “He’s saved people’s lives. Protected them. He has a cause and he’s standing up for it.
The Raven’s a hero.”

Chief Benedict sighed. “He’s a hero that has sent
quite a few students to the emergency room.”

“Only because they asked for it.”

“No one asks for it, Mr. Davis.”

“So you think it’s better that innocent guys get beaten
to within an inch of their life? That bats get taken to them and they end up crippled for the rest of their lives?” A hiccup rose up my throat, and my eyes stung with unfamiliar heat.

The chief round
ed his desk. I flinched when he drew an arm around my shoulder and gently moved me to a seat.

My whole body shook
, and my teeth clenched so tightly that my head ached.

Chief Benedict crouched
at my side, one hand still firmly on my shoulder. “No, it’s not better,” he said. “It really, really isn’t. But we must work on other ways of stopping senseless violence. Because violence against violence . . . it will go wrong. What happens to the criminals when The Raven swings just a little too hard? Or lands a kick at just the wrong angle? What happens when blood stains his fingers for good? He won’t be the guy with the good cause anymore, and he won’t be admired; he’ll become a killer and his life will never be the same again.” The chief shuffled on his feet as he pushed himself back up. “And what if one day he’s outnumbered, and he ends up in the hospital—or worse?”

At some point I’d started clicking my pen,
comforted by the rhythm. But there was nothing I could say to the chief. Nothing at all. He was right, and I hated that.

I picked myself
up off the chair and gave the chief a sharp nod. “I have a column to draft,” I said. I shut the door on him and his sigh, and slid back behind my desk.

But I didn’t work on my
column. Instead, I stared blankly at my screen and my office “friends.”

The
Raven saved me, saved many people, and now—now we had to thank him by warning him about the threat to his life. And we had to save him by getting him to stop.

“You okay, Liam?” Hannah asked, shutting her laptop.

I glanced over. “I need to find The Raven and warn him.”

She gave me a sharp nod and looked toward the piles of paper on her desk. “If I come across anything that will help, I
’ll tell you.”

“Thank you, Hannah.”

Her smile was coupled with rosy cheeks, matching the hair tie she wore to pull her mahogany hair off her face and into a bun.

“Off now, are you?” I asked,
picking up the phone, fingers itching to press the buttons and dial. I needed to call Beckman Hall right away.

Hannah pushed back her swivel chair and
grabbed her messenger bag as she stood. “I’d better get back to my apartment else Lotte will complain I have no life at all. Not even a slumming-it-on-the-couch-in-front-of-the-TV life.”

“But if you’re happy, right? It shouldn’t matter.” I glanced from my laptop screen
, glowing with the number for Beckman Hall, to Hannah, who was nervously rounding her desk toward mine. I gave her a small, curious frown and she blinked her gaze away from me. Shyly. Coyly.

I
tensed.

What was
happening here?

“You’re right, it doesn’t matter.
If you’re happy
.” She blushed and focused on me. “But I do want more than just working. Like . . . like maybe going out on a date sometime.”

I clutched the phone tighter as she tapped her fingertips on the edge of my desk. “Liam?
Do you maybe want that too? To go out sometime”—her voice shook at the edges—“with me?”

I swapped the phone to my other hand as if it would help me think of a reply.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about dating. Hannah was sweet; she always brought and shared oranges and grapes. I enjoyed talking to her during the day, and she often gave insightful thoughts on my work. But going out on a date?

I pushed my glasses up
the bridge of my nose, even though they were sitting high enough already. Before I knew it, I’d laid the phone down and was clicking my pen.

Click, click,
click.

“I’m not sure, Hannah. How about I think about it and get back to you?”

“Oh, um—”

I brought up my calendar on the desktop and scanned all the meetings, classes and deadlines I had coming up. “How does the end of next week sound?”

She frowned lightly. “So you’ll get back to me about us going out not this Friday, but next Friday?”

“No, Friday I
’ll have to research for the party page, but Sunday would work.”

That way I’d have time to weigh up the pros and cons of
dating. I’d made the mistake before of dating someone who worked in the office. Bad idea. But I couldn’t ignore the warm ache at the thought of someone wanting to spend time with me. Someone who actually seemed to like me.

Someone w
ho would discover my dead body before it started to rot in my apartment.

“Okay, Liam.”
She gave a small chuckle, then turned and left. “Next Sunday it is.”

The door shut behind her with a soft
click
, and I stared at it for a good ten seconds before the chief brought me back to the present, snapping his fingers in front of my face.

The chief left
soon after, leaving me and the dodgy light alone in the building. Finally, I picked up the phone and dialed Beckman Hall.

The girl who answered sounded almost identical to Hannah, and I did a double take before introducing myself. She recognized my na
me right away. “I just loved the piece you did on ghosts of university past and present and that. Really great.”

What was it with that Christmas piece? Had no one any real taste?
I cleared the strange mix of delight and disappointment from my throat, and my voice came out deeper than its usual baritone. “Thank you. I’d like to speak with a Dylan MacDonald?”

“Just a sec.” She must have covered the phone because
, though I couldn’t make out what she was saying, I could make out voices. A long moment later, she said, “I’m sorry, Dylan came back sick from his field trip. He might have glandular fever. He’s gone back home and I don’t know when he’ll be back. Do you want me to leave a message on his door? Or, he has a friend crashing in his room for a couple days . . . maybe he can help answer your questions?”

I declined the offer. Dylan would have no idea who I was
or what I was after, and I didn’t want to leave details in a note on his door. I certainly didn’t want to involve his friend.

Just before I hung up, the girl spoke again
, “So, like, how do you choose what party you write about?”

“Random, mostly.”
This wasn’t entirely true; I chose parties that were close to my apartment.

She continued,
“Beckman Hall is having a ball this Friday, would that count as a party?”

I almost
declined, but I reconsidered. If I attended this ball, I’d be at Beckman Hall, where a photo of The Raven hung in Dylan’s room. Maybe, if I was clever enough, I wouldn’t have to wait until Dylan returned to get a glimpse of the vigilante.

I leaned back.
“Actually, I think Beckman Hall ball would work splendidly. How do I go about getting a ticket?”

Beckman Hall
cafeteria-turned-ballroom looked like it had been sucking on gangster hats, feather eyelashes, fringed skirts and cigarette holders for so long that it started spitting feathered scarves and velveteen gloves to the floor in protest.

Wearing
plain black slacks and a black shirt, I slipped easily into the shadows, and no one gave me much more than a passing glance. Now that I was here, all I had to do was write some notes for my column, find out where exactly Dylan roomed, and sneak inside for a quick look around.

A voice cut through the plucking of bass strings, and the familiarity stilled me.
Trying to fit myself against a life-size silhouette showcased on the wall, I skimmed the heads of the crowd toward the voice. No. It just wasn’t possible. How could he be here?