Page 69 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
“I’m sorry if you felt left behind,” the professor continued, looking at Dani. “It was a difficult decision, but one I felt I had to make to protect the most people that I could at the time. Perhaps there were more ideal ways to have handled the situation, but it might not have come to that if we had all played our parts correctly, which I trust each of you will in the future. If anyone,anyonegoes against my direct orders in the field again, they will be excused without a second thought,” she finished.
A small silence followed, in which Silva studied each of them in turn. Finally, she cleared her throat. “Now. We have approximately three weeks left until the gala. We will meet again on Monday and determine our next steps. Though Miss Novak assures me her device could pass even the strictest security sweep, she must make certain that it remains undetected after the alarms were raised. After, she’ll need a few days to fully explore OneiroLabs’s systems and discover the breadth of what she can access or manipulate. In the meantime, keep your heads down and please, try not to attract any undue attention to yourselves. Questions?”
A pause. Dani felt her question,thequestion, bubble up underneath her diaphragm:What do I do if I just found out I’m dating the CEO’s son?
But she just bit down hard on the inside of her lip again, this time tasting blood.
“Very well,” Silva said into the silence. “Dismissed.”
Everyone trooped out of her office without speaking to one another. Out in the wet afternoon, the sidewalks were rivers runningwith students hurrying to their next class. Katya and Wyatt peeled out quickly, but Dani, McKenna, and Oliver lingered in front of the OS building for a moment.
“How are you holding up?” Dani asked Oliver.
“I should be asking you that,” they said. “I feel awful that we left without you last night.”
“Oh, please don’t,” Dani said. “It was Silva’s decision to leave, not yours. And anyway, we could have ported back to campus if it had come to it.”
“Still,” Oliver said. “I’m sure that can’t have felt good.”
McKenna nodded.
“Porting definitely didn’t,” Dani said with a laugh. “I’d really rather not do that again unless I absolutely have to. Where are you headed now?”
“I’ve got a free period, so I think I’ll stop by the greenhouse,” Oliver said. “I haven’t told Silva yet, but I’ve started experimenting with using my telepathy to figure out what other plants could be part of the antidote.”
“How does that work?” McKenna asked with interest.
“It’s hard to explain,” Oliver said. “I can kind of discern the essence of a plant, get a sense of its properties. Right now I’m working on grafting two plants together that might work well against the nightmares. I’m using telepathy to try to get them to communicate better as they fuse, but it’s delicate business. I need to tend it multiple times a day.”
“Fascinating,” McKenna said. “I don’t have class until three—would you mind if I tagged along to see?”
“Of course not,” Oliver said. “I’d love to show you.”
“I’ve got stats in ten minutes, but I’m going in the same direction,” Dani said. “I’ll walk with you.”
They turned right, joining the flow of students. McKenna and Oliver struck up a conversation about plants that could be used ascomponents in glamours; McKenna frequently went into the university forest to forage but was curious about the possibilities of growing such things in a greenhouse. After a few minutes, they came to the arcanobotany quad, the most artistically landscaped section of the university, with the mammoth greenhouse nestled at the center.
“Go on ahead,” McKenna said to Oliver. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
“Sounds good,” Oliver said, and gave Dani a quick hug. “See you later, Dani.”
McKenna turned to face Dani as Oliver started toward the greenhouse. “I just wanted to check in. Are you—”
Dani’s long-held question came spilling out of her before her friend could even finish. “What the hell am I supposed to do, Kenz?”
“I’m going to be honest—this is one conundrum I don’t know how to solve,” McKenna said. “It’s a pretty tough spot. Let me ask you this: What do youwantto do?”
“Iwantto have none of this OneiroLabs stuff to have ever happened. I want Kass not to be the CEO’s son. I want to forget I know anything about all of this.” Dani sighed. “I feel like I have to tell him.”
“Tell him that you’re trying to steal from his family’s business? You can’t do that.”
“I also can’t just pretend I don’t have a secret like this. I’d at least have to quit Silva’s project.”
“Do you want to quit?” McKenna asked.
“I mean, kind of. Not really, obviously, because Oliver, and you know, the whole scholarship thing. But I can’t keep dating Kass and trying to bring down his family’s business at the same time! What happens when he finds out? That’s so fucked up. I think I have to choose, Kenz.”
“Break up or back out?”
