Aurelie opened the door a minute later and motioned for them to step inside. It was a large, rectangular room with one high, narrow window above the desk. Des had to duck his head to keep from running into the dried herbs and flowers hanging from the low ceiling. The room was full but not untidy, with rows of bookshelves lining the walls, holding more scientific objects than books. Des noted a small collection of skulls and blinked in surprise.
“As you can see,” Aurelie said, taking a seat on the sofa, “it’s more or less a study. I spend most of my time here when I’m not in class or working. I’m afraid it’s all rather dull. I read, I take notes, I memorize formulas. I work here at the university as a handyperson. That takes up a good deal of my time. Occasionally I sleep.” She patted the sofa. “It’s more comfortable than it looks.”
Daisy walked to a large wooden wardrobe. “May I?” she asked, gesturing to the door.
“Of course.”
Des wasn’t sure what he’d expected when Daisy opened the doors—clothing, perhaps, or more skeletons—but it wasn’t a series of vials and beakers, some filled with unidentifiable objects floating in fluid. Aurelie was even stranger than he’d given her credit for, but he didn’t see anything that would indicate illegalactivity. Certainly nothing akin to the sketch he’d taken. Could it simply have been an assignment for one of her classes, some sort of hypothetical exercise? After all, he had no idea what university students did, and he doubted Commander Yew did, either.
“What do you use all this for?” Daisy asked over her shoulder. She looked as out of place here as Des felt.
“Scientific study,” Aurelie explained, joining them at the wardrobe. “Not novel experiments, of course. Nothing that could produce demons. But part of learning how things work is observing the processes for ourselves.” She lifted out a small dish containing a jagged lump of crystals. “I’m growing these to learn about the crystallization process. These were made with water and alum.”
“And this?” Des asked, pointing to a jar full of cockroaches.
“Food for the amphibians in the zoology department. I catch so many around here that I figured I may as well do something useful with them.”
Daisy seemed to accept all of Aurelie’s explanations at face value, but Des kept his eyes on Aurelie. There was a bead of sweat at her temple, though it wasn’t warm down here. If anything, it was quite cold. There was no fireplace. The thought of her sleeping down here by herself troubled him for some reason. Perhaps he was too used to sleeping in a room with dozens of other people.
“All right,” Des said, sitting at the desk. “So if you’re not doing anything here to produce demons, what’syourexplanation for what we’ve been seeing lately?”
Aurelie shrugged and returned to the sofa, where Daisy sat next to her. “I don’t have an explanation, Des.” She turned to him, eyessuddenly sharp. “I suppose one could ask if there isn’t some other common denominator at these demon sightings.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaningyou. You have also been at every one of these encounters. How do we know you’re not the one attracting the demons?”
Des glanced at Daisy, who shook her head unhelpfully. “Because it hasn’t been happening when you’re not around,” he said, though he wasn’t sure. Commander Yew said there were more encounters elsewhere in the kingdom. Des had read the reports himself.
Aurelie untied the ribbon at her neck, exposing the pale hollow of her throat, and shook out the remnants of her disheveled braid, as if she no longer cared to keep up her student persona. And why should she? She was obviously exhausted, and both Des and Daisy had already seen under the guise of the dean’s perfect niece.
“Tell me one more thing and we’ll let you get some sleep,” Des said.
She sighed and met his eyes again. “What?”
“Who was the tall man who came here to visit you?”
“Everard? He’s a friend of my uncle’s.”
“And yet he came when your uncle was away.”
Aurelie blinked slowly, as if she was fighting sleep. “He wasn’t aware my uncle would be traveling. It was a last-minute trip to visit a dying friend.”
“And you invited him to stay for dinner?”
“I did. But he wasn’t able to stay long. We had a glass of wine and then he left.”
Fair enough. That did explain why the visit was so short. “What else do you know about him?”
“Very little. I’d never met him before that night.”
“Have you seen him since?”
A small scratching noise from across the room caught Aurelie’s attention. Des followed her gaze to the far corner near the floorboard.
“Mice,” Aurelie explained with a light laugh. “They’re nearly as bad as the cockroaches.”
“Your uncle’s friend?” Des asked, doing his best to keep his tone curious.