Spell of the Highlander Read Free Page A

package hadn’t turned out to be quite what she’d expected. From the way the professor had spoken of it, she’d imagined a bulky envelope, perhaps a small parcel.
    But the “package” was actually a crate, and a huge one at that. It was tall, wide, about the size of a . . . well, a sarcophagus or something, and proving no easy matter to navigate through the university corridors.
    “Careful, man. Tilt it! Tilt it! Ow! You’re smashing my finger. Back it up and angle it!”
    A muttered “Sorry.” More grunting. “Damn thing’s awkward. Hall’s too frigging narrow.”
    “You’re almost here,” Jessi offered helpfully. “Just a bit farther.”
    Indeed, moments later, they were carefully lowering the oblong box from their shoulders, depositing it on the rug.
    “The professor said I needed to sign something.” She encouraged them to hurry. She had a full day of working and studying tomorrow . . . er, today.
    “Lady, we need more than that. This here package don’t get left ’til it’s verified.”
    “‘Verified’?” she echoed. “What does that mean?”
    “Means it’s worth
boo-koo
bucks, and the shipper’s insurer’s got to have visual verification and release. See? Says so right here.” The beefier of the two thrust a clipboard at her. “Don’t care who does it, lady, so long as somebody’s John Hancock’s on my paperwork.”
    Sure enough,
Visual Verification and Release Required
was stamped in red across the bill of lading, followed by two pages of terms and definitions detailing shipper’s and buyer’s rights in pedantic, inflated legal jargon.
    She pushed a hand through her short dark curls, sighing. The professor wasn’t going to like this. He’d said it was personal.
    “And if I don’t let you open it up and inspect it?”
    “Goes back, lady. And let me tell you, the shipper’s gonna be plenty pissed.”
    “Yeah,” said the other man. “Thing cost an arm and a leg to insure. Goes back, your professor’s gonna have to pay the second time around. I bet he’s gonna be plenty pissed too.”
    They stared at her with flat, challenging gazes, clearly disinclined to wrestle the awkward crate back up on their shoulders, squeeze it back down the hall, reload it and return it, only to end up delivering it again. They weren’t even talking to her breasts, a thing men often did, especially the first time they met her, which told her how deadly earnest they were about dumping their load and getting on with their lives.
    She glanced at the phone.
    She glanced at her watch.
    She hadn’t gotten the professor’s room number and suspected that if she called the main desk, they’d never put her through at this hour. Though he’d insisted he wasn’t badly hurt, she knew the doctors wouldn’t have kept him if he hadn’t been seriously injured. Hospitals these days spit people out as fast as they took them in.
    Would the professor be more upset if she opened it—or if she refused the delivery and it cost him a fortune to have it reshipped?
    She sighed again, feeling damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
    In the end it was the constantly-broke college student in her who flipped the coin and made the call.
    “Fine. Let’s do this. Open it up.”
     
    Twenty minutes later the deliverymen had secured her wearily scribbled signature and were gone, taking the remains of the crating with them.
    And now she stood, eyeing the thing curiously. It wasn’t a sarcophagus after all. In fact, most of the packaging had been padding.
    From deep within layers and layers of cushioned wrapping, they’d unearthed a mirror and, at her direction, propped it carefully against the east wall of bookshelves.
    Taller than she by more than a foot, the mirror’s ornate frame was a shimmery gold. Shapes and symbols, of such uniformity and cohesion to imply a system of writing, were carved into every inch of the wide border. She narrowed her eyes, pondering the etchings, but linguistics was not her specialty,