Free By Jove by Marissa Doyle Page B

made it to a symposium. Get some pink in her cheeks and some starch out of your shirt. I livened things up a little for you up in New Hampshire, didn’t I? And to think you’d never tried cow-tipping.” He shook his head incredulously. “By the way, how’s our beauteous Olivia? Has she forgiven me yet? Now there’s someone who needs a few more symposia under her belt. Far too solemn for such a handsome girl, don’t you think? Then again, she always was too serious. You need to work on her more, Grant.”
    Theo pressed her lips together and looked down at her feet. She’d forgotten that Marlowe had spent a year at Grant’s institute and knew all his colleagues and friends up there. Like this beauteous Olivia. Julian had asked Grant about an Olivia as well, hadn’t he? A small green snake hissed ‘very interessssting’ in her mind’s ear.
    “Olivia’s fine. I spoke with her a few days ago.” From the corner of her eye she saw Grant glance at her as he spoke, but she would not look up from the floor.
    “Fabulous. Send her my love, won’t you? Tell her she has to come down for a visit here. It’ll be like the old times, eh?” Marlowe clapped Grant on the back, then made a grab for his sheet as it started to slide. “Whoops. I say, Theo, what’s so fascinating about that floor?”
    She was still staring down at her feet, but now from interest rather than from pique. “It’s the bird I saw at the department dinner. I’ve been looking for it ever since then, but I guess there was furniture over it. Look.” She took their arms and pulled the two men back a few steps.
    There indeed was the sinister bird with its glinting eye, whether an eagle or a vulture she couldn’t say, stretched in its exultant dive toward—toward—she stepped back further.
    Yes, there it was, at her feet: a naked man, bound hand and foot to a stained rock on the craggy side of a mountain, the granite beneath him worn smooth by his body’s agonized thrashing. A long, jagged wound gaped across his torso, bleeding freely. It was his blood that had stained the rock below him. Looking more closely, she could see that the bird’s beak was stained rusty red as well, and a fragment of purple flesh was still caught in it. It was mesmerizing and horrible.
    “It’s Prometheus. Prometheus and the vulture. I should have remembered,” she said softly, staring down at it.
    “Why, so it is. Olivia wrote an interesting little monograph on Prometheus, didn’t she, Grant?” Marlowe came around to peer down at the floor next to her. “You said you’d preferred Aeschylus’s handling—”
    A sudden movement silenced Marlowe and made her look up. Without a word, Grant turned on his heels and strode out the door.

Chapter Six
    Some days later Theo was walking down the hall after Dr. Herman’s seminar when she saw Julian’s secretary stride toward her. She hastily stepped to one side and tentatively said, “Hello, Ms. Cadwallader.”
    To her surprise, the woman stopped in front of her. “Here,” she said shortly, and handed Theo a small scroll of thick cream-colored paper, tied with a gold ribbon.
    “Thank you,” Theo said, but June was already stalking back down the hallway to her office. When she got to it, she slammed the door behind her.
    “You have a nice day too,” Theo said under her breath, and let her backpack slide to the ground as she untied the scroll. Unrolling it, she read:
    Tua praesentia
    Petitur
    Ad Symposium Departmenti
    Idibus Novembris
    Hora octava post meridiem
    Vestis idonea requiritur
    So she’d been invited to the next department symposium. Marlowe had been as good as his word. Idibus Novembris —that would be the, uh—
    “November fifteenth?” Grant said, looking over her shoulder.
    Theo jumped but maintained her composure. “Thirteenth. This Saturday. The Ides are on the fifteenth only in certain months, remember? What are you teaching your class, anyway?” She stepped a pace or two from him.
    He didn’t