Page 140 of Victorious

Victor’s mouth quirked. He hadn’t known the details, but he’d noticed the discrepancy between Dani’s potential and her posting, recognized a talent being stifled, squandered. Add to that her past interest in stress-induced hormonal shifts and synthetic cortisol, and he suspected she was the person for the job.

Now that he was sitting here, across from her, his suspicion turned to certainty. In her, Victor saw a distorted version of himself. Not as he was, but as he’d been. Young and brilliant, ambitious and ignored.

“If you don’t want money—” he began.

“Oh, I want it,” said Dani. “It’s just not my primary motivating force.”

“What is, then?” inquired Victor.

“Spite. And the knowledge that it’s only a matter of time before the current dean drops dead.”

Victor spread his hands. “An outcome that could almost certainly be expedited.”

The professor searched his face. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

His mouth quirked up at one corner as if to say, That’s the point.

Her gaze dropped back to the paper. “You have to tell me what it does.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Either. Both.”

Victor thought of hurting her. To prove the point. He’d timed his visit well. His powers had come online just after she walked in. Now, his nerves were humming, and so were hers. He could force her. Bend her. Break her.

Instead, he told the truth. “Have you heard the term EO?”

Her eyes narrowed suddenly, amusement dropping off her face. “Is that a joke?”

“You did some research on the topic. Not by that name, of course, you called it something else—”

“That paper was never published,” she shot back, wincing as she said it. Clearly a sore subject.

“Your hypotheses were sound.”

“And unproveable,” she countered. “It was pseudoscience. I was young, and dumb, and trying to shake things up.”

“Like me,” said Eli, somewhere over Victor’s shoulder. “Remember when I first declared it as my formal thesis? You could hear a pin drop in that lecture hall.”

Victor tried to tune the specter out. “A lot to risk a future on.”

“And look where it got me,” muttered Dani, before rising to her feet. “I can’t help you. But if you’re in crisis, the university has plenty of resources.”

Victor sighed. “Sit down.”

But she ignored him, rounding the desk. “I’m sure they’ll be able to—”

“Don’t,” he warned, as she reached for the phone on the corner of the desk. She wasn’t listening. Victor flexed his hand, and hers froze. Her whole body went taut and still, pinned in place by his will. She sucked in a breath, fingers trembling over the cradle. Sweat broke out along her temples.

“You know,” he mused, “it took a long time for me to learn how to wield a body without hurting it. I used to simply fry the nerves. Turn the dials up. Pain is a shockingly efficient way of making a point.”

Fear glinted in Dani’s eyes. Fear, and shock—and indignation.

He let go. She sagged a little as her autonomy returned, her body back under her own control.