Read Spiral of Bliss 02 Allure for Free Online Page A

note resting on top of a folder:

    I never knew before now that Liv has a talent for drawing. I wonder if she even realizes she’s a good artist.
    “Professor West?” One of my grad students, Sam, knocks at the half-open door. “Hey, didn’t know you were back yet. Have a good Christmas?”
    “I did, thanks.” I tape the note to my computer, which faces away from the rest of the office. “You?”
    “Yeah, went skiing up on the Point last week.”
    “Come on in.” I clear a pile of folders off a chair so he can sit down. “How was the snow?”
    “Powder, but thick. Beat my own speed record. You get out this year?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Bunch of us might head out again for a weekend before the semester starts, if you’re up for it.”
    “Too busy, but thanks.” I don’t want to leave Liv even for a weekend now. I eye Sam’s backpack. “So what’s going on? You get any work done yet?”
    “Believe it or not…” Sam digs into his backpack and removes a sheaf of printed-out paper. “First chapter outline.”
    “Really?” Impressed, I take the papers.
    “I focused on the medieval city structure and guild system,” Sam explains. “I found a great essay about how the power structure of the guilds affected city planning.” He pulls another paper out of his backpack and passes it across to me.
    We spend the next hour discussing the outline of his thesis, the further research he needs to do, the narrowing of his hypothesis. I loan him a couple of books and promise to email him copies of my own papers on medieval city planning.
    After he leaves, I organize my notes for the Words and Images conference, which will involve over three thousand scholars. Between presentations, dinners, seminars, poster sessions, banquets, and an exhibition of medieval manuscripts, we’re booking venues all over the university and in town.
    A second knock sounds at the door. Another graduate student, Maggie Hamilton, looks in. There’s a guarded expression on her face.
    My jaw clenches. “Hello, Maggie.”
    “Professor West.” She shifts, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “I just saw Sam at the library, and he said you were here. Can I… can I talk to you a minute?”
    “Come in. Leave the door open, please.” Wariness floods me as she walks in.
    Maggie was a masters student at King’s before I was hired. When the previous medieval history professor retired, Maggie became one of my students. I learned soon that she had been admitted to the program because her family has strong ties to the university, and her father continues to make large donations. Maggie’s lack of scholarly aptitude manifested itself in her poorly written thesis proposal, which she and I have argued over for the past year.
    Last semester, Maggie approached Liv to ask for help getting me to approve her proposal. When Liv refused, Maggie made some slanderous implications about my integrity. I wrote Maggie an email telling her I could no longer be her advisor. She never responded.
    Until, I assume, now.
    “I… er, I wanted to apologize, you know, for last semester.” Maggie’s face gets red. “It was really inappropriate for me to approach your wife like that.”
    “Yes, it was. Have you turned in the paperwork to change advisors?”
    She turns a beseeching gaze to me. “I don’t want to change advisors, Professor West. I can’t! I’ve already done all the coursework for Medieval Studies, and you’re the only medievalist on faculty right now.”
    “We talked about this last semester, Maggie. Given our disagreements—”
and your damn lies
“—I can’t advise you any longer.”
    “But my father is expecting me to graduate
this year
so I can start law school next year! I’m already scheduled to take the LSAT. If you stop advising me, I’ll have to go to Professor Hunter, and she’ll make me take a whole semester of coursework, plus summer school.”
    “Professor Hunter won’t
make
you do anything, Maggie. This university has