In this scene, Cillian Phane has demanded grad student Laura Agnew attend office hours after failing her essay. Cillian is the new tutor in countermancy filling in since the permanant tutor, Deirdra, has gone missing.
From A Lesson in Curses (Chapter 3)
When there’s a tap on my door at the end of the day, I know it’s her. I go to answer, then pause and switch on my speaker and set it playing some Bach. I want to see this “fear of music” firsthand.
I open the door. The first thing Laura does when she registers the sound of a Brandenburg Concerto is fidget in her pocket and pull out some earbuds. But after a moment, she cautiously puts them back.
“Hello, Ms. Agnew. Come in.”
She steps inside and stands rigid, plainly pissed off to be here. It sparks a malicious pleasure in my heart.
“Tea? Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“Come and take a seat.” Laura sits stiffly on the edge of a padded armchair, and I sit opposite. “You’re Australian, right? How are you adjusting to life in the U.K.?”
“Fine.”
Clearly, she’s so mad at me about that fail she can barely speak. “Enjoying the weather?” I ask.
“It’s okay.”
“Going through two winters back-to-back must feel a little strange.” She nods. “Where did you take your undergraduate degree?” I add, as if I haven’t looked closely into her background.
“University of Melbourne.”
“I believe that’s a respected institution. And you studied law?”
But Laura is done with chitchat. “Why did you fail my essay?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Because it was substandard.”
She stares at me for a few moments, lips parted in shock, the lamplight bouncing off her nose-stud. “I worked hard on it. I’ve compared it with my friends’ essays, and I think you marked me unfairly.”
“Are you here on scholarship?”
A flush rises on her cheeks. “Yes.” She sweeps her pink-and-dark hair off her shoulder—an irritable gesture—and I’m momentarily distracted by her neck. Gleaming in the desk lamp’s glow, the skin where her jawline and earlobe meet looks as soft as vellum. The light catches the very finest of hairs, so fine they would probably melt in the mouth like peach fuzz.
I pull my eyes away. “I thought so.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Are you saying I’m somehow inferior?”
“On the contrary, scholarship students tend to be brilliant but often have an inflated sense of their own abilities.”
Her eyes glitter with dislike and for an instant I think she’s going to get up and leave. Then she takes an almost imperceptible breath. “Could you please help me, Cillian? It’s very important that I pass.”
“Why is it important?”
She pauses. “Because I don’t want to disappoint my parents. They’ve sacrificed a lot to help me get here.”
“That’s not a particularly inspiring motivation.”
She sets her jaw again. “You asked a personal question. I gave you an answer.”
“How do you expect me to help you, Agnew, if you can’t even tell me honestly why it matters that you pass this course?” She stays silent so I push. “Every curse has a motivation, and getting to the heart of that motivation is what allows a countermancer to break the curse. That’s why I’m interested in motivations.”
“What’s your motivation?” she shoots back.
“You’re the one who wants help, not me.”
She lifts her eyes to my face and studies it. Her eyes are so dark, you can’t quite distinguish the pupil. It puts me in mind of a deep well. Or a demon.
“My motivation,” I find myself saying, “is to break curses that ruin people’s lives.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I’m on edge. I can’t be sure if I said that because she used some sort of power on me—or because, for an instant, I liked her. I fight against the urge to shift in my chair and keep my gaze locked on her face.
“My motivation is the same as yours,” she says.
“That’s a cop-out.”
“I can’t help it if we share altruistic motives.”
If she genuinely mirrors my motivation, then she’s hiding something. Because what I said is the truth, but only part of it. “Nobody operates from purely altruistic motivations.”
She hitches an eyebrow and it’s startlingly sexy. “You tell me your selfish motivation and I’ll tell you mine.”
I fight to control the muscles threatening to quirk my lips into a smile, and I’m not sure I succeed. “Perhaps we should leave it at altruistic motives, then.” I reach for my copy of Bastion and pass it to her. “Let’s get started.”
“Now?”
“Have you got somewhere else to be?” She shakes her head reluctantly. “Well, what can you tell me about escape clauses?”
She sighs and opens Bastion to the relevant chapter. She reads for a few moments, then looks up, clearly trying to convert what she’s read into simpler language. “The difference between an unbreakable curse and one that a countermancer can work with can be in the fine print.”
I nod. “Why do so many curses have ‘fine print’?”
“Because most curses were placed a long time ago, when it was the fashion to build in a loophole?”
“What does Bastion say about it? Read the paragraph on maledictors.”
She finds it and reads, her hair falling across her cheek. Apart from the faded pink streak, it’s the colour of an antique mahogany table and looks unspeakably soft and clean, like she’s just washed it. I wonder how it smells.
Laura lifts her face. “Bastion suggests it’s almost like the maledictor is having fun with the victim—toying with them. Did I interpret that right?”
“Yes. Loopholes are built in as a kind of sneer at the victim. It could be anything from the curse only kicking in when a specific condition is met, to coming up with a ludicrous set of circumstances for breaking the curse. You know the sort of thing … ‘You must balance on a horse’s tail hair in neither night nor day, and sing a ballad forgotten by all mankind, and only then shall the curse be broken’.”
She frowns. “Is that from the Darwich Curse?”
What the fuck? “It’s not from any curse. I made it up as an example.”
Laura searches my face like she’s looking for answers to unspoken questions there. “What loopholes did the Darwich Curse have?”
I harden my expression against her probing gaze. “You tell me.”
“We haven’t studied it yet.”
“Then you’ll need to do some background reading.”
She looks more puzzled than chastened. “You work with Professor Vitta. I figured you’d know all about it.”
Christ, of course she did. I adjust my manner. “We’ll cover that at some point. For now, I suggest we focus on Bastion.”
She gives a faint shrug. “I just thought it would help to talk about a real-world example.” But she goes back to the Bastion.
We read and discuss the text for another forty-five minutes. She’s a quick learner. I feel a nudge of remorse that I failed her essay when she didn’t deserve it. But no real harm’s been done, and if anything, she’s at an advantage, getting private coaching from me.
“I understand you have a hearing condition,” I say when Laura is putting away her books at the end of our session.
She frowns. “No ...?”
“Jac Humbert says you have phonophobia.”
“He said that?” She sounds flustered. “It’s fine. I can manage it.”
“May I ask what the trigger is? Just so I can support your management of the condition.”
“It’s a bit random. Maybe something to do with a specific instrument or tonality.” She’s not looking at me as she speaks.
“It’s worth investigating,” I say. “If you can identify the problem, you can master it.”
“I’m fine.”
She heads for the door.
“Going forward, I can give you an hour’s coaching on Thursdays, first thing,” I say.
“Okay,” she answers without turning around.
“One more thing, Agnew.”
Laura glances back, hand on the doorknob.
I tip my head. “A ‘Thanks, Cillian’ would be the standard nicety here. I don’t offer students extra coaching for my own amusement.”
The dark eyes widen incredulously. I wait. She swallows. “Thank you.”
I nod, permitting myself to smile a little.