Chapter 2

Over the next several days, Emma did her best to forget about the strange start to the semester, an undertaking which was not assisted by the fact that she had Professor Jones' class again on Wednesday, and spent the entire time so involved in dithering that she completely forgot to take notes. If he had been up to no good in her room (nothing appeared to be missing, but was it something small she wouldn't notice?) she didn't think she should confront him and raise his suspicions, but she didn't want to go on playing ignorant when something was clearly fishy. He, for his part, treated her completely as he had before, which was to say calling on her when she raised her hand and smiling when he told her that she'd done well at the reading. He knew that David Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" was not the most riveting item to ever grace a college sophomore's over-stimulated eyeballs.

Emma was inordinately flustered by his praise, doing nothing to uncomplicate her scattered mental state, and almost walked into the wall on her way to meet Wendy and Alice, her English-major suitemate, for coffee at Hillside. When she squeezed into the table with her macchiato, her expression must have been wild enough to attract comment, as they said together, "What?"

"Oh, just this…" Emma struggled to think how to describe him. "My history teacher. Professor Jones."

"Ohmigod!" Alice clapped a hand to her mouth. "Is he the same one that teaches my comparative lit class? OH MY GOD!"

Emma eyed her narrowly. "He does literature too?"

"Apparently. He's the newbie, he doesn't have tenure, so he gets dumped with the crappy required courses they can't find enough TAs for?" Alice shrugged, but she was clearly far more interested in discussing their shared distraction. "That guy, sheesh. You have no idea how many fans he already has. Nobody plans to skip class for any reason. That's a talent."

Emma fought away a completely irrational pang of jealousy. If there was anything female on the entire BC campus that hadn't noticed Professor Killian Jones, they should be checked post-haste for a pulse. She was absurdly tempted to say that she thought he had been in her room, but that was a can of worms she definitely didn't need to open. "Fan club, huh? Someone should print up T-shirts."

"Yeah, we're having trouble thinking of a name." Alice adjusted her ashy blonde ponytail. "Killian's Klan?"

Emma winced. "Um, definitely not."

"Jones' Junkies?"

"No."

"Professor Hot Stuff's Hoochie Mamas?"

"No!"

"See!" Alice protested, as Wendy choked on her double tall skim latte. "It's hard, okay!"

"Changing the subject," Emma said hastily. "Have either of you guys seen Neal? I, uh, told him something after class on Monday, and he kind of flipped out. He's been MIA ever since."

Alice pursed her lips. "And that's really such a loss?"

"Hey," Emma said, stung. "No judging me in the boyfriend department, okay? Neal may be kind of a – " loser – "free spirit, but at least he can function without industrial quantities of psychotropic drugs."

Alice looked miffed in turn. Her boyfriend, Jefferson, was one of the chief culprits in the skulking-film-student department, whose avant-garde short last year had won a prize for being artsy and groundbreaking (Emma thought they'd given it to him because they were afraid of what he'd do if he didn't get it). His most recent project was called Adventures in Wonderland, in which he wandered the rundown districts of Boston with an expensive camera, taking black and white photos of poverty and desolation in the first world. It would probably net him a lucrative fine-arts scholarship one day soon.

"That's different," Alice sniffed. "Jefferson is a genius. Neal is…"

"Campus weed connoisseur number one?" Wendy suggested.

"Hey! Keep your voice down!" Emma glanced around shiftily, in case any RAs or school administrative officials happened to be in the vicinity. She trusted them both, but she still didn't need that little tidbit becoming public knowledge. "I just was wondering, all right?"

"No," Alice said.

Wendy paused, then shook her head. "Nope."

That weekend was the Eagles' first home football game of the season. BC was opening up against Virginia Tech, which meant they were probably going to be used to wipe the floor, but everyone was excited anyway. Last year, Emma had gone to all the games with Neal and his connections for prime tickets, away from the general student section; despite being a Catholic school, BC could turn into alcohol-soaked harbingers of doom with the best of them when the fur was flying between the gridiron lines. Nobody ever had to worry about being killed, however, and Emma made plans to tailgate with Wendy, Alice, Jefferson, and his crowd before the game. Then they'd hang around and see if they could bum extra tickets off someone.

It was as she was getting ready that she discovered what was missing. She was pepping herself up with school spirit: her crimson-and-gold BC sweatshirt, her eagle earrings, the red ribbon for her hair, and suddenly remembered the necklace her parents had given her last Christmas. It was an antique and she was usually picky about where she wore it, but it was a little gold swan that looked like an eagle if you squinted at it at the right angle. She opened her jewelry box, reached in – and found nothing.

Confounded, Emma stared. She picked up the box and jangled it hopefully, like an incompetent prospector panning for gold, and still didn't find it. Pawing down the back of her dresser yielded the same result. It was gone.

It was always possible that Wendy had borrowed it without asking, as the two of them were fairly lax about sharing clothes and jewelry, but not very likely. Emma wracked her brain trying to think what about it would be noteworthy in any aspect. Her parents had given it to her as a boost for her self-esteem; she'd been moping about how she felt like the ugly duckling at Storybrooke High School and nobody ever noticed her. But they had reminded her that the ugly duckling grew up to be a swan, and –

Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

David Nolan had purchased that necklace for his daughter at Robert Gold's pawn shop.

Was she really prepared to corner her history professor and accuse him of busting into her room and stealing her jewelry? Could she even be sure that he had done it? It seemed unbelievably stupid in a dozen different ways, especially for a guy who held a Ph.D from a prestigious university – Trinity College Dublin wasn't exactly a slacker emporium. Why risk his job in the first week of getting it, to break and enter a student's dorm and take – take this? Why?

Emma continued to stand there, completely baffled, until she heard a yell from the suite common area. "Hey, Em! Guess who showed up? Change of plans!"

She grabbed her scarf and jacket – it had been unseasonably cold for Boston in the early autumn, they were going to get the first big snowstorm of the year sooner rather than later – and hurried down the hall. There, to her immense surprise, she beheld her itinerant boyfriend, looking penitent and holding out a fistful of tickets. "Hey, um, so can I come tailgating if I give you these?"

"Neal!" Emma said, surprised and relieved. "Where have you been?"

He shifted from foot to foot. "What do you mean? I've been around."

"You split on me on Monday and I thought that you – "

"Drop it," Neal interrupted. "I was just startled about something. It's fine."

"But you didn't – "

"I said drop it, okay!"

Emma flinched. "I'm sorry," she said meekly. "I was just worried."

Neal emitted a mumpish grunt, clearly the extent of the commentary he was prepared to make on the subject, and offered her his arm. Still hurt, but eager to stop him from running away again, she took it, and they and the gang headed out to Alumni Stadium, which was buzzing with excitement. They enjoyed the tailgating, the schmoozing, and eventually the game, which went almost as badly as expected – the Eagles, however, did nearly pull off a thrilling comeback, and so Neal wasn't as depressed as he normally was and feeling frisky after. He lived off-campus, in a grotty little apartment with three Russian knuckleheads, two of whom were named Alexei Pavlovich; Emma had always suspected them of being in the Mafia. She'd overlooked them in the past, but right now, after his weird behavior and total lack of explanation, she didn't feel like it. "Actually… not tonight."

"What? Babe, I want to make it up to you. I bought those fruit-flavored condoms and everything."

Emma winced, as Wendy and Alice had definitely overheard that. "I have a lot of homework," she lied, the college-student equivalent of "I have a headache." "I just don't think – "

"Aw, come on," Neal wheedled. "You're not mad at me, are you? We don't have to talk about it. I want to show you that I – "

"Um, no, really. I have so much homework. Really, a – " Emma struggled to think of a plausible story. "So much that I – that I – "

"She does," said a new voice from behind her. A familiar, Irish-accented voice. "I can vouch for it. Three hundred pages of Adam Smith to read and a research project to pick. Very busy."

Emma went hot. Emma went cold. Emma spun around to see Professor Jones, standing behind them in a long double-breasted overcoat, a crimson-and-gold scarf thrown nattily around his neck. He gave every appearance of having casually stumbled across them in the post-game scrum, and shrugged self-effacingly, as if to acknowledge that indeed, they were speaking to each other outside of class. "Sorry, Miss Nolan. Just thought I'd back you up."

"I," Emma stammered. "Um, hi."

"Hey, Professor." Neal, having clearly put two and two together to arrive at a rather unpleasant four, flashed his best crooked smile. "Uh. Just straightening stuff out."

Professor Jones' dark blue eyes remained fastened on Emma's. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine," Emma and Neal blurted in unison.

"All right then. The lass has said she's quite busy, so I'm sure you're taking that for an answer?" Jones raised one dark eyebrow. "As she said. Another night."

Neal shot a confused, defensive glance between them, apparently unsure who deserved it more, as if in some sense that they might be ganging up on him. But he was unwilling to go so far as to confront a professor to his face, and backed down. "Yeah, you're right. For sure. It's fine. Good night, Emma, Mr. Jones." And with that, pulling his hood up against the fine, drizzling mist that had moved in, he sloped away.

Professor Jones watched him go with a narrow expression. "I don't like the way that young man looks at you, Miss Nolan."

Oh my God. Was he actually giving her dating advice? Was it a fatherly kind of thing to say, or something else? Was he looking for an excuse to get her alone? Was she supposed to confront him, ask him why he'd needed to steal the pendant that at one point had belonged to Robert Gold? Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.

"Are you heading back to campus?" Professor Jones asked.

"I, yeah, I am actually."

He cocked his head at the deepening darkness. "May I walk you?"

He didn't need to. BC was a safe place, there was a shuttle, patrolling security, the whole nine. And if it was true that everything with two X chromosomes was swooning for him, she didn't want to set herself up to be poisoned in the dining hall or ambushed in the laundry room. But before she could remember all the really excellent reasons to refuse, her mouth was saying stupidly, "Sure."

He smiled then, a sweet and almost shy smile that did horrible things to her innards, and for a heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to offer his arm. He didn't, however. They just started off at a Catholic nun-approved two feet apart, strolling sedately side by side back toward the main campus. It was so beautiful right now with its leaves turning golden, its gothic architecture and groomed green lawns, its lights glowing cozily in the crisp New England twilight. But Emma noticed it only tangentially. Her mouth was dry as a bone. Now was the time to tell him that she was onto him.

Right?

"Have any ideas for your research project?" Professor Jones asked, as they walked.

"I… it's kind of lame, but I was thinking about doing something about the European privateer industry and the whole Caribbean piracy thing. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, you know?" She blushed. "But I could make it interesting, I think. Analyze it in terms of the mercantile system and eighteenth-century economics and nationalism. And colonial theory. It would be fun."

"Pirates." He smiled at her, a wide, open smile that made his teeth unbearably white in the falling violet dusk. It was a smile of pure amusement and delight, as if he was looking at her simply to look at her and was thrilled by the simple fact of her presence. Nobody had ever looked at her like that. Neal had certainly never looked at her like that. "Good form."

Really. Who allowed him to say things like that, while looking like that, in that voice? It was every kind of wrong in the world to feel what she did right now: hot-faced, light-headed, weak-kneed, barely able to stop herself from reaching out and grabbing his arm. Her stomach was rioting with butterflies. She shoved her hands into her pockets.

After a minute or so in which they had walked in silence, Professor Jones nodded his head at the dining hall. "I'll leave you here, my dear?"

Oh God. "S-Sure," Emma squeaked. "I – Professor?"

He had started to leave, but turned about quizzically. "Aye?"

"I…" No, no, not the time for this, definitely not. But something about him completely shredded her self-control. "Do you… were you… I thought I saw someone who looked like you at my, at my dorm the other night. And I thought that you were there, and it might just be that something…" At his massively confused expression, she trailed off. "Did you…?"

"I'm sorry?" He looked blank. "Did I what?"

"My necklace," Emma blurted out. "My swan necklace. It's missing."

He blinked, still completely nonplussed. "If you think you've been robbed, I'd suggest taking it to campus security. Or asking your roommates, some can be quite light-fingered and – "

"My parents got it from Robert Gold's shop."

He hesitated. Then he said, "That's very interesting, Miss Nolan, but I still can't see how it's any of my business. I'll bid you good night now? Good night." And with that, he turned and strode away.

Emma silently watched him go. There was a faint sensation on the back of her neck, like fire ants, and she knew why. All her life, it had been a strange, inexplicable skill she had, like ESP or guessing things correctly too many times for it to be luck, or seeing people in your dreams that you met two weeks later. Anyone else would have bought that, smooth and convincing as it was.

But not her. She was now sure of it.

Professor Killian Jones was lying.