Terribly Sorry To Disturb You.....

Victor had been her mentor, a father figure to her that had given her strength. He had been very forward thinking in the time she had met him, when women were meant only to be mothers and get no education, he had trained Evelyn from the very beginning that she could be President if she wished it. And in a way he had almost given that to her by making her Dean here, to be the overseer of so many species under one roof and an ambassador all across the world to settle matters when it came to inhumans. He had been a good, strong and impenetrable force…and a disasterly little trickster. He had loved to tease people and test them with his jokes; she had always been amazed how a man who would strike fear in absolutely any creature could also be the same man to put a frog under your pillow to scare you. So when the simple note was delivered to her, she had to say she wasn’t surprised and yet excoriatingly surprised at the same time.

My dearest Evelyn, I have sent a man I know very well to be your associate dean to help you with the increasing load at the university. Please greet him warmly and I hope you are doing well. Love, Victor.. That was it. That’s all she got?! She hadn’t heard a single peep, not an inkling of a sign from the man since he left the school over a hundred years ago and now he just sends her this note telling her he’s giving her a associate dean?! She questioned every day if Victor had even still been alive! No one had seen him since he left the school and it had hurt her that the man she had come to respect had never kept in contact with her, and now this. What was he up too? She had always wondered what he thought about her being Dean. Did he think she was doing a good job? Did he approve of the humans being on campus? Did he think he made a mistake? She had no idea, and it wasn’t helping that Victor was bringing this mysterious man in to help her. She didn’t need help, damn it! And if Victor thought she did…that had to mean he didn’t think she was doing things right, didn’t it? Damn Victor and his infuriating ways!

She paced…and paced..and paced. Like hell she was going to greet this man warmly. She didn’t know him and was too pissed at Victor at the moment to trust what he was doing…even though Victor had always known what he was doing. When she heard the car come up she stiffened and turned towards the door. It was time to give this stranger a rude awakening. She moved to the door quickly when she heard the knock and threw the door open, fixing the man before her with a not so welcoming glare “You have wasted your time in coming here. Whether Victor sent you or not I do not care. I do not need your assistance”

She wasn’t going to play nice, she wanted this man far away from her school. How could Victor expect her to just take in a man as her associate dean that she knew nothing about? She knew Victor was a cautious man, he could just look at a person and know if they were trust worthy or not but, she could not just accept this. This was her school and her call and if Victor was going to be so disrespectful as to not speak to her for long then send her this bullshit note then she didn’t think she had any need to abide by his wishes. When he stared at her silently she just glared him down, expecting some kind of fight but he backed down so easily. That was easy…too easy. Was he messing with her?

She was ready to close the door but stopped when he asked her too and sighed impatiently “What?” She asked curtly and looked at the item he took out from his pocket addressed to her. Another letter of Victor’s? Maybe this held three sentences instead of two. She snatched the letter from him and looked it over, recognizing Victor’s handwriting from anywhere, and slid her finger under the flap to open it. She pulled out the contents and glanced over them, making a unhappy sound before sighing and shaking her head. She stepped aside “Come in” She told him for she was telling him not asking him too in those two words.

When he hesitated she gave him an impatient look that she was not in the mood for hesitation. He needed to either come in and talk or get back in the cab and back on a plane and far, far away from here. As he came in she eyed him like a hawk, like she felt he might try to do something like backstab her any minute. How could Victor do this? She felt emotionally violated. To her it was like adopting a child and then years later the adoption agency saying never mind, were giving the child to someone else and you’ll never see them again. The school was her child and she was not going to give it up, she would have to be killed first and she knew Victor knew that…so what did that say about his intentions with this new man coming in to be her second in command?

“Cut the garbage. People kiss my ass every single day. I get rather sick of it” She snapped at him. He was probably feeding her the polite routine like she had seen Victor do before to get on someone’s good side. She didn’t have a good side in her opinion so his little act was useless. She walked a few paces from him as she read the letter better he had given her, shaking her head and the expression on her face was getting angrier and angrier. Victor could write whatever he wanted as eloquently as he liked but it made no difference. After she finished quickly reading she looked up to Zeus and crossed her arms “So…you honestly think you can just waltz onto campus, onto MY school and declare yourself associate dean?”

She still didn’t feel the need to believe him, why should see? Some stronger picked out from some unknown place and sent here to ‘help’ her? She had seen far too many snakes in her life that played a good game and acted flawlessly but were still snakes in the end. It also wasn’t in his favor that he was a man…her automatic hatred and distrust of him was fifty times worse than if he had been a woman. “I like to collect things” She said, her tone curt “Don’t touch anything”. She was hardly a pack rat but certain artifacts had called to her and she had kept them, one of her favorites was a mourning ribbon from Lincoln’s funeral and another a single tea cup that had come from the wreckage of the Titanic.

The hand he held up made her want to go over and break it but she decided she didn’t need the mess. “Right. You were a completely innocent party. Following blindly the path Victor left before you like Dorothy in Oz” There couldn’t have been any more cynicism in her voice even if she tried. Though she didn’t have right to judge, she among thousands of others would follow anything Victor told them to do, he had that power about him but didn’t mean she had to take it any easier on Zeus. No one said no to Victor…well, except Victor’s last lover, but that had worked out so well between them. “If you do not want the job then that makes it easier for me. I am not going to give it to you” Damn it is Victor wanted to make this man her second in command he should have had the decency to come here himself and tell her! But yet he appeared to this man and not her. It stung deep.

“There will be no arrangements” She told him impatiently. No! None! Not going to happen! She didn’t need help from this bloody man! She looked to his hand and glowered, not wanting to touch him or force herself to be polite. How could Victor do this to her? She tried so hard to run this school and did everything to try and please him even though he was not around and he sends someone to assist her…to replace her in her eyes. “There is no position. And I do not want to make one for you. I do not share, Mr. Riley. The school is mine. I will give it to no one else”

She didn’t care about polite, he could have kissed her feet for all she cared, she was too angry and hurt to care. She held back a snort when he used the word M’lady, typically she was impressed by those things but not today. She glanced away for a few moments but then her eyes locked on his like a predator to its prey. He had no intentions of just giving up the position? Was he just subtly asking her to kill him because it sure seemed like it and that was what he was going to get if he didn’t get the hell away from her school. “There are a lot of things I am making clear that you do not seem to understand yet” Like she didn’t want him here. At all. Not one bit. She was going to kill him and at the moment there was no one to stop her.

Her jaw dropped ever so slightly when he told her he would be in the office whether she liked it or not. The nerve of him to say that! The blunt little bastard was going to be the next antique in her damned house with his head in a display case if he didn’t watch himself. Impertinent , smug, backstabbing creodont! The look in her eyes was pure murder, it would have made Victor very, very proud. No one, no one just came onto her school grounds and told her how things were going to be. That was NOT how it worked nor how it would ever work. In Evelyn’s eyes he was telling her what to do in a way, giving her no option and giving it to her how it was going to be whether she approved or not. “Victor does not run this school anymore. He has no right of anything. So whatever contract you have with him or whatever instructions you were given they have no backing with me”

“Common ground? Common ground” The words spoken were deadly, but she suddenly seemed…eerily calm as she chuckled and looked down as if what he said was utterly amusing to her. He wanted a common ground? She will put him in the damned ground. She shook her head for a moment then her eyes snapped up at him and the threat was there for a moment…before she executed it. In a blink of an eye she bridged the gap between them, grabbed him and through him back against the walls “You do NOT come to MY school and tell me how the situation is going to be! You are not welcome here and I will KILL you before I let you step foot on my campus!”

She was ready to pull him to pieces. Rip his limbs off, tear out his throat, snap his neck, choke him to death, pull out his heart…many different scenarios went through her mind. But her hesitation to not immediately do all of these things was the small leftover part of her that was a thinker and thought everything through. If she killed him, what would Victor do to her? Would he simply send someone else or punish her? She didn’t even know if this man was of any true importance. He smelled human, but if he knew Victor…he had age to him, but how? He had to be a wizard, Victor wouldn’t send a true human to be an associate dean…of course these were questions she should have asked him but she let her temper get ahold of her.

When Freya came out, well she didn’t even notice her for she was too busy glaring Zeus down and figuring out how to kill him and if truly she could afford too. Suddenly however Freya had sent him away and she stepped away from the wall she had had him pinned against and made a frustrated sound, her eyes dark and she was ready to break her couch in half if she had too. When she returned Evelyn growled at her, the Vampire beast nature snapping out uncontrolled. Victor had a temper just like she did…but he had been far older and far better at it. He could switch it on and off smoothly without even thinking, but Evelyn struggled with control. Her temper exploded and then it was always hard to reign in. “It was not in your right to interfere, Freya!” She shouted at her “You do not place yourself in my affairs!” She was on the defensive because of the man, but she managed to take in a few deep breaths but wasn’t doing well calming down and she tore her face away from Freya’s hands and moved away from her so she wouldn’t lash out at her instead.

Her agreeing threw her off, but she still gave her a nasty glare “Then you shouldn’t have done it” She snapped, anger still bubbling in her tone. She growled again “If you hadn’t intervened I would have killed him like he deserved!” She pointed off to where Zeus had been not moments ago. “Do not dare let yourself get comfortable enough to think you can involve yourself in my actions! It is not your right too!” She even got pissed at Nowe when he intervened and she had “known” him longer and he was hired to do that exact thing, protect her and keep her in line and she didn’t even approve of him butting him all the time. She didn’t want to calm down! She wanted to rip that insubordinate little rodent into a million pieces. Who did he think he was to say he would just keep going to the office?! She wasn’t going to allow him on her campus, over her head body!

She stiffened when Freya touched her and was ready to wretch away when she caught herself and made herself stand still. No…no she could not take it out on Freya, they had fought enough and they did not need to fight anymore, especially not about something trivial like this. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, slowly coming down from her fury “Victor apparently thinks I am not good enough for this school. He sent that man here to be associate dean, more likely to slowly take my position away. For Victor to have the absolute gall to do this to me-!” She started to get angry all over again and stopped herself, gritting her teeth . “I have sacrificed everything for this school. Everything and it is obvious he does not approve and now he wants this spineless, false man to take my job. Well, he will have to fight me for it. I will not give it away”.

Freya was smart in assuming being submissive would help in the situation, and it certainly did. After feeling she had been challenged by a male the best thing for anybody to ever do was bow down to what she said or wanted to help lower her off her very high and angry pedestal. She was very sensitive to being challenged, even the absolute slightest hint of one sent her over the edge, that and threats. She didn’t take these lightly but that was because she had been raised to respond to demands and threats and now she resented them passionately. As a human she had to listen to everything her husband said and could never question it and had been threatened to have her children taken away or thrown out on the streets, so now she wouldn’t tolerate it, not that she now had the power to fight.

She shook her head “That’s not how these sort of politics work. If he did that I would fight even more, people who do approve of me as Dean would deny him and possibly mutiny. No…far wiser to slip in trying to be unassuming and in a helpful role. Make me look bad, take away situations out from under my feet and deal with them himself, have access to my files and networks…that’s how it is done” Oh yes, she had thought about these things, she tried to think of all possible scenarios. But for Victor to have any hand in it all was what hurt the most. Victor had taught her so much and she had been his absolute favorite…now she felt like Eve cast away from the Garden of Eden. She was no longer important. She brought a hand up and placed it on one of Freya’s hands that massaged her “I’m sorry for shouting at you. I shouldn’t have taken my anger out on you. You did nothing wrong” She glanced back at her and then slowly turned around to face her “You did do the right thing”

She rubbed at her forehead stressfully “No, no, I have to solve this on my own” Really she didn’t think there was anything Freya could help with but it would still kind of her to offer but, Evelyn would have to solve this on her own somehow. If he really was here to try and take over as Dean well then he better be prepared for the fight of his life, though unless he was pretending, he didn’t seem to be too much of a threat by himself but didn’t mean he didn’t have muscle just like she did. If he was going to be around she wanted him to be watch, perhaps Katerina could do that for her, Evelyn didn’t really favor her after all.

“No, you did what was right. I couldn’t have killed him blindly” No, because she knew nothing about him. Leaving Victor aside, this…Zeus character could come from a prominent family, or be well known in another country or be an important figure that she had just never been informed about. If she had killed him then who knew what could have happened, she probably would have created a huge and very sticky situation. When Freya spoke about defending Evelyn and the school she chuckled some, amused Freya seemed so gun-ho in helping her. Funny how far the two of them had come in such a short amount of time. She shook her head in amusement then tilted it some “No, no, now that I have a clear head we cannot do that. Though five minutes ago I would have agreed” She made a face “Actually, I would like you to bring him back here. I promise I will not harm him, but I’d rather have him placed back here then roaming wherever you took him too” She didn’t want to see his damned face again but, if he meant his words, she would have to try and put things back on her terms somehow.

“And Freya” She gazed at the women a moment and her hand twitched as if she was going to touch her but then changed her mind “Thank you”

She paced a few steps as Freya went to retrieve him, taking in deep breaths and telling herself she needed to not pounce on the man as soon as he came back. No…if he was playing some sort of game with Victor to take over the school then she’d catch him in the act and then have a true reason to kill him. She worried when Freya took longer than she felt was needed, wondered if the man had shown his true colors and tried to harm her. The thought made her blood boil and she swore if that man touched Freya and harmed her in any bloody way she’d-but then they appeared back in the house and Evelyn quickly looked over at him. Well, so much for staying calm, now she had left over anger from thinking he had hurt Freya, but she looked completely fine and Evelyn let her muscles relax….just a little. When she stopped beside her she looked over at the fae and nodded, turning her head a bit more to watch her walk into the bedroom then fixed her cold gaze on Zeus.

“I only wish” She muttered, keeping her distance as well, it was better for the both of them. She crossed her arms tightly to remind herself to keep her hands to herself and not around his throat “You are lucky that Freya was here to intervene. Even more lucky that I care to listen to her” Anybody else? Not too many others she would have listened too…Nowe yes, Castielle certainly, but any other staff member and she would have broken their arm just to keep them out of it while she killed Zeus. She took a step toward him just to see how he’d react before speaking again “You say you will stay here regardless? Fine, I won’t stop you. You want to be associate dean, I will follow and listen to what Victor wants. But know that you are not welcome here, and I will make your life a living hell and anything suspicious, Mr. Riley, I will not hesitate to punish and next time you will not be so lucky as to have someone stop me” She motioned to the door “Have the car take you to campus. Go to the front office and look for my secretary. She will find someone to help you settle in…now get out”