The Eighth Excalibur Read online

  Nate grabbed one last slice of pizza and followed Marty down the hallway to his friend’s room. Without question, Marty’s room was the tidiest in the house, and he was undoubtedly the MVP when it came to keeping the rest of the house in order as well. Between that fact and the concerned look Marty turned on Nate the second he closed the door behind them, Nate couldn’t help but wonder for the thousandth time if maybe his own mother didn’t secretly have Marty on payroll as her designated worry-wart by proxy.

  “Why are you dropping Hillman’s class?” he asked.

  Nate looked around the room. “The old can you take a look at my Arduino trick, huh?”

  “Gets ’em every time,” Marty agreed, sitting down at his computer desk and waking the sleeping beast. “I have been getting an error all afternoon, though. Driving me crazy.”

  Nate stood there while Marty pulled open the code he’d been working on for his utterly unnecessary and wonderfully nerdy automated bedroom wakeup system. Adjustable lights, music, motorized window blinds control, and retro LED message board—all controlled by a handy little Arduino.

  Marty loved these kinds of projects. It was the kind of stuff Nate highly appreciated as well but never tended to initiate himself, preferring instead to spend most of his leisure time either gaming or sketching up his concept art alongside that little voice in his head that said maybe, just maybe if he kept it going he could one day find work as a real living, breathing video game concept artist. One day.

  His phone buzzed in his hand.

  Gwen: “So what do you say, sailor? Just like old times?”

  He tucked the phone in his pocket, suddenly feeling a little sick for reasons he couldn’t identify. Probably just the onslaught of pizza and beer, he supposed, but…

  “I couldn’t show it to him, Marty. The Promethean, I mean. It’s stupid, but after all the work I put into it… I just couldn’t show Hillman what was left. Not even to prove my story.”

  Marty frowned, clearly trying to understand. “So what? He threatened to fail you or something?”

  Nate shook his head. “No. He just said he understood and asked me if I wanted to try again.”

  “But… That’s good, right? Why don’t you just, you know… try again?”

  Nate leaned in to inspect Marty’s code more to change the subject than anything else, taking the mouse to scroll through the lines.

  “You love that stuff, Nate,” Marty said quietly. “You don’t have to drop it all just because…”

  He trailed off, either unsure of what to say, or just unwilling to point out the truths that Nate already knew: that he wasn’t a concept artist, and that he probably never would be. That there just weren’t that many reliable, obtainable jobs out there in the field, as his parents had been quick to point out back when the college talks had started. And sure, that didn’t mean he had to drop the art. But it also didn’t mean there was any point pretending he was something he wasn’t.

  “You transposed this matrix in the wrong spot,” he said.

  “What?” Marty said, turning back to the monitor.

  “The way you’re opening this spreadsheet and accessing the… Never mind. Just, this matrix needs to be transposed every iteration, see? So it needs to be nested one loop deeper.”

  “Oh.” Marty squinted at the screen and bobbed his head as he saw it. “Ohhh. Yeah, that’s… that makes sense.” He looked up. “That was quick, dude. You are really good at this stuff, for what it’s worth.”

  Really lucky, was more like it. He’d just happened to start reading at exactly the right spot. But he still appreciated Marty’s compliment. For a second, he thought about asking his friend to come with him, even though he knew the answer would be a solid thanks, but no thanks… unless you need me to.

  “I still think you should stay in Hillman’s class,” Marty added, still looking at the monitor. “For the record.”

  “Duly noted,” Nate said, patting his friend on the back. “Maybe I’ll try to take a page from your wall display’s book.”

  Nate opened the door and slipped out of Marty’s room to go investigate his clean shirt situation, sure that behind him, Marty was meanwhile turning to look at the retro LED display on his nice, tidy wall.

  “ERROR,” it read. “INPUT INVALID.”

  3

  Go Frat Yourself

  Finding and following signs of the troglodytes, it turned out, wasn’t all that hard, what with the earth-shaking bass beats and the extensive collection of frisbees, wiffle bats, crumpled red cups, beer cans, and even one passed out pledge all scattered across the lawn. And somehow, staring at the decimation that’d already occurred, all Nate’s buzzed mind could seem to think about—for the hundred-and-eighty-second time—was whether he should’ve changed his shirt after all.

  Jeans and plain black t-shirt was a timeless classic, right? Maybe. But he was also the guy who thought people should maybe try listening to real music at these parties for a change, and whose own book of timeless classics consisted of such chestnuts as Mario Kart and Ocarina of Time. What the hell did he know about clothes, aside from that his gray zip-up hoodie was clearly at odds with the Greek cutoffs and Team America trunks of the Alpha-Sig-Sigs who were hanging on the front deck?

  The sight almost made Nate shiver. But the Alpha-Sig-Sigs were either too cool to be affected by the early October chill, or too drunk. Probably both. Maybe Nate should’ve had another drink himself before he left. He was still buzzed, but it was in danger of fading, and gods forbid he had to brave the next hour on his wits alone.

  “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” he mumbled to himself in a bad excuse for an Obi-Wan impression.

  See? Hopeless.

  On the way past Emily’s, he’d half-considered going to sneak a quick doggy paw bump with Copernicus through the window to drink up some of the little guy’s incorrigible energy. But even on a Friday night, with a roughly hundred percent chance the corgi would be home alone while Emily and her roommate tore up the town, that plan had felt just a little too creepy, even for him.

  Besides, if her texts were any indication, Gwen was waiting for him.

  Waiting for him at her boyfriend’s douchey Alpha-Sig-Sig party, Nate reminded himself, also for the hundred-and-eighty-second time.

  He started down the entry path from the sidewalk, reflecting that he should probably stop it with the Alpha-Sig-Sig thing for the evening too, lest he slip up and land himself as target for an entire household’s worth of roid rage. Alpha-Sig-Sigs were just what Nate and his oh-so-clever roommates called stereotypical frat bro types. Which was probably stupid to start with. Calling someone a Greek A.S.S. wasn’t exactly subtle, and even if it had been, spiteful name-calling wasn’t really his style. Alpha bros had just always had a way of hitting a nerve for Nate and his nerdy brethren.

  The actual lettering on the side of the huge house read “Iota Nu Nu House,” which was almost as funny anyway, even if they had missed their chance to call it “The INN Inn.” In the daylight, minus the thumping music and drunken sundry, it was the kind of old house one might’ve described as rustic—from the outside, at least.

  “What’s up, bro?” someone called as Nate finished parting the drunken sea of the front yard and mounted the deck steps.

  He looked up and found three of them watching him from their dominant, triceps-heavy leans on the banister above. Not blocking his way, but definitely giving off a whiff of the who are you and what do you want vibe.

  Fair enough. Nate had been here before, multiple times, but he wasn’t exactly memorable, and he didn’t recognize these three Adonises-in-the-making either. He wondered if he should mention Todd’s name, or Gwen’s—reticent to even imply any kind of kinship with Todd, but also less than eager to let these guys think he’d come sniffing after their Alpha’s mate.

  Goddammit. They weren’t werewolves.

  That you know of, whispered his unhelpful brain.

  He cleared his throat. “Hey
guys.”

  Great start.

  “Uh, Gwen told me I should stop by.”

  Okay, on second thought, maybe they were werewolves.

  “Gwen Pearson,” he clarified, probably unnecessarily judging by the metaphorical bared fangs. Desperate, Nate pointed down Allen Street toward Emily’s and added, “Todd Mackleroy invited me this morning over at—”

  “Oh hey! IT Guy!” someone called from the door.

  They all turned, and Nate breathed a small sigh of relief at the beaming face of Brad, one of the few Iota Nu Nus he sort of knew—and actually, in this case, even sort of liked, from what limited interactions they’d had.

  “Heard you had a wicked fall this morning?” Brad called, still beaming.

  Had he heard? Great.

  “Yeah,” Nate called back, cautiously climbing the last steps to the deck and approaching a glassy-eyed Brad. The Greek werewolves stood back, watching suspiciously. “Yeah, that… that happened. At least the dog was okay, though.”

  The intensity of Brad’s laugh caught Nate by surprise. “Long live Copernicus, dude! Come on in, let’s get you a drink.”

  Inside, the party was, as they say, thumping. Loudly. And with all the writhing bodies and flashing lights of an epileptic’s worst nightmares. Nate wasn’t sure he would’ve made it more than a step through the sensory overload if Brad hadn’t looped an arm over his shoulder and pulled him along like they were age-old bros.

  “Ahh, IT Guy,” Brad said, patting Nate’s back. “Hell of a night to see you, Nate. Hell of a night.” Brad squinted over at him with a look of intense focus. “It is Nate, right?”

  Nate looked at his glassy-eyed guide in surprise. “Uh, yeah. Brad, right?”

  “So they say, man.” Brad shook his head. “So they say.” He frowned, looking around the flashing light chaos, and barely seemed to notice when a rather noticeable girl materialized from the crowd and began moving against him in time with the booming music. “What were we doing, again, IT Guy?”

  Figuring he was about to get ditched—and not really blaming Brad one bit for the fact—Nate was opening his mouth to ask his stalwart guide if he might know where Gwen was when Brad jerked upright and tugged Nate onward toward the kitchen with a cry of, “Drinks! We need to get you a drink! Fuck yeah!”

  Nate caught a fleeting glimpse of the indignant surprise from Brad’s would-be dance partner, then they were pushing on through the crowd, unmistakably on a mission.

  “I’m not gonna lie, IT Guy,” Brad said, patting his back again, “I’m trippin’ ALL the balls right now. But we’re gonna get this done. Like, a quest and shit.”

  “Uh thanks, man,” Nate said, not really sure how else to respond. “And while we’re at it, have you seen Gwen Pearson around here tonight?”

  “Another quest!” Brad cried, pumping a fist as they stepped out of the strobe-lit dance room and into the enormous and only slightly tamer kitchen. “Yo, someone get IT Guy a drink!” Brad called. “Dude fell off a windmill or something today.” He squinted over at Nate. “Right?”

  “Uh…” Nate looked around at the dozen or so faces that were now turned their way and gave them a little wave that he hoped said, Never mind us, we’re all good.

  Everyone in the kitchen went back to their conversations—or their heavy petting—as Nate guided Brad over to the side of the room, out of the main traffic flow. Brad didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed pretty stoked about life in general at the moment. And he seemed to be blinking a lot, too. And had his pupils been that gigantic a minute ago?

  Nate was about to ask if he was all right when one of the younger Iota Nu Nus appeared beside them, offering Nate a red cup, filled to the brim with a neon blue concoction.

  “Here you go, IT Guy.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Nate said, too flustered and surprised by the service to do anything but accept the cup. Quick as that, the pledge who’d brought it was gone, leaving Nate staring down at the blue mystery drink.

  As a rule of thumb, he tended to avoid jungle juice. Especially from guys who called him IT Guy like it was his legal name. He wasn’t even rightly sure how that one had started, especially since there were at least two IT majors in Iota Nu Nu, and most of these people had no idea who Nate even was. Maybe he just had one of those IT Guy faces.

  Nate turned to Brad, thinking to thank him and ask where he should look for Gwen, but Brad cut him off, holding up both hands in a clear sign to wait. He closed his too-dilated eyes, still dancing to the beat, brow furrowing in paradoxical concentration. Furrowing, and furrowing, and…

  “Ah, you found us!”

  At the sound of Gwen’s voice, Nate turned faster than what could ever be deemed cool or collected. Beside him, Brad just clapped his hands victoriously, gave Nate one last friendly pat on the chest, and danced off chanting something about satellite minds.

  “Wasn’t sure you’d make it,” Gwen said, her smiling eyes flicking between him and Brad’s dance-retreating form.

  “Not sure what that was about,” Nate said, nodding after Brad, suddenly unsure what else to say as the rest of his brain shut down to drink her in and spill a nice migration of butterflies into his stomach.

  She was wearing faded jeans and a rose-red top with minimum frills and just enough of a cut that Nate might’ve pulled a muscle trying not to let his eyes wander if he hadn’t already been so riveted to her smile-crinkled eyes, which looked more green tonight than blue. He could never quite tell.

  Reflexively, he sipped at his drink to buy himself a second, all reservations about the neon blue mystery juice momentarily forgotten. “Brad was just, uh…”

  “Tripping balls?” she asked, her smile widening.

  “Something like that.” Nate cocked his head thoughtfully. “I think he might be psychic.”

  “He didn’t earn the name ‘Balls Brad’ by accident, I’ll tell you that much.”

  Nate smiled. “Is he gonna be okay?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s probably the drugs that should be scared of him at this point.” She frowned across the room to where Brad was now strutting his dance moves for the refrigerator, clearly questioning her own confidence in the matter. Then Brad’s prospective dance partner from earlier came into the kitchen and dragged him back out to the dance floor by the hand, and Gwen relaxed and turned back to Nate. “How’s your brain doing, Mr. Concussion?”

  “Well, you know, it’s all a bit fuzzy,” he said, brandishing his red cup. “So if I say anything stupid tonight…”

  “Free pass,” she said, holding up her own drink. “Guaranteed. Cheers.”

  This time, it wasn’t that he was too flustered to remember his aversion to communal jungle juice. It was just that, touching cups with Gwen, caught in the shine of her infectious smile, he just didn’t really care anymore. Especially not when he noticed she was also drinking the mystery concoction.

  “Come on,” Gwen said, taking him by the arm and pulling him toward the back deck.

  At least if they died, they’d die together. And in that moment, arms interlocked, her favoring him with a happy grin, Nate couldn’t help but think that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.

  While not quite free of the October chill or the sleeveless werewolves, the enclosed wraparound deck out back was at least slightly less crowded, and the music volume slightly more amenable to speaking below a scream. There was even some moonlight striking through the glass panes—though that hardly put Nate’s mind at ease, what with all the werewolf analogies.

  Gwen led him to a couch that arguably had two open spots. Really, it was probably more like one-and-a-half, but they crammed in as best as they could. By the time they’d settled, Nate could only imagine his face had shifted to the rose-red of Gwen’s top, but at least the deck was dark enough to cover it up. To his surprise, Gwen shared his embarrassed smile, looking a little abashed by the contact herself at first, but she quickly shifted, draping her legs over his and putting her back against the arm of the couch to free u
p a little more lateral space.

  “Okay,” she said with a playful pat to his thigh. “Not sure either of us is getting out of here without a crane now, so I guess you might as well tell me how you’ve been.”

  Nate was still busy just trying to remember how to breathe with Gwen this close to him, but once he’d gotten past his reflexive, “Oh, same old, same old,” and Gwen sharpened her questions, they fell into an easy conversation about how both of their years had been going.

  She told him about her senior bioengineering thesis work in the enigmatic Millennium Science Complex, and he did his best to follow along, asking questions whenever she lost him with her talk of induced pluripotent stem cells. Even if he hadn’t found it all fascinating—which he did—he would’ve been tempted to pretend, just to see the way she lit up talking about it all. He knew how important this work was to her. Or had a strong idea, at least.

  Gwen had always been pretty close-guarded when it came to her family situation, but over the years, he’d come to learn that her brother suffered from some form of muscular dystrophy, and that his condition had played a huge role in Gwen’s path of study. She’d always dreamed that one day she’d be able to do something about it, and to listen to her talk, it was evident she had every intention of seeing that dream through.

  Similarly, it filled him with a soft, bittersweet warmth when she was every bit as mortified as his roommates about what’d happened to his Promethean art project earlier that day, as well as his decision to drop Hillman’s design course.

  It never ceased to amaze him, how he and Gwen could go months without a real conversation and then, right when he’d start convincing himself it had all been in his head, and that she’d only been showing him merciful kindness in the past, they’d fall straight back into it like two peas in a pod, and she’d be there asking him questions and listening to his answers like what he said truly mattered to her. Like she knew him every bit as well as he thought he knew her. Like the two of them simply belonged.