Hex Appeal by P. N. Elrod Page A

and waited, watching both doors, until the professor arrived, and the class started. Irwin never arrived. I was going to leave, but it actually turned out to be kind of interesting. The professor was a lunatic but a really entertaining one. The guy drank liquid nitrogen, right there in front of everybody, and blew it out his nose in this huge jet of vapor. I applauded along with everyone else, and before I knew it, the lecture was over. I might even have learned something.
    Okay.
    Maybe there were some redeeming qualities to a college education.
    I went to Irwin’s next class, which was a freshman biology course, in another huge classroom.
    No Irwin.
    He wasn’t at his four o’clock math class, either, and I emerged from it bored and cranky. None of Irwin’s other teachers held a candle to Dr. Indestructo.
    Huh.
    Time for plan B.
    River’s dossier said that Irwin was playing football for OU. He’d made the team as a walk-on, and River had been as proud as any father would be about the athletic prowess of his son. So I ambled on over to the Sooners’ practice field, where the team was warming up with a run.
    Even among the football players, Irwin stood out. He was half a head taller than any of them, at least my own height. He looked gangly and thin beside the fellows around him, even with the shoulder pads on, but I recognized his face. I’d last seen him when he was about fourteen. Though his rather homely features had changed a bit, they seemed stronger, and more defined. There was no mistaking his dark, intelligent eyes.
    I stuck my hands in the pockets of my old leather duster and waited, watching the field. I’d found the kid, and, absent any particular danger, I was in no particular hurry. There was no sense in charging into the middle of Irwin’s football practice and his life and disrupting everything. I’m just not that kind of guy.
    Okay, well.
    I try not to be.
    “Seems to keep happening, though, doesn’t it,” I said to myself. “You show up on somebody’s radar, and things go to DEFCON 1 a few minutes later.”
    “I’m sorry?” said a young woman’s voice.
    *   *   *
    “Ah,” said Officer Dean. “This is where the girl comes in.”
    “Who said there was a girl?”
    “There’s always a girl.”
    “Well,” I said, “yes and no.”
    *   *   *
    She was blond, about five-foot-six, and my logical mind told me that every inch of her was a bad idea. The rest of me, especially my hindbrain, suggested that she would be an ideal mate. Preferably sooner rather than later.
    There was nothing in particular about her that should have caused my hormones to rage. I mean, she was young and fit, and she had the body of the young and fit, and that’s hardly ever unpleasant to look at. She had eyes the color of cornflowers and rosy cheeks, and she was a couple of notches above cute, when it came to her face. She was wearing running shorts, and her legs were smooth and generally excellent.
    Some women just have it. And no, I can’t tell you what “it” means because I don’t get it myself. It was something mindless, something chemical, and even as my metaphorically burned fingers were telling me to walk away, the rest of me was going through that male physiological response the science guys in the Netherlands have documented recently.
    Not that one.
    Well, maybe a little.
    I’m talking about the response where when a pretty girl is around, it hits the male brain like a drug and temporarily impairs his cognitive function, literally dropping the male IQ.
    And hey, how Freudian is it that the study was conducted in the Netherlands?
    This girl dropped that IQ-nuke on my brain, and I was standing there staring a second later while she smiled uncertainly at me.
    “Um, sorry?” I asked. “My mind was in the Netherlands.”
    Her dimple deepened, and her eyes sparkled. She knew all about the brain nuke. “I just said that you sounded like a dangerous guy.” She winked at me. It was adorable.