EVAN'S CASTLE

Tracy Fabre
Stonegarden.net, August 2008
Genre: Fantasy

Rachel Kane, after leaving home and family to flee the aftermath of a bad relationship, ends up working closely with brilliant scientist, Evan Callahan. He seems at first to be very much like the man she left behind-an aloof loner with no real use for her-but as she gets to know him, she finds he is warm and engaging, and much too attractive for her equilibrium. But is that real? Or has she just left one loner for another? To complicate matters, she's also the victim of vandalism that is both disturbing. and escalating.

Excerpt From EVAN'S CASTLE

“Let me explain to you what this job is, Miss Kane. You will be working with boxes which may or may not be marked as to what they contain. You will need to go through all of these boxes and catalog their contents, cross-referencing with the other boxes, and also with our in-house online database. At the end of the project we expect to know what is housed in that collection, how it links to other ongoing projects, and how to retrieve it.”

I nodded. “All right.”

He wasn’t finished. “You signed a non-disclosure agreement about this interview, so I’ll go on to say that Evan Callahan may not make himself approachable regarding your work, but you will absolutely have to deal with him since you will be working within the confines of his lab, and he will be your first and most likely only source in deciphering the contents of the boxes.”

Slowly, I said, “Meaning, he could be a complete pain.”

Mr. Collins blinked, but he only smiled a little. “Evan knows how to conduct himself in social situations. However, he can also be brusque, though I believe it is seldom his intention to be rude.”

“Meaning, I shouldn’t take offense.”

“Exactly.” He studied me. “The issue is that he resents this impending intrusion into his space.”

“Then why can’t the boxes just be moved to another area, here at the Center?”

“He won’t agree to that.”

“But he doesn’t want a cataloger hanging around all the time, either. Pardon my bluntness, but how is it that you have to accede to him on one issue but not the other? Isn’t he still the top banana?”

“Yes. It’s his company. It’s his work. But he knows his research is crucial to ours, and he has agreed to have the boxes cataloged because it is the one way he can make sure the cataloging is done properly.”

My professional hackles fluttered a little at that. “I presume you mean that to be on his terms, rather than an implied slur against my experience and personal high standards.”

Mr. Collins was amused. “Of course.”

I sighed. “Exactly how much of a pain is he going to be?”

He only shook his head. “As I said, he is not intentionally rude.”

“But if he feels threatened, or that his space is being invaded…” I trailed off.

Mr. Collins sighed. “I can’t predict how things will go. I don’t want you to be unduly intimidated by any of this, Miss Kane. The point is to get the work done.”

“Okay, but look. I need to know precisely how mercurial this guy is. If this job is offered to me, and if I accept it,” I said pointedly, “I need to know I’m not going to pack up and move here for nothing. What happens the day he takes umbrage at how I classify something and tells me I’m fired?”

He was unperturbed. He looked, in his expensive suit, and with his professionally-coiffed silver hair, as if he were seldom perturbed by anything, and certainly prepared to pay people to make sure he went on being unperturbed. “Tell him you’ll have to hear it from me.”

I laughed. “And since he’s the guy who signs your paychecks, he says, ‘well, then he’s fired too.’”

Mr. Collins only smiled, his gray eyes unamused now. “Tell him you’ll have to hear that from me, as well. Evan is the director of the Center, yes, but not solely responsible for hiring and firing. You will be working for the Center, not directly for him.”

“Which he probably hates.”

“Yes, but he accepts it. He is a thinker, an inventor, an analyzer. He doesn’t want to be bothered with mundane operations.”

“Seems to me, though, that if he hates me on sight, he ought to be able to toss me out on my ear.”

“Well, if it’s a rational hate, then yes.”

I laughed. Realizing what he’d said, he laughed too. “You mean, if he can find fault with my work, not my mere existence.”

“Precisely. Now, are you ready for the tour of his workshop?” He glanced at his watch. “We can be there in ten minutes.”

The day had been filled up to that point with questions about my experience, my work habits, my management and being-managed experience. I’d gotten a rundown on the Center’s operations, a tour of the main facility, a look at their in-house data storage system. It had all been rote for the most part; Mr. Collins had primarily observed and then had taken me off by myself for this half-hour of pointed chat. He was the Center’s second-in-command, which I took now to mean that he was the real day-to-day big-picture guy, if those two concepts go together. I was getting the sense at every turn that Evan Callahan had created this research facility specifically to have a buffer between himself and the real world, and that Perry Collins kept the buffer in place.

When I applied, I had believed this was just a cataloging position for the Center, and had only learned after signing the non-disclosure agreement that it would involve working directly with Evan Callahan’s research materials.

On the short ride over to the lab that was solely under Evan’s command, I went over what I knew of him, which wasn’t much. I’d read a few articles on him and the Center while trying to decide whether to apply, and he’d come across as the quintessential brilliant loner who didn’t like being interviewed and would rather be left alone to do his work. Photos had been few, mostly of his childhood boy-genius-makes-good phase, but I hadn’t looked very hard for more, because it had never occurred to me that I would ever lay eyes on him.

We pulled into the parking lot of a drab two-story warehouse, and Mr. Collins slid out of his leather-interior Infiniti and shook out his elegant gray suit and slacks. I didn’t wait for him to come around; I just got out and stood surveying the rather unlovely structure before me.

“Home sweet home,” he said dryly, and approached the tall steel door.

The only other car around was a dusty white pickup with an equally dusty shell. “That’s not his truck,” I said somewhat doubtfully.

Mr. Collins glanced at the pickup. “Oh, yes. Evan is not interested in any of the trappings of wealth.” He punched numbers into a keypad at the door, and also swiped a card through the reader.

“Except security,” I muttered.

“We like security,” he said mildly. “Come along.” He pushed open the door, and ushered me into the dim entry hall.

While he secured the door behind me, I studied the huge room beyond, and its various components. A section that seemed to be all lab; a section that was all boxes and filing cabinets; a section that was all junk. A mezzanine, for lack of a better word, lined with boxes. Stuff everywhere. Not clutter, per se; it all felt oddly organized. But it was definitely stuffed with stuff.

“Another one,” he said, and I turned, but it wasn’t Mr. Collins. “I thought we were done with this, Perry.” His blue-green gaze dismissed me, and he strode off toward the lab area. “Didn’t you tell me that?”

“I told you no such thing,” Mr. Collins retorted.

Evan Callahan was about six feet tall, slim, with brown hair and good looks that he probably couldn’t have cared less about. He stood at the counter, pulling on work gloves, and glanced back at us. “Then let’s get it over with.”

“Rachel Kane, Evan Callahan.” Mr. Collins was not fazed. “You knew we were coming,” he said, as he took my elbow and ushered me further into the room.

“Rachel Kane,” Evan said, unsmiling, “this is my personal research facility. Everything in here is important, valuable, meaningful to me and not to be touched by you.”

Into the silence that followed, during which he glanced at me again with those cool blue eyes, I said mildly, “I’m sorry, didn’t I tell you? I left my cooties at the door.”

He blinked down at the tools on the counter. “Cooties? You’re twelve?”

“Long past. You?”

He gazed at me directly now. I had the feeling he was deciding in those few seconds that my average height was too average, my wavy brown hair was too wavy, my brown eyes were too brown, and that pretty much everything else about me was equally ordinary, and thus of no interest to him. “Where do you come from?” he asked.

Whatever. “Are all of these boxes part of the project?” I addressed Mr. Collins for this. “Or just selected areas?”

Mr. Collins began, “Everything up on the mezzanine, and—”

“The boxes I identify as such,” Evan interrupted. “But yes, the mezzanine and most of the caged-off areas.”

“You’ll be controlling which boxes are cataloged?” I inquired.

“Of course,” he said blandly. “They’re my boxes.”

“Miss Kane will be working for the Center, Evan. She needs full access to very nearly everything in here,” Mr. Collins said flatly. “We have discussed this numerous times.”

“Miss Kane, if hired, will be working in my research lab, regardless of who signs her checks,” Evan retorted.

I said somewhat sharply, “Miss Kane, if she accepts any offered job, needs to know how much of it is going to be spent waiting for the blowfish display to wind down.”

And amazingly, Evan smiled directly at me. “I kind of like blowfish. Perry, how many other catalogers have been interviewed for this position?”

Mr. Collins thought it over, and then said, “Seven. Plus two that we didn’t bring to meet you, because they were terrified by your reputation for snapping people’s heads off.”

“Oh, is that why you downplayed that possibility when we talked earlier?” I asked, and he had the grace to flush a little.

Evan was still studying me, his gloved hands moving idly around the tools. Then he shook his head and pulled up a stool. “She’ll do.”

“Excellent,” Mr. Collins said, relieved and unmistakably surprised. So was I—the surprised part, not the relieved part. “I’ll send you the details on when she can start.”

It seemed imperative for me to say something. “Hold on a minute.”

They both turned to gaze at me. “What is it?” Evan asked.

“I need a little more information before I decide whether I want this position.”

“I’m sure Perry told you everything worth knowing about the Center and the work we do,” he said carelessly, pulling on goggles and picking up a blowtorch.

“He only hit the highlights on you, however. I need time to adjust to the idea of working for you, here, instead of in a clean and well-lit research department back at the Center.”

Mr. Collins cleared his throat.

Evan slowly got to his feet, removed his goggles, peeled off one glove, and approached me with a most interesting expression on his face. “Miss Kane,” he said. He was not amused. “This is a clean and well-lit area. There hasn’t been an insect in here for years that I didn’t bring in myself. This is a perfectly sanitized lab, with ionized air, and only purified water from every tap.”

Seemed like kind of a dumb thing to be offended about, however, since my point had been that having only just learned what the real job was, I had a right to obtain more information—as well as time—to decide whether I even wanted it.

“Clean it yourself, do you?” I asked gently, glancing down at his ungloved hand, which had a pronounced smudge on one finger. I walked past him to the counter, and picked up the other glove, which was long overdue for a wash. The shelves behind the counter were dusty, too; I could see from where I stood, but before I could take a step toward them, he clamped his bare hand down on my shoulder.

“That’s enough,” he said firmly. “I told you not to touch anything.”

The pressure of his hand was a skosh intimidating, but maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it was because he was standing so close and his eyes were so intently blue—no… blue-green… sea green?—that I flashed back to another time, with another person, to a name that jumped into my head despite all the reasons I didn’t want it to. I said coolly, “If I take this job, Dr. Callahan, there’s almost nothing that I won’t touch.”

He let me go and studied me, curious more than annoyed, and behind him I saw Mr. Collins approaching, perturbed.

I resisted the urge to rub my shoulder. “Still think I’ll do?”

Evan only smiled. “More than ever. You’re right. The lab is a bit untidy. But the air and water really are purified, and what the place lacks in charm, it makes up for in substance.” He moved past me to return to his place at the counter. “Show her where she’ll be working, Perry. I have an experiment to conduct.” With that, he put the goggles and gloves back on.

Mr. Collins gestured for me to follow him up a flight of metal steps to the mezzanine, where in one corner a table had been set up. “You’ll have a company-issued laptop, wireless of course, and we’ll bring in book carts and whatever else you need in the way of work supplies.”

It occurred to me that there were no windows. “Not much of a view,” I said.

“You can always observe Evan,” he suggested. But what was there to observe? From here he had his back to us, and something on the counter was being well and truly torched. “What do you think, Miss Kane? I know,” he said more gently, and most likely so that Evan couldn’t hear, “this isn’t what you bargained for. But it’ll be steady, challenging work, and you’ll always have a direct line to the research librarians on staff, and also any of the IT people when you can’t get what you need from Evan.” He glanced over his shoulder at him briefly. “Most days you may not even have much contact with him.”

I asked him a few questions. Where was lunch around here? What about residential areas? I was an apartment-dweller by nature and hoped for a short commute. What could he—what should he—tell me that wasn’t covered by the hours I’d already spent interviewing at the Center?

He answered, and without saying anything else one way or the other, I started down the steps to the main floor. “Well?” he asked, following.

“Let me think about it overnight,” I said. “My plane doesn’t leave until mid-day. I’ll call you.” I passed Evan, who didn’t bother to turn.

“I suppose that’s fair,” Mr. Collins agreed. “Evan, we’re leaving.” He tapped him on the arm. “I’ll be in touch.”

Evan made some indifferent noise of assent, without looking up from his work, and I kept going toward the door, thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be any issue at all to work with his files if he was primarily going to ignore me. Thinking of the job itself, though, I stopped and asked Mr. Collins, “If I decide to take this position, am I allowed to tell people where I work and what I do?” I jerked my head toward Evan. “I assume the non-disclosure agreement applied only to the part of the interview where you gave me information about him.”

Evan looked up, sharply.

Mr. Collins said quickly, “Of course. Naturally you are not to discuss the particulars of the projects you’ll be cataloging,” and he took my elbow and started ushering me toward the door, “but of course you can tell people that you are working for the Center under the direction of Evan Callahan.” He was reaching for the door, suddenly oddly anxious for us to be gone, when Evan was there, reaching past him and putting his hand on the flat expanse of metal.

“Stop right there,” he said firmly.

Oh, I thought; he wants to reiterate the secrecy of his work. Not to worry; I knew how to keep my mouth shut even without signing anything to that effect.

“Evan,” Mr. Collins said, brisk. “We do have to be going.”

Evan turned his pointed gaze to me. “You were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement?”

“Yes?”

He turned back to Mr. Collins. “Perry. Have you asked every candidate to sign a non-disclosure agreement?”

Mr. Collins hesitated. “Well, Evan, there are matters of internal security to consider here.”

Evan sighed and faced me; in fact he pulled me a little bit away from Mr. Collins. “Miss Kane. At what point were you asked to sign an agreement, and what did it contain?”

Conscious again of the pressure on my arm, and of him standing way too close, my primary goal was to get this over with. “It was after the general tour, and before any specific information was given to me, and I was reminded of it just before—and during—my one-on-one meeting with Mr. Collins.” I met his gaze evenly.

“And its contents?” he persisted, silkily, his hand still on my arm.

“Not to discuss…” But I was cut off.

“Miss Kane was asked, as all the candidates were asked, not to reveal anything she might learn in the course of the interview that could even remotely be construed as proprietary—or negative—about the Center, or specific as to the job for which she was interviewing,” Mr. Collins said curtly, as if that were all there was to it.

But Evan knew better. He let me go, and turned to smile at Mr. Collins. “In other words, nothing bad about me, specifically.” He ran his hand through his hair, exasperated. “Have I ever given a damn what people think of me?”

“Absolutely not. But the Center is more than just you, Evan. And we do care very much what the world thinks of us.” He wasn’t apologetic in the least. “As should you. We are your creation, after all, and it is the success of the Center as a prestigious research institute that allows you to continue working unmolested in this warehouse, while the rest of us preserve the reputation you don’t care about, but which we all need to keep making our house payments!”

I had to laugh. “You go, boy.”

They both stared at me. Then Evan grinned, but Mr. Collins looked uncertain. He had surely been expecting an argument.

Evan shook his head. “Fine. That’s all I wanted to know.” He stuck out his hand to me, adding, “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Kane. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

Tracy Fabre Bio

Tracy Fabre lives in the mid-south, works with books, toils in relative anonymity, and you can read more about her on her website at www.tracyfabre.com.

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Evan's Castle, Tracy Fabre
Stonegarden.net, August 2008

The preceding excerpt was taken from the book Evan's Castle with complete approval by the author Tracy Fabre and/or the publisher Stonegarden.net. This information may not be re-used or redistributed in any manner.

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