Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib

by David J. Schwartz

  There were no visible signs of activity in or out of the building and no cars in the lot. She needed to get inside.

  When he had asked them to come onto campus to investigate, President Fitzgerald had given the FBMA three keys, but only one of them fit on a keychain. The other two were phrases that would get her through the outer and inner security shells. She whispered one of them as she approached the entrance, and shivered as she felt the energy field allow her through. She used the second phrase at the same moment that she slid the master key into the front door; she turned the key and slipped quietly inside.

  Joy hurried down the nearest south-facing corridor, checking each door. The cool air inside the building chilled the rain and sweat on her skin, and she shivered as she moved on to the next corridor and then doubled back to the north side. No light, no sound. There could be someone in the shadows somewhere, but she couldn’t see auras without seeing the person first. She returned to the lobby and managed to make out the big clock amid the shadows: 4:33. She was running out of time.

  She moved on to the second floor. She paused outside the library, thinking she had seen a light, but realized that it was just the eyes of a cat, darting between study tables. She searched the rest of the floor, then the third and fourth and the first again, but there was nothing. Whatever had happened, she had missed it.

  She left the building shortly after five a.m., locking the door behind her. She holstered the Beretta and clenched her fists. What a mess. What a goddamned, shitty…a block away from the school she stopped and punched at the air, boxing with her inadequacies. She knew she would look like an idiot to anyone who happened to drive past on Stagecoach Trail, but she also knew that she would feel a little bit better afterward.

  When she had calmed down, she jogged back to her house. She would call Martin immediately. He would probably pull her out…no, actually. Martin wouldn’t give up on her that easily. The thought was comforting. By the time she got back to her house she had a list of questions for the blips and a second list of possible avenues of investigation for herself.

  She swung her front door open and found herself in Martin’s office.

  “I thought it was too risky to open a gate inside the city limits,” she said as she shut the door. “Listen, I got there and there was nothing. I’m wondering if the blips can—”

  She stopped talking when she saw that the man behind the desk wasn’t Martin. It was a tall, balding white man wearing a suit but no tie. His aura was a pulsing red with bursts of bright yellow.

  “Where the hell have you been, Agent?”

  “I went to check on Martin’s report,” she said. “There was no one there, not unless they were hiding in the dark, and if they were hiding they certainly weren’t moving any demons through. Where’s Martin?”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you spoke to Assistant Director Shil last night?”

  “Not last night, no. Just an hour ago. He said the blips had spotted something.”

  “An hour ago.”

  “It was 4:17 by my bedside clock. Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “Sit down, Agent Wilkins.”

  “Please. Has something happened to Martin?”

  The man — he still hadn’t told her his name — considered her for a long moment, his lips pursed. “You really might want to sit down.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We don’t know much, but I can tell you this: you didn’t speak to Special Agent Shil this morning, because he was murdered at around ten thirty last night.”

  At some point Joy must have finally sat down in one of the red leather wraparound chairs in Martin’s office. She felt grubby and damp. Martin’s office was so elegant — the brightly lit bookshelves, the simple but fine rugs, the discreet shrine to Ganesh near the window. She didn’t want to be here, sweating on his furniture, but her legs would not hold her. She perched on the forward edge of the smooth cushion, waiting for her strength to return.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Assistant Director Benjamin Flood,” said the man. “And I’ll ask the questions from here on out.” He didn’t look up as he spoke. His posture suggested a military background; his baldness and the sagging of his jowls told her he was older. Late Cold War era, perhaps.

  “AD Shil left these offices at about five minutes to ten last night. He drove home via his usual route and parked in the underground garage. He rode the elevator to the ground floor, where someone else got on.” Flood passed a black-and-white photograph across the desk, and Joy took it. It showed two men, one darker than the other, both wearing suits. Joy knew that Martin was the lighter-skinned of the two only because she recognized the suit as one she had seen him wear before.

  “Do you recognize the other man?”

  Joy cleared her throat. “AD Flood, I don’t know if you’re aware of my disability.”

  The tone of his voice and the shimmer of his aura told her that he was, but he said, “Enlighten me.”

  “I’m face blind. I have trouble recognizing even family members by photographs. I read people’s auras; they’re highly individual.”

  “You’re a field agent who can’t recognize suspects based on the photographs in their files? I find that a bit strange, Wilkins.”

  “Actually—”

  “That wasn’t a question, Wilkins.” Flood folded his hands on the desk. “What does my aura tell you right now?”

  “That you’re very determined, and very worried.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s all I’m comfortable saying right now.”

  “There’s more?”

  “I’ve just met you, sir. I need to get to know you a little better and compare what I learn with what I see. The colors can mean more than one thing.”

  “You were a psychologist, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He pulled out a file. “You had a tenure-track position at a state college in Kentucky when AD Shil recruited you. How did that happen?”

  Joy knew she wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but she was starting to feel very uncomfortable. It was starting to feel like he was interrogating her.

  “I don’t know, exactly. I had a small reputation as an aura reader. I think he heard about that, and he came to see me.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Joy took a slow, deep breath as she remembered. “He was very kind. Very warm. It’s rare…many people are good at faking those things, and their auras give them away. Martin is“—her voice broke as she corrected herself—”Martin was one of the most genuine men I ever met. He was earnestly concerned not just for the safety of the public but for the well-being of the people who worked with him to maintain it.”

  “You never wished him harm?”

  “No.”

  “Would you mind taking another look at that photograph?”

  Joy did so, just to appease him. Flood seemed to be the sort of person who liked to give people the opportunity to argue with him just so he could smack them down.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t say whether I’ve seen this person before.”

  “So you can’t even recognize that the suspect is black?”

  Joy took a moment to answer. “No. I’m not sure what the relevance of that is, exactly.”

  “You’re black.”

  Even though he had telegraphed the question, Joy’s body reacted exactly as though she’d been hit. Her heart beat faster, her back tensed, and she broke out in a sweat. Was he trying to accuse her of being part of some race-based conspiracy? The idea was so insane that she was tempted to laugh in his face; but even if she had felt like laughing, she knew it would probably make him even more unpleasant.

  “Again, I’m unclear as to the significance of my race — or that of the suspect.”

  “Just pointing it out.”

  Joy understood, then, that he had just been making a wild stab. He didn’t really consider her a suspect, but he thought that if
she was guilty of something, then coming at her from a racial direction might make her slip up. He was doing his job, but Joy didn’t like the way he was doing it, and she didn’t like him.

  “How did he die?”

  “He was strangled. With a garrote. Not an amateur’s weapon, generally.” Flood pushed Martin’s chair back from the desk and stood. “You must know that Shil took some heat for giving you the Gooseberry Bluff assignment. Aside from the things that we aren’t allowed to say anymore because they aren’t politically correct, you’re so green your reports have grass stains. Clearly AD Shil had confidence in you, but we don’t know yet if he was right to, do we?”

  “The man’s been dead for less than eight hours. I think you should have a little more respect when you speak of him.”

  “And you should be careful how you speak to your new handler.”

  Flood lifted a slim paperback off the desk; Joy recognized the casebook that she had filled just the day before. He set it on the desk and motioned for her to do the same again.

  “Sir, I…”

  “Say what’s on your mind.”

  “I have some doubts about whether you and I should be working together,” Joy said.

  “I don’t,” he said. “I’ve been following this case. Marty and I fought over it, in fact. I would have handled it much differently, of course. But you’re there now, and we don’t have the resources to pull you out and send someone else in. The moment I heard Marty was dead, I said a little prayer and I called the director to request that you be assigned to me.

  “Now. Update me.”

  Joy set her hand on the book. Just as it had the day before, it seemed to enfold her…and then she was back in the office. She felt sharper and less fatigued, despite barely having slept.

  Flood picked up the casebook and flipped through it. “So. This place is full of strange folks, isn’t it? This secretary, this ladyboy…” He shook his head. “If that was my son, I’d set him straight, believe me.”

  Joy said nothing. Flood was, if not a typical FBMA man, at least typical of a sizable percentage of them. Coming from academia, where the prejudices were more subtle and more rationalized, she had initially been shocked at how some of the agency men talked. The fact that Martin was different had gone a long way toward balancing out how she felt about the work. To have him replaced by a man like this was worse than insulting.

  “So you really haven’t done anything yet. This divination professor, Song, told you nothing; you haven’t talked to the conjuration professor; you haven’t even checked in with the president. Is that correct?”

  “I saw the president briefly but I haven’t been able to get in to see him since. As to the rest of the faculty, I’m trying to ease my way in so as not to arouse suspicion.”

  Flood turned toward the back of the casebook. “Tell me about this call.”

  “Like I said, at 4:17 AM I received a crystal-to-crystal call, and someone who I believed was AD Shil told me that the blips had picked up indications that demons were being moved through the college at that moment.”

  “What were his exact words?”

  “He said…he said, ‘Agent Wilkins, it’s going down right now. The blips picked it up seven minutes ago.’ I wasn’t fully awake yet, and he said, ‘Wake up, this is Martin Shil. Someone is moving demons through the college right now.’ ”

  “He said, ‘It’s going down’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you known AD Shil to use that phrase?”

  “Yes.”

  Flood raised an eyebrow at that but let it pass. “So. You went to the college.”

  “Yes.” He ran her through everything that had happened, and he seemed to be checking her version of the events against what she had just put in the casebook. When they reached the point where she returned to her rental house, he stopped and set the casebook down.

  “Tell me how you think it’s going so far,” he said.

  Joy shook her head. “I’m not sure. It depends a lot on who called me. It could have been Martin calling me. Martin’s…ghost. Or it could have been a setup. Someone — possibly the same people who had AD Shil murdered — may have wanted to flush me out and make me blow my cover.”

  “You think your cover is blown?”

  “It could be.”

  “I don’t agree.” Flood picked up a thin folder and read from the single sheet of paper inside: “Four ten a.m., August 29th, tracking division picked up nameless demon signatures on the college grounds. Ten minutes later, they were gone.”

  Joy did some figuring in her head. They’d finished before she had even managed to leave her house.

  “The list of things we don’t know right now is longer than a congressional report. What I’m interested in at the moment is how they’re moving the demons.”

  Joy shook her head. “Maybe they’re using spatial distortion. If so, though, I don’t understand why they would choose the college as a stopover.”

  “What do we know about the security at the college?”

  “The wards were set up by the president himself.”

  “The president whom we can’t get in touch with.”

  “Yes. One of the security magic professors is also a security consultant, but I’m not sure what aspects he’s involved with.”

  “You’re thinking of Hector Ay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to talk to him. Also this conjuration professor, Ingwiersen. Now. I don’t care if you annoy people. We don’t have time for you to make friends. Be nosy, be aggressive. We want the people who are behind this, but there’s a breaking point with this trafficking. If another shipment gets through, the director wants a clamp put over the campus, and then we’ll be starting from scratch somewhere else.”

  He didn’t say “without you,” but Joy heard it anyway. “What about Carla Drake?”

  “The only thing we know for sure is that she’s not here.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You’re dismissed, Agent.”

  Joy stood. She stared at a paperweight replica of the Lincoln Memorial on Martin’s desk. She had given it to him the first Christmas after she met him, because he had mentioned that he admired Lincoln. Joy was a terrible gift-giver, and she knew it.

  “When will the funeral be?”

  Flood unclenched his jaw for the first time since Joy had entered the office. He almost looked ashamed, but Joy suspected that any discomfort would be turned back on her the next time she saw Flood. “I’ll let you know. We’ll set up a gate for you.”

  Joy looked around the office one last time before she walked out and stood on the landing outside her house. The sun was just peeking out from the opposite shore of the St. Croix, obscured by a light fog. It was going to be a hot day.

  She made it back inside before she started to cry. She doubled over with grief, sobbing like a child, but not caring. She took a few steps in the direction of her living room before giving up and dropping to her knees on the floor.

  She had first met Martin about a year after her father had died. Even seven years later, Joy hadn’t recovered from her father’s death. She had thought for a while that the world would eventually fill in that hole, like a vacuum, but apparently grief was an unnatural phenomenon. Raymond Wilkins’s absence had substance. As a child, whenever Joy heard her father return home from a three- or four-day trip in the middle of the night, she would sneak out of her room and crawl into her parents’ bed. Her mother was an oncology nurse who often worked nights and always slept badly; she discouraged Joy and her sister and brother from sleeping with her when her husband was gone. But Ray Wilkins loved to crowd his children into the king-size bed: elbows and knees pressing into backs, drool dripping on shoulders, snoring waking everyone up. When their mother worked the night shift he would keep them up late, telling silly jokes or listening to them talk about their day.

  As Joy got older the bed became too crowded, and she came to want her own space, but she had remained close with her
father. For a long time he was her closest friend. It wasn’t until her late teens that she could read auras well enough to counterbalance her face blindness, and other kids often assumed that she was either slow or snobby because she couldn’t recognize them from day to day. A girl she was friendly with one day might wear pants instead of a dress the next day, or put her hair up in a ponytail, and become unrecognizable. But her father was always the same. He always smelled the same, he always had the same haircut, and he always called her “Pride ’n’ Joy.” His aura was always a bright emerald green.

  Joy loved her mother as well, but she was more changeable. She had always been moody and dissatisfied. She took up hobbies and friends and fashions and then lost interest and dropped them, staying in on her days off and sipping white wine while she read magazines about famous people. Her aura tended to dark greens tinged with gray. Joy didn’t claim to understand her mother, but after years of psychology classes her theory was that Marsha Wilkins was an introverted person who needed more solitude than she got at home, and didn’t know how to get it. Now that her husband was gone and her children had moved out, she was happier, and Joy had to admit that she resented her for it.

  Ray Wilkins had suffered a heart attack at the yards and died before the ambulance arrived. He’d just turned fifty-one. It was too young, and Joy had never been able to process it. She’d cried, but she still woke up aching to hear his voice, to sit in his lap and smell his sweat.

  Martin Shil was nothing like her father except in one way: consistency. His suits were all of the same style, and he wore them in a regular rotation; he never wore hats; he saw his barber every Monday like clockwork. His accent was faint but distinctive. He always crossed his legs and folded his hands in the exact same way. All that, and he took a genuine interest in her. He convinced her that her face blindness would not be a barrier to working for the FBMA, and he made sure that it was true. He invited her to dine at his house with himself and his wife. He always invited her over for Thanksgiving, even though Joy usually went home to see her mother.

  She knew that she was grieving as much for her father, still, as she was for Martin. She felt guilty for that. But she consoled herself that it was also a compliment, because they were the two best men she had ever known.