The next moment Larch launched himself at her.
But Joy had not been idle as she had been speaking. She had been gathering her energies, and focusing them, and she was ready to execute.
The instant Larch sprang she raised her hands and pushed a narrow funnel of air at him; he spun like a piece of newspaper and flattened against the nearest bookshelves. He yowled, sounding for a moment like a much smaller cat, and Joy backed into the demon room and shut the door behind her.
She seized the crystal at her throat. “Call Benjamin Flood,” she said.
The thing that struck the door an instant later sounded much larger than a panther.
“Wilkins? What the hell is it?”
“The librarian, Larch, is a shape-shifter. A panther. He’s been using the interlibrary spatial distortion system to move and store the demons. Or someone has. I found a cache of them, and I’m inside it right now.”
“Are you in danger?”
Larch plowed into the door again; this time it left a dent.
“Oh yes. But if you come in, my cover is blown. And I still don’t have any solid leads on Carla Drake.”
Flood didn’t reply right away, and Larch struck the door again. One of the hinges popped loose from the doorframe.
“Listen, I’m going to have my hands full in a second here, so I’ll talk to you later,” said Joy. At least I hope so, she thought. She reached into the nearest crate and pulled out a demonic cylinder. She decided not to mention the fact that she was about to commit a felony in self-defense.
“You call in the moment you’re clear,” Flood growled. “The blips have got you, and your security detail is nearby. We’ll be monitoring,” he said, and dropped the line.
Joy flattened herself against the wall beside the door. She breathed slow and deep. She could die here if she wasn’t careful. But Joy had discovered something during her encounter in the desert, something she had not expected.
She liked to fight.
The door crumpled inward, and Larch-the-panther tumbled into the room behind it.
As soon as the doorway was clear, Joy stepped out into the library proper. She focused her will, lifted the demon bottle to her mouth, and whispered: “Bookcase.”
The lid of the demon bottle popped loose, and Joy yanked it out.
The pure will of the demon screamed forth like an uncorked hurricane. One moment the black panther was turning to face her; the next, a cage of books from the library shelves took place around him. Three interlocking walls, floor to ceiling, with insulating layers between. It took shape in about five seconds. About three seconds after that Joy heard a muffled impact, but the book-prison didn’t budge.
Then something yowled, and claws raked across Joy’s cheeks. She was blinded by the pain. She found herself leaning against an empty row of shelves, pressing her hand against the cuts on her cheek. A library cat hissed at her from the shelf, and she backed away.
It was almost funny — she handled the big cat, but the little ones had her on the run. Their voices chased her south through the denuded shelves. She clutched at the crystal and whispered Flood’s name. “Larch is secure at my last location. I suggest you extract him immediately.”
“Already done,” said Flood, sounding smug. “Your security detail is taking care of it.”
“Good.” She dropped the line as she passed the FOUNDER'S ROOM. It was there that she heard Hector Ay calling her.
“Ms. Wilkins! Joy!”
“I’m here,” she said. “Be careful, the cats—”
“I know.” Hector was out of breath. “They drove everyone else out. Herded them out the main door.”
“I think I’ve managed to make them angrier,” she said. “Can you do your trick with the cats?”
“Nobody can tell a cat what to do,” Hector said. “These library cats, they just give them a place to live, and they politely ask them to use the litter boxes, and they magic the books against claw marks. But if the cats decide to do something else, there’s no telling them otherwise.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here until they settle down.”
“This way.”
Joy ran along behind Hector. Her hand was beginning to stick to the blood on her cheek, and there was a faint buzzing in her head, as if her skull were expanding. She was going to end up with shots for tetanus and rabies, and probably some nasty scars besides.
She didn’t realize they had reached the entrance of the library until she saw Zelda Akbulut and Margaret May waiting there for them. The sky had gone dark outside the windows, and even here the shelves were naked of books.
“Hector?” Zelda called out, too loudly. Beside her, Margaret May was pouring something into what looked like a perfume bottle.
“I’m right here,” said Hector.
“Hector, I brought in the allergy mist. It’s something I synthesized a while back. It’s partially a repellent for the cats. I thought if I had Margaret mix in some more lavender, it would amplify the effect. Are you finished, Margaret?”
“I think so? It’s bubbling, like you said.”
“Is Joy here? Joy, are you OK?”
“Scratched, but OK.”
“OK, gather around me, everyone,” Zelda said. “Margaret, when you take my classes I will discourage this sort of application, but right now I want you to smash the bottle on the floor.”
“OK,” said Margaret, and raised the bottle.
Joy noticed something about the component bottle on the table. “Wait, that’s not lavender—”
Glass shattered against the library’s tiled floor.
“—it’s valerian.”
“Oh,” said Margaret May. The potion had worked almost like a conjuration; they were surrounded by arch-backed, snarling, hissing felines, five deep on every side. “Crap.”
“By the Great Beast,” said Joy, “where did he get them all?”
“We’re going to be OK,” said Hector, and he embraced Zelda. “Everybody cover your faces.”
“I made things worse again, didn’t I?” Joy heard Zelda say the instant before the library’s outer windows exploded inward and the air became a riot of glass and cats…and crows.
Episode 5
Chapter 6
* * *
The McMonigal Arms
Edith Grim-Parker was on her phone, and there was a crow perched on the shelf above her desk. It stared at Joy as she entered. Edith glanced up at her, her aura the familiar orange-yellow dotted with green and turquoise. She pointed at a chair, but Joy decided to keep standing. The crow had the aura of a crow, dim yellow muddied with brown.
“No, it’s not a liability issue,” Edith was saying. “It would have been a liability issue if three faculty members and a student had been killed by two hundred cats. We have security so we don’t have to replace our people; we have insurance so we can replace things like, say, windows.” Edith didn’t sound angry; she sounded implacable.
“You do that,” she said, and hung up.
Edith shook her head at Joy. “We’ll be lucky if we can convince them to pay half of the replacement costs,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Joy said.
Edith glared at her. “Never apologize for things that aren’t your fault,” she said. “I meant what I said. I’d rather we have to rebuild the library — and hire a new crazy librarian — than have to go to funerals. You get old enough, you get sick to hell of people dying on you. How’s your cheek?”
Joy shrugged. “It’ll heal. It might scar.”
Edith smirked. “You make it sound like it’s a badge of honor. You’re a little odd, you know, for a professor. Not that they aren’t all odd.”
Joy didn’t want Edith to pursue that line of thought, so she quickly changed the subject. “Looks like you have a new mascot. Did he find his way down here from the library?”
“Christopher, you mean? Yeah, I think he hurt his wing. One of those cats must have gotten its licks in.”
Joy didn’t doubt it. She
guessed that something like fifty crows had answered Hector’s summons, but they were still outnumbered four to one, and the cats had been half-mad from Zelda and Margaret’s botched concoction. Joy had tried to fight back with some air and water magic, and Hector had talked Margaret through a surprisingly strong force bubble, but they’d been trapped inside the library for nearly an hour before the spatial distortion professor arrived and transported most of the cats to a holding room at the county Humane Society. About forty of them had scattered into the stacks, and a few had been killed, but there were more dead crows than cats.
After that there had been several hours of questions, first from the local police, who were frustrated by Larch’s disappearance and the fact that Joy was the only one who had seen him in the shape of a panther until Zelda mentioned that she had seen a big black cat in the library just a few days before. That mollified the cops temporarily, but the chief was clearly still suspicious of Joy’s story.
Joy had thought she could relax some when the FBMA liaison arrived: Gray, with an agent out of St. Paul named Renard. But the two of them took her to an unused classroom and debriefed her at such length that she asked why they didn’t just portal her to Washington so she could put it all into the casebook.
“AD Flood isn’t available at the moment,” Gray had said. “He wants to meet with you tomorrow or Monday.”
Joy had been surprised, but she hadn’t said so. Flood had been all over her this past week; it was a shock to think of him having a life outside of making hers difficult. She’d told Gray and Renard everything she knew and then stumbled home to bed. She hadn’t heard a word from Flood all day yesterday, but early this morning she’d received a call from Edith asking her to come in and talk to the president.
“Look, I don’t know exactly what’s happening here,” said Edith, “and I don’t need to know. But I’ve worked at this college for forty years. My mother was one of the founders of this school. If Larch was the one moving demons through here, then you’re part of the reason he won’t be doing so anymore. So I thank you for that. It doesn’t mean you’ve got tenure or anything, though, so stay on your toes.” She motioned to the door behind her. “He’s waiting for you in there.”
“Thank you,” said Joy, and walked into President Fitzgerald’s office.
Her first thought was that she had accidentally portalled to someplace else. Instead of the dark wood and leather of Martin’s office or the steel and beige of Flood’s, President Fitzgerald’s office was Sheetrocked and painted a buttery yellow with sky-blue trim. It had the look more of someone’s kitchen than of the inner sanctum of a man in authority.
“Ms. Wilkins.” Fitzgerald came out from behind his desk — an unassuming, vaguely prairie-style piece with painted accents matching the walls — and took her hand. His aura was normally orangish yellow, but was trending toward clear yellow today, suggesting that his mood was less detail oriented, more playful. “So good to see you again.”
“I’ve actually been trying to reach you since last Tuesday,” said Joy.
“Have you? I’m sorry, I was traveling. Please, sit.” The office chairs were wire framed with white leather seats. Joy perched on one while Fitzgerald leaned on his desk. Philip Fitzgerald’s hair was red with gray streaks, and his fair skin was freckled, but his body language reminded her of Martin Shil in the meeting she had had with him just a week ago.
“I could have portalled to you,” Joy said.
“That would have been difficult.” He smiled. “Anyway, you’ve made so much progress, already! Demon smuggling. Serious, very serious. This librarian, Larch, I never suspected.”
“Apparently his name isn’t even Larch. The real Fredrick Larch was murdered four years ago, and this shape-shifter took his place. He’s not saying why, either. It appears he may have spent the majority of his life living as a panther.”
“Hm.” Fitzgerald nodded. “Serious. Very serious.”
“So he was using the state system to move the demons, but Gooseberry Bluff was the only branch to report any strange activity. That seems odd, doesn’t it?”
“Odd, yes,” said Fitzgerald. “Interesting. And what about Carla Drake? Have you found any leads on her?”
Joy paused. He was evading her. She decided to throw him off balance.
“President Fitzgerald, are you a member of the Thirteenth Rib?”
“The Thirteenth Rib? What an interesting name! I…am. Aren’t I? Yes! I think I am.”
Joy was as thrown by his admission as by his indecision about it. “And how many…” She wasn’t sure which question to ask first. “Can you tell me what the purpose of the organization is?”
“Oh, I don’t know if I’d call it an organization, exactly. It’s really more of a…circle of friends. I can’t really tell you about it, though, seeing as it is a secret.”
“Well, I know about it now. And Carla Drake did too. I think knowing about it got her into trouble.”
“Ah. No, I think that’s backward. Carla was in trouble, and she found out about the, uh…”
“The Thirteenth Rib?”
“The Thirteenth Rib, yes. But not until it was too late for us to help her. That’s why you came in.”
“You mean that’s why you called the FBMA?”
“Yes, I called you. Precisely.”
“Why didn’t you share that information with us?”
“Well…that’s a — that’s a very good question. I wasn’t sure we could trust you yet. But we needed help, because things were beginning to get out of hand. It was more than we could handle on our own.”
“What was?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You know more than you’re saying.”
He laughed. “Yes, well, doesn’t everyone?”
“Are you deliberately impeding my investigation?”
“No, no.” He held up his hands as if to show he meant no harm. “It’s like this, Agent Wilkins. Gooseberry Bluff is more than it appears. I am more than I appear. The Thirteenth Rib, the demon trafficking, the disappearance of Carla Drake — all of these things are more complex than I can sum up in a friendly conversation or even an interrogation. The organization — we have been independent for some time now, and some of the members would have liked to remain so. But there was a vote, and a majority of the organization decided that it was time to begin sharing information and resources. But we need to be cautious.”
“My superiors are going to want answers.”
“Yes, I know, but…I’m afraid your superiors are — what’s the phrase — out of the loop on this. You won’t be able to repeat any of what’s been said here, and only the most sanitized version of it will show up in your casebooks.”
Joy gasped. “You’ve put a geas over this room? You can’t do that!”
“Really?” If he’d seemed scattered before, he was suddenly focused. “Isn’t that exactly what your superiors did to Hector Ay?”
There was no way he could know about that. “That’s — they have federal authority. You don’t.”
“Without wishing to sound too ecclesiastical, we answer to a higher authority than that.”
Joy scoffed. “Oh, OK. Global? Intergalactic?”
“Let’s call it interdimensional.”
“There’s no proof that other dimensions exist.”
“That’s because people haven’t been looking in the right place.” Fitzgerald pointed at the floor. “Right here on this campus. Stag was close, but he built his school on the wrong spot.” He stood and crossed to the window. “The barrier between the dimensions is strong. Too strong, in every other place but this.”
“What makes this place special?”
“There was a war here. A cataclysm, really. An entire world died, and it was because of a spell centered on this exact piece of real estate — except two hundred worlds away. And ever since then, the fabric of reality has worn thin here, and certain people have traded between worlds, traveled between worlds — and sometimes
, fought wars between them.”
“So Larch…Larch could have come from another dimension.”
“It’s possible. And it’s also possible that Carla Drake may have been taken to one.” Fitzgerald turned. “You believe me?”
“I really don’t know.” It was a lot to accept. Dimensional travel was the stuff of pulp novels and tabloid stories, not reality. It could explain some things; but it raised at least as many questions as it answered.
“I understand that you might need time, but although some of my colleagues are unconvinced, I feel it’s crucial that you join us.”
“Join you?”
“As a member of the Thirteenth Rib. We have a meeting tonight. Not very formal, just a dinner party. But we’d like you to attend. Think of it as a getting-to-know-you sort of thing.”
“If I attend, are you going to answer some questions?”
“You can ask all the questions you like. Whether the members choose to answer is up to them.”
Joy fumed all the way back to her office; she didn’t even hear Andy until he followed her to her door and handed her a package. “It just arrived via PoofPost,” he said.
“Thank you.” Joy didn’t look at him. When she was angry she had trouble seeing auras, and looking at faces stripped of meaning — blank ciphers — only made her angrier. She shut the door to her office and pulled the blinds. The chair squawked as she sat down, and she hammered her fist on the desk.
Calm down, she told herself. She put her hands to her face and forced herself to breathe slowly. The crystal at her throat chimed once, but she ignored it.
She was angry because she was being manipulated, and she wasn’t the only one. By withholding the information about the secret society and the other dimensions — information Joy wasn’t sure she could believe yet — Fitzgerald had kept Carla Drake in danger and might have indirectly gotten Martin killed. And by placing Joy under a geas, he may have made it impossible for her to do her job effectively.
She wasn’t sure how to reconcile this with the man she had met during her interviews and briefings. Philip Fitzgerald had immediately struck her as a bit scattered and eccentric, certainly, but Martin had clearly trusted him. They had some history that Martin was never specific about.
Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib Page 14