Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib

by David J. Schwartz

  Maybe that was the way to go. She needed to know more about what Fitzgerald was up to, and if his own tracks had been covered, maybe Martin’s were still fresh.

  In fact, maybe she could ask him directly.

  She put her hand over her crystal and took a deep breath. Probably this wouldn’t work, but she was getting more ghost calls than usual since she’d come to Gooseberry Bluff. It was worth a shot.

  “Martin Shil,” she said. The crystal chimed briefly, and a familiar voice answered, but it wasn’t Martin’s.

  “Wilson? Is that you?”

  “No, ma’am.” Joy tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

  “Young woman, put Wilson on the line immediately. I haven’t got time for your shenanigans.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I do hope you get ahold of your son.” Joy closed the connection.

  Now that her anger had passed, she was just tired. She sighed and looked at the package on her desk. It was the size and shape of a small coffee table book, wrapped in brown paper. The return address was in Chicago; Joy didn’t recognize it.

  She tore it open and found a small white envelope and a hardcover book entitled Trickster Tales of the Hvenashawa People. Joy wasn’t familiar with the Hvenashawa; the illustrations were of an otter, or a man dressed as an otter, interacting with various animals and humans in landscapes that appeared variously early East Asian or North American.

  The envelope was addressed to her and contained a greeting card with an image of a gift-wrapped box, wrapped with ribbon tied into an elaborate bow. The inside of the card bore only four words, written in spare yet elegant calligraphy: “Carla Drake Is Alive.”

  It was all she could do not to run out of her office and accost Andy. She forced herself to get up slowly and calmly walk out and approach his desk.

  “Hi, Andy.” Andy was wearing a sleeveless green top that displayed his slender, tanned arms to great effect. Joy was learning to look past the incongruity of his wardrobe to notice that Andy had excellent fashion sense.

  “Hello, Joy.”

  “I’m sorry if I was brusque before,” Joy said. “I had an upsetting meeting. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “You didn’t,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re having a bad day.”

  “Thanks. It would be a little better if you still had the packing slip for that package you gave me.”

  “Sure. I usually keep them for a week or so…here,” he said, pulling the slip out of a file folder on his desk.

  “Thanks.” Joy scanned the onionskin paper, but the space for “Sender” was illegible, and the address hadn’t been filled out. There was a corporate account number, though, and despite everything Joy smiled. She had dealt with PoofPost before.

  It would have to wait, though. She had a second job to do, which meant a week’s worth of lectures to finish preparing, and one of them was in just a few hours. She thanked Andy again, went back into her office, and locked the door.

  This, at least, was familiar work; during her time at Kentucky State last-minute class preps had become routine to her. She had been good at that job, but she hadn’t realized how bored she was there until after she joined the FBMA. She almost missed that feeling now. If she’d known when Martin came to recruit her that he’d one day be murdered because of a case she was working on, she might never have joined.

  Except Martin would likely still be dead. At least this way, she could find out who was behind his murder.

  Joy worked through lunch, and when Andy knocked on her door to tell her he was leaving for the night she realized she was starving. She packed up her materials for the night’s lecture and moved down to the cafeteria, lingering over a soup and salad until it was time for her class. Her crystal had chimed a few times through the course of the afternoon, but she had decided, not entirely consciously, to ignore it. When it rang as she was sitting staring at her dinner tray, she decided to answer.

  “This is Joy.”

  “Dammit, girl, why don’t you answer my calls?” It was Rosemary, her sister.

  “I’m sorry,” said Joy. “I’ve been working. Things are crazy.”

  “They better be. You haven’t called me in a week.”

  “I know. I suck. I’m just on a big case.”

  “I’m sure you are, but don’t play that on me. I’m your sister. What I want to know is, are you OK?”

  Joy sighed.

  “That didn’t sound like a yes.”

  “I can’t really talk about it right now. But things started badly.”

  “Are you safe?”

  “Yes, of course.” There was no point telling Rosemary the truth, because she would never let it go. “And I’ve made some progress. Last week was just bad.”

  “I don’t know why it is I’m the only normal child in this family,” Rosemary said.

  “Don’t start,” said Joy.

  “I’m just saying, after what happened with Trevor—”

  “Rosemary, I am not kidding. I do not want to talk about it.”

  Joy could hear her sister breathing, but there was a long pause before she spoke again. “You should come visit. I would like to see you. This weekend, maybe? Don’t say you don’t have time to portal down here for dinner.”

  “I’d like that too. I’ll let you know.”

  “Just take care of yourself; that’s all I’m asking.”

  “I always do.”

  Joy hung up, bussed her table, and headed over to the lecture hall. It was only six thirty, but she wanted to get the board ready.

  She passed Greg, the janitor, taking a mop and bucket to the men’s bathroom on the first floor. He shook his head at her, his soft blue aura flaring sulfurous with irritation. “I got cats in the service tunnels, feathers in the ventilation system, and just about every toilet in the building’s overflowed in the past twenty-four hours.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Joy. “Are you…do you have to clean up the library too?”

  “Aw, hell no. They won’t even let me in there. I heard it might not open up again until spring semester.”

  Joy had heard that too. As they spoke, FBMA spatial distortion teams were combing the depths of the Minnesota interlibrary system, tracing its hidden portals and shutting them down, one by one. There wouldn’t be any rebuilding until after they finished their survey.

  Unfortunately, Greg didn’t have security clearance for any of that information, so all she could say was, “What a mess.”

  Joy entered the south lecture hall via the instructor’s door on the first floor and found that the instructor’s table on the dais was scattered with books and papers. It took Joy a moment to recognize the aura of the young woman seated there as Margaret May’s.

  “Hi, Margaret,” Joy said.

  “Oh! Professor, I’m sorry. I just, there wasn’t any — the library’s closed now, and I can’t really study in my apartment? I’ll move.”

  “There’s no great hurry, Margaret. Class doesn’t start for another half hour.”

  “It’s OK, I can move.” Margaret’s dark-gold aura was fingerprinted with gray at the edges, which was worrisome enough for Joy to decide to push a little.

  “Everything OK, Margaret?” Joy asked. “You said you have a roommate, right? Are you having problems?”

  Margaret shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I expected, you know? I had to skip a couple of years after high school because my mom got sick, and I thought this would be more like…it’s not really like I thought college would be, I guess. I was kind of a terrible student in high school, and back then — it seems like a really long time ago — I just wanted to go to the U with all my friends, you know? But…I guess we’re not really friends anymore?” Margaret said this as if she were hoping Joy would insist that of course that wasn’t the case, she would always be friends with the people she’d known in high school. As someone who had always struggled with her own friendships, Joy was struck by pangs of sympathy, but she wasn’t sure what the right t
hing to say was.

  She tried changing the subject. “Is your mom better?”

  “Oh. Not really. They just kind of…they’re just trying to keep her comfortable. She’s in hospice here in town, so at least I get to see her all the time.”

  Joy mentally berated herself. “I’m so sorry, Margaret.”

  “No, you know, it’s OK! I’ve actually had a lot of fun here, I mean, the classes are fun. Saturday? That was crazy. Did they ever find that librarian guy?”

  “Not that I know of,” Joy lied. “I’m just glad no one was seriously hurt.”

  “Did you have to get, like, a rabies shot for that? On your face?”

  “A rabies shot on my face?”

  “No, the claws, you know.”

  “Oh. That’s only for bites, I believe.”

  “Oh, right. Duh!” Margaret finished making a stack of her books and papers and gathered them to her chest. “I just liked it,” she said suddenly.

  “You liked what?”

  “Just, you know. Being on a team, kind of. The four of us against all those cats? I mean, it was scary and it was all screwed up because we did the wrong magic, but it was exciting and I had fun. Except when I went home my cat was all freaked out; she wouldn’t come near me but she also didn’t want to let me out of her sight. She’s such a weird cat.”

  That this poor girl was so desperate for friends that she enjoyed facing death with three of her professors made Joy sad. She knew the school had a counselor on staff, and she made a mental note to ask him to check in with Margaret sometime this week.

  Margaret sat down in the front row. “You know what I wonder?” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  Margaret didn’t say anything for several seconds, long enough that Joy stepped off the dais and sat next to the girl.

  “I wonder why it is that magic can do all kinds of crazy stuff like summon cats and make force bubbles and tell you about the future, but it can’t zap some stupid rogue cells in a person’s body and stop them from killing her.”

  “I don’t have a good answer for that, Margaret.” The Why Can’t We Cure Cancer? question was one that was much debated in the popular press, but Joy didn’t think any of those theories were what Margaret needed to hear.

  Margaret put her head down and shaded her eyes. “Yeah, I know. Nobody does.”

  Joy hesitated, then set a hand on the girl’s shoulder and squeezed. “Will you do me a favor, Margaret? Will you keep me updated on how your mom is doing?”

  “Sure,” Margaret said, but she didn’t look up. Joy patted her shoulder and returned to the dais to start putting her notes on the board, though the conversation with Margaret stayed with her.

  They had already covered ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian magic; today they were going to discuss the Greco-Roman mystery religions and the beginnings of syncretization of the traditions, with some particular attention to the Greek Magical Papyri. The Papyrii Graecae Magicae was one of the oldest known spellbooks, though only a few of them worked. It was interesting in part because it represented one of the first known efforts to pull from different traditions to create practical, working magic — take what works and leave the rest, as Bruce Lee had done with the martial arts.

  Joy spent another twenty minutes covering the six-panel board with her lecture outline. By the time she finished Margaret had recovered, and the hall had filled in behind her. Joy had the impression that there were even more students tonight than there had been on the first day.

  As she sipped water, preparing to talk for an hour, three men and two women filed in and took seats next to each other near the back. They were all gray or graying and were dressed formally, the men in suits, the women in dark dresses that fell below the knee. Joy couldn’t determine much from their auras, which were a mix of colors, but none of them presented any shades that were particularly worrisome. She figured if they wanted to audit, it didn’t bother her, but she’d keep an eye on them nevertheless.

  “Good evening, class,” she said. “I have one announcement, for those who haven’t heard: the library is closed indefinitely, but the school has made arrangements with Arthur Stag College for all of you to have full access to their collection. Shuttles are running every hour over to that campus, and there should be a portal set up by the end of the week.

  “Now, I wanted to start by asking a question. Based on our readings and what we’ve covered so far in this class, what would you say first prompted humans to start experimenting with magic?”

  “Greed?”

  Joy found the source of the guess in the fifth row, a long-haired boy with a lavender aura. “That comes later, actually. Anybody else?”

  “Love?” This from a small, pale girl in the second row whose dark hair always hung in front of her eyes.

  “Probably a close second, but that’s not what I’m thinking of, no. Anyone else?” She gave them a few seconds before she went on. “Think about the Egyptians. Think about Gilgamesh. What were they concerned with?”

  “Death,” said Margaret May in a faint voice.

  “Yes. Fear of death and of the dead, the desire for knowledge about what happens after we die — these are almost universal concerns of early magical traditions. How to see that the dead we care about — or fear — make it safely to the next world and don’t stick around to scare us or hurt us. How to discover and use the secrets that only the dead know. How to cheat death, and how to stay alive indefinitely. Next week, for example, we’ll talk about shamanic tradition and how shamans treat the sick by traveling to the land of the dead to bring their souls back to their bodies.

  “It’s been said that where religion is about coming to terms with death, magic is about battling with death. Of course, the lines between magic and religion aren’t really that easy to draw, whether we’re talking about transubstantiation or the riding of the loa. But keep this in mind. One of the reasons that necromancy is outlawed is that no one ever managed to practice it in a way that benefited anyone.” This last point was arguable, but these were undergrads, and Joy wanted to do her civic duty to discourage any experimenting. “We don’t understand death, not on anything beyond a literal level, and yet in some ways all of magic — especially the more disastrous magic—stems from the impulse to cheat it.”

  The lecture went well, she thought. She was feeling more confident in the classroom again; it helped that she could recognize a few of the students’ auras now, and that she herself found the subject matter interesting. Covering three thousand years of world magical tradition in twelve weeks was an insane proposition, but Carla Drake had managed to break it down in about the best way Joy could imagine. If she ever found the woman, she would have to congratulate her on that.

  The older folks who had sat near the back were long gone by the time she packed up and dealt with the small knot of students with questions after the lecture. She shut off the lights and made her way out of the building, bleary from a long day. She crossed Stagecoach Trail and walked toward her house.

  The sun still pinked the sky beyond the bluff, but the shadows were long and she didn’t see Benjamin Flood until he was right next to her.

  “Get in,” he said, motioning to the dark-blue sedan parked beside the curb. She slid into the backseat beside him, and the driver, whom she didn’t recognize, started the car and eased it down the street.

  “I called your crystal twice today,” said Flood. “I’d like to know why you didn’t pick up.”

  Joy sat for a minute with her eyes closed.

  “Are you going to answer me, Wilkins?”

  “Sorry, sir. I was just taking a mental photograph of that fleeting moment of job satisfaction I had before you showed up.”

  “Funny,” he said, but he didn’t laugh. Flood glanced out the window, showing her a bit of his silhouette. He was barely visible in the streetlight’s glow, and his aura was similarly hard to make out, but she had known him immediately by his voice and the way he spoke to her.

  “I�
�m still waiting for an explanation,” he said.

  “I was busy. I have this second job, you know. I have to do it well, so that no one will start wondering why I’m there.”

  “When I call, you damn well better talk to me.”

  “I just assumed you were calling to congratulate me on the breakthrough in my investigation.”

  “Don’t get smug, Wilkins. This just became a lot bigger than us. I spent my Sunday in nonstop meetings with people who don’t have the time to even hear your name.”

  “Talking about Heartstoppers, I assume.”

  “Heartstoppers. Librarian panthers. Assassins without fingerprints or identities who refuse to speak.”

  “He was talkative enough when I captured him. Why don’t you give me a shot at him?”

  “That’s not going to happen. The fact is, we’re pulling you out.”

  Joy’s mouth went dry. “You — you can’t do that. I’m here to find Carla Drake.”

  “You were here to get to the bottom of the demon trafficking. Carla Drake might have been connected to that, we don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter now. You’re going to develop a sick relative. I can give you a week.”

  “Sir, there’s something I need to show you.” Joy pulled the anonymous note from her bag and handed it to Flood.

  “What is this?”

  “It arrived today in an anonymous PoofPost package, along with a book of kids’ stories. Myths.” Joy found the book in her bag and handed that over as well.

  “Pull over,” Flood told the driver, and once they were parked he turned on the overhead light. “ ‘Carla Drake Is Alive.’ You said this came anonymously?”

  “The sender’s information was obscured, but I pulled a corporate account number off the slip. I’m going to look into that tomorrow.”

  “PoofPost.” His tone had changed from annoyed to thoughtful. “Be careful. I’ll talk to our task force, make sure you won’t be stepping on any toes.” Flood opened up the book. “Hvenashawa? I’ve never heard of them.”