Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib

by David J. Schwartz

  Joy’s frustration had reached the point where she finally had to interrupt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I have no idea what it has to do with anything.”

  Bebe threw up her hands. “I thought she was educated.”

  “Be a little patient, Bebe,” said Yves. “You really were in professor mode there for a moment.”

  “Let me try,” Abel said. “Look, Philip told you there was a battle some time ago, one hundred and ninety-six dimensions distant. It was…it was an extraordinary thing. From what we’ve gleaned of it, the gods and the great powers of that Earth were bent upon not just victory but complete annihilation — and they succeeded. They succeeded in destroying themselves and their entire world. And what happened then was that a hole opened in the fabric of existence — as if you put a stack of maps of all the possible Earths into a paper-punch and pressed down right on the spot where Gooseberry Bluff sits.

  “The forces of order in the universe, as you might expect, were appalled by what had happened. Order is…” He seemed unsure, for a moment, how to explain. “In most pantheons, order is sort of assumed, and the gods that govern it are minor, or it’s a minor aspect of gods who handle other things. But the battle and the disruption that followed — the easy movement between the dimensions — put the gods of order on high alert, and they started to band together across the worlds. Slowly, they’ve taken control of more than a hundred dimensions. And by taken control, we mean lockdown. You submit to order, or you are destroyed. Chaos and order should be in equilibrium — enough stability for life to thrive, enough random chance to allow for adaptation and invention. But there’s no such thing as an alliance of tricksters. Order was designed to ally itself with order, but you can’t put Eshu and Hermes in the same room and expect them to agree. Their nature is to contradict and disrupt, even when their own survival is at stake.”

  Philip laughed, a bit loudly, until he saw that they were all looking at him. “It’s just so true,” he said.

  “OK,” said Joy. “You’re telling me that not only are the gods — plural — real, but they’re fighting a war across the dimensions, and the ones who are on the side of law and order are the bad guys?”

  Bebe made a face. “We’re not comfortable framing this in terms of good and evil—”

  “What Bebe means to say is yes,” said Abel. “Things are far enough out of balance that our choice — really, the choice of our predecessors, the founders of this group — was clear. We exist to confound the forces of order, which is one reason that we are a bit leery of your superiors. It’s also why we need people like Veronica Dada in the mix.”

  “All right, assuming that this makes sense, why now? What’s happening that would prompt you to share this secret with someone like me, who could expose you?”

  “Well, first of all, you can’t, because there’s a geas here just the same as there is in Philip’s office,” said Cyril Lanfair.

  Joy had suspected as much, but she was still stung by the confirmation. Pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to talk about anything, and her briefings with Flood would just be an inventory of her daily caloric intake.

  “Don’t be smug, Cyril,” said Simone. “What’s happening, Joy, is that we believe that we’re next. Ken is our proxy defender for the area, and he’s been fighting a magical duel for weeks now.”

  “Months,” said Ken Song.

  “They’re testing our defenses,” said Simone. “They’re scouting us out to find out if we’re prepared for them. They have probably infiltrated this dimension in ways we’ve been unable to detect. Government, industry — who knows? We’re a small group, Joy, we always have been. We always believed that we had to remain so, because our goals would be seen as a threat to any organization larger than ours. Law enforcement, the military — these are the forces of order, by definition. But if there was ever a time for us to recruit, this is it.”

  “We’re not asking anything of you right now,” said Yves. “Take a day or two to consider what you’ve learned here tonight. We’ll be in touch later in the week to discuss the role we’d like to see you play in our group.”

  “And to test you,” said Bebe.

  “Don’t worry about that now,” said Yves. “More berries?”

  Ingrid started awake from a nightmare that she had already forgotten. She’d gone to sleep in her clothes, and they were soaked with sweat either from terror or the humidity or both. Her skin was hot; she sat up, put her head in her hands, folded her arms, but any position in which she was touching herself was unbearable, so she got up.

  She’d been sleeping on the couch at the rental house on the Point since she’d finalized the lease on Sunday. The place had come furnished, but she had moved most of the living room ensemble into the garage, leaving just the couch and the table from the kitchen. She would sleep on the couch and plan at the table, only leaving to go to work and — once a day — to go home and care for Selma’s body.

  The house sat on the westernmost side of the Point and looked out over the bay in which the St. Goose Pier lay. It had its own private dock and lots of windows, all of which Ingrid had covered up in order to work. The house was old, and the carpet was crunchy in spots, prone to damp in others. It needed new windows and a new coat of paint, both inside and out. All of the fixtures in the bathroom and the kitchen had rust rings, and there was a family of something — probably raccoons — living under the steps.

  Ingrid was aware of all of these things. She was aware that, on some level, she had chosen this house because it would not clash with her emotional state, which was also neglected, dilapidated, vacant. All day yesterday she had worked inside, and sometime in the late afternoon she had realized that she had forgotten to eat. While she heated up a frozen pizza, she had the impression that the house had sunk into the earth, that the darkness from the windows was not the shades and black curtains but dirt and sand and clay. A part of her was disappointed when she opened the door to the deck and found the bay still sparkling in the sunlight.

  Ingrid shut the door, pulled the curtains closed, and went looking for some clean clothes. She had packed plenty of shorts and T-shirts, but she had forgotten to bring work-appropriate clothes. She would have to stop by the house before she went in to the school.

  She was not looking forward to it.

  She tossed the sweaty clothes she had slept in into a corner of the living room and put on a pair of gym shorts and the first clean T-shirt she found. She wasn’t sure where her car keys were; she spent several minutes searching for them, only to find them on the relocated kitchen table, under the map she had marked up with grease pencil. She stared at the map for a minute before she went out to the car.

  She went over her plans as she drove. Tonight, she would summon up the minor demon she needed to perform the major summoning, and then she would work on the summoning circle for Stolas. This was going to be tricky, because the circle needed to be big — big enough that two points of the pentagram would be on the Wisconsin side of the river. She’d already plotted this out, but actually setting it up was going to be another matter. One point was just half a mile down the peninsula from her rental house, and another was on the public beach to the north, but the Wisconsin points were both on private land and the last was on the southeastern edge of campus. She was creating the largest summoning circle she could reasonably control. “Control” was an imperfect way of looking at it, but Ingrid had done summons in the middle of artillery barrages and was confident she could handle it. None of her previous summons had ever been this big, though, nor had she ever attempted to destroy the thing that she was summoning.

  She wanted the circle big because she didn’t want any surprises; she wanted Stolas to manifest at full strength. Demons, in her experience, had a habit of looking beaten before growing seven sizes or manifesting ultimate powers. Ingrid wanted to skip straight to the ultimate and cut through the dramatic tension. She would rather end up with a 120-foot-tall Stolas with fire arcing from its eye
s than a 4-foot cuddly thing that would hoot harmlessly until it was attacked. A giant owl-monster with long chicken legs would also scare off any potential gawkers, keeping them out of harm’s way, and hers.

  The drive to her house only took ten minutes — not nearly long enough. She parked in the driveway and then sat for a moment, gathering her strength. It was ironic that everything she was trying to do was for her sister, and yet it was her sister who was making everything so difficult. But, no, that wasn’t fair. Sometimes Ingrid tried to tell herself that this depression was all about her sister, but the truth was it had started before that, sometime after the Conjuration Corps, or even while she was still in the service. She even suspected that she’d saved Myrtle Vongsay’s life because she’d been hoping to die in her place.

  Ingrid knew she was depressed, but she didn’t feel like she could really deal with that, couldn’t fight it, until she knew why she was depressed. If she could isolate the cause, then maybe she could put a stop to it. And if she couldn’t, then she’d go and see a doctor. But she couldn’t stand to tell someone she was depressed when she didn’t know why. My sister was two-thirds dead and she’s still one-third dead was reason enough, but it wasn’t the reason, and there was something wrong with that. How could she explain to someone else what she didn’t understand herself? And she couldn’t focus on why right now, not until Selma was all right, her horrible ghost reunited with her sleeping-beauty body and the spark that Stolas had taken from her.

  Ingrid took a deep breath and went into the house.

  Selma started in immediately. “So now you’re avoiding me?” said the ghost.

  “No,” said Ingrid. “I’m actually trying to—”

  “I’ll bet you’re whoring around,” said Selma. “Is it that spatial distortion professor again? Or maybe that waitress? You’ll fuck anyone who shows the slightest interest, won’t you?”

  Ingrid had sometimes worried that that was true. She had told her sister as much, years ago, and Selma had assured her that it wasn’t the case. It had been so long since anyone had shown the slightest interest, though, that having it thrown back at her almost didn’t hurt at all.

  “I need to take a shower,” Ingrid said, and went upstairs, her legs feeling like lead.

  “Washing them off won’t make you any less of a whore!” shouted Selma. But the ghost didn’t follow her upstairs. Ingrid had mentioned the shower deliberately, knowing that the ghost disliked being reminded of bodily things.

  Ingrid turned the shower on hot and glared at herself in the mirror, disgusted by the expression of defeat she saw. There was a part of her that almost relished the abuse she got from Selma’s ghost, because she kept hoping that something Selma said would help her remember how to fight back and not just avoid. But it hadn’t happened yet. It hadn’t happened, and if she was honest with herself, Ingrid didn’t believe it ever would.

  Agent Renard pulled up outside a three-story Queen Anne–style home on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul. “This is the place,” he said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Joy said. Renard had called her early to tell her that he had a contact with PoofPost, so she had driven over to the Minneapolis office to meet him. But once there, Renard had informed her that the contact wouldn’t come to them, they had to go meet him. Joy wasn’t sure what she had expected — a bar, maybe, or a nondescript private club, maybe a barbershop. But this place, with its stained-glass windows and its wooden rosette detailing and its salmon-and-periwinkle color scheme, wasn’t it.

  Renard checked his watch. “It’s nearly ten thirty, so he should be up. Don’t expect him to be happy to see us, though.”

  A concrete staircase climbed up from the sidewalk, ten steps during which to stare up at the house in awe, Joy supposed. Maybe this made a kind of sense after all.

  It was an open secret, at least in law enforcement, that PoofPost was the legitimate business side of the Irish Mafia in the United States. After Prohibition and after the war, the Irish had dipped their toes in various enterprises, but none had panned out because they were all either too visible or too volatile. Finally, in 1963 a young couple in rural Iowa had patented a foolproof method for teleporting parcels instantaneously and without fail. Their primary investor had been a captain in the St. Paul organization. The nice young people had eventually retired happily to Hawaii when their share was bought out by a holding corporation.

  Over time, what had been intended as a front had had a sort of domesticating effect on the enforcers and bagmen who were put in charge of the various PoofPost franchises. In order to convince consumers and the authorities that their service was safe and legal, stringent controls were put into place so that things like explosives or illegal drugs would be filtered out before they were sent. That wasn’t to say that the St. Paul outfit had become cuddly and harmless — certain captains still pulled strings on the street, and there was almost certainly a back channel of PoofPost through which narcotics were distributed. But that was a separate case, and the task force captain had given Joy leave to ask Markie Malone her questions, as long as she didn’t rattle him too much. Flood had sent Renard along to make sure she didn’t.

  A big man, the sort that Joy suspected gangsters kept around just to impress visitors, opened the door as they reached the porch. “Mr. Malone ain’t seeing anybody today.”

  “Oh, come on, Terry,” said Renard. “Ten minutes. Unless he’d rather we wait in the car while he handles his important meetings and such.”

  “He don’t care where you wait,” said Terry. “He ain’t gonna see you.”

  “Hey, Terry, who are you talking to like that?” A heavy, pale man with a full head of brown hair appeared. He wore a blue bathrobe with a little Irish flag on the lapel. “Ah, the feds. What’s this, Renard, you got a warrant or something? We gonna play revolving door again?”

  “We don’t want to put you in jail, Markie. Not today, anyway. This is my associate, Agent Wilkins. She’s just got a couple of friendly questions, something you could help her with, that’s all.”

  “Is that right.” Markie Malone gave Joy the sort of up-and-down glance that always left her wanting a shower. His aura was surprisingly green, indicating that he was a social and loving person. “Agent Wilkins, is it?”

  “Call me Joy.” She held out her hand, and after a moment he shook it. “I’d appreciate just a few minutes of your time, Mr. Malone. I’m trying to trace a package, one that looks as though someone deliberately tried to obscure its origin.” She took the slip for the anonymous package out of a file folder and handed it to him. “As you can see, the corporate account number is still legible, but the originating address is not. It would be a great help to me if you could see your way to tracking down that address for me.”

  Joy had planned to be on her best behavior anyway, but she was trying even harder to put on the charm since it was obvious that Renard had no interest in concealing his dislike for Malone.

  “Now why you can’t talk nice to me like she does, Renard? Her, I like.” He turned and walked into the house, still carrying the packing slip. “Come on out back. You want some coffee? Bring ’em some coffee, Terry.”

  He led them down the front hall, past a staircase, through the kitchen and a three-season porch, and into the backyard. A concrete patio squeezed up against the house, with a hot tub and a couple of lounge chairs on it. Beyond it was a compact but well-kept garden. A bed of mixed hollyhocks, calla lilies, and other flowers formed a crescent on the lawn, bordered by white-and-green variegated hosta. A towering maple shaded a bed of ferns, coral bells, astilbe, and brunnera in one corner, while a flowering dogwood anchored the other. A small lilac bush hugged the back fence, its blossoms in waiting for the spring.

  “I like to handle my business outside,” he said. “You have to enjoy the nice weather while you can. Three months from now we’ll all be hunkered down inside, and we won’t come out until March. You gotta take advantage.”

  That might be true, Joy thought, but
it was also true that law enforcement clairaudients had more trouble picking up outdoor conversations.

  Terry brought out a pot of coffee and three mugs. Joy took the maroon-and-gold one that said MINNESOTA GOLDEN GOPHERS on it.

  “Thanks, Terry. Terry, ah, grab the…thing.” Malone waved his hand as if to clarify this remark. “And my glasses.” Terry nodded and went back into the house.

  “I like your garden,” said Joy. “Are those bleeding hearts?”

  “Good eye,” said Malone. “They’ve gone back to sleep. Won’t see any more flowers until the spring. Those I planted after my wife died. They remind me of her.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Joy.

  “Ach,” he said. “Years ago, now. We fought like dogs. Hell of a woman, though. Here we go,” he said, as Terry returned with an accordion file and a glasses case. Malone settled himself on a lounge chair, letting the robe fall open to reveal his round belly and an indecently short pair of swim trunks. The sun glared off his white skin. He put on his glasses. “Mind telling me what it is you’re looking into? Something…untoward show up in this package that I should know about?”

  “Nothing illegal,” said Joy. “Your people didn’t miss anything. I just need to know where it came from.”

  “Community college,” Malone read from the packing slip. “I dabble in academics myself, you know.”

  Renard laughed. “How’s that, Markie? You taking on high school interns now?”

  Malone rolled his eyes at Joy. “He thinks he’s funny, can you believe that? I teach a business class over at the MCTC. Also we’re getting into publishing. Textbooks. Lots of money there, if you do it right.”