Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib

by David J. Schwartz

  “Let’s not take any more time doing this than necessary,” said Lutrineas.

  “No. Andy comes with us.” She glanced at the assistant. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Piper took Andy’s hand. “I’m going to stay close to you,” she said. “Keep quiet, do everything we say, and everything will be copacetic. Tell me that you understand.”

  “I understand,” said Andy in a small voice.

  “That goes for you as well,” Joy said to Flood.

  “This is going to end badly for you.” His tone was distracted, and Joy knew that he was struggling with Ken Song even as he spoke. “It’s inevitable.”

  “Threats are boring,” said Lutrineas, shutting the door to the office behind him. “Let’s go.”

  They walked out of the director’s suite and took a right down the hall toward the north end of the building. Flood walked in front, with Lutrineas and Joy flanking him, close enough to hold the Beretta on the director unseen. Piper and Andy followed. No one else was in the hall, and none of them spoke.

  At the end of the hall, near the access to the north lecture hall, was a stone door that didn’t exist in Joy’s world. There was a black pad next to it with a narrow gap at one side.

  “Open it,” said Joy.

  “I have to get something out of my pocket,” said Flood.

  “Do it, but slowly.”

  Flood pulled out a small plastic card.

  “Hand it over,” said Joy. It was black on both sides, but there was a small strip on it. Joy handed it back. “Go ahead.”

  Flood took the card and swiped it upward through the gap. Something beeped, and the door opened inward slightly. Lutrineas pushed it open the rest of the way, and Joy followed him inside.

  There was a narrow metal staircase leading down. Joy started down and made sure that Piper shut the door behind them.

  “How many prisoners are you keeping here?” she asked as she forced Flood to precede her down the steps.

  “Just the one,” he said. “We don’t keep our citizens in prisons like you do. We don’t need insane security precautions, either. No one here would dare commit the sort of crimes you see in your world.”

  “When everyone is as afraid as you are, then I suppose it’s easy to keep them in line,” Joy said. “If anyone does act out, I would imagine you execute them.”

  Flood shrugged, which Joy took as confirmation.

  “Then you recruit our discontents to commit crimes in our world on your behalf. You play both sides against the middle; scare the population until they welcome tyranny.”

  “You talk like someone who’s never thought about how the world works until this exact moment,” said Flood. “You’re naive. Humanity will always tend toward self-destruction. That’s just our nature. It’s elemental. We need structure in order to prosper.”

  The words were different, but he sounded so much like the Flood from her own world that Joy’s hands started to shake. She pressed the gun harder into his side to stop herself.

  “Structure is stagnation,” said Lutrineas. “Forest fires cause stronger regrowth; Earth must be tilled for seeds to grow.”

  “But we till the earth in rows,” said Flood. “We plant our seeds carefully; we don’t just fling them into the wind.”

  “Shut up, both of you,” said Joy. “I’ve had enough parables. I’m done debating.”

  Flood started to speak again, but gasped and leaned his weight against her.

  “That would be our friend Ken attacking you,” said Joy. “You know, the one you’re sending assassins after so that you can invade our world?”

  The director said nothing, and Joy felt none of the satisfaction she might have expected to feel in that moment. With Lutrineas’s help, she carried Flood the rest of the way down the stairs.

  “There’s something in his aura,” she whispered to Lutrineas. “Your sister’s face.”

  Lutrineas jerked back as though he’d been struck. “She’s riding him. He’s her avatar here, for the invasion. We can really hurt her!”

  “First things first,” Joy whispered.

  A door at the bottom of the stairs opened onto a hall with four more doors. Flood pointed them toward the nearest one.

  “Unlock it,” said Joy.

  “It’s unlocked from this side,” said Flood.

  Lutrineas opened the door.

  The woman inside was infected with the dark-blue fear Joy had seen everywhere on this world, but it manifested as jagged strikes on a field of orange. She sat on a narrow bench, clutching her knees to her chest. Her hair was brown and long, and she wore a set of blue-and-yellow coveralls.

  “I don’t know anything,” she said.

  “Carla Drake?” asked Joy.

  “I don’t know anything,” the woman said again.

  “She doesn’t say anything else,” said Flood. “She’s useless to us. You might as well take her.”

  “We will, thank you,” said Joy. “Get inside.”

  Joy, Lutrineas, and Flood went into the cell; Piper stood outside with Andy. Flood glanced at his assistant and looked away with a sneer.

  Joy nodded at Lutrineas, who folded into himself and emerged as a gray-haired woman in an ill-fitting man’s suit. Joy could only assume that his appearance now matched the photograph of Amanda Drake that she had shown him earlier. The woman knelt beside Carla Drake. “Honey? Carla?”

  Carla Drake released her hold on her legs and lowered them to the floor. “Mom?”

  Joy heard a shout.

  “Someone’s coming down the stairs,” said Piper.

  “Goddammit.” Joy forced Flood to kneel. “You set off an alarm, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did,” he said. “Did you expect me to just let you take me?”

  “We’re not taking you anywhere,” said Joy.

  “What the hell are you here for, then?”

  The face of the Emissary loomed out of his aura. Joy broke into a sweat.

  “There’s no time,” said Lutrineas as Amanda Drake. “Do it now!”

  “Shut up,” said Joy.

  “Do it!”

  “What…” Flood sagged. “You’re going to kill me.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” said Joy. “Everything I’ve seen here this morning tells me that.”

  She was so tired, all of a sudden. She wanted to shut her eyes and wake up when this was all over.

  “I don’t know anything,” said Carla Drake.

  “It sounds like a lot of guards,” said Piper. The confidence in her aura was wavering, forest green bleeding into the orange red.

  “Shut up, all of you! Just shut up!” Joy pressed a hand against her temple, but it was all wrong; her skull was wrong, her hand was wrong, even her voice was not her own.

  Andy was hyperventilating. Piper held him up with one arm. She looked grim.

  “This won’t stop it,” said Flood. “One of us will kill Song and open the way. It’s inevitable.” Joy heard the tremor of fear in his voice, but she also heard the Emissary’s voice on top of his own, like an echo.

  “There isn’t any other way,” said Joy. She held the gun to the back of Flood’s head and pulled the trigger.

  The sound was shocking in the small space. Flood’s body convulsed, collapsed, folded in ways that nothing alive could do. There was blood everywhere.

  Carla Drake was sobbing; Andy was screaming. Joy turned to him.

  “You can come with us,” she said. “You’ll be safe. I swear it on my life.”

  “No, no, no,” he screamed. “No.”

  Clearly he didn’t think much of her promise. Joy could hardly blame him. She put a hand to her face, and it came away with spots of blood. Not her own. Flood’s.

  “Leave him,” Joy said to Piper. “Get in here.” She grasped her crystal. “Abel Bouchard.”

  The door shut behind Piper. Lutrineas muffled Carla Drake’s sobs in an embrace.

  “This is Abel.”

  “It’s done,” said Joy. “T
here are four of us. Get us out of here.”

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  MICROCOSM

  Hell was war.

  Once Ingrid saw the metaphor, it was obvious. But it had taken her something more than a day, something less than a week to climb to higher ground and get the full sense of it. The lilies on her dress were gray with smoke and sweat; her feet, still bare, had blistered and broken open in a dozen places, but she had nothing to cover them with.

  Ingrid stood on a volcanic mountain in the midst of a landscape of fire and dust. The sky was perpetual twilight, clouded but never rainy, orange outlining the horizon. The air was so clogged with something that her lungs had not been filled since she came here. It smelled like oil and human waste.

  Anything that might have grown on the slopes or the plains below was burning or had already been burned. What was left was earth, dry and hard-packed from marching feet—feet of soldiers, demons, slaves, the damned, or some combination of the four. Hell had no cities, only camps; no borders, only front lines. So far the armies had been easy enough to avoid, but at some point, she was probably going to have to choose a side.

  Ingrid wished, for the thousandth time, that she had bought more fulgurite arrows. She carried Surena’s bow on her back, and the last arrow dangled from her belt. She had seen a horde of fox-like things launch artillery shells at a fortification of stone creatures, and an eyeless giant with a flamethrower lay waste to a swarm of blood-sucking insects. The chatter of machine gun fire was as ubiquitous as birdsong. Hell might have hunger with no food and fatigue with no sleep, but it seemed to have limitless ammunition for everyone but her.

  She decided to make a circuit of the mountain, to plan her route—not that she knew where she was going to go. She started to make a counterclockwise circle, but then she spotted it.

  The owl-demon was still a mile or more away. Its long legs dangled ridiculously, but its flight was strong and swift. She might have destroyed him back in the world of the living, but here Prince Stolas was as strong as ever. Stronger, undoubtedly.

  Ingrid took the deepest breath she could without choking on brimstone. “Going to be a little while longer getting back than I planned, Selma,” she whispered.

  She lifted the bow, nocked the last arrow against its string, and pulled it back.

  Wilson and Sofia Ruiz lived just south of campus in a ranch-style home across from the town cemetery. It seemed a little on the nose, considering, but Joy didn’t say so out loud.

  She had driven over from the campus with Andy. Andy sat in the passenger’s seat, wearing a minidress with a sailor-style collar, white tights, and chunky-heeled Mary Janes. Twin bow-shaped barrettes were carefully placed in Andy’s short, dark hair.

  “Andy, I want to ask you something that I probably should have asked when we first met,” said Joy.

  Joy was back in her own shape, thanks to Simone’s help, but her voice sounded slow and deep to her own ears. She had slept twenty minutes in the past twenty-eight hours.

  Andy smiled. “Go ahead.”

  “I was just wondering—is there a particular…are you, um. Do you identify as male or female?”

  “I’m genderqueer,” said Andy.

  “Right. I mean, you told me that. But I’m a little unclear on that, and I’m just wondering if I should be calling you ‘he’ or ‘she.’ ”

  “Well, first of all, I really appreciate you asking,” Andy said. “The answer is kind of complicated, because it depends on how I’m feeling at the moment. But honestly, I think of myself more as a girl who was born looking like a boy. I don’t really feel like I need to change that. But if you wanted to say ‘she’ and ‘her’ when you talked about me, that would be nice.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll do,” said Joy. There was a lot more she thought about saying, about how she had an idea now what it was like to be in the wrong body, how she had seen how brave Andy was in comparison to at least one other version of herself, but none of it was safe to bring up. She settled for squeezing Andy’s hand. “Let’s go talk to your folks.”

  They got out of the car, and Andy walked in the front door of the sprawling house without knocking. The entry was lined with family photos and decorated with colorful throw rugs. “Welcome to the Ruiz house,” said Andy. “I have my own place now, but…well. This used to be home.”

  The wistful tone in Andy’s voice didn’t escape Joy, but before she could pursue it a small, blonde woman appeared, hugged Andy, and shook Joy’s hand. “I’m Sofia,” she said. She wore a dark skirt and a polka-dotted blouse; the way she carried herself reminded Joy strongly of Andy.

  The two of them led her to the living room at the back, where Wilson Ruiz was standing and staring out the window. He nodded at Andy. “Andrew,” he said, and the two of them shook hands. “Nice to meet you,” he said when Andy introduced him to Joy. “I understand you have something that belonged to my mother?”

  “Not exactly,” said Joy. “I just…she wants to talk to you.” Joy pulled her crystal off over her head. “I accidentally got hold of her, and I promised that I would put her in touch with you.”

  Wilson Ruiz’s aura was a mix of yellows and browns: Joy read him as playful and creative, but distracted by material possessions and gain. He was frowning at her.

  “My mother’s dead,” he said flatly.

  “Her ghost is…around,” said Joy. “She wants to talk to you. Will you listen?”

  Sofia Ruiz put a hand on her husband’s arm. “Of course we’ll listen. Do you—should we have coffee or something first?” she asked.

  “I’ll just make the call and then step out, if you don’t mind,” said Joy. “This is a family matter. I’ll come back when you’re finished. Is that all right?”

  “Of course,” said Sofia. She led her husband to a weathered green couch, and they both sat down. Andy sat down in a chair on her mother’s side. Joy noticed the way Wilson Ruiz flinched when Andy adjusted her dress as she sat.

  It’s not my place to say anything, Joy thought.

  She grasped the crystal. “Hilda Ruiz,” she said, and offered the crystal to Wilson. He hesitated a moment, then took it from her.

  “Wilson?” Joy heard the voice as she walked toward the front entry. “Wilson, is that you?”

  Joy thought of her father. She couldn’t have put a price on one last conversation with him. She hoped Hilda’s son would feel the same way.

  She wondered if, somewhere on Earth Positive Seven, Flood had a son or a daughter who was thinking along those lines.

  Wilson Ruiz’s voice broke as he answered. “Yes, Mother. It’s me.”

  An hour later Joy took Andy back to campus and then drove over to the town square to pick up Piper. Piper slid into the passenger seat, her piercings back in place, but wearing a dark suit over a turtleneck. She handed Joy a cup from Café Dante.

  “Three shots,” she said. “You’re going to need it.”

  Joy didn’t normally drink espresso, but she made herself take a sip, because Piper was not wrong. Exhaustion had seeped into her blood; it was making her muscles tight and her bones ache. She could still feel the other Flood’s blood on her skin, even though a glance at the strange face in the mirror—her face was always strange—told her that she had washed it all away.

  She made her way to the interstate, drove about halfway to St. Paul, and pulled off into an outlet mall. She parked near the T.J. Maxx and sat a moment, trying to finish her drink. She was shaking a little, and every time she blinked shapes swam in front of her eyes.

  The first thing Joy had done when she came back from Earth Positive Seven was to hand Carla Drake over to Abel Bouchard, the second was to follow Simone into the ladies’ room and get her own body back, and the third was to ask Yves and Lutrineas to release her from the geases they had placed on her.

  “I won’t tell any more than I have to,” said Joy. “But I need to be able to speak freely.”

  “One might argue that our secrecy has worked aga
inst us,” said Ken. “Surely we can drop from a Level Ten clearance to a Level Nine.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Yves told Joy. “But I don’t know if we can trust him.”

  “I don’t know yet either,” said Joy. “But if we can’t, we won’t proceed.”

  Yves had agreed, in the end. Joy didn’t feel any different without the geases. Compared to what had happened on Earth Positive Seven, a little bit of truth weighed nothing at all.

  “Hey, wake up,” said Piper. “Let’s not put this off.”

  Joy got out of the car, locked it, and followed Piper into the store. They each grabbed a couple of pieces of clothing off the racks as they made their way to the dressing rooms in the back. Joy counted the doors: one, two, three—

  Behind the fourth one was AD Flood’s office. He sat at his desk, talking on the phone. He motioned for them to sit. His aura was the familiar red pulsing yellow that Joy had come to dislike, but right now it was a relief to see it. She saw herself again with the Beretta in her hand, holding it to the back of the other Flood’s head. She felt the gun kick…

  Gray shut the door behind them and leaned against it. He nodded at Joy, who forced herself to smile back. At least, she reasoned, no one else in this room had slept much either, if at all.

  Joy set the dresses on one of Flood’s side tables and sat. Piper sat next to her. She looked less comfortable in a suit, but she moved with her customary confidence and grace.

  Flood hung up the phone, leaned back, and steepled his fingers. “Well,” he said. “You managed to surprise me, Wilkins. You got us eight names, and five of those are in custody. I was personally present for a raid in Augusta where we picked up two of them.”

  Joy had the impression that he was waiting for a pat on the back, so she gave it to him. “Congratulations, sir.”

  Flood ignored the compliment, but his good mood persisted. He read from a file on his desk. “Two more were arrested in Florence and one in Bangkok. St. Petersburg police killed one during an attempt to apprehend him. Two have gone to ground, but I expect we’ll have them soon. And we’ve already made more than two dozen related arrests. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve broken the back of the Heartstoppers.”