She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and looked back at Shelby Hall. The few other people out and about on the quad were studiously avoiding the path in front of Shelby. She had been the only one to take that route. She trudged the rest of the way to Cooper Hall and up the stairs to the second floor and her office. Two students were sitting together in the lounge area, pouring over notes. They glanced up at her approach.
“Hi, Dr. O’Brien! I know you don’t have office hours right now, but we were hoping we could talk to you about our class project,” Josh Shelford greeted her with a smile. He and Annmarie Johnson were sitting on one of the sofas that along with several comfy chairs filled the lounge. Both students were her advisees and had taken several classes with her as well. They were good students and she trusted them enough that she had been mulling over the idea of asking one or both of them to be her research assistant over the summer. It suddenly occurred to her that they just might know something about what was going on in Shelby. There were students working in Shelby, maybe Josh and Annmarie knew somebody who worked there. Calm down. Just stick to the research project. Students don’t need to know that their faculty advisor is going crazy.
“Sure,” Zoe responded, “just give me a minute to drop my stuff and get situated.” In her office she dropped her bags, turned on her computer and called the two students in.
“How are you guys? Have a seat. What’s up?”
“Well, like I said, we wanted to talk with you about our class research project,” Josh began. Both students were in Zoe’s Medieval Magic and Witchcraft class and their project was a comparison of attitudes towards magic during the Middle Ages with the twenty-first century. They had done a lot of research, and Zoe had to rein them in at times when she thought they had gotten carried away with their analysis. Their initial conclusions suggested that a belief in magic was almost as common in the present as it had been in the Middle Ages. Was it possible that they knew more about the topic than she did?
“Okay, anything else?” Zoe asked as they finished up.
“No. Thanks for meeting with us,” replied Annmarie.
As they got up to leave, Josh paused and turned back to look at Zoe. “Hey, Dr. O’Brien…um…oh, never mind. It’s stupid, never mind.” He turned back to the door embarrassed and anxious to leave.
Annmarie glanced at Josh. She opened her mouth and closed it. “Um…what Josh means is…um…like, you teach magic, right? Um…” her voice trailed off.
Zoe regarded the students. “What’s going on? What are you trying to say?” This was worse than asking students questions in class.
Josh faced her once again. He swallowed hard. “Have you felt anything strange or weird on campus lately? I mean, like, a bad vibe or something?” The words came out in a rush and his ears reddened.
Annmarie reached around Josh and closed the office door. Zoe raised an eyebrow. “What Josh means, Dr. O’Brien…um…is…well…um, the air feels bad. Not bad, like uh, smoke or smog or something, but, bad like, um…like Josh said…like a bad vibe.” Both students were uncharacteristically tongue-tied.
Josh took another deep breath blurted out another rush of words.
“Yeah. Bad air. Mostly like, around Shelby Hall. It’s like, really weird there.” He gave Zoe a look that said he expected her to laugh at him.
Talking squirrels, talking cats, dark energies, magic, mages...what the hell had happened to her nice, familiar, stressful, academic world? Dammit, she did NOT need this. Her annual review was going to be hard enough. Having to explain otherworldly phenomenon would make it impossible.
Shaking her head, she returned to the present and found Josh and Annemarie staring at her. She blinked and refocused on the two students.
“Yeah, between us, I did notice something. Do you know if other students have noticed anything? Has anybody said anything?” Students had far more information and sources of information than the faculty and administration ever gave them credit for.
Josh and Annmarie exchanged a look.
“Yeah,” said Annmarie slowly. “Since the beginning of the semester there have been rumors that something weird is going on in Shelby. Some of our friends have work study jobs in there and if they didn’t need the money, most of them would quit,” Annmarie’s face became concerned and her hands shifted nervously.
“One of my frat brother’s roommate who worked there left school already. Supposedly he went home on a medical leave of absence. And, some of the students who work there look really sick, like they haven’t been sleeping or even eating. It’s getting really freaky.” Josh’s face was creased with worry and a little fear.
Zoe’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the two students. It might be best if the students were kept out of the picture for their own good, but they did have sources of information she did not. In the end, the desire to protect them won out.
“Okay, please keep this between us for now. I’ll let you know if I find out anything,” she replied. That wasn’t very helpful she knew, but she really wanted to keep them away from anything to do with dark energies or whatever the hell was going on in Shelby. Never mind mages. Students shared enough stories and myths about faculty without adding the idea that some faculty were mages to the mix.
Josh crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. “Okay, we won’t talk to anybody about any of this. Do you want us to let you know if we hear anything else?”
Zoe frowned. “Yes, please do. But don’t do it in an email; come and find me here in person.” Now, Annmarie’s eyebrows went up, but without saying anything further they turned and left the office.
Despite the worry created by the conversation with Josh and Annmarie, the rest of Zoe’s day passed quietly in pleasant productivity and progress on her new research project. She briefly conducted a fruitless search for information or even stories of mages in the twenty-first century. The relief she felt at coming up empty-handed was strongly tempered by the image of Rowantree sitting on her desk.
Just before two o’clock, she finished up in expectation of Mark’s arrival. In the midst of saving files, the sharp staccato clack of high heels striking the linoleum floor sounded down the hall. Zoe recognized the rhythm of the steps; it was her office neighbor and sociology colleague, Meredith Cruickshank. Great. Just the person I didn’t want to see today. A woman with a penchant for sticking her nose in where it was not welcome, Meredith was one of the few faculty members at Summerfield who enjoyed actively sowing discord among faculty and staff. She continually searched for reasons to be insulted and could cause almost unlimited drama.
Zoe quickly turned to face her computer, so she wasn’t looking directly out the door. Maybe Meredith would walk past without stopping if Zoe looked super-busy and absorbed in her work. Damn. No such luck.
“Hey there. How are things going? Why are you here? You don’t teach today,” Meredith stuck her head in the door. Her last comment had an almost accusatory tone, implying that coming into work was somehow strange. Zoe always worried that Meredith would somehow use any information against her; without the protection of tenure anybody with a grudge could derail her career even more quickly than being seen talking with squirrels.
“It’s easier for me to do research here. I’m more productive here than I am at home. Probably the academic atmosphere,” Zoe said lightly.
“Oh, okay,” Meredith sounded a bit disappointed. “Hey, do you know…” she broke off. “There’s a big squirrel sitting on your windowsill!”
Crap. Zoe spun around. Sure enough, Rowantree was sitting on the outside windowsill. Hoping Meredith didn’t notice, Zoe made a shoo-ing gesture with her left hand and stared hard at the large squirrel. She got up out of her chair, and Rowantree disappeared down the roof.
Zoe, her heart beating hard, turned back to Meredith. “That’s a first. Stupid squirrels.”
Meredith narrowed her eyes at Zoe. “Are you feeding them or something?”
“No, of course not! Why would I do that?�
� Her voice had a panicky note in it. Still standing, Zoe moved toward Meredith and the door. On an impulse she grabbed a small notebook and pen off her desk. She should be able to catch Mark before he got to Cooper.
“I gotta run to a meeting over in Davis,” she said hoping Meredith wouldn’t ask why she didn’t mention the meeting earlier.
“Oh, fun. With who? What meeting?” Fortunately, Meredith seemed more interested in finding out who Zoe was meeting with and didn’t question the sudden mention of a meeting.
“Department. Nothing major.”
Zoe kept moving toward the door and eventually Meredith backed out into the hallway. Checking she had her keys and ID card, Zoe pulled her door shut and headed for the stairs.
“See you later!” she said cheerily to Meredith.
Sending up grateful thanks that she had gotten out of what was shaping up to be an interrogation session with Meredith, Zoe zipped out the door neatly avoiding any further questions about the fictional meeting. Why had Rowantree risked sitting on her window? Had something else happened? She emerged from Cooper Hall and spotted Rowantree and Alder sitting under a nearby tree.
She passed the tree without looking down and muttered out of the side of her mouth, “I can’t stop right now, Meredith’s office overlooks this area. She’ll see me. What’s going on?”
Rowantree and Alder scampered along in the grass, acting like normal squirrels. “We have felt the dark energies getting stronger,” said Rowantree.
“And it’s moving further out from the Big Building,” Alder added.
“Please tell Wardmaster this.” Rowantree paused. “And you can tell the Air mage you have met us.”
Zoe risked a look at him. “What? Who’s the Air mage?” Rowantree simply nodded at her and he and Alder scampered up the nearest tree.
She continued walking across campus, carefully avoiding Shelby Hall. She passed through the quad scanning the building for any signs of nastiness. This is crazy. I have no idea what I’m looking for. Mark came towards her down the path that would take him furthest away from Shelby. Good, she had managed to intercept him. As they approached each other, she waved.
He waved back. “Did you forget I was coming over?”
“No, but we can’t meet in my office,” Zoe answered once they met. “Meredith Cruickshank just stopped by and she’s in her office. If she hears your voice, she’ll pop in again and I don’t really want to deal with that.”
Mark frowned. “What did she want to talk to you about?”
Zoe gave him a puzzled look. “Nothing out of the ordinary. She said she wanted to ask me something and then noticed a squirrel sitting on my windowsill. I told her I had a department meeting and escaped. Why do you ask that?” Damn. I’m getting paranoid.
“Well, if she thinks you’re headed for a department meeting, let’s turn around and keep heading that way. She won’t know if you end up going to Harrison or over to Davis,” Mark said matching action to words and turning back the way he had come.
Zoe fell into step beside him noting, but not too worried about, the stress she suddenly heard in his voice. Meredith had an uncanny ability to cause stress in everybody she worked with and Mark did not have tenure either. Stress was a fact of life among the untenured, but he did seem more keyed up than usual. Was the bad vibe coming out of Shelby getting to him? Maybe the political science department was less collegial than the history department. He had told her some funny and frustrating stories over dinners at his and David’s house. Today was getting strange. But, then, the entire week had been strange. Zoe seriously hoped that things would return to normal quickly.
Chapter Five
As they headed toward Davis Hall, Zoe looked over at Mark. He was striding down the walk, his face set. His tone of voice betrayed a deeper than normal level of stress.
“Are you okay? You look a bit more stressed than usual,” Zoe tried to keep the worry out of her voice.
He glanced at her. “I’m all right. I’ll give you more detail once we get back to my office.”
Zoe sighed and kept walking. Was Mark worried about something else, or did the serious tone and look mean there were more talking animals and magic powers in her future? This did not bode well for her research and by extension her tenure bid. Could you be denied tenure for living with talking cats? She was pretty sure there were no provisions for this situation in the faculty handbook, and none of the mentoring articles she’d read in the Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned anything about how magic might fit into the tenure process. A small voice in the back of her head mentioned that this discovery of really existing magic might make tenure less of an issue. No. I’ve worked too hard for this. Plus, tenure means I can’t get fired, even if somebody finds out I have talking cats.
They reached Mark’s office and he unlocked the door. Zoe followed him in and without waiting for her to sit down, Mark closed the door. Zoe raised an eyebrow at this precaution.
“This is not for general knowledge,” Mark said in response to her eyebrow as he settled into his chair. “I ran into George Wardmaster yesterday and we ended up chatting for quite a while.”
Zoe was a bit surprised; she did not realize that George and Mark knew each other well enough that they would be talking for any length of time. She dropped into the one guest chair in the small office.
“He told me that you spoke with Rowantree the other day,” Mark went on. “And, he told me that you now know he’s a mage. Knowing that you and I are good friends, George suggested that I talk with you as soon as possible.”
Zoe braced herself for more improbable information.
“I’m a mage, too,” Mark said. “I’m an Air mage; I can manipulate air currents, wind, and temperature, stuff like that.”
“What the hell,” Zoe muttered. “Now that I think about it, I’m not really surprised.”
“Why not?” Mark asked looking puzzled.
“Well, I just saw Rowantree and he said I could quote tell the Air mage unquote that I know him. Rowantree was the one at my window just now, by the way. After finding out George is an Earth mage and having a for-real conversation with my cats the other night, I think I’m numb,” Zoe explained.
“Your cats are Watchers? How long have you had them?”
“What? They showed up about a year ago, they were strays. Why? What are Watchers? Is that what Rowantree and his buddies are? Is that what my cats are? Is that why they sit in the bathroom with me?” Zoe got so involved in explaining what her cats were up to that she almost forgot Mark had revealed himself to be an Air mage.
“Wait. You’re a mage too?” she returned to the original point of the conversation. “Does David know?” Could a marriage handle one mage and one non-mage? She certainly hoped so. She seriously needed the support and friendship that Mark and David provided, especially if “talking shop” over dinner now included discussions of how to deal with dark energy coming from the main administration building. Besides, David was an amazing cook.
“Yes, he does. In fact…” Mark hesitated.
“Let me guess. He’s an excellent gardener, owns a landscaping business…he’s an Earth mage.” Zoe made it a statement rather than a question, half-hoping she was wrong.
“You got it,” Mark replied. “That’s why he’s so good at his business.”
“So, my two best friends here are both mages and I’m just now learning this,” Zoe said in a slightly aggrieved tone.
“Well, we couldn’t really tell you before. It’s not exactly something you put on a business card,” Mark answered. “But I’m going to guess that since Rowantree spoke to you, and your cats are Watchers, you have some power as well.”
“Me?! Ha!” Zoe responded. “If I had power, talking animals and colleagues who are mages would bother me a lot less!” Mark had a speculative look on his face. “What?”
“Nothing. Okay, never mind.”
Zoe glared at him. “Fine. Whatever. What are Watchers and why do I have cats that are Watchers?
What is going on?” Her voice rose. She was starting to get truly freaked out.
Mark made a calming gesture with his hands. “It’s okay. Watchers are animals – squirrels, cats, crows, and sometimes others depending on the region, who keep an eye on their neighborhood or campus, or wherever. They are like an early warning system for mages.”
“But…I’m not a mage,” Zoe protested. “Why did Moose and Flash show up at my house?” She was ready to cry with frustration. She needed background, context, history even. The researcher in her refused to draw conclusions without complete information.
“I know, I know. But I can sense something about you. It’s weak and scattered, but there’s something there.” Zoe stared wide-eyed at him.
“Yes,” he continued in response to her expression, “a mage can tell if someone else is a mage. Usually. Some of the more powerful ones can hide their…I guess you’d call it an aura.”
Zoe looked down at her hands twisting together in her lap. She glanced up at Mark, feeling tears in her eyes.
“Will you help me figure this all out?”
“Of course! David too. You’re basically family. Of course we’ll help you.” He leaned over and gave her a hug, then smiled. “Okay. Change of subject…sort of. How do we find out what’s going on in Shelby Hall?”
Zoe took a deep breath and very deliberately turned her mind to the puzzle he’d put in front of her. She thought for a minute. Walking past Shelby made her queasy. No. It made her downright nauseous and feel like she’d lost all hope. Her own experiment the other day showed her clearly that inside was going to feel far worse than simply walking by outside. And she couldn’t forget the rapid change in attitude that she had seen in herself and in Sarah Riley the other day, once they were away from Shelby. Going inside was distinctly unappealing. But she reminded herself, there were dozens of people in there every day, including several students, and most of them had no choice in the matter. Unless all of them, and not just a few, were responsible for the dark energy surrounding the building. Damn this was getting complicated.
Academic Magic Page 4