Academic Magic

by Becky R Jones

  Mark looked at the cats. “Do you guys want to go into the back yard and find some of the other Watchers? Or do you want to do that later?”

  Moose yawned. “We’ll do that later. We sent word we were here. Now we have to wait for the others to show up.”

  Zoe gave the big gray cat a puzzled look. “What do you mean you sent word? How did you do that?”

  “We told the squirrels in our neighborhood a couple of days ago we were coming over here today. They’ve passed the word. It takes squirrels longer to pass things along, but they do get it done,” Flash stretched and turned around a couple of times before settling back down again.

  Zoe and Mark exchanged a look.

  “Okay. Just let me know,” Mark replied.

  Just then a knock sounded at the front door. Mark got up to answer it and Kieran walked into the room.

  “Hi Zoe,” he smiled at her.

  “Hi,” Zoe smiled back feeling her stomach do a little flutter. Flash cracked open one eye and stared at Kieran who was handing off a bottle of wine to Mark.

  “I’ll get you a glass of the wine we’ve already opened, and we’ll save this for dinner,” Mark said walking into the kitchen.

  “Sure, that sounds good,” Kieran managed to find room to sit down at the opposite end of the sofa from Zoe. The cats retained their spot in the middle.

  Mark returned and sat down. “David says about half an hour and we are to leave him the hell alone. When it comes to cooking, he’s a bit of a control freak,” he laughed.

  Zoe smiled. “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do? I feel guilty sitting out here drinking wine while he’s in there working away.”

  “Nah, he’s fine. Seriously, he’ll get mad if any of us heads in there,” Mark assured her. “Hey. Did you tell Kieran about your student, Declan, yet?”

  Kieran looked over inquiringly. “What happened?”

  “Well, he vanished, went invisible in my office,” Zoe answered and was rewarded with a gaping stare from Kieran.

  “What?! What do you mean, went invisible?” he exclaimed, wide-eyed. “How the hell did he do that?”

  “He’s half djinn. His mother has the Sight and his father was a djinn,” Zoe grinned, enjoying Kieran’s astonishment. It felt good to be the one with information for a change.

  She could tell that Kieran had dozens more questions, and finally took pity on him and told him the whole story. When she finished, Kieran took a large sip of wine and sat for a minute or two in stunned silence, processing everything Zoe had just told him.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” Kieran asked finally.

  “Well, Simon has gotten him to switch majors to Poli Sci from Sociology and will be his advisor, so he doesn’t have to deal with Meredith anymore. And, Simon is going to be helping Declan figure out how to control his magic. I guess the combo of Sight and djinn magic is rare.” Zoe realized she was discussing the problem of Declan’s strange combination of powers as if it were a normal, everyday problem. Wow, things have really changed.

  Kieran was still mulling things over and asking questions when David appeared and announced that dinner was ready. They all moved into the dining room and sat down at the food-laden table. Looking around, Zoe thought that either David didn’t believe her casserole was good enough, or he was an Italian grandmother in disguise. In addition to her casserole, there were mashed sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, regular green beans, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and of course, turkey.

  “How much turkey do you think we’re going to eat, David?” Kieran remarked looking at the huge roasted bird.

  “Well, it’s Thanksgiving. You can’t send people home hungry!” David defended his huge feast. He started passing dishes around the table and everybody dug in.

  The good food, wine, and great company almost let Zoe forget that they still had to deal with a demon-raising coven on the campus of Summerfield. And, once again, it was the cats who managed to bring her back to reality. Moose and Flash strolled into the dining room, doing their best to look like they hadn’t eaten in a week. David looked down at the cats as they wandered into the room.

  “I’ve put some meat and skin on plates in the kitchen for you guys. The back window is open a bit so you can go out to the back yard when you need to meet up with the squirrels,” he reached down and gave each cat a brief scratch behind the ears. The cats jogged into the kitchen to get the promised food.

  “Thank you, David. You didn’t have to do that. I do feed them you know,” Zoe sighed. The cats seemed determined to make her look bad to other people.

  “I know, but I also know cats. They’ll complain until they get something and then probably forget why they came with you in the first place. So, my feeding them is at least somewhat driven by self-interest,” he laughed.

  CRAAACCCKKKK.

  Moose and Flash dashed in from the kitchen yowling and crouched under Zoe’s chair. The back yard lit up with a stark, blue-white light. Zoe almost jumped under the chair with the cats.

  Mark and David leapt up from their seats, both clearly pulling energy and manipulating their Elements.

  “That was an attack and it hit my garden!” David yelled.

  Kieran looked at Mark. “What can I do?”

  “Shield needs reinforcement. Can you add Water to it?” Mark answered tersely.

  “Sure, I’ll weave it in with your Air,” Kieran immediately went to work.

  Zoe stared back and forth between them all wishing she knew what to do but recognizing that at this point she would be more of a hinderance than a help. She pulled Moose and Flash into her lap and the three of them watched as the experienced mages worked to reinforce the shield which she assumed was around the house. Who would attack Mark and David? Was this because of the coven or something else? She hugged the cats and hoped for the best.

  CRAAACCKKK!! WHOMP!

  The blue-white light flared a second time in the back yard and the whole house felt like it bent and snapped back. David looked livid while Mark and Kieran wore almost identical grim expressions. All three were concentrating and Zoe could see the lines of Air and Water as they were manipulated. She couldn’t see what David was doing, but she could feel something like a tremor moving beneath her feet. She assumed that was David’s doing and not the attackers. The light faded and the house settled back down.

  After what felt like hours but was really only ten minutes according to Zoe’s watch, Mark signaled to Kieran and the three men stopped working.

  “Good thing you had shields up already,” Kieran commented.

  “Yeah, I’m paranoid so I always have something over the house and David has had some um…shall we say…interesting? clients over the years,” Mark gave a tight grin.

  “What the hell just happened?” Zoe gasped once the they all sat back down. The guys all looked like they had just finished a sprint, and David had an angry scowl on his face.

  “Somebody took out my freaking garden!” he growled.

  “But why is somebody attacking you?” Zoe asked.

  “Good question,” Mark responded slowly. He turned to David, “Did you piss off a client again?”

  “No! And besides, that guy was an asshole, a piss-poor mage, and he tried to cheat me on the contract,” David glared at Mark, but a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  The smile disappeared as David stared at Mark. “But…what if it was directed at you? Didn’t you tell me that the coven knows you’re a mage and don’t the provost and her secretary know our address?”

  Zoe started as Moose and Flash jumped off her lap. “The provost has everybody’s address…did she attack my house too? What about George?” She felt her hands starting to twist on themselves again.

  Kieran was looking down at his phone. “I just texted George. Nothing has happened over there. But he says we should all take precautions. Maybe they’re afraid of him?” He looked back up at the others. “Zoe, can you call or text one of your neighbors to see if anything happened b
y you?”

  “Yeah, I could call Kim, my neighbor, but what do I say? Hey, Kim, I think a coven of witches might have attacked my house with a magic lightning bolt just now. Would you mind running over and see if it’s still standing?”

  Mark gave a short laugh. “You have a point. So, what do we do now?”

  David glanced around the small group. “Well, we’re safe for now, so let’s have some pie and then we can make sure everybody gets home safely.”

  Moose glanced up from where he and Flash were crouched on the floor. “Someone will need to put at least some kind of shield over our house,” the cat noted. He tilted his head at Zoe, “She’s not quite there yet.”

  Kieran nodded. “I’ll follow you home, Zoe, and put up a shield around the house. That will work for tonight and then we can fine tune it and strengthen it this weekend.”

  Zoe stared at him. She needed a shield over her house? Well, duh. Somebody just sent a couple of lightning bolts into David’s ornamental cabbages, why wouldn’t they do the same to you?

  “That sounds like a good idea to me,” she agreed. A small part of her brain giggled at the idea of Kieran coming over to protect her. Oh, just stop. Somebody might be trying to kill you and that’s what you’re thinking about?

  Flash stretched elaborately and turned to David. “So, now that’s all worked out, is there cream with that pie you mentioned?”

  The four humans laughed, and David got up and went into the kitchen to get the promised pie. He returned with pumpkin pie and a chocolate cheesecake and two small bowls of cream for the cats. Zoe’s mouth started to water even while her stomach protested that it had no room left. She took a small slice of each, justifying it as not wanting to insult David by refusing one of his specially prepared desserts. She didn’t regret it. Not for one minute. The cats never looked up from their cream until the bowls looked like they’d just come out of the dishwasher. Regaining their long-lost dignity, they returned to their interrupted visit to the back yard to talk with the local Watchers.

  After the pie and cheesecake had been mostly consumed, and the dishes mostly cleared, Mark and David insisted that Zoe and Kieran should get to Zoe’s house as quickly as possible so that they could shield it before anybody realized she was home. Moose and Flash returned at the end of the conversation.

  “They’re right. The local Watchers said the attack we just had felt like the same thing around Shelby Hall. That means the coven attached here and they will likely try our house next,” Moose said as he sat down and stared up at Zoe.

  The relaxed feeling that had come over her with dessert fled, leaving Zoe feeling wound up and stressed. She forced her hands not to do their usual twisting together thing and found her coat and the leashes for the cats.

  “Well, it was still a great dinner. Thank you guys again. I’ll call you when we get a shield up on my house,” she hugged Mark and David in turn.

  Mark put the casserole dish in a plastic shopping bag for her and she and Kieran went out to their cars. She gave Kieran her address for his GPS map in case he lost her on the way and got the cats into her car.

  “Shielding is something you need to learn how to do,” Flash commented from the back seat where he was lounging, “Two attacks in one night is not good.”

  “Thanks, Obvious Cat, and how was I supposed to learn? Except for David, all the mages I know are in the middle of the end-of-semester crunch. Who has time to teach me? And, it never occurred to me that the coven would attack anybody,” Zoe snapped as she pulled out of the driveway.

  “Well, now you know what you need to learn,” Moose noted. “I bet the Water mage would be happy to teach you.” It took Zoe a second to realize he was talking about Kieran.

  “Oh, shut up,” she muttered.

  They reached home about half an hour later. Because of the holiday, there were more available parking spaces than usual on her block and both she and Kieran found spots close to the house. She waited for him at the bottom of her steps.

  “I like this neighborhood,” he said looking around. “Are you renting the house, or did you buy it?”

  “I bought it. I know it’s kinda crazy to buy a house before getting tenure, but it just felt right,” Zoe said.

  “Cool. I’d like to buy a place, but I’m not sure if I want to do that in the city or somewhere out like where Mark and David are,” Kieran followed her up the steps to the front porch.

  As Zoe opened the door, Kieran stood on the porch and looked around. “I can put a shield around your house, but this weekend, we should get together and strengthen it and you can add in the other Elements.”

  “Okay,” Zoe watched as Kieran went to work.

  It looked like he was making a basket weave out of what she thought of as threads in the Elements. Since he was a Water mage, Kieran was using the moisture in the air to create a sort of blanket that looked like it draped over her house. She thought about adding in Air but quickly realized that between overeating and wine she really couldn’t concentrate enough to not only learn how to create a shield, but then actually make one.

  About two minutes later, Kieran let out his breath. “That should do it. It will hold against something like what happened tonight, and we’ll fine tune it this weekend.”

  “Thank you. I do feel better with the shield and I know they do,” she pointed at the cats who were head-bumping Kieran in the shins.

  He laughed and bent down to give them each a scratch behind the ears. “You’re all welcome. I promise, guys, I won’t let her get hurt.”

  The cats gave him one last head bump and strolled over to the door and into the house.

  Zoe watched them go and turned back to Kieran. “Thanks again. I’ll text you this weekend to figure something out.”

  “Do that. And I mean it. Don’t forget,” Kieran gave her a quick hug and started back down the steps. “Later!”

  “Bye,” Zoe waved. The hug had felt good.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The week following Thanksgiving break was the most pressure-filled, and seemingly shortest week of the semester. Only three weeks remained in the semester, and one of those was exam week. Students were frantically creating presentations, finishing papers, and studying for exams while faculty were equally frantically grading presentations, papers, and exams. At the same time, everybody was busy plotting how to finish all their work as rapidly as possible and leave campus as quickly as possible, so they could enjoy their winter break and the holidays.

  Zoe was not immune to the pull of finishing the semester in the fastest manner possible. Coming down to the end of the semester was stressful in more ways than normal this time. The stress of dealing with the coven, the falling-brick attempted attack on her that had come right before Thanksgiving, the attack on Mark and David’s house, and simultaneously cramming in all the demon-lore she could dig up, was hitting her hard.

  After reinforcing Kieran’s shield around her house and learning how to create a basic shield herself, she had spent the remainder of the long Thanksgiving weekend reading everything she could get her hands on about demons and picking the brains of Moose and Flash for any additional information they might have (in between the pleas for more food and their insistence that they were on the verge of imminent death by starvation).

  Back on campus, Zoe forced herself to put thoughts of demons out of her head and focus on grading. Her obligatory attention to painful undergraduate prose was thankfully interrupted by a tapping at the window. She turned around expecting to see Rowantree on the ledge. Instead, a large crow sat there, head cocked, staring at her. Getting up quickly, she closed her office door and moved to open the window. As she raised the screen to let the bird into her office it cocked its head the other way and fixed her with a beady black eye.

  “Don’t bother. I am called Darkwing. I am simply delivering a message: watch out for Barker,” it said. The voice was what one might expect from a crow, harsh and raspy but something in the tone told Zoe this was a creature of intelligen
ce and a certain level of malice.

  “Why are you telling me this? We know she’s the leader of the coven,” she asked, not really expecting an answer. The crows had been working for the coven.

  “We lost one of our own. Our murder will not tolerate that. She was my mate. The witches have used our services and show us no respect. We will avenge her.” The crow cocked his head again and repeated, “Watch out for Barker. She has power.” It flew off.

  Zoe closed the window, mulling over the warning. She decided to take a short walk around the hallway to stretch her legs and get her blood moving after sitting for a while. If, as she was doing so, she happened to check on Meredith’s office and happened to notice with whom she might or might not be having a conversation, why, that would be simply a happy coincidence.

  As she was casually wandering down the hall, Zoe used her newfound power over Air to push out around her and search out conversations. She cringed at the thought of eavesdropping on people but rationalized it as skimming through conversations without really listening. She was hunting for Meredith’s voice and ignored all the other conversations until she located the familiar arrogant tones. From the cadence she was probably on the phone again. Without pausing in her leg-stretching wander through the hallway, Zoe fine-tuned her control of the air currents until she had isolated the conversation and could hear both Meredith and the person on the other end of the call. She really was getting good at this magic thing. She suppressed a self-satisfied smirk. Don’t get cocky, kid.

  “Yes, ma’am. I will make sure she’s there. Now that the girl is gone, we will have to use the secretarial assistant, Sarah Riley. She’s a little older, but still young enough to be easily controlled.”

  “Are you certain that you can control Sarah Riley?” the sound was tinny through the phone, but there was no mistaking the president’s voice. Zoe froze in her meandering down the hall.