Academic Magic

by Becky R Jones

  Sprawled on the floor half sitting against the wall, watching the ifrit come closer, Declan dug down into what he thought of as his well of magical energy and envisioned something like a lightning bolt. Scuttling to the side, he raised his arm and pointed at the ifrit’s head. Because he couldn’t do this silently, like the ifrit had done to the guard, he dropped his invisibility and released the magic and rage-filled lightning bolt from his fingertips.

  “Die asshole! This is for that guard!” his yell echoed down the corridor.

  In a less than dramatic fashion, the ifrit hissed and as the lightning hit it, disappeared in a flame-tinged swirl of smoke and shadow. The sound of crickets returned with a startling suddenness.

  Shit. Did I really just kill an ifrit? Declan drew a deep breath and willed his hands to stop shaking. He dragged himself upright, using the wall for support. Gingerly he extended his Sight and gazed at the spot where the ifrit had been. Nothing. Just a slight fuzz of magic where Declan had almost been its second victim. He slowly walked up and down the corridor using his Sight to look for any signs of the ifrit. He did see another ghost, but couldn’t tell if it was the same one he’d seen before. He thought the ghost gave him a small salute before drifting off down the opposite corridor.

  Declan did one more circuit around the corridor and then went back to the body of the security guard lying where the two corridors came together. He wanted to make sure the man wasn’t left alone and that one of the installation crew would find him when they came in. He also needed to sit down before he fell down, he was shaking that badly.

  He slid down the wall and sat on the floor next to the body and leaned back against the wall. I’m really sorry, sir. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t know how to kill it before it got you. Declan took a deep breath and willed himself not to cry. Simon would certainly notice that and give him a hard time about it.

  As he silently apologized to the guard, he saw a silvery substance rise from the body. The ghost of the guard materialized over the man’s body. It looked around the corridor intersection and saw Declan. A questioning look appeared on its face.

  “Ifrit, sort of a demon. I’m sorry. I killed it.” Declan answered the unspoken question.

  The ghost nodded.

  Voices coming from the opposite corridor and lights being switched on overhead heralded the arrival of the art installation crew. The ghost glanced over its shoulder and then back at Declan.

  He nodded. “I’ll wait until they find you. Are you married? Kids?”

  The ghost shook its head in the negative.

  “Family?” The ghost nodded.

  “I’ll make sure somebody remembers to call them tonight. I’m really sorry.”

  The ghost inclined its head in thanks and then, as if under compulsion, drifted off in the direction of Declan’s original hiding place toward the center of the complex.

  The voices drew nearer, and Declan drew on his remaining energy to become invisible. He pushed himself off the floor and stood up waiting for the crew members to come into the intersection of corridors. The corridor grew lighter as the new arrivals turned on the lights as they approached. The leaders in the group appeared in the intersection followed by about ten or twelve others.

  “Oh, my God!” a woman in front half screamed.

  “Fuck! What happened?” the man behind her leaned forward to get a better look at the body of the security guard. He stepped around the woman and moved over to the body. He bent down and put two fingers on the guard’s neck. His face was somber when he stood up.

  “There’s no pulse. He’s dead. Must have been a heart attack.”

  “Oh, hell. I’ll call 911,” said the woman, pulling out her phone.

  “Thanks, Trudy. Can somebody else call Mack and let him know? I’m not sure how long the EMTs are gonna take. We might have to do the entire installation tomorrow,” the man who had checked for a pulse sat down on the floor next to the guard’s body just like Declan had done.

  “I’ll stay here and wait for them. Trudy, go out front and wait for the ambulance. The rest of you do whatever you can do to get things started. We’ll play it by ear.”

  “Tom, Mack says to do what we can and play it by ear,” somebody called from the middle of the group.

  Tom gave a tight grin. “On it.”

  Declan sidled to his right to put more room between himself and the man named Tom. He seemed like he would be the kind of person who would make sure all loose ends were tied up so Declan was confident that the guard’s family would get notified. He also liked Tom for clearly staying so he could keep watch over the body. He gave a last glance down the corridor where the guard’s ghost had drifted, but he didn’t see anything.

  Declan edged around the group of people bunched up in the intersection and headed for the exit. His arm brushed a woman’s elbow as he wormed his way past and she looked around, startled. Declan kept moving in case she put a hand out to discover what had brushed against her. Reaching the exit, he willed himself back to visibility and stepped through the door onto the sidewalk. He saw the ambulance approaching and moved away from the entrance. He didn’t want the EMTs asking him awkward questions.

  Once outside the prison, he looked around for Simon. He jumped when he saw a good number of people walking up and down Fairmount Avenue. Duh. It’s only about 7:30 at night. And, it’s Friday. Of course, there are people wandering around. He’d become so wrapped up in dealing with the ifrit and the death of the security guard that he’d lost track of where he was. The rest of the world had kept on its usual path.

  Thinking of the guard made him shudder. I saw somebody die tonight. No, worse. I saw somebody killed tonight. His hands started to shake, and he quickly laced his fingers together to hide the shaking. Where was Simon anyway? He stared up and down the sidewalk searching the passing faces for his mentor.

  Chapter Two

  DR. ZOE O’BRIEN glared hopelessly at the stack of essays sitting on her desk. There was no way around it, she was going to have to take them home with her tonight and finish up grading them. She was already late getting them back to the students. Damnit.

  She grabbed the offending papers and stuffed them into her bag. Turning back to her desk, she shut down her computer and grabbed her keys. Zoe hesitated as she reached the door to her office and without even thinking about it, sent out a tentative thread of air to see if Meredith Cruickshank was in her office down the hall. Then, she laughed at herself. Meredith was taking an “unscheduled” sabbatical. In the wake of the battle between the coven (of which Meredith had been a member), the demon, and mages, on the winter equinox in Logan Square, Meredith had taken the sabbatical leave for the spring semester, ostensibly to recover from a stress-induced breakdown. The coven had been on the hard-losing end of the battle between the witches, their demon, and the mages. One of the coven members had been killed by the demon, their leader, the provost’s former secretary, had managed to escape, and the provost had suffered a serious mental breakdown.

  Zoe was perfectly happy to have a semester without Meredith around. Not only was Meredith just an all-round nasty, power-hungry sort of person, but she had involved students in the coven’s activities against their will and had tried to control one of Zoe’s favorite students, Declan Jin. Those were unforgivable actions as far as Zoe was concerned.

  Standing in her doorway, Zoe let the tendril lapse and stepped into the hallway, closing and locking her door behind her. She had always felt slightly guilty about snooping into Meredith’s whereabouts. But she had reminded herself, this was self-preservation. She obviously was still not used to the fact that Meredith was not around this semester. Once back on campus and in the rhythms of the semester, Zoe had fallen right back into habits she’d had since before she discovered her mage powers last year.

  At that time, her means of avoidance had been to quietly glance down the hall and then quickly tiptoe out her door and down the stairs. Most of the time this tactic had been successful, but there had
been times when it seemed like Meredith had a preternatural ability to tell when Zoe was leaving her office. Hindsight is 20-20 or so they say, and Zoe knew now that Meredith probably had magical means of knowing when Zoe left her office so that she could intercept.

  Zoe’s discovery that she was an Elemental mage and had control over the four primary Elements, Air, Water, Fire, and Earth, had been mind-blowing to say the least. Magic existed and function. She’d had to wrap her head around that almost immediately. She was still trying to figure things out. Her best friend Mark Davis and his husband David had turned out to be Air and Earth mages and her mentor at Summerfield, Dr. George Wardmaster was an Earth mage. Several other faculty members were also mages.

  Since the battle with the demon on the winter equinox last year, Zoe had created time in her schedule to experiment and play with her powers. She was still in a bit of shock over the idea that not only did magic exist, but that she had control of it, and she had more power than any of the other mages she knew.

  Her cats had been working with her as well (another mind-boggling discovery…her cats could talk). As Watchers along with the squirrels and racoons they had kept her up to date on all events magical and otherwise in her neighborhood.

  Scolding herself for wasting time worrying about Meredith, Zoe quickly walked out of her office and down the stairs. Once home, she tossed the bag with the ungraded essays in a corner of her home office/guest bedroom and changed into cozy, comfortable sweatpants and a sweatshirt. She turned to go back downstairs, adroitly stepping around Moose and Flash as the cats attempted to wind themselves around her ankles. Although they could talk, and did a great deal of that, when it came to feeding time, they shamelessly employed the universal feline trick of wide-eyed looks, loud purring, and cute head-buts and ankle-rubbing.

  She glared at the cats. “I’m working on it. If you guys keep this up, I am going to fall headfirst down the stairs, suffer a concussion, have to have Kieran take me to the ER and probably spend the night there. And then you won’t get fed until tomorrow night.”

  “But, we’re hungry!” Moose had a trick of ending sentences with a small, pitiful meow.

  “I am too, and if you actually let me get down the stairs, I can fix that. Sheesh!” Zoe grabbed the bannister, balanced against the far wall and lifted herself over the cats and down two stairs. She rapidly descended the remaining stairs before the cats could trip her up again.

  In the kitchen at the back of the first floor of her small house, she fed the cats and then searched the refrigerator for anything remotely edible that could pass as dinner. Not seeing anything Zoe gave a sigh. She glanced over to where the cats were inhaling their food.

  “I’ll be back in a bit, guys. I’m going to run over to that new place and get a poke bowl for dinner.”

  Neither cat gave any indication they had heard her. Zoe sighed again and walked to the front door grabbing her coat and keys on the way out.

  Zoe walked along Fairmount Avenue planning out what exactly she was going to include in her poke bowl. Salmon or tuna? Why not both? It was Friday night, Kieran, her colleague and sort-of-maybe boyfriend was in town, but at a conference and he had a dinner thing tonight. She was going to indulge herself. Oh, man. This is pathetic, Kieran’s busy and I’m all excited about ordering a poke bowl.

  She shook herself out of her reverie and then shook her head again. There was an ambulance stopped in front of Eastern State Penitentiary. What happened there? And, why was Declan Jin standing on the sidewalk in front of the penitentiary? He didn’t live around here. She stopped in front of him, but he didn’t seem to notice her. He was staring around at the people on the sidewalks as if he was looking for somebody.

  “Hi, Declan,” she greeted him. No response.

  “Declan!” He jumped and jerked his head around to stare at her.

  “Dr. O’Brien! What are you doing here?”

  “I was just going to ask you that. I live a couple blocks away. What are you doing here?” She smiled as she asked the question. Declan was less jumpy than he had been last semester, but he was still prone to retreating into a shell.

  “Um…I-I was w-working with S-Simon, um…Dr. LeGrande on something.” Well, that answered one question. Simon had been working with Declan to help him figure out and get control over his powers. But the stuttering was a dead giveaway that he was extremely nervous. What was going on here?

  Ever since she had discovered that the leader of the coven that raised the demon last year had tried to control Declan, a shy, awkward misfit at the time, Zoe had felt an obligation to keep a protective eye on him.

  “Oh, OK. Are you OK?” He was still staring around at the people walking by.

  “Umm…yeah. I-I’m f-fine. Just w-waiting for Dr. LeGrande to come back. H-he’s my…um…r-ride back to…um…c-campus.”

  Zoe started to stare at the passersby as well. Declan’s nerves were contagious. She half expected Simon to come running up the sidewalk pursued by some sort of monster, Declan was shaking that badly.

  Just as she was beginning to get seriously worried, she spotted Simon LeGrande bouncing along the sidewalk. He was a small, rather round little man who tended to bounce on the balls of his feet whether he was standing still or walking. He was bundled up against the cool evening in a somewhat formal overcoat, scarf, and an Irish driving cap. It’s not that cold out…oh, well. Whatever keeps you comfortable, I guess.

  “Declan, my boy! Did you get it?” he called as he approached. “Oh! Dr. O’Brien! What a pleasant surprise to find you here! What brings you out on this chilly evening?” If he was surprised to see Zoe standing next to Declan he didn’t show it. He was chair of the political science department and she knew that Mark trusted him, and so she did too, but she always felt that there was something just off about Simon. It’s probably just the old-world, archaic vibe he gives off. And that icky half-handshake thing.

  Zoe smiled at Simon. “Hello, Simon. How are you? I was just out grabbing some dinner when I ran into Declan. What are you two up to?” He probably wouldn’t give her a straight answer, but it didn’t hurt to try. Declan was just too nervous.

  “Oh, you know. The politics of building prisons, where to put them, who runs them, etc. It’s part of a research project I’m working on and I persuaded Declan to be my research assistant. So, he took the tour of the prison and interviewed the staff historian to get some background for himself. We’re heading back to campus now.” Simon bounced on his toes and cocked his head at Zoe.

  “Sounds interesting. Well, I’ll let you two get going. Declan I’ll see you in class next week.” Zoe smiled at Declan who gave her a small jerky nod and shy smile in return. Simon nodded at her and turned back up the street. Declan hurried after him.

  As she continued on to get her poke bowl, Zoe thought of at least two more questions she probably should have asked Simon in order to reassure herself that his intentions toward Declan were not malicious. Come on. Why would Simon want to harm Declan? You are just being paranoid.

  Putting paranoid thoughts out of her mind, she ordered her poke bowl dinner and headed back home with it.