Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial)

by Schwartz, David J.

  “It’s not about being Sherlock Holmes, you know. The kind of cases we work are primarily a matter of data collection. We put together enough information, we look at it from a thousand different angles, until we see something we didn’t see before.”

  “But we also need evidence.”

  “If you’re doing it right, the evidence is just the data with a narrative sewing it together.”

  “And what if there isn’t time to do it right?”

  Martin laughed. “In other words, ‘That’s all very well, old man, but what about the real world?’” He took a sip of brandy. “You have to trust your instincts. Concentrate on the gaps in what you know, on the witness whose story doesn’t add up. Worry at the facts that don’t make sense until something comes loose. And when all else fails, accuse a likely suspect. People talk a lot differently when they think you’re going to lock them up.”

  “And what if my instincts are wrong?”

  “Then you’re in the wrong line of work,” Martin said. “But I happen to know that’s not the case. After all the aptitude magic I’ve invested in you, I don’t have any doubts.”

  She came to the front of the line, to the body in the casket. It had no aura. It wore one of Martin’s suits, but it could have been anyone.

  Joy wept openly for the rest of the service.

  ***

  After the funeral Joy cleaned herself up in the ladies’ room, wiping away the crust of snot and tears. She suspected that she was supposed to be celebrating Martin’s life, not mourning his death, but she was too tired to dissemble, too wrung out to suppress her grief.

  Out in the reception area she searched for Veena, but she was surrounded already. She spotted Flood by his red aura; he beckoned her over.

  He cleared his throat as she approached. “Agent Wilkins, you, uh…are you doing all right?”

  “I’ll be OK.”

  “I’d like to debrief quickly, if you don’t mind.”

  Joy sighed but didn’t bother to object. “I don’t have anything new to report, honestly. But I’d like access to the prisoner’s interrogation recordings, if not access to the prisoner himself.”

  “I can summarize those for you in one word: nothing. He hasn’t said a single word. At times he seems nearly catatonic.”

  “Let me talk to him,” Joy said.

  “Out of the question.”

  “Then let me go in with Parker. His aura will talk even if he won’t.”

  “We have other aura readers in the agency.”

  “Yes — but none of them are as good as me.”

  Gray arrived at that moment, munching on a plate of raw vegetables. “She’s telling the truth,” he said through a mouthful. “At least, as she sees it.” He winked at Joy.

  “I’ll consider it,” said Flood. “Have you spoken to Ingwiersen yet? The conjuration professor?”

  “I’m having coffee with her in”—Joy checked her watch—”two hours.”

  “Give the time and location to my office, and I’ll make sure your new security detail is there.”

  “All right, but it’s in the Gooseberry Bluff town square. I’m not worried about an attack.”

  “You’re not paid to worry. I am.” Flood looked past her, to someone just behind her. “Mrs. Shil.”

  Joy turned to face her. “Veena.”

  “Hi, Joy. I was hoping we could talk, just for a moment. You don’t mind, do you, gentlemen?”

  Flood made grudging, noncommittal noises as Veena pulled Joy away. “I despise that man,” she said. “I know it’s an unkind thing to say, but I honestly don’t care. If Martin knew you were being forced to work for him it would break his heart. He loved you like one of our own children, you know. He never wanted the girls to follow him in his work, but when he found you I think he realized that he had missed something. He was very proud of you.”

  Joy took a deep breath and managed not to dissolve into tears. “Thank you. He was a wonderful mentor to me — you’ve both always been so welcoming.”

  Veena waved away her gratitude. “What I want to know is whether you are all right. You’ve been attacked, you’re alone in that place, and now you’re reporting to that…I’m not even going to say what he is. Are you all right? Are you safe?”

  Joy was not safe, and she knew it. But she was in far enough now to know that she wouldn’t be safe until she knew more, and it wasn’t going to help Veena any to know that. She wondered, abruptly, if she should tell Veena that she had talked to Martin’s ghost, but it didn’t really seem like an appropriate time or place to do that.

  “I think so,” she lied, and kept on lying. “We’ve caught the killer and he’s starting to talk. We’re close to finding out who he’s working for. Try not to worry.”

  ***

  Joy was at Café Dante on the Gooseberry Bluff town square at exactly 2:30. She ordered an iced coffee and took a table outside.

  Ingrid Ingwiersen arrived fifteen minutes late, her aura gray with a tinge of red that might have been sunlight reflecting off the scarlet of the café’s sign. She was even thinner than the last time Joy had seen her, at the faculty reception a week and a half before. There she’d looked unwell, but also like a figure carved out of marble, untouchable; now she looked feral and on edge. She took her black satchel with her to order a drink, as if she were afraid Joy was going to look through it while she was gone.

  She came back with a double espresso, even though she was obviously wired already; her leg twitched under the table like a speed-metal metronome.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” Joy said, putting on her best Eager New Professor voice.

  “I can’t stay long,” Ingrid said. “I’m on my way over to Arthur Stag to use their library.”

  “Really? Actually, I sort of wanted to check their library out too. If you want, we could just head over there together, and talk on the way.”

  Suspicion rippled across Ingwiersen’s aura. “I thought you just wanted to talk about my guest lecture. I told you, I’d prefer to do it later in the semester. That always worked for Carla.”

  “Well, I’d rather have you come in sometime before Thanksgiving break.”

  “November 14th, then? That’s the Wednesday before. I don’t see why we couldn’t have done this over the phone.”

  “I was hoping to pick your brain a little about readings on conjuration, for the students.”

  “You have the syllabus, right? You’re still using the same textbook?”

  “For now.” Joy was struggling to maintain a demeanor of cheery oblivion in the face of this woman’s hostility. She knew a lot of things about Ingrid Ingwiersen already, from her file; the trick was not to reveal that she knew them, while at the same time using them to get at the things she didn’t know.

  “I’m thinking about a few changes in the syllabus for next year, and I was hoping to get your input. For instance, Professor Drake has a lot of readings about Crowley in the syllabus. I know he’s influential and can’t be ignored, but I’d like to highlight some more modern thinkers in conjuration.”

  Ingwiersen grunted and sipped at her espresso. “Carla always did have a little more reverence for the Beast than he deserved,” she said, almost grudgingly. “What he really was, was a master of public relations. The Wiks did most of the heavy lifting; they just didn’t publish as much.”

  “Exactly my thinking!” Joy hoped she wasn’t overdoing it on the enthusiasm. “So who do you teach?”

  “Oh — both Pierces, Whitson and Volant, Kombuis…a little bit of Fernandes, but not enough of it is translated. You’ve got to have them read The Book of Daemons, just because it’s expected, but I’d supplement with some of those names. I can give you a list.”

  “What about…what’s the name…de Forest?”

  Ingwiersen squinted. “You mean de Fourier?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “That’s…you can’t teach that. It’s dangerous. De Fourier was a Crowley fanatic, you know; his books are full of ma
gical booby traps, coded spells that will blow up in the face of anyone who doesn’t know what components to leave out. And the appendix — the appendix is a working demon summoning spell, written in a cipher that any reasonably motivated college kid could solve.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that,” Joy lied. “I guess you’d have to know that, in your field.”

  Ingwiersen nodded. “Every year they give us an updated list of prohibited texts, and every year it gets longer.”

  “It must be so strange,” said Joy. “The biggest thing in your field is the thing you can’t talk about.”

  “We can talk about it. We actually talk a lot about the principles of demonology, but a lot of it is cautionary. But most of these people are looking to get a job in elemental work, lost objects, that sort of thing. Salamander boxes and wedding weather.”

  “Did you ever…you know?”

  Ingwiersen blinked and shook her head. “What?”

  “Did you ever summon a demon?”

  “I was in Special Forces, Conjuration Corps. But I can’t talk about that.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” It was a good thing Ingwiersen wasn’t a truth-teller like Gray, Joy thought.

  “Listen, I really need to get over to the Stag library and then home. Are you coming along?”

  “Yes, if you don’t mind.” Joy slung her purse over her shoulder. “You have plans for later, then?”

  “No. I just have some…gardening to do.”

  Ingwiersen was obviously lying, and obviously hiding some other things, but Joy didn’t think she was going to get any more out of her right now. She’d have to come up with another approach. She made small talk as they walked south, past the Farmer’s Market being slowly dismantled, and past the Stag College auditorium that marked the edge of the campus. The library was at the southernmost end of the quad, one story aboveground and three below.

  Inside, Ingwiersen pointed her at the kiosk. “Just show them your Gooseberry Bluff ID and they’ll give you a visiting faculty pass. I’ll get you that list of textbooks next week, OK?”

  “Thanks,” Joy said, but Ingwiersen had already darted inside.

  ***

  At 1:13 p.m. that Saturday afternoon, Ken Song experienced the worst attack yet.

  In a competitive magical duel there were always several things happening at once, several objectives, or, for scoring purposes, several categories. There were points for offense and points for defense, and there were points for style, which encompassed things like originality, precision, and speed. Master duelist T. F. Lockwood once referred to it as “Like a boxing match fought with poetry, adjudicated by figure skating judges.”

  But she was speaking of regulation dueling, which was to the earnest, life-or-death reality as the game of euchre was to a knife fight. Pure magical duels had no referees and no rules, only basic and immutable principles, such as:

  I. Dueling is, in essence, an exchange of energies between two opponents.

  II. While energy can be shaped and used in various ways, its essential nature cannot be changed. In other words, there is no such thing as offensive or defensive magic, only energy that is used for offensive or defensive purposes.

  III. It follows from the previous statement that a duelist can absorb an enemy’s offensive energy and exploit it for defensive purposes, or launch an assault that turns the enemy’s defense against them, or otherwise repurpose the magical energies in play.

  In competitive dueling arenas the energies were illuminated, or at least simulated, so that spectators and officials could see who was doing what. The results were often spectacular light shows, with the duelists on platforms at either end, the lights lowered as green clashed with purple, silver with red.

  Ken had toured on the professional circuit for eight and a half years. He still had dreams of electric-blue tendrils arcing out from him toward an unseen opponent, lattices of light surrounding him protectively, the lash of a golden whip snaking through and squeezing his lungs…

  …that pain, though, had been nothing compared to what he felt at 1:13 p.m. He was watching one of the cable news channels when it happened, and the clock in the corner of the screen was all he could focus on as his insides burned. The pain was in his lower intestines; he would have thought his appendix had burst if it hadn’t come out decades before. And yet it was the same pain, which told him that they were striking at his memory, using the pain as an anchor to learn more about the college’s defenses.

  Instead of flinching away from the pain, then, he focused on it, used his own energies to amplify it until his awareness dimmed to pain, more pain, and the clock shifting over from 1:13 p.m. to 82° F. He gritted his teeth so he couldn’t cry out, but a whimper escaped him. The invading presence in his mind tried to wriggle loose, to fix on some other memory, but Ken held fast to it, like a centurion clinging to the spear that had run him through. Then the spear dissolved and the presence with it. The pain faded. 1:14 p.m.

  Ken was on his hands and knees, slick with perspiration. He had pissed himself and maybe worse; he shook his head, blinking back tears of shame. Victor the basset hound sniffed at his hair, licked him on the forehead. Ken hated it when the dog slobbered on him, but he could hardly move.

  When he could stand he walked to the laundry room, stripped, and threw the clothes into the washer. Then he washed himself, a long, hot, soapy shower that erased some of his aches.

  “I’m too damn old for this,” he whispered to the sky-blue tiles. Then: “Goddammit, Philip, you need to come home.”

  He finished his shower and put on a nice blue shirt and linen pants while Victor watched. He was going to drink today but he wasn’t going to do it alone. A nice table down at Solera, a bottle of Don David, a plate of paella — no one could begrudge him that. The staff there loved Victor; they would fuss over him and feed him kitchen scraps. But when the two of them stepped out onto the porch, there was Philip, standing on the sidewalk outside his house.

  Victor galloped over to him, and Philip squatted down to rub the old dog’s neck. Ken was slower to approach, relief and resentment still circling each other in his chest. He kept biting off things he had better not say. Goddammit, Philip. This had better have been worth it. I could have died.

  “Kango.” Ken’s given name was Kang-ho, but Philip’s lazy Midwestern enunciation never got it quite right. He was sunburned, and he wore a yellow polo shirt that Ken couldn’t remember having seen him wear in years.

  “You should have told me you were home,” Ken said.

  “I just got here.”

  Ken allowed himself another moment to resent Philip; then he hugged him. “You were gone a long time this time,” he said. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t.”

  Ken made an exasperated sound. “They hit pretty hard just before you got here. It felt a little like a desperation move; I hoped that meant that you had located them.”

  “Are you all right?” Philip asked.

  “I’m very tired,” said Ken. There was a pause, and Ken knew that Philip was thinking about whether or not he had been drinking. He mentally downgraded his bottle of Don David to a glass. “I was thinking about lunch. Solera?”

  “Sure,” Philip said.

  “By the way, your undercover girl came by my office asking about you. Edith was stonewalling her.”

  “Of course she was. That’s what I pay her for.”

  “This Wilkins, I don’t know if she’s up to it, Philip.”

  “We’ll see,” said Philip. “I’d really rather not think about it until I eat something.”

  Ken sighed. “OK. But you’re buying.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  They walked to the town square, two old men and one old dog. Ken was content to say nothing, just to have Philip next to him. He knew himself to be cranky and unreasonable much of the time, but it was always easy to appreciate Philip after he’d been worried about him for a while.

  They
walked north along Inspiration Avenue, then east down First to the town square, the sun warm on their backs. Philip seemed to be taking it all in, breathing deep of the warm evening air, turning to inspect every building along the way and every car that passed.

  “You got scared, didn’t you?” Ken asked him.

  “I what?”

  “You seem to be…appreciating things more than usual. You had a close call, didn’t you?”

  “Not really. Nothing to worry about. It’s just a lovely evening, isn’t it? Look at the river down there! It’s so…blue!”

  Ken laughed, letting the relief take over. His eyes went moist, and he turned away to wipe them surreptitiously. “Yes, it is. I think we need to get some food in you.”

  Solera had a table for them outside on the plaza. A bluegrass combo was playing at the bandstand in the center of the square; it wasn’t really Ken’s thing, but Philip kept bobbing his head to the fiddle. Victor lay sprawled out under the table, gnawing on a rib eye bone. Ken savored his wine, knowing he would have to make it last.

  “This is wonderful,” said Philip, and Ken just shook his head and smiled. When the food arrived, Philip became even more animated, alternately wolfing it down and picking out chunks to inspect them. “Is this snail?” he asked at one point.

  “I certainly hope so,” said Ken. “You’ve had it before.”

  “Of course. Of course! It’s just, it’s been a while.”

  Ken’s crystal rang, and he tapped it. “This is Ken,” he said.

  “Kango, it’s Philip.”

  Philip was washing down his paella with a glass of wine. He’d never displayed a talent for ventriloquism before.

  “You’re with me right now, aren’t you?”

  “Who is this?”

  Philip — or whoever was on the other end of the call — sighed. “It’s me, Ken. It’s…this is going to take some explaining.”