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

by Schwartz, David J.

  The Philip across the table caught Ken’s eye and leaned forward. “That’s me calling, isn’t it?”

  “What’s happening?” Ken asked.

  “Ken, I found something,” said Philip through the crystal. “But the people here aren’t ready to trust me yet, so they sent someone back in my place.”

  The Philip across the table picked up Ken’s wine and drank that down as well. “The fate of the universe depends upon your cooperation, Kango Song,” the false Philip said. “But first, let’s order some more of this paella.”

  Episode 4

  Chapter 5 — Two Libraries and a Catfight

  Ingrid Ingwiersen ducked behind some magazine racks near the front of the Arthur Stag Memorial Library and waited for Joy Wilkins to get her visiting faculty pass. Ingrid wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t realize she was getting paranoid, but there was something off about Wilkins. She couldn’t figure out if she was prying into Ingrid’s business specifically or if she was just nosy, but Ingrid wanted to make sure that Joy was nowhere near the meeting she was about to have.

  When Wilkins entered, Ingrid stayed out of sight until she saw her directed to the elevators. She moved to stand near the New Releases shelf until she saw Joy get on an elevator going down. Then Ingrid moved swiftly toward the back of the library, where the staircases were, and made her way down toward the seventh subfloor.

  Ingrid knew of at least four places she could purchase a nameless demon — illegally, of course, but also theoretically, since she had no hope of raising the kind of money that would require. So she was going to have to summon her own. But before she did that, she needed to know which major demon she was looking for.

  The difference between a nameless demon and a major demon was marked enough that more than one scholar had argued that the terminology should be changed entirely. Minor or nameless demons were little more than force without will, coherent knots of energy that could be set in relentless motion with a simple command. In war they could be devastating, but difficult to stop, as with the raw and unfocused entities that had left Germany and Japan in ruins at the end of World War II. Since then the subtleties of demon command had been refined, but treaties outlawed their use in conventional warfare, and the trade or conjuration of minor demons was highly restricted. In her classes Ingrid taught the theory of demon use and its history, but in terms of actual conjuration she covered the range from zephyrs to salamanders, basic weather witchery, and little else. Those were the sorts of skills that could get someone an honest job; if they were looking for a dishonest job, they’d have to do some independent study.

  A major demon was to a nameless demon what a human being was to a wind-up toy. These were the creatures that the religions and folk traditions of every culture warned of, beings of great power and trickery. If the Seoul police were correct and the Heartstopper attacks were meant to summon major demons, then there were as many as seven of them loose in the world, presumably in hiding, gathering strength. Whoever was behind their summoning had to be a little bit insane to go to the risk and expense that they had.

  During Ingrid’s service she had seen action in the siege of Sarajevo, where the BPC’s Conjuration Corps had attempted to summon Count Furfur, an Earl of Hell who was supposed to manifest in the shape of a giant winged stag. Ingrid’s division had managed to put a stop to it, but not before 127 Bosnian prisoners of war were killed in the ritual. There was no shortage of things that Ingrid had nightmares about, but Sarajevo was a particularly bad one.

  To bring a major demon onto the material plane required an equal number of human souls and minor demons; the precise number depended upon the specific demon. Demonic numbers, as they were called, were always prime, and the demons they corresponded to were a closely guarded secret. The most complete Infernal Index — the portentous title was from Aleister Crowley, after the Catholic Church’s list of banned books — was a kept by the United States government, accessible only to officials with a security clearance of level three or higher.

  Fortunately, Ingrid knew of such a person.

  On the seventh sublevel of the Arthur Stag Memorial Library, next to the locked room that held the college’s restricted demonology collection, was a secluded study room that Ingrid had reserved the day before. Inside, seated at the wide blond-wood table, sat a compactly built Asian woman wearing a green sleeveless top. Ingrid suppressed the urge to salute and offered her hand instead; the woman rose and shook it firmly.

  “Thank you for coming,” Ingrid said.

  “I’ve been here a while,” said Colonel Myrtle Vongsay as she resumed her seat.

  “I’m sorry,” Ingrid said. “I had another meeting that I had trouble getting away from.”

  “I don’t have a great deal of time, so let’s cut to the chase,” Myrtle said. “I need to know why you want to look at the Index. Is this about revenge? I know about your sister.”

  “It’s not revenge, it’s…” Ingrid hesitated, knowing that Myrtle wasn’t entirely wrong. But there was more to it. “I think I can bring her back, Myrtle. I think her life force is caught up in whatever major demon the Heartstoppers summoned.”

  “Nobody’s sure yet that that’s what’s going on,” Myrtle said.

  “Bullshit.” Ingrid smiled. “You’re sure, aren’t you? But they won’t let you do anything about it because that would mean bringing a major out into the open. They’re afraid of a panic.”

  Myrtle leaned forward. “Do you blame them? How do you expect to put down a major without collateral damage?”

  “By being better than anyone else at handling demons,” Ingrid said. “I know how to play by their rules. I guarantee you that not a single innocent life will be lost.”

  Myrtle shook her head. “You know, you look like absolute hell. When’s the last time you slept? I should be dragging you into a psych ward, not handing you national secrets.”

  “I’m not crazy,” Ingrid said, “but I am very determined. I’ll get the information somewhere else if not from you. I just thought that, considering what you owe me, I’d ask you first.”

  “Ah, there it is. What I owe you.” Myrtle sat back in her chair. “Everything’s a transaction with you, isn’t it? Is there a balance written down in a little black book you keep somewhere? I could swear that you saved my life over there just because you saw it as an investment.”

  “I’ll never ask you for another favor after this one,” Ingrid said.

  “Once again, Lieutenant, you manage to spectacularly miss the point. But I wouldn’t want it said that I don’t pay my debts.” Myrtle pulled a perfect-bound document out of her purse and set it on the table. “I’m going to hit the head. Here’s some reading material for while I’m gone.”

  As soon as she was gone Ingrid turned the document to face her. As she touched it, text appeared on the blank cover. Index of Known Class Two Infernal Entities, it read; Department of Defense. Ingrid flipped through to the main section, but the demons were listed by name, not number.

  The DOD meant “Index” in the Church sense, but the document contained multiple indexes for cross-referencing. Indexes within indexes. Ingrid looked in the one for demonic numbers:

  149 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prince Stolas

  She flipped back to the page listed and found a rather absurd drawing of a long-legged owl wearing a crown.

  Prince Stolas is a Great Prince of Hell commanding 25 or 26 legions of demons. It has knowledge of astronomy, poisonous plants, herbs, and precious stones. The entry cited the Pseudomonarchia daemonum and the Ars Goetia, the first part of The Lesser Key of Solomon. Ingrid scribbled down the pages and then, since Myrtle hadn’t returned, she quickly paged back to the directory of demonic numbers to look up a few more. She tucked away the notebook just as Myrtle returned.

  “I hope you’re done with that,” Myrtle said.

  “Sure, I’m done.” Ingrid slid it across the table. “Thanks.”

  Myrtle remained standing as she returned the I
ndex to her purse. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Just don’t get anybody killed. And Ingrid?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “That includes you, Ingrid.” Myrtle looked like she was about to say more, but she lowered her eyes. “Good-bye, Ingrid.”

  Ingrid waited until Myrtle had gone before she took the stairs back up to the library entrance. The books she would need were either at home or in the Gooseberry Bluff library; she needed concrete things now. She needed a place to work. She couldn’t plan to summon and duel a major demon at the office, and she couldn’t work in the same house as her sister’s ghost. She’d found a month-to-month lease on a little house on the peninsula on the north side of town, and she was planning to put down a deposit this afternoon.

  Once she was outside in the sun, she grasped her crystal. “Glass House Real Estate,” she whispered, but instead she got a ghost.

  “Wilson? Is that you?” It was a woman’s voice; she spoke sharply and impatiently.

  “No, ma’am. Sorry, wrong number.”

  “You tell Wilson that I need to talk to him. This is his mother, do you understand me? You tell him I need to talk to him.”

  “If I talk to someone named Wilson, I’ll let him know.”

  “Don’t play coy with me, dammit! Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Jesus Christ. I have to go, ma’am.”

  “Who is this? What’s your name? I’ve got—”

  Ingrid broke the connection. It was tempting, when connected with a ghost, to mess with them; to ask them to describe the room they were in, to ask them what they were wearing, or even just to tell them flat out that they were dead. But living with a ghost had made her more sympathetic, if not more patient.

  At least her sister had a body to go back to. Maybe. If Ingrid could make this work.

  She started to reach for the crystal again, but she stopped. She’d broken into a sweat, and when she raised her hand to wipe her face she realized that she was shaking. She hurried into the shade of a nearby maple and leaned against it.

  Maybe she shouldn’t be doing this alone. Maybe Myrtle was right; maybe she shouldn’t be doing this at all. She was exhausted; she wasn’t eating; she couldn’t concentrate on her teaching. She could lose her job.

  But every time she thought of the things she could lose, she was reminded of all the things that Selma had already lost, that she could never get back unless Ingrid helped her. And if she told anyone, they would bring in the FBMA, and they would take her sister’s body, and they would stop her from summoning and destroying Stolas. It was dangerous, what she was going to do, and no one else would understand that the risk was worth it. No one else was going to help her.

  She took a deep breath and stepped back into the sun.

  ***

  Joy had no trouble getting access to Arthur Stag’s private papers, but the process was a bit tedious. She had to fill out some more forms regarding her liability and intent, and the librarian on duty gave her a pair of latex gloves and a brief tutorial on how to handle the books. She could also only request three volumes at a time of Stag’s journals or letters. None of them were indexed by topic, nor were they enchanted with search spells, because (the librarian explained) that type of magic tended to have adverse interactions with the preservation magic.

  This meant that she had to skim every page for mentions of the Thirteenth Rib. Fortunately Arthur Stag’s handwriting was clear and bold; if it had possessed an aura, it would have indicated oblivious overconfidence. Unfortunately, Stag was a long-winded and repetitive correspondent, often describing the same people, ideas, and events in similar but not identical terms, so that she ended up reading an account of the same dinner party five times in three letters and two journal entries. She also had to go through dozens of vehement denunciations of Aleister Crowley’s arrogance, manners, personal hygiene, and deviant sexuality. The fact that many of these things were known to be true did not prevent Stag’s puritanism from lowering him even further in her esteem than he already stood.

  It was in a journal entry from January 1956 that she finally found what she was looking for. At the end of an entry on yet another dinner party that Stag had attended on New Year’s Eve, after a detailed description of the meal and the more notable attendees, she found three uncharacteristically terse lines:

  Unpleasant moment as H.R. cornered me to beg me to reconsider this 13th Rib business. Said very little in response as memory of her insistence that I was building in “wrong place” is still fresh. They may do what they like.

  The way it was phrased left Joy in doubt as to whether H.R. was asking Stag to reconsider his involvement with the Thirteenth Rib or his lack thereof. And who might H.R. be? There was no one by those initials listed among the guests, but then Stag had managed not even to specify who the host had been. Either it was someone he considered beneath his notice or someone he preferred not to acknowledge. Perhaps someone with whom he’d had a falling out.

  Joy paged carefully back to the beginning of 1955. On June 28th there was another terse passage in the middle of a long entry:

  Lunch with Hilda. She is being quite unreasonable. We parted on bad terms.

  H.R. could be Hilda Ruiz — Andy’s grandmother, one of the founders of Gooseberry Bluff Community College. Joy scribbled down the dates of both entries and went to speak to the librarian.

  “Would you have any of Hilda Ruiz’s papers here?” The woman looked blank. “She was one of the founders of Gooseberry Bluff. The college, I mean.”

  “Oh. I’ll check, but…” The woman typed the search into her terminal, then shook her head. “Sorry. If they’re collected, I’d guess they’d be over there.”

  Joy nodded. “Probably. Thanks a lot for your help.” She pulled off the latex gloves and dropped them in the garbage near the door as she left.

  It was just a little after five, but the sun was setting behind the ridge by the time Joy made it back to her car and drove northeast across town to Gooseberry Bluff. There were few cars in the parking lot on a Saturday night. She climbed the steps to the squirrel-trap-shaped building, her mind racing.

  Stag’s phrasing had been ambiguous, but the fact that the society was only named in connection with Hilda Ruiz made her think that Ruiz was the one involved in the society, not Stag. If Stag had been involved he would have mentioned it, or been coyer about not mentioning it, Joy suspected. And if Hilda was involved, the entire founding faculty of Gooseberry Bluff might have been involved. The current faculty might be involved. Probably not the president, because she couldn’t think of a reason for him to bring the FBMA in if he were, and probably not Hector Ay — although he was still being mysterious about his security protocols for the campus.

  The campus lawns had been mowed the day before, and the ubiquitous crows were still feasting on the clippings. As Joy came up the path from the lot, they turned their heads, one by one, to watch her. This time she was sure of it. She stopped then, realization bubbling up through her.

  “You’re the surveillance system,” she whispered to the nearest crow. It cocked its head at her. “Something like a flock of familiars or shamanic transference or something. But passive. I’m right, aren’t I? Can you hear me, Hector?” Oh, he was clever. She reached into her bag for her notebook and pen. She squatted down in the middle of the path and wrote in thick black letters on the first blank page. Then she held it up to the nearest crow, tapping on the paper. Meet me in the library, it said; Joy just hoped that the crows had good enough vision to transmit it and that Hector’s security magic worked the way she thought it did.

  “Later, birds,” she said, and hurried up the path. Things were starting to make some sense; it was a slightly giddy feeling, thinking that she was going to figure all this out. She could do this job; she wouldn’t let Martin down.

  The question was, if Hector could be trusted and he really had the entire campus monitored, how could the demons be moving through? Where were they coming from, and where were they going? No; there w
ere still too many questions, too many basic unknowns. She had an idea of what the demons were being used for and some insight into the whens, but the whos and the wheres and the whys remained elusive.

  The cool inside of the building revived her somewhat, and she took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. She knew the library was open on Saturdays, but not how late, so it was a relief to see the posted hours on the door as 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

  Mr. Larch was behind the circulation desk; he gave her a languid, almost leering smile. “Ms. Wilkins,” he said. “A pleasure to see you again.” He wore a sky-blue short-sleeved button-down shirt and a silver ascot, a combination that few men could have pulled off. Larch was not one of them.

  Joy made an effort to ignore the revulsion she felt for him. “Hello,” said Joy. “I was wondering if we have a collection of Hilda Ruiz’s papers here.”

  “Indeed we do. Letters, journals, drafts, and unpublished articles, some books from her personal library with marginalia in her hand. Her handwriting isn’t the best, fair warning.”

  “OK. I think I’d like to see her journals first.”

  “Right this way.” Larch set off north through the stacks, his movements as graceful as his wardrobe was awkward. He moved with economy, not exaggeration, no free-swinging arms or thrown-back shoulders. He had the least self-conscious walk Joy had ever seen, and if you assumed that his fashion sense stemmed from that same lack, it almost made him appealing. Ascot or no, Larch gave off a decidedly masculine vibe; he reeked of Old Spice and not testosterone, but Old Spice was one of the more masculine scents Joy could think of, next to sweat.

  She cleared her head of those thoughts when a gap appeared in the stacks, a wire-enclosed but well-lit cage labeled Founder's Room standing to one side of it. Larch took out a set of keys and sorted through them. “We don’t get many requests for this stuff,” he said. “Looking for anything in particular?”