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

by Schwartz, David J.

  Ken’s back and butt hurt. He carefully set the wine bottle down on the wooden floor and struggled to his feet. Victor sighed once but did not stir.

  Once Ken reached his feet he reconsidered standing. He’d had most of a bottle before the impostor had shown up, and at least half a bottle more since. He’d been trying to moderate his drinking, he really had, but he had been doing it for Philip, and Philip wasn’t here.

  Ken thought maybe he’d better sit down on the couch before he fell on the coffee table. Sitting made him nearly as dizzy as standing had done. He was aware of the two black men in gray suits standing in his living room, but they didn’t register upon him as real until one of them spoke.

  “Pathetic,” he said. He looked just like the other one. Ken blinked, but neither of them disappeared.

  “Who…what are you doing here?” Ken asked.

  “That should become clearer in a few seconds,” one of them said. Neither of them moved, but pain surged through Ken’s body, pain so severe that he convulsed forward and vomited all over the floor. Another attack; there hadn’t been one since Philip’s return. Not-Philip’s return, that is. He was completely unprepared.

  One of the men grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him forward, yanking him clear over the coffee table and onto the bare wooden floor. Ken lay struggling to catch his breath, straining to focus. Gather, first. By the time he focused on anything he was going to be dead.

  The next time he looked up there were three identical men, not two. They were fighting. One of them had a large kitchen knife in one hand and a greasy pan in the other. As Ken watched, the man with the knife stabbed one of the other men and hit the third across the back of the head with the pan. They both fell, and both lay motionless.

  The third man shifted—it was like a bird folding its wings as it landed, or a rabbit going from a full bound to a complete stop. He was someone else and then he was Philip… except that he wasn’t.

  “Kango,” he said. “Are you OK? Are you hurt?”

  Ken still couldn’t catch his breath. Who are you? He wanted to ask. What kind of danger have you put me in? But the harder he struggled to speak, the faster he lost consciousness, until the face that wasn’t really Philip’s faded from sight.

  Episode 8

  Chapter 9 — Prelude to a Summoning

  It was raining hard in suburban Atlanta, and the nearest Globe Gate location was six blocks away from Rosemary and Lawrence’s house. Joy’s shoulder bag had some rain-repellent magic, but her own elemental magic was no match for the honest-to-goodness fury of nature. She was wet and miserable by the time she knocked on her sister’s front door.

  Rosemary answered the door with the baby, Kenshō, in her arms. “Girl, don’t even try to hug me when you’re all wet,” she said. “And don’t wake the baby. I started the bath already. Take off your shoes and go straight into the bathroom.”

  Joy did as she was told, shivering as she stepped into the cool air. Rosemary had worked in heating and cooling magic before the kids; she still consulted sometimes, but as she told Joy with increasing frequency, she wanted to enjoy her time alone with the children until the time came when she had to throw their father out and go back to work full-time. At first Joy had thought her sister was kidding—it could be difficult to tell with Rosemary—but after numerous conversations and hints, she was beginning to worry about her sister’s marriage.

  Joy forgot all that when she saw the bathtub, already nearly filled with water that was far too hot for her. She shut the door, turned on some cold water, and peeled off her wet clothes. She felt like a towel that had been used, thrown in the gutter, and then run over by a succession of cars.

  She sank into the water while it was still painfully hot, hissing as it hit her skin. It hurt but she could already feel herself relaxing. She was about to lean her head back against the cast-iron edge when the door flew open and her niece, Zen, bounced in.

  “Auntie Joy Auntie Joy Auntie Joy is here!” Zen jumped up and down as she sang the words. She was wearing footie pajamas with characters from The Booger Patrol, a popular children’s hygiene/adventure show, on them. Her long, curly hair floated around her. Zen’s aura was changeable because she was young, but like most children she tended toward yellows and greens. A happy little girl who loved and was surrounded by love, despite any problems in her parents’ marriage.

  “Hi Zen-Zen,” said Joy. “How are you?”

  “Good.” Zen went suddenly shy, looking down at the floor. She reached down for something she saw there and came up with Joy’s bra. “Oh my gosh it’s huge!” she said.

  Joy couldn’t help but laugh. “I think your mama’s is bigger,” she said.

  “Always been my cross to bear,” said Rosemary from the doorway. “Young lady, you give your aunt a kiss good night and then go tell your father to read you a bedtime story. And no stops along the way, all right?”

  “Will Auntie Joy be here in the morning?”

  Joy glanced at Rosemary. “I think so,” she said. “Yes.”

  “Yay!” Zen gave Joy a wet kiss on the cheek and ran out of the bathroom.

  “That girl tires me out,” said Rosemary.

  “I thought she was sick,” said Joy.

  “That was last week. We’ve already been through two days of sniffles and a near amputation since then.” Rosemary picked Joy’s clothes up off the floor. “There’s a robe on the back of the door,” she said. “Don’t soak in there all night. Dinner’s waiting.”

  Joy decided that she would soak just as long as she liked, turning the hot water back on periodically with her foot, until she realized that the heat and steam were making her drowsy. Then she pulled the plug and stood to rinse herself off under the showerhead.

  The robe was a red terry cloth thing, so fluffy that it made Joy feel as if she had doubled in size. The hardwood of the hallway was cool under her feet, but Joy felt like her body temperature had risen about ten degrees; she didn’t mind the cool.

  Rosemary’s kitchen table was a massive old blond-wood piece, with sturdy country-style chairs. The room was painted a cheerful yellow, with floral accents that were really more like flourishes, except that when Joy said “floral flourishes” Rosemary got annoyed with her. Rosemary had lived here even before she had married Lawrence, and she had done all of the decorating herself; she was a nester, in ways that Joy herself had never been. But when she did think of home, she thought of Rosemary’s house.

  Rosemary must have heard her coming, because she set a hot plate of white-smothered pasta in front of her. “Mac and goat cheese,” she said. “The green bits are pesto.”

  “You make this for Zen?” Joy asked.

  “Are you kidding? She loves it. She’s going to be spoiled, but she’s going to learn how to cook for herself, so it’ll even out.” Rosemary sat down but her hands wouldn’t keep still. She had quit smoking while she was pregnant with Zen, but Joy could tell that she missed having a prop, especially when she was talking. Her aura was a soft blue, shot through with slivers of silver and—occasionally—black. Truthful and nurturing, but with a tendency to hold grudges.

  “Thank you for having me,” Joy said.

  “Don’t be stupid. You’re welcome anytime. You don’t even need to call.”

  “Well, I just wanted to be sure you’d be around and everything.”

  “Joy, honey, we don’t go anywhere,” Rosemary said. “We don’t screw, and we don’t fight. He goes to work early, he comes home late, he goes to his meditation chamber, and he contemplates his ass off.”

  Lawrence Ebrahim was a VP of meditation and visualization at a major investment firm. He was a devout Buddhist, but he was also a devoted family man, or at least Joy had always thought so.

  “Doesn’t he portal home for lunch?”

  “Sure he does. But Kenshō and I aren’t on his schedule. Baby’s usually napping when he comes home. Then he just wants to complain about work, and I do not want to hear it. I could complain to him, b
ut I don’t.”

  Joy tried to hide her smile under a forkful of mac and goat cheese. She was sure that Rosemary shared her complaints with Lawrence more than she was saying, and maybe more than she realized.

  “So why is he meditating at home so much?”

  “He says his work is stressful. But, I mean, his work is meditating! He sits around concentrating on his breathing all day.”

  “Well, he’s the vice president. I’m sure it’s not that simple.”

  Rosemary waved a hand in dismissal. “I don’t want to hear that from you. You want to take his side, you can take him home with you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Joy pushed her plate aside. “Thank you for the food, it was delicious.”

  “Uh-huh. So what’s on your mind?”

  Joy craned her neck to relieve the ache that suddenly returned. “I’m fine. I just came to visit.”

  “I know you better than that, Joy Mahalia Wilkins.” Rosemary rose, went to the fridge, and came back with two bottles of Leinenkugel’s honey weiss.

  “You don’t drink beer anymore,” Joy said in disbelief.

  “I’m backsliding,” said Rosemary, and twisted off the cap. “Besides, it’s Wisconsin beer, in honor of your new home.”

  “It’s Minnesota—” said Joy.

  “Close enough.”

  “And it’s not my home.”

  “Mm-hm.” Rosemary slid the open bottle over to Joy and opened the other one. “Why don’t you have a beer and tell me what it is that brings you to my home, then. Don’t tell me you just wanted to see me; I know you did. But I know you’ve got something on your mind too. I could see it the moment you showed up at my door looking like a mess of five-and-a-half-foot-tall seaweed with legs.”

  Joy took a swig of honey-flavored beer. It tasted like her late teens and early twenties, like disconnected visits home, her siblings dragging her out to the sort of parties she had never been never invited to when she was in high school. Rosemary had acted like the older sister even then, but it was worse now that she had kids.

  “You’re not Mom, you know,” Joy said.

  “Mom isn’t Mom. You want to talk to her about your problems? Good luck with that.”

  “Yeah. I guess…” Joy hesitated for a moment, unsure of where to start, but then it all just came spilling out.

  “I went into this job knowing it was going to be tough. There would be lying, and I’d have to get close to people who were doing bad things. But now Martin’s gone, and…” Tears welled up and threatened to spill, but Joy blinked them away. She didn't think Rosemary would understand Joy's feelings for Martin as a surrogate father. “I’ve learned some things that make me unsure whether I can trust the people I work for. I’m already lying to them. In fact, the only people I can talk openly with are people who’ve already made me, people who have been hiding information from my agency.”

  “Wait, your cover is blown? Why the hell don’t you get them to pull you out?”

  Joy had wondered that herself these past couple of days, especially since learning there had been more attempts on her life. There was no way she was going to tell Rosemary about that, though.

  “I’ve thought about it," she said. "My boss wants to pull me out at the end of the week if I don’t find out where this missing professor is. He’s more concerned about the demon trafficking anyway, and I already shut that down, even though I don’t really know who was behind it.”

  “Demon trafficking?”

  “Ah, yeah. Forget I said any of that. I’m not supposed to talk about the details.” Joy laughed. “‘Sorry, sir, my sister got me drunk and started pumping me for information.’”

  “Joy, honey, I don’t care about your investigation. I care about your well-being and your safety. And I have to tell you, you look beaten down.”

  Joy bristled at this. “I’m not beaten. I just don’t know if I’m on the right side. I’m being pulled in three directions—at least—and it’s maddening. I just found something major, and I’m not even sure I should show it to my boss.”

  “For the record,” Rosemary said, “I said you looked beaten down, not beaten. You’re my big sister, and I’ve never seen you get beat, not once in my life.”

  “Well, thank you, but I’m not sure that’s true.”

  Rosemary put her hand over Joy’s and squeezed. “Not. Once.”

  “OK. Fine. I’m amazing. But that’s when I know what I should be doing. That’s when I know what the right thing is. Right now, I…I almost wish I could talk to Trevor.”

  Now Rosemary took a long swig from her bottle. “I thought we weren’t talking about him.”

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you the other day,” said Joy. “Have you even heard from him?”

  “Sort of. He sends presents to the kids. No notes, just ‘From Your Uncle Trevor.’ They’re posted from Cleveland.”

  Joy picked at the label of her beer. “He hasn’t spoken to me since I joined the bureau.”

  Rosemary finished her own bottle and stood. “I’m going to say something that you’re not going to like. The two of you have always been trying to prove something to each other. You go into academics, he drops out and says the educational system is, what—?”

  “Assembly-line brainwashing for profit.”

  “Then you write some paper about the dangers of privacy—”

  “It was on pathologies of people who struggled with intimacy!”

  “And all of a sudden he’s off protesting about law enforcement overreach. He goes to prison, you go into law enforcement. The two of you have been in an arms race since Dad died.”

  “Well, if you ask me, he wanted to take Dad’s place. Except Dad never told everyone what to do.”

  “Honey, don’t sit there and tell me you never tried to mother Trevor,” Rosemary said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out two more beers.

  “That’s only because Mom gave up on him!” Joy pounded on the table without realizing she was going to do it. “Damn. I’m sorry.”

  “If you didn’t wake the baby, then we’re fine. If you did, you are going to pay.” Rosemary waited a moment; when no sound came, she set two open bottles on the table. “So why do you think Trevor would be more help than your devoted, maternal, sharp-as-a-tack sister?”

  “Maybe because he’s been to prison. Because he’s been on the other side. I’m having an existential crisis here. I went into this thinking I knew about the pitfalls of law and order, and now I’m finding out there’s an entire universe of complications that I never even suspected.” If only she could explain to her sister how literally true that was.

  “Maybe you should talk to him, then,” Rosemary said as she settled back into her chair.

  “If I tracked him down and showed up at his door he’d be so angry there’d be no chance of him ever speaking to me again,” said Joy.

  “You could tell him I hired someone to track him down.”

  Joy shook her head and drank some more beer. She was starting to feel a little buzzed, but more than that, she felt tired.

  “You know what would make my job a lot easier? If my new boss wasn’t a massive jerk.”

  “Oh, here’s the good stuff,” said Rosemary. “I knew if I got a little alcohol in you I’d get some dirt.”

  “He’s a bully. The number of times I’ve wanted to hit that man…”

  “I hope you fight better than you did when we were kids.”

  “I do, as a matter of fact. I learned from the bureau.”

  “This is the guy you’re not sure you can trust?”

  Joy set her elbows up on the table and leaned her head on her hands. “It’s not quite that cut-and-dried. I think he’s loyal to the bureau. Being an ass doesn’t preclude that. But I…” Joy stopped herself from telling Rosemary about Carla Drake’s manuscript. Joy hadn’t had a chance to read it yet, but the title told a story all on its own. “I’m not sure whether the bureau is the right side. I don’t know which end is up, honestly.” She looked down at he
r drink. “And I must be a real lightweight these days, because I am loaded off of a beer and a half.” She set the bottle of honey weiss to one side. “I think I should switch to water and go to bed.”

  “Couch,” said Rosemary. “Remember what I said about the ashram? He’s taken over the guest room for that.”

  “Is he still in there?”

  Rosemary just shook her head and swigged the rest of her beer…then Joy’s. “Man’s going to turn me into an alcoholic,” she said.

  ***

  Night boating was not something Ingrid had much experience in, so she took it very slow. The sky had cleared from the rain showers of the day, but there was only a waxing crescent moon above; the stars did little to illuminate the rough water. She’d bought a silent propulsion charm from a specialty fishing store in Hudson—along with the canoe—but she had cast it at its lowest intensity, ready to refocus it if she saw the lights of a patrol boat.

  She had placed the first column, a plastic pillar filled with Earth, on her rented property already. Ingrid’s preferred method was to use the controlling/generative/destructive Taoist conception of the pentagram, starting with whatever element was most directly opposed to the creature she was summoning. So Earth absorbed Water, a pillar of which she had hidden on the public beach on the north side of Gooseberry Bluff. Water doused Fire, which she had just concealed near a private dock on the Wisconsin side of the river in a military-grade steel pillar. It contained a kerosene mix that would burn hot and be nearly impossible to douse before her work was done. Fire melted Metal, which was the heavy lead pillar she had planted in a copse of spruce trees at the southeastern edge of campus earlier that afternoon. It was a slight breach of ceremonial procedure to do these things out of order, but in practice it wouldn’t matter. She wasn’t going to make two separate trips out in the canoe.

  The final pillar was Wood (Metal split Wood, Wood broke Earth), which she was about to set up in the river shallows on the Wisconsin side, half a mile or so ahead of her. The generative/destructive cycles played out in either direction on the outer circle of the pentagram and helped to balance the summoning energies. But the order of the pentagram—the order the minor demon would activate them in tomorrow night—was what mattered most. Prince Stolas was identified with Air, an element that didn’t fit into the Taoist cycle, but in Ingrid’s experience Water and Earth both helped to restrain the spirits of Air. The conjuration commenced with Earth and would land Stolas in a body of running Water; Ingrid wasn’t worried about where things would go from there.