Magic 101 (A Diana Tregarde Investigation)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Who knows what that thing was that was in the basement. There wasn’t a lot known about Phrygian myth, so it could have been a satyr, some sort of minotaur, or something Di had never heard of.

  Lavinia finally wound down, and Di packed the stuff from Tamara’s lair back up in one of the bags the grinders had come in. At Joe’s look of inquiry, she said “Incinerator in the basement,” and he nodded. He even helped her take the rest of the burnable trash down there, and they stood together to make sure it all went to ash.

  “So. Can I count on you and your Spook Squad again?” he asked, casually, as they watched the flames. “Can’t exactly ask Lavinia to go hiking across country in the middle of the night or breaking into spooky old houses in the middle of nowhere. She’d probably break her hip.”

  Di snorted. “She’s tougher than you think. She’s more likely to bitch the whole time, but…yeah.” She thought about it a moment. Even after being confronted with a very dead body last night, the four of them had handled themselves well. They hadn’t been put off by the dybbuk. They hadn’t made any noises about bailing or not wanting to be involved this afternoon. Finally, she nodded. “You can count me in. I’ll have to talk to the others first, but—”

  It was Joe’s turn to snort. “After being in my department all these years, kid, I can tell you there’s two kinds of people out there. The ones that see the weird shit and just block it out and never want to think about it, and the ones that get addicted to it. Your bunch is addicted. You’ll see.”

  By the time they had gotten back up to Di’s apartment, Lavinia had gotten her coat on and was saying goodbye. Zaak was promising to take the bus to visit her next weekend. “A pity I cannot manage to get Diana to do the same,” Lavinia said dryly.

  “Diana has only just moved here and hasn’t figured out the bus schedule yet, old woman,” Diana replied just as dryly. “I’ll let Zaak be the trailblazer. Thanks for coming over and giving us the low-down, Joe.”

  “My pleasure. I just like to have all the pieces to put together, you know?” He shook hands with everyone, there was the usual jockeying at the door, and then he and Lavinia were gone.

  This time it was Emory who put his back to the door. “Okay, we have to know. Are we still in?”

  I guess Joe was right. “You’re in as long as you want in,” she affirmed. “Joe was just asking if he could count on us for next time.”

  “There’s going to be a next time?” Emory exclaimed with glee.

  “Idiot.” Em punched him in the bicep. “He wouldn’t have asked if there wasn’t.”

  But Zaak looked as if he had suddenly run out of steam, though not enthusiasm, and yawned hugely. “I think I need to sleep lunch off,” he said ruefully, as he set off a chain reaction of more yawns from the rest of them. “Good thing I don’t have Monday classes.”

  Di groaned, as did Marshal. There was some more congestion at the door, then they were all gone, and she went to grab her book bag. She had her hand on the knob when there was another knock.

  It was Marshal.

  “I figured we could go together,” he said. “I’m going to introduce you to the guy that organized a karate club, so you can get hooked up for when you can’t carry a gun. And maybe I could find out if you’d rather go to the Carlos Montoya concert or something else with me Friday.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks. “Marshal, are you actually asking me on a date?”

  He tugged her elbow to get her going again. “Is that so strange?”

  “It is for me,” she admitted. Then she grinned. “Carlos Montoya sounds great!”

  And the possibility of having something like a real, normal life?

  Priceless.

  WITCHING HOUR

  Diana Tregarde sat in the middle of her king-sized, medieval canopy bed, with cinnamon incense making the studio apartment smell like buns baking. She had pillows piled up against the headboard, and the thick upholstery-velvet curtains half closed against the draft. There were built-in lights glowing on either side of her, giving exactly the right amount of illumination to read by, and lined up to her left was a pile of books and notebooks.

  A “scholar’s mistress,” was what they used to call that arrangement. Students and academics seemed to have had a habit of going to bed with books for—well, since there had been books, it seems.

  The curtains were keeping drafts at bay nicely—which was, after all, what they had been invented to do. That, and give the better-off, couple or single, some privacy from children, servants, or both, who might be sleeping in the same room. She was wrapped in a second-hand men’s kimono of heavy silk, over her jeans and leotard. Just visible to her left was the fireplace, with a cheerful fire going in it, and her ritual sword propped next to it, for later. It had been Zaak’s but it was hers now; he’d given it to her. She rather liked the idea of having a ritual sword as well as a dagger. For one thing, swords were intimidating; for another, they kept things physically at bay a lot better than a mere knife. This was a real sword, too, not some replica piece of crap. A real Toledo blade. She had no idea where he had found it, but then, Zaak was from New York City and the strange things that came into pawn and second-hand shops there were the stuff of legend. The door to the hall was hidden by the bedcurtains. There was no distraction from the window in the west wall at the foot of the bed, and not only because it was dark and the velvet curtains that matched the ones on the bed were pulled shut. There was never any distraction from that window; it looked onto the blank brick of the building opposite.

  Diana had looked at the apartments over there, because they were a bit cheaper than this building, but one quick tour had convinced her that cheaper rent for more square footage was not worth it. For one thing, the building was mostly tenanted by very loud male students. For another…when she stepped in the door, she could smell the mice, in the entryway, in the hallway, even in the studio open to look at that had (allegedly) been cleaned. Where there were mice, there was probably a thriving population of roaches. And rats. The hall carpet didn’t look as if it had been cleaned since it was new, and she wasn’t altogether certain that the brown color of the carpet in the apartment was its original color.

  This place might be old, and might be shabby, but it was clean to a fault. At the first sign of a roach, the management came in and laid down boric acid along every baseboard, and left you a bottle of it to use inside your furniture. There were no mice, because they had a very civilized, one-cat-per-apartment rule; with that many cats in the building, including three enormous, wary beasts in the basement who were the responsibility of the super, mice and rats didn’t have a chance. There were no carpets, only ancient hardwood floors that were easy to clean. Di could sleep at night without worrying about waking up to something running over her face—or having something living in her underwear drawer.

  Her floor was quiet tonight; so was the floor above her, where Emory Sung and Itzaak Freiburg lived in the apartment directly above, and Marshal Stevens—who she was currently dating off and on—lived next to the staircase. She already knew that Marshal, Zaak and Emory were out. In Marshal’s case, he was working, since there was a lot of work on Halloween for a good amateur stage magician. And as for Emory and Zaak, there were a lot of parties going on tonight at the twelve Harvard Houses, and if you didn’t like the music at the first one, or the snacks they were serving, or the brand of beer in the keg, it would be easy enough to find another. Normally, of course, it being a Tuesday night, there would be no parties at all—but this was Halloween, and not even the fact that some sadist professors were holding exams November First was not going to deter the merriment. Lucky for the lads, not one of the three had a midterm tomorrow. Di’s course in Moral Reasoning did. So did her math class.

  On the other hand, this means I didn’t have to find an excuse to break away at midnight.

  Diana Tregarde was the last in a long, long line of family-tradition witches—pagans, they would have called themselves nowadays, she supposed, since
the tradition she’d been taught was, more or less, Celtic and Druidic. It was a long, long way removed from its origins, however. Something she was only starting to realize as she continued in her Celtic Folklore course.

  Halloween—or Samhain, as she knew the original name to be—was an important night in the pagan calendar. The Christians had usurped it and turned it into the Eve of All Hallows, the night before the celebratory Mass of all Saints, known and unknown. Which, when you came to think about it, was a neat double trick. Grab Samhain for yourself, then cement yourself a little more good karma by making sure you gave worship to Saints you might not even know existed, or had forgotten to thank during the rest of the year. Then, while you’re at it, turn it into a double-hitter on November Second with the Feast of All Souls, which remembered all those who had passed on. A two-day celebration—granted, you spent most of it on your knees in church, but that was two days in the middle of harvest when you weren’t working sun-up to sun-down. And they were feast-days, which meant that the church itself would provide you with a meal if you sat through the mass. The Druids and other pagan priests couldn’t match that.

  Clever, those early Christians, Di thought, with a wry half-smile.

  Well, for her, and for Memaw, and for all the ones that followed the old ways, Samhain was the night when the veil between the world thinned, and spirits slipped across. They could go either way, actually; it was easier at Samhain and Beltane for ones that had gotten stuck to cross over, and easier for the spirits of their loved ones to come and fetch them.

  It was also the night for spirits to visit their loved ones, but Di already knew not to expect her father and mother, or her grandmother. In all the Samhains that had passed, her parents had never turned up, and as for her grandmother…Memaw never looked back.

  In fact, Memaw might well be one of the ones out tonight, finding the lost and giving them an escort to the other side. No use to look for her; she knew very well that Di was capable of taking care of herself, since Di was a Guardian. She knew Di didn’t need the comfort of seeing her. Nor did Di need to see her to know she was in the Summer Country.

  So, tonight what Di would do—at midnight or thereabouts—was create a safe space for spirits of good intent to cross, and a beacon to help them. The beacon would burn until midnight tomorrow, when Samhain ended.

  Until midnight, however, she was going to stay right where she was, cuddled in the featherbed that softened her mattress, warmed by her afghan, soothed by incense and candles, calmed by classical music, studying her notes. And nibbling on just a little Halloween candy she’d helped herself to before she left Dudley Hall, the Hall for students who lived off-campus.

  My student fees paid for it, I might as well eat it, she thought, and allowed herself a moment of bliss as a bit of chocolate-covered toffee melted in her mouth.

  #

  Mark Valdez was looped; Tim, Phil, and Quasi were a good bit farther along than that. There had been a lot of parties on the Harvard campus. A crazy lot, considering that tomorrow was a class day. But maybe some of the profs decided there was no point in holding a midterm the day after Halloween, Mark thought fuzzily. ’Cause they wanted to party too.

  Well, it was possible.

  Mark hadn’t bothered with a costume for the ones he’d crashed before he met up with his three friends. There had been the Adams House official party, which had been a lot more fun with the new House Masters, the Kielys, at the helm. It was still in full roar when he’d gone to sample some room parties. He told everyone he was in costume, though; in his Grateful Dead shirt, he said he was a DeadHead. Most people had had enough of whatever their chosen vice was at that point that they just nodded solemnly and offered a beer. The fact that the drinking age in Massachusetts was eighteen had been no small consideration to Mark when he had considered colleges and universities…

  From dinner until eleven PM, when he’d promised to meet up with the guys, he wandered the five buildings of Adams, maintaining a level of intoxication that was just right on the edge of losing focus. Looped, pleasantly buzzed; he wouldn’t drive but he wasn’t incapacitated.

  Once it got past ten, he started checking his watch, although at that point he’d hit on a party that seemed to have a higher than normal number of girls in bikini-based costumes, so he was somewhat distracted. There were a bunch of “Laugh-In” girls, a couple of hillbilly girls from “Hee Haw”, some surf-bunnies, some “hippie-chicks.” In short, the scenery was good. Good enough that he stopped drinking and started to sober up.

  Sober enough that he heard the bell at Memorial Church toll eleven times before he happened to glance down at his watch.

  Okay. I can get there in about ten minutes at a fast walk. He chuckled to himself. It’s not as if Quasi can start without me.

  #

  Di looked up from her book and rubbed her eyes just as the bell at Memorial Church struck eleven. She stretched, relieved that she didn’t feel too sleepy, and closed her eyes, taking the general occult “temperature” of the area around her building and outward.

  It was gratifyingly neutral, which was good.

  She opened her eyes again, and wiggled off the bed to get herself a fresh cup of spiced-orange tea. Having a fire in the fireplace served several purposes; warmth, atmosphere, and a good place to keep the teapot so the tea would stay hot without boiling. She poured herself another cup, added a spoonful of honey, and went back to the shelter of the bed.

  Sometimes I wish I never had to leave this thing, she thought, as she nestled down into the pillows and featherbed again, and took up her notes.

  On a night like tonight, that felt especially true. Halloween was one of those problematic, liminal times. Because the barrier between the “real” world and the world of occult entities was so thin, there was the potential for a lot of problems. People who were naturally—even marginally—gifted had a much greater chance of dragging something across the divide, if they just believed in it hard enough. And when you were a bit drunk or stoned, sometimes you could believe in something with a lot more force than when you were sober.

  Will was a huge component of being able to work magic. Belief was powerful, more powerful than most people realized.

  Thin the veil, get a lot of people together, and convince them to make something happen…even if they don’t know what they’re doing, on Halloween, they can make it happen. Add in booze or something more potent…

  It was a recipe made for trouble. And this was a campus just full of people with active imaginations, looking for—well, many of them didn’t know what they were looking for, only that they were looking. Look in the wrong places, and things will find you, she thought, sipping her tea.

  But maybe tonight, with a full day of classes looming, people were confining themselves to partying and not dabbling.

  One hopes. At least tonight, it wouldn’t be her upstairs friends that invoked it, if trouble came.

  Ever since she had become a Guardian—at a remarkably tender age—there had been exactly one Halloween that she hadn’t been forced to bugger off and put something down. Usually because of teenage girls, playing with Ouija boards, with books of spells they had found in second-hand shops or had ordered through an occult catalog, or—the worst case scenario, had found in an attic. What is it about teenage girls? The boys who fiddled around with the occult never seemed to get in nearly the same amount of trouble.

  ….except Zaak. She shivered a little, thinking about the dybbuk he had managed to call up.

  Well, Zaak was an exception. Very talented, very passionate, and with a surprisingly strong will, considering how he had flitted from interest to interest until he had hit on magic. And he had passed the ripe old age of twenty-one. Most teenage guys couldn’t seem to keep an interest in magic going if they didn’t get an immediate result.

  Maybe it’s the hormones that make teen girls such naturals at magic. No, that couldn’t be it. Boys and girls alike had raging hormones in their teen years.

  Hormone
s plus…focus? She’d once seen a cartoon of the diagram of a dog’s brain side by side with a teenage guy’s brain. Tiny slivers devoted to everything until you got to “ball sports,” and “sex” at which point the two sections together represented about ninety percent of the brain. She chuckled to herself. That could be it. If it’s not a ball sport or getting laid, a teenage boy isn’t interested.

  She debated starting the ritual. Any time from midnight to around five or six in the morning would do, though the closer to midnight it was, the better. Still, in the old days there was no way to tell when midnight was, exactly, and the rituals had worked just fine….

  Better safe than sorry, she decided. If anything bad is going to break loose, it’ll be around midnight. And if nothing does, I’ll have gotten another good hour of study in.

  She opened her book again, and hoped for the best. A nice, quiet couple of hours.

  #

  Mark trailed along behind his three friends. As he had expected, they’d been waiting for him down by the car, drunk enough not to be worried about whether or not he’d show. They hailed him cheerfully as soon as he got within sight, and Phil popped the cap off a beer and handed it to him as soon as he reached the car.

  Now they were on their way to their destination, an off-campus apartment belonging to Quasi, the senior among them. Quasi—short for Quasimodo—was carrying the booze-box, for the reason that he was the only one of them capable of toting that much, drunk or sober. Quasi was built like a gorilla, and just about as hairy.

  He was also on a full academic scholarship to the anthro department. Phil claimed it was because he was the only living specimen of Neanderthal and they wanted to study him. Mark knew better—he'd seen Quasi's marks so far this semester. Impressive.