Worldweavers: Cybermage

by Alma Alexander

  “You said you trusted my instincts.”

  “I do, but it all feels like an insane dream right now, and I’m not certain that I believe any of it actually happened. Exactly what do you want to do next?”

  “Absolutely nothing, until I figure out what I already did,” Thea said.

  Terry stared at her for several long moments with his mouth hanging open, and then shook his head sharply. “I suppose you’ll let me in on the secret, when you do.”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” she promised with a grin. “I’d better get back to my room now. It’s been a long night.”

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “All twenty-seven seconds of it.”

  She smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and tapped ENTER.

  Magpie wasn’t in the room when Thea materialized there. Thea was grateful; there was far too much she needed to think about.

  Thea slipped into bed with one of her Tesla books, and was quickly absorbed. Pigeons had played an increasingly essential part in Tesla’s later life; when he could not make his daily feeding time in one of New York’s parks, he sent other people to take his place. Tesla once disappeared from a formal dinner at which he had been the guest of honor, and was found a short time later in his favorite park, late at night, standing quite still, completely covered with pigeons, who had settled on his head and shoulders and outstretched arms.

  It was an arresting image. Unable to read much past that point, Thea put the book away; it was very near to lights-out, anyway. Magpie still hadn’t returned, and Thea lay awake for a while, but she fell asleep before she saw any signs of Magpie’s return.

  Her dreams were full of a rush of wings, glimpses of gray pigeon feathers, and the sound of distant cooing. At one point she stood in a rain of feathers, all gray and silver-pale except for one that was black as night and twice the size of the pigeon plumage, falling like an omen, a dark premonition. But there was nothing coherent in those dreams, nothing that she could have interpreted as a message of any significance. She woke suddenly, with a start. The only thing that remained was an odd sense of anticipation, and a fading memory of the rustle of many wings.

  Magpie was in her bed, grumbling and knuckling her eyes. They were both late and didn’t exchange more than a couple of words in passing.

  It was one of those breathless days when Thea felt she was running as fast as she could just to stay in the same place. She simply seemed to be late for everything. Classes backed up and stacked up on top of one another, the few spare moments between them spent juggling books and notes and homework assignments and running down corridors with her backpack bouncing painfully against her legs as she rummaged through it for the things that she would need for the next class.

  Somewhere during the third class of the day, mathematics, Ben passed a note to Thea while Mr. Siffer had his back turned for a moment.

  Can you tell the Walrus to quit making faces at you? People are starting to wonder.

  Thea looked up, startled, and looked around for Kristin. Ben was quite correct; her face was a mask of blazing curiosity, and her eyes glittered. She brightened as she realized she finally had Thea’s attention, and mouthed something like, Well?

  Thea, glancing at Mr. Siffer, who was starting to turn, managed a swift and unequivocal gesture of drawing her index finger across her throat accompanied by a suitably ferocious scowl. Cut it out. Not now!

  Mr. Siffer turned fully around, sweeping the class with a gimlet gaze, and Thea dropped her eyes and stared studiously at her notebook. But the escape was only temporary. After class, Kristin stuffed her books untidily into her backpack and made a bee-line for Thea’s corner.

  “Well?” Kristin asked breathlessly.

  “Not now,” Thea said, glancing meaningfully at the other students. “You know I can’t.”

  Kristin eyed Thea’s wrist hopefully. “You could…”

  “No. Later, Kristin!”

  “That exciting, was it?” Kristin said with a grin.

  “All right, what did you do?” Ben demanded, leaning across his own desk.

  “Terry didn’t tell you?” Thea asked carefully.

  Ben’s shoulders hunched up defensively. “Tell me what?”

  Thea rolled her eyes. “Look,” she said, “I promise I’ll catch you up, but first I need to figure out a few things myself. I’m not holding out, and I’m not going to simply disappear, so you can stop watching me like a cat at a mouse hole, Kristin, because right now I’d rather everyone’s attention was focused somewhere else.”

  “Yes, well, it was my idea,” Kristin said.

  “And full credit will be given, if you absolutely insist,” Thea shot back. “But wouldn’t you rather wait and see just how much trouble you’d be in?” She hoisted her backpack on one shoulder and turned to give Ben and Kristin one last indignant look before flouncing out of the classroom.

  “Is she always that snippy?” she heard Kristin ask.

  “Not before you turned up,” said Ben.

  But they both backed off, and she had a breather, a space in which she simply sat back and waited to see what would happen next. She had been winging it, as Terry had pointed out, and she had finally run out of impulses, waiting to see what the response would be to the things she had set in motion.

  Nearly forty-eight hours later, crossing the quad on her way to the library, she saw Terry hurrying toward her across the lawn, waving urgently. Even as she slowed her pace, she saw his expression change to one of resignation, and another familiar voice spoke behind Thea.

  “Ah, good,” Humphrey May said. “Just the two people I wanted to talk to.”

  There had been no warning that Humphrey May was at the school, or on his way—no time for Thea and Terry to get their stories straight.

  “I had hoped,” Humphrey continued pleasantly as Terry reached them, “to just let you two get on with trigonometry and Shakespeare for a while, but I need to pick your brains.”

  He was smiling slightly, professionally, but the smile never reached his serious blue eyes. Thea stole a quick glance at Terry. Humphrey sounded as though he was simply there for a pleasant chat, not to confront them over breaking and entering. On the other hand, there was something to be said for avoiding a scene, and they had no way of knowing if FBM agents were waiting just out of sight to take them both in.

  “What’s up?” Thea asked. She managed to keep her voice level, but her heart was beating very fast and a flush was creeping into her cheeks.

  “It seems,” Humphrey began, almost unwillingly, “that somehow it was let slip that…” He looked Thea straight in the eye. “You’d better make sure we aren’t overheard,” he said, nodding at her keypad. “I could shield us, but in this place that would reveal rather than conceal if anyone was watching.”

  Thea obligingly tapped a couple of words into her keypad, hit ENTER, and looked up again without saying a word.

  “I think we’re in trouble. Again.” Humphrey hesitated once more, and when he spoke again it was to utter a name that Thea had not been expecting—or at least not so soon. “The Alphiri,” he said.

  Thea felt the familiar sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “What about them?”

  “Let me just say that I appear to have a somewhat loose-lipped assistant,” Humphrey said, with a touch of acid. “One who has a weakness for a pretty face, at any rate. Rafe was there when we talked of…of what you and your friends had come to the professor’s house to help out with. Mention was made of pigeons. Rafe was mightily amused at the idea of hunting down individual birds in New York City. He mentioned something along those lines to my other intern, a comely young woman by the name of Kay Otis. Next thing we know, Miss Otis has vanished. And as of yesterday…the Alphiri have been observed stalking pigeons in New York.”

  Thea stared at Humphrey, trying to imagine the Alphiri chasing down birds in the streets of New York. The image was ludicrous. But then she thought of the ramifications of the whole idea, and any notion of humor v
anished.

  “If they have figured out the same thing that you figured out, through Rafe’s ill-advised confidence in Miss Otis, we might have lost this race already,” Humphrey said. “Something was discovered back at Headquarters in the wake of Miss Otis’s disappearance, something that hints pretty strongly that some of your old friends are involved here—the Faele, perhaps, and even the Trickster himself. Your Coyote spirit. The same one who turned up last summer as young Beltran de los Reyes’s tutor. The same one who was involved in Diego’s bargain with the Alphiri.”

  Thea flinched at the name. Terry saw it, and bit his lip; Humphrey did, too, and reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We—I—gave you a heavy burden to bear in that matter. But Diego, however powerful he might potentially have been, was an untrained and ignorant child. If the Alphiri can actually harness Tesla himself—the only quad-Elemental in history—we are in trouble so deep that even I am not sure where it all might lead. Thea…we need your help, once more.”

  “The pigeons are his magic,” Thea said. “His Elemental side. Without that power restored to him, he is not what the Alphiri seek. But he himself took that out of himself. Can that Elemental magic be restored? Is it even possible?”

  “It’s Elemental magic,” Humphrey said. “You’d know more about the fine detail of that, even now, than I do. But with Elemental magic, everything is theoretically possible, even though a high price might be demanded for some things to occur.”

  “We need to find the pigeons,” Thea said. “Before the Alphiri do.”

  Humphrey appeared to be on the verge of saying something else, but then apparently reconsidered. “But they’re pigeons,” he said. “Let’s say they are truly Elemental in nature and not subject to the lifespan of an ordinary bird, and that they are still around. From what you’ve told me of your own vision of them, they still don’t look any different from any ordinary bird out there. Rafe might have been a reckless fool here, but he does have a point—chasing pigeons in New York borders on lunacy.

  And we have no way of knowing if there is even anything to find.”

  Almost a year had passed since Thea had rescued Humphrey from the lonely place he had allowed a spellspam to trap him into. He had been anxious back then, uneasy, concerned—but not frightened. This time, he was afraid.

  “I’ve been working on some of the equations you left with me,” Terry said suddenly, filling the gap of silence. “I think maybe I’ve found a few useful things. Can you give me another twenty-four hours?”

  Humphrey hesitated. “If need be,” he said at last. “But please understand—if there is something there that can be useful, you’d better find it before the Alphiri do. Time is of the essence here.”

  Thea’s heart thumped painfully again. He hadn’t mentioned the cube, but this might imply that he was waiting for them to own up, that it might go easier with them if they would simply step up and make a full confession….

  Terry cleared his throat and Thea drew a deep breath. She looked away, aware that she had been almost mesmerized, her mind snared by the myriad unpleasant possibilities.

  “Are you going to be staying at the Academy for a day or so? Or do you have to get back to the problem?” Terry said.

  The question seemed almost artless, but Humphrey answered it.

  “I’ll be here for another day. If that’s what it takes,” he said.

  Thea glanced at the two of them, and then at her wrist pad. Touching the ENTER key brought them back to the quad, with other people hurrying by. It was starting to look like it would rain again.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Humphrey said, and turned away to stride across the quad in the direction of the administration building.

  “He’s afraid,” Terry said softly, watching the FBM mage’s retreating lanky frame. “It might have been Rafe who spilled the beans, but both of the people involved in this fiasco report directly to Humphrey. He’s the one ultimately responsible. He took his eye off the ball back at the office, watching you, and now he’s painted into a corner.”

  Someone was calling Terry’s name, and he turned his head to see his sister running across the quad toward him. Trailing in Tess’s wake, dragging her feet but with her eyes alight with unwilling interest, came Magpie.

  “What did he want?” Tess asked breathlessly as she reached them. “What’s he doing back here?”

  Even as Terry opened his mouth to answer, another voice came from behind Thea.

  “All right, now can you talk about it?” Kristin, trailed by a furious-looking Ben, was standing only a few feet away.

  “What, are you two following me now?” Thea said, a little sharply.

  “Not exactly, but I was going over to the library. I saw you heading there, and I thought maybe we could, you know, talk about stuff.” Kristin shut up abruptly, suddenly going red, aware that everyone’s eyes were on her. “Well, all right,” she said, suddenly defensive, “I’m curious. So sue me.”

  Thea rolled her eyes.

  “All right, since everyone’s here, come on, then, all of you.”

  A quick tap on the ENTER key shifted the world around them for the second time in a handful of minutes. The air was suddenly a little warmer, and the school grounds around them were noticeably emptier than they had been moments ago.

  Thea rounded on Terry. “Terry, what’s going on?” she said, letting her wrist drop. “You look like you already know what Humphrey is here about. But it can’t be that—they can’t have found out anything already…”

  “You did steal it, after all!” Kristin said. “Didn’t you?”

  Ben glared at her. “Haven’t you done enough damage?” Kristin just shrugged, and Ben turned his attention back to Terry and Thea. “You didn’t, did you? Tell me you didn’t listen to her! I told you that was a preposterous idea.”

  “You’d be right,” Terry said. He quirked an eyebrow at Thea, and received a nod in response. “We did go in.”

  Ben did a horrified double take. “We?” he said. “You actually went with her? Have you both gone crazy?”

  “Well, it was that or blowing the whistle on the whole thing. I was hardly likely to let her go in alone.”

  “They got you, didn’t they?” Ben said. “That’s why Humphrey’s here, isn’t he? How much trouble are you in?”

  Terry glanced at Thea again. “It isn’t public, and that’s only to be expected—they would never admit that someone waltzed in and out of their highest-security area at the Bureau headquarters,” he said. “But I stayed behind at the Nexus after you left, just to keep an eye on things for a little while. By the time I went to bed, everything was still quiet. And there’s been very little chitchat over the last day or so. But when I checked this morning…” He shook his head. “Nothing firm, nothing that can be nailed down, or actually pinned on anyone. But there was a definite sense of a hornet’s nest being upset when I got back to the computer this morning. And one name kept popping up.”

  “Thea’s?” Ben asked, appalled.

  Terry shook his head. “A certain Miss Kay Otis,” he said, very quietly. “Apparently she’s gone missing in a very strange way. And so has a very important artifact.”

  “What did you do with it?” Kristin asked.

  “With what?” Magpie asked, head swiveling from one to another as she tried to make sense of what was being discussed. “What are you all talking about?”

  “They took the cube,” Tess said faintly. “They actually walked into the Federal Bureau of Magic headquarters and stole the Tesla cube.”

  “Why?” Magpie said blankly.

  “Because she thought it was a good idea,” Ben growled, tossing his head in Kristin’s direction.

  “Not that I know much about it,” Magpie said, “but even given that someone might have thought it was a good idea…how? It isn’t like you can just wander into the heart of the FBM—”

  “So who’s this Kay Otis person, then?” Kristin interrupted.r />
  “Actually, that name sounds awfully familiar,” Magpie said, frowning. “Have we met her?”

  “Kay Otis. Kayotis. Coyote,” Terry said. “Thea says that it’s the Trickster himself.”

  “In the midst of the FBM? You can’t be serious! Do they have any idea?”

  “Do they think she took the cube?”

  “How did they ever let her in there?”

  “Didn’t they realize—”

  “Everybody just shut up a sec and let me think,” Thea said, exasperated. “What about Kay Otis, Terry? How do you mean, ‘gone missing in a very strange way’?”

  “Don’t know, exactly. What information I have right now is sketchy at best.”

  “I don’t understand, I really don’t, how you two weren’t nabbed in the first five seconds that you were there,” said Ben grimly.

  “They didn’t nab us because she really is what Humphrey said she is,” Terry said with a sudden grin. “If anyone else had tried to waltz in there, I swear it would have been alarms all the way. She just made the place…forget us.”

  “An Elemental,” Tess said.

  “Do you think that the place might have remembered you, just a little, after all?” Ben said. “If they do know it was you, Thea—if they have any idea what you two idiots did last night, you’ll be lucky if it ends with you just being kicked out of school and not in court.”

  “Isn’t he always the bright ray of sunshine,” Kristin said.

  “This is all your fault,” Ben said, rounding on her. “You and your brilliant idea.”

  “Actually, if Kay Otis is the Trickster, I’m awfully glad she had the idea,” Thea said. “We’d better get back. I’m guessing there’s one person at the Academy right now who knows what’s going on.”

  “Humphrey wasn’t saying very much, if you mean him,” Terry said thoughtfully. “But I think he screwed up. He was too focused on you, and trusted this Rafe fellow far too freely with what was going on back at Headquarters in Humphrey’s absence. When Rafe screwed up, so did Humphrey, simply because he’s Rafe’s boss. But he came out here to find things out, not tell us what he knows. If he knew that we…that Thea took that cube, he would be out here with guns blazing. But he didn’t come to demand, he came to ask. That was as much humility as I’ve ever seen in a senior FBM mage.”