The Gambler Grimoire: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Wicklow College of Arcane Arts Book 1)

by BR Kingsolver

  I grabbed my wand and my phone. The phone I set to record, then dropped it in the pocket of my skirt. I cast a quick spell, “Silentium,” before opening the door and going down the stairs to the garden.

  The door to the lab was locked, but I cast a spell and heard a faint click. Easing the door open, I entered and moved through the potting area and the apothecary lab. The lights were on in the alchemy lab.

  Peeking in, I saw Emma bent over a table. To one side of her, liquid was bubbling in a beaker on a hot plate. I could smell alcohol and the mixed scents of several flowers and their foliage that were lying there. On the other side of her was a slim green book with a red spine, and an older, shabbier book that looked like a grimoire.

  I dropped the quiet spell. “Whipping up a love potion?” I asked.

  Emma whirled around. She wore gloves, a mask, and a face shield. Good lab practice, but usually reserved for dealing with nastier ingredients.

  “That’s what Lia hoped that book might contain,” I continued.

  The expression on Emma’s face was exactly that of a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  “You know, something I’ve been wondering is whether it would be weirder to sleep with my father or to kill him. Of course, I think my relationship with my father is probably very different than yours.”

  The blood drained from her face. “I-I-I never slept with him.”

  “But he wanted you to?”

  She leaned back against the workbench. “He was often inappropriate. Yes.”

  “What tipped you over the edge?”

  I could tell she was fishing for something to say. Emotions flitted across her face, and her mouth opened and closed a couple of times.

  Then her eyes narrowed, and her posture subtly changed. “He was drunk, and made a pass at me. When I told him no, he got nasty. Said I had no talent or intelligence, and if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have any future except to play witch in an herb shop like Agnes. I could deal with that, but then he started on my mother. He said some incredibly vile things about her, and I just snapped.”

  “You shouldn’t have run. You should have confessed and said he attacked you and you were defending yourself. But you didn’t take the book, did you?”

  Her eyes darted toward it, then she shook her head. “Stupid book. No, I didn’t take it. I didn’t even think about it until you showed up and started asking questions.”

  “Why did Lia have to die?” I asked. “Was she blackmailing you?”

  “Stupid bitch.”

  Her hand whipped up, holding her wand. “Fulmen!”

  I held my wand before me. The lightning bolt hit it, and the crack of thunder was deafening in the small space. Smoke came from the broken end of her wand, the other half lying on the floor in front of her.

  “Were you with her and Corey when they went to Agnes’s shop?” I asked. “I think that was the spell that disabled Agnes. Most witches spend their whole lives and never see or engage in a mage battle. Most witches have no idea what kind of potential there is in wand magic. Of course, since you’ve hidden your alchemical talent, you never would have taken my course in how to craft a wand. I go into a lot of depth on the theory and materials that most people don’t know about. Praeligo!”

  With the girl bound, I pulled my phone from my pocket, ended the recording, and called Lieutenant Barclay. Maybe I should have called Kagan, but Barclay was nicer to look at.

  “This is Savanna Robinson. Could you please round up Lieutenant Kagan and Chief Crumley and come to the alchemy laboratory next to the greenhouse on campus? I have an interesting tale of murder and magic you all might like to hear.”

  I also had a feeling that a thorough search of the greenhouse and labs could turn up some of the missing computers and books they hadn’t found at Corey’s.

  Chapter 34

  A group of people who had become my friends in Wicklow sat around a table in a corner of the Faculty Club. I was doing my best to ignore the shots someone had bought for me, and was sticking to wine. I realized I needed to slow down on the wine, too.

  “Let me get this straight,” David Hamilton said, “this girl was Brett’s daughter? Did he know this when she came to school here?”

  “I’m pretty sure he did. I know that he paid child support for another of his daughters who grew up here in town. My understanding is that Emma had spent a few summers here with her grandparents when she was growing up. Whether she ever saw him then, I don’t know. Her grandfather wasn’t one of Brett’s biggest fans.”

  “I would guess not,” Kelly said. “So, Emma beat his head in because he was being a lech and a jerk, then she ran, but she was seen?”

  “Yes, that stupid book. Ophelia and Agnes were watching. I don’t think they were together, and I don’t know if they were watching Brett or Emma. Both wanted the book. Probably both had an interest in blackmailing him. When he turned up dead, Ophelia, at least, switched her blackmail to Emma. It was all a game to her.”

  “And how does Joshua Tupper fit into all this?” Hamilton asked.

  “This happened before Ophelia broke up with him. He was angry with her, jealous of Corey, and had fantasies of selling the book for a lot of money. In his mind, she cheated him out of his half of the book proceeds.”

  “Speaking of which, what is going on with the book?” Steven asked. When I had recovered it and given it to Kelly, we discovered the title of it on an inside page was ‘Spells to Foretell the Future.’ The cover itself was blank. Analysis of the physical book placed its manufacture as sometime in the 1950s.

  “Ruth Buckley, who is a professor of divination, took a look at it,” Kelly said. “Evidently the spells it contains are for divination, scrying, and pre-cognition. Basically, if you cast them while asking a question as to whether something might happen, most of the spells will return a yes or no answer.”

  “That could still be useful,” Lowell said.

  Kelly cocked her head. “Yes, but you’re not going to spend five or ten minutes casting a spell to find out if the next cast of the dice will be a seven or not. And it doesn’t do you much good to know if a stock will go up tomorrow, since it wouldn’t tell you if it goes up three cents or three dollars, now would it?”

  “And it wouldn’t tell you what it would do the following day,” David said. “There are a lot of magic spells that are basically useless.”

  “Exactly. Ruth said that one of the spells might tell you if the plane you are taking tomorrow will crash,” I said. “Considering that the grand majority of planes don’t crash, you could cast the spell several thousand times, and unless a plane crashed, you still wouldn’t know if the spell really worked or not.”

  “So, Agnes ended up with the book,” David said. “And everyone sort of forgot about it until you showed up.”

  “I guess. Ophelia did a lot of research over the summer, discovered Trent McCarthy’s offer, and decided she could use a little extra cash. I still haven’t figured out if Emma went to Agnes along with Ophelia and Corey, but at least the latter two tried to strong-arm her. It was about that time that Emma started to worry about Ophelia. She has smartly clammed up and is hiding behind her lawyer.”

  “Has anyone contacted Trent McCarthy about the book?” Steven asked.

  “Edmund—Dr. Phillips—has,” Kelly said. “Sent him a few pictures of it. Not to sell it, just as a professional courtesy so he would know it exists and that we have it. McCarthy said he had seen something similar but wouldn’t pay ten cents for it.”

  “Any idea what the worth of that other book is?” I asked.

  “The Maleficium? Priceless, and not for sale. We notified the Council, and as the Wicklow Museum is a certified repository, we’ve locked it away in the deepest depths of our archives. Available to Council-certified researchers for limited study.”

  “Where could he have acquired such a thing?” I asked.

  “Somewhere in his travels,” Lowell said. “Definitely not from Harold or me. If I had to gu
ess, somewhere in Eastern Europe or the Middle East or India. There are dealers who are not registered with the Council. I’m convinced he got it from someone who really didn’t know what it was. Very possibly a non-witch. Brett didn’t have the money to afford it otherwise.”

  “Do you suppose there really is a Gambler Grimoire?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” Kelly said.

  “How about a Wandsmith Grimoire?” David asked. “Some of the more esoteric branches of magic might never have been codified.”

  “That wand of yours is very unusual,” Lowell said.

  “And expensive, I’ll bet,” Kelly chimed in. The check for sixty thousand dollars from Kelly’s mom had come in—proceeds for five wands Harold Merriweather had sold for me.

  I shrugged. “The materials alone are too expensive for me to duplicate it. I traded a custom wand to a gemstone broker in Antwerp for the ruby at the tip. The inner bark of oak, rowan, willow, and yew are braided together and left flexible, fixed inside to the stiff handle of applewood by a cabochon of amber with an included wasp, set using owl talons. The moonstone on the pommel is set with talons from a kestrel. The entire wand is sheathed in kelpie hide bound with silver. Each part of the manufacture is carried out during a different phase of the moon, and the final binding and blessing was done on a full moon during Summer Solstice. Such timing requires some planning.”

  “Kelpie hide?” Lowell asked, laughing. “And where would you be getting that?”

  “I was in a pub in a town on the coast near Edinburgh when a young man picked me up and took me for a ride. I knew something was wrong when he leaped off a cliff into the sea. It was touch and go for a while, but I managed to drown him and drag the body to shore. It was a full moon, and it took me until dawn to skin him.”

  “You’re pulling my leg,” Steven said.

  “You drowned a kelpie?” David appeared quite skeptical.

  Lowell punched him in the shoulder. “There’s no such thing as a kelpie.”

  “Of course. If he had drowned me, I wouldn’t be here to tell the story, now, would I?”

  Some of my friends were staring at me with open skepticism. Kelly was laughing so hard tears were running down her cheeks.

  “A ride. I’ll bet. Goddess, I need to go on holiday with you. And how much for a common, run-of-the-mill Savanna Robinson custom wand?” Kelly asked when she finished laughing. “I’ll forego the kelpie hide.”

  “Ten to twenty-five thousand retail. I’d give you a twenty-five percent discount because you’re a friend. Considering my time, I really don’t make much from a wand.” I looked to Lowell. “Now that Harold’s out of business, are you interested in peddling a wand for me now and then?”

  “I would be happy to let people know if one were available.” He gave me a faint smile and a wink. “Of course, any good word put in with your father would be appreciated. I’ve never known a daughter of a councilman before.”

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  Books by BR Kingsolver

  Wicklow College of Arcane Arts

  The Gambler Grimoire

  The Revenge Game

  The Rift Chronicles

  Magitek

  War Song

  Soul Harvest

  Rosie O’Grady’s Paranormal Bar and Grill

  Shadow Hunter

  Night Stalker

  Dark Dancer

  Well of Magic

  Knights Magica

  The Dark Streets Series

  Gods and Demons

  Dragon’s Egg

  Witches’ Brew

  The Chameleon Assassin Series

  Chameleon Assassin

  Chameleon Uncovered

  Chameleon’s Challenge

  Chameleon’s Death Dance

  Diamonds and Blood

  The Telepathic Clans Saga

  The Succubus Gift

  Succubus Unleashed

  Broken Dolls

  Succubus Rising

  Succubus Ascendant

  Other books

  I’ll Sing for my Dinner

  Trust

  Short Stories in Anthologies

  Here, Kitty Kitty

  Bellator

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