Mrs. Walton offered a rare smile. “Excellent, Miss Covington. And that raises another point: there are new threats constantly arising. If our government can’t use every tool at their disposal to protect us, how can we reasonably expect to be safe?”
Listening to her teacher extol the virtues of over-regulation was infuriating, since that’s what she seemingly lived to do: enforce arbitrary rules. And Walton certainly worked at the right place, because The Hawthorne Academy had an endless supply of them.
Want to write something about the Gravenhurst attack, or anything remotely political? Not gonna happen, students. Keep your thoughts to yourself, because your peers might have a differing opinion.
Interested in getting a tattoo, or a piercing someplace other than your ears? Sorry. ‘Risky behavior’ has been associated with body modification, according to some random study that was conducted somewhere. Academic penalties will be leveled against non-conformists.
Clothing and cosmetics were on the banned list, too. Yes, the literal fashion police: wearing black make-up, yoga pants, and even UGG boots could result in punitive measures. Though she had to admit, a ban on UGGs was probably for the best. Forcing everyone to wear maroon-colored uniforms with matching ties and cardigans seemed cruel and unusual, but banning those monstrosities was doing them a favor.
If the rules weren’t so irritating they’d be laugh-out-loud ridiculous. Thankfully she was eight blissful months from graduation, and this unforgiving trial-by-fire called high school would be in the rearview.
Calista parted her lips to reply when a chime rattled the loudspeaker, slicing off the first word of her sentence.
“Saved by the bell,” Mrs. Walton announced with a wave of her marker. “Class dismissed. Enjoy the pep rally, and have chapter sixteen read by Monday.”
The room teemed with activity, chairs clattering, knapsacks zipping. Seated in the back row, Kaz and Calista were the last to file out. They were approaching the threshold when they heard, “Miss Scott, may I have a moment?”
Calista winced, her muscles locked in place.
Kaz mouthed the words, ‘Good luck’ and slinked away, silently pulling the door closed behind him.
She turned to find Mrs. Walton standing at attention, hands clasped behind her back. “Miss Scott, I’m well aware of your penchant for assertiveness.”
Calista folded her arms tightly across her chest. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Please don’t misunderstand, a measure of independence is encouraged at The Hawthorne Academy. Although,” Walton said with a heavy sigh, “there is such a thing as too much self-reliance. I fear this rebellious persona you’ve crafted is becoming unhealthy.”
Rebellious persona? It was one of the more pointed insults Calista had ever received, and as a seventeen-year-old girl attending the most elite private school in Virginia, that was saying a lot. She’d already been reprimanded for deftly side-stepping the dress code: Calista eschewed tasteful gold hoops for black gauged earrings that tunneled through each lobe—wide enough to pass a pencil through—and wore heavy combat boots instead of classic Mary Janes. Not technically against the rules, though not exactly encouraged.
“You think my boots are the problem? Why I don’t get along with the Whitney Covingtons of this school?”
Walton placed a delicate hand on her chest. “I wasn’t implying that at all, Miss Scott. I would never pass judgment based on a student’s personal appearance.”
Calista cocked a suspicious eyebrow. “Mm-hmm.”
“What I am saying is that your predilection for conspiracy theories, and these outbursts—”
“Debates,” Calista cut in.
“These outbursts,” Walton persisted, adding a small wag of her finger, “have been increasing both in frequency and aggression. Comments have consequences, Miss Scott, and people take offense. Many of the ‘lying politicians’ you refer to are the parents of your classmates.”
“I didn’t know speaking my mind was a crime.”
“It absolutely is not,” Mrs. Walton explained, “though this isn’t solely about your attitude during today’s lecture. Part of education is the ability to nurture interpersonal relationships, work in groups, and communicate amicably with your peers.”
Calista dipped her head, suppressing a laugh. The word ‘peers’ was quite the embellishment, especially considering her financial situation; she was only enrolled at Hawthorne because her mother had secured one loan after another to pay the astronomical tuition fees. She’d grown up very much middle-class, while the other students were the offspring of investment bankers, politicos, and third-generation zillionaires. For years she’d painted on a smile and done her best to blend in with the pod people, and it had worked to a surprising degree, but after her life went sideways the daily performance was too exhausting to maintain. She’d been summarily knocked from the apex of Hawthorne’s elite social stratum, downgrading her from ‘popular’ to ‘pariah’. It was a fairly binary system without many degrees in between.
“Principal Vanderberg believes you deserve a measure of leeway,” Walton said plainly. “‘Take it easy on her. The poor lamb has had a rough go.’ But being coddled doesn’t build character. My father was a three-star general, and he taught discipline, personal responsibility. I didn’t have the luxury of being babied, and neither will my students. Just because you’ve been uprooted from your home, and your mother was—”
“I don’t need a recap,” Calista said.
Walton closed her eyes and let out a dramatic sigh. “I’m not paid nearly enough to deal with this.” She made a show of composing herself, as if she were physically exhausted from the conversation. “You’re on the cusp of being an adult, and you will behave accordingly in my classroom.”
Calista nodded weakly, eyes fixed on the scuffed toes of her boots.
“We are in agreement, then. I’ll see you Monday. Going forward, let’s keep these spirited debates to a minimum, shall we?”
Without another word Calista shrugged her knapsack over her shoulder, turned, and headed for the exit.
“And regarding the notes,” Walton added, “I’d like to remind you that Hawthorne’s rules exist for a reason. They are not flexible. Nor am I.”
The CIA’s Department of Occultism and Metaphysics was formed in 1943 after reports that Adolf Hitler was using astrologers as part of his military strategy.
At the time, DOM Director Archibald Thorne had a plaque above his office door. It read Temet Nosce: ‘Know thyself’.
The sentiment being that by discovering the paranormal—by studying it, by embracing it—we would gain a better understanding of our own existence.
Thorne retired in 1961, and after nearly two decades of research, no evidence of the paranormal had been discovered. The DOM was shuttered.
Decades later, the CIA would discover that magick not only existed, but that it could be harnessed and weaponized. This necessitated the funding of a new research division.
When the Director of FATHER was appointed, another plaque was placed above the same doorway. Once magick was no longer an abstract, and had become a quantifiable source of power, a new phrase was selected: Magickae est Mortis.
‘Magick is death.’
– Introduction to the FATHER Division Agent Handbook
2. Protocols
“ON A SCALE FROM one to shit-storm, how would you rate this operation?” The old man flipped to a fresh sheet on his notepad, pen poised to transcribe every lurid detail.
Agent Malek shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He’d been questioned post-mission before, but never quite like this, and certainly never in a location like this. Colloquially referred to as ‘The Pit’, the off-grid safe house was a windowless concrete dungeon no larger than a prison cell, illuminated by the dim glow of a stale yellow bulb.
Across the table sat a portly, bearded agent thirty years his senior, stuffed into a two-thousand-dollar suit. He introduced himself as Charles King, but neglected to me
ntion his title. It wasn’t necessary, because Malek, and everyone else at The Pentagon, had seen it on infinite memos. He was FATHER Division’s newly appointed Director.
A grizzled veteran was functioning as a stenographer? Doubtful. The data collectors were fresh-faced lads straight from The Farm, and they were paid rubbish. If a Director was slumming it in The Pit with a junior agent, he had ulterior motives.
“This is highly irregular,” Malek began, his proper British accent shot through with nerves, “but if I had to put a number on it? A nine, I suppose.”
“Damn.” King scribbled furiously, filling a sheet with scratches of indecipherable blue ink. He pressed hard enough to leave grooves in the paper.
The agent raised a tentative finger. “Possibly a nine and a half, if I’m being honest.”
The Director barked a grainy cough into his fist. “I read your report, and I heard from the local PD, but The Agency wants me to get your take on some specifics from the last couple of days. Things you may have neglected to mention the first time around.”
“The Agency is nothing if not thorough,” Malek said with a tiny chuckle.
“Uh-huh.” More scribbles. “So if you’ll be so kind, rookie, walk me through the last couple of days, starting with Thursday. And this time, don’t skimp on the details.”
There was something about the way he enunciated ‘rookie’—how it belched from his bloated face and floated across the room. It was almost a slur.
Over the last eighteen months Malek had been subjected to a battery of tests—some physical, most psychological. He had no idea when or where these tests would take place, and each had been more grueling (and in some cases, more baffling) than the last. That’s The Agency: opaque, secretive, all-consuming. Information is sucked into a vacuum and neatly compartmentalized. And they never reveal a shred of intel unless it’s absolutely necessary.
‘Need to know’, they liked to say. ‘If we told you we’d have to kill you’, but without the inflection of irony.
This was another game, Malek deduced: the location, the Director, the shroud of mystery surrounding this entire sham of a debrief. Scare tactics, nothing more.
Bugger this.
Malek straightened his posture. “All right,” he said, a defiant smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth. “It started with pizza: double cheese, pepperoni, those god-awful pineapple slices strewn about. We intercepted a van on the way to the residence. I’m not particularly fond of pizza myself, though I haven’t a clue why anyone would desecrate a perfectly fine—”
“Malek,” King interrupted, “on second thought, maybe you can skimp on a few details. Fast forward to the door knock.”
“Right. So the door swung open and Mrs. Carter answered, wobbling on shaky legs, a goblet of wine in her hand. When she asked where her pizza was I presented my card and gave her the standard story: that we had credible information about a cyber threat originating from their IP address. I also mentioned that since her husband worked security at the Pentagon, we were doing them a favor by ringing the bell and not calling in SWAT to do the dirty work for us.
“She screamed, and Mr. Carter came stumbling from the living room brandishing a shotgun. He mustn’t have been fond of F-Division because he leveled his weapon and demanded I get off his property, or he’d, ‘decorate his front hall with my limey face’. I calmly informed him that I was authorized to perform a warrantless search. That’s when he pulled the trigger.”
King glanced up from his notepad, bushy eyebrows raised. “So he fired? Just like that?”
Malek slung his arm over the back of the chair. “Just like that.”
“Huh. Ballsy move. Stupid, but ballsy.”
The agent ran a hand along his scalp, fingers massaging through a thicket of dark hair. Amazing—not even a scar. Half of his skull had been splattered across the Carter’s foyer, and it healed without any medical attention. He’d been tested by The Agency with blades and blunt objects, and his recovery time had been exemplary, but this was something else entirely; he’d never even lost a limb, let alone the better part of his cranium.
“I blame myself for pulling out a card,” Malek admitted. “I should have opened with the badge. Badges are shiny and authoritative. They carry more clout.”
“Any theories on why he pulled the trigger?” King asked.
“Mr. Carter was on indefinite stress leave—retired, more or less. At his age, he wasn’t coming back.”
“Right, I think I read that somewhere.” King shuffled a few notes around. “Stumbled across an artifact in the Deadly Hexes & Enchantments lab, from what I recall. Suffered some sort of breakdown.”
“Rapid exposure to magick can have that effect. At any rate, toxicology revealed Mr. Carter had self-medicated with alcohol and several anti-depressants; they believe the combination led to a bout of paranoia, causing him to fire. That, or he was stark raving bonkers. I suppose we’ll never know for sure.”
Extending the business card was supposed to have allayed the Carters’ anxiety, but the CIA’s newest black ops division was preceded by its reputation. Outside of The Agency, FATHER was a ghost story; a conspiracy discussed on the dark web, and given the same amount of credence as an urban Bigfoot sighting. Though to insiders, it was all too real: a notorious group of mad scientists and gunslingers operating with little oversight and even less accountability. Some wanted the division shut down, while others wanted admission so they could play in the most interesting sandbox at The Pentagon. But everyone feared them.
King flipped to a fresh sheet of paper and pressed his pen to the surface. “So, what did you feel?”
“Regret,” he said wistfully, and with a heavy sigh. “I had just purchased that suit and the fit was to die for. The dry cleaning bill is going to be horrendous, and even so, I can’t be certain all the blood and brain matter will come out of the fabric. I mean, they’re wizards with a mustard stain, but they’re not bloody sorcerers.”
“No,” King groaned, “how did the bullet feel?”
“Oh. That. I didn’t feel it, to be honest, but my hearing was askew for several minutes during re-gen. I could hear them conversing, but nothing they said made any sense.”
As Malek lay slumped against the wall, he could have sworn he heard Shelly Carter make a reference to a nearby castle made of despondent blueberry pancakes, and Douglas proudly declare he was the Emperor of an invisible moon that orbits Jupiter.
“And that’s when Aphra joined the party?” King said.
Malek nodded. “Standard operating procedure, if memory serves. As soon as the mission turned hostile she entered through the back door of the premises, and responded with reasonable force.”
“Reasonable force?” King shouted, face reddening beneath his beard. “The police report said, and I’m quoting here, ‘the bodies looked like empty toothpaste tubes.’”
Malek offered an awkward shrug and folded one leg over the other. It was hard to get comfortable in a rusted metal chair, but he was making do. “I suppose Aphra’s definition of ‘reasonable’ differs slightly from yours and mine.”
“Goddamned rookies.” He scribbled something, scratched it out, and then opted to tear the page from the pad, wadding it up and tossing it aside. “Then Aphra went upstairs?”
“Indeed. She went to secure the target. At least that was the intention.”
King snorted. “All right, so then what?”
“We recovered some sketchbooks and a very expensive paper shredder. There was a corkboard above his desk with some interesting photos, as well as a—”
“I saw the inventory,” King said, not bothering to look up from his pad. “Don’t jump ahead. We’re still talking about the physical altercation.” The Director let out a series of coughs; wide, open-mouthed barks that filled The Pit with the stench of cheap cigarettes and even cheaper coffee.
Repulsive as it was, the odor struck Malek with an unexpected craving. He reached for his breast pocket and half-extracted a pack of cigaret
tes, just enough for the Director to see the label. “May I?” Malek asked.
“No,” he said. “You may not.” A pudgy digit jutted towards the wall, and a metal square drilled into the mortar. The paint was peeling at the edges, but the faded logo was still intact: a cigarette encircled in red, bisected with a diagonal slash.
Malek relinquished the pack and continued. “After re-gen I went to restrain Aphra, right around the time she … well, I assume you saw the crime scene photos.”
“I wish I hadn’t, but yeah, I saw them. So when you went to the kid’s room, what did you feel?”
“I was struck with a pang of … well, I suppose it was guilt, if I’m capable of such a thing anymore. It wasn’t an overwhelming sensation, though. Sort of like sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night for a slice of cake: delicious in the moment, but you just know you’ll regret it in the morning.”
“No, what did you feel when you walked in wearing the Fox Model R4?” King glanced at Malek’s hand, where the technology in question was wrapped around his ring finger, no more conspicuous than a wedding band.
“Oh, right. I felt a signature, I can tell you that much. It was powerful.”
Jackson’s room had been a typical teenage man-cave, sparsely decorated with football memorabilia and trophies, walls lined with posters of exotic cars. As Malek neared the drawing desk his ring began to vibrate, and the silver band illuminated with a ghostly phosphorus green. Powerful magicks leave an ethereal footprint, like radiation after a nuclear bomb; the signature is detectable as long as you have cutting edge techno-alchemy and a competent Scrivener to wear it. Thanks to an aggressive recruitment program and patented Fox Tech, The Agency had both.
The North Valley Grimoire Page 2