by D. R. Perry
“He can’t. I’m not the kind of legal eagle who’d get on his dad’s payroll.” The owl shifter opened a battered and dog-eared paperback, holding it up over her face as she read. Olivia Adler sure knew how to make an exit without moving an inch. "I'm the enemy as far as Gino Gitano's concerned."
“Um, Bianca?” I hovered in front of her, completely aware that half of me was under the table. I looked like I wore a wooden tutu. That was the whole point, of course.
“Hmm?” She turned past the flyleaf on her book and ran one finger down the Table of Contents. She glanced up and froze.
“Thank you.” I bowed at the waist, making a little flourish with one hand. "For everything." I winked.
Her laughter rang out but stopped at the stacks, muffled by all the books. I couldn't feel the incorporeal corners of my mouth turn up, but I remembered the sensation of my long-gone body smiling as I watched and listened to her mirth. Once she’d caught her breath, Bianca explained for the peanut gallery. Off to my right, Kimiko giggled. Olivia’s book jiggled a bit. A puff of something way too cold to be smoke misted out from behind Bianca’s head, forming a pale-gray nimbus around her lavender hair.
I watched Mr. Waban stifling his laughter and decided he wasn’t so bad, stuffy old dragon or not. But just as I’d figured that maybe the old fellow could redeem my opinion of his entire category of shifters, Willie and Iggy showed up.
“We promised not to argue, and that’s exactly what we’ll do.” Wilfred’s finger was in Ignacius Harcourt’s face.
“Word crime!” Ignacius snorted. “You just implied we’d fight, airhead! Can't believe Hertha married a dumb blond like you.”
“Shh!” Wilfred Harcourt pointed at me. “He’s here. Stop.”
Ignacius folded his arms over his chest, stopping short of the table I stood in the middle of. Wilfred pushed through to join me.
“Hmm.” Bianca gazed at Wilfred, then glanced at Ignacius. “Interesting.”
“I beg your pardon?” Wilfred raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, it’s just unusual for the newer ghosts to pass through solid objects so easily.” Bianca shrugged. “Usually, doing something like that means you’ve been incorporeal for at least a decade or two. And it’s just been since March for you. You’re pretty strong for a newbie. Congratulations.”
“Ah.” Mr. Waban’s head moved in a slow nod. “Hello, Wilfred.”
I turned my head, watching the air dragon’s ghost narrow his eyes at the librarian. Beyond his translucent profile, I saw Kimiko wipe tears off her face, smearing mascara to make dark circles under her eyes. I’d almost forgotten she’d been standing right there when Blaine’s stepdad had died. Been murdered, actually.
Olivia patted her shoulder absently, staring off in Wilfred’s direction above her paperback. I tried to catch the owl shifter’s eye, still wondering whether she could actually see us ghosts. She shouldn’t be able to. Her eyes were naturally amber-colored and hadn’t gone all owlish. I’d seen Olivia Adler enough times to know that she looked unusual for a nonmagical shifter. The magical ones carried attributes of their shifted forms while human, like Blaine’s smoke rings and Kimiko’s striped hair. Olivia's coloring marked her as more than mundane.
But Olivia Adler didn’t look like a garden-variety owl shifter, or act like one, either. All the naturally occurring magical types except Tanuki and Dragons had vanished. But this was the third time I thought I’d caught her looking at incorporeal people, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
“Bianca, you really ought to ask her how she can see me.” I locked gazes with my medium, then jerked my chin at Olivia.
Bianca waved a hand between Wilfred and Olivia. “So, how long have you been able to see ghosts while unshifted?”
“Um.” Olivia blinked. Her hand dropped from Kimiko’s shoulder, which was just as well since the Tanuki sprang from her seat as though the poor owl shifter was radioactive or something. “Hoo, boy.” Olivia put the book down. “It’s been on and off since I stopped taking all the meds that made me diurnal. My mom thinks it’s some kind of weird side effect that’ll go away eventually.”
“And you didn’t bother telling us you could see ghosts before now, why?” Kimiko put her hands on her hips.
“I never knew I could in human form.” Olivia’s gaze dropped to the table. “And like I said, it’s probably some temporary fluke, anyway.”
“I find that hard to believe.” I watched Kimiko’s face as she spoke, so I saw what Olivia missed. The Tanuki wasn’t angry or even snarky. She looked almost excited, like an explorer discovering uncharted territory.
“Believe it, or you don’t get my help on this anymore.” Tony slapped one hand down on top of the encoded letter. I hadn’t even noticed he’d returned.
“But don’t you think it seems impossible for her not to know something like that?” Kimiko tapped one foot after another against the parquet floor, bouncing slightly. “She must have some idea. It’s so mysterious. I mean, who puts small children on medication for their whole entire lives, anyway? People hiding something that’s who. I wonder if LORA can figure it out.”
The chair squeaked as it dragged against the floor and the flip-flops on Olivia’s feet flapped on the wood like wings against air, carrying her away. Kimiko’s hands went to her mouth, and Bianca’s jaw dropped. Tony dashed after her but came back a few moments later.
“She took off. Literally.” He sank back into the chair he’d occupied before. “I will too unless you promise to—”
“Apologize?” Kimiko nodded and sat back down. “Yeah, I went off like an insensitive mystery-solving nerd. I screwed up. Absolutely. And to you, too, Tony. I should have listened and dropped it. Sorry.”
“Forgiven on my end.” Tony leaned over the table again, peering at the yellowed paper. “If only your mate swallowed pride like you, the pack would be way better off.”
Kimiko was once bitten, twice shy. She bypassed that line of conversation so far she might as well have detoured through the Under. Instead, she doodled on the blank notebook page next to her and muttered something about cyphertext.
“I’m not going to bother asking where Olivia went.” Henry sat back down in front of the box, eying the notebook the owl shifter had left behind. “I need to keep on checking these memory charms. For great justice.”
“Yeah.” Tony leaned one hand against his cheek, leaning forward to peer at the paper again. “Until all their data belongs to us.”
“Well, what can the ghosts and I do to help?” Bianca stretched in her seat.
“Ghosts, plural?” Henry glanced around. “You mean, besides the library helper ghosts?”
“Yeah.” Bianca nodded at me. “Horace is here, of course, but also Wilfred and Ignacius.”
“Wilfred?” Henry raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Harcourt?” Henry stood up and straightened the leather jacket he always wore. “Hello, sir. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I had no idea you were here.”
“Please, tell him to forget about all those old pre-Reveal formalities.” Wilfred sighed, drawing one weary hand down and slightly through his face. “And let him know that any friend of Blaine’s is a friend of mine.”
Bianca relayed the message, and Henry sat down, a faint yet relieved grin on his face. I had to stop myself from floating up through the table as my pride for her inflated like a helium balloon. She didn’t muddle anything important or try to frame it according to her own speech patterns and perspective. Other Mediums, even on occasion the experienced and important ones like Delilah Redford, did.
Bianca was nothing fancy in solid terms, just plain according to them in so many ways even, with the changing hair color. But it suited her spirit, I thought. To me, she was like water—authentic, original, crystal clear, and the first thing anyone crossing a desert thinks of. I glanced at the dragon ghosts, closed my eyes for a moment, and considered my situation.
Ghosts were all in a perpetual state of passage, halfway between where we’d been and where we sti
ll had to go. The world needed more mediums like Bianca Brighton. More mundane solids like her, too. The first question she asked most people was “How can I help?” I wasn’t sure I deserved to be her partner. Only she could decide whether and how she wanted me in her life.
A thud slammed the door on those thoughts, heavily. Henry Baxter fell to the floor. His arms and legs flailed, heavy boots striking hardwood, the fallen chair, and the nearest table leg.
“LORA, call Maddie.” Tony’s voice rang through the library at a volume most wouldn’t risk with a dragon librarian present. “Lynn too.”
Tony narrowed his eyes, but not before I saw them go catlike. He pounced on Henry, leveraging his body weight to keep the vampire from breaking himself or anything else. All I could think about was the wooden furniture everywhere and how a broken chair could stake him or something. My death energy sense was tingling. Someone in this room would risk death in the not-too-distant future. Maybe even more than one of them.
Somehow, Tony’s shoulders seemed more bulky, indicating some sort of partial shift. That should have been impossible for a natural cat shifter like Tony Gitano. Only the magical shifters could partly shift anything but their eyes without a magipsychic charm. Maybe it was just the fact that he still wore his trench coat. For all I knew, he had such devices in the shoulder pads or something.
“What do we do?” Kimiko’s face had gone pale.
“Get what’s affecting him.” Bianca tilted her head and stood on her toes, trying to get a good look at Henry’s hands.
“Left. It’s small and in his hand,” I said. Energy was coming off of the object through the vampire’s flesh and bone, something no living Psychic could see. Even Clairvoyants needed the right line of sight.
Tony threw his body across Henry’s, holding on to his left wrist, so his fist stood raised, as though it held an invisible Excalibur out of a pond or something. And Taki Waban, dragon librarian, reached down to pry open the vampire’s stronger-than-human fingers. Bianca slipped a particolored mitten onto one of her hands and scooped the small, transparent object from his palm.
“Is he okay?” Bianca blinked down at Henry, who’d stopped moving altogether. I thought he looked most sincerely dead.
“Gimme that bag, Maddie.” Lynn Frampton slid on her knees past the dragon librarian and the cat-man like she’d been a softball all-star instead of Valedictorian. I didn’t know her that well; maybe she’d been both. She stopped beside Henry, then reached one hand up and behind her toward her roommate. Maddie May tossed the plastic bag filled with ruby liquid underhand. Lynn caught it and shoved it in Henry’s mouth.
“Drink!” Tony pulled one fist back, then slammed it into Henry’s chest. “You can’t conk out on us now!”
I understood what was going on. Lynn’s coursework meant she knew, too. And Tony must have either been minoring in some medical stuff or doing an additional directed study on undead creatures. Vampires, especially Psychic or magically-empowered ones, could go into a deep sleep if something drained enough of their energy. It’d last for years if something didn’t wake them up. Blood was one of those things, but cold, bagged blood like the girls had brought wouldn’t do the trick without help. There was something else.
“Tell them to let Maddie try waking him.” I’d watched the pair of them get together. Half their courtship had taken place on campus, after all.
“That’s right! Maddie, get him awake and drinking.” Bianca waved a page of notes from the Extrahuman Regulations class she and Olivia had been taking together. “You’re one of three things that can wake a slumbering vampire, and the other two aren’t exactly legal.”
Tony got out of the way. Everyone looked on as Maddie’s dusky hand closed over Henry’s pale one. I made myself watch as she leaned down to murmur in his ear. I’d seen many such displays of affection in the years since I’d died, but it wasn’t within the scope of my living experience. No one had ever touched or spoken to me with anything like that kind of affection during either my solid or incorporeal time, and none ever would if I couldn’t ghost up and tell Bianca how I felt.
But the situation had gone from busy to life-threatening in under sixty minutes. It still wasn’t time.
Chapter Eight
Bianca
“Quartz.” I held the crystal up to the light, peering at it. “Infused with a whole lot of power, too.” I screwed a magipsychic viewing monocle against my eye. The loaner device from Headmistress Thurston gave me limited ability to see the Magical energy I normally couldn’t. I had no idea what type it was, only that it was there. “Only a little of it is Psychic, but it doesn’t match yours, Henry. So, who’s the Magus this belonged to, then?”
“Let me see?” Maddie held out her hand tentatively, like she approached a skittish horse and not a friendly but tired classmate. I handed it over, mitten and all. She peered at it, shrugged, and passed it back. After that, she wiped her hand on her skirt, barely aware she did it. “Eww, I don’t like that type of magic. It feels like a black hole. Who could this have belonged to?”
“Neil.” Henry shook his head. “Not Fred’s dad, Neil. One of my old friends. He had this with him every day at the hospital back in the days after I got turned.”
“Hospital?” Lynn crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. “Magi went to regular hospitals in the 1990s, during the worst parts of the Reveal? Wasn’t that frowned on by the Magus community back then?”
“Neil had to.” Henry sighed, relaxing his shoulders as Maddie rubbed them. “He had leukemia. I had no idea Neil had stored any of his memories, which is a good thing.”
“Wait, what?” Tony’s eyebrows almost collided. “You had a seizure and almost went dark on us, and you say it’s a good thing?”
“Well, it means a different Psychic helped Neil put that memory in the crystal.” Henry sighed again.
“Are you sure?” Maddie leaned her head against his, her curls cascading around them both. “Last time you didn’t remember putting a memory somewhere, it was because you wiped it from your own mind at the time.”
“I’m sure this time. The memory in this crystal didn’t include a wipe. In fact, it didn’t include me at all.” Henry’s mouth stretched in a grin that didn’t bare his fangs. “That means Edgar must have helped Neil before he died. We’re on the right track.”
“So, what was in that memory crystal?” Lynn smirked. “Jeez, that could have come straight out of a Stargate episode. I feel like a bigger geek than usual.”
“Neil was saying something, but I didn’t get to find out what.” Henry held his hand out.
“The jolt you got was magic, though.” Maddie tapped her chin with one finger. “I saw it but didn’t recognize the type. I knew it was there but couldn’t see it. I’ve never even heard of a magic type that looks and feels like that.”
“It must have been Neil’s, then. He was a Null Magus.” Henry rubbed his head. “I bet that was a ward against anyone but Edgar getting the memory out, but maybe the ward’s broken after all that. I’ll try it again.” Henry stuck one hand out, palm up.
“Not here and not now.” I closed my hand over the crystal. “Am I right, Lynn?”
“Absolutely.” Lynn jerked her chin at the librarian. “If Mr. Waban hadn’t been here, we might not have gotten this magipsychic whosiwhatsis away from Henry in time. Next time Henry tries this, we need to make serious preparations.”
“With what?” Tony rubbed his arms through the trench coat. “A young priest, an old priest, and some holy water?”
“Bagged blood, warmed, at least six pints.” Lynn ticked off each item on a finger. “A bear-level or stronger shifter. Our pack Alpha. Someone in law enforcement, plus Mr. Ichiro. More than one powerful Magus with amplification devices or wands. It wouldn’t hurt if one of those Magi was Headmistress Thurston. An actual non-student doctor, if one’s willing to help a vampire try the psychometric version of extreme sports. Maybe Doctor Klein from the hospital would help. She's a vampire, too."<
br />
“I’m in agreement with Miss Frampton’s ideas.” Mr. Waban looked at me for some reason. “You seemed to know what was wrong immediately, Miss Brighton. You ought to be there again as well and bring whichever ghost helped you see it.”
“Um, this is all fine and well, but Henry’s thing is going to take time.” Kimiko rattled the paper with the cipher on it. “And maybe we don't need to do something that risky, anyway. Because I think I figured something out here.”
“Really?” Tony blinked, then smirked. “Without me?”
“With what you did already.” Kim shrugged. “Anyway, I found two repeating patterns that look like names.”
“Well, don’t leave us hanging.” Tony leaned on the table, trying to get a good look at the paper. His eyes moved from side to side. “Great balls of yarn! It says Edgar.”
“Seriously?” Henry shook his head, his chuckle darker than his hair. “Coincidence is on the prowl tonight, huh?”
“Oh no, someone said the C-word.” The voice from the doorway belonged to the green-haired man standing just inside it. “Let’s go study somewhere else, Margot.”
“Um, no.” A redheaded woman ducked under the man’s arm and sauntered into the room with the rest of us. She took one look at the overturned chair and moved to right it. “These guys helped us over the summer, Lane. We’ll stay.”
“Says the chick who came here to get her Ph.D.” Lane Meyer shook his head. “I’m the C-average student who actually needs to study, you know.” Even with the complaints, he sat down and started pulling books from his bag.
“So.” I looked from Kimiko to Tony and back. “What’s the other name there?”
“Joyce.” Kimiko wrinkled her nose, then tapped her temple with one finger. “Familiar name; wait a second.” She mimed putting a hat on, then pretended to turn a crank on the side of it. I tried not to get too distracted by the three wise ghosts laughing at her antics.
“Joyce was Edgar’s lady.” Henry’s eyes got a faraway look. “Maybe they were married; I don’t remember much about her, but she was always there when I went over for lessons with Edgar as a kid. Joyce made an amazing bologna sandwich, and an even better fluffernutter.” Everyone but Margot gave Henry a sideways glance. “What? I was a kid in 1970s Rhode Island, okay? Anyway, she was also Precognitive.”