Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial) (14 page)

“Do you need
to go to the hospital?” Hector asked. He was looking at her, directly at her,
for the first time since he had run into her. He could do this now, because it
was safe. She couldn’t see him, so she couldn’t see what he was sure was
written on his face, the pleading, the need. He wanted to tell her that she was
so beautiful that it hurt him, but he didn’t dare.

“No, I don’t…I don’t think so.” She ran a hand across her forehead. “It
must be the pumice. I really thought I had the proportions figured.”

“I think I’d better take you home, then.” He took her arm. “Is that OK?
Will you let me lead you back across the street?”

“Yes, thank you.” She started to say something more, but at that moment
he heard the shrill cry of a crow and saw Joy Wilkins on the school campus. She
wrote out a crude sign on a notebook.
Meet me in the Library
, it read.

So this was it. Wilkins had figured it out; she would tell her bosses,
and Hector would lose everything. He had just spoken with an intellectual
property lawyer this morning, in preparation for his meeting on Monday. Now
perhaps there was no need to meet; they would just arrest him on some sort of a
conspiracy charge. A part of Hector wanted them to.

This was not how things were supposed to have gone for him. He had come
to the United States against the wishes of his family, first to continue his
studies, then to work; he’d made friends here, but not many, and sometimes he
could only think of the list of people who didn’t want him to succeed, and the
even longer list of people who didn’t care if he failed.

The light changed, and he led Zelda across the road.

“Please say something,” she said. “This is pretty scary, and it’d be
nice to hear your voice.”

He took a second to think. “I don’t know very much about curses,” he
said. “You say that this one backfires whenever you try to do something nice?”

“‘May all the good you do turn to bad, may all
your help turn to harm.’”

“So the people closest to you are the people most likely to get hurt,”
he said.

“Yes.”

“You would like to go out with me again, but you’re worried that I’m
going to get hurt.”

“Yes.”

“So really, if you cut me loose, you’re doing something nice for me.
You’re doing something good. You’re being selfless. That’s bound to backfire,
isn’t it? The way I see it, you have to go out with me or something terrible will
happen to me.”

She laughed. “It doesn’t work like that. You can’t reason with a curse.”

“Well, you can’t reason with me either. Not about this.”

“Hector—”

“Let me say something, OK? Then I will shut up and listen. If you think
it was a mistake — if you had too much wine and made a bad decision, if I’m not
really your type — I can deal with it; I can respect it. It’s not — I wish it were
otherwise, but I will accept it and I will get over it. But if it’s just this
curse, I say screw it.”

“Hector…this curse has killed people.”

“Here’s my car,” he said, ignoring her. He opened the passenger-side
door for her and guided her into the seat. “Watch your hands,” he said before
he shut the door. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?”
he asked.

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll have to drop you at your place. I have to meet someone up at the
school.”

“Please, Hector…I don’t want to be alone. Not like this.”

“Well. I’m supposed to meet someone in the library. I don’t know how it’s
going to go.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“I’m not really sure. Tell you what — if I’m not, let me take you on a
date tomorrow.”

“Let’s not plan on a movie,” she said. “I may still be blind.”

“Good. That way you can’t complain about my purple underwear.”

“Did you hear me say that this curse has killed people?” she asked.

“I heard. I don’t care. And I’m skeptical that the curse did the
killing, unless you saw someone with a monogrammed shirt that said CURSE stab
this person.”

“It’s not funny.”

“I’m sorry. When I’m nervous I make jokes.” He tried to think of
something more to say, but he was preoccupied with what Wilkins was going to
say, and soon he pulled into the college parking lot without breaking the
silence.

“We’re here,” he said. “I’ll help you out.” She didn’t say anything, so
he got out of the car and crossed behind to help her out.

As soon as she was on her feet, she said, “I liked your purple
underwear.”

“I liked you better without yours,” he said. She blushed, and he
wondered if he had gone too far. But she took his arm and leaned into him, so she
must not be too upset about it.

Hector led her up to the school, taking inventory of each of the crows
and what they were seeing as he went. He tried to reach out to the campus
squirrels as well, but he hadn’t yet managed to make much use of them. Their
attention spans were too short. It was a concern for him because he needed to
diversify in order to get good campus coverage during the winter.

“Who are you meeting?” she asked as they climbed the stairs toward the
library.

“I don’t think I can say,” he said.

“What does
that
mean?” she
asked.

“Um. Just a second.”
There were a half dozen students clustered just
outside the library, and one of them was holding a cloth to his arm.

“What is it?” Zelda asked.

“Professor Ay!” Margaret May stepped away from the knot of students and
approached them. “So, the cats went crazy. One of them slashed this guy’s arm,
and we couldn’t find Mister Larch, and they basically chased us out, and nobody
knows what to do.”

“Have you seen Ms. Wilkins?” Hector asked.

“The history of magic instructor? I saw her
come in a while ago, but I haven’t seen her in a while.”

A cold sweat broke out on Hector’s skin. The library was the only part
of the school that he had no eyes in — the cats had served as library security
since before Hector had worked here, and Fred Larch had seemed to have a
special relationship with them. Perhaps
too
special.

“I have to go in there,” he said to Zelda. “Will you be all right?”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but I think it’s bad. Margaret, can you stay with
Professor Akbulut?”

“Sure.”

Hector squeezed Zelda’s hand and slipped into the library.

“Um, I have
to go now, Martin. Thanks for the warning.”

“Take care,” Martin said, and was gone.

The panther just stood there, sleek and huge, rumbling with menace.

“Mr. Larch,” she said. “It’s obviously you. I see auras, you know, and
yours is the same whether you’re in the shape of a skeevy
librarian or a big cat.”

Panther-Larch hunched toward the carpet, displaying his teeth.

“I think I have most of it now,” Joy said. “You get hired on here and
use some kind of feline solidarity to circumvent the library’s security. You — or
someone you work with, or work for — install a few side doors into the Minnesota
state community college interlibrary gateway system. Then you use the system to
move and store the nameless demons that are being used by the Heartstoppers to animate major demons. You bring them here
because the campus itself has some powerful magical resonance; you charge the
demons here on the premises, like batteries, for about six weeks before they’re
used in the attacks.”

She hoped that she sounded calmer than she felt. Larch in his feline
form was not the size of, say, a tiger, conservation of mass being what it was.
But his claws had wicked points and his incisors were as long as her pinky
fingers. He looked as though he were designed for killing, which, aside from
the adaptation that enabled him to turn into a skeevy
librarian, was more or less true.

So she stalled. “You’re wondering how I know all that, aren’t you? You’re wondering who I work for, and who else I’ve
told. I’ll tell you this: you can kill me if you like, but regardless of what
happens to me, you’re done.”

She was gambling — most of what she was telling him she had only put
together in the last half hour, and no one would know where to pick up the
investigation if she disappeared into a panther’s stomach. He probably couldn’t
read auras, since he’d already given himself away with his own, but he could be
a truth-teller like Agent Gray, or even have some cat-vibey-instinct
thing that would give her away.

“Tell you what, Freddie; why don’t you change back so we can chat, and
neither of us has to get hurt.”

Something in his posture and his aura changed, and in that moment Joy
knew that the things she knew didn’t concern him much.

The next moment Larch launched himself at her.

But Joy had not been idle as she had been speaking. She had been
gathering her energies, and focusing them, and she was ready to execute.

The instant Larch sprang she raised her hands and
pushed
a narrow funnel of air at him; he spun like a piece of
newspaper and flattened against the nearest bookshelves. He yowled, sounding
for a moment like a much smaller cat, and Joy backed into the demon room and
shut the door behind her.

She seized the crystal at her throat. “Call Benjamin Flood,” she said.

The thing that struck the door an instant later sounded much larger
than a panther.

“Wilkins? What the hell is it?”

“The librarian, Larch, is a shape-shifter. A panther.
He’s been using the interlibrary spatial distortion system to move and store
the demons. Or someone has. I found a cache of them, and I’m inside it right
now.”

“Are you in danger?”

Larch plowed into the door again; this time it left a dent.

“Oh yes. But if you come in, my cover is blown. And I still don’t have
any solid leads on Carla Drake.”

Flood didn’t reply right away, and Larch struck the door again. One of
the hinges popped loose from the doorframe.

“Listen, I’m going to have my hands full in a second here, so I’ll talk
to you later,” said Joy.
At least I hope
so
, she thought. She reached into the nearest crate and pulled out a
demonic cylinder. She decided not to mention the fact that she was about to
commit a felony in self-defense.

“You call in the moment you’re clear,” Flood growled. “The blips have
got you, and your security detail is nearby. We’ll be monitoring,” he said, and
dropped the line.

Joy flattened herself against the wall beside the door. She breathed
slow and deep. She could die here if she wasn’t careful. But Joy had discovered
something during her encounter in the desert, something she had not expected.

She liked to fight.

The door crumpled inward, and Larch-the-panther tumbled into the room
behind it.

As soon as the doorway was clear, Joy stepped out into the library
proper. She focused her will, lifted the demon bottle to her mouth, and
whispered: “Bookcase.”

The lid of the demon bottle popped loose, and Joy yanked it out.

The pure will of the demon screamed forth like an uncorked hurricane.
One moment the black panther was turning to face her;
the next, a cage of books from the library shelves took place around him. Three
interlocking walls, floor to ceiling, with insulating layers between. It took
shape in about five seconds. About three seconds after that Joy heard a muffled
impact, but the book-prison didn’t budge.

Then something yowled, and claws raked across Joy’s cheeks. She was
blinded by the pain. She found herself leaning against an empty row of shelves,
pressing her hand against the cuts on her cheek. A library cat hissed at her
from the shelf, and she backed away.

It was almost funny — she handled the big cat, but the little ones had
her on the run. Their voices chased her south through the denuded shelves. She
clutched at the crystal and whispered Flood’s name. “Larch is secure at my last
location. I suggest you extract him immediately.”

“Already done,” said Flood, sounding smug. “Your security detail is
taking care of it.”

“Good.” She dropped the line as she passed the Founder’s Room. It was
there that she heard Hector Ay calling her.

“Ms. Wilkins! Joy!”

“I’m here,” she said. “Be careful, the cats—”

“I know.” Hector was out of breath. “They drove everyone else out. Herded them out the main door.”

“I think I’ve managed to make them angrier,” she said. “Can you do your
trick with the cats?”

“Nobody can tell a cat what to do,” Hector said. “These library cats,
they just give them a place to live, and they politely ask them to use the
litter boxes, and they magic the books against claw marks. But if the cats
decide to do something else, there’s no telling them otherwise.”

“Then let’s get the hell out of here until they settle down.”

“This way.”

Joy ran along behind Hector. Her hand was beginning to stick to the
blood on her cheek, and there was a faint buzzing in her head, as if her skull were
expanding. She was going to end up with shots for tetanus and rabies, and
probably some nasty scars besides.

She didn’t realize they had reached the entrance of the library until
she saw Zelda Akbulut and Margaret May waiting there
for them. The sky had gone dark outside the windows, and even here the shelves
were naked of books.

“Hector?” Zelda called out, too loudly. Beside her, Margaret May was
pouring something into what looked like a perfume bottle.

“I’m right here,” said Hector.

“Hector, I brought in the allergy mist. It’s something I synthesized a
while back. It’s partially a repellent for the cats. I thought if I had
Margaret mix in some more lavender, it would amplify the effect. Are you
finished, Margaret?”

“I think so? It’s bubbling, like you said.”

“Is Joy here? Joy, are you OK?”

“Scratched, but OK.”

“OK, gather around me, everyone,” Zelda said. “Margaret, when you take
my classes I will discourage this sort of application, but right now I want you
to smash the bottle on the floor.”