Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial) (15 page)

“OK,” said Margaret, and raised the bottle.

Joy noticed something about the component bottle on the table. “Wait,
that’s not lavender—”

Glass shattered against the library’s tiled floor.

“—it’s valerian.”

“Oh,” said Margaret May. The potion had worked almost like a
conjuration; they were surrounded by arch-backed, snarling, hissing felines,
five deep on every side. “Crap.”

“By the Great Beast,” said Joy, “where did he get them all?”

“We’re going to be OK,” said Hector, and he embraced Zelda. “Everybody
cover your faces.”

“I made things worse again, didn’t I?” Joy heard Zelda say the instant
before the library’s outer windows exploded inward and the air became a riot of
glass and cats…and crows.

Edith
Grim-Parker was on her phone, and there was a crow perched on the shelf above
her desk. It stared at Joy as she entered. Edith glanced up at her, her aura
the familiar orange-yellow dotted with green and turquoise. She pointed at a
chair, but Joy decided to keep standing. The crow had the aura of a crow, dim
yellow muddied with brown.

“No, it’s not a liability issue,” Edith was saying. “It
would
have been a liability issue if
three faculty members and a student had been killed by two hundred cats. We
have security so we don’t have to replace our people; we have insurance so we
can replace things like, say, windows.” Edith didn’t sound angry; she sounded
implacable.

“You do that,” she said, and hung up.

Edith shook her head at Joy. “We’ll be lucky if we can
convince them to pay half of the replacement costs,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Joy said.

Edith glared at her. “Never apologize for things that
aren’t your fault,” she said. “I meant what I said. I’d rather we have to
rebuild the library — and hire a new crazy librarian — than have to go to funerals.
You get old enough, you get sick to hell of people
dying on you. How’s your cheek?”

Joy shrugged. “It’ll heal. It might scar.”

Edith smirked. “You make it sound like it’s a badge of
honor. You’re a little odd, you know, for a professor. Not that they aren’t all
odd.”

Joy didn’t want Edith to pursue that line of thought,
so she quickly changed the subject. “Looks like you have a new mascot. Did he
find his way down here from the library?”

“Christopher, you mean? Yeah, I think he hurt his
wing. One of those cats must have gotten its licks in.”

Joy didn’t doubt it. She guessed that something like
fifty crows had answered Hector’s summons, but they were still outnumbered four
to one, and the cats had been half-mad from Zelda and Margaret’s botched
concoction. Joy had tried to fight back with some air and water magic, and
Hector had talked Margaret through a surprisingly strong force bubble, but they’d
been trapped inside the library for nearly an hour before the spatial
distortion professor arrived and transported most of the cats to a holding room
at the county Humane Society. About forty of them had scattered into the
stacks, and a few had been killed, but there were more dead crows than cats.

After that there had been several hours of questions,
first from the local police, who were frustrated by Larch’s disappearance and
the fact that Joy was the only one who had seen him in the shape of a panther
until Zelda mentioned that she had seen a big black cat in the library just a
few days before. That mollified the cops temporarily, but the chief was clearly
still suspicious of Joy’s story.

Joy had thought she could relax some when the FBMA
liaison had arrived: Gray, with an agent out of St. Paul named Renard. But the two of them took her to an unused classroom
and debriefed her at such length that she asked why they didn’t just portal her
to Washington so she could put it all into the casebook.

“AD Flood isn’t available at the moment,” Gray had
said. “He wants to meet with you tomorrow or Monday.”

Joy had been surprised, but she hadn’t said so. Gray
had been all over her this past week; it was a shock to think of him having a
life outside of making hers difficult. She’d told Gray and Renard
everything she knew and then stumbled home to bed. She hadn’t heard a word from
Flood all day yesterday, but early this morning she’d received a call from
Edith asking her to come in and talk to the president.

“Look, I don’t know exactly what’s happening here,”
said Edith, “and I don’t need to know. But I’ve worked at this college for
forty years. My mother was one of the founders of this school. If Larch was the
one moving demons through here, then you’re part of the reason he won’t be
doing so any more. So I thank you for that. It doesn’t mean you’ve got tenure
or anything, though, so stay on your toes.” She motioned to the door behind
her. “He’s waiting for you in there,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Joy, and walked into President Fitzgerald’s
office.

Her first thought was that she had accidentally portalled to someplace else. Instead of the dark wood and
leather of Martin’s office or the steel and beige of Flood’s, President Fitzgerald’s
office was Sheetrocked and painted a buttery yellow
with sky-blue trim. It had more of the look of someone’s kitchen than the inner
sanctum of a man in authority.

“Ms. Wilkins.” Fitzgerald came out from behind his
desk — an unassuming, vaguely prairie-style piece with painted accents matching
the walls — and took her hand. His aura was normally orangish-yellow,
but was trending toward clear yellow today,
suggesting that his mood was less detail oriented, more playful. “So good to see you again.”

“I’ve actually been trying to reach you since last
Tuesday,” said Joy.

“Have you? I’m sorry, I was traveling. Please, sit.”
The office chairs were wire framed with white leather seats. Joy perched on one
while Fitzgerald leaned on his desk. Philip Fitzgerald’s hair was red with gray
streaks, and his fair skin was freckled, but his body language reminded her of
Martin Shil in the meeting she had had with him just
a week ago.

“I could have portalled to
you,” Joy said.

“That would have been difficult.” He smiled. “Anyway,
you’ve made so much progress, already! Demon smuggling.
Serious, very serious. This librarian, Larch, I never
suspected.”

“Apparently his name isn’t even Larch. The real
Frederick Larch was murdered four years ago, and this shape-shifter took his
place. He’s not saying why, either. It appears he may have spent the majority
of his life living as a panther.”

“Hm.” Fitzgerald nodded. “Serious. Very
serious.”

“So he was using the state system to move the demons,
but Gooseberry Bluff was the only branch to report any strange activity. That
seems odd, doesn’t it?”

“Odd, yes,” said Fitzgerald. “Interesting.
And what about Carla Drake? Have you found any leads
on her?”

Joy paused. He was evading her. She decided to throw
him off balance.

“President Fitzgerald, are you a member of the
Thirteenth Rib?”

“The Thirteenth Rib? What an interesting name! I…am. Aren’t I? Yes! I
think I am.”

Joy was as thrown by his admission as by his
indecision about it. “And how many…” She wasn’t sure which question to ask
first. “Can you tell me what the purpose of the organization is?”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d call it an organization,
exactly. It’s really more of a…circle of friends. I can’t really tell you about
it, though, seeing as it
is
a secret.”

“Well, I know about it now. And Carla Drake did too. I
think knowing about it got her into trouble.”

“Ah. No, I think that’s backward. Carla was in
trouble, and she found out about the, uh…”

“The Thirteenth Rib?”

“The Thirteenth Rib, yes. But not
until it was too late for us to help her. That’s why you came in.”

“You mean that’s why you called the FBMA?”

“Yes, I called you. Precisely.”

“Why didn’t you share that information with us?”

“Well…that’s a — that’s a very good question. I wasn’t
sure we could trust you yet. But we needed help, because things were beginning
to get out of hand. It was more than we could handle on our own.”

“What was?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You know more than you’re saying.”

He laughed. “Yes, well, doesn’t everyone?”

“Are you deliberately impeding my investigation?”

“No, no.” He held up his hands as if to show he meant
no harm. “It’s like this, Agent Wilkins. Gooseberry Bluff is more than it
appears. I am more than I appear. The Thirteenth Rib, the demon trafficking,
the disappearance of Carla Drake — all of these things are more complex than I
can sum up in a friendly conversation or even an interrogation. The
organization —
we
have been independent
for some time now, and some of the members would have liked to remain so. But
there was a vote, and a majority of the organization decided that it was time
to begin sharing information and resources. But we need to be cautious.”

“My superiors are going to want answers.”

“Yes, I know, but…I’m afraid your superiors are — what’s
the phrase — out of the loop on this. You won’t be able to repeat any of what’s
been said here, and only the most sanitized version of it will show up in your
casebooks.”

Joy gasped. “You’ve put a geas
over this room? You can’t do that!”

“Really?” If he’d seemed scattered before, he was suddenly
focused. “Isn’t that exactly what your superiors did to Hector Ay?”

There was no way he could know about that. “That’s — they
have federal authority. You don’t.”

“Without wishing to sound too ecclesiastical, we
answer to a higher authority than that.”

Joy scoffed. “Oh, OK. Global?
Intergalactic?”

“Let’s call it interdimensional.”

“There’s no proof that other dimensions exist.”

“That’s because people haven’t been looking in the
right place.” Fitzgerald pointed at the floor. “Right here on this campus. Stag
was close, but he built his school on the wrong spot.” He stood and crossed to
the window. “The barrier between the dimensions is strong. Too
strong, in every other place but this.”

“What makes this place special?”

“There was a war here. A cataclysm,
really. An entire world died, and it was because of a spell centered on
this exact piece of real estate — except two hundred worlds away. And ever since
then, the fabric of reality has worn thin here, and certain people have traded
between worlds, traveled between worlds — and sometimes, fought wars between
them.”

“So Larch…Larch could have come from another
dimension.”

“It’s possible. And it’s also possible that Carla
Drake may have been taken to one.” Fitzgerald turned. “You believe me?”

“I really don’t know.” It was a lot to accept.
Dimensional travel was the stuff of pulp novels and tabloid stories, not
reality. It could explain some things; but it raised at least as many questions
as it answered.

“I understand that you might need time, but although
some of my colleagues are unconvinced, I feel it’s crucial that you join us.”

“Join you?”

“As a member of the Thirteenth Rib. We have a meeting tonight. Not very
formal, just a dinner party. But we’d like you to attend. Think of it as
a getting-to-know-you sort of thing.”

“If I attend, are you going to answer some questions?”

“You can ask all the questions you like. Whether the
members choose to answer is up to them.”

Joy
fumed all the way back to her office; she didn’t even hear Andy until he
followed her to her door and handed her a package. “It just arrived via PoofPost,” he said.

“Thank you.” Joy didn’t look at him. When she was
angry she had trouble seeing auras, and looking at faces stripped of meaning — blank
ciphers — only made her angrier. She shut the door to her office and pulled the
blinds. The chair squawked as she sat down, and she hammered her fist on the
desk.

Calm down
, she told herself. She put her hands to her face and
forced herself to breathe slowly. The crystal at her throat chimed once, but
she ignored it.

She was angry because she was being manipulated, and
she wasn’t the only one. By withholding the information about the secret
society and the other dimensions — information Joy wasn’t sure she could believe
yet — Fitzgerald had kept Carla Drake in danger and might have indirectly gotten
Martin killed. And by placing Joy under a geas, he
may have made it impossible for her to do her job effectively.

She wasn’t sure how to reconcile this with the man she
had met during her interviews and briefings. Philip Fitzgerald had immediately
struck her as a bit scattered and eccentric, certainly, but Martin had clearly
trusted him. They had some history that Martin was never specific about.

Maybe that was the way to go. She needed to know more
about what Fitzgerald was up to, and if his own tracks had been covered, maybe
Martin’s were still fresh.

In fact, maybe she could ask him directly.

She put her hand over her crystal and took a deep
breath. Probably this wouldn’t work, but she was getting more ghost calls than
usual since she’d come to Gooseberry Bluff. It was worth a shot.

“Martin Shil,” she said. The
crystal chimed briefly, and a familiar voice answered, but it wasn’t Martin’s.

“Wilson? Is that you?”

“No, ma’am.” Joy tried to keep the disappointment out of her
voice.

“Young woman, put Wilson on the line immediately. I
haven’t got time for your shenanigans.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I do hope you get ahold of your son.” Joy closed the connection.

Now that her anger had passed, she was just tired. She
sighed and looked at the package on her desk. It was the size and shape of a
small coffee table book, wrapped in brown paper. The return address was in
Chicago; Joy didn’t recognize it.

She tore it open and found a small white envelope and
a hardcover book entitled
Trickster Tales
of the Hvenashawa People
. Joy wasn’t familiar
with the Hvenashawa; the illustrations were of an
otter, or a man dressed as an otter, interacting with various animals and
humans in landscapes that appeared variously early East Asian or North
American.

The envelope was addressed to her and contained a
greeting card with an image of a gift-wrapped box, wrapped with ribbon tied
into an elaborate bow. The inside of the card bore only four words, written in
spare yet elegant calligraphy: “Carla Drake Is Alive.”

It was all she could do not to run out of her office
and accost Andy. She forced herself to get up slowly and calmly walk out and
approach his desk.