Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial) (16 page)

“Hi, Andy.” Andy was wearing a sleeveless green top that
displayed his slender, tanned arms to great effect. Joy was learning to look
past the incongruity of his wardrobe to notice that Andy had excellent fashion
sense.

“Hello, Joy.”

“I’m sorry if I was brusque before,” Joy said. “I had
an upsetting meeting. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“You didn’t,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re having a bad
day.”

“Thanks. It would be a little better if you still had
the packing slip for that package you gave me?”

“Sure. I usually keep them for a week or so…here,” he
said, pulling the slip out of a file folder on his desk.

“Thanks.” Joy scanned the onionskin paper, but the
space for “Sender” was illegible, and the address hadn’t been filled out. There
was a corporate account number, though, and despite everything Joy smiled. She
had dealt with PoofPost before.

It would have to wait, though. She had a second job to
do, which meant a week’s worth of lectures to finish preparing, and one of them
was in just a few hours. She thanked Andy again, went back into her office, and
locked the door.

This, at least, was familiar work; during her time at
Kentucky State last-minute class preps had become routine to her. She had been
good at that job, but she hadn’t realized how bored she was there until after
she joined the FBMA. She almost missed that feeling now. If she’d known when
Martin came to recruit her that he’d one day be murdered because of a case she
was working on, she might never have joined.

Except Martin would likely still be dead. At least
this way, she could find out who was behind his murder.

Joy
worked through lunch, and when Andy knocked on her door to tell her he was
leaving for the night she realized she was starving. She packed up her
materials for the night’s lecture and moved down to the cafeteria, lingering
over a soup and salad until it was time for her class. Her crystal had chimed a
few times through the course of the afternoon, but she had decided, not
entirely consciously, to ignore it. When it rang as she was sitting staring at
her dinner tray, she decided to answer.

“This is Joy.”

“Dammit, girl, why don’t you
answer my calls?” It was Rosemary, her sister.

“I’m sorry,” said Joy. “I’ve been working. Things are
crazy.”

“They better be. You haven’t called me in a week.”

“I know. I suck. I’m just on a big case.”

“I’m sure you are, but don’t play that on me. I’m your
sister. What I want to know is, are you OK?”

Joy sighed.

“That didn’t sound like a yes.”

“I can’t really talk about it right now. But things
started badly.”

“Are you safe?”

“Yes, of course.” There was no point telling Rosemary
the truth, because she would never let it go. “And I’ve made some progress.
Last week was just bad.”

“I don’t know why it is I’m the only normal child in
this family,” Rosemary said.

“Don’t start,” said Joy.

“I’m just saying, after what happened with Trevor—”

“Rosemary, I am not kidding. I do not want to talk
about it.”

Joy could hear her sister breathing, but there was a
long pause before she spoke again. “You should come
visit. I would like to see you. This weekend, maybe? Don’t say you don’t have
time to portal down here for dinner.”

“I’d like that too. I’ll let you know.”

“Just take care of yourself; that’s all I’m asking.”

“I always do.”

Joy hung up, bussed her
table, and headed over to the lecture hall. It was only six thirty, but she wanted
to get the board ready.

She passed Greg, the janitor, taking a mop and bucket
to the men’s bathroom on the first floor. He shook his head at her, his soft
blue aura flaring sulfurous with irritation. “I got cats in the service
tunnels, feathers in the ventilation system, and just about every toilet in the
building’s overflowed in the past twenty-four hours.”

“I’m sorry,” said Joy. “Are you…do you have to clean
up the library too?”

“Aw, hell no. They won’t even let me in there. I heard it might not
open up again until spring semester.”

Joy had heard that too. As they spoke, FBMA spatial
distortion teams were combing the depths of the Minnesota interlibrary system,
tracing its hidden portals and shutting them down, one by one. There wouldn’t
be any rebuilding until after they finished their survey.

Unfortunately, Greg didn’t have security clearance for
any of that information, so all she could say was, “What a mess.”

Joy entered the south lecture hall via the
instructor’s door on the first floor and found that the instructor’s table on
the dais was scattered with books and papers. It took Joy a moment to recognize
the aura of the young woman seated there as Margaret May’s.

“Hi, Margaret,” Joy said.

“Oh! Professor, I’m sorry. I just, there wasn’t
any — the library’s closed now, and I can’t really study in my apartment? I’ll
move.”

“There’s no great hurry, Margaret. Class doesn’t start
for another half hour.”

“It’s OK, I can move.” Margaret’s dark-gold aura was
fingerprinted with gray at the edges, which was worrisome enough for Joy to
decide to push a little.

“Everything OK, Margaret?” Joy asked. “You said you have a roommate, right? Are
you having problems?”

Margaret shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I
expected, you know? I had to skip a couple of years after high school because
my mom got sick, and I thought this would be more like…it’s not really like I
thought college would be, I guess. I was kind of a terrible student in high
school, and back then — it seems like a really long time ago — I just wanted to go
to the U with all my friends, you know? But…I guess we’re not really friends
anymore?” Margaret said this as if she were hoping Joy would insist that of
course that wasn’t the case, she would always be
friends with the people she’d known in high school. As someone who had always
struggled with her own friendships, Joy was struck by pangs of sympathy, but
she wasn’t sure what the right thing to say was.

She tried changing the subject. “Is your mom better?”

“Oh. Not really. They just kind of…they’re just trying
to keep her comfortable. She’s in hospice here in town, so at least I get to
see her all the time.”

Joy mentally berated herself. “I’m so sorry,
Margaret.”

“No, you know, it’s OK! I’ve actually had a lot of fun
here, I mean, the classes are fun. Saturday? That was
crazy. Did they every find that librarian guy?”

“Not that I know of,” Joy lied. “I’m just glad no one
was seriously hurt.”

“Did you have to get, like, a rabies shot for that? On your face?”

“A rabies shot on my face?”

“No, the claws, you know.”

“Oh. That’s only for bites, I believe.”

“Oh, right. Duh!” Margaret
finished making a stack of her books and papers and gathered them to her chest.
“I just liked it,” she said suddenly.

“You liked what?”

“Just, you know. Being on a team,
kind of. The four of us against all those cats?
I mean, it was scary and it was all screwed up because we did the wrong magic,
but it was exciting and I had fun. Except when I went home my cat was all
freaked out; she wouldn’t come near me but she also didn’t want to let me out
of her sight. She’s such a weird cat.”

That this poor girl was so desperate for friends that
she enjoyed facing death with three of her professors made Joy sad. She knew
the school had a counselor on staff, and she made a mental note to ask him to
check in with Margaret sometime this week.

Margaret sat down in the front row. “You know what I
wonder?” she said.

“What’s that?”

Margaret didn’t say anything for several seconds, long
enough that Joy stepped off the dais and sat next to the girl.

“I wonder why it is that magic can do all kinds of
crazy stuff like summon cats and make force bubbles and tell you about the
future, but it can’t zap some stupid rogue cells in a person’s body and stop
them from killing her.”

“I don’t have a good answer for that, Margaret.” The
Why Can’t We Cure Cancer? question was one that was
much debated in the popular press, but Joy didn’t think any of those theories
were what Margaret needed to hear.

Margaret put her head down and shaded her eyes. “Yeah,
I know. Nobody does.”

Joy hesitated, then set a hand on the girl’s shoulder
and squeezed. “Will you do me a favor, Margaret? Will you keep me updated on
how your mom is doing?”

“Sure,” Margaret said, but she didn’t look up. Joy
patted her shoulder and returned to the dais to start putting her notes on the
board, though the conversation with Margaret stayed with her.

They had already covered ancient Egyptian and
Mesopotamian magic; today they were going to discuss the Greco-Roman mystery
religions and the beginnings of syncretization of the
traditions, with some particular attention to the Greek Magical Papyri. The
Papyrii Graecae Magicae
was one of the oldest known spellbooks,
though only a few of them worked. It was interesting in part because it
represented one of the first known efforts to pull from different traditions to
create practical, working magic — take what works and leave the rest, as Bruce
Lee had done with the martial arts.

Joy spent another twenty minutes covering the
six-panel board with her lecture outline. By the time she finished Margaret had
recovered, and the hall had filled in behind her. Joy had the impression that
there were even more students tonight than there had been on the first day.

As she sipped water, preparing to talk for an hour,
three men and two women filed in and took seats next to each other near the
back. They were all gray or graying and were dressed formally, the men in
suits, the women in dark dresses that fell below the knee. Joy couldn’t
determine much from their auras, which were a mix of colors, but none of them
presented any shades that were particularly worrisome. She figured if they
wanted to audit, it didn’t bother her, but she’d keep an eye on them
nevertheless.

“Good evening, class,” she said. “I have one
announcement, for those who haven’t heard: the library is closed indefinitely,
but the school has made arrangements with Arthur Stag College for all of you to
have full access to their collection. Shuttles are running every hour over to
that campus, and there should be a portal set up by the end of the week.

“Now, I wanted to start by asking a question. Based on
our readings and what we’ve covered so far in this class, what would you say
first prompted humans to start experimenting with magic?”

“Greed?”

Joy found the source of the guess in the fifth row, a
long-haired boy with a lavender aura. “That comes later, actually. Anybody else?”

“Love?” This from a small, pale girl in the
second row whose dark hair always hung in front of her eyes.

“Probably a close second, but that’s not what I’m
thinking of, no. Anyone else?” She gave them a few
seconds before she went on. “Think about the Egyptians. Think about Gilgamesh.
What were they concerned with?”

“Death,” said Margaret May in a faint voice.

“Yes. Fear of death and of the dead, the desire for
knowledge about what happens after we die — these are almost universal concerns
of early magical traditions. How to see that the dead we care about — or
fear — make it safely to the next world and don’t stick around to scare us or
hurt us. How to discover and use the secrets that only the
dead know. How to cheat death, and how to stay
alive indefinitely. Next week, for example, we’ll talk about shamanic tradition
and how shamans treat the sick by traveling to the land of the dead to bring
their souls back to their bodies.

“It’s been said that where religion is about coming to
terms with death, magic is about battling with death. Of course, the lines
between magic and religion aren’t really that easy to draw, whether we’re
talking about transubstantiation or the riding of the
loa
. But keep this in mind. One
of the reasons that necromancy is outlawed is that no one ever managed to
practice it in a way that benefited anyone.” This last point was arguable, but
these were undergrads, and Joy wanted to do her civic duty to discourage any
experimenting. “We don’t understand death, not on anything beyond a literal
level, and yet in some ways all of magic — especially the more disastrous magic —
stems from the impulse to cheat it.”

The
lecture went well, she thought. She was feeling more confident in the classroom
again; it helped that she could recognize a few of the students’ auras now, and
that she herself found the subject matter interesting. Covering three thousand
years of world magical tradition in twelve weeks was an insane proposition, but
Carla Drake had managed to break it down in about the best way Joy could imagine.
If she ever found the woman, she would have to congratulate her on that.

The older folks who had sat near the back were long
gone by the time she packed up and dealt with the small knot of students with
questions after the lecture. She shut off the lights and made her way out of the
building, bleary from a long day. She crossed Stagecoach Trail and walked
toward her house.

The sun still pinked the sky beyond the bluff, but the
shadows were long and she didn’t see Benjamin Flood until he was right next to
her.

“Get in,” he said, motioning to the dark-blue sedan
parked beside the curb. She slid into the backseat beside him, and the driver,
whom she didn’t recognize, started the car and eased it down the street.

“I called your crystal twice today,” said Flood. “I’d
like to know why you didn’t pick up.”

Joy sat for a minute with her eyes closed.

“Are you going to answer me, Wilkins?”

“Sorry, sir. I was just taking a mental photograph of that
fleeting moment of job satisfaction I had before you showed up.”