Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial) (24 page)

 “No, it doesn’t.”

Ken took a long swig out of the
bottle.

“Mostly it’s about the butter,”
he said. “I use half a stick for two decent-sized fillets. You can’t use oil,
it’s just, it’s just not…not to blacken it, anyway.”

He was sitting on the floor. He
remembered clearly a moment when this had seemed like a good idea, but not the
reason why it had seemed like a good idea. He uncrossed his legs and
accidentally kicked Victor the basset hound, who was lying next to him on the
floor.

“I’m sorry, Victor,” he
whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Tears came to his eyes unexpectedly; he let them
rest there, unshed, hoping they would dry before they fell.

“What about the skin?” The
thing that was not Philip was in the kitchen. It had asked him for salmon, but
Ken had refused to cook it for him.
Cook
your own fucking salmon
, Ken had told it. He had told it a number of other
things, some of which he could not remember. At some point he had agreed to
instruct the impostor on how to cook salmon, under the condition that he not be required to move or to eat any of what was cooked.

“Just put it in the pan with
the skin side down,” Ken said. “After it’s cooked that way a little bit you can
turn it and the skin will come off easy.”

“I usually just eat it raw,”
said the impostor. “How is it that a divination professor and master duelist is
also a master chef?”

“I’m not a master chef,” Ken
said. Then he said it again, louder, because for some reason being called a
master chef had made him angry.
Angrier.
He took another drink before he answered.

“I was based out of New Orleans
for a couple of years while I was on the dueling circuit,” he said. “There was
this boy there. He had these…arms. But it didn’t last, and when I came here I
didn’t miss the boy. Or the weather. But I missed the
food. So I took a course in Minneapolis. Cajun cooking.
Actually, that’s where I met Philip,” he said.

“What was that?”

“I said that’s where I met you!
Not you. Fucking, whatever-you-are. I met Philip. I
mean, we had met, but he was just the man in charge, you know. No—he was still
the head of the spatial distortion department then. Anyway.
I saw him differently there.” Ken fell silent, remembering. The
adolescent anticipation of that hour with Philip, and the disappointment every
time he drove home without having said anything to him. He’d been such a
fool. Ken was shy; he liked to be pursued. But Philip, it turned out, was the
same way. It wasn’t until a couple of months after the class, after a long day
spent in a staff development seminar, that Ken decided that he really was
getting signals in response to his own signals—which he was never confident
were getting through—and invited Philip over for a drink.

“Where the hell is Philip?”

The impostor sighed. “We’ve had
this conversation, Kango. Philip is perfectly safe.”

“‘Perfectly safe’ isn’t a
place. When does he come back? Tell me that.”

Ken’s back and butt hurt. He
carefully set the wine bottle down on the wooden floor and struggled to his
feet. Victor sighed once but did not stir.

Once Ken reached his feet he
reconsidered standing. He’d had most of a bottle before the impostor had shown
up, and at least half a bottle more since. He’d been trying to moderate his
drinking, he really had, but he had been doing it for Philip, and Philip wasn’t
here.

Ken thought maybe he’d better
sit down on the couch before he fell on the coffee table. Sitting made him
nearly as dizzy as standing had done. He was aware of the two black men in gray
suits standing in his living room, but they didn’t register upon him as real
until one of them spoke.

“Pathetic,” he said. He looked
just like the other one. Ken blinked, but neither of them disappeared.

“Who…what are you doing here?”
Ken asked.

“That should become clearer in
a few seconds,” one of them said. Neither of them moved, but pain surged
through Ken’s body, pain so severe that he convulsed forward and vomited all
over the floor. Another attack; there hadn’t been one since Philip’s return.
Not-Philip’s return, that is. He was completely
unprepared.

One of the men grabbed him by
the back of the neck and pulled him forward, yanking him clear over the coffee
table and onto the bare wooden floor. Ken lay struggling to catch his breath,
straining to focus. Gather, first. By the time he focused on anything he was
going to be dead.

The next time he looked up
there were three identical men, not two. They were fighting. One of them had a
large kitchen knife in one hand and a greasy pan in the other. As Ken watched, the
man with the knife stabbed one of the other men and hit the third across the
back of the head with the pan. They both fell, and both lay motionless.

The third man shifted—it was
like a bird folding its wings as it landed, or a rabbit going from a full bound
to a complete stop. He was someone else and then he was Philip… except that he
wasn’t.

“Kango,” he said. “Are you OK?
Are you hurt?”

Ken still couldn’t catch his
breath.
Who are you?
He wanted to
ask.
What kind of danger have you put me
in?
But the harder he struggled to speak, the faster he lost consciousness,
until the face that wasn’t really Philip’s faded from sight.

It was raining hard in suburban Atlanta, and the nearest
Globe Gate location was six blocks away from Rosemary and Lawrence’s house.
Joy’s shoulder bag had some rain-repellent magic, but her own elemental magic
was no match for the honest-to-goodness fury of nature. She was wet and
miserable by the time she knocked on her sister’s front door.

Rosemary answered the door with the baby,
Kenshō, in her arms. “Girl, don’t even try to hug me when you’re all wet,”
she said. “And don’t wake the baby. I started the bath already. Take off your
shoes and go straight into the bathroom.”

Joy did as she was told, shivering as she stepped
into the cool air. Rosemary had worked in heating and cooling magic before the
kids; she still consulted sometimes, but as she told Joy with increasing
frequency, she wanted to enjoy her time alone with the children until the time
came when she had to throw their father out and go back to work full-time. At
first Joy had thought her sister was kidding—it could be difficult to tell with
Rosemary—but after numerous conversations and hints, she was beginning to worry
about her sister’s marriage.

Joy forgot all that when she saw the bathtub, already
nearly filled with water that was far too hot for her. She shut the door,
turned on some cold water, and peeled off her wet clothes. She felt like a
towel that had been used, thrown in the gutter, and then run over by a
succession of cars.

She sank into the water while it was still painfully
hot, hissing as it hit her skin. It hurt but she could already feel herself
relaxing. She was about to lean her head back against the cast-iron edge when
the door flew open and her niece, Zen, bounced in.

“Auntie Joy Auntie Joy Auntie Joy is here!” Zen
jumped up and down as she sang the words. She was wearing footie pajamas with
characters from
The Booger Patrol
, a
popular children’s hygiene/adventure show, on them. Her long, curly hair
floated around her. Zen’s aura was changeable because she was young, but like
most children she tended toward yellows and greens. A happy
little girl who loved and was surrounded by love, despite any problems in her
parents’ marriage.

“Hi Zen-Zen,” said Joy. “How are you?”

“Good.” Zen went suddenly shy, looking down at the
floor. She reached down for something she saw there and came up with Joy’s bra.
“Oh my gosh it’s huge!” she said.

Joy couldn’t help but laugh. “I think your mama’s is bigger,”
she said.

“Always been my cross to bear,” said Rosemary from
the doorway. “Young lady, you give your aunt a kiss good night and then go tell
your father to read you a bedtime story. And no stops along the way, all
right?”

“Will Auntie Joy be here in the morning?”

Joy glanced at Rosemary. “I think so,” she said.
“Yes.”

“Yay!” Zen gave Joy a wet
kiss on the cheek and ran out of the bathroom.

“That girl tires me out,” said Rosemary.

“I thought she was sick,” said Joy.

“That was last week. We’ve already been through two
days of sniffles and a near amputation since then.” Rosemary picked Joy’s
clothes up off the floor. “There’s a robe on the back of the door,” she said.
“Don’t soak in there all night. Dinner’s waiting.”

Joy decided that she would soak just as long as she
liked, turning the hot water back on periodically with her foot, until she
realized that the heat and steam were making her drowsy. Then she pulled the
plug and stood to rinse herself off under the showerhead.

The robe was a red terry cloth thing, so fluffy that
it made Joy feel as if she had doubled in size. The
hardwood of the hallway was cool under her feet, but Joy felt like her body
temperature had risen about ten degrees; she didn’t mind the cool.

Rosemary’s kitchen table was a massive old blond-wood
piece, with sturdy country-style chairs. The room was painted a cheerful
yellow, with floral accents that were really more like flourishes, except that
when Joy said “floral flourishes” Rosemary got annoyed with her. Rosemary had
lived here even before she had married Lawrence, and she had done all of the
decorating herself; she was a nester, in ways that Joy herself had never been.
But when she did think of home, she thought of Rosemary’s house.

Rosemary must have heard her coming, because she set
a hot plate of white-smothered pasta in front of her. “Mac and goat cheese,”
she said. “The green bits are pesto.”

“You make this for Zen?” Joy asked.

“Are you kidding? She loves it. She’s going to be
spoiled, but she’s going to learn how to cook for herself, so it’ll even out.”
Rosemary sat down but her hands wouldn’t keep still. She had quit smoking while
she was pregnant with Zen, but Joy could tell that she missed having a prop,
especially when she was talking. Her aura was a soft blue, shot through with
slivers of silver and—occasionally—black. Truthful and nurturing, but with a
tendency to hold grudges.

“Thank you for having me,” Joy said.

“Don’t be stupid. You’re welcome anytime. You don’t
even need to call.”

“Well, I just wanted to be sure you’d be around and
everything.”

“Joy, honey, we don’t
go
anywhere,” Rosemary said. “We don’t screw, and we don’t fight.
He goes to work early, he comes home late, he goes to his meditation chamber,
and he contemplates his ass off.”

Lawrence Ebrahim was a VP of meditation and visualization
at a major investment firm. He was a devout Buddhist, but he was also a devoted
family man, or at least Joy had always thought so.

“Doesn’t he portal home for
lunch?”

“Sure he does. But Kenshō and I aren’t on his
schedule. Baby’s usually napping when he comes home. Then he just wants to
complain about work, and I do
not
want to hear it. I could complain to him, but I don’t.”

Joy tried to hide her smile under a forkful of mac
and goat cheese. She was sure that Rosemary shared her complaints with Lawrence
more than she was saying, and maybe more than she realized.

“So why is he meditating at home so much?”

“He says his work is stressful. But, I mean, his work
is meditating! He sits around concentrating on his breathing all day.”

“Well, he’s the vice president. I’m sure it’s not
that simple.”

Rosemary waved a hand in dismissal. “I don’t want to
hear that from you. You want to take his side, you can
take him home with you.”

“I’m sorry.” Joy pushed her plate aside. “Thank you
for the food, it was delicious.”

“Uh-huh. So what’s on your mind?”

Joy craned her neck to relieve the ache that suddenly
returned. “I’m fine. I just came to visit.”

“I know you better than that, Joy Mahalia Wilkins.”
Rosemary rose, went to the fridge, and came back with two bottles of Leinenkugel’s honey weiss.

“You don’t drink beer anymore,” Joy said in
disbelief.

“I’m backsliding,” said Rosemary, and twisted off the
cap. “Besides, it’s Wisconsin beer, in honor of your new home.”

“It’s Minnesota—” said Joy.

“Close enough.”

“And it’s not my home.”

“Mm-hm.” Rosemary slid the
open bottle over to Joy and opened the other one. “Why don’t you have a beer
and tell me what it is that brings you to
my
home, then. Don’t tell me you just wanted to see me; I know you did. But I know
you’ve got something on your mind too. I could see it the moment you showed up
at my door looking like a mess of five-and-a-half-foot-tall seaweed with legs.”

Joy took a swig of honey-flavored beer. It tasted
like her late teens and early twenties, like disconnected visits home, her
siblings dragging her out to the sort of parties she had
never been never invited to when she was in high school. Rosemary had
acted like the older sister even then, but it was worse now that she had kids.

“You’re not Mom, you know,” Joy said.

“
Mom
isn’t
Mom. You want to talk to her about your problems? Good luck with that.”

“Yeah. I guess…” Joy
hesitated for a moment, unsure of where to start, but then it all just came
spilling out.

“I went into this job knowing it was going to be
tough. There would be lying, and I’d have to get close to people who were doing
bad things. But now Martin’s gone, and…” Tears welled up and threatened to
spill, but Joy blinked them away. She didn't think Rosemary would understand
Joy's feelings for Martin as a surrogate father. “I’ve learned some things that
make me unsure whether I can trust the people I work for. I’m already lying to
them. In fact, the only people I can talk openly with are people who’ve already
made me, people who have been hiding information from my agency.”

“Wait, your cover is blown? Why the hell don’t you
get them to pull you out?”

Joy had wondered that herself
these past couple of days, especially since learning there had been more
attempts on her life. There was no way she was going to tell Rosemary about
that, though.

“I’ve thought about it," she said. "My boss
wants to pull me out at the end of the week if I don’t find out where this
missing professor is. He’s more concerned about the demon trafficking anyway,
and I already shut that down, even though I don’t really know who was behind
it.”

“Demon trafficking?”

“Ah, yeah. Forget I said any of that. I’m not
supposed to talk about the details.” Joy laughed. “‘Sorry, sir, my sister got
me drunk and started pumping me for information.’”

“Joy, honey, I don’t care about your investigation. I
care about your well-being and your safety. And I have to tell you, you look
beaten down.”

Joy bristled at this. “I’m not beaten. I just don’t
know if I’m on the right side. I’m being pulled in three directions—at
least—and it’s maddening. I just found something major, and I’m not even sure I
should show it to my boss.”

“For the record,” Rosemary said, “I said you looked
beaten down, not beaten. You’re my big sister, and I’ve never seen you get
beat, not once in my life.”

“Well, thank you, but I’m not sure that’s true.”

Rosemary put her hand over Joy’s and squeezed. “Not.
Once.”

“OK. Fine. I’m amazing. But that’s when I know what I
should be doing. That’s when I know what the right thing is. Right now, I…I
almost wish I could talk to Trevor.”

Now Rosemary took a long swig from her bottle. “I
thought we weren’t talking about him.”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you the other day,” said Joy.
“Have you even heard from him?”

“Sort of. He sends presents to the kids. No notes,
just ‘From Your Uncle Trevor.’ They’re posted from Cleveland.”

Joy picked at the label of her beer. “He hasn’t
spoken to me since I joined the bureau.”

Rosemary finished her own bottle and stood. “I’m
going to say something that you’re not going to like. The two of you have
always been trying to prove something to each other. You go into academics, he
drops out and says the educational system is, what—?”

“Assembly-line brainwashing for profit.”

“Then you write some paper about the dangers of
privacy—”

“It was on pathologies of people who struggled with
intimacy!”

“And all of a sudden he’s off protesting about law
enforcement overreach. He goes to prison, you go into law enforcement. The two
of you have been in an arms race since Dad died.”

“Well, if you ask me, he wanted to take Dad’s place.
Except Dad never told everyone what to do.”

“Honey, don’t sit there and tell me you never tried
to mother Trevor,” Rosemary said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out two
more beers.

“That’s only because Mom gave up on him!” Joy pounded
on the table without realizing she was going to do it. “Damn. I’m sorry.”

“If you didn’t wake the baby, then we’re fine. If you
did, you are going to pay.” Rosemary waited a moment; when no sound came, she
set two open bottles on the table. “So why do you think Trevor would be more
help than your devoted, maternal, sharp-as-a-tack sister?”

“Maybe because he’s been to prison. Because he’s been
on the other side. I’m having an existential crisis here. I went into this
thinking I knew about the pitfalls of law and order, and now I’m finding out
there’s an entire universe of complications that I never even suspected.” If
only she could explain to her sister how literally true that was.

“Maybe you should talk to him, then,” Rosemary said
as she settled back into her chair.

“If I tracked him down and showed up at his door he’d
be so angry there’d be no chance of him ever speaking to me again,” said Joy.

“You could tell him I hired someone to track him
down.”

Joy shook her head and drank some more beer. She was
starting to feel a little buzzed, but more than that, she felt tired.

“You know what would make my job a lot easier? If my
new boss wasn’t a
massive
jerk.”

“Oh, here’s the good stuff,” said Rosemary. “I knew
if I got a little alcohol in you I’d get some dirt.”

“He’s a bully. The number of times I’ve wanted to hit
that man…”

“I hope you fight better than you did when we were
kids.”

“I do, as a matter of fact. I learned from the
bureau.”

“This is the guy you’re not sure you can trust?”

Joy set her elbows up on the table and leaned her
head on her hands. “It’s not quite that cut-and-dried. I think he’s loyal to
the bureau. Being an ass doesn’t preclude that. But I…” Joy stopped herself
from telling Rosemary about Carla Drake’s manuscript. Joy hadn’t had a chance
to read it yet, but the title told a story all on its own. “I’m not sure
whether the
bureau
is the right side.
I don’t know which end is up, honestly.” She looked down at her drink. “And I
must be a real lightweight these days, because I am
loaded
off of a beer and a half.” She set the bottle of honey weiss
to one side. “I think I should switch to water and go to bed.”