Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial) (6 page)

“AD Shil left these offices at about five minutes to ten last night. He drove home via his usual route and parked in the underground garage. He rode the elevator to the ground floor, where someone else got on.” Flood passed a black-and-white photograph across the desk, and Joy took it. It showed two men, one darker than the other, both wearing suits. Joy knew that Martin was the lighter-skinned of the two only because she recognized the suit as one she had seen him wear before.

“Do you recognize the other man?”

Joy cleared her throat. “AD Flood, I don’t know if you’re aware of my disability.”

The tone of his voice and the shimmer of his aura told her that he was, but he said, “Enlighten me.”

“I’m face blind. I have trouble recognizing even family members by photographs. I read people’s auras; they’re highly individual.”

“You’re a field agent who can’t recognize suspects based on the photographs in their files? I find that a bit strange, Wilkins.”

“Actually—”

“That wasn’t a question, Wilkins.” Flood folded his hands on the desk. “What does my aura tell you right now?”

“That you’re very determined, and very worried.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s all I’m comfortable saying right now.”

“There’s more?”

“I’ve just met you, sir. I need to get to know you a little better and compare what I learn with what I see. The colors can mean more than one thing.”

“You were a psychologist, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

He pulled out a file. “You had a tenure-track position at a state college in Kentucky when AD Shil recruited you. How did that happen?”

Joy knew she wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but she was starting to feel very uncomfortable. It was starting to feel like he was interrogating her.

“I don’t know, exactly. I had a small reputation as an aura reader. I think he heard about that, and he came to see me.”

“What did you think of him?”

Joy took a slow, deep breath as she remembered. “He was very kind. Very warm. It’s rare…many people are good at faking those things, and their auras give them away. Martin is—” her voice broke as she corrected herself, “—Martin
was
one of the most genuine men I ever met. He was earnestly concerned not just for the safety of the public, but for the well-being of the people who worked with him to maintain it.”

“You never wished him harm?”

“No.”

“Would you mind taking another look at that photograph?”

Joy did so, just to appease him. Flood seemed to be the sort of person who liked to give people the opportunity to argue with him just so he could smack them down.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t say whether I’ve seen this person before.”

“So you can’t even recognize that the suspect is black?”

Joy took a moment to answer. “No. I’m not sure what the relevance of that is, exactly.”

“You’re black.”

Even though he had telegraphed the question, Joy’s body reacted exactly as though she’d been hit. Her heart beat faster, her back tensed, and she broke out in a sweat. Was he trying to accuse her of being part of some race-based conspiracy? The idea was so insane that she was tempted to laugh in his face; but even if she had felt like laughing, she knew it would probably make him even more unpleasant.

“Again, I’m unclear as to the significance of my race — or that of the suspect.”

“Just pointing it out.”

Joy understood, then, that he had just been making a wild stab. He didn’t really consider her a suspect, but he thought that if she was guilty of something then coming at her from a racial direction might make her slip up. He was doing his job, but Joy didn’t like the way he was doing it, and she didn’t like him.

“How did he die?”

“He was strangled. With a garrote. Not an amateur’s weapon, generally.” Flood pushed Martin’s chair back from the desk and stood. “You must know that Shil took some heat for giving you the Gooseberry Bluff assignment. Aside from the things that we aren’t allowed to say anymore because they aren’t politically correct, you’re so green your reports have grass stains. Clearly AD Shil had confidence in you, but we don’t know yet if he was right to, do we?”

“The man’s been dead for less than eight hours. I think you should have a little more respect when you speak of him.”

“And you should be careful how
you
speak to your new handler.”

Flood lifted a slim paperback off the desk; Joy recognized the casebook that she had filled just the day before. He set it on the desk and motioned for her to do the same again.

“Sir, I…”

“Say what’s on your mind.”

“I have some doubts about whether you and I should be working together,” Joy said.

“I don’t,” he said. “I’ve been following this case. Marty and I fought over it, in fact. I would have handled it much differently, of course. But you’re there now, and we don’t have the resources to pull you out and send someone else in. The moment I heard Marty was dead, I said a little prayer and I called the director to request that you be assigned to me.

“Now. Update me.”

Joy set her hand on the book. Just as it had the day before, it seemed to enfold her…and then she was back in the office. She felt sharper and less fatigued, despite barely having slept.

Flood picked up the casebook and flipped through it. “So. This place is full of strange folks, isn’t it? This secretary, this ladyboy…” He shook his head. “If that was my son, I’d set him straight, believe me.”

Joy said nothing. Flood was, if not a typical FBMA man, at least typical of a sizeable percentage of them. Coming from academia, where the prejudices were more subtle and more rationalized, she had initially been shocked at how some of the agency men talked. The fact that Martin was different had gone a long way toward balancing out how she felt about the work. To have him replaced by a man like this was worse than insulting.

“So you really haven’t done anything yet. This divination professor, Song, told you nothing; you haven’t talked to the conjuration professor; you haven’t even checked in with the president. Is that correct?”

“I saw the president briefly but I haven’t been able to get in to see him since. As to the rest of the faculty, I’m trying to ease my way in so as not to arouse suspicion.”

Flood turned toward the back of the casebook. “Tell me about this call.”

“Like I said, at 4:17 AM I received a crystal-to-crystal call, and someone who I believed was AD Shil told me that the blips had picked up indications that demons were being moved through the college at that moment.”

“What were his exact words?”

“He said…he said, ‘Agent Wilkins, it’s going down right now. The blips picked it up seven minutes ago.’ I wasn’t fully awake yet, and he said, ‘Wake up, this is Martin Shil. Someone is moving demons through the college right now.’”

“He said ‘It’s going down’?”

“Yes.”

“Have you known AD Shil to use that phrase?”

“Yes.”

Flood raised an eyebrow at that but let it pass. “So. You went to the college.”

“Yes.” He ran her through everything that had happened, and he seemed to be checking her version of the events against what she had just put in the casebook. When they reached the point where she returned to her rental house he stopped and set the casebook down.

“Tell me how you think it’s going so far,” he said.

Joy shook her head. “I’m not sure. It depends a lot on who called me. It could have been Martin calling me. Martin’s…ghost. Or it could have been a setup. Someone — possibly the same people who had AD Shil murdered — may have wanted to flush me out and make me blow my cover.”

“You think your cover is blown?”

“It could be.”

“I don’t agree.” Flood picked up a thin folder and read from the single sheet of paper inside. “4:10 AM, August 29
^th
, tracking division picked up nameless demon signatures on the college grounds. Ten minutes later, they were gone.”

Joy did some figuring in her head. They’d finished before she had even managed to leave her house.

“The list of things we don’t know right now is longer than a congressional report. What I’m interested in at the moment is how they’re moving the demons.”

Joy shook her head. “Maybe they’re using spatial distortion. If so, though, I don’t understand why they would choose the college as a stopover.”

“What do we know about the security at the college?”

“The wards were set up by the president himself.”

“The president whom we can’t get in touch with.”

“Yes. One of the security magic professors is also a security consultant, but I’m not sure what aspects he’s involved with.”

“You’re thinking of Hector Ay?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to talk to him. Also this conjuration professor, Ingwiersen.
Now.
I don’t care if you annoy people. We don’t have time for you to make friends. Be nosy, be aggressive. We want the people who are behind this, but there’s a breaking point with this trafficking. If another shipment gets through, the director wants a clamp put over the campus, and then we’ll be starting from scratch somewhere else.”

He didn’t say “without you,” but Joy heard it anyway. “What about Carla Drake?”

“The only thing we know for sure is that she’s not here.”

“Yes, but—”

“You’re dismissed, Agent.”

Joy stood. She stared at a paperweight replica of the Lincoln Memorial on Martin’s desk. She had given it to him the first Christmas after she met him, because he had mentioned that he admired Lincoln. Joy was a terrible gift-giver, and she knew it.

“When will the funeral be?”

Flood unclenched his jaw for the first time since Joy had entered the office. He almost looked ashamed, but Joy suspected that any discomfort would be turned back on her the next time she saw Flood. “I’ll let you know. We’ll set up a gate for you.”

Joy looked around the office one last time before she walked out and stood on the landing outside her house. The sun was just peeking out from the opposite shore of the St. Croix, obscured by a light fog. It was going to be a hot day.

She made it back inside before she started to cry. She doubled over with grief, sobbing like a child, but not caring. She took a few steps in the direction of her living room before giving up and dropping to her knees on the floor.

She had first met Martin about a year after her father had died. Even seven years later, Joy hadn’t recovered from her father’s death. She had thought for a while that the world would eventually fill in that hole, like a vacuum, but apparently grief was an unnatural phenomenon. Raymond Wilkins’ absence had substance. As a child, whenever Joy heard her father return home from a three- or four-day trip in the middle of the night, she would sneak out of her room and crawl into her parents’ bed. Her mother was an oncology nurse who often worked nights and always slept badly; she discouraged Joy and her sister and brother from sleeping with her when her husband was gone. But Ray Wilkins loved to crowd his children into the king-size bed: elbows and knees pressing into backs, drool dripping on shoulders, snoring waking everyone up. When their mother worked the night shift he would keep them up late, telling silly jokes or listening to them talk about their day.

As Joy got older the bed became too crowded, and she came to want her own space, but she had remained close with her father. For a long time he was her closest friend. It wasn’t until her late teens that she could read auras well enough to counterbalance her face blindness, and other kids often assumed that she was either slow or snobby because she couldn’t recognize them from day to day. A girl she was friendly with one day might wear pants instead of a dress the next day, or put her hair up in a ponytail, and become unrecognizable. But her father was always the same. He always smelled the same, he always had the same haircut, and he always called her “Pride ’n’ Joy.” His aura was always a bright, emerald green.

Joy loved her mother as well, but she was more changeable. She had always been moody and dissatisfied. She took up hobbies and friends and fashions and then lost interest and dropped them, staying in on her days off and sipping white wine while she read magazines about famous people. Her aura tended to dark greens tinged with gray. Joy didn’t claim to understand her mother, but after years of psychology classes her theory was that Marsha Wilkins was an introverted person who needed more solitude than she got at home, and didn’t know how to get it. Now that her husband was gone and her children had moved out, she was happier, and Joy had to admit that she resented her for it.

Ray Wilkins had suffered a heart attack at the yards and died before the ambulance arrived. He’d just turned fifty-one. It was too young, and Joy had never been able to process it. She’d cried, but she still woke up aching to hear his voice, to sit in his lap and smell his sweat.

Martin Shil was nothing like her father except in one way: consistency. His suits were all of the same style, and he wore them in a regular rotation; he never wore hats; he saw his barber every Monday like clockwork. His accent was faint but distinctive. He always crossed his legs and folded his hands in the exact same way. All that, and he took a genuine interest in her. He convinced her that her face blindness would not be a barrier to working for the FBMA, and he made sure that it was true. He invited her to dine at his house with himself and his wife. He always invited her over for Thanksgiving, even though Joy usually went home to see her mother.

She knew that she was grieving as much for her father, still, as she was for Martin. She felt guilty for that. But she consoled herself that it was also a compliment, because they were the two best men she had ever known.

The best thing she could do for him now was to find out who had killed him.

The sun was behind the bluff by the time Joy made it down to the St. Croix Trail. The Wisconsin side of the river was lit up like a greenery-filled stage, the glare of scattered windows shining in her eyes as she pulled into a spot in front of the St. Goose Pier. There were six rows of a dozen slips each. About a third of them were empty, but the rest held boats ranging from little water-skiing craft to those larger than her house. Several of the latter seemed to have parties going on onboard. As Joy locked her car she noticed a group of kids wearing gear from Arthur Stag College on a nearby boat; one of them waved at her, and she waved back, wondering if it was one of the kids who had crashed her first lecture.

She crossed the street to the row of brick buildings opposite the pier. The second building from the right had a couple of neon beer signs in the window and the inscription
The Mandrake
hanging below the second-floor windows.

Once inside she saw that the second story no longer existed; the remnants of its wood floor were embedded halfway up the brick walls, now open all the way to the high rafters that supported the building’s roof. Brown faux-leather booths lined the wall to her right, with tables filling the front left side up to the point where the long, polished bar took over. The place was hung with black-and-white photos of the town — at least, Joy assumed it was the town — and people Joy had no way of recognizing, any more than she could have recognized the patrons filling most of the tables in the place.

“Hi,” said the hostess. “Are you here for dinner?”

“I’m meeting someone — the reservation should be under Hector Ay?”

“Yes! Right this way.”

The hostess’s aura belied her cheery air; she was beset with anxiety over something. But it was none of Joy’s business. There was no good way to tell a stranger that you were worried about them because you were able to see things about them that they hadn’t chosen to tell you. Joy had made a rule for herself, that unless someone’s aura indicated that they were about to hurt themselves or someone else, she kept what she saw to herself.

The hostess led Joy to a booth where Professor Ay was already sitting. He stood as she approached and shook her hand. Joy took note of his dark, tousled hair, his thick mustache, and the alternating reds and yellows of his aura. A driven man…but also a worried one.

“Good to see you again,” she said.

“Thank you for meeting me.” He motioned for her to have a seat and waited until she had before sitting back down himself.

“This is an interesting spot,” she said. “I haven’t seen much of the town yet.”

“Yes. I believe this was the offices of the local newspaper until the flood of 1965. When I first came here it was vacant, but then they shut down the culinary department at the college and Chuck decided to use his severance to open this place.”

“Chuck?”

“Yes. He was the head of the culinary department. They used to be in charge of the cafeteria at Gooseberry Bluff, before the state decided they could make more money by giving franchises to Subway and Pizza Hut. So now this is the place to get good food in town.”

The waitress came by and asked if they wanted drinks, never looking up from her pad. Her aura was familiar, dominated as it was by dark gold. “Margaret?”

Margaret May looked up. “Professor! I’m sorry, I just got on shift and I’m all — oh! Professor Ay!” The smile Margaret gave Hector was a bit more enthusiastic.

“Hello, Margaret,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were working here.”

“I just started this week. Can I ask you? I tried that aversion spell you talked about? From class? I put it on the door to my bedroom, and now my roommate is talking about moving out, and I’m worried that I cast it too strong, you know? I didn’t mean for that to happen. Also my cat is avoiding me, but sometimes she’s just kind of a snot, so that might be totally unrelated.”

“Cats and aversion spells can have some bizarre interactions,” Hector said. “Sometimes they cancel each other out. Have you tried removing the aversion?”

“I did, but we didn’t have any mustard powder, so…”

“You used yellow mustard, didn’t you?”

“Brown, actually.”

“Well, I don’t know what sort of counterspell that might have turned out to be. I recommend you go back and use the correct materials.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve just been really busy, and you know, I wouldn’t normally substitute like that, but—”

“Margaret.” Hector held up a hand. “This is about as harmless as magic can get; don’t worry about it. But in the future don’t substitute unless you talk to an expert first.”

“Right. Right. So: drinks?”

“I’ll have a Surly Furious,” Hector said.

Joy had been so distracted by the conversation that she hadn’t even glanced at the beer list. “I’ll have a…Summit Extra Pale Ale.”

“Great. I guess I don’t need to card you two, do I?” Margaret’s laugh was a bit nervous. When neither of them responded, she quickly said, “I’ll be right back with your drinks!” and fled to the bar.

“Nice girl,” Hector said.

“I’m a little worried about her,” Joy said.

“Oh, it’s just nerve-wracking, seeing teachers out of context. She probably assumed we lived in our offices.”

“No, it’s more than that. Someone’s putting a lot of pressure on her — maybe herself.”

Hector grunted faintly in response. “I suppose I relate to that.”

Thoughts of Martin pressed in upon Joy in the brief silence. The only time he had ever put pressure on her was when he could sense that she wasn’t putting any on herself. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, determined to focus on the job at hand.

Margaret returned with their beers. “Can I get you any food?” she asked.

Joy glanced at the specials board behind the bar. “The artichoke dip sounds good.”

“Nothing for me,” Hector said. After Margaret left, he stared toward the back of the restaurant for a moment, sipping his beer. His aura was rippling stripes of orange-red confidence in a rhythm and pattern that Joy had come to recognize as smugness.

“So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Joy asked.

“You taught at Kentucky State, is that right?”

“Yes. In another lifetime. Before I went back to school to do a master’s in magical arts.”

“The illustrious MA MA.” He laughed. “You were out of academia for part of that time, weren’t you?”

“Briefly.”

“Two years.”

“You’ve done your research.”

Hector shrugged. “I was curious. Why the break?”

“I just wanted a little break. I’d gone from undergrad to a PhD to teaching to the master’s program. I needed to get some experience in the real world.”

“What did you do?”

She couldn’t tell him the real answer: studied judo. Learned elemental and stun magic. Took multiple exams on federal and departmental procedures. Trained in investigative techniques. Spent — no; she wasn’t going to think about Martin, because she was too tired and it would break her. Instead she stuck to the cover story that she and Martin had worked up.

“I traveled a little bit. Spent time with family. Did a lot of reading.” It was all true enough to get past anyone using truth magic, although her answers to any follow-up questions would be a little more precarious. To counter that, she took some conversational initiative. “Tell me about yourself. How did you get here?”

Margaret chose that moment to return with the artichoke dip. “Anything else?” she asked, hovering.

“Not at the moment,” Hector said. Once Margaret was gone he leaned over the table and plucked a broccoli floret from Joy’s plate, dipped it into the steaming bread bowl, and popped it in his mouth. He grinned at Joy’s stare.

“Help yourself,” she said.

“Thanks. You were on campus this morning,” he said.

Joy managed not to betray her surprise. “Actually I didn’t get there until about 1 this afternoon.” She dipped a baby carrot into the artichoke dip. It was delicious, and she realized how hungry she was.

“No, you were there a little before four thirty a.m. Apparently, you had keys for the security shells as well as the front door.” He paused. “You also had a gun.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Joy said. She wanted to tell him to keep his voice down, even though he was barely speaking above a whisper.

“Well, it doesn’t sound like the Joy Wilkins from the application paperwork that we have on file.” He leaned forward. “You’re investigating the demon trafficking, aren’t you? Who are you with, the Department of Defense? Magical Affairs? GUMP?”

“Demon trafficking?”

“Don’t,” Hector said. “My wards picked it up too. Look, I know that it’s been happening, but I’m damned if I can figure out how. I have eyes on every square inch of the campus, and yet every few months someone slips a few dozen major demons through the grounds.” He sat back. “If Philip didn’t tell me that you were coming, then that must mean that he wasn’t sure of me.” He took a long drink of his beer, looked at it, and then drank the rest of it. “I’m not involved,” he said. “I’m trying to do my job, but this is…I just haven’t figured it out yet.”

Joy sighed and wiped her mouth with a napkin. She wasn’t looking forward to explaining to Flood how the consulting Security Magic prof had seen through her cover, but she didn’t see an alternative beyond simply lying and freezing him out. If the security was really as good as he said, he might be a valuable asset.

“What about portals?” she asked.

“There’s been no activity. Dennis — that’s the head of the spatial distortion department — he has everyone in the department log everything they do, and it always checks out.”

“Always?” Joy was thinking of the jugglers she’d seen on campus the first day of classes.

“What, you’re thinking it’s too good to be true? No. Dennis is meticulous, and he doesn’t put up with any shenanigans from his people.”

“Shenanigans?” It was such an inappropriate word, given the stakes, that all Joy could do was laugh bitterly.

“I’m glad you think this is funny. I could lose my job over this.”

Joy grunted. “I suppose I relate to that,” she said, echoing Hector’s comment from earlier. She looked down: she had finished most of the dip but had barely touched her beer. “Well, Professor Ay, I hope you don’t have any further plans for this evening, because you and I are going to have to go for a drive.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. There’s a reason I wanted to meet in public.”

“It’s not really optional.” Joy stood. “Let’s go.”

Hector spread his hands. “Why would I go with you?”

“Because I’m asking.”

“This is asking? It sounds like ordering.”

“No,
ordering
is three big men waiting outside your door when you get home putting a gag spell on you and tossing you into an invisivan. I’d rather not do that.”

Hector folded his arms across his chest.

“Look, this can work out for you,” Joy said. “If you cooperate now — and you’re clean — then we can help you. You do a lot of freelance work, don’t you? How would you like to get on a list of approved government security contractors? And if you ever decide to get out of academia, we could get you set up at one of the better firms. It’ll look a little better, though, if we don’t have to drag you kicking and screaming into a routine interview.”

“Routine, huh?”

“No body cavity searches, I promise.”

Hector sighed as he stood. “Lead on, then.”

AD Flood had a personalized gate set up on the men’s room door of a truck stop outside Hudson, Wisconsin. “After you,” she told Hector, opening the door. Hector hesitated, but he walked through, and Joy followed.

For a moment she thought the gate hadn’t worked, but then she realized that they were in Flood’s office, not Martin’s. Flood’s office was steel where Martin’s had been dark wood, beige fabric where Martin’s had been leather. There were no personal touches except for a picture of his family on the desk.

It hurt Joy to think that she would never be in Martin’s office again, never give him another report. Flood wasn’t about to give her a moment to reflect, though.

“Mr. Ay, we need to debrief,” he said, motioning to another agent who stood near the door. “Agent Gray will get you started while Agent Wilkins brings me up to speed.”

“I just wanted to know who she was working for,” Hector said.

“Yes, well, if we’re going to bring you in on this we need to make sure that we all understand each other, OK?”

Hector sighed. “OK.” He glanced back at Joy before following Agent Gray out of Flood’s office.

Flood took a deep breath. “Three days in and you’ve already blown your cover.”

“He’s in charge of security. He knew I’d been on campus this morning.” Joy failed to stifle a yawn; she covered it with the back of her hand instead. “Sorry, sir. I haven’t slept much.”

“There’s coffee on the table,” Flood said. She was surprised by his offer, but she didn’t hesitate to pour herself a cup.

“He must have some type of surveillance set up. He knew about the keys. He knew I had a gun.”

Flood crossed his arms and glared at her. “I’m not done yelling at you yet.”

“Oh. Well, it’ll keep,” Joy said.

He was silent for a long moment, to remind her that he was in charge. He shook his head. “
If
he’s clean,” he said, waving toward the door Hector had followed Gray through, “then we’re OK. If not…you heard about Seoul?”

“I know they stopped a Heartstopper attack.”

“They didn’t so much stop it as stumble upon it. No one in custody. But they found a conjuration ritual set up in an empty storefront.”

“Which suggests that the attacks were actually intended to animate major demons by harvesting the life force of the dead. Seven attacks in crowded public places, with at least forty-one dead in each attack. So counting the attack last night—”

“—night before last.”

“—seven major demons may have already been animated.”

“Maybe not seven; we think the first couple of attacks may have been dry runs.”

The coffee was lukewarm and bitter; Joy drank it all down just to get it over with.