Thaumatology 101 (22 page)

Ceri thought of the letter; it was not unconscious, it was one of the defence mechanisms the enchantment had created. ‘I had exactly two boyfriends through school and university,’ she said. ‘They were both magicians.’ There had been some fumbling sex with the one at the Metropolitan and that had been bad enough that they had broken up soon after. ‘I’ve had more attention in the last few weeks than the rest of my life put together.’ Her own parents had turned her into a wallflower for twenty-four years, robbed her of her power, and then died before they could undo what they had done. She stabbed a finger at Lily. ‘
You
were the first sex I’ve had that I actually enjoyed! It’s enough to make a girl bat for the other team.’

‘Oh,’ Carter said, a smirk forming, ‘once you’ve had Lily no one else matches up.’ Both girls looked at him, the playboy millionaire. He held his hands up, palms toward them. ‘Really. All my conquests since have been a vain attempt to find someone, anyone, even half as good.’

‘You hold him down,’ Lily said, ‘I’ll tickle him.’

Ceri giggled and Carter looked, for all the world, like he was worried they would do it.

Kennington, October 10
^th

Two police cruisers and an unmarked black sedan pulled up outside the gates of High Towers far too early in the morning as far as anyone inside was concerned. Twill was, however up and about, just disconcerted to have guests arriving when everyone else was in bed. So it was that Ceri was hustled out of bed, half asleep, and barely remembered to throw on a shirt before she was dragged downstairs to deal with this terrible inconvenience.

Radcliff and Middleshaw, the Greycoat detectives who had visited before were standing in the main hallway. Beside them was Cheryl, and beside her was a small suitcase. Ceri half-stumbled down the wide stairs from the first landing, rubbing her eyes. ‘Morning,’ she said wearily. ‘What are you doing here with them, Cheryl?’

The thaumatologist opened her mouth to answer, but it was Radcliff who spoke first. ‘Doctor Tennant is under our protection,’ he said, ‘but it seems that your Mr Fleming suggested to my boss that she would be safe here and that it would cost less in police resources if we brought her when we came to interview you.’

‘A wise man,’ Twill commented. ‘Since Ceri renewed the enchantments nothing short of a major demon is getting in here with ill intent. I’ll make coffee.’

‘In the lounge, Twill,’ Ceri said as a bolt of bluish light sped off toward the kitchen. She looked at her guests, blinking sleepily. ‘Long night,’ she said. ‘Come upstairs and we can talk.’

She pulled a couple of rarely-used chairs from the sides of the room so that everyone could sit down, and curled up in her usual place, leaving them to decide who sat on the less comfortable ones. The detectives, it turned out, were well-mannered enough to let Cheryl take the leather wing-back. Ceri said nothing. She was hoping Twill would arrive with the coffee before she had to answer any questions. Hope died on the vine.

‘Could you tell us what happened last night?’ Radcliff said.

‘Um,’ Ceri began, ‘I’d asked Lily to see if Carter, Mr Fleming, could spare me some time tomorrow, well, today now. I wanted to talk to him about… something personal. She called about midnight and said he was going to Winchester and could I go to the Dragon right then.’

Middleshaw was taking notes. ‘That’s the Jade Dragon?’ she asked. ‘His club?’

Ceri nodded. ‘So, I went. It’s faster if you cut through the park. I got the feeling someone was watching me, and then a woman dressed all in black came at me with a pair of knives. She was a vampire…’

‘You know this because?’ Radcliff interrupted.

‘Her aura,’ Ceri replied. ‘I don’t have a vampire handy to demonstrate…’

‘I know what a vampire aura feels like,’ he replied. His eyes were hard yet, somehow, pained, and Ceri wondered again what had happened to make him distrust magic but join the Greycoats.

At that moment the footstool slid across the floor to stop between the chairs and a tray of coffee with sugar and milk standing by floated in to rest on it. Ceri leaned forward to take one of the mugs. ‘Twill, you’re a life-saver.’

‘My talent is wasted on coffee production,’ the fairy said, ‘but it is nice to be appreciated.’ She spiralled down and landed on Ceri’s shoulder.

‘Anyway,’ Ceri said after a gulp of coffee, ‘the vamp attacked, I deflected the knives and threw fire at her. I must have hurt her more badly than I thought, because she ran off. And then things are a bit of a blur until I got to the Dragon and they fed me whiskey until my nerves calmed down.’

‘Your home would have been closer,’ Radcliff suggested, an edge of suspicion in his voice.

‘Yeah,’ Ceri said. ‘I honestly didn’t think that until Lily was telling me off for not coming back here.’

‘Quite right too,’ Twill grumbled.

‘I guess I panicked. I just thought of running to where I had been going.’ Ceri suspected that she had run to Lily, to her pet demon, but she was not sure she wanted to admit that to herself never mind saying it to Radcliff.

‘I presume you can’t give a description of this vampire?’ Middleshaw asked.

‘She was wearing a ski-mask or something,’ Ceri said, shaking her head. ‘Trim, lithe, fair-sized chest. Not too old. Her aura wasn’t particularly strong. She’d had martial arts training.’

‘And you “deflected” her knives?’ Radcliff said.

Ceri nodded. ‘With my arm.’

‘Interesting,’ Cheryl said, ‘a reflexive reinforcement of the skin by magic.’

Middleshaw nodded. ‘I’ve seen it done. Colleague of mine took a blow from a katana once. Just pushed it aside and broke the guy’s nose. It’s an impressive trick.’

Ceri gave a weak grin. ‘I was kind of too busy staying alive to be amazed at my awesome skill,’ she said, ‘and then there was the throwing up and the running.’

‘And you’re still unwilling to say who you think might be behind this?’ Radcliff said.

‘I wasn’t aware you had a theory,’ Cheryl commented, her interest peeked.

Ceri sighed. ‘A necromancer,’ she said, ‘almost certainly a wizard too. Very skilled, with a reason to want to see Cheryl’s project fail.’

Cheryl blinked at her. ‘Put like that…’

‘Matthew Barnes,’ Radcliff said.

‘That’s going a little far to win a race to find a particle, don’t you think?’ Cheryl said.

‘He’s reputedly arrogant enough,’ Middleshaw said, ‘but I’d agree. It seems a little too much, and too late, I’d have thought. I mean, you’ve found it, haven’t you?’

‘Unless,’ Radcliff said, ‘what you’ve found isn’t what he’s trying to beat you to.’

‘Ceri, why’d you get up? Oh! Sorry, didn’t know there was people here.’ Everyone turned and looked at the source of the voice. Radcliff’s eyes bulged. Lily sleepily pushed soft, chestnut hair out of her face and grinned sheepishly, not even reflexively covering her nudity. ‘Hey, Cheryl, what’re you doing here?’

Suddenly, the two police officers discovered they needed to be somewhere else.

~~~

Twill had decided that Cheryl’s shoulder was an excellent resting place for an evening in the lounge with the bottle of wine the thaumatologist had brought with her. There had been a moment of discomfort when the fairy had settled down without a word, just assuming it would be okay, but then Twill’s aura had done its magic and Cheryl had relaxed. Now, with half a glass of wine in her, having a fairy on her shoulder drinking wine from a thimble seemed perfectly natural.

‘I need to tell you all something,’ Ceri said, ‘and I need to know it won’t leave this room.’ She looked down at the still naked half-succubus curled up at her feet. ‘That means you don’t tell Carter either, Lil. If anyone’s going to tell him, it’s me. You can take that as an order if it makes you feel better.’

‘Okay,’ Lily replied, looking back. ‘If it’s an order…’

Cheryl watched the exchange with interest, but did not comment. ‘Why are you telling me?’ she asked.

‘Because you know half of it and might figure it out yourself,’ Ceri replied. ‘I’d rather tell you, and have you know it’s to be kept quiet for now.’

‘Intriguing, but you have my word.’

Twill shrugged. ‘Who am I going to tell?’ she said. ‘I only leave the property to hunt.’

Cheryl glanced at the little figure on her shoulder. ‘Hunt?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ Ceri said quickly.

‘Just don’t go into her bit of the attic,’ Lily added.

‘The enchantment my parents put on me,’ Ceri said, before they could get more distracted, ‘wasn’t a protection. It was a barrier enchantment designed to keep my power locked away, to hide it. It didn’t protect me, as such, it just allowed the power I had to protect me if something contacted me.’

‘I don’t understand?’ Lily said.

‘The ability you’re now exhibiting,’ Cheryl said, ‘is not new, it simply hasn’t been able to get out of your own body until the tattoos were destroyed.’ Ceri nodded.

‘Oh,’ Twill said, her tiny eyes wide.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Lily said. She looked a little annoyed that she was not in on the revelation. ‘Your parents were magicians, why would they want you to
not
be one?’

‘Because she’s not,’ Twill said. ‘Not a normal one anyway.’

Lily’s frown deepened and Ceri tried to explain. ‘Normal magicians get their power from a biological chain reaction. Well, a metaphysical one, but it expresses itself in biological ways. They have to expend physical energy to create thaumic energy, their body acting as a transducer.’ Lily nodded; she got the general idea at least. ‘I don’t,’ Ceri continued. ‘I’m more like a fairy, or a demon. I’m able to…’

‘Catalyse T-Null boson decay at will,’ Cheryl broke in, her eyes sparkling. ‘It would explain everything about the way your magic works.’

‘She’s a sorceress,’ Twill said flatly. ‘To think I’d see the day they’d come back…’

‘That’s… crazy!’ Lily exclaimed. ‘Sorcerers are… legend. They didn’t really exist. That’s like… Merlin, or…’

‘Ceridwen,’ Ceri said. ‘I was named after an ancient sorceress because the Lady of Bala Lake told my parents that’s the name they should give me.’

‘Because she sensed the power in you, even as a baby,’ Twill said. ‘She’s an old one, that one. She probably remembers the sorcerers in the old days. She’d know.’

Silence descended on the room. No one seemed to know what to say until Lily suddenly burst into giggles. Everyone looked at her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it just shows how awesome
I
am. How many succubi can say they snagged themselves a sorceress for a mistress?’

Part Four: Doomsday

Holloway, London, October 11
^th

Ceri lay on the cold granite of the lab’s containment circle with a motorised engraving tool in one hand and a pot of filler sitting beside her. Lily had complained bitterly when the two thaumatologists had said they were going into work, but had caved in the face of two determined women, so long as she could come along to act as guardian angel. Though guardian demon was proving to be more accurate; a little piece of temptation on long legs.

Shane’s imperfections in the containment runes were not as bad as Ceri had thought. Minor alterations would have them operating at peek and after a morning spent working on them she was more than halfway done. The errors were, in fact, far too carefully calculated in Ceri’s opinion. Like the rune he had used to fake a containment breach, the slight modifications to the sigils were way beyond what Shane was capable of. It just added to the evidence that he had not been sabotaging Cheryl’s efforts for his own benefit. There had to have been someone far smarter behind him.

The little grinding head on her engraving tool smoothed out her latest cut and she blew the dust away, examining her work. She nodded; perfect. Putting the tool down, she looked back over her shoulder to where Lily was standing, leaning on a wall with a slight grin on her face. Despite her feelings regarding crawling around the floor in a skirt, Ceri had put on a teddy and mini-skirt that morning. She knew full well
why
she had done it, but she just could not quite stop herself.

‘Enjoying the view back there?’ she asked.

‘Uh-huh,’ Lily replied.

‘You going to stop looking up my skirt anytime soon?’

‘I will if you stand up.’ Smirking slightly, Ceri climbed to her feet and stretched. Her spine clicked. ‘And then I’ll look at your boobs instead,’ Lily said.

Giggling, Ceri sagged out of her stretch. ‘You’re terrible,’ she said.

‘You love it,’ Lily replied. ‘You find the attention flattering, even though it comes from a girl.’ Ceri opened her mouth to protest, but Lily went on, ‘You wouldn’t normally dress like that for work, but because I was going to be here, you did.’

‘Oh,’ Ceri said.

‘I’m half-succubus,’ Lily said, ‘I know what you want. I even know the thing you want, but you don’t really want me to do it because it’d be terribly embarrassing.’ Ceri went bright pink.

‘That sounds fascinating,’ Cheryl said as she walked in from her office.

Lily grinned at her. ‘It should do,’ she said, ‘you want exactly the same thing. Should I make some coffee or something?’

‘That’d be great, thanks Lil,’ Ceri said, and her friend pushed off the wall to go to the small utility room off the main lab.

Cheryl walked up to the circle and looked down at it. ‘How’s it going? The part you’ve worked on looks… sharper.’

Ceri nodded. ‘I’ve done some general clean-up, some slight modifications and repairs. I’ll have it finished before we leave.’

‘And you think we’ll achieve full containment with this, no leaks?’

‘Tough call,’ Ceri replied. ‘Only way to be absolutely sure would be to start from scratch. How’re the modifications on the accelerators coming?’

‘One left,’ Cheryl said, pointing at the lone machine. ‘I’ll do that tomorrow. I said I’d show you its insides.’ Ceri nodded and there was a moment of silence. ‘So you wanted her to take you right here in the circle too, huh?’ Cheryl said.

‘Oh yeah.’