Thaumatology 101 (8 page)

‘Not freaky at all,’ Lily said, ‘but it was a dream, right? I mean… Hang on, you said you were in the lab.’ Her body shifted slightly as though she was going to sit up, but she was stopped by the fairy sitting on her chest.

Ceri nodded. ‘I saw that symbol glowing through the salt in the outer circle. It says here that it can be used to find secret doors and open locks.’

‘But if there
was
actually one of these runes under the salt of the circle,’ Lily said, ‘Shane the Pain would have noticed.’ She paused and her face darkened. ‘Unless he put it there, of course.’

Ceri remembered her thoughts on the day of the accident. Some of the mistakes she had found in the code for the pulse generators had seemed almost deliberate. She shook her head. ‘I can’t go accuse him of sabotaging the experiment without proof,’ she said.

‘Then we need to get some,’ Lily replied.

~~~

Etherstream was a quantum leap in wide-area, high-bandwidth networking. That’s what it said on the help page Ceri found while checking the settings. Etherstream devices connected to other Etherstream devices via a medium range broadcast over sub-membrane field space, rebroadcasting to other devices until the data was delivered to a base-station connected to the terrestrial Internet. It was all encrypted so that no one could eavesdrop on your traffic and perfectly safe. Or so the documentation said.

Still, getting through to the Metropolitan’s public gateway proved easy enough. From there, her login credentials let her onto the staff system. Sheer curiosity made her go look at the data files from the day of the accident. Just over a terabyte of collected raw data sat there waiting to be analysed. Ceri grinned. There had to be enough there to find the evidence they needed. And it could not do any harm to take a look…

Up in the study, she had plugged in one of the other devices she had found in Carter’s box. It was a fifteen terabyte network storage box with a little yellow note attached saying “I put a few books and programs on here you may find useful.” Well, she had not checked those yet, but the first use she had for the box was storing the data files from the experiment. Setting the download going, she set about the real reason she was in the system.

Of course, she had no access to most of Shane’s records, but she went poking around to find out what she could. After twenty minutes of mild frustration and piecing together bits and pieces of files, she had a vague picture of her suspect, and the data download was eighty per cent complete.

‘He did a vocational wizardry course at the Metropolitan,’ she said.

Lily had been watching her the entire time, leaning against the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee. She seemed determined to be somewhere in Ceri’s view at all times today. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that’d be enough to get him a position as a research assistant,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t. He worked as a jobbing wizard for two years and did an online course in Thaumatology. He got his degree a year early.’

‘Wow,’ Lily said though her voice suggested she was not impressed, ‘that work experience really must’ve helped.’

Ceri suppressed a smirk. ‘According to this he got a two-one, but if he did, he’s forgotten a lot.’ She tapped the screen. ‘I found his thesis here.’

Lily pushed off from the counter and walked over to stand beside Ceri’s chair, bending over to look at the screen. Her perfect breasts were right beside Ceri’s face. ‘Well,’ Lily said, ‘it’s over my head, but I’m kind of short, metaphorically speaking.’

‘Well…’ Ceri considered how best to put her summary of her co-worker’s masterwork. ‘I could’ve written this when I was fifteen,’ she said.

‘You’re a genius, hun,’ Lily said. ‘Try thinking down to normal peoples’ level.’

‘The course was run out of Cambridge,’ Ceri said. ‘They usually have very high standards. Unless he made up
big
marks elsewhere, this is barely worth a third.’

‘Cambridge?’ Lily said. ‘Cambridge, your main rival in the search for the T-Null? That Cambridge?’

‘Uh, yeah.’

‘So, Shane the Barely Capable, who happens to be a wizard and therefore useful to Tennant’s work, miraculously gets a good degree he doesn’t appear to merit from Tennant’s main rival, just in time to apply for the job as her research assistant.’ Lily paused dramatically and then added, ‘That about sum it up?’

Ceri started to turn her head to look at her friend, found her view full of breast, and turned away, her cheeks colouring. ‘Uh… when you put it like that.’ She chewed on her lip for a second. ‘It could be coincidence,’ she said, not sounding convinced.

‘That’s one huge pile of… coincidences. Any idea who runs the course he did?’

Ceri’s fingers flicked nimbly across the touchscreen. A few seconds later she was reading the Cambridge University website’s online courses section. She grimaced. ‘The course was designed and is operated by Matthew Barnes,’ she said.

Even Lily had heard of Barnes, she had even met him once when he had spent an evening at the Dragon. Her lips drew back, showing her fangs. ‘Protégé magician,’ she said, ‘wizard, necromancer, and enchanter. He’s like Carter without the morals. Seriously, you look in his eyes and there’s nothing there. I’m sure he’s pacted.’

‘I know he’s a bit wild,’ Ceri said. ‘He’s got a rep for partying, dated a couple of pop stars. I don’t think Cambridge would put up with him if…’

‘Oh come on, Ceri!’ Lily snapped, straightening up and walking back to the counter. Ceri let out a slight sigh she hoped Lily did not hear. ‘His father’s Alfred Barnes. That family owns MagiTech, and MagiTech is one of Cambridge’s main benefactors.’ Whatever the truth was, things had fallen into place for Lily. ‘When Matthew came to the Dragon he had two bodyguards with him,’ she said. ‘Vampires. Both girls and fairly young.’

‘Daddy probably pays them to keep him out of trouble,’ Ceri suggested.

Lily shook her head. ‘He’d got them bound,’ she said. ‘You know the way the human thralls of a vampire look? That was the feeling I got off these two.’ Her lips twitched into a snarl again. ‘He had real trouble with the idea that “no” means “keep your grubby hands to yourself” too.’

Ceri chewed on her lip. ‘Okay, let’s say Mat Barnes set Shane up to mess up Doctor Tennant’s experiments from the inside.’

‘Which he did,’ Lily said emphatically.

‘
Assuming
that he did,’ Ceri said, indicating that she was still not entirely convinced, ‘we would need proof so solid it could actually
stop
a Null Thaumiton before we accused him.’

Lily opened her mouth, pulling in a deep lungful of air to argue, and then sagged, her head hanging. ‘Damn,’ she said. Slowly she looked up at her friend. ‘They hurt you, Ceri. We
can’t
let them get away with this.’

September 6
^th

‘We have a visitor,’ Twill said, flitting into the kitchen.

Ceri and Lily looked at the fairy, and then at each other. ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone,’ they said in unison. Lily giggled.

‘A woman,’ Twill said. ‘She reeks of magic, but she’s not a practitioner.’

‘Doctor Tennant?’ Ceri guessed. ‘Crap!’

‘I better get dressed,’ Lily said, bolting for the door.

‘What about me?! Ceri wailed. She was dressed in her usual over-size shirt.

‘Too late for that,’ Twill said, sounding amused, ‘she’s at the door.’

Sure enough, there was a distant sound of knocking. Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. Ceri padded to the front doors on bare feet, opening an inner one, and then going on to the outer ones. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

Tennant did not look like a woman on the verge of a momentous discovery. Her eyes were sunken from lack of sleep and she looked as though she had just pulled herself together from crying. Ceri frowned. ‘Doctor Tennant, hi. I’m, uh, sorry for the informal…’

‘You’re convalescing, dear.’ She sounded tired, too. ‘Would it be a terrible inconvenience if I came in?’

‘No, of course not.’ Ceri stepped back and waved her employer through into the hall. She closed the door and followed after.

Twill was hovering at the foot of the stairs, dressed in her toga-like dress. She regarded the doctor calmly and said, ‘You look like you could use a coffee.’

Tennant did a slow blink. ‘That… would be very welcome,’ she said. Nodding, Twill turned and, vanishing into fairy-light, streamed off toward the kitchen. Tennant turned to look at the slightly sheepish Ceri. ‘You live with a half-demon and a fairy?’ she asked incredulously.

Ceri shrugged. ‘Yeah, we kind of adopted each other. That was Twill. She’s the reason the house is clean. Um, up the stairs and to the left. We’ll go sit in the lounge.’

Lily was standing meekly in front of the fireplace when they walked in. Dressed demurely, for her, in a short, grey, jersey-dress and heels, she stood there with her hands behind her back looking like a slightly-too-short catwalk model awaiting her cue. Ceri briefly wondered how the girl had got dressed so fast before realising that pulling on a stretchy dress probably did not take too long and Lily was almost certainly not wearing anything under it. ‘Good afternoon, Doctor Tennant,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to see you again.’ A slight frown broke her cutely submissive expression. ‘You look terrible, Doc. Sit down.’

Tennant took the seat Carter had occupied two days earlier. She really did not look too good. The “accident” had seemed to sap some of her confidence, like almost losing an assistant had shaken her. Now something else had happened which had been worse.

‘What’s wrong, Doctor?’ Ceri asked. Twill chose that moment to fly in with the coffee tray in tow. Ceri took her drink and sat down in the other chair while Lily once again perched on the foot stool beside her, though this time she seemed to be more conscious of doing it. That just made Ceri more conscious that she
was
doing it.

The doctor took a sip of coffee and composed herself. ‘I have some bad news,’ she said. ‘There was a fire at the lab last night. Some equipment was damaged, but C… one of our backers has already agreed to fund the replacements.’ Ceri and Lily exchanged a glance; the backer had to be Carter. ‘The real problem is that the fire started in the storage unit where the experimental data was. It’s gone! It’s stupid of me, but I hadn’t backed it up yet, and now it’s gone! All that work, you getting… hurt… and now it’s…’ Her voice, which had moved from something close to her normal speech patterns to rambling, broke down entirely as she started to sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered out.

Ceri and Lily exchanged another glance. There was the tiniest flicker of red in the half-demon’s eyes. ‘Just happy,’ Ceri said under her breath.

Lily slid from her stool and moved across to the big, wing-back chair where Tennant was sitting. Her long, delicate fingers covered the doctor’s hands. ‘It’s all right, Cheryl,’ Lily said. ‘You don’t have to be sorry. You’ve had a nasty shock. It’s okay.’ The soothing words were accompanied by a soft succubus aura, barely a tickle, but enough to make the older woman relax slowly into her seat, a smile starting to play across her lips as the tears dried.

Ceri frowned. Normally she would have felt the aura as a tingle in her wrists. Whenever Lily had done this trick before it had felt as though someone was lightly running a feather over her tattoos; not unpleasant, actually. She still had her bandages on and was not really surprised to not feel anything there, but there was an odd feeling at the back of her skull, like the skin was tightening. She had never felt anything like it before, but she ignored it; she had other things to worry about.

‘Was anyone hurt, Doctor? Do you know
why
the fire started?’ Ceri kept her voice light. The aura Lily was using was a very weak one and pulling Tennant back to reality too sharply would break it. Then they would just have a sobbing woman on their hands again.

‘No, no one,’ Tennant replied, sounding a little dreamy. ‘We were kind of lucky, actually. It was an electrical fire. There was this fireman and he was telling me…’ She trailed off softly, her smile broadening. ‘He was really nice. Big broad shoulders, and he looked so strong, and I think he kind of fancied me because I could see this huge bulge…’

‘Little too happy, Lil,’ Ceri muttered. ‘You were saying we were lucky, Doctor?’ she added more loudly.

‘Oh, um, yes, well…’ The prim doctor was looking a little flustered now and there was a flush on her cheeks. Lily had definitely overdone the aura. ‘Yes, Shane was in the lab late last night. If he’d been there when the fire started…’

Lily looked around at Ceri, her eyes still glowing red from the pupils. Ceri was thinking the same thing; Shane had gone to the lab, and then the data to prove the existence of the particle they were looking for had gone. ‘What was Shane doing there?’ Ceri asked.

‘Oh, he would work weekends sometimes.’ Tennant actually giggled. ‘Between you and me, he wasn’t that good. If he hadn’t put in extra hours I’d have sacked him when you came along, Ceri. It’s okay if I call you Ceri isn’t it?’ She looked at Lily suddenly. ‘How did you know my name was Cheryl? It’s all right that you know. You can call me Cheryl if you want. You have lovely eyes…’

‘Carter mentioned it,’ Lily said.

‘Oh! You know Carter? He’s gorgeous. Such a gentleman when he should be, and then…’

‘I work at the Jade Dragon,’ Lily told her.

‘I’ve never been there. Is it nice? I went to the Green Rooms to meet him when he was thinking of making the endowment. We had drinks in one of the private rooms and then he asked if I’d like to stay after the Dean left.’ She let out a soft, contented sigh. She did not actually
say
anything, but it was still way too much information. Lily looked back at Ceri and smirked.

‘I think,’ Ceri said, ‘you should take a nap, Doctor.’

‘Call me Cheryl, dear,’ Tennant responded, her eyelids fluttering toward closed. ‘Please, no need for…’ She yawned and sank back into the leather chair. ‘Sorry, where was I?’

‘Just close your eyes and rest,’ Ceri said. ‘Relax.’

‘I have been up,’ another yawn, ‘half the night. A nap would be…’ Her head fell to one side and she was out.