Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  “Foo-koo-tekky—changing the body axis to avoid contact,” Paj said. His eyes narrowed at the student’s kick, and he said, “You could let it pass over, but his form’s bad. He’s left an opening. Never pass on free. So you decide to take the rib.”

  Paj threw his shield hand down and flicked up his back leg, touching the student’s side. “You see,” he said, and I did—how the defensive movement set him up for the kick, how the kick set him up to retract the leg, shooting it under his body, spinning upright.

  “Sensei,” one of the green belts asked. “What was that kick? It wasn’t ebi—”

  “Chai-joe,” I said with a grin. I loved saying the name of that kick; it reminded me of two of my favorite beverages. “More like a roundhouse kick done from the floor.”

  “It’s shaa-jo,” Paj corrected. “Otherwise our visitor is correct. Frost, show him!”

  I blinked. Me? And my damn mouth. I let one hand fall to the floor and kicked up my back leg. I held it up there, pointed forty-five degrees at the ceiling, and the green belt grunted; then I pulled it under me and lurched upright. In short, I had none of the grace of Paj.

  At least my dragon tattoo wasn’t bothering me—it seemed to like my exertions.

  “Not bad, Frost,” Paj said, perhaps a little too graciously, as I stood there, red-faced, whether from exertion or embarrassment I couldn’t say. “We need to work on your form a bit. You’re not ready to work it into foo-koo-tekky. Again!”

  After showing us some of Taido’s most advanced kicks, Paj drilled us on its most basic form—untai no hokei, a ritualized solo fight where you imagine a sequence of attackers coming at you, whom you dispatch with the hokei’s signature movement, a wavelike motion.

  Regardless of how good you are at untai, the best thing to do is to narrow your focus and enter the universe of the hokei. To see the attackers, leaping between them, shooting your hands at their Adam’s apples, landing knockout punches on a third foe, catching him and laying him aside before whirling to deal with the two remaining foes—before returning to the start.

  “Good!” Paj said. “Forceful yells, fluid pacing, and believable targets. But you’re bobbing. Halfway through the hokei, your stance goes to shit. Focus on your breathing—it should follow the hokei. Conquer your breathing, and your stance will follow. Next!”

  I rose and returned to the line of students. Out in the theater seats, Cinnamon, Jewel, and Molokii watched. Jewel was staring at me, wide-eyed—then giggled as Cinnamon leaned and muttered something in her ear. Only Molokii was unmoved, nodding at me gravely.

  “Thanks for joining us,” Paj said, shaking my hand after closing the practice with a formal stretchdown and a whole bunch of bowing. “You just pop up everywhere. I think I’ve seen you in every studio but Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wiping my brow with a towel. “I’m surprised you remember me. I’ve only been to the headquarters once when you were there.”

  Paj cocked his head at me. “Full sleeves and a Mohawk,” he said, still smiling, but his eyes penetrating. “Six-two, but you carry yourself like six-six. You want to stand out.”

  I smiled tightly. Behind me, I heard Jewel snicker. Finally I said, “Can’t argue with that.”

  Then I hopped down from the stage to land in front of Jewel, Cinnamon, and Molokii.

  “Ow,” I said, regretting it the moment I landed. “My knees. My thighs. My ass—”

  “I can help with that,” Jewel said. “You know, check for damage—”

  “Oh, behave,” I said, checking my phone. “Officer Ridling texted me the all-clear, but we’re in the conference’s afternoon break.” I smiled at Cinnamon, then tousled her hair until I disheveled her headscarf. “We’ll just have to while away the time in the Stanford Bookstore.”

  “Yaay!” Cinnamon said, bouncing.

  “Haha! Phoo,” I said, wiping my face again. “Just give me a minute to wash up—”

  “You know, I can help with that too,” Jewel said, the smile becoming devilish.

  “Behave,” I said. “Really. Behave!”

  “Don’t wanna,” Jewel said.

  Fifteen minutes later, we emerged into a winding path lined with bicycles that led us back on to the beautiful Stanford campus. We soon lost ourselves in branches and leaves and cottage-like classrooms roofed in Spanish tile. Stanford was a warren, a living Escher print unfolded and flattened out upon itself, M.C.’s delicate etchings of impossible buildings coming to life in a maze of arched arcades and cozy buildings fashioned from warm, rough-hewn gold stone.

  It was here, by an empty bird fountain, sitting on a redwood park bench with a plaque that read SMILE, that Savannah and I had shared our first kiss “away.” The Bay had been our first trip together, the first time it had finally hit us we could really be together as a couple.

  I glanced at Jewel, trying to jam her octopus hat back down over curls which kept trying to pop the hat off. What a delight she’d proved to be. Five months since Calaphase died, three years since I left Savannah-turned-Saffron. Maybe it was time to open a chink in my armor—

  My phone rang. “Yes,” I said curtly.

  “Frost? Carnes,” came the reply. “What’s the word on Buckhead?”

  “Dude!” I said. “We last spoke, what, twenty-four hours ago? Give me a break.”

  “Higher-ups,” Carnes said bitterly, “in the Wizarding Guild are leaning on me. If you recall, you asked if I wanted another arrangement. I do want another arrangement. I want to help your friend Jewel, and I want your help. But my superiors are demanding a quid pro quo.”

  “Where is this bookstore again?” Cinnamon asked.

  “All right, all right,” I said, glancing over at her. “I’ll call him.”

  “Don’t you know?” Jewel asked, adjusting her hat.

  “But you haven’t called him yet,” Carnes said. “I mean, as of right now?”

  “I thinks it’s that way,” Cinnamon said. “Down to the left—”

  “No,” I said. “It’s down to the right—”

  “What?” Carnes asked.

  “Really? Fuck! I’m all turned around—”

  “Just a minute, baby,” I said, stepping slightly away.

  “What?” Carnes said.

  “Sorry, I’m in the middle of two different conversations.” I hung back a bit and let Cinnamon, Molokii, and Jewel get ahead. As their conversation about missed turns and Dover books faded, I put the phone to my ear again. When I did, Carnes was laughing.

  “ ‘Catches’ you at a bad time?”

  “In theory, no,” I said, following the three of them closely as they wound around the garden. If I remembered right, this would come out right in front of the church, in the middle of the Quad, and from there it would be easy to get our bearings back. “You were asking?”

  “I’m not asking—my boss, the Professor, is,” Carnes said. “He likes to stay informed, but since, in his words, ‘A fae god’s visit won’t be announced on Wikinews,’ he asked me to ask you for an update. Though I don’t understand why he won’t just ask you when he sees you—”

  “When he sees me?” I asked, rounding the corner. Cinnamon, Jewel, and Molokii were ahead of me, my tiger hopscotching over tiles inlaid with numbers—but the main cobblestone surface of the Quad was nowhere in sight—only a long arcade of stone arches. I’d gotten us completely lost. “Our schedule’s filled to the brim. I need some advance notice—”

  “Wait,” Carnes said. “Aren’t you at Stanford to see him now?”

  “No,” I said, picking up the pace. Each time I turned the corner, I got more and more confused—an Escher print, this was. But each time, my three companions were farther away—gaining on them, I wasn’t. “Wait, how did you know we’re at Stanford? No one knows—”

  “I
didn’t,” Carnes said. “He did.”

  “Oh, hell,” I said, bolting forward, chasing after my baby as she, Jewel, and Jewel’s friend rounded the corner. But when I turned just after them, they were already at the opposite end of an impossibly long arcade of brown stone arches, seemingly farther away now than ever.

  And then Cinnamon, Jewel, and Molokii turned the corner . . . and were gone.

  I stared. What the hell had just happened?

  I whirled around. The archway I had just darted out of had disappeared, replaced by a wide path lined with luxuriant jasmine bushes. I whirled again, and the long arcade I’d seen my friends disappear on was gone, replaced by a classroom building nestled among paths and trees. It was a perfectly normal classroom, two stories of warm brown stone topped with Spanish tile . . . but attached to it, looming over me, making my skin crawl in a way I couldn’t quite put a finger on, was a tall, windowless, three-story tower.

  I swallowed.

  I looked at my cell phone for reassurance—but the call with Carnes had been dropped. Shit. Cautiously, I stepped up beneath the archway, and saw a dark green double door. On the right hand door was written, in neat, white letters:

  LIGOTTI HALL

  Building 26A

  Department of Alchemy

  Post no flyers or posters

  Then the left hand door opened on its own.

  ———

  “Oh, hell,” I muttered. “Let me guess. The warm welcome . . . of the ‘Professor.’ ”

  28. The Computer Wizard of Ligotti Hall

  I stepped through the dark green door—and backward through time, my nose assaulted by competing wafts of memory: the tang of desiccants from Emory University’s Department of Chemistry, and the eclectic spices of the Harris School of Magic. Here, at the Stanford Department of Alchemy, those smells mixed, but the feeling was the same.

  The wave of nostalgia was not limited to my nose. The colors, fonts, and logos were all different, but otherwise, the room I entered was a perfectly normal front office of an academic department: mail slots and message boards, ratty couches by a well-worn copier, a wide cracked oak counter shielding a pair of administrative assistants.

  The younger assistant, a trim Hispanic man, was busy hitting on a Scottish version of Hermione with purple hair and a nose ring. I wondered what the point of their flirting was; as far as I could tell, they were both gay. I turned instead to the wiry-haired senior assistant and cleared my throat—and the assistant and student both gave me appraising looks. Were they gay or bi? I realized that I’d slapped a label on them, just like I’d accused Jewel of doing to me.

  “Excuse me,” I said, reddening. “I’m Dakota Frost. The Professor is expecting me.”

  “Which one, dear?” the senior assistant asked, pleasantly but distractedly, still scribbling on a Garfield pad. “There are thirteen—uh, twelve professors in the Department.” When I didn’t respond, she looked up sharply. “Oh, dear. You mean The Professor. Did he do the thing?”

  I grinned. “I’m guessing he did.”

  The Hispanic assistant slapped his head. “Oh, God, we’re gonna get sued. Again—”

  The older assistant stabbed at a phone. “Professor!” she barked, in a voice of authority that made all of us jump. She rose, finger still held on the intercom button, and snapped, “You, as you well know, have a visitor, and shame on you, sir.”

  Laughter rippled out of the intercom. “Yes, yes, send her back, Ms. Koch.”

  Miss Koch released the button. “Follow me, dear,” she said, bustling toward the flip-top of the counter. “And I’m so sorry. He’s supposed to stop doing the thing—”

  “Are you the new professor?” the Scottish girl asked, calculatingly.

  I glanced back at her—cute, and what a delicious voice. But still . . . “God, I hope not.”

  As we walked back through the hall on the left, that brief interaction made me start to wonder what I was doing with Jewel. I’m an irrepressible flirt; if a tasty man or woman crosses my path, I’ll give them a wink. But I rarely act on it. Why had Jewel been different?

  We turned a corner, and the split-brain feel of the Department of Alchemy continued. On our left were normal professorial doors—some dark behind the glass, others lit, and one with a row of students waiting. On the right were classrooms hosting far less normal demonstrations: wafts of smoke, crackling electricity, flickering behind glass that left my tattoos tingling.

  We passed a laboratory where students slaved over bubbling beakers that shot puffs of sparkling silver flame, and I wished Jewel was here to see it too. I sighed. What made me latch onto this stranger on a plane, knowing we’d go our separate ways by the end of the week? Maybe that was the appeal in the beginning.

  But that’s as far as my self-examination got—we were there, at a second bend in the hall, standing before a door with a frosted glass window whose brighter light almost certainly indicated a corner office, and whose dark lettering indicated the turf of:

  Professor A. NARAYAN DEVENGER

  Department of Alchemy

  Chair

  Miss Koch knocked, but nothing happened; and while we waited, I examined the flyers on the message board next to his door: a film series, antinuclear protests, and an arrow pointing down at a large box, filled with FREE(D) BOOKS. Charming. I liked him already.

  “Professor!” Miss Koch snapped. “This is enough. I know you’re in there!”

  There was a rumble. A large shape loomed behind the glass. “Oh, all right,” called a voice, and the rounded shape sank downward. With another, deeper rumble, the shape receded from the glass, and the door slowly opened, all by itself, with no one behind it. “Come in.”

  Miss Koch groaned. “At it again. He’s not tearing you away from anything, is he?”

  “Oh, just my daughter, my date, my life,” I said, picking up a couple of books from the box. Someone had thrown away a perfectly good copy of Kohen and Egelston’s Biogenic Manadynamics. “Huh. What do you know, fifth edition. All I have is the fourth—”

  Koch snapped her fingers in my face. “Don’t let the Professor addle you,” she said, checking her watch. “Legend has it people have grown old and died talking to him, so if I don’t see you in twenty-five minutes, I’m coming back with a crowbar—”

  And then a shimmering light flickered against the glass. I squinted, feeling a slight flood of mana that made my skin tingle—but the sparkle caught Miss Koch full in the eyes. She stopped, tilted her head, then said pleasantly, “—and maybe a cup of nice tea.”

  “I won’t let him ‘addle’ me,” I said, smiling. “And I’ll pass on the tea. Or the crowbar.”

  “Crowbar?” She furrowed her brow, then scowled. “Neither the tea nor the crowbar will be for you,” Miss Koch growled through the door, having recovered both her composure and her ire. “Both will be for his head, and not in that order!” Then she stalked off.

  I pursed my lips, slipping the slim copy of Gamut’s Art of Graphomancy on top of the fifth edition of K&E. Then I stepped through the door.

  I entered a paradise of books and light. The two straight inner walls of the corner office were lined with books; the opposite wall arced outward, with a row of sofas below a curved arc of windows, nearly three-quarters of a circle. At the circle’s center, protected by the ramparts of a huge, paper-strewn L-shaped desk, and nearly hidden from view by a parapet of vertical flat panel monitors, sat Professor Narayan Devenger.

  Narayan Devenger was a salt-and-pepper Santa in sandals, suspenders, and sport coat. His frayed black T-shirt was emblazoned with a symbol I didn’t recognize, an upside-down V in a circle. I couldn’t quite place him—his features were Caucasian, his skin swarthy. He was facing his fort of computer screens when I entered, but when I stepped through the threshold, he looked back through half-rimmed gl
asses at me, mouth breaking into a wide, cheerful, devilish grin.

  As Devenger turned around, the wooden floorboards rumbled deeply beneath his Herman Miller chair. Beside me, just behind the door, I saw a stepladder on rollers piled with books on magical tattooing, all by authors I knew: Sumner and Navid, Wilsen and Grayson. Devenger had been checking up on me, right up to the moment I appeared at the door, and then he had turned the simple act of returning to his desk into a little faux-magical show.

  Then I remembered how I got here. “My daughter—” I began hotly.

  “She’s fine,” Devenger said, holding up his hands. His face might have been European, his skin Indian, but his voice was pure Midwestern. “No doubt deep in the bookstore by now. I have Carnes’s errand boy on loan, shadowing them. You have my word as a wizard—”

  “Ha,” I said.

  “My word as a wizard,” he said firmly, “they will come to no harm—”

  “Really?” I snapped. “You ‘addle’ them too?”

  “No,” Devenger said, so sincerely I started to believe him. “You are described as a skilled magician, highly cantankerous, and a fiercely protective mother. I anticipated your response, and spared your daughter and your squeeze from my little exercise in . . . escheromancy.”

  He smiled, whether at the magic or the pun I couldn’t tell. I stared back—then my mouth quirked up, wanting to smile. Maybe he was putting the whammy on me, but my skin felt no tingle of magic. Perhaps Devenger’s happiness was just naturally infectious.

  Finally I gave in, smiled, and said, “Still, that was a dirty old trick.”

  “A whole sequence of them,” Professor Devenger said, chuckling.

  “Mind if I keep these?” I asked, indicating the books in my hand.

  “That’s why they’re freed,” he said, still chuckling. There was a reason this fat, happy, charismatic man was a chair of a department. “And I’m sorry for luring you in like that, but I’d heard you’d had trouble being tailed by the DEI and I wanted to talk in private. Besides, this is Stanford. The campus is practically built for it. Forgive an old man his little tricks.”