“Well now we know we have his blessing,” Liam said. “That’s enough for me.”
Sal felt something unclench inside of her. The recent tension between Asanti and Menchú had been a background anxiety in all of their lives, something she didn’t notice until they agreed on something again. Strong leadership was key to a group like this.
• • •
Strong leadership was tearing the Society apart.
Menchú needed no magic to see that. All he had to do was sit, in this too-hot room, holding his lukewarm cup of bad tea, and listen to people talk about him as if he wasn’t there.
Monsignor Fox, for example, Team One’s clerical and administrative head, had begun with some minor point of order, but worked his way around to: “—unable, and indeed sometimes appears unwilling, to curtail his archivist’s adventurism.”
Adventurism. Menchú’s last text from Liam had reported a monstrous flower, an enigmatic hostess, and a magical fountain they’d left intact, and said the party was on their way to a mall to stop a woman who had outsmarted the Maitresse. Anything could still happen; they might end up swallowed by some sort of magical bubble that would chew its way out from the Icelandic coast to consume the world. For example. Was this how Asanti felt all the time, watching them go? No wonder she wanted more field experience.
Fox was still rolling.
Menchú clutched his tea and glanced left, to Sansone, and right, to Monsignor Angiuli. Sansone, Team Two’s representative, kept her cool, not that she ever lost her cool to begin with. And Angiuli, Team Three’s monsignor, charming, affable, and wise, just… waited.
One of the Jesuits in attendance consulted the meeting minutes and objectives, but did not interrupt. One legate was staring very intently at his hands, cupped in his lap. Menchú hoped he was praying—then at least this closed-chamber monstrosity would feature some godliness. Then he saw the legate’s thumb tapping, tapping, tapping on the screen of the phone he held, in the rhythm of that stupid game he’d seen Liam play on an airplane last year, the one with the bird and the pipes.
“Indeed,” Fox continued, “while I understand the greater license Team Three has been allowed in the wake of last year’s fiasco, they have pushed this license to its limits. As well they should, to my mind—vigor in the defense of virtue is no vice.” Menchú resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the showy alliteration. “But even now, Team Three are in the field without any ordained oversight. Our role—and the role of our new cardinal—must be to curb excesses, to establish order. The very nature of magic…” The room filled with hushed murmurs when he said that word out loud. Even the legate looked up from his phone. “…The very nature of magic is changing. We have to be strong, and supple, to adapt to its change. We cannot afford to let discipline slacken. We cannot continue to let our archivist run wild.”
He sat down. Menchú looked to Angiuli. This is your cue, boss. Stand up. Speak.
Angiuli didn’t. The Jesuit shuffled his meeting minutes, cleared his throat.
“Dr. Asanti,” Menchú said, “is not my archivist, Monsignor Fox. Nor is she yours, or ours.”
The Jesuit stopped with his mouth open.
“She is the archivist. We trust her, as we have trusted her predecessors, to guard and study the books and artifacts the Society assembles. She is not my subordinate. She is my colleague, and, often, my guide. We do not hold the same views about magic, or anything else, but she is not running wild, as you say, Monsignor. And I would take care with my words in the future, if I were you. Our Society should count itself lucky to work with someone of her skill, knowledge, and wisdom. But, yes, Monsignor, I am worried when my team goes into the field without a priest along. Which is part of the reason I hope we can limit these meetings to the purpose at hand: identifying any possible obstacles to the accession of Monsignor Angiuli to the post of cardinal. So I can get my team back.”
Fox sat down. He watched Menchú as if they were alone in the stone room, while the Jesuit moved on to the next point on the agenda.
Menchú looked away. He caught the last trace of a smile submerging beneath Sansone’s calm. Pleased to see Menchú making political moves? Smelling blood in the water? If so, whose?
Leadership. Give him demons any day.
• • •
“Do you think there’s an Icelandic Hot Topic?” Grace asked as they entered the Kringlan Shopping Center.
“What?” Liam said.
“I’ve never been to one. I don’t shop in malls regularly in Rome,” she said, craning her neck at the mostly-unfamiliar store names.
“I was kidding about the Hot Topic, incidentally. How about we take you to one when we’re not planning on evacuating the mall and battling a woman who outsmarted one of the strongest mages on earth?” Sal asked.
“I just wanted to window-shop,” Grace said defensively. “And I may want some clothes that are better than this volcanic mouthful. You know killing whatever is in front of me is always my priority.”
“Especially after today,” Liam said. Grace grunted in agreement. He did a quick search on Sal’s phone and held it out to them. The mall’s website with a list of Icelandic names and an occasional English name—The Body Shop, Extra—scrolled by. There was no Hot Topic.
“Now can we get back to work?” he asked.
“You all can crack jokes whenever you like, Seymour. When I want to do something fun, you act like the world is ending,” said Grace.
Sal put her hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Humor is great. But your timing could be better. It’s a process. You’ll get it. If you really want to go shopping, we can do it. Back home.”
It was the first time she had said “home” and it had meant Rome in her mind, not New York. She felt momentarily disoriented.
Asanti had walked ahead of them and was puzzling out the mall map. The place bustled with mid-afternoon Christmas shoppers, and a bored mall Santa slumped, ignored, in a red throne. Some of the shoppers looked curiously at the obvious foreigners.
“You sure we don’t want to get Team Two on speed dial?” Sal asked, reaching for her phone. Liam didn’t surrender it.
“That wouldn’t be my first choice,” he said.
“Well, they do their job better than we would. Methods, leadership, and morality aside,” Sal said.
“Yes, by all means—scrape methods, leadership, and morals aside to get to the real soul of someone,” Liam said. “No doubt their interior is rich nougat.”
Asanti ran her finger over the map as if that would help her find something more quickly. “We call no one until we need them,” she said absently over her shoulder, and then located a kiosk right outside a store called Joe and the Juice.
“There she is. First level. Cell phone accessories,” Asanti said. “Let’s go.”
“How do you know that’s the mage?” Liam asked.
“Because someone who has stolen something as priceless as what the Maitresse lost would never trust someone without magic to sell it,” Asanti said. “If it’s not her, then it’s a powerful underling. So be prepared.”
“Wait,” Grace said, “I have a question.”
Sal put up her hand. “We need a plan, here. Especially if we’re not going to call Team Two. Liam, go look for a fire alarm. Grace, you shadow Asanti. Not too close. I’m going to the second floor to keep watch for other threats.”
“What threats? Whiny toddlers? Cranky Christmas shoppers?” Liam asked.
“We don’t know what threats,” Sal said. “That’s why I’m keeping watch.”
“What if we need you down at the kiosk?” Asanti said.
“I’ll go to the second floor,” Grace said. “You stay with Asanti, but first—”
“What about the things that may need punching?” Sal asked, putting her hands on her hips. “How are you going to punch from the second floor?”
“I’ll jump down.”
Sal couldn’t argue with that. She nodded, but Grace didn’t go anywhere.
“I’m not moving one ste
p farther until Asanti tells us why we’re doing this. We’re putting our lives on the line, and we wouldn’t be here if not for your secret. I wouldn’t have been turned to stone if not for your secret. If we’re securing a secret for the Maitresse, then you need to give yours up.”
Asanti sighed and drew Grace away. She whispered into Grace’s ear for a moment. Sal couldn’t hear anything, but Grace’s eyes went wide. She nodded briefly.
Then she walked past Sal and Liam toward the escalator without saying another word.
“I’m not moving either! I got eaten!” said Liam, but Asanti raised an eyebrow at him.
“Only one of you got to play that card, and Grace played it first. Find a fire alarm, Liam.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then Sal said, “If her reason’s good enough for Grace, it ought to be good enough for us. Now give me my phone. I have to browse phone accessories.”
The muscles in Liam’s jaw worked as he struggled with some metaphorical demon, probably his tech obsession, but he handed it over, and then he turned and left them.
“Don’t you ask too,” Asanti said.
“Wasn’t going to,” Sal said. “It doesn’t matter now. We’re committed.”
She and Asanti waited a few stores down from the kiosk while the other two got in place. “Do you really think you can take care of this without violence?” Sal asked.
“She stole the secret without violence. Maybe we can do the same.”
“But we’re not stealing. With Grace here, it’s mugging.”
“We could steal if we didn’t resort to violence immediately.”
“Yeah. And magic is totally safe all the time, isn’t it?” Sal said, grinning.
Asanti glared at her. “Let’s just see if we can take care of this peacefully.” She walked away, and Sal popped her phone from the case and put it in her back pocket. She jogged to catch up to Asanti as they approached the kiosk.
There was a line out Joe and the Juice, which seemed to be a shake and juice shop that advertised the strongest vitamin C drink with the best immune system buffer in the world. With or without cayenne pepper, to make you sweat out toxins!
Asanti pulled out her phone and frowned at it. Then she began browsing the kiosk. Sal looked at her own phone, and gritted her teeth. There was some serious magic here; she had zero service. If Grace got in trouble she wouldn’t know. She began browsing the cell phone cases with Asanti.
There were a few iPhone cases with logos of what seemed to be Icelandic soccer teams, and some landscape photos of the volcano that no one could pronounce but which really messed up transatlantic flight paths on occasion. Android and Windows phones, similarly decorated, lined the top row of the kiosk.
But the items that took up most of the kiosk—all the rest of the shelves, the counter, and the display cases at knee-level—were cases for the Klindor phone. It was quadrilateral like all phone cases, but while most phones sat solidly in the rectangle class, this one was tilted, rhombus-style.
Who would want a phone that was a rhombus?
She had never seen a phone in that shape, and glanced at Asanti. She gave a small nod back.
“What can I do for you ladies?” asked a small woman with blonde hair and ice-blue eyes.
“My boyfriend dropped his phone and cracked his screen,” Sal said, emphasizing her US accent more than usual. “And I thought, God, I don’t want that to happen to mine, so I said, ‘I don’t care if we’re far away from Gaffney’—you know Gaffney, right? We’re famous all over for our big peach water tower, down in Gaffney, South Carolina—I said, ‘I don’t care if we’re far from home, I am going to get me a case to protect my phone so what happened to him won’t happen to me!’”
As Sal talked, she placed her body in the woman’s sight line to block her view of Asanti. The problem here was that now she couldn’t see what Asanti was doing either. The bored woman, who had a dyed blue streak in her hair, listened patiently as Sal continued her story of her boyfriend and his busted phone. Then her eyes focused over Sal’s shoulder. Sal turned to see what had caught her eye.
If Liam had been a woman, Sal would have said he had gone to the restroom to primp. He had removed his jacket, his black tank top showing off his muscles and his tattoos. He walked with a swagger, and his buzz cut stood out in spikes in that careful “No, really, ladies, I just rolled out of bed, I totally don’t have plant digestive goo in my hair” way. And Sal was sure he’d applied some kind of lip balm.
Liam nodded to Sal, who had trailed off, hoping her surprise at seeing him would be taken as the same lust that the kiosk woman was demonstrating. She focused on him entirely.
“If you could point me toward some cases that would fit my phone?” Sal asked, and the woman waved her hand at the top shelf. Sal moved closer to Asanti and pretended to browse.
“Well, look at him,” Asanti said. “Not what we planned, but it could work.”
“He could have told us,” Sal mumbled, trying not to notice Liam’s blatantly sexy act. Too bad breaking up doesn’t automatically make the other person hideous.
“This place reeks of magic and the phones are gone or useless. They had to improvise. Here comes Grace,” Asanti said.
In retrospect, Sal thought they should have stayed with the original plan. As it was, the only thing that went right was the fire alarm, which went off just then, scattering the customers of the juice store. Liam had utterly distracted the mage, flirting and asking her what cases would fit his rather rough lifestyle. Asanti pointed briefly to the one thing that wasn’t a cell phone case or dongle: a small stone gargoyle nestled into the cell phone cases. Right as Sal was about to reach for it, Grace walked by—it blinked once and sprang to life, aiming for her.
Sal was always annoyed that magic didn’t follow the laws of physics. Particularly the conservation of mass. That stone gargoyle should have weighed the same when it was huge and bounding toward Grace as it did when it was small and sitting among the cell phone cases. Instead, it grabbed Grace and easily took her down, as if it weighed tons.
Liam tried to grab the clerk, but she was gone, and he tackled her stool instead. He went down hard, and Sal winced, imagining the bruises that would bloom on his ribs from falling on the stool legs.
Grace was still struggling with the statue, which had pinned her. Sal went to help, but the beast lashed out with a claw, and she backed up right in time to feel it pass by her face. It seemed to still be the density of stone, and she figured she had better avoid being hit by that club with a claw on the end.
The creature looked back at Sal, its yellow eyes the only living tissue she could see, and hissed at her.
Grace took its moment of distraction to bring her own fist up and punch it. Sal tried to warn her, but Grace’s fist connected under the gargoyle’s ear, and knocked it off her. Grace staggered to her feet, holding her injured hand and cursing.
“Yeah, it’s made of stone, don’t punch it,” Sal said.
The remaining shoppers were running from the fight now, screaming, and Sal groaned, thinking of Team Two’s inevitable arrival.
Asanti cried out, and Sal whirled. The archivist was trapped in an ice-blue trap. At first it looked like a cage with clear blue bars, but the bars thickened, and Asanti struggled against them to no avail. Sal realized it was actual ice, growing rapidly. It would soon engulf her.
Liam was beside Sal. “That woman’s got to still be here; she couldn’t summon that cage if she weren’t.”
Sal looked around in a panic. The stool stayed on the ground, Asanti was alone in her thickening cage, and Grace was dodging the attacks of the lumbering stone gargoyle. Above the kiosk hung large, elaborate Christmas decorations attached to the ceiling with wire. A red-and-green dragon hung from wires, grasping holly in its jaws. The mage stood on the dragon’s head, or, more accurately, was clinging to the side and hanging onto one of the wires with one hand, holding a book open with the other.
A plan finally formed in Sal’s head. �
�Grace, can you hold it off for a bit more?”
“If I have to,” came the reply, as Grace goaded the creature away from the kiosk and dodged another attack. “But if you can figure out how to put it down, that would be good.”
“Working on it,” Sal yelled, and grabbed Liam. They ran into the abandoned juice store. “Check the fridge; they should have the mix for that Vitamin C drink,” she said, pointing to the ad on the wall behind the counter. He ran into the kitchen.
Sal hunted around herself, but for something small and dense. A kitchen knife sat on the counter with seven oranges next to it. That might do. She slid it into her belt and grabbed a few other things.
Grace shouted, “Hurry up!”
“Did you find it?” Sal yelled over her shoulder at Liam.
He came out of the fridge with a jug of bright reddish orange juice. IMMUNO-C CONCENTRATE, it said on the label. She grabbed it from him. “Perfect.”
“What next?” he said.
“Get on her computer and see if you can find inventory,” she said, pointing to the kiosk’s register. Liam nodded once and ran out.
The mage still focused on her book, and the cage continued to squeeze around Asanti. She was visibly shivering now, and struggling against the bars, which had closed in to allow her only a coffin-sized free space, and little air.
The gargoyle had jumped into a men’s clothing store display after Grace and was currently rooting through fine menswear to get at her. Silk suits fell into shreds around its feet. Sal didn’t see Grace at all.
“Grace!” she shouted, and threw a small metal bowl at the gargoyle. It turned abruptly and then leaped at her, eager to go after the prey it could see.
Which was when it got a face full of the concentrate made from vitamin C and hot peppers. Orange goo dripped from its hideous face as it screeched and tried to wipe it away, but its one weak spot was in excruciating pain, its yellow eyes turning red. It flailed around, and Grace appeared in the store display, several black leather belts in her hand. She tossed them at Sal’s feet.
“Can you tie it up?” she asked.
At the same time, Sal tossed her the kitchen knife, the handle first. Grace plucked it out of the air without looking. “Throw that at her!” Sal said.
Bookburners The Complete Season Two Page 19
