Scottish Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 1)
Page 19
"I thought," Macintyre continued, "that I might have his card here somewhere, but apparently not. In any event, his name is Winfield Kirby. He has an office down near Provost Skene's House. If you'd like to schedule an interview, please contact him directly. Ta."
With that, Prof. Craig Macintyre scooted down the hallway, around the corner and out of sight.
"Well, that was bloody arrogant," Warwick observed.
"Aye," Cameron agreed with a scratch to his chin. "Interesting, too, though, don't you think?"
"What is?"
Cameron looked down the hall to where the professor had disappeared. "He wasn't at all surprised to see us. Not even curious. It was almost as if—" He stopped.
"As if he'd expected us," Warwick finished.
"Aye."
And one floor down, around the corner from the stairwell, Prof. Craig Macintyre stood silently, back pressed against the wall, his face flushed, his heart pounding, and his mind racing.
21. The Power of Suggestion
Maggie stood in the open doorway of Prof. Macintyre's office for several moments expecting that he would sense her presence and look up from his book and styrofoam-boxed take-out lunch. He didn't.
Finally, she knocked gently in the doorframe. "Prof. Macintyre?"
Macintyre dropped the pen from his left hand and drew in a startled gasp.
"Oh." He regained his composure. "Miss Devereaux." His voice dripped with disappointment. He returned his attention to his work without saying anything more.
"Hi," she started. "I, um, just wanted to stop by and apologize for missing our meeting this morning. And to explain."
"No need to apologize, Miss Devereaux." He did not raise his head from the book splayed out in front of him. "Or explain. You're a big girl. If you don't want to take your studies seriously, that's your business. But please, don't make it mine."
Maggie's eyes narrowed. "I was talking with the police."
Macintyre dropped his pen again. "The police?" Now he looked up.
"Yes. There's been another murder."
At this news, Macintyre's expression changed ever so slightly, but Maggie couldn't quite read it.
"I think you knew her, too," she went on. "Fionna FitzSimmons? I think she may have taken a course or two from you."
Macintyre looked down again at his book and began fidgeting with his pen. "FitzSimmons, you say? No, I'm afraid the name doesn't ring any bells." He paused. "Why were they talking with you?"
Maggie shrugged. "I guess I was one of the last people to see her before—" She stopped. "Well, anyway, I'd seen her that afternoon."
This mention of her encounter with Fionna in the reading room suddenly reminded Maggie of the dead woman's cryptic warning about Macintyre.
"Uh, look. I have to go," she hurried to excuse herself. "You know, studying and stuff. I—I just wanted to stop by, you know, to explain."
Macintyre just nodded, his expression inscrutable.
"Okay, then." Maggie raised her hand in farewell. "I guess I'll see you again in two weeks. I'll—I'll study hard. I promise to have something ready by then."
"All right." Macintyre half-raised his own hand. "Good bye, Miss Devereaux." Then over her departing shoulder he called, "Miss Devereaux! Margaret!"
Maggie turned and looked back into the office.
Macintyre's face convulsed in obvious discomfort, but then he said, "Well, it's just— Well, be careful, Miss Devereaux. Apparently—at least until the police catch this killer—apparently no student is safe. Go ahead and study, but don't stay out too late on account of your research."
He tried a smile. "I doubt there's anything in those dusty old books that can protect you from the likes of this madman."
Maggie stared past him for a moment before answering, "Thank you, Prof. Macintyre." Then she walked quickly to the stairs with one thought ringing in her head.
* * *
It had started to rain slightly by the time Maggie arrived at the café.
How appropriate, she thought as she regarded the weather, and walked inside. The clock on the wall told her she was ten minutes early, but a quick scan of the interior revealed that Ellen had still beaten her there. She was crouched over a newspaper and had not noticed Maggie's arrival.
"Hey," Maggie said in subdued greeting as she approached the table.
"Oh, hello, Maggie." Ellen folded the paper and pushed it aside. "Good of you to come."
Maggie sat down. Even for a Scot, Ellen looked deathly pale.
"How are you doing?" Maggie asked.
"Not very well, I don't suppose." Ellen looked down again at her hands.
Maggie didn't say anything for a bit, then ventured, "When did you find out?"
"This morning," Ellen replied, looking up. "Will called me. He's in a right state."
Maggie closed her eyes in sympathetic pain. "Oh. I hadn't thought of Will."
"Aye. He's beside himself. The police questioned him early this morning. He called me right after."
"The police?" Maggie remembered the two officers who had sat in her aunt and uncle's living room that morning. "They don't think he's involved, do they?"
"I imagine not," Ellen replied. "He's probably just the last to see her alive. Still—" She trailed off.
Maggie cocked her head encouragingly.
"Well, I mean they don't really know, do they?" Ellen went on. "I mean, it could have been Will, couldn't it have been? I hate saying it, but it's true. That's what's so frightening."
Maggie frowned at this suggestion. "I suppose so, but," she felt the need to defend Will, "but did he even know the first victim, Annette Graham? I mean, what's the connection?"
"I don't know," Ellen admitted. Then pushing the newspaper toward Maggie, said, "Maybe they aren't connected at all. The police won't say anything."
Maggie picked up the paper and unfolded it to see the headline:
Second Student Found Slain - Is Serial Killer Loose at King's College?
"Don't bother," Ellen discouraged any further reading. "I'll tell you what it says: 'The police have declined to release details of this murder.' 'It is unclear whether this killing is related to last month's murder of another female university student.' 'The police have identified several persons of interest, but admit they have no suspects at the moment.'"
Maggie set the paper back down on the table.
"But you know it as well as I, Maggie," Ellen continued. "The murders are bloody well connected. Everybody knows it. And the police have no idea who the killer is."
Maggie wanted to tell her friend what she had learned that morning. That the killings were definitely related. That they both had been classified as 'occult' murders by the police. And she wanted to tell Ellen that Fionna's last words to her had been a cryptic warning abut Macintyre. But somehow, she couldn't bring herself to do so. Maybe she was getting paranoid too. Flailing desperately for some other topic, she latched onto one of the few things she realized she actually had in common with Ellen Walker.
"I suppose the trip to Inverness is off, then?"
Ellen laughed a bit. "Well, actually, I was thinking about that too. I haven't seen Jenny—my friend in Inverness—for, well, for too long." She paused, reflecting. "Definitely too long. But I don't know. I—"
"I was just wondering," Maggie tried to console her. "No big deal."
"No, it's all right, Maggie." Ellen sighed and ran her hands through her dark blond waves. "To be true, Maggie, I think I'd like to get away from Aberdeen for a bit. Maybe for good, I don't know. These murders—" Words failed her. Then she reached across the table and grabbed Maggie's hand. "None of us are safe. You know that, don't you? Something evil is stalking the women of King's College." She narrowed her eyes and set her jaw. "I'm going to do whatever I have to do to protect myself."
She looked earnestly at Maggie. "And you best do too."
Maggie just smiled weakly and nodded, but her mind was racing.
"Promise me, Maggie," Ellen implored. "I
can't lose another friend. Promise me. Promise me you'll do whatever it takes to protect yourself."
The thought that had begun ringing in her head since she'd departed Macintyre's office now crescendoed. Maggie was looking at her friend, but all she could see was the black handwritten script, counseling her across the centuries:
Maggie sat silently for a moment, her mind considering both the absurdity and the apparent necessity of what she was considering.
Then she refocused her gaze on Ellen.
"I promise."
22. Do You Believe in Magic?
It was still raining. Only harder. The thick drops threw themselves against the window panes, sliding earthward and tracing the paths of their predecessors. The droplets refracted the light from Maggie Devereaux's bedroom out into the black Aberdeen night. Inside, Maggie quietly closed her bedroom door and carefully turned the skeleton key in the lock, trying hard to muffle its dull metallic clack. Crossing to the windows over her bed, she pulled the curtains tight against the outside world. She repeated this with each window in the room and even closed the door to her private bath. Then, turning with her hands on her hips, she surveyed the room. Every window sealed, every shade drawn, the door locked. There was something she was forgetting.
She looked down at the floor. The vent.
The one that carries voices to all parts of the house. She quickly flipped the lever to close the vent's trap, cutting off both sound and air. She could feel the room begin to grow stuffy with seclusion and took comfort in knowing that the chamber was now sealed off from any who might detect her embarrassingly foolish endeavor.
She stepped up to her desk. The top was rolled back and the writing surface was empty save the black leather-bound spellbook, which sat closed and centered before the chair. Sitting down, she opened the fragile cover, the broken metal clasp jingling loudly in the otherwise silent room.
'
She stared at the handwritten title page, remembering the first time she had gazed at it, uncomprehending, in the subbasement of the college's historical collection. Having since become familiar with the text's contents, she leafed quickly to one of the early pages, to reread the passage that had shot through her mind both outside Macintyre's office and sitting in the café with Ellen.
'
Maggie squirmed slightly in her seat. The room was getting hot. She pulled off her wool sweater and threw it on the bed, exposing her silver clan badge dangling atop her red turtleneck. Flipping forward again, Maggie stopped at the advice section she had encountered as she had fallen asleep in the comfortable bed at the Castle of Park.
'
Believe.
The word, even in its strange Old Gaelic form, seemed to challenge Maggie.
She closed her eyes and tried to relax. Tried to believe. She thought of her great-times-ten grandmother, Brìghde Innes Gordon. The healer. And Brìghde's daughter, Maggie's namesake, Margaret NicInnes Wilkie. The witch. The people back then had believed.
Maggie opened her eyes again and looked at the book. It seemed different. No longer an ancient linguistic relic, but now a living, breathing part of her present.
"Start small," she repeated aloud.
Flipping loosely through the tome, almost in a trance, she soon spotted her quarry. Before her, on the page she had remembered from her earliest efforts at translation, stood a small sentence in small handwriting. A small incantation. A small spell.
Her eyes absorbed the words:
'
A smile played across Maggie's lips. A levitation spell. That was simple, and small. And damn it, despite herself, she thought maybe she did believe.
She quickly fetched a pen from her backpack and centered it on the desk, having slid the spellbook to one side. Silently, she read over the spell again, then she closed her eyes to confirm she had translated the words properly. She opened her eyes again and affixed her gaze on the pen which lay nervously in front of her, only inches from her outstretched hands.
"Tear asunder," she started in melodramatic English, "the bonds which chain this object to the Earth. Deny Nature its order and raise this thing to the hated sky!"
Nothing.
Maggie's face twisted into an expression somehow combining disappointment with fulfilled expectations. She pursed her lips and turned to the spellbook. She had translated the spell correctly. As correctly as she could given the centuries between the two languages. Then she had a thought and her expression melted into a smile. She double-checked the words on the page, then turned again to the pen.
"Mhaidhid," she had to guess at the accent, "inh chuimriachan anh-í chonrig riátsha cho inh Thalum. Dha'shluindi ghrád ó nádhúr ochus ail riátsha chi inh niam dho'miecciathadh!"
Nothing.
"Damn it." English this time. It was sincere, but quiet, lest she disturb her aunt and uncle. Then she realized again where was—and what she was doing.
Oh God, she thought, what's wrong with me? Do I really think this will work?
A hot blush seared her cheeks. She slumped back in her chair. Then she stood up and walked several brisk steps toward nowhere in particular, before stopping and staring at her shoes.
"Stupid," she murmured. "Silly. Dumb."
She sighed and looked at the clock. Ten minutes before midnight. Time for bed.
She kicked off her shoes and pulled off her hot wool clothes, changing into her far more comfortable lavender cotton pajamas. Soon she had washed up and was ready to climb into bed for the night. The spellbook still lay open on her desk and peered invitingly at her as she went to turn out the light.
"Okay," she said aloud. "One more try." She looked about the room. "But this time," she smiled, "let's have some atmosphere."
Crossing to one of the short bookcases behind the reading chair near the door, she grabbed two candles from its top and set them carefully at either back corner of the writing desk. Lighting them with the matches which had accompanied them atop the bookcase, Maggie turned off the rest of the lamps, leaving the room dark save a glowing tent of light cast by the candles over the desktop, the spellbook, the pen and Maggie's outstretched hands.
"
Nothing. Still.
Maggie snatched up the pen and flung it across the room. Even the risk of her relatives hearing her couldn't stop the next words.
"Damn it!" Her fist crashed down on the desktop, threatening to topple the candles and succeeding in dislodging one from its brass base.
"Oops." Maggie quickly reached out and righted the teetering candle, pulling it toward her and shoving it securely back into its holder. The flame had not gone out, but rather had swelled, sending smoke billowing. After a moment, the flame shrank again and took its original shape, an orange droplet, floating strongly and unwavering above the wax of the candle, undisturbed by air currents in the sealed off room.
Staring at the almost hypnotizing flame, she was reminded of a trick she'd learned where one can light a candle without ever touching the match to the wick. The flame of a candle, she had learned, is actually fueled by flammable gas rising from the melting wax; the wick only holds the flame in place. Knowing this, one can have a lighted match at the ready when blowing out a candle, then, sticking the match into the smoke which billows from the wick, the gases are reignited. The flame will jump from the match to the untouched wick below.
Like magic.
Anyone who has studied languages can tell you that there comes a point in learning a new tongue when one suddenly begins forming ideas directly in the new language, rather than having to think first in one's native language and then translate. And anyone who was spent time with people who study languages can tell you that such people love to regale them with the stories of the first time this happened: the first time they dreamt in German; the first time they stopped translating Cyrillic letters into their Latin counterparts; or that time in France, when after only two weeks there, the street hot-dog vendor had asked, 'Voulez-vous moutarde?' and without ever having taken a French course in their life, they responded without thinking, 'Oui, un peu.'
The world exists independently of the words humans use to describe it, and every language has its own unique way of a categorizing the objects and events of life into its own system of words and phrases. The more languages one learns, the easier it becomes to accept this truth and thereby be able to shift among the various worldviews embodied in humankind's languages. Ways of expressing ideas which may have seemed ludicrous when learning the first language become expected when learning the third. Maggie Devereaux had spent her life learning languages. A semester of Spanish in middle school. Four years of German in high school. Latin and French. Modern Gaelic and Old Gaelic. And now Hamilton's dialect. Her brain was accustomed to this shifting of worldviews. She was a student of languages. And although it always took a while for the new language to be fully absorbed and its worldview accepted, so too did that moment always eventually come.
Maggie opened her eyes and looked at the candle before her. Almost without a conscious thought, she opened her mouth and spoke the spell—not again, but for the first time. She didn't worry about her accent. She didn't notice that the first noun was in the accusative case. She didn't follow along the English translation in her head. She just spoke the spell. Not the words, but the meaning behind the words.