The room was dark except for the light of a single candle.
A candle which shone brightly on Maggie Devereaux's face.
As it floated silently in the air before her fully believing eyes.
32. Calling Dr. Freud
It had been a long night. Working the levitation spell was difficult. Like balancing warm butter on the edge of a razor-sharp knife. Or, as she had heard someone once say, like grabbing smoke. It was also tiring. Even though she hadn't been doing anything physically, by the time she got the spell down right, Maggie felt like she'd run a marathon. Every muscle ached and her heart and lungs felt spent. She had actually wanted to move on to the divining spell. That was her real goal. Levitating things wasn't going to help her solve the murders. Learning about what had happened those nights might. But by the time she felt confident with the levitation spell, she was so exhausted that even the thought of trying a different spell seemed just too much.
She had laid down on the bed, 'just to rest her eyes,' she'd told herself. She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.
* * *
The castle was familiar, although she knew she'd never been there before. The walls of gray stone enclosed a small but adequate courtyard. The courtyard was earthen and the ground held various stains of differing colors. Near the iron gate, wooden gallows stood ominously. Silence filled the courtyard as the prisoner was dragged to the center of the dirt field. There were no voices but she could feel the multitude of eyes focused on the young woman who cowered on the soil beneath them. A guard, his face and body obscured by armor, seized the woman and dragged her toward the gallows. Her face contorted in a scream but no sound could be heard. When they reached the wooden structure, rather than pull her up the steps to the hangman's noose, he quickly chained her arms and legs to the scaffolding. At her feet was a bed of steaming coals. The guard stood to the side of the white hot coals, ignoring their heat, and pulled a red hot blade from their depths. The prisoner continued to scream silently. Without ceremony, the guard plunged the blade into the woman's stomach and slit open her abdomen. Reaching inside, he pulled out a bloody bag of organs, some still connected to her insides, and threw them onto the fire. The organs exploded into a ball of gore and smoke that covered the courtyard with the color and stench of blood.
Maggie looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood. The blood of this young woman. She raised her left hand slowly to her face to inspect it. She turned the hand over and back, watching the thick red liquid drip from her wrist. Then she pulled her hand to her smiling mouth and slowly licked the blood from her fingertips.
"Aaaahhhh!" Maggie shot awake. She was sitting bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat and her heart beating a mile a minute. Her breath was short and labored as she recalled the grisly details of her dream.
She looked down at her hands. No blood. Good.
She lay down again, still breathing hard, her hair damp with sweat. She was scared. By the dream, to be sure. But she wasn't as scared as she thought she should have been. And that scared her even more.
33. Divine Right
Maggie stumbled down the stairs for breakfast. She was showered and dressed, but still shaken by the dream. She had overslept, so both Alex and Lucy were gone, at the store no doubt. She found some oatcakes in the cupboard and sat down at the table with these and a glass of orange juice. Alone with her thoughts, she reflected on her activities of the night before. She was chewing on a bite of oatcake when she finally woke up fully.
"Oh my God," she said aloud, as if she herself couldn't believe it. "It worked."
* * *
"<... raise this thing to the hated sky.>"
The pen rose from the desk, shaky at first, then relaxing onto a bed of air.
"
The pen was joined by one of her grandmother's books, far heavier than the pen but equally suspended above the floor.
Maggie stared at the two objects, her hands raised into upturned claws, and a broad smile across her face. She had always loved language and in addition to the pure thrill of using the magic, she had a particular appreciation for the turn of phrase used in the spell. Not 'lift this object' but 'break the bonds with the earth.'
Gazing at the book, she envisioned bonds rising from the earth and surrounding the book to pull it down. The book faltered slightly in the air. Maggie then envisioned these same bonds breaking and falling aside. The book rose again, higher even than the pen which had preceded it into the air. She then imagined the bonds lurching upward from the floor and grabbing the book back. The book dropped to floor with a loud thud.
Maggie stared at the book for a long moment. Then she looked at the pen which still floated unmolested before her eyes.
Interesting, she thought.
Repeating the process, she imagined the bonds pulling the pen toward the center of the earth. The pen fell quickly back to the floor.
Cool.
Maggie picked the pen and the book up off the floor—with her hands—and set them back on the desktop. She grabbed the spell book from the same desktop and plopped herself down on the bed. Turning to the divining spell, still marked by the sketch of Kelly's body, Maggie studied the page. The divining spell was significantly longer than the levitation spell. And more complicated. But she understood it well enough and felt confident that, with some practice, she would be able to master it as she had the levitation spell.
She recalled the words of the book, '
Damn, she thought, this is fun.
Maggie scanned the room for a suitable object. She found one. A small seashell sitting decoratively atop one of the short bookshelves behind the reading chair. Rising briefly to grab the shell from its perch, she sat down again at the desk, spellbook on her lap and seashell centered on the desktop, a few inches from the pen and book which had just moments earlier dangled across the room on invisible puppet strings. Rereading the spell to make sure she had it, Maggie then turned her attention to the seashell.
"<...Release the secrets hidden in this object's matter,>" the spell concluded. "
She waited for a moment until she was satisfied that nothing had happened. Then she refocused on the shell and went over the spell again in her mind.
"
A faint red glow spread across the seashell. Maggie hadn't really been sure what to expect, but this seemed to be a positive development. Still, it was hardly informative.
"
The red glow coalesced into a brightly burning droplet on top of the shell, then a pink fog rose slowly from the center of the spot. The rosy smoke swelled then gave way to a vision which filled Maggie's amazed eyes. Looking into the mist, she could see a small scene of two people at the beach. A man and woman. They were walking along the beach, dressed in swimsuits only. Their lips would move occasionally, but Maggie could hear no sounds. They were young and Maggie could feel the love between them. And more than just love, Maggie could feel happiness, comfort, friendship—and just the faintest hint of anxiety. The image was small, and the memory old, but Maggie was fairly certain she could make out the younger faces of her aunt and uncle. She watched as they strolled along the beach, until the man—Uncle Alex—bent down and picked up a seashell and showed it to, well, to Aunt Lucy.
Cool, Maggie thought, and pulled away from the vision. Obviously they had found the shell on vacation some year when they were much younger. Maggie wondered whether the anxiety she sensed had anything to do with a baby girl named Annette an ocean away.
Maggie looked around for another object. One whose unveiled secrets she would recognize and
could therefore confirm. Looking about the room for something small, but important, she remembered the clan crest hanging around her neck. Pulling the silver pendant out from under her sweater, she couldn't help but smile. Apart from being a gift from her grandmother, it was also a beautiful piece of jewelry—solid silver and shiny even in the artificial light Maggie was forced to rely upon with all of the shades drawn against the midmorning sun, and prying eyes. She set the pendant down carefully on the desk and closed her eyes for a moment.
She opened them again. "
The red glow wrapped itself across the pendant, then without further coaxing it coalesced into a small dot, the pink vapor rose and the vision appeared. She had expected to recognize the vision or at least the participants, but she found the faces unfamiliar. A woman sat in a chair, a young girl at her feet. The woman was saying something to the young girl and showing her the pendant, which dangled delicately at the end of a chain. The woman might have been her grandmother as a very young woman. Then again, the girl might have been her grandmother as well. Then Maggie noticed that the woman also had a book in her lap. She raised it to show the girl and pointed to something on the page. The book looked familiar and Maggie instinctively turned to see if it might be one of the same books her grandmother had left her. But when she turned her attention back to the vision, it had vanished.
Damn, Maggie thought.
She was just about to repeat the spell when she noticed a black smudge on the pendant. She snatched up the pendant to examine it, noting even as she did so that the smudge lay exactly where the red dot had been. Maggie rubbed at the black mark, but it would not be so easily dispatched. The metal looked stained. Even scraping with her fingernail proved to be fruitless. Turning her attention to the seashell, she observed the same black discoloration. She hadn't noticed it earlier. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Alex were not going to be happy.
Returning to the pendant, she noted that the smudge had partially obscured the motto written across its top. Rather than "BE TRAIST," the pendant now said "BE..AIST."
"Oh man," Maggie complained aloud. She was genuinely upset. "I've ruined it."
Further rubbing and scratching proved unsuccessful. Even dabbing it with water from the bathroom sink did nothing.
"Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn!" Maggie wanted to throw the blemished pendant across the room, but caught herself. That would hardly help the problem.
Maybe silver cleaner would help. Maybe it would fade with time. Maybe... Maybe the transmutation spell she had seen in the back of the book! If magic had caused the stain, maybe magic could undo it. All she would just have to do was change the surface back to silver. This thought buoyed her and she flipped the pages, a bit too roughly, to the transmutation spell.
"Oh," Maggie said.
The spell was very long. And very complicated. And she wasn't sure she even knew all the words, at least not without a dictionary.
She looked down at the discolored pendant. She looked again at the transmutation spell, its words filling the better part of a page. She looked at her pendant again.
"Okay," she said to no one in particular, "maybe later then?" There would always be time to get that spell down.
Maggie returned the seashell to the bookshelf, black stain turned discretely to the wall, and hung the pendant around her neck again, tucking it neatly beneath her sweater. After raising the shades, cracking open one window and opening the floor vent's trap, she returned her spellbook to her purse and headed to the door. Stopping in the doorframe she turned around and spied the pen, laying motionless on the desk.
"
The pen rose into the air. Then, with just a thought, she lowered it back onto the desktop.
"Cool." And she closed the door behind her.
* * *
Maggie stepped off the bus at the main King's College stop. It was too cold to ride her bike, and she was in too much of a hurry to walk. A fresh dusting of snow clung jealously to the grass, but had already melted from the wet concrete sidewalks. Maggie made a direct line to where she and Iain had found Kelly's butchered corpse.
Turning the corner of the King's Tower Building, she stopped dead in her tracks. She had been right about where the body had been. Unfortunately, she had forgotten that people other than her might be interested in what had happened that night. The entire scene was cordoned off with that blue and white British police tape. In addition, two police officers were still rummaging around the scene, one more interestedly than the other. Nevertheless, she knew she would have to wait to inspect the scene for artifacts for the divining spell.
She paused for moment, just standing there trying to figure out what to do next. Then she noticed out of the corner of her eye that one of the officers had turned from whatever business he had been conducting to look curiously in her general direction. Resolving to return to the scene as soon as she could safely procure some samples, she decided not to linger lest the police officer get a good look at her. No reason to draw attention to herself. She turned the corner and strolled as casually as she could back around the King's Tower.
Now what? she asked herself. Fionna's murder scene seemed the most obvious answer, but she suddenly realized she didn't know where that was. She had been away with Uncle Alex and Aunt Lucy that weekend. It could be anywhere.
Okay, next option? Of course, when there's only one option remaining, it's also the most obvious. So Maggie set out to retrace her steps from her first visit to the campus.
Ten minutes later found Maggie standing next to the Edward Wright Building looking across the courtyard where she had seen the same blue and white police tape so many weeks ago. At least she thought it was the same courtyard. It had actually been over two months since she had spied the police activity while searching for the university office upon her first visit to the Old Campus. She would have to rely on her memory in hopes of pinpointing the location where Annette Graham's body had been found.
Actually, once she thought about it, Maggie realized that she had no actual confirmation that what she had observed that day in early October had any relation to the first murder. She had later assumed that to be the case—and it probably was—but she now questioned her conclusion in light of the concrete consequences of her being wrong. If she was unable to locate any samples, she would be forced to put off her plans, at least until the police left Kelly's murder scene or she could learn where Fionna's murder had taken place.
Deciding that she didn't want to put off her plans at all, Maggie hurried across the courtyard to where she hoped, in a perverse kind of way, that Annette Graham's body had been butchered.
The courtyard showed no sign of having been the scene of a brutal and bloody murder. On the other hand, it had been two months since then. Two months of rain and wind and snow and general exposure to the elements. Maggie looked around for some clue, some confirmation that she was in the right place. A lot depended on her being right. Then she noticed a slight darkening of the pavement stones. The pattern of the dark spot crossed over several stones and seemed to be independent of their physical make up. Looking further up the path, she saw additional darkening, this time in the form of a thin line with one large splotch crossing it. While she was no Sherlock Holmes, Maggie deduced that the dark spots might just be half-bleached bloodstains. If so—if that splotch across the line marked where one of the organs of the circle had lain—then she was in business. Now, to find some artifact.
Maggie crouched down. What in the world could have survived so long exposed to the elements? she thought. Maybe fabric from her clothes?
Then she spotted it. A single hair barely visible between two stones, its length almost completely hidden under a small shelf of one of the granite blocks. Pulling it out carefully, Maggie was rewarded with a five inch long human hair, brown and curling, with a small piece of skin hanging from its end. Yuck. She didn't kno
w what Annette had looked like, but the length certainly suggested a woman's hair. And Aunt Lucy had dark wavy hair. Besides how else would a hair get jammed under some rock unless...
Maggie let the unpleasant thought slip away. She had what she'd come for. Time to see what she could learn from it.
* * *
Maggie was hungry for lunch by the time she got back home, but elected to skip food just then, and instead hurried up to her room. She quickly cleared off her desk and extracted from her jacket pocket the folded tissue which housed Annette Graham's hair. Or at least, Maggie hoped it was Annette's hair. She really didn't want to have to settle for the vision of some young student falling and hitting her head on the pavement last week. Then, remembering the black stains from her previous attempts, Maggie fetched an old T-shirt from her dresser drawer. Placing this down on the desk first, she then laid the hair carefully across it. Show time, she thought.
Opening the spell book and placing it on the desk chair next to her, Maggie stood expectantly over the hair.
"
The vision rose quickly this time; Maggie didn't even notice whether the thin hair turned red first. She felt a sick combination of emotions as the vision satisfied her hopes that it had belonged to Annette Graham, but also turned her stomach as she was forced to watch its story play out. Annette was walking quickly down the path when a dark figure jumped her from behind, wrapping a cord around her neck. Within seconds, she had stopped struggling. Then the murderer had quickly extracted a knife from his coat pocket. Maggie watched in horror as he sliced open her abdomen and began extracting her organs with surgical precision. The red tint of the vision only made the scene bloodier. Eventually though, the killer had finished his work, and Maggie watched as he carefully placed a stone across Annette's eyes and methodically wiped down the scene with a cloth, smearing away any bloody finger or palm prints. The cloth, the knife, and the cord then were returned to his coat pocket and he pulled out a key of some sort. Then he stood up and Maggie was finally able to see his face—but she couldn't make out the visage. It looked familiar somehow, but she couldn't make out any specific features. It was like a double exposure on film, or ghosts on a television with poor reception. Just as her eyes would rest on a specific feature, it would seem to melt away to a different location. Then, suddenly, the entire vision faded as quickly as it had appeared.
Scottish Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 1) Page 25
