Magic 101 (A Diana Tregarde Investigation)

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was three flights up to Quasi’s apartment, and this old wreck of a building didn't have an elevator. Normally, this was no big deal, but half blitzed, it was an adventure. The staircase was lit only infrequently, and poorly; the stairs were worn and slippery. Mark was clinging to the banister with both hands, but frankly wondered if it would stay attached to the wall if it had to take his full weight.

  “This,” Tim announced to no one in particular, “is 1970. The Age of Enlightenment. The Age of Illumination. This is the dawn—”

  “Of the Age of Aquarius, Age of Aquar-i-uuuuus—” Phil warbled. He was, as usual, off-key.

  “Shut up, dork,” Tim said, glaring at him from under an untamed thatch of thick black hair.

  “Sir, yessir!” Phil saluted—which struck Mark as hilarious, since Phil, flatfooted, four-eyed, and a genuine asthmatic, had about as much chance of being drafted as a nun.

  “You were saying—” Quasi prompted, shifting the box a little, and pointedly ignoring Mark’s snorts of laughter.

  “My point is, what the hell are we doing having a seance?” Tim demanded, squinting almond eyes at their host.

  “One,” Quasi replied amiably, “This is Halloween. It is traditional, as it were, and I am all in favor of tradition. Two, I’m curious about that ‘spell’ I dug up. My anthro prof claims he’s seen magic work—you know, stuff that had no rational explanation. The way I see it, if a magic spell ever works at all, I'm betting it will work on Halloween. Three, I'm paying for the booze.”

  “And very good booze it is,” Phil agreed, nodding so hard his glasses slid down his nose. “Well worth a bit of cavorting and chanting.”

  “Okay,” Tim replied, mollified. “That's a good reason.”

  “Hey, we're here—” Mark interrupted, hauling himself up the last few stairs and getting to the door on the landing ahead of them all. “I want to get this over with.”

  He held the door open for the other three. Phil had been entrusted with the key to the apartment, and skipped to the front of the group. The hallway was even dimmer than the staircase; Mark suspected that the bulbs in the light fixtures were at best fifteen-watt refrigerator bulbs. It was probably just as well; by the musty smell, nobody had cleaned the hall carpet for years. Mark was just as glad he didn’t have to look at it. It might be growing something.

  Phil fumbled with the lock while the other three made rude comments, and finally got the scarred and gouged door open. Quasi shouldered him aside impatiently; Mark trailed in behind his three friends.

  Quasi had obviously been hard at work earlier today; his usual clutter of Salvation Army furniture and books had been pushed up against the wall. The couch was shoved against the wall next to the door they’d entered. It was absolutely covered with junk. The chairs and orange-crate tables were piled up against each other on the back wall. The curtains were tightly closed and then pinned shut with enormous safety pins.

  It was, without a doubt, the cleanest this place had been in weeks.

  Drawn on the anonymously brown rug in colored chalk was an intricate diagram. Placed at the four corners of the design were rickety candlesticks apparently salvaged from a church; they stood as tall as Mark’s shoulder and held black candles as thick as his wrist. In the center of the diagram was a hibachi stoked with instant-starting charcoal. Beside the hibachi was a sheet of newspaper with a neat arrangement of little piles of unidentifiable flotsam on it.

  The three invitees stared at the bizarre setup. Quasi set the box down on his cracked vinyl sofa and took control of the situation.

  “Okay, since you want to get this over with, let's move it. Phil, you go stand in the south—”

  “Right.” The bespectacled Chem major made a face. “Which way is south, Leatherstocking?”

  “Behind the candlestick in front of the record player.” Quasi cast his eyes up toward the ceiling. “Give me strength.”

  “If you’re gonna raise a demon, you should be looking in the other direction,” Tim pointed out.

  “How many times do I have to tell you cretins? We’re not raising a demon, we’re trying to contact a dead person. That’s what this book says—” Quasi waved a thick paperback at them; the cover said Voudoun Today. Mark squinted at the letters, which wavered in front of his eyes.

  “Voo-doon? What's that?” Mark wanted to know.

  “It’s not ‘voo-doon,’ dummy, it's voodoo. Sheesh. You go stand to Phil's right.”

  “Over here—” Phil flapped his right hand helpfully. Tim took the other open position without being directed.

  “Shouldn’t we be wearing robes or something?” Mark asked, looking down at his jeans and Grateful Dead T-shirt doubtfully. It didn't seem like the right outfit to be talking to a ghost in—even if he didn't believe it would work. Well—the skull on the front was okay, but the outfit itself seemed kind of—disrespectful.

  “Nah—you'll be okay.” Quasi dismissed his objection with an airy wave of his hand, and took a healthy slug of whiskey directly from the bottle. “Now, don’t move, or you’ll ruin the pentacle.”

  Quasi moved unsteadily around the diagram, closing up lines they’d erased by walking on them, lighting the candles, and giving each of the participants a carefully printed slip of paper.

  “Okay, when I point at you, say what’s on that. I wrote it down pho-net-ic-al-ly—” he had a little trouble getting the word out “—so just say what’s there. If this works—”

  “If? Why shouldn’t it?” Phil wanted to know. “My sister gets answers on her Ouija board all the time!”

  “Well, I didn’t have everything, so I had to make some substitutions in the formulas,” Quasi admitted. “But I did it logically, okay? So it should work. Anyway, if it does, the ghost will show up in the middle, in the center of that five-pointed star. I’m trying for Julius Caesar—” He lit the hibachi; there was a sharp chemical smell and a sparking line traveled across the surface of the charcoal.

  “You wanted me ’cause I know Latin, right?” Phil blinked owlishly.

  “I wanted you ’cause you’re a Scorpio, okay? Now shut up, I’m gonna start.” Quasi palmed the light switch, and suddenly the only illumination in the room was coming from the four candles and the hibachi.

  Mark went very cold; with the lights out this was beginning to seem like something other than funny. The Scotch he’d downed had worn off all too quickly, and with it his bravado. He wanted very badly to walk out that door, but didn’t dare. He knew what the other three would say if he did. He’d never live it down. He was supposed to be studying Criminology; it wouldn’t look real cool if he couldn’t handle a spooky situation.

  Quasi, looking warped and sinister in the flickering candlelight, began chanting and throwing various substances on the coals in the brazier. Some of them smelled vaguely pleasant; some stank to high heaven. All of them produced a good deal of smoke, further obscuring vision. Mark could scarcely see when he pointed dramatically in his direction.

  He stammered out what was written on the notebook paper, not feeling at all ashamed that his voice shook. This wasn’t funny anymore. He waited, feeling a cold chill ooze down his backbone, as Phil and Tim said their pieces. Then Quasi intoned a final sentence—

  Everything—just stopped. No sound, no nothing. Then Mark’s stomach lurched, and every hair on his arms stood straight up. The temperature in the room dropped at least twenty degrees. But that was only for openers.

  Without warning a soundless explosion in the center of the diagram knocked Mark right off his feet.

  By some miracle, he didn’t turn over the candle behind him; as he staggered upright again he saw that Phil and Tim hadn’t been so lucky. His candle and Quasi’s were the only sources of light—

  Then something at the heart of the diagram flared greenly; the remaining two candles were snuffed out by the hurricane wind that followed that flare of sickly light. For with the light came a tempest.

  #

  Di’s head came up abruptly, as a sudd
en shift in the arcane atmosphere sent it from “nothing to see here” to “Danger, Will Robinson!” Even though the velvet curtains over the window were still shut tight, she didn’t need the curtains open to sense the surge of energies as something very close at hand attracted a lot of nasty attention. Something powerful and evil had found something to exploit, and it was homing in on it very, very quickly.

  Without even thinking about it, she flung herself out of the bed, grabbed the sword, and was out the door.

  #

  Mark dropped back down to his knees and sheltered his head in his arms. There was a whirlwind raking the room; it was centered by a vortex in the heart of the diagram. The wind was sucking anything loose into that vortex—papers, bits of herb, posters torn loose from the walls. Quasi was staring at his handiwork with a face that was panic-stricken and utterly dumbfounded.

  There at the heart of the vortex was the source of the evil light—it was—

  Mark didn’t know what it was, only that it was a dark, amorphous blot that smelled utterly foul and made him sick to his stomach. It had eyes that glowed a vile, poisonous green; eyes that he could not look away from.

  He found himself rising again to his feet, and realized with cold and helpless horror that he was being pulled toward it.

  Phil screamed; an incongruously girlish sound. Mark heard him clearly above the howl of the wind.

  And then Mark heard the sound of his footsteps fleeing toward the back door. A splintery crash marked the slamming of the porch door against the wall—then Tim followed Phil, backing put slowly, unable to take his eyes off the apparition. Tim was not screaming, he was giggling hysterically. Quasi held out a few moments longer, but when the thing turned its horrible eyes on him, Quasi howled like a mad dog and followed the other two.

  Mark fought the fascination as best he could, but found himself taking a slow, deliberate step toward the thing—then another—and another—

  He was too frightened to cry out, too terrified even to pray. He could only fight against the pull, and know his fight would be, in the end, useless.

  The creature in the vortex chuckled wetly, and Mark felt his whole self become one inarticulate and soundless cry for help.

  And—like a miracle—help arrived.

  #

  Di raced across to the neighboring building, then up the stairs, cursing the lack of an elevator. Whatever idiot was working magic on the third floor had somehow—probably by accident—managed to replicate the spell that opened a door in the Veil that would allow any spirit that wanted to possess a human being across. And on any other night but this, well, it still probably wouldn’t have worked.

  But this was Halloween.

  The Veil was thin, it was midnight and this was when the Veil was thinnest. Where before it might have taken the equivalent of an ax to hack across the Veil, tonight all it took was a butter-knife.

  She reached the third floor. She didn’t need to go door to door to look for the culprit, she could feel it. And she didn’t wait to be invited.

  “Agor!” she screamed furiously, letting the force of her own anger hit that door. And as the power left her, she felt something else—

  Guardian energy!

  It flooded through her, and exploded against the door.

  The door didn’t just open, it very nearly splintered as it was hurled against the wall on the inside. And Diana stepped across the threshold, sword at the ready.

  #

  The front door literally exploded inwards, with a force that dwarfed the initial explosion that had brought the thing, and the compulsion and the whirlwind weakened as the thing turned its attention to the newcomer.

  Light—light against the awful darkness.

  Brilliant, clean white light poured in the open portal. Standing in the light—or had she brought the light with her?—was a young woman. A very angry young woman.

  Some unencumbered part of his mind recognized her as one of Quasi’s upstairs neighbors.

  Her waist-length hair stood out from her head as if she had taken hold of a static generator. She was wearing ballet slippers, jeans, a leotard, and an ancient Japanese kimono that whipped wildly about her in the screaming wind.

  She was holding what could only be a broadsword.

  The sword was glowing. Blue-green flames flickered all up and down the blade. The thing in the vortex saw that, and snarled at her.

  The girl sidestepped into the room, slowly; she looked like she knew exactly what she was doing. She was holding the sword in both hands, and Mark had the relieved feeling that this was not the first time she had fought this particular battle. She eased along the edge of the diagram until she stood a few feet from Mark—

  Then she suddenly dashed the remaining few feet toward him and slashed the fiery blade down into the space between him and the thing, as if she was cutting a line that was binding him and the thing together.

  The compulsion to join the thing snapped so abruptly that he stumbled backwards into the wall.

  #

  If she hadn’t been busy fighting with every iota of her attention, Di would have groaned. There could not have been a more potent combination for attracting a Yeth Hound than a drunk conducting a half-assed version of a Jamaican ceremony designed to invoke a loa, but calling on an unspecified “spirit of the Old Country,” with a completely wide-open and untrained medium in the circle. Normally a Yeth Hound wouldn’t try to possess someone, because normally, a Yeth Hound couldn’t. Except, thanks to whatever idiot had put this together, and the thinning of the Veil, and the presence of the medium, a creature that desperately wanted to live, at any cost, was going to get the chance.

  “Ci drygionus o farwolaeth, troi i ffwrdd ac yn wynebu i mi!” she screamed. And the fell beast turned, and its baleful glare fell on her.

  #

  The girl was shouting words that he couldn’t quite make out—and didn’t really want to—above the howling of the wind and the higher wailing of the apparition in the vortex. He crouched and covered his ears with both hands, unable to look away. She gestured with the sword, drawing fiery lines in the air between herself and the creature, lines that glowed and continued to hang suspended before her long after any afterimage should have faded. The thing’s wailing grew in intensity—and so did the sucking wind. Mark huddled against the wall, his heart pounding with absolute panic.

  #

  She had to seal the rupture in the Veil. That was the only way to get the thing’s ectoplasmic claws out of its would-be victim. And this was the sort of thing only a Guardian could do….

  She felt the power pouring by itself into the sword, and instinctively, she knew what to do.

  #

  Then the girl changed her stance, balancing the pommel of her sword in her hand as if the whole massive piece of metal was nothing more than an oversized throwing-knife.

  Mark stared at that; the back of his head was insisting that you couldn’t do that, but his eyes were telling him that she was, and logic be damned.

  She held it that way for only an instant—then cast it, throwing it as if it had no weight at all, aiming it at the darkness between the thing’s eyes.

  There was a third explosion and a flash of light that left Mark half blinded and half-deafened, and not a little stunned.

  When he finally came to himself again, the electric lights were back on. There was an awful stench filling the apartment, like burned and rotting meat.

  There was nothing in the middle of the room except a blackened spot in the center of the rug, a spot that had a sword sticking out of the middle of it. Mark stared at the blade with a slackened jaw; it had buried itself into the floor for a depth of at least two inches. He couldn’t imagine how the hell she had tossed it that hard.

  The girl was again standing between him and the spot where the thing had been, surveying the wreckage with her feet slightly apart, and her hands on her hips. As he stared stupidly at her back, she turned to face him.

  She was not happy.

/>   “Well,” she said at last. An angry frown marred her otherwise pretty face as she grabbed the hilt without looking at it and wrenched the sword from the floor with an audible crack. “You sure blew my study plans all to hell. I’m not too thrilled about having to drop everything to rescue an almost-damned fool. What have you got to say for yourself?”

  “Uh—” He swallowed hard. “Thanks?” She stared at him for another long moment, then began laughing.

  “There had better be some booze here,” she said, when she stopped. Wordlessly, he pointed, and she looked over at the box in the corner. She walked over to it, still carrying the sword in her right hand, transferring it to her left when she reached the booze box. She looked down. And smiled, just a little.

  She bent down and picked out a bottle by the neck, holding it up to examine the label. “Well,” she said. “Glenmorangie.”

  Just then Quasi, Tim, and Phil peeked around the splintered door to the porch.

  God knows what they thought they were doing, running out there, Mark suddenly realized. There’s no way down to the ground from there. They were as trapped as me…

  The girl looked up at them, and frowned. “So. This would be the rest of the Four Stooges.”

  Quasi’s mouth opened and shut, but nothing came out. Phil and Tim were as white as plaster.

  “I’ll be taking this to make up for the crap you put me through tonight,” she continued, hefting the bottle, then pointing at them with the neck of it. “If you ever do this again, I won’t be coming to rescue you. I will seal this room off with you and whatever you call up inside of it, until it and you are gone. Understand?”

  Tim fainted. Quasi’s mouth opened and shut several times before “Yes, ma’am,” came out in a whisper.

  She glared at them, until they retreated to the porch, dragging Tim with them. Then she looked around until she spotted the desk shoved against the wall. She stalked over to it and rummaged until she found a pencil and a loose index card. A little scribbling and she stalked over to him and shoved it into his hand. “You,” she said, pointing the hilt of the sword at him. “You will be at my place tomorrow at 7 P.M. You will not be late.”