Thaumatology 101 (12 page)

Ceri looked up at Lilly. ‘What are you reading?’ the half-demon asked.

‘It’s about pack behaviour in werewolves,’ she lied.

‘Cool.’ She rolled onto her side, grinning at Ceri. ‘Maybe you can give me some pointers later. You’re so much better at the academic stuff than me.’

The succubus will behave suggestively, and compliment you on your knowledge and power. Often they will indicate that they find you attractive, even if you are, by all contemporary measures, about as good looking as a walrus. Refrain from bedding the succubus immediately. Giving in too easily will make the demon think less of you. I cannot stress enough the importance of ensuring that you are the master in the relationship. I recommend waiting two to three days before finally taking your succubus to your bed. Her attempts to persuade you will increase in intensity over this time, but resist. It
must
be you who commands her, not the other way around.

Okay, Ceri thought, survive three days of Lily drooling over her and things should sort themselves out. She closed the file, located one which
was
on werewolf pack behaviour and opened it. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I can do that.’ Though whether she was thinking about Lily, or Lily’s request for information was open to question.

~~~

‘Werewolf packs exhibit substantially different behaviour from that of Grey Wolves which they are believed to be derived from,’ Ceri intoned, and then shovelled a large mouthful of pasta into her mouth. ‘God I love this dish, Twill,’ she added around her food.

‘Then eat it rather than spraying it over the table,’ Twill replied. Ceri looked suitably chastised and went back to reading the werewolf pack paper.

‘What’s this stuff called again, Twill?’ Lily asked.

‘Spaghetti alla puttanesca,’ Twill said. ‘A relatively recent recipe, but I know Ceri likes the olives and anchovies.’ Ceri nodded enthusiastically.

‘That’s Italian, right?’ Lily said.

‘Yes,’ Twill replied, pleased that Lily was taking an interest. ‘It literally translates as “whore’s style spaghetti.”’ Ceri swallowed rather convulsively and looked up at Lily. There was a mischievous sparkle in her eyes; she had known full well what the stuff was
and
what the name meant.

Ceri was about to say something when Lily put a forkful of food into her mouth and proceeded to slowly suck a loose strand of spaghetti in through pursed lips. It took every ounce of will Ceri had to look away, but she managed it. ‘According to this,’ she said in a desperate effort to stop thinking about Lily’s lips, ‘the idea of wolf packs having an “alpha” wolf at the head is entirely discredited, but werewolf packs
do
have an alpha. Says it’s likely because of the mixture of human and animal social traits.’ She looked up, thankful to see that Lily was chewing. ‘Why’s Alec a ronin?’

‘He’s never really said,’ Lily replied after swallowing. ‘He’s been at the Dragon since before I started. From the beginning, I think. I know he gets more respect from the wolf packs than most ronin do. I think he’s a friend of Carter’s from way back.’ Ceri nodded, looking down at her tablet again. ‘Why,’ Lily asked, ‘you fancy him?’

‘No!’ Lily was grinning again. ‘I was just interested. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a werewolf without a pack until last night.’

‘It happens for a couple of reasons,’ Twill said. ‘It’s usually a failed play for dominance in a pack. If a younger were tries to take the Alpha position from the current one and fails, he’s generally run off by the rest of the pack. That’s if he lives, obviously.’

‘That doesn’t fit Alec, from the sound of it,’ Ceri said. ‘I’d imagine that someone driven off like that would get no respect at all.’ Lily nodded her agreement.

‘Some leave of their own accord,’ Twill said. ‘It’s generally because they can’t stand living under the Alpha’s rule, or they’ve fallen for a she-wolf from another pack. And there are a few cases where a pack is wiped out for some reason. Often a lone survivor will never join another pack out of respect for the fallen.’

‘Huh,’ Lily said, ‘I can see Alec having gone after someone else’s Alpha female.’

‘Horn dog, yeah,’ Ceri said, grinning. Her face straightened. ‘Though it kind of makes more sense if he’s a last survivor. Especially if the others had died doing something… noble? Kind of romantic, in a sad way.’ She glanced down again. ‘Oh, there’s a bit here on that cascade effect you mentioned last night. One were changing can result in those nearby changing too, and you suddenly have a pack all wolfing out at once. Wonder if it’s some sort of backwash effect from the thaumiton collapse.’

‘You said something about that when you were talking to Carter. What did you actually
do
to that guy?’

‘Yes,’ Twill said, ‘I haven’t heard this story.’

‘Well, the guy was giving off this field, like a magnetic field, but thaumic,’ Ceri said. ‘It was contracting, or collapsing. I figured when it collapsed all the way there would be an energy surge and he’d transform. So I kind of… sucked the energy out. It was like what I did to get the energy to hit Shane.’

‘Then she had to get rid of it,’ Lily said, ‘so we went to the bathroom up in Carter’s offices and she boiled a bathtub full of water.’

Twill looked impressed. ‘You do know that no one knows what the mechanism is for true-were transformations?’ she asked.

‘You’ve got another paper to write,’ Lily said with a grin.

Ceri grimaced. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘if there’s an emission of thaumitons prior to a transformation, you could probably detect it. Either an enchantment or a thaumometer fixed under the tables. Might give you some warning.’

‘I’ll mention it to Carter tonight,’ Lily said, and then developed a smirk. ‘Always assuming he doesn’t have your boss tied up in the office to go bang at regular intervals.’

‘You,’ Ceri said, ‘have a one track mind.’

‘Yes,’ Lily retorted promptly, ‘I’m half succubus.’

September 26
^th

Somehow the study seemed less oppressive now. Ceri sat at her father’s desk with the file on the house’s many enchantments. She had extracted the bulky document from one of the filing cabinets which were kept hidden away, out of sight, behind the false walls at the sides of the room. There were files on more or less every enchantment the Brents had ever done in those cabinets. The only ones missing were a few confidential corporate ones and a couple which she knew they had done for the government, though what part of the government it had been for they had never said.

It was morning, and she could work without any distraction from Lily’s attempts to get her into bed. Which was a good thing, because her parents had created quite complex enchantments to fortify their own home, and despite her initial confidence that she could handle the necessary maintenance, she was starting to think she was in over her head.

The sigil which guarded the door was fairly simple, for a given value of simple. The complexity there was that it responded to non-magicians if they knew the correct form of wording, but she was pretty confident about that.

Then there were the runes built into the building as it had gone up. These strengthened the structure and actually repaired wear and tear. Nothing she could not handle, so long as she could work out how to actually get to them to work on them. Some were in the foundations! She finally cracked that when she found her mother’s notes on the maintenance mechanism they had built in. Everything could be handled from a central point in the cellar.

Twill flew in with a fresh mug of coffee as she was going over the enchantments for the grounds. ‘Those,’ she said, landing on Ceri’s shoulder, ‘need work. Especially the barrier on the south gate.’

‘Yeah, well they put the runes in using ink rather than carving them,’ Ceri said. ‘Dad’s view was that carving into wood didn’t make that much difference so long as there was someone there to keep up the drawings.’

Twill gave her a pat on the cheek with a hand so small it felt almost like a pin pricking her. ‘Well, now there is,’ she said.

‘Huh, yeah, if the Calendula and Elder ink is in any fit state to use.’

‘Well,’ Twill said, ‘let’s go look. Your parents kept those supplies in the cellar, didn’t they?’ She looked down at Ceri’s shoulder and sniffed. ‘Walk slowly, please, I’ve nothing to hang onto. Why did you put one of these things on anyway? I’m sure you’d be more comfortable in one of your shirts.’

Ceri looked down at the white, lace-and-mesh teddy she had put on without thinking that morning. ‘This
is
comfortable,’ she said, ‘and I felt like wearing it.’ And the unbidden voice in the back of her head was saying that Lily would like it; it would turn the half-succubus on and Ceri would get another compliment. There was no way she was admitting that to the fairy.

Standing up, she made her way as smoothly as she could down the stairs to the hall. Off to one side, in the corner, was the hidden-but-not-really-secret door which lead to the spiral staircase to the cellar. The stairs were dark and fairly narrow, but Ceri had been navigating them since she was old enough to walk. At the bottom, a small chamber presented them with two options; off to the right, directly below the main area of the house, were the two summoning rooms, and ahead of them was a heavy, metal door which led to into the workshop.

It was as much a laboratory as a workshop, really. Amulets and charms, as well as larger items, had been made there. There was an entire jewellery making bench at the far end, and the left wall was lined with heavy wooden tables and the kind of glassware you saw in semi-industrial chemical labs. When her mother had been working on a new potion, she had tended to get
very
enthusiastic.

There were two cabinets in the room. The smaller one was metal, had a padlock on the front, and was entirely empty. It had contained various things which you needed a special license to obtain and store. A couple of weeks after her parents’ funeral Ceri had taken several men in protective clothing from the Department for Environmental Affairs to the cellar to clear out the contents of the cupboard. She had been happy that they had come;
she
had not wanted to go near some of the stuff in there.

Beside that stood a much larger, wooden cabinet which contained the more general supplies. Ceri rarely came down here; there really was very little she usually wanted, or at least, that was what she told herself. As she opened the big, wooden doors of the cabinet and the scent of herbs, oils, spices, and other things she had more trouble identifying filled her nose, she felt a sudden flurry of excitement. Back before the accident which had claimed her parents, she had loved watching them working down here. When she had been younger, she had thought that she would be doing the same someday, and later she had just been happy to help.

‘Mum used to let me help her sometimes,’ Ceri said as she began checking the shelves. ‘I’d grind the pigments for inks, or the herbs for her potions. Even when it was clear I was never going to be able to work magic I’d still do the grunt work.’

‘You enjoyed it?’ Twill asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ceri replied. ‘It was something I could do with them. It
felt
like I was doing something magical, even though it wasn’t.’

‘And now you
can
do magic,’ Twill said. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone spontaneously developing magical talent before.’

Ceri found a packet the size of a pack of cigarettes, checked the label and grinned. ‘Cheryl checked the literature,’ she said, ‘and she couldn’t find anything either. Then again, she couldn’t find any examples of someone surviving a thaumic burst like that.’ She peeled back the wrapper of the packet and checked the slightly waxy substance inside. ‘This looks good.’

Twill carried a bottle from the back of one of the shelves. It was bigger than she was. ‘The oil’s dried out though,’ she said. ‘You realise that the chances that you would come out of an accident like that with beneficial side effects must be smaller than those particles you’ve been looking for.’

Ceri shrugged and picked up the bottle. ‘Even a tiny chance is a chance,’ she said. ‘I’ll go up to Baltzman’s and get some more of this stuff.’ She waited for Twill to fly out and land on her shoulder before pushing the doors closed, and then started for the door, bottle in hand.

‘You will be putting some clothes on, won’t you?’ Twill said as they started up the stairs.

‘Yes, Twill,’ Ceri said, suppressing a smirk.

‘I’m sure you look wonderful in just a… teddy is it? But I think something a little more covering is appropriate.’

‘Yes, Twill, I’d
never
have thought of that.’

There was a second or two of silence and then Twill said, ‘Don’t think I won’t enchant you knickers to shrink three sizes once you’ve got them on.’

Ceri tried
very
hard not to giggle.

Soho

Blatzman’s was the best purveyor of magical supplies and equipment in London. Grey’s Market on Oxford Street was larger and shinier, and many people who did not know better went there, but Ceri’s parents had always bought their supplies at Baltzman’s. That was as good a reason as any for Ceri to take the trip up to Piccadilly Circus and then walk up to Great Pulteney Street. It was quiet, being Sunday, but the shop would be open for a short day; magicians were not big on Sundays as a day of rest.

The shop was correctly called “Baltzman’s Emporium of Magical Artifice,” which had resulted in the student community christening it Beema’s. Generally, though, students did not shop there, and so had never met Earnest Baltzman. If they had, they would have shown more respect. Ceri remembered him as a stern old man who had looked at her over the top of half-spectacles whenever she strayed from her parents. Then again, the last time she had been there was when she was twelve.

Ceri looked up at the six storey building built in the Regency style. Age had had a significant effect, however, and it seemed run down and in need of repair. It was not exactly an illusion, like High Towers, but Ceri knew the interior was not the same. Taking a deep breath, she opened the front door and walked in.