“That’s the bit that threw me,” said Ballard. “When I went to look, I mean. I mean, magic? It’s a lot to accept. My uncle believed in this book. He made sure I found it. I want to know why. Until then, no one knows. Not even Lia.” He made me promise.
“I won’t tell anyone, Ballard. I promise. I want to know how you got this book, too.”
“I did find a few things,” he said. “Leads...”
I listened on, interested.
“That’s how I found you. And that... school...”
I grimaced... St. Martley’s. How could I explain it?
“It’s all right, if you don’t want to tell me,” he said.
I looked at him. “Ballard, St. Martley’s is a school for girls––there’s nothing sinister, I swear...”
That wasn’t entirely true, and he knew I was keeping things from him. “Suit yourself,” he said, “but I was hoping I would get to see you so we could talk about it. I just didn’t realize it would be happening so soon. Aren’t you a student there? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
I asked him the same thing.
“I asked you first,” he said.
I sighed.... Teenage boy....
“Its full title is St. Martley’s Academy for the Gifted.”
“You being the gifted one?” he said.
“What can I say?” I said.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he just ate his ice. Mine was dripping on to the table. We ate in silence for a while. I looked at the Codex.
You can’t lie to him. It isn’t right. I sighed.
“Okay, it’s a school for Magic, all right? There, I said it.”
It was like he won, or something.
“I knew it,” he said, with altogether too much satisfaction.
I glared at him. “You shouldn’t gloat,” I said. “It’s unbecoming.”
“So what do you do there, being all gifted and all?”
“Stuff,” I said, either defensively or evasively––I wasn’t sure.
“‘Stuff?’” he repeated, skeptically. “What kind of ‘stuff?’”
It was obvious that he wasn’t going to let this go. “You know. Math, Science, Geometry. You should see me foil. I do great Algebra.”
“I see. So it’s just P.E. and fifteen-minute breaks and every other week you get a half day on Friday, is that it?”
“Sure,” I said, enjoying his irritation.
“What did he mean when he said you were, you know... ‘the last?’” said Ballard, referring to his Uncle Risky.
I saw his heartbreak, then, his soul. It was like mine at seeing my father’s and mother’s signatures. Ancient ink-strokes on a yellowing page, filled with dust.
It was the kind of dust I would never be able to get out. Just as I would never be able to get out the feeling that I had lost them.
“He meant my mother and father. These are their signatures.”
Ballard looked at them. “I didn’t know they were... dead,” he said.
“Yeah well.”
“Say,” he said, choosing to brighten up. “We’re having a little get-together. You should come tonight. It’s at Lia’s boyfriend’s place.” He said the last bit like he was going to gag. “But it’ll be really fun; it’s really cool there. It’ll give you a chance to ride your bike, at the very least.”
“Do you have a bike?” I asked.
“You betcha.” He nodded.
“I don’t know,” I said. After all, I had a date. “Can I bring a date?”
His face fell. “Sure,” he said. He told me where it was at. “So my uncle knew about magic. And that is what I don’t get. I would love to know what he was doing, caught up in it. Hey, can you conjure? I mean, can you do like magic spells, and stuff?”
“Erm...” I said. “It wasn’t really that kind of place.”
He did the frowning thing again. “What d’you mean?” he said.
I knew this would happen if I ever talked to anyone about what I did at St. Martley’s.
“You are a witch, aren’t you?” he said, pawing me relentlessly like a playful puppy. “I mean, aren’t you?”
“Erm...”
He looked so embarrassed.
“I mean, maybe,” I said.
“What?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, St. Martley’s isn’t so much a school of magic as it is a school against magic...”
He just stared. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he said.
“I’m afraid not,” I said. I felt embarrassed.
“So you’re saying... Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he said. “You’re a witch––whose parents were witches––”
“Well, a witch and a wizard,” I interjected.
“Of course, sorry,” he said. “...And you go to a magic school, but you’re not a witch.”
“It’s more like I’m waiting,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
He shrugged. “I guess we have time. Oh, and it’s summer. That’s why I don’t go to school.”
“Duh! Geez! Of course!” I said. “We go–– no kidding. Gah!”
“What? You don’t?”
“We go year round, yeah. I told you, it’s all about abstinence, denial, conforming, rather than accepting who you are.”
“I don’t like this word ‘denial,’” he said. “You mean they teach you to reject who you really are?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
“Sounds like hell,” he said.
“It wasn’t that bad,” I said. “I had friends.”
“Were they all abstainers, too?” he asked.
“Becca, my best friend,” I said, “she started a Coven.” He looked on, intrigued. We pretended like we didn’t have a copy of The Magus Codex open between us. “But it was just like pretend, mostly. You see, a witch is taught abstinence first, so that she can gain all of the other things a supposedly well-rounded individual should have. Only, all we wanted to do was cast charms and do transformations and stuff––and we could, if we wanted to, if they taught us. But magic was strictly forbidden at St. Martley’s. It was like you couldn’t be... anything.”
Even now I felt restricted, here in his too-small kitchen that smelled like a scent I was beginning to associate with Ballard: clean, fresh, lemony....
“It wasn’t like we had it rough. To tell you the truth, it was pretty posh. Everyone tried to do stuff anyways.”
“Were you able to do... stuff?”
“You mean conjure? All that. Never. I’ve never crafted, no. Not even once. Some girls said they did, but we didn’t believe them.”
“Then how did you know?” he asked. “That you were...?”
“‘Gifted,’” I asked? “We didn’t. We don’t,” I said.
“I think I understand,” he said.
“I’m sure you do.”
We stopped talking after that. I read the inscription again. ‘It being different, accordingly.’ What the H did that mean?
“Who’s the other guy?” he asked. “The guy at the top of the page?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at the signatures. It went Frobenius Foucart, then my dad’s name, then my mom’s. It bothered me. I didn’t like seeing his name above theirs. Whoever he was, I had never heard of him before.
“Maybe it’s weird,” I said, “but I would like to find out about him. Who he is, where he lives... If he is even still alive....”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” said Ballard. He reached for the book. “It looks like a library book, almost. Like how libraries used to stamp books. You could tell who checked out what.”
That was an interesting thought––I finished the grattachecca. In fact, I was sure he was right. “That’s probably exactly what it is,” I said, smiling. He beamed at me. I was going to like Ballard.
* * *
I left with a map he drew for me, to the location of Lia’s boyfriend’s party tonight; I promised I would try to come. It made me feel bad. I had only been in Rome one day and already I had prior com
mitments.
“Be there,” he said. “It was nice meeting you.”
I told him likewise and hopped on my Vespa, speeding home. I didn’t pass any motorcycles coming back the way I had come, but could hear them in the corridors.
It was like they were prowling around. I was soon across the river, with the evening to look forward to.
* * *
Dear Diary,
If that is what you are,
Today, as I drove to Ballard’s, I felt a strange tug; it began at the Questura, which, let us never speak of again, but it intensified as I came around the Piazza Venezia rotary. I drove in a circle, lost for a long period of time, trying to get my bearings and avoid being run over. Around and around I went. Wherever I was headed, it seemed like I should turn off, go back to where I came from. I don’t know if it was a tug into the past, or else a protective instinct, shielding me from what I might find.
What I didn’t tell Ballard about St. Martley’s was more for his protection than honoring ardanes. St. Martley’s instructs girls how not to craft, but there is more to it than that. For instance, teacher slips. We have all seen one or more of them lose their cool. I suspect foremost Mistress Genevieve. She seems a wicked bad witch. I would hate to fight her.
I hope I made the right choice. I left in such a hurry. Three months, but still. I have effectively burned that bridge. There will be no prodigal Halsey, returning.
When we come of age, we are indoctrinated into the Craft. I don’t know how I feel about that. Particularly the whole abstinence bit. If they knew what some of us get up to... Sometimes with each other... although, I never did....
Having an all-girls’ school is like waving a banner to every healthy hormonal boy in a hundred mile radius. It is the enzyme in the equation. The spark that lights the blaze. I am a furnace of heat.
But I’m getting off track.
Mistress Genevieve said it was a kind of test. Not the no-sex bit. The Magical abstinence, is what I’m talking about. It’s a kind of badge. It’s supposed to teach you resourcefulness, patience, discipline––all of the multitudinous virtues. Instead it has us cracking up.
Her analogy was a piece of fruit. How we were all like little plump plums or other dumplings on the vine. Like a peach, a peach was good.
And if we got picked too soon...
How about not getting picked at all? What if we just fell off the magical tree, which, in the analogy, was St. Martley’s? What if we just fell off and nobody noticed? What if we just lay on the ground, wormpecked and rotting? Who would eat us, then?
There were 8 Virtues, according to Mistress Genevieve: Insight, Discretion, Virtuosity, Malleability, Severeness, Humor, Goodwill, Grace.
Hers was clearly Severeness. Sometimes Becks would do a rendition of Mistress Genevieve. “We must be beautiful, powerful bitches,” she would say. “Stern when we need to be.”
That had me thinking what my Virtue was? Knowing me, I’d probably get stuck with Malleability, whatever that meant. Virtuosity sounded cool. That must be badass witchcraft.
* * *
There was a storage compartment on the back of the Vespa under the seat. I bought some laundry detergent, shampoo, and bars of soap, and headed back to my apartment on Via dei Condotti.
My landlady nodded her approval. She had facilities onsite: washers, dryers. It got me thinking of Trastevere, and how freely its occupants aired their dirty laundry. ‘I’m too much of a coward to be so free. Instead I have you, Diary.’
* * *
He hasn’t come yet. I stood around down in the street, for a while, window-shopping. Drooling is a better term. Waiting for him to show up. I swear I don’t drool at the thought of boys and whether or not they remember promises ever, Diary. There are so many boy rules when it comes to second contact. It’s coming on nine o’clock at night. The summer days are long. I think the nights must be mercurial in response. Who knows what may happen? I think I will change into some fresh laundry. Yes.
I want to see more of Rome. I find all I want to do is mix, mingle, and be single. All those Six Nine Guys can’t all have girlfriends. Drool.
Chapter 8 – Lennox
Things were not going my way. It began with my wheels. The scent of dead guy was strong with this Fast Walker. He kept bitching and moaning.
That was a powerful trifecta of reasons not to take John Occam’s car. Next, the wardrobe issue. I had two stops to make. The first one I was not looking forward to. The second one I was. I did not want Halsey Rookmaaker to think I walked around in a trench coat all the time. So I put on something new. You could only wear leather so much in the summertime, anyway.
Unfortunately, that meant I would have to take the sewers, otherwise I would end up burning to death in the sun. I would probably end up getting to the morgue late and smelling really bad.
Which meant she was going to be wondering where I was, when I didn’t show up to her place on time. Stalker Boy didn’t miss a beat. Can’t tell her. Can’t stay away from her. Problems, problems.
That was something else that was bothering me. I usually had someone to talk to about my problems. Occam was incommunicado, doing god knows what. I could hear him now.
Girl? What does a girl have to do with the Zombie Apocalypse? Throw her off a really high cliff, preferably into a pit of stakes. If she lives, she is evil.
Stalker Boy was a little more adept.
If you turn her, he reasoned, she may enjoy that you have fangs. She can’t ever be anything serious.
He proceeded to relate it to coffee.
She is like a shot of espresso. She makes this teeny-tiny little cup. But you want to make a bigger deal of her than she already is. So you make her into a caffè latte. This is a tall glass of coffee. A rich, full-flavored experience. It is to be savored that much longer. But what you fail to realize is that she is still that same hit of espresso. Like a drug. All you have succeeded at is watering her down. Drink her and be done.
It would be easier if I did.
I had her locket around my neck for safekeeping. It tingled where it touched my skin. What was I doing, getting mixed up with someone like her? Already, I knew that it could end only one way.
I came up from the sewer like a hopeful monster, and checked the parking lot.
Just the security guard at the front desk, and a few orderlies cleaning up. The medical examiner liked to go home early.
I had Occam’s litmus kit he developed; any infected blood would turn the paper black. The only thing left to do was go to the place where they kept the dead bodies. At least, I hoped they were dead.
I had cultivated a persona. Doctor L.
Doctor L was a forensic fellow who had spent time at the Sorbonne and Cambridge, and had traveled extensively, lecturing at Harvard and La Jolla. He came and went at odd hours. Someone or other had seen fit to allow him to wander the pathology labs at will.
“He is interested in all forms of death,” they said. The interns gossiped that he must be a ghost. But a few had seen Doctor L, sometimes, wandering the halls. He was very pale. His eyes were dark, almost black, and he looked hungry, like he would eat you, if you disturbed him. He never talked to anybody. That was another thing, Doctor L was completely antisocial, but very brilliant. “Don’t ever bother him,” they said.
Doctor L entered through the front doors, strolling, for all to see, without a care in the world, in a grey V-neck casual T-shirt and jeans, wearing a pair of sneakers.
He looked like he had just made a million bucks selling oil futures or something. He was way too young to be a doctor.
He smiled at the desk clerk and signed in. The orderlies, and everyone, had never seen him so relaxed. Usually he had a look so serious upon his face that it froze any would-be conversationalists. This guy was just––there was something about him... They couldn’t quite put their fingers on it.
You realize, said Stalker Boy, that soon you won’t just have opportunities like this. That this period of your life is finite
. That you are growing up. Or else––well...
I signed in and went down the hall to the elevators to go get a look at the stiffs. No one bothered me. It was the smart move on their parts.
Moretti had supplied me with the autopsy reports of the previous victims, all of whom were being tentatively attributed to the nasty serial killer Rome had roaming its streets. Peter Panico.
I had to make sure these bodies didn’t have any infectious diseases the pathology lab was unprepared for. That meant taking blood samples and testing them against the litmus Occam had prepared.
There were six cadavers in all, wrapped in white sheets. The medical examiner was probably waiting for the morning before he processed them.
I went to corpse number one, removed the cap on the syringe, and stuck it in. Blood stopped moving when someone died––the heart no longer beat.
This blood had already begun to degrade.
The autolytic effects were such that the erythrocytes were on self-destruct. The blood because of the hemolysis was see-through. I made a note of it.
The same for the next one. Both cadavers tested negative for the Suck.
Same with the third. I was halfway through them, discarding needles in biological waste containers. None of the bodies had any of the telltale marks of being bitten by vampires.
Now for number four. I paused with the needle.
“I’ll be,” I said.
The blood had given me an idea. If the virus was spreading to red blood cells, taking them over, destroying them–– No, it was converting them. It wasn’t necrosis. And it wasn’t decomposition. It has to be changing the blood––reconstituting it.
We had never done a postmortem on one of the infected rats. Never thought to study it. Occam and I had been too busy destroying the carriers.
We incinerated the rats.
I bet their hearts pump. I bet when the Suck attacks the nervous system, it does something to the circulatory system. If these contagion carriers, these revenants, have pumping hearts... One, it means they’re ‘alive’––and anything alive can be killed, I told myself. But also....
It was too new an idea. I concentrated on the fourth body. It failed to trigger Occam’s litmus.