Confessions of the Magpie Wizard Book 3: Dissolution (Chapters 54 & 55) (Patreon)

Date Night Kiyo Art by https://twitter.com/onibaku1_5?s=20

Chapter 54

Nagoya, Japan

Friday, August 16th, 2050

The morning started off extremely promising. Once I had figured out that the disguise wand was based on a standard memory card, it had been simple enough to trade in some of my excess credits from the Headmaster for a few spares.

It wasn’t quite as easy to decipher how the fabricata read the images inside. Back before Kiyo and I had been found out, I might have chanced things and asked her for help. It would have been easy enough to say I had salvaged the wand from Haru after the fight on the rooftop. However, Kiyo had been out of sorts, and I didn’t feel like lying to her more than I had to. She was starting to worry me, and giving her more half-truths to mull over didn’t help my cover or her mood. She was a clever one; I doubted she would buy something as ridiculous as my snakebite story a second time.

I had eventually learned how to check a file format, thanks to a helpful website of computer tips for seniors. Then it was a matter of finding somebody nondescript with a good sample of photos online. I considered picking a staff member, but Maggie had rolled the dice strolling around wearing Headmaster Tachibana’s face before, and I didn’t want to trust anything to luck. After searching SatoPic for a while (I wondered if there was an industry Yukiko’s family didn’t have their tentacles in), I picked an Indonesian accountant who seemed very taken with himself. He had more pictures of himself from any given day than I had for my whole life to that point.

The results were… mixed. I didn’t have any voice clips, so I still sounded exactly like myself. Also, the fabricata’s ability to stitch together disparate images was impressive, but not flawless. Nurse Kazushi’s pictures had been taken in a short period from a variety of angles. My donor had so many selfies that I looked convincing from the front. However, he had posted no images of himself from behind. If I turned around and looked over my shoulder in the mirror, I could see my pajamas and all of the exposed skin in my natural color, instead of his darker tone. I also found that if I faced the mirror in a profile, the gray suit he wore switched to a tank top and set of swim trunks.

“I wonder where Maggie got enough pictures of Tachibana,” I mused as I got ready for my other early morning appointment. He was a public figure and he didn’t change his clothes often, but there had to be some sort of trick to it. I couldn’t very well ask her, of course, since that would defeat the point of the wand being my ace in the hole.

“How could I get enough footage to mimic somebody without them wondering why I was photographing them from every conceivable angle…” Ah, well. It wasn’t a pressing concern, and it was fun having a puzzle to ponder that I could take my time on.

I had another appointment to attend to anyway. I changed into my jogging clothes, musing that I wore more clothing to sleep than to run. It felt strange to walk to the elevator in a tank top and shorts, but then, fashion back home tended to be more conservative. Not out of any sense of propriety, of course, but for efficiency. We had destroyed most of Europe’s infrastructure, and one of the luxuries we had lost was central heating. If one didn’t have the energy for a spell or a fabricata, it was easier to just throw on a sweater.

I couldn’t resist  a detour into the mailroom. I had begun checking it twice a day since the failed attack on Sumatra. Logically, it would be at least another week before I heard back, but it eased my mind.

Or, so I thought. “Well, I’ll be.” Hidden amongst the credit card offers and junk mail was a letter from Harriet Oswald. I shouldn’t have opened it right away, but my curiosity got the better of me. I found more questions than answers inside. For once, the letter didn’t have the distinctive metallic trim of the fabricata sheets Harriet had sent me to that point. It also wasn’t a formal letter. All it gave was a time, eight o’clock that evening, an address in Nagoya written in English characters, a phone number, instructions to dress nicely, and the name Dante.

“Who’s Dante?”

I let out a startled cry and searched the room. If I strained, I could just make out a hint of vanilla. “Kiyo?”

She shimmered back into view to my side. “You gotta watch yourself, Magpie. You almost hit me with your arm.”

“Excuse you! Were you reading over my shoulder?”

She shrugged. “You were running late, so I thought you’d be here. You check your mail a lot.”

“That doesn’t answer my question at all!” I said.

“We don’t have any secrets from each other,” Kiyo said. “Boyfriend/girlfriend contract. So, who’s Dante?”

“You also have promised me more than once that you wouldn’t sneak around on me! That’s in the contract too.”

“Hiro and Yukiko were hanging out on a bench outside, and you’re already making us late for the run,” she said. “They were going to make me late saying hi. It was a one-time thing.”

“It had better be,” I said. Blast it all, I’d have to be even more careful. Apparently her word on the subject didn’t mean much. “Mr. Dante is a friend of the family. One of Harriet’s relatives, a cousin, I think. She was writing to let me know he was in town.”

She let out a long sigh and shoved her hands into her pants pocket. “And you’re going to go into town and meet up with him instead of taking me out or even just staying in and playing video games. I get it, man. You have time for everyone but me lately.”

“I…” The tone in her voice had given me pause. She had sounded utterly crestfallen. I could have fought back against anger, but her resignation pierced my heart. Empathy is extremely overrated. It makes one do foolish things.

At least, it had that effect on me. “I wouldn’t dream of it, my dear. We’ll make a night of it. Dinner, a movie, whatever else sounds good.”

Kiyo raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Wait, what?”

“Oh, you don’t want to?” I leaned back against the wall of mailboxes, trying to look nonchalant.

She emphatically shook her head and waved her hands in front of her. “No, no, that isn’t it. I just… the school’s still locked down, right? Especially after that hack the other day. Did Dante know about that before he told you to meet him in the city?”

“I did mention that in my last… letter to Harriet,” I said, nearly slipping up and calling it a report. “You let me worry about that, Angel.” I had to figure out a way to meet up with this Dante anyhow. Having somebody on hand who could turn me invisible could only be to my benefit. “In fact, you go tell Rose I won’t be joining you today for the run. I’ll get right on it.”

“Are you sure you can handle that, man? You don’t know your way around the big cities. I had to take care of everything that time we went to Tokyo.”

“And it was a wonderful learning experience,” I replied. “What did you tell me once? I’m the guy, so it’s my job to come up with something to entertain you.”

Kiyo stood up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. “This is going to be great! We haven’t done anything like this in ages. And uh…” She fidgeted shyly, her face turning a bright crimson. “I know I said this is your job, but uh, look up something called a ‘love hotel.’”

“What’s a love hotel?”

“It’s a…” She covered her face. “I don’t want to say it out loud. You don’t have them in England, but knowing you, you’ll like them. We can go after dinner.”

“It sounds promising.” I shooed her away. “Now move along, or else I’ll be so distracted that I shan’t be able to get my work done.”

She giggled again. “Shan’t. I love it when you talk like that. It’s like one of the vampires in mom’s novels.” Before I could respond, she had already dashed out the door to the mail room.

That was one crisis averted. Now all I had to do was figure out how to escape the Tower, get into the city, and figure out how I was going to explain Kiyo to this Dante fellow.

Well, I knew how to fix two of the three. It was time to cash in a few favors.

Chapter 55

“You want to… borrow a car.” I had caught Maggie in her homeroom a half hour before class was set to start. Her voice was chirpy and energetic, even when tinged with confusion. It felt strange when I stumbled across her in her teacher mode, among all the insipidly encouraging posters that decorated her room, since I knew the real woman beneath the façade. It felt rather like seeing a magician after you have had the trick explained.

I had changed into my uniform and sat on the edge of her desk. “Yes, that’s right.”

“And you won’t tell me why.”

“It’s serious business, ma’am. I’m not at liberty to say.”

She shot up out of her wheeled chair, sending it rolling away as strands of her red hair popped out of her bun. “We don’t have secrets between us, Holy Brother Mockingbird!”

“I have to keep this one, I’m afraid,” I said. “It’s related to the source that told me about Sumatra. A demonkin would be hesitant to let the head of the local Holy Brotherhood chapter know his or her name.”

Maggie fumed silently for a moment. “As well he should. He’s a traitor to the species.”

“He’s a useful one,” I said.

“That’s something that’s been bothering me,” she said. “If he’s a demonkin, why did he reveal the attack in the first place? Is he a double agent?”

“I very much doubt that,” I replied. Any agent Fera trusted to relay her messages probably had a failsafe curse mark somewhere on his body, similar to what we had stamped on Haru. “What I have gathered over time is that the Grim Horde isn’t as united as they might seem from the outside. It was probably some sort of internal struggle.”

Maggie pulled her seat back into place and flopped down. “That’s the most encouraging thing I’ve heard in ages.”

“Not really,” I said. “Devils are ambitious and not afraid to throw orcs at a problem until it’s solved. I’d expect them to launch an attack that’s just as large sometime next year. All that probably did was change who will be giving out the orders.”

As Maggie’s shoulders slumped, I worried I might have given away too much. Would a demonkin on the street know as much about the inner goings on of the Horde as I had just let slip? She seemed too busy thinking through the implications of what I had said instead of wondering why I said them.

She shocked me by jumping up again, stomping over to the enormous touchscreen at the front of the room and punching it. The glass spiderwebbed around her hand, and when she withdrew her fist, a small trail of blood seeped through her balled fist.

“What the devil are you doing?”

“Stress relief,” she said. Her affinity went to work, and a hint of mint wafted through the air. Under her orders, the glass liquified again. When she was done, it was as if her little tantrum had never happened at all.

“I take it this isn’t the first time you’ve relieved stress that way?”

“Glass manipulation isn’t the most powerful affinity, but it has its perks.” Laughing bitterly, she pulled out her smartphone. “I haven’t bought a case for one of these babies since my magic emerged.” She held up her hand. “Fix it.”

“Fix it, please?”

“Fix it if you want me to jeopardize my job to get you a car,” said snapped, flopping down again in her chair.

“It sounds like a fair trade to me,” I said.

“Don’t use that demon magic this time,” she said. “People would see scars on my fingers.”

“Yes, Holy Sister Shrike,” I said, trying to sound obsequious. She was helping me out, after all. I cast a light healing spell, since the damage was all superficial. That mint scent intensified as I worked through the magic.

“Are you using your affinity?”

“Do you see any glass moving?” she replied sarcastically.

“No, I suppose not. It must have been a false positive from my Mimic Sight.” I decided not to tell her about the recent development. Why was I smelling the mint, though? It hit me after a moment’s consideration; healing magic used the energy of the recipient to heal wounds. Her magic had that scent, and it didn’t seem to matter if it was being used by her or for her.

I still hadn’t figured out a practical application for Mimic Scent, but most theoretical research seems pointless at first.

“I already knew what you just said, for the record,” said Maggie once I released her hand. “At least, that the next attack would come. It’s why playing on defense makes no sense at all. It’s why every scrap of intel we can get is so important.” She pulled a pocket mirror out of her desk to straighten her hair. “Do you have any idea what this meeting is about?”

“I can’t say I do,” I said. “But it’s bound to be good, based on past performance.”

“It was so close, Soren,” she said. “They woke me up in the middle of the night and flew me down there to face down the wrath of the Grim Horde, and then they shipped me back up and told me to go back to work without a hint of downtime. Do you know why?”

“Because we’re close to exam time?” I offered.

“Because they didn’t want to panic the students! They should be panicked!”

“You’re preaching to the choir, my dear,” I said. “We don’t have much longer until class starts. About the car?”

She searched her pockets before pulling out a small plastic card with a magnetic strip. I took it in my hand, but she didn’t let go. “I’ll check out Car Seventeen for the night and curl up with a good book. If anyone asks, you were with me working on affinity training out in the woods.”

“And Kiyo,” I said. “She’s coming too.”

Her steely blue eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“You’ve had me so busy that she’s starting to go stir crazy,” I said. “I figure I can kill two birds with one stone.”

“I swear, if this is all a scheme to get out of the school for a date night, you’ll pay for it.”

“That’s only a secondary concern. Besides, you did promise that I would have tonight to myself.”

She let out a long sigh. “There had better not be so much as a scratch on it when you’re done.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

She went to cancel the Zone of Silence, but stopped short of snapping her fingers. “Make sure you keep tomorrow night clear.”

“What for?” I asked.

The slightest smirk played across her lips. “You were right about Mr. Wilson. I am his type.”

“I thought you were in a better mood today,” I said. “I take it pounding glass isn’t your only form of stress relief?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” she said. “That would be the wrong approach for him. I can string him along for ages, and he’ll be more loyal to me for it. If I just jumped right into bed with him, he’d go off to tell his friends. Slow and steady will win that race.”

I suppressed a chuckle. Poor Paul. I had set him up with another woman who wanted to take it slow. Ah, well. He couldn’t hate me any more than he already did.

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