Chapter 21 - The Mark of a Thief

“I’m sorry, Olivia. That must have been frustrating.”

Iset’s gentle voice floated between the speaker on Jacky’s phone and where Olivia and I were sitting on his bed.

We were back at the Oliversens’ residence. Jacky had called Iset the moment we closed the door to his room. Olivia and I hadn’t questioned it. You couldn’t expect death to hold such an important conference without both halves of his brain being in on it.

The phone was resting on the nightstand that Jacky had pulled out to sit between him and us.

Olivia was sitting on the bed beside me. She glowered at the floor. “At least now we know why Autumn told us not to get our hopes up. Mrs. Lehm’s nothing but a crazy old cat lady.”

“Don’t be too quick to dismiss her,” the mummy cautioned.

I spoke up: “I don’t know, Iset. I’m pretty sure Darius would’ve thrown her out as an unreliable witness.”

“It’s true that her conclusions are suspect, and I wouldn’t trust anything she said she remembered ‘after she knew what happened,’ but that doesn’t change the fact she saw something.”

“The woman thought that a math assignment was a spell!” Olivia cried.

“You weren’t sure what it was either until I told you,” I pointed out.

“What do you know?!”

“Enough to get a D-minus in trig.” I threw up some hastily invented gang signs. “Public school forever.”

Before Olivia could think of a retort, Iset said, “Yes. Thank you, Emerra. Big Jacky, what do you think?”

Jacky had been sitting back in the armchair, his elbows out to the sides. He unlaced his finger bones and sat up.

“Mrs. Lehm didn’t manufacture any details when I asked her about the stranger,” he said. “I’ve noticed it’s rare for humans to be comfortable admitting their ignorance and only do so out of a sense of integrity—”

Olivia’s cheeks flushed.

“—so I’m inclined to believe at least that much of what she told us. Someone was in that alley on Wednesday afternoon. As for who they were and why they were there, I’m afraid we don’t know.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Pager?” Iset asked.

“We did. He said he was out late watching a movie. If it becomes necessary to check if he was telling the truth, I have the name of the theater, but until we have a better reason to suspect him, I don’t think it’d be worth the effort.”

The mummy sighed. “All right. Did you learn anything while you were in ARC Hall?”

“Nothing,” Olivia grumbled.

Jacky said, “Olivia, that’s an inaccurate statement.”

“Fine. Practically nothing.”

I glanced at Jacky, but he didn’t seem to think that answer needed correction.

Olivia went on, “Everything looked normal, nothing was out of place, and none of the workers seemed to know what we were talking about when we asked them what happened last night.”

“Do you think they were hiding something?” Iset asked.

Olivia blinked, then looked at Big Jacky.

After a brief hesitation, he answered, “I didn’t get that impression.”

“Is it possible you got the wrong building?” I asked.

“You mean ‘again?’” Olivia snapped.

“Okay. Sure. Did you get the wrong building again?”

“I don’t think that’s likely,” Iset said. “I have access to some coven records through the Torr. They have to declare if there are any witches being paid by the coven to use their magic on a regular basis. They have a list of researchers that aren’t associated with a building, but the rest of the salaried magicians are from Saufgrove or ARC Hall.”

My brows furrowed. “They have wardsmen at the school?”

“They have teachers at the school,” Olivia said.

I rubbed my forehead with the tips of my fingers. Even Olivia’s minor snippiness was starting to get to me. It wouldn’t be long before I needed a break.

Would it be rude of me to monopolize the bathroom for an hour-long soak?

Iset said, “If the issue came up because of a wardsman, it probably came from ARC Hall.”

Olivia groaned. “Then why didn’t anyone know about it? Are they keeping it a secret?”

Jacky tapped his finger bone on the arm of his chair. “That’s possible. It’s also possible the coven leaders didn’t bother telling their subordinates.”

“No,” Olivia said. “Stuff like that gets around.”

“Not always. Most of the information I have access to is useless to the majority of the people in my organizations, so I don’t bother passing it on. I suspect it’s the same with your coven.”

Olivia put her forehead in her hand. “So you’re saying that whatever happened, it wasn’t important enough to tell anyone about?”

“Which would make sense if, as your mother said, it was a false alarm.”

Olivia’s voice grew louder with every word: “Who gets a false alarm with a ward?”

She grit her teeth, closed her eyes, and put her other hand to her head. One must not have been enough to hold it up.

Maybe Olivia needed that soak more than I did.

After a few seconds, I decided we’d had enough dismayed silence.

“Iset,” I said, “how many different kinds of wards are there?”

Olivia’s monotone answer flowed out from the space between her arms. “A ward is a ward. Barriers are different.”

Iset said, “She’s right, Emerra. There’s only one kind of ward.”

“Then what’s the difference between a malign ward and a normal ward?” I asked.

Olivia raised her head. “How do you even know those terms?”

I cleared my throat. “Ah, ha. Yeah. Um…so I was playing around with the ward at the back of the Hall—”

“I thought I asked you to stay out of trouble!”

“I didn’t get into trouble! I made a new friend!”

“You mean like you tried to be friends with Ansel?”

“Olivia,” Iset said, “maybe we should listen to what she has to say.”

The witch clamped her mouth shut, but a small huff escaped her nostrils.

I told them about my walk around the complex, finding the tuna can, and the difficulty I had getting to it. As I talked about the young woman who came out to tell me to lay off the ward, Olivia scowled at me. I explained what she’d said about malign wards and normal wards, and waited to see what Iset would say.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

As the silence stretched on, I craned my neck to look at Jacky’s screen to make sure the mummy was still on the phone with us.

“Iset?” I said.

She sounded distracted: “Olivia, can you explain it?”

Olivia hauled out her patented impression of a mildly pompous professor. I was beginning to wonder if she did it on purpose, without shame or apology.

“All wards share the same base spell. The differences between them are created when you define what they’re meant to keep out. Malign wards are considered more difficult than standard wards because you have to spend a lot of time defining what counts as ‘malign.’ There are traditional preconstructed lists that witches will use if they’re in a hurry, but it’s still time-consuming to work them into the spell.”

“What does a standard ward keep out?” I asked.

“That depends on its size,” Jacky said.

Olivia elaborated. “Size is the other major variable that determines its effect. The larger the area the ward is meant to protect, the weaker it’ll be and the less it can keep out. A ward the size of my fist could keep out everything—”

I thought I saw where this was going. “While one big enough to protect the Hall would keep out humans but let in cats?”

“Not exactly.” A thoughtful frown appeared on Olivia’s face. “It sounds to me like they changed the definition of the spell. They probably used sentience parameters.”

She saw me open my mouth and answered my question before I could ask it.

“It’s a common preconstructed definition. It’s used to keep out robbers, but it doesn’t worry about most animals.”

“Most animals?”

Jacky said, “There was a brief time period when a group of foolhardy but determined thieves tried to train monkeys.”

“A coven of witches takes on trained monkey thieves?” I laughed. “I would watch all ten seasons of that cartoon.”

Olivia said, “The ward you ran into is the one they keep up to make sure people can only come in from the front. The ward in the front is only activated when the Hall is closed.”

“What about the doors around the sides and back?” I asked. “Are they only there for decoration?”

“They’re there for safety,” Jacky explained. “Fire exits.”

“But with the wards—”

Olivia interrupted me. “Wards only prevent you from entering. They can’t stop you from leaving.”

“Could someone exiting the ward be what caused the false alarm?”

“A wardsman can’t feel when someone’s leaving.”

“But the girl said she wasn’t a wardsman.”

Olivia's eyes narrowed and her upper lip lifted into a slight sneer. “What?”

“The girl who came out to talk to me. She said she wasn’t a wardsman.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. She was the one maintaining the ward, wasn’t she?”

I hesitated. “Well, yeah.”

“Then it’s probably some stupid technicality. Maybe you only get the title of wardsman if you’re a full-time employee or something. It doesn’t matter. Whoever was maintaining the ward wouldn’t have felt someone leave it.”

The flippancy of her answer bothered me—the answer itself bothered me—but it wasn’t like I had a better one.

Iset suddenly broke in: “Olivia, I have a hypothetical problem for you to consider.”

The young witch looked wary. “Go ahead.”

“I point you to a ward. You don’t know who’s maintaining it or how its defined. You have to learn as much about the ward as you can without alerting the witch maintaining it. How would you do it?”

“Am I trying to avoid alerting her at all, or just alerting her to the fact that I’m the one screwing around with it?”

“Let’s say that you want to avoid alerting her at all for as long as possible, but she must never find out you were involved.”

Olivia fidgeted with a lock of hair as she puzzled over the question. When she arrived at an answer, she let go of the lock. “I’d start with the things least likely to set off the ward and move up toward the most likely. The witch maintaining it would eventually figure out someone was doing something, but by that time, I’d probably know how she defined it and how strong it was. I’d start with an inanimate object, like a rock—”

“Or a stick?” Jacky said.

Olivia and I stared at him.

He leaned forward in his chair. “Go on.”

Olivia said, “Next would be simple animate creatures. The easiest way would be to see if insects could get through the ward. Then I’d do complex animals—”

“Call in the trained monkeys!” I cried.

“They’ve been accounted for,” Jacky reminded me.

Iset said, “You’d be much more likely to use a dog or a cat.”

Some unholy combination of anticipation and hesitation made my brain go numb. It felt like we were close to something interesting—but then, we’d been excited about a discarded math paper. I was scared to grab for whatever this was, in case it turned out to be equally silly.

Olivia scooted off the mattress and sat down on the floor at the end of the bed so she could be closer to the phone. “You think someone was testing the ward.”

“Emerra,” Iset said, “you said the tuna can was around the back of the main building?”

I corrected her: “It was on the side of the main building. But that’s the wall that’s most hidden from view.”

“If someone was testing the ward, that might have caused the false alarm,” Olivia said.

Unease percolated through my chest. “I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

For the sake of my sanity, I pretended she hadn’t spoken. “The tuna inside the can was old. It looked like it’d been there for at least a day or two. I don’t think that could’ve been what set off the alarm last night.”

“Meaning it’s likely they conducted that test a few days ago,” Jacky said, “and returned last night either to do more testing or to execute their plan.” His finger bone tapped on the arm of the chair again. “That’s the act of a careful person.”

That tapping had to be primitive Morse code for “Behold! I am pondering!”—because there’s no point in being mysterious and wise unless everyone around you knows about it.

“What is it, Jacky?” I asked.

“Hmm?” When he saw my eyes slide from his skull down to his finger, he stopped tapping and curled it back under with the others. “I was thinking about the stranger that Mrs. Lehm saw. It’s possible that they were there, as she surmised, to look over Kirby’s place.”

Someone careful enough to test the ward before executing their plan, and someone careful enough to look over Kirby’s place before breaking in—that was thought provoking.

“You think they’re the same person?” I said.

“I think that Olivia’s assumption that they are is gaining merit.”

“But what kind of plans did they have for ARC Hall?” Olivia asked.

My numb brain latched onto the most obvious answer it could find. “To get inside the building.”

Before the witch could summon enough acid for the well-deserved sarcastic response, Jacky spoke up.

“That’s one option. Another is that they needed information about the wards because they want to destroy the building.”

My eyebrows jumped. I hadn’t thought of that option.

“That seems less likely to me, Jacky,” Iset said. “If they know enough about wards to test one, then they probably have a decent understanding of magic, and they would know that a ward can’t stop someone who’s determined to destroy a building.”

“Really?” I said.

Olivia shoved an imaginary object toward the phone. “If you can push a can of cat food through the ward, you can push a bomb through it.”

“If we’re right,” Iset said, “and they were using subtle means to test the ward, that sounds like they’re aiming for subterfuge. That isn’t the mark of a terrorist. That’s the mark of a thief.”

The word “thief” sparked a memory, and it glowed in my head like a candle.

“The witch that came to talk to me said that they were doing an inventory,” I said.

Olivia and Jacky turned their attention to me.

I ignored them and focused on a spot on the rug, trying to picture the scene. “She said that they’d come in that morning and they had orders right from the top.”

Olivia inched toward me. “Did she say it was from the coven mistress?”

“All she said was ‘right from the top,’ and that they were doing inventory stuff.”

Jack Noctis leaned back in his armchair, folded his arms, and raised the pits of his eye sockets to the ceiling.

Olivia took a lock of her hair, pressed it between her lips, and scowled. When she was done thinking, she pulled the hair out of her mouth and said, “So Mother gets a call last night. There’s a problem with the ward. She and the other witches go in and look around. They can’t find anyone and everything looks the same. She says it’s a false alarm—”

“But she isn’t sure,” Iset said, “or problems with the wards are rare enough, she wants to be cautious.”

Olivia took up the story line again. “So she orders an inventory to make sure that nothing is missing.”

I ran it all through my head once more before saying, “Yeah. That makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t!”

I held up both hands. “Whoa! Geez! You’re the one that said it.”

“Wards are basic magic. That means they’re simple and strong. The most talented and powerful magicians in the world can’t get inside a ward without breaking it, and that wouldn’t have been a false alarm—it would’ve been an emergency!”

I appealed for help. “Iset?”

“I’m afraid Olivia’s right, Emerra. If you’re inside an intact ward, it’s because you were there before it went up.”

“Is that possible?” I asked. “Could someone have hidden out until everyone else left?”

“This is ARC Hall we’re talking about,” Olivia said. “They keep track of everyone that comes and goes, and they do a search before they close up at night.”

Iset added, “And if someone did manage to somehow sneak in before the ward went up, then sneaking out again wouldn’t have alerted the person maintaining it.”

“Could they have changed something about the ward?” I asked. “Like, rearranged the parameters? Or something?”

Olivia rolled her eyes and turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at me. At last, I had managed to overwhelm her with my ignorance. Hail to the clueless champion!

“Not in this case,” Iset said. “The metal lines they laid into the paving stones probably have a casting core which would make the ward spell a permanent fixture. To activate it, all a witch has to do is pour her power into it. People would notice if someone tried to change it.”

“So that’s it?” My shoulders slumped. “It’s just…impossible?”

“It should be,” Olivia said. The words sounded definite, but her frown and the slight crease between her brow told another story.

“But…?” I prompted.

Iset said, “But it’s hard to imagine them asking for an inventory unless they suspect that someone had found a way inside.”

“What were they after?” I asked.

Jacky said, while still staring at the ceiling, “Consider the mark of the thief.”

Olivia and I looked at him.

He lowered his skull. “Whether it was information or an item, they were most likely there to steal something. And if they are a thief, that would answer an important question.”

“What question?” Olivia asked.

“Why Nolan Kirby isn’t dead.”

It had been a long and disappointing day. I’d born up well under Olivia’s attitude, but that meant that I had no patience left for any of Big Jacky’s cryptic nonsense.

“Why?” I demanded.

He trained his eye sockets on me. “Because thieves aren’t normally murderers.”