The Unskillful Thaumaturge

XXVIII

Lamenting the fact that neither of her roommates had been able to join her for lunch, Lillian sighed and took a bite of her usual bagel. Resignedly, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a textbook and a blank sheet of paper to begin on her next intro thaumaturgy homework. But a call from Galena saved her from the drudgery of beginning.

"Hello?"

"Hey Lillian, it's me. I just wanted to let you know that some of the police officers who dealt with the vagrant are coming in, and if you want to help out, or just watch the interviews, you're welcome to. Other than that, there isn't anything interesting going on, so you probably don't need to come in. But if you want to, you can."

Lillian stopped a moment to consider before answering. "No, I don't think I will come in. Anything new?"

"Not really. We figured out what funeral home was in charge of the burial and we're going to question someone from there, too, but we haven't gotten ahold of anyone yet. We're still trying to get in contact with Mom- Ashley- and I've even tried calling her a couple times, but it seems like she always hangs up right away. We're thinking about going to Roseburg to check in on this suspicious behavior." Galena's voice shook slightly. "And I was thinking- she was clearly in contact with Beanie- so what if he knew that, and that's why whatever he did was making my eye twitch too?"

"Actually- yeah, you're right, I didn't think about that. It definitely sounds plausible. When would you be going to Roseburg?"

"I don't know, probably sometime this week, if we don't have anything else to do. We've learned enough to leave someone in the building, if that's what you were wondering about."

"Can't you analyze more fingerprints?"

"On what?"

"The key that Beanie had when he was arrested."

"That disappeared, too, when he escaped. The footage shows that he opened the lab door a crack somehow and then just grabbed it. It must have been really quiet, because Janelle was in there working and still didn't notice."

"Oh, okay, yeah. So all we have now is the mirror case?"

"Yeah. Apart from what I already told you, there isn't much else we could be doing, and Janelle's still working on your DNA test."

"Can you do a DNA test on Beanie?"

"We don't have a sample."

"Oh." Lillian was slightly crestfallen.

"We're doing everything we can."

❧☙

Dakota stopped short in the doorway, letting the door swing shut loudly behind him. Rory, sitting at a desk and staring at the screen of a laptop, didn't flinch or look up.

"What are you doing?" Dakota asked, incredulous.

"Spying," Rory replied casually. Dakota leaned in closer to look at the picture, realizing it was the video feed from a quadcopter drone. He shook his head. "How are you even-"

"I'm spying here. Looking for Ashes."

"How-"

"Power from the Void." Rory pointed to a small black box at the end of the computer cord. "Both this and the quadcopter."

"You guys have a thing for getting power from the Void, don't you?"

"So do you," Rory grunted without looking up.

"Anyway, what I meant to ask was-"

"Ashley was right when she told you I was picking up my luggage."

"All the way to Portland?"

"No way! I left it all here."

"You left your luggage here? What if something saw it?"

Rory didn't respond, just tapped his head.

"How many did you have to dump?"

"Dunno, like eighteen."

"Don't you think someone's going to notice?"

"No, they've got loads."

"How many?"

"A couple thousand."

Dakota whistled. "What are they doing with all those Spalls?"

"They're looking for you."

❧☙

"So can you give us a general idea of exactly what happened?" Diane asked, tapping a pencil across her lips.

"We got a tip that there was a vagrant in Alton Baker Park," one of the officers began. "And we weren't sure exactly how old he was. Hovering somewhere in that area where he might have been a minor and might have been an adult. But anyway, we went over there-"

"You mean I went over there," the officer from Portland interrupted, his face projected onto the wall facing Galena.

"Yeah, you went over there and took him into custody and brought him back to the station."

"And then we tried questioning him," the third officer picked up. "Real weird kid. From the sound of his voice we figured he was probably on the older side of about seventeen, though we couldn't really know. We asked him who he was and he didn't answer. He didn't seem to speak English really well, and the whole 'ime we were ques'ioning him he sounded a lo' like this- like, ri'ualis'ically omi'ing the t's from words. But after we talked to him for a while it seemed to get better. I'm not sure why he did that at first, but it sounded really weird."

"What did he say?" Derek prompted.

"Mainly telling us that he wasn't a vagrant, that we had to let him go, that he did nothing. At one point he even asked us what family we were."

"What family?" Rolf wondered curiously.

"Yeah. I told him my name and he just laughed. But he didn't respond to anything we asked him."

"We saw what he was wearing."

"Oh, yeah, that," said the wall-projected officer. "That was really weird. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with flip flops. Totally not cold-weather clothing. He wasn't complaining at all, though. Just sitting there."

"What about the hat?" Erica pressed.

"About the hat- well, it made up about half of what he said. He wouldn't take it off, and at that point he seemed like he might have been a little nutty, so we let him keep it on. And he was threatening us, saying he might dump us."

"Dump you?" Galena wondered.

"Like I said, he may have had a screw loose."

"Tell us about his death."

"Well, that was it. I came down to give him breakfast, and there he was, lying dead on the ground. They did an autopsy and couldn't find a cause of death. He was apparently completely healthy. Completely normal. And there wasn't anything under the hat, just hair."

"He was really light-skinned but dark-haired, right?" Evan asked.

"Yeah, and kind of short."

"What about his eyes?"

"Well, now that you mention it, they were kind of weird. I don't remember exactly what it was about them, but-" The officer leaned back to look at his companion on the wall. "Do you remember?"

"Yeah... I almost feel like they were purple or something..."