The Woodward Academy, Year 6

Chapter 5: October

"You still want me to take lead?" David asked Joe as they walked down the hallway.

"Yes. And before you ask, no, they don't need to know you're an intern."

"You say so."

The two were walking through the Boston field office of the FBI. There was a meeting between the agencies involved in several disappearances. They had invited themselves, since no one else yet knew they should be there. They found the right room and stepped inside, into the middle of a turf fight.

"Look, Agent Deline, these are my girls who are missing. We'll find 'em."

"Officer Stiers, we both know you're not going to find those girls in good health. With the interstate nature of the victims, plus the fact that Albany is about a half-hour from a state line, the FBI has the right to assume this investigation."

David felt this was a good point to announce himself, as neither of the others had apparently noticed them yet.

"Actually, I hate to say it, but you're both wrong."

"Who the hell are you?" Officer Stiers demanded.

"David Stroud. This is Agent Joe Garibaldi. Is this your latest missing person?" David handed over an image of the girl they'd found dead in Winding River.

Officer Stiers sighed. "Yeah, that's her. Miranda Horkheuser, age twenty-one."

"She's never going to turn twenty-two," David said. "And this investigation just became ours."

"By whose authority? Just who the hell are you?" Officer Stiers demanded again.

"Rimohrs. Your killer is a wizard, and that makes it our business," David said flatly.

"You can prove he's a wizard?" Agent Deline asked, far more calmly than Stiers.

"The woman in this image was found in Winding River, in Dugerra. Since only wizards can come to Dugerra..."

"She was there," Officer Stiers objected.

"When she arrived, she was either dead already, or she was in the company of her killer. A wizard must have been involved."

"Maybe she was the wizard," Stiers sniffed.

"That would still make it our case, and it was the first thing we checked," David said, shooting him down. "Now then, I know there have been other abductions. Sorry, I mean, I know other women have 'gone missing'. What can you tell us?"

"All of them have been students at UAlbany. All in their early 20's. All with blonde hair and green eyes."

"From the same campus?"

"No. Of the six that have gone missing, at least one has come from each of the three campuses."

"That likely rules out a student," David said. "I mean, it could still be, but why switch to an unfamiliar hunting ground when you can hide in plain sight?"

"To throw us off his trail, maybe?" Stiers said. He was calming down, now that he saw that David was acting like a professional, despite the fact that he didn't look old enough to shave.

"Possibly," David allowed. "But where are the bodies? A student couldn't go too far away; he wouldn't have the time to do so without being noticed. Ours is the first body to turn up at all, right?"

"Yes. But if he's a wizard, would he bother going to college, anyway?"

"If he decided to live in Earth instead of Dugerra, he might. He'd need an education to get a decent job. Joe, where is the nearest travel gate to Albany?"

"It's right near Winding River." He could only answer this because David had already shown him where Albany was relative to a Dugerran map.

"Where is Winding River, may I ask?" Agent Deline inquired.

"On this side, it would be Springfield, Massachussetts."

"That's something like an hour and a half," Officer Stiers said. "Long way to go to drop a body."

"Right," David agreed. "Hour and a half there, hour and a half back. When did Miss Horkheuser go missing?"

"Sunday afternoon was the last time she was seen. She didn't make it back to her dorm room that night."

"Okay. She was found Monday morning. So this slimeball did whatever he did, and dropped the body, in one night. It would be somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible for a student to be gone that long without notice. Especially if he's treated the other victims the same way."

"Agreed," Stiers said, "but I never thought it was a student to begin with."

"Did you do an autopsy on the body?" Agent Deline asked.

"Of a sort. We also brought the body here, to let your forensic people examine it."

"After two days of manhandling, I'm not sure..."

"The body has been kept in a... well, let's just say the body hasn't changed any since we found it, okay?"

Agent Deline nodded, understanding that something had been magically done.

"Any thoughts on how to find this cocksucker?" Officer Stiers asked.

"Not yet. I need access to more information."

"You'll have what we've got," Agent Deline replied.

 "Any ideas?" Joe asked David as they drove toward Albany.

"Not yet. We've got to interview the people on that list. They were the last ones with known contact with the missing girls."

"You're positive this is a serial killer, aren't you?" Joe asked him.

"The girls are the same age, same hair color, same eye color, attending the same school. All of them disappeared on either a Saturday or a Sunday night. It goes beyond the realm of possibility that those are unrelated events. Since we know that one of them was killed, it stands to reason that, if they are related events, then they were all killed. That makes it a serial killer."

"Fair enough," Joe said, impressed at how succinctly David had laid out the situation.

"Think we'll find him?" Joe asked after a while of driving.

"Eventually. But probably not soon enough."

"Yeah."

 "Charlotte Hendrickson?" David asked.

"Yeah, who are you?"

"We're special investigators, working with the FBI. We need to ask you some questions about your roommate." Dealing with people who knew nothing of wizards was tougher for the Rimohrs, as they were generally supposed to avoid spreading the knowledge that magic existed as much as they reasonably could.

"What can I tell you?" she asked. She motioned them into her room, and then closed the door.

"You were the last person who reported seeing her. Can you tell us what she was doing?"

"Getting ready to go to dinner."

"Just dinner in the lunch hall, or did she have a date?"

"Nah. Mandy didn't date much. Her last boyfriend was last year sometime. She was just gonna go to dinner, and then she said she had to go to the library to look some stuff up."

"Mandy?" Joe asked.

"She hated the name Miranda. She asked everyone to call her Mandy."

Joe nodded. David asked, "Is it possible that she had a boyfriend you didn't know about?"

"I can't see why she would," Charlotte replied. "We shared most things."

"What if her boyfriend was... unusual?"

"Unusual how?"

"Well, what if, say, he was a lot older than her?"

Charlotte shrugged. "I'm not sure. She might think I'd make fun of her. How much older are we talking?"

David shook his head. "I'm not saying she had one. I'm just trying to get a sense of whether it's possible she didn't tell you the truth about where she was going that night."

Charlotte shrugged again. "She didn't seem like she was spending a lot of time with anyone except me, and that's just 'cause I live with her."

David didn't comment on this last remark. Charlotte had not yet been told that Miranda was dead. The police would make those notifications after the body had been positively identified, and the family notified.

"So," David said, taking another route, "when did you realize that she was missing, as opposed to just not home?"

"Around one o'clock. She never stays out that late. Even when she was dating, on a Saturday night, she would be home before midnight. I called around to a few people I knew would be awake, but nobody'd seen her."

"Did you do anything else?"

"There wasn't anything else I could do. I knew not to bother with the cops until at least the morning. I went and talked to Campus Police around nine or so. That's pretty much it. I haven't seen her since."

"Okay. Well, that's all the questions I've got. Joe?" Joe shook his head. "Thank you for your time, Miss Hendrickson. I hope we haven't made you late for class."

"Nah, I don't have class until tomorrow."

"Okay. Have a good day."

 David and Joe talked to twenty other people that afternoon, with similar results to their conversation with Charlotte. Though some of the girls had boyfriends, they had not been attempting to see those boyfriends on the night of their abduction. At least, that's what they were told. David's divinatory skills said they were probably telling the truth, not that he could use that as evidence.

"So, now what?" Joe asked.

"Now we go looking for dead bodies," David told him.

"Ugh," Joe said, almost gagging at the thought.

"Yeah. Especially since the oldest one will have been dropped eight months ago."

"Where are we going to look?"

"Well, it makes the most sense to start around Winding River. If he dropped one there, he might have dropped at least one other one there. It all depends on why he chose that spot."

"This isn't going to be fun."

"No," David agreed, "it's not."

 "I thought you said we couldn't come here," Officer Stiers said. They were standing at the drop site of Miranda's body.

"You can't come here alone," David told them. "You were accompanied by Dugerran citizens."

"So this is where she was dumped?" Agent Deline asked.

"Yes. She was lying spread-eagle, her head pointing that way," he said.

"What difference does that make?" Stiers asked.

Deline replied, "Serial killers are often very ritualistic about leaving the body. You've done this before?" he asked David.

"Thankfully no. I watched a lot of Forensic Files as a kid."

"They have that here?" Deline asked, surprised.

"I grew up in Earth."

"Oh, okay."

"Not much to see here," Stiers said.

"No. What they didn't trample on pulling the body out, the rain washed away yesterday."

"So, what are we here for?" Stiers wanted to know.

"To see if we can't find the other bodies."

"You think they're going to be in this field somewhere?" Deline asked incredulously.

"No. But, depending on why he dumped Miranda here, the others may be in and around Winding River."

"That's a lot of ground to search," Joe put in.

"Yeah, I know. Luckily, we have help." David pulled the Dalmajak Cynosure out of his pocket. This little device had proven most useful over the last year. "This little gizmo," he said to the others, "is a searching device. If I tell it what I want it to look for, and the object is close enough, then it will point right to it."

"How the fuck does it do that?" Stiers asked.

"Magic," David replied, not trying to be funny. "If I told you any more than that, you wouldn't understand. Rest assured, it does work. I've used it on other cases."

"How close do we have to be?" Joe asked.

"Within about a half-mile."

"That's a huge help. It covers an immense amount of ground all at once," Deline said, encouraged for the first time. "But if you just say, 'dead body', won't it also find any dead animals in the area?"

"Yes. Which is why we'll use their names. What was the most recent one before Miranda?"

Remarkably, they found that two of the bodies were within range of the cynosure from right where they were standing. As they were walking toward the second body, Joe asked a question.

"David, why do you insist on calling them by name? It's much more comfortable to refer to them as bodies."

"Exactly," David said. "I don't want to forget that these were living, breathing, probably happy young women who got slaughtered by some fuckwad with no self control. A 'body' is just a thing, an it. These were whos, not whats."

"That sort of attitude can get you too personally involved in finding the murderer," Deline warned.

"Maybe that's a problem in Earth. I'm a Rimohr. Remembering they're people will not affect my judgment. It will affect my motivation. I'm not going to go off half-cocked after someone who I think might be their killer. I want to make sure the right scumsucker winds up spending the next four hundred years in wizard prison."

"You guys live that long?" Stiers asked.

"Not normally," Joe replied. "People in prison are often kept alive magically, to make sure they fulfill their entire sentence."

"What about life sentences?" Deline asked.

"We don't have life sentences. If we want to take the entire rest of your life away from you, we just kill you and save everyone the trouble," Joe told them.

"You don't find that barbaric?" Deline inquired.

David was the one who replied. "No more barbaric than the fuck who committed the crime."

"Should we really stoop to their level?"

"Only if you want to actually stop them from committing the crime in the first place," David said. "Crime is not a huge problem here in Callamandia, mainly because if you commit a serious crime here, we get rid of you, one way or another. We either take away your magic license and exile you to Earth, put you in prison for a good, long time, or we kill your sorry ass. And prison is not the cushy place it's become in America, either. Prison here is something people work hard to avoid."

"Torture?" Stiers asked.

"Some might call it that, but not of the type you mean," Joe replied. "Wizard prison is mentally and emotionally uncomfortable 24|7. If you get too used to it, they change your situation to make you uncomfortable again. Magical means are used to make sure you are never anything but miserable."

"I thought you guys were supposed to be more educated and enlightened," Deline said.

"Actually, we just prefer to do what works."

While Deline tried to figure out a response to that statement, Joe said, "Can we get back to our investigation? We could debate the merits of one system over the other for centuries. People have."

"Fair enough," David said. Shortly after that, they discovered the second body they'd been looking for, and they got to work examining it. 

 All told, they found four of the five bodies they were looking for. They were carted off to the Bolmont Division for processing, after which they would be turned over to the FBI for full forensic analysis. The analysis was not, strictly speaking, a proper part of the Rimohr investigation, but they were hoping to keep the FBI cooperating as long as possible.

"Are you surprised we found so many?" Joe asked David as they drove back to Gorumshead.

"No. What it means is that there's a reason he's dropping them in Winding River."

"Lives there?" Joe offered.

"Possibly, but I doubt it."

"Why?"

"Because Winding River's a really small town. It would pretty much point right to him. He went to the effort to move the girls from where he kidnapped them, to where he dumped their bodies. That says he's trying to hide, at least a little bit. I can't imagine he would do that, and then be dumb enough to hide them in his own backyard, so to speak."

"Unless that's what he wants us to think..." Joe objected.

"Granted, and we'll check everyone in Winding River, but I don't think we're going to find anything there."

"Where, then? On the Earth side, maybe?"

"Possible. That's Springfield, Massachusetts. It's a pretty good-sized city, so a lot more targets. My guess is that he either lives in Springfield, or Springfield is on the way between Albany and his real home."

"You think he's dumping them in Winding River because it's the closest travel gate," Joe said.

"Right. After Winding River, the closest travel gate is where?"

"Bolmont, going east. Cormatsen, going south."

"Really? As far away as that?"

"This northeast area of Callamandia has a very high density of travel gates, for an unknown reason. They're pretty spread out elsewhere."

"Oh. I didn't know that. Pretty strange that I ended up living right next to one, then."

"It is a funny coincidence."

"Then again, depending on how the curse that imprisoned Jacob works, maybe not. If the dark wizard needed to be in Earth to do it, then he would have needed a travel gate. But I don't know if he needed to be in Earth or not. I've never asked Jacob about it. I kind of thought it'd be rude."

"I can see where it might be," Joe agreed. "Anyway, back to the case. What do you want to do now?"

"Are you ever going to actually lead on any of this stuff?" David asked a bit plaintively.

"Not until you don't have any ideas of your own, no."

"Oh. Well, we have to examine the bodies, of course, and see if that leads us anywhere. I'm not expecting it to do so, though. Then we'll have to dig into the background of everyone living in Winding River."

"What about Springfield?"

"There are too many people there to look randomly. You're not talking about a few hundred, you're talking about tens of thousands."

"Yeah, that's too many."

"We can ask the FBI and the Springfield Police to do a check on known sex offenders in the area. Maybe one of them has 'graduated' from rape to murder."

"And if none of that pans out?"

"I'll worry about that if and when it doesn't," David admitted.

Joe grunted, then said, "You want to come over for dinner? Zyla's been asking how you're doing."

"Sure."

 David was digging through background information about the people living in Winding River when Tanya interrupted him. He'd been looking at those reports for days, so he was quite happy for any reason to stop.

"What's up?" he asked her.

"We've got the DIRT out here. They have a question about what to do about their perpetrator."

"Oh, okay." David got up from his desk and slipped on his coat, then walked out to the main office. There he saw the current DIRT patrol, one guy in custody, and three other students who just looked nervous.

"Ted, what've we got?"

"Apparently, extortion. According to these three first-years, this guy - he's a third-year - has been threatening to ruin their reputations if they don't pay him."

"Ruin your reputations how?" David asked one of the students.

"Making up stories about us. He said he'd tell the professors we were cheating. He also said he'd tell people we were gay. Not that I've got anything against gay people, but I don't need any help not getting dates, if you know what I mean."

David smirked at the student and nodded.

"He told me he'd write my parents and tell them I was partying instead of studying, and that I was doing drugs," another of the students put in.

"And, I have to ask this for legal purposes. Are you?"

The student snorted. "Even if I was into that kind of thing, which I'm not, I haven't got the first clue where you'd find drugs in Dugerra. And I don't even like parties."

"So would your parents believe such a thing?"

"My parents are both technos. They think I'm some kind of alien already. They'd believe just about anything."

David nodded. He could sympathize.

The last student said, "He threatened to tell people I'd been convicted of rape when I was a teenager."

"Were you?"

"No. My sister was raped, when she was a teenager."

"I'm sorry about that. So, in short, he's basically threatened to twist the truth to hurt you."

As the three nodded, the one in custody said, "I did no such thing!"

"Shut up," David told him.

"What, I don't get to defend myself?" he demanded.

"To the dean, yes. Not to me." Turning to Ted, David said, "You take them all to the dean. She'll convene the Board for something like this, I imagine. I'll go with you for this one."

"How come?" Ted asked, surprised. David never accompanied the DIRT to such things.

"I'm interested in the outcome."

"Oh. Okay, c'mon, you guys," Ted said to the three students. He nudged the one in custody forward.

"This is bullshit," the accused said. "Tried and convicted without even getting a chance to talk?"

"You haven't even been tried yet, dipshit," David told him. "I have no authority to punish you or set you free. That's the job of the dean and the Board." Turning back to Ted, he asked, "Why did you feel you needed my input on what to do with him?"

"Well, it's all one person's word against another. I wasn't sure this was something to take to the dean."

"Any time you have a complaint between students, if it can't be obviously cleared up right then, you need to take it to the dean. We don't have the authority to just write off someone's concerns like that without them being obvious bullshit."

"Yes, sir."

"What were you doing patrolling so early, anyway?" It was early afternoon.

"None of us has class right now, so we figured why not?"

David nodded. "I like the way you guys think."

David led the group into the dean's office - after knocking, of course - and then let the DIRT present the basics of the case. The dean did, indeed, call for the Board of Discipline. For the very first time, David knew one of them personally.

"Good afternoon, Prof. Phillips," David said.

"Hello, David. Is this your case? If so, I may need to recuse myself..."

David shook his head. "I'm here merely as an observer."

Prof. Phillips nodded, and settled.

After DIRT laid out what information it had, the dean interviewed all of the participants. With that, the Board of Discipline retreated to a side office to confer.

"How is your murder investigation going?" Dean Lengel asked David quietly while they waited.

"Slowly and without much progress," he admitted, the frustration showing. "I hate this part of the job. Not only do I not know who's doing it, I don't even know which way to look to figure it out. And the only way for me to get more information is for someone else to die."

"People are dying here?" one of the first-year students asked in dismay.

David shook his head. "It's not a school-related investigation. Chief of Security isn't my only job."

"Oh."

David chatted quietly with the dean until the Board finally emerged from the room.

"Has the Board reached a decision?" Dean Lengel asked.

Prof. Do, one of the Metamorphosis professors and the current head of the Board of Discipline, said, "We have. We find Nelson Kierney guilty of both intimidating fellow students, and attempted theft."

"What did I try to steal?" Kierney inquired with some surprise.

"Theft is the act of taking that which does not rightfully belong to you. This would include money given under duress."

"Does the Board have a punishment in mind?" Dean Lengel asked.

"We leave that to the dean's discretion," Prof. Do replied.

"Madame Dean?" David said, before she could say anything further.

"What is it, David?"

"I would like to make a request regarding this student's punishment."

"Go ahead."

"I would like to see him expelled permanently."

"Damn, dude, what the hell did I do to you?" Kierney asked plaintively.

David looked at him. "You stained the name of my school with your actions. You tried to hurt people who had nothing to do with you, had never caused you a single bit of trouble, and who wanted nothing more than to be left alone to get an education. In short, you are unworthy to be a student at this Academy."

Kierney was rocked back by David's vehemence. Dean Lengel wasn't surprised, however. "Can you give a... well, a more logical reason for your request?"

"Ma'am, this person has been at this school for two full years now, yet he still thinks that what he's done is acceptable behavior. While he may be technically proficient as a wizard - or he may not, I have no idea what his academic standing is - he is certainly not maturing in his attitudes about acting appropriately. Left to continue down this path, I fear that the academy would merely be educating another dark wizard."

"You see no hope of him changing as he gets older?"

"Not without a good, hard, kick to the teeth - metaphorically speaking - to wake him up, no."

"I see. Orrin?" she asked, turning to the head of the Board. "Any comments on his request?"

Professor Do looked to the others, and there were negative shakes of the head. "No, Madame Dean. We'll let Chief Stroud's words stand on their own."

The dean sighed quietly, then turned back to David. "I will take your request into consideration. I'm going to need a few minutes to think about this. If you would all wait out in the anteroom. David, stay for a second, please."

David stood still until the others left. "I assume this is when you yell at me for speaking out of turn?" he asked.

"Hardly. I'd prefer you say what's on your mind, and you waited for an appropriate moment. I'm concerned, however, about the level of aggression you're advocating in his punishment. You realize that expulsion from Woodward would pretty much kill his chances of ever becoming a citizen."

"Oh, I don't know. I hear that Savolar has finally found a school that will take him."

"Yes, but that's because Madchen Hall needed the student volume."

"That, and he probably helped them steal the trophy."

"Very likely," Dean Lengel agreed. "Back to the issue at hand, however. You don't see any chance of rehabilitating him?"

"Not unless he actually wants to be rehabilitated. I didn't get that sense from him."

"I see. Okay. I need to think. Bring everyone back in here in... five minutes."

David nodded, and went and joined the others to wait.

When they all came back in, Dean Lengel was sitting at her desk, looking over Kierney's academic record.

"Nelson Kierney, the Board of Discipline has found you guilty of student intimidation and attempted theft. Do you have anything to say before I render punishment?"

"Uh... well, I mean, I didn't really think what I was doing was all that bad. I wasn't really going to do the stuff I threatened them with. I just figured I'd get some money out of the more gullible ones."

"I see. So, on top of intimidation and theft, you are admitting to being a liar?"

Kierney blanched. "Well, I don't really want to put it that way..."

"I'm sure you don't. I have to tell you that Chief Stroud's words carry a great deal of weight with me. He's dealt with a lot of people like you in his time here at the academy. If he says you're incorrigible, I have to think seriously that you may well be unsalvageable.

"In this case, however, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I happen to think that you perhaps did this one very stupid thing, and that you can learn from it. I am not going to expel you.

"You will, however, spend every weekend for the rest of your academic career here working for the maintenance department. Don't worry, David; I'm not going to assign him to security."

David smirked at that.

"Learn the lesson, Mr. Kierney. Your bad actions have bad consequences. Chief Stroud's request wasn't out of line, and I'd be well within protocol to have you expelled. I'm taking the chance that you will grow and become a benefit to Callamandia. Please do not make me regret that choice. Any further trouble from you, and you will be expelled immediately. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to prove myself."

"You are dismissed. You will report to Fensterman Hall, Room 6, to receive your assignments for the weekend. If you miss weekends without a solid reason, there will be hell to pay."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Go on. You three can go, as well," she said to the students who had been victimized. She then excused DIRT and the Board, but she specifically did not tell David to leave.

"I hope you're not too upset," she said.

David shrugged. "It's your school, Emile. I don't agree with your choice, but they don't pay me to agree with you."

"I don't want you to think that I disregarded your opinion. As the dean, I wouldn't want you to think that your position means nothing to me. As your friend, I worry that you'll be offended when I don't listen to you."

David snorted. "We have been disagreeing on things ever since we met, for one reason or another. We're still friends. I don't expect that will change just because you take a more lenient stance than I would."

"I'm glad to hear that. Apart from the fact that we do need to work together, I really didn't like it when you were upset with me last year, and I don't want that to happen again."

"Don't worry about it. Not over stuff like this."

"Okay. Thank you. Say, how are your little brothers doing?"

"We're going camping this weekend."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. They've been working pretty hard, and I think they could all use a bit of a break. They haven't gotten off campus except for the field trips in History class, either. I remember how confined I felt my first couple years. I don't want them to feel that way. So, we're just going to go out into the woods for a day and a night, see some of what makes Dugerra different, and relax a little bit."

"Sounds like fun. Does the program seem to be working?"

"Hard to judge, after only a month. The others involved have given positive reports, though."

"That's good. Well, I'll let you get back to work."

"Gee, thanks," he said sarcastically. She grinned at him. 

"So, is your secret still safe?" David asked Lydia. The two were walking across the terrace, on their way to lunch. David was checking in with her to make sure things were still going well.

"As far as I know," Lydia replied.

"You'd know it if it wasn't, trust me," David said sourly. "Your kind isn't looked on much more favoriably than my kind." David refused to use the word vampire in public, just in case anyone overheard them.

"That's true," she said. "Well, no one's calling me names or anything, so I guess I'm still safe."

"Shit, I wish they'd have stuck to name-calling my first year," David said. "Anyway, how's your... 'assistant' doing, down in town?"

Lydia knew that David was referring to her feeder. "He's fine. He took a job as a gardener. That's what he was doing down in Travaysal, so his life hasn't really changed much."

"What about his family?"

"He hasn't got one. Oh, parents, sure, but they live in Earth, apparently, so it doesn't much matter to them where he lives here."

"Can I ask a... well, a personal question? You can feel free to tell me to mind my own business."

"Let me guess your question," Lydia said. "You want to know if I'm screwing my feeder."

"Well, I wouldn't have phrased it that way, but..."

"It's not an uncommon thing to happen, but no, not in my case. I don't really find him that attractive. Why are you interested in my love life?" she asked, teasing him.

David would have blushed crimson, if he could. "Pure curiosity," he finally said. "With a relationship that is already so intimate..."

Lydia nodded. "That's why it happens a lot. If there's any attraction between the two, it'll usually happen eventually. In fact, in vampire families, having sex with your feeder isn't even considered cheating on your spouse."

"Really?"

"It's just too hard to fight the temptation. Your feeder is literally giving you life."

David nodded in agreement. "So, if you're not sleeping with him... do you allow him to sleep with others?"

"Sure. I honestly don't care what he does with his time, as long as he's available to me at dinnertime every night."

"You still feed every night?"

"No. But I don't want him deciding whether I do or not, so he has to be ready for feeding every day."

"Makes sense, I suppose. Don't want the cow dictating when you have steak."

Lydia grinned. "Right."

As the two neared the cafeteria, suddenly they were surrounded by a swirling pink field. It formed a sphere all the way around them.

"What the hell?" David muttered, unsure of just what this was. A second later, the bubble lifted off the ground.

"Holy shit!" Lydia cried. They were already five feet up, and still ascending. David immediately faded to his insubstantial form, and slipped right through the bubble, which apparently could only stop solid matter.

"Don't leave me!" Lydia screamed, panicked.

"I won't," David called up to her. "But I'll have a better chance of fixing it from the outside."

Jailla, who had been flying free, swooped down to David's shoulder. David said, "Stick with her, just in case I lose sight of her."

Jailla chirped softly in understanding, and then flew off, circling near the bubble as it rose, while David tried to figure out how to get Lydia free.

The problem for David was that he didn't have any immediate idea just how to do that. The first thing he did was to cast sem. This pulled the bubble back down to the ground, but as soon as he let go of the spell, the bubble began to rise again.

David tried to think of something that might work as he cast sem once more. It was hard to concentrate on the spell while trying to come up with a solution. As a result, the bubble wavered up and down.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Lydia called out.

David jolted. "Sorry, I wasn't really paying attention."

"Well, do something!"

"I'm trying to think of what I can do," David replied. He let go of sem and pulled out his mirror. Lydia began to float away, but for the moment, he let her. Soon, Prof. Phillips was on the other end of the mirror.

"Well, hello, David. What can I do for you? Do please be brief, as I'm in the middle of a class right now."

"Sorry about that, Professor. I need some help. One of the students is trapped in a bubble that is floating her into the air. I slipped out of the bubble, but as a ghost. It didn't try to stop me. I need to know how to break the bubble hex." After he was done talking, he cast sem again, as Lydia had ascended a good forty feet off the ground.

"Uh-oh. It sounds like the Ninkirbendo hex. The bubble is pink?"

"Yes," David said, trying to concentrate on sem while talking. It was difficult because the object he was working on was actively fighting the spell: it wanted to rise, and he wanted it to descend.

"That's the one. The counter-curse is dede demeta."

"Wand action?"

"Just point. This counter-curse is so specific to the hex that the wand is almost superfluous."

"Gotcha. Could you hang on just a second, Professor? I want to make sure it works."

"Of course."

David pulled her as close to the ground as he could, then he said, "Dede demeta!"

In a flash, the pink bubble burst, and Lydia fell the remaining few feet to the ground.

David let out a huge sigh of relief. "Thanks, Professor. It worked."

"Good work, David. I hope your friend is all right."

"I'm going to go check now. Talk to you later, Professor."

David fogged off, then went to see how Lydia was. She had already gotten up, and was dusting herself off by the time he got there.

Lydia flung her arms around him and gave him a huge hug. "Thank you! God, I hate heights!"

David hugged back, letting her calm down. Once she was more settled, he disengaged. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yeah. I only dropped three or four feet when the bubble went pop, so no big deal."

"Good," David said. He turned so that they could continue walking toward lunch. "Looks like maybe someone knows your secret..."

"You think they were after me?" Lydia asked.

"Nobody's messed with me in that fashion for years. Besides, anyone good enough to create that bubble would have known that a ghost would slip right through it. Had I been alone, I wouldn't have even tried to break the hex."

"Hmm," Lydia said with a frown. "I don't know. Like I said, nobody's been saying anything. Anyway, let's go to lunch. I'm hungry."

"You get hungry?" David asked.

"Yeah. We have to eat, remember? Even more than just the blood, our bodies still have to function."

"Well, hell, what are the good parts of being a... uh, what you are?"

"There aren't too many. Better senses; immortality, of a sort; the older of us can use mirrors as transportation gateways; and the longer you're one of us, the stronger you get... up to a point, of course."

"Wait, so you guys can teleport?"

"Only through mirrors. It can't be just a shiny object, either. It has to specifically be a mirror. That's why you don't find mirrors in important places. Also, a mirror can be enchanted to prevent us from using it. And you have to be older... like three, four hundred years... before you can do it at all."

"I see. So, really, why would anyone ever want to become one of you?"

"Because they want to live a long time. Dugerrans know that death's not exactly a party, and they don't really want to go through that just yet."

"They could always just discorporate as soon as they get there..." David said.

"To most folks, that thought is - at least while they're still alive - more disturbing than being stuck as a ghost."

"I guess," David said.

After that, they entered the lunch room, and their conversation turned to other things. 

 "Okay, guys, here's our campsite," David said. The three guys with him grunted and shrugged off their packs.

"Why here?" Rick asked curiously. Looking around, it seemed no different than any of the other forest they'd walked through.

"River's right over there," David said, pointing, "there are several tasty plants nearby, and this part of the forest has no tangle trees in it."

"I like those reasons," Max said.

"Max, I've been meaning to ask you... what's with the blue hair?"

"Prank someone played on me, sir."

David looked at Olissa, who had come with them, and shook his head ruefully. To Max, he said, "Been there, done that."

"So what do we do first?" Ben asked.

"Set up camp," David said. He motioned with his hands for everyone to step back a little, and then he conjured several large objects out of his Conjuring Room.

"Whoa!" Rick said, impressed. "Cool!"

"How did you do that, sir?" Max asked.

"Conjuring. You'll start learning conjuring in your third year, if you stay that long."

David walked over to one of the objects and tapped it three times with his wand, uttering, "kukuzandi kuson kana." The object began to unfold itself, rods and fixtures sliding along and attaching to each other, then sliding into the material which made up the bulk of the package. In short order, a tent had been constructed. As a final step, long stakes were driven into the hard ground, and the tent was now secure.

"Fuckin' A," Rick said. "That was... how does it do that?" he asked in awe.

David chuckled. "Magically."

"Uh... who's tent is that, sir?" Max asked.

"Ours. Didn't you bring one?" David asked.

All three looked at him, stricken.

"You didn't mention needing a tent..." Ben told him.

"Well, what did you expect to sleep in?" David demanded. The three boys looked at him in confusion and discomfort.

Olissa poked him. "Stop teasing them," she said quietly, so they wouldn't hear her.

"You're no fun," he told her with a grin. Turning back to the others, he said, "Fine, I guess I'll have to provide one for you." He went over and cast the same spell on a larger bundle, which then performed similar maneuvers to the first tent. This one was much larger, however. When it was finished, it formed a connected set of three domed rooms, separated by a wall of material between each room.

"Now, if you want to join them together into one big tent, just tap the blue spot in the middle of the wall. If you want to put it back, you pull on the blue tab on the floor."

"Thank you, sir," Max said to him.

David waved him off. As the three went to investigate their tent, David said to Olissa, "One of these days, I'll get him to stop calling me 'sir'."

Olissa giggled, then said, "I'll go set up our stuff in the tent, okay?"

David nodded. She levitated one of the remaining bundles into their tent, while David separated out the other camping gear for Rick, Max, and Ben. 

 "...so the wizard searches high and low, seeking out the oilwood tree. Finally, after three years of searching, he finds it."

"Where was it?" Ben asked.

"No one knows," Rick told him. Continuing his story, he said, "So the oilwood tree says, 'What is it you wish from me, wizard?' The wizard tells him, 'I want you to make me the most powerful magic wand in history.' The oilwood tree shakes his limbs for a moment, then says, 'I can do this, but only if you can ask me a riddle that I cannot answer.'

"Well, the wizard's like, 'I don't know any riddles.' The oilwood tree tells him, 'Go, then. Do not return unless you have a riddle for me. And be warned! If I can answer your riddle, things will not be well with you.'

"So the wizard goes off. He spends another three years trying to devise the trickiest riddle he can think up. He consults with scribes and professors and spellmasters, anyone he can think of. Finally, he thinks he's got it, and so he goes back to the tree.

"'Do you have a riddle for me?' the tree asks. The wizard says he does, and asks his riddle. Now, we don't know what his riddle was, but clearly it wasn't good enough. The oilwood tree laughs at him and answers his riddle in a flash.

"The wizard looks dejected, and turns to leave. 'Where are you going?' the tree asks him.

"'Back to find a better riddle,' he says.

"The oilwood tree rumbles with laughter. 'Fool,' he says, 'you only get one chance. I warned you that things would not be well with you if you failed.'

"Before the wizard can react, the oilwood tree's limbs whip out and grab hold of the wizard. In a flash, it begins to rip him apart. They say the screams could be heard in the nearest village, which was over ten miles away.

"The next day, the villagers went into the forest, to find the remains of the wizard, to bury him. But he and the oilwood tree were gone. Neither of them was ever seen again."

Rick sat back from the fire, eyeing his listeners.

Ben broke the mood. "Yawn. That was hardly scary. Besides, everyone knows that oilwood trees don't eat you if you fail. They just turn you into a bush."

Rick frowned, then said, "Yeah, but that's not gross and scary like being ripped apart is."

Ben rolled his eyes.

"Wait, so there really are oilwood trees?" David asked.

"Yeah... well, there's one, somewhere. And it supposedly can craft very magical items out of itself."

"Why would it want a riddle it can't answer?" David asked. "What use is that to it?"

"According to the legend," Max replied, "the oilwood tree can't die until it finds a riddle it cannot work out. The tree is supposedly as old as Dugerra itself, and it is rather sick of being here."

David nodded, unsure of whether to believe any of it.

The three enjoyed the campfire in silence for a few minutes. Jailla, who had been keeping watch in a nearby tree, flew down to David's shoulder.

"Nothing around?" David asked him.

"Only the usual forest dwellers," Jailla confirmed.

"Say, Ben, how come you didn't bring your familiar?" David asked.

"Taki's a mouse. He was a bit worried about the other things that live out here, so I left him with Madame Abernathy."

David snorted in amusement.

"What?"

"Ellen... sorry, Madame Abernathy... has about thirty cats."

"Oh!" Ben said, turning beet red. The others laughed at him.

"She wouldn't let them eat Taki, would she, sir?" Max asked.

David replied, "No. Her cats all know better than to mess with familiars. That won't necessarily be comforting news to Taki, however."

"How come your familiar isn't with you?" Rick asked Olissa.

"I didn't want him to scare you," Olissa said.

"Scare us?" Rick asked.

"Her familiar is a dragon," David told him. The color drained from the faces before him.

"Is that safe?" Rick asked.

"Depends on how polite you are to him," Olissa replied with a smile. "He's only eaten three students since I've been here..."

"What about that guy last year..." David said, extending the joke.

"Oh, come on! You're not gonna count that," Olissa said. "He only bit off the guy's arm! Healer Hall grew it right back. He was only out of school for four months..."

"Okay, fair enough," David said, grinning. He saw that the others weren't sure they were joking, so he finally took pity on them. "Bispy, her familiar, has never harmed anyone who didn't soundly deserve it."

"Sir, are classes going to keep getting harder? I'm afraid I'm barely passing as it is."

"Classes will get harder... but you'll also get smarter. You're from Earth, aren't you?"

Max nodded in confirmation.

"So was I. We don't think quite like Dugerrans, and it takes a little while for our brains to switch over to the magical way of doing things. There are things I do now that would have seemed completely alien to me in my first year. So, yes, classes will get harder, but you'll soon find, as long as you keep trying, that the actual work for you will get easier."

"That's good to know, sir."

Rick asked, "And does finding a girlfriend ever get easier?"

"I wouldn't know," David replied. "I haven't had a "typical" girlfriend since my third year."

"But..." Rick said, motioning to Olissa.

"We're not in that particular kind of relationship," David said.

"Uh... okay," Rick replied, still confused.

Just then, Olissa yawned.

"I guess it is getting a little late," David said, knowing she was uncomfortable with the topic of conversation, and helping her to change the subject. "Why don't we all head to bed, and get a good night's sleep? We'll do some sight-seeing tomorrow before we head back to the school."

"Sounds good," Rick said.

David extinguished the fire magically, making sure that it was completely out, then he said good-night to the guys, and retired to his tent with Olissa. The two cuddled together on top of their sleeping bag, which had a very soft cushion beneath it, to make sure they were still comfortable, despite their surroundings.

"It's nice to get away from things for a little while," Olissa said.

"Yeah... wish my mind could have come with us," David said with a grin.

"Huh?"

"You know I'm still thinking about all the crap waiting for me back there."

"Ahh. Well, I know one way to fix that," she said.

David wasn't sure what she meant until she started to unzip his pants.

She was right: for about an hour, he stopped thinking about the murder investigation. 

David was in his office when the sound of a ringing phone filled the room. Seth, who was with him, looked around in confusion. David merely chuckled.

Walking over to the mirror on his office wall, he tapped it, and the ringing stopped. The mirror image was replaced with the face of the barmaid at the Slyther Inn.

"Woodward Chief of Security. How can I help you?"

"Hi. I wasn't sure who else to call. It looks like there's going to be a brawl here soon, and the people who're going to be involved with it, we can't handle."

"Why do you think there's going to be a brawl?"

"Just the feeling in the air," she replied.

David nodded. "Are any of the people in the inn students at the academy?"

"I count three uniforms."

David nodded again. "I'll be right down."

As he fogged off with the woman, Seth said, "You know that's not our jurisdiction. We don't have any authority off campus grounds."

"I'm not going to let our students get hurt because they got caught up in something stupid. Call Tanya and let her know what's going on."

"You going to take anyone with you?"

"No. Like you said, this isn't really something the security department can do anything about. I do have... other levels of authority I can act on."

Seth nodded, and David grabbed his coat and left the office. He considered traveling as a ghost, to get there quickly, but she hadn't said there was an imminent fight, so he didn't want to deal with the unpleasantness of Haven.

It was apparent when he opened the door that he'd arrived a little too late. The fight was underway, and he counted at least ten individuals. He tapped the badge holder on his coat twice, and suddenly his Woodward security badge was replaced by his Rimohr badge. For this, he would need greater authority. Since he was acting in defense of life and property, he could do so alone.

David pulled out his wand and then announced himself.

"RIMOHRS! EVERYONE ON THE FLOOR!"

The nearest fighter laughed and said, "Make us!"

David zapped him with a hex. The man was soon lying prone on the floor.

"As you wish," David replied.

Another person came at David, swinging. David ducked the punch and nailed the guy in the jaw. The man crumpled to the floor.

Just then, David saw three blue uniforms trying to scurry along the wall to get to the door.

"Where do you three think you're going? Sit your asses down on those stools. We're going to have words when this is over."

Seeing that the three students, who were so obviously first-years, were obeying, David turned back to the fight. In short order, all of the fighters were either unconscious, hexed, or cooperating.

"I'm glad you got here when you did. It started not too long after I called you."

"What tipped you off?" David wanted to know.

"Those three guys came in, and it was clear they were looking for trouble." She waved her hand toward the men on the floor, and not the three students.

"How'd it start?"

"I don't know. I was looking the other way when the first crash was heard."

David nodded. He then walked over to the three students. First, he got their names. Then he said, "You three were in an awful hurry to leave."

"We didn't want to get hurt," the one said.

"Seems to me, since you were on the other side of the room, that retreating into the back hallway would have been a much safer way to go."

The student stammered a bit. Finally, another of them admitted, "When we saw you, we didn't want to get into trouble. We didn't start the fight, but..."

"But you were involved?" David suggested.

"Kind of."

"What do you mean, 'kind of'?"

The third said, "Well, see, this guy was talking to us. Then this other guy came up and told the first guy to leave us alone. They started to argue, then the guy who had been talking to us threw a punch, and then... well, all hell broke loose."

"The guy who was talking to you. What was he talking to you about?"

"He wanted us to join his group," the first said.

"'Group'?" David asked, one eyebrow raised.

It was obvious none of the three wanted to say it, but finally, the first one said, "His gang."

David's eyes narrowed. "And what did you tell him?"

"Nothing, really. He was still making his pitch when the other guy came up."

"Did he tell you the name of his gang?"

One of the other students said, "The Clan."

David's eyes narrowed further, into an expression that made all three students swallow hard.

"Point out this guy."

They all pointed to the same guy.

"And the other guy, who interrupted him?" They indicated him, as well.

"Fine. I want you to consider this: The Clan was a big presence on campus last year. Because of them, seventeen people died. If I catch any student joining The Clan, or acting as one of their members, I will lobby to have that student expelled. I'm not going through that again. Now get your butts back to campus."

"Yes, sir!" they all three said, and bolted for the door.

David walked back down to the barmaid. "You said that three guys came in, and you felt they were looking for trouble. Which ones are they?"

She pointed to the three in question. It came as no surprise to David that the group included the one who'd been talking to the students.

David asked the barmaid to call the Rimohr office and have someone come up to take custody of the Clan members. He had those three get up off the floor, and he set them on stools, handcuff-hexed together as well as shackled. They were going nowhere.

David picked the other guy up off the floor and led him over to a stool away from the Clan members. "So, who are you?" he asked.

The man gave him his name. "My son was seriously injured in last year's battle. I wasn't going to let that asshole bring more of the same."

David nodded. "Do you live here in town?"

"No, I came to bring some personal items to my other son. He'd been in such a hurry the day he had to come to school that he forgot one of the bags he was wanting to bring."

"And you're just bringing it to him now? It's already October."

The man shrugged. "They weren't important items, just personal things he wanted to have with him, so I waited until I had the time to get up here."

"Your son's a first-year?"

"Yeah."

"One of the three who was just here?"

"No, but my son does know one of them."

David nodded. "Who swung first?"

"He did. Though I might have, if he hadn't. The anger was getting pretty intense."

"How'd these other folks get involved?"

"You know how barroom brawls are. You bump into a drunk, and they start swinging."

"So, it was really just you and that guy?"

"Well, and his two buddies. They tried to gang up on me, but once the fight got started, everyone was all over the place."

David nodded again. "You're staying here for the night?"

"I can, if you need me to."

"That would be appreciated, until I'm sure this matter is cleaned up."

The man nodded. After having talks with the other remaining patrons, he let them go. Finally, he returned to the Clan members.

"Where is Wendell Kendall?" David asked without preamble.

"Fuck off," the leader of the group said.

David stepped forward and slugged him in the solar plexus just as hard as he could. The man fell off his chair and puked up his lunch. The other two were pulled off their stools when he fell.

David waited a few minutes for the man to stop vomiting, then he hauled him back up onto his stool. The other two sat down again, not wanting the same kind of treatment.

David pulled out his wand and performed the sku iji charm on the floor, vanishing away the vomit, so the barmaid wouldn't have to clean up the mess. After that, he turned back to the man he was questioning.

"Let me be a bit more clear in my question. Do you wish to have aiding and abetting a fugitive added to your charges, or do you want to tell me where Wendell Kendall is? Just for your clarity, the charge of aiding and abetting carries the same penalty as whatever crime the fugitive is charged with. Wendell Kendall has been indicted for seventeen counts of first-degree murder. That carries a sentence of over four hundred years of prison time. Think really hard how loyal you want to be to the man." David then stepped back, and looked at all three of them. "The first one to answer me, I won't charge."

The one on the left immediately spoke up. "He lives outside of Bolmont."

"Shut up, you idiot!" the middle one said.

"Fuck you, Trevor! I ain't doin' four hundred years for no one!"

"He's bluffing, you ignorant fuck."

"No, I'm not," David interjected. To the one who'd spoken up, he asked, "Where outside Bolmont?"

"Eastern side. I don't know beyond that. I've never been there. Supposed to be some nice apartment or something, I don't know."

"Anyone else want to contribute anything?" David asked the other two. Neither said a word.

"Fine."

With that, David walked a few paces down the bar and ordered a drink. It only took a little while for another Rimohr to show up.

"Hey, Tom," David said.

"David. What've we got?"

"Bar fight."

"You called me up here for that?"

"These three pukes are members of The Clan."

"Ah," Tom said. "What do you want to charge them with?"

David walked over to the three. "This guy," he said, pointing to the one who had spoken up, "gets just violent gang activity. The other two get that, plus aiding and abetting a fugitive."

Tom whistled. "Think you can make it stick?"

"One of them had the information I wanted. What's the likelihood, given that he wasn't the leader of this group of three, that the other two didn't?"

"Good point. All right, you three. You're under arrest."

"We're already under arrest, you shithead," the one in the middle said."

"I never arrested you," David said. "I merely detained you for further questioning." He wanted this to be clear, in case they tried to make an issue out of him being an intern at the trial.

Turning to Tom, he asked, "You need me to accompany you back to Bolmont?"

"Yeah. You've got lots of paperwork to do."

"Joy. Let me contact the school and let them know, then we can go." 

 "Hello, David. Come on in," Prof. Rutherford said. "Time for your advisory meeting, is it?"

"Yes, ma'am," David said.

"Okay. So, this year you're working on aquamandy. You said at our initial meeting that you were going to start by going large. What did you manage to accomplish?"

"I created a ten-foot wave in the monster moat."

"Good heavens! Going which way?"

"Around the ring."

"How far were you able to push it?"

"From Thunderbird Dorm to just past Pegasus Dorm."

"That's a good long ways. How, exactly, did you do this without scaring anyone? A ten-foot wave is completely unknown in the Monster Moat, even during bad weather."

"Well, it was two in the morning..."

Prof. Rutherford nodded in understanding. "And do you think you can do better than that?"

"No. Doing that took every bit of concentration I had, took me twenty minutes to pull off, and gave me a headache for the next day and a half."

"Oh, dear. Headaches are nature's way of saying, 'Don't do that.' Especially where magic is concerned."

"I figured."

"So where will you go from here?"

"Actually, I already started working on fine control, just like I've been doing with everything else."

"Oh? Well, then, have you achieved anything interesting?"

David waved his hand, and something that resembled a model of a roller coaster appeared on the floor of Prof. Rutherford's office. It wasn't too complicated of a track, but it did contain a loop.

David moved his hand toward the tank of water in the professor's office, and a marble-sized ball of water rose up out of it. The water marble floated over to the very top of the roller coaster track. David held it there as he turned back to the professor.

"Usually, when you're controlling water and rubbing it against other surfaces, some of the water gets left behind, making the other surface wet, and losing some of the volume of water you're working with. Do this enough, and you don't have any water left."

"Right," Prof. Rutherford agreed. "So, what are we doing?"

"Preventing water loss."

With that, David allowed his water marble to drop onto the roller coaster track. It immediately started to roll along the track.

"I'm not actually moving the ball," David said, keeping his attention fully focused on his task. "I'm simply keeping it round."

"I understand," she said, watching as the ball of water went along the entire track, including the loop. Finally it finished its run, banging against a stop at the bottom of the track.

"If you'll notice, there's no water left behind on the track. It's still completely dry," David said.

Prof. Rutherford examined it closely. She was a bit surprised to find this was, in fact, true. She then reached down and poked at the water marble. While her finger was able to penetrate without resistance, it came out dry.

"How do you do that?" she asked.

David first put the water marble back into the water tank, then he turned back to her.

"I found a way to increase the surface tension of the water to the point where it simply won't flow off. That ball of water will act as if it is solid, so long as I keep the tension up."

"Have you done anything else with this technique?"

"Created a water bullet..." David said.

"Excuse me?" Prof. Rutherford asked.

David whisked the roller coaster back into his Conjuring Room, where he'd been storing it, and brought out a piece of wood about a half inch thick. He leaned it against a frame that hung over the edge of the water tank.

David pulled his water marble out of the tank again, and floated it over in front of his face.

"You want to prove it's still just water again?" he asked.

"No, I trust you. I was merely dumbfounded the first time."

David nodded, then looked over at the piece of wood. In a flash, the ball of water was thrust across the room, and slammed into the wood. Prof. Rutherford heard a splash, and saw ripples in the tank of water. Then she looked at the wood, where there was a perfectly circular hole.

"My lord," she whispered. Then she looked at David, who was wincing. "Are you all right?"

"Doing this also gives me a headache," he said. "But not nearly as bad as the wave did."

"You just punched a hole through a solid object with nothing more than water," she said. "And not a whole lot of water, either. This is really impressive. You keep insisting you're not a good Elemander, yet you pull off things I've never even heard of doing."

"I guess I'm creative," David replied with a grin.

"Indeed!" she agreed with a chuckle. "I'm not even going to give you any ideas of exactly how to move forward. You know what you're doing with this. I would point out, however, that water, like earth and unlike fire, does have 'particles' you can work with."

David nodded, taking a deep breath as his headache started to fade. "Okay. I had a few other things I wanted to try, but hadn't had time for due to... other duties."

Prof. Rutherford snorted. "Yeah, you've got enough other duties to keep three people busy. I hope you're not overtaxing yourself."

"I'm okay, Professor. I just have to be careful managing my time."

The professor nodded. "Well, that's good. Once again, I'm going to let you wait until the end of the semester before I see you again. You don't need guidance as to what to do; you're clearly right on track. Of course, if you have any questions, or you want to show off, my door is always open," she said with a grin.

David chuckled. "Yes, ma'am. All right, I'll see you in a couple months, then."

"Good luck, David. Not that you need it." 

 "Those look like some likely prospects," Joe said to David. They were walking down a street in Bolmont. The people he was referring to were loitering against a building. They looked like the troublemaking type. They'd seen a lot of these types around, but none had given any indication that they knew where Kendall was.

As they approached, the guys leaning on the building straightened, then started to walk away. Silently, David cast a containment charm. He tried not to laugh when the three people walked right into it and got knocked to the ground.

"You ain't got no right to arrest us, man!" one of them growled when the two Rimohrs arrived where they were.

David looked to Joe. "Did you say they were under arrest?"

"I haven't said a word to them," Joe replied, playing along.

"Me, either," David said back. "I wonder why they think we would arrest them?" David turned back to the man on the ground. "Is there something we ought to be arresting you for?" he asked innocently.

"Fuck off," the guy grumbled.

"On your feet," David said to the three of them. Joe and David stood back as the three struggled back to their feet.

"What the fuck do you want, then?" the talkative one demanded.

"Where is Wendell Kendall?"

"Who?"

"You don't sit in trees and shit through feathers," David replied. "I know you know who I'm talking about."

"And how's that, smart guy?" the man demanded.

David grabbed his wrist. Though the man struggled, he wasn't about to break David's grip. With his free hand, David pulled up the man's sleeve to expose the tattoo on his forearm. It was a globe with three swords run through it. David had seen it when the man was getting up.

"That is how I know you know who I'm talking about. Where's Wendell Kendall?"

The guy jerked free of David's now looser grip. "Never heard of him," the guy said.

David turned to Joe. "Ten."

Joe just nodded.

"Ten what?" the guy wanted to know.

"That's the number of days you're going to spend in the infirmary before we take you to jail, if you don't start cooperating."

"Hey, fuck you, man. I don't have to answer any of your motherfucking questions."

To Joe, David said, "Twenty."

"Hey, you can't threaten me. I got rights!"

David's gaze bored in on the man. "You don't have the right to hide the whereabouts of your gang leader. Doing so will be very expensive for you."

"You can't prove I even know this Kendall guy."

"You're a member of the gang he leads. It would be impossible for you to not know him."

Another of the toughs spoke up. "Hah! Shows what you know! Kendall ain't no leader of The Clan!"

"And how would you know this?" David asked reasonably. "Either you know Kendall, or you're a member of The Clan. In either case, you know Kendall. Now, where is he?"

"Blow me," the leader replied.

"Thirty," David said to Joe.

"You know if we go above thirty, the boss will get upset. Too much paperwork."

"Right. I guess it's time to start busting heads, then." David turned back to them and cracked his knuckles.

Two of the three guys in front of him did likewise. The third, who had not yet spoken, took three steps back and started to run.

"You take these two," David said to Joe. Joe pulled out his wand and hexed the two aggressors. David chased down the runner with little effort, as he wasn't in very good shape.

"Don't hurt me, man! I ain't gonna cause you any trouble!"

David shoved him back against a building wall. "Kendall. You know where he is."

"I know where he might be, yeah. I'm not sure. He moves around, 'cause he knows you guys are lookin' for him."

"Then how would you know where he is?"

"Well, he has a girl, see? So, he goes to see her every now and again."

"And you know where she lives?"

"I ought to. She's my mother."

"Likes older women, does he?" David mused.

"I think he likes that he can push Mom around without her complaining about it."

"So where does your mother live?" 

 "Okay, David, this is your bust," Wilson said. "Let's try not to have any more complaints, though, okay? Those three you busted earlier all say you threatened them."

"Nothing I did was outside of Rimohr policy, as it has been explained to me, sir. I never intended to hurt them."

"What did you intend, then?"

"Exactly what I got. I was trying to find the weak one of the group."

"Uh-huh," Wilson replied. "I'll choose to believe you this time, because I don't want to do the paperwork. But you need to ease off on the violence a bit."

"Yes, sir."

You watch seventeen people die in front of you, and see how easy that is for you to do, David thought to himself.

"We don't know exactly where in the building Kendall is. Our best bet is to surround the building, then go in quietly," Wilson said. "David, you'll lead the front-door entry team. Vivian, you take the back door team. Tom, you're in charge of the outside team. I'm going in with the front-door team. Everyone got it?"

There were nods all around.

"Good. Let's go."

David, Joe, Agent Wilson, and one other officer moved to the front door. They waited until they heard from Vivian that her team had gotten into position.

David used a charm to unlock the front door. With that done, he nodded to Vivian in his mirror. They both put them away, then quietly turned their respective doorknobs. The teams were not going to storm the building: it was eleven o'clock at night, and it appeared as though the occupants were sleeping. This gave them a chance to sneak in and catch them without any resistance at all.

As soon as he was inside, David pulled his wand. Joe moved to the left, and the other officer moved to the right. Wilson stayed behind David, keeping an eye on him. Having verified the room was empty, they moved on.

It didn't take too long before the bottom floor was deemed empty. With that, they had to take the risk of going up the stairs, which were likely to make noise under the weight of seven different people.

The group moved as quietly as they could while not taking forever to get up the stairs. Once they reached the top of the stairs, they heard noises coming from a room at the end of the hallway. David motioned his team toward that door. He nodded to Vivian to check out other rooms.

The noises coming from inside the room didn't seem dangerous, but David wasn't taking any chances. Standing to one side of the doorway, David fired a blast of energy at the doorknob, blowing open the door. With that, all four members of David's group rushed into the room.

Wendell Kendall was in bed, pumping away at the woman beneath him. He barely had time to register the presence of other people in the room before David grabbed him by the hair and yanked him forcibly to the floor. David's foot was quickly pressed against the back of the man's neck.

"You so much as twitch, you little fuck, and your brains will be goo leaking out of your nose." Kendall could feel the crackling energy coming off David's wand; he knew that it was no idle threat.

Wilson stepped up next to David. "Wendell Kendall, you're under arrest for first-degree murder, conspiracy, and a shitload of other charges. Okay, let him up," he said to David.

"Can't I zap him... just a little?" David asked, shoving his wand against the back of Kendall's head, so that he could feel the energy surging through it. The man swallowed hard.

"No, you can't. He's down, he's captured, and he's in custody. Anything you do to him now is just going to help him."

"Hmph," David said, and removed his foot. "On your feet, maggot."

Wendell Kendall got up, finally facing his attacker.

"You!" Kendall said in shock.

"Yeah, me. If you are very, very lucky, they won't turn you over to Woodward security. I know a few parents who'd love to have a few minutes alone with you."

"Hold out your hands," Wilson ordered the man. He did so, but wouldn't take his eyes off David, who gazed at the man as if sizing him up for butchering.

"Okay, folks. Good job," Wilson said. David continued to glare at Kendall. "Let's help the lady clean up, and head on out."

David waved his hand at the door, which was instantaneously repaired. After that, he turned to the woman.

"If you want to have your life run by a man, that's your business. Next time, find someone who isn't a murderer."

With that, David left the house.

In a few minutes, Wilson brought Wendell Kendall out to the Rimohr carriage and put him inside. After that, he came over to David.

"You're going to have to get a handle on your anger, or you're not going to last long," Wilson said. It was the tone of his voice, more than anything else, that pissed David off.

"Agent Wilson, how many people have you had to watch be killed right in front of you?"

"None," the man admitted after a long pause.

"Then shut the fuck up. Sir." David walked away down the street. Agent Wilson stared agape after him.

"No offense, Boss, but you deserved that," Joe told him. He then joined the other Rimohrs in the carriage for the ride back to the station. Joe knew that David was going home, but he'd get his paperwork done in the morning, he was sure. It would make little difference to Mr. Kendall, who was going to be in prison for a good long time. 

"All right, David, I assume you've got something interesting to show me, since we don't normally need to meet outside..." Prof. Zoroaster said.

"Well, I need your help to test this thing, Professor. It requires two people, so I don't yet know if it works."

"Oh? Well, what do we have here?"

David was holding two small circular devices. On the face of each was an arrow, and in the middle, they each showed the number two, above another number which was different on each one.

As David handed one of the devices to the professor, he said, "It's a long-distance measuring device." Prof. Zoroaster noted that, as he took the device from David, the arrow on it moved, to continue to point at the device still in David's hand. The top number in the middle also changed, from two to three. The bottom number changed rapidly before settling down to a new number.

"I see... so they measure the distance between each other?"

"And direction, yeah."

"A clever idea, but why not just use a spell?"

"Spells require you to be in visual range of what you're measuring. If this works, it will work well beyond that."

"Oh? So... oh, I see, they're divining the distance between each other."

"Right. This is an alternate application of the viewing lens magic. Each end is focused on the other, but instead of showing you an image of the other one, it gives you distance and direction. Hopefully."

"Why did you start to work on this? You haven't mentioned it previously..."

"I need it for one of the investigations I'm working on," David said. "Since I couldn't find mention of one already made, I decided to make my own."

"Really? No one's made these? It seems like such a straightforward concept..."

"True, but how many people actually need to measure these kinds of distances? Surveyors, mostly, and they have different spells and talismans to use that give them even more information. Anyway, what I'd like for us to do is to basically measure the mountain. Since these are known measurements, I can verify how well it works."

"Very well. What do you want me to do?"

"I won't make you do all the walking. If you want to just pick a bench and sit down, I'll walk around the campus, and we'll compare readings on these to the known measurements."

"Sounds good. I'll sit right over here."

"Great," David said. With that, he double-checked that the distance reading on both devices was the same, and that they were still pointing directly at each other, then he started to walk away from the professor.

It took two hours before they had proven to both of their satisfaction that the device worked quite well, to within about a foot of accuracy. For David's purposes, this was as close as was needed. He knew that he could refine it to get even more precise, but it would be a time-consuming task.

"This is very clever, David. You should market these. I'm sure there are some people who would find good uses for them."

"I might... if I can find a shopkeeper who'd want to carry one or two in his store. They'd be pretty expensive, though. They take a while to make."

"Oh? How long?"

"About five hours. I imagine I could get that time down with practice, but still, one of the enchantments takes three hours just to run its course."

"But you could be making another one while that's happening, couldn't you?"

"True. Still."

Prof. Zoroaster nodded. "Yes. But I think it would be worthwhile. You might even consider hiring a spellcaster or two to make them for you."

"That's a thought. I'll think about it."

"You do that. This is good stuff. You are definitely progressing well with your divinatory objects. Now if you could just get that mood cube to work..."

David laughed. "Yeah, I know. Still having trouble with the stronger emotions."

"Do work on it."

"Yes, sir. I'll see you in a couple weeks." 

"Okay, that's all of them," Garibaldi said to David after they met back up at the travel gate in Winding River. "Now what are you going to do with all of that?"

David pulled out a piece of parchment, and drew a dot in the center of it. He set it on the hood of his glidecar, and took out his wand.

Using a charm, David placed dots on the parchment that represented the position of each site where a body was dumped. The information from his distance measurement tool allowed him to place the dots with pinpoint accuracy.

The pattern was immediately obvious.

"He's forming a circle," Joe said.

"Maybe. The points look like they're equal distance around the circle. That means that the one body we couldn't find should fill in that gap."

"How do we go look for that spot?"

David pulled out a scientific calculator that he'd borrowed from Gwen for this purpose. He typed in the necessary numbers and worked through the steps. Finally, he came up with the necessary information.

"Okay, we leave the one anchor in the car."

"Anchor?"

"That's what I call each part of the measurement device."

"Oh, gotcha."

"Then we just walk... this way, seventeen hundred twenty-eight feet."

They'd made it only sixteen hundred fifty feet before they had to stop.

"Well, this is a problem," Joe said. Before them was a very deep pit. It was unclear why it had been dug, but it was obviously magical in nature. The pit was large enough that it completely encompassed their intended drop site.

"You think maybe he dropped it into the hole?" Joe asked David after they'd walked all the way around it.

David pulled his wand, pointed into the hole, and uttered, "Lux ventus!" A bright ball of light descended into the pit, illuminating the entire area.

"I don't think so," David said. "Though after eight, nine months, it'd be hard to tell what it was at this distance. I can't see him screwing with the pattern this way."

"Me, either. But that just means we've got the pattern wrong."

"Yeah. Dammit, I thought I'd figured this part out."

"Cheer up. You can't get everything overnight."

David grumbled unintelligibly, until Joe's mirror started buzzing. David came around behind Joe to see what the call was about.

"All right, you two. We've got another missing girl," Agent Wilson said. "No body yet. She was last seen on Sunday morning."

"Anything useful from the roommate?" Joe asked.

"Not that they told me about. Go there and find out yourselves."

"Yes, sir."

As Joe fogged off, David said, "Shit."

"Yeah. Let's get going." 

Joe actually had to hunt down David in his Alton Hall workroom in order to give him the news.

"Can this be put on hold?" Joe asked him, motioning to the potion.

"Yeah. What've we got?" David asked as he placed the lid on his cauldron that would keep the potion safe at its current point.

"We have to go to Earth."

"Oh? What for?"

"The Springfield Police found a body."

"What the hell?"

"I don't know. They say it looks like our guy. Come on, we've got to get going."

"Okay. Say, how come you didn't mirror me?"

"We need your truck, don't we? I had to come up here, anyway, so I just came, instead."

David nodded, changed his uniform to look like a Rimohr's, and then they headed off-campus. 

"Gentlemen," David said as he walked up to the officers. "David Stroud, this is Agent Joe Garibaldi. Rimohrs."

"They told us you were coming. They didn't bother to tell us why," the detective said.

"We're working a serial murder case. If they called us, they must think your victim is part of that case."

"How old are you, like sixteen?" the detective's partner asked snidely.

"I'm twenty-three, and I've been doing investigative work for the last two years. Can we dispense with the attitude now?"

"Hey, look, buddy..." the partner started.

"Shove it," David replied. "If this isn't part of our case, we'll be gone as fast as we got here. If this is part of our case, it's no longer your jurisdiction, and you'd better be glad we are here, because if you tried to arrest our killer, he'd wipe the floor with you without even breaking a sweat. Now, where's the body?"

The detective looked at his partner sternly, then motioned them to follow him.

"Feeling grumpy today?" Joe asked David quietly.

"Getting tired of having to explain why I'm qualified to be on the job."

Joe just grunted. They walked down a river embankment, where they found the body of a young woman. Her hair was blonde, and her eyes were green. She was laid spread-eagle and face up on the ground.

David looked at her briefly, then looked around at the area. Though there were trees in the immediate vicinity, people could see them across the river.

"How was the body discovered?" David asked as he returned to his examination of the body.

"Jogger was running along the bridge, saw 'something', then came over here to check it out."

David nodded, then turned to Garibaldi. "Same hair color, same eye color. Rigor mortis has passed, which means she's been lying here at least a day. If it's the missing girl, that puts her here yesterday morning. It fits the time, the description, and the method of disposal. This is our scumsucker."

Joe nodded in agreement. To the detective, he said, "We'll be taking this one. This is probably a woman who went missing from the University of Albany a couple days ago."

"You guys are working that case?"

"The killer is a wizard," David said.

"Shit," the detective opined.

"Yeah." Looking around, David asked, "What is this spot? What's that building?"

"It's part of the power plant across the street. Water pumps or something, I think. Don't really know."

David moved up the hill and saw, across the street, a power generation station. He then turned back to the others.

Joe asked, "Why do you think he dumped her here, instead of Winding River?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that," David admitted. "I have no idea."

"Well, let's get the body into your truck."

"Hey, you guys can't just take a dead body around in an SUV..." the detective's partner objected.

"We have the proper containment, detective," David assured him. Joe went to open the rear of the truck while David levitated the body off the ground and up toward the road. He gently slipped it into the back of his truck, and then the two carefully wrapped it in a magically sterile sheet. They would first take it back to a magical examiner, then they would allow the FBI to do an autopsy. Previous autopsies hadn't revealed anything of use, but that didn't necessarily mean this one wouldn't.

After David put the protection charms in place, he closed the truck. He then waved his hand over the back door of the truck, and a sign suddenly appeared on it that said "Coroner - Bolmont District".

"No one's going to know where the hell the Bolmont District is in Massachusetts," Joe objected.

"I'm counting on that. People will leave us alone because we look official, but will assume we're just passing through, which we are."

Joe nodded, then turned to the detectives. "Thank you for your cooperation," he told them.

"Your partner seems a bit... pushy," the lead detective said.

"He's new to the job."

"But he said he's been doing it for two years now..."

"Long story. He's been in investigations for two years, but he's only been a Rimohr for four months."

The detective nodded. "Rookies," he said, motioning his head to his own partner. Joe just chuckled, shook the man's hand, then went and got in the truck.

"What was that about?" David asked. He'd waited in the truck while Joe had finished up.

"Just us ragging on rookies," Joe said, gleefully teasing David.

"Hmph," David said. He waited until the detectives left, then went to put the keys in the ignition. Suddenly, he stopped and looked around. Getting an idea, he put the keys back in his pocket and said, "Wait here. I need to go try something."

Before Joe could ask what it was David needed to do, the door was closed, and Joe saw him walking back down the hill toward the river. He disappeared behind the brick building that was apparently part of the power station, and then all he could do was wait.

In a couple minutes, Joe heard a loud noise, like an explosion. He had just gotten out of the truck when David appeared from behind the building. He was shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears. He nodded to Joe, and then they both got back in the truck.

As David got back on the highway to Boston, Joe finally asked, "What was that about?"

"Nothing important," David said. "Just needed to find something out."

Joe grumbled about enigmatic partners, but didn't say anything more.

As David pulled onto the Mass Pike, getting his ticket for the toll road, he said, "At this rate, I need to get an electronic pass for this road. It's cheaper."

"Is that really a problem for you?" Joe asked with a grin.

"No, but every penny I have to give to some government puke is a penny I can't use to actually help someone."

Joe snorted at that in amusement, and then they settled back for the ride to Boston. The magical examiner would meet them there.

David drove, letting his mind mull over the case.

Why did he leave her in Earth? Why not take her to Dugerra like all the others? This completely fucks up any pattern he was...

David turned around at the next exit.

"Where are we going?" Joe demanded.

"Back to Springfield. We forgot to do something."

"What?"

"Measure the position of the body from the travel gate."

"How can that possibly be important, here?"

"I don't know if it is. All I know is we need to do it."

It didn't take them very long to measure the distance. David then plotted it on the parchment he was using to mark the position of the bodies.

"See? It makes no sense," Joe told him. The body's position was inside the circle of the other bodies, found in Winding River.

"It makes sense to our killer. We just have to try to figure out what kind of logic he's using. There has to be a pattern, Joe, even if we aren't seeing it. The bodies we have found are placed too precisely."

"Except this one."

"We don't know if this one is placed precisely or not, because we don't know what the pattern is."

"Okay, fair enough," Joe finally conceded.

"I want to check one more thing, while we're here."

Joe knew what it was without asking. The two headed through the travel gate.

"You wait here, I'll go look at where the body would be, if it was on this side."

Joe nodded, and David set off. It wasn't a long walk. When he was finished, he called Joe to join him. When Joe arrived, David just motioned.

"That's why he couldn't put the body on this side of the gate."

They were near Winding River itself, and there was a small house right next to the riverbank. Inside the yard was a large eagle/lion griffin, who was growling at them with a strange rattling noise.

"So he couldn't put the body in the right spot on this side because he couldn't get there. It was too dangerous for him to try."

"He could have just levitated her body into position," Joe objected.

"But that risks the griffin tearing the body apart. I don't think our killer wants that. He's not mutilating the bodies. He's not even scuffing them up much. They are, with the exception of the defensive bruises and the strangulation marks, pretty clean."

"Okay, so he can't put the body here... so he puts it on the other side? How would he know where to put them, anyway?"

"This little device wasn't all that hard to make," David said, referring to his measurement device. "He could have made a similar device... or found some other way to mark the positions. He's familiar with technology. On the Earth side, he could have used GPS."

"GP...what the... no, never mind."

David grinned.

"Point is, we have a plausible reason for why he didn't put the body in Dugerra. If we're right, that means there is a pattern, and the position of the bodies in that pattern is so critical that he's willing to switch worlds to maintain position."

Joe suddenly said, "What about our one missing victim?"

David immediately nodded. "Yeah, we need to go look for her body."

The two returned to Springfield, and it wasn't long before they discovered the remains of the woman, lying in an abandoned factory. They bundled those remains up, gently set them next to their most recent victim, and headed back to Boston.

"We've got to find this fucker," Joe said.

"We will," David assured him. "Somehow."