A hundred years! I felt a strange tremor run through my body. That was no ordinary book deliver that I had done. Who would entrust a box of books like that to someone like me?
But the clerk did not seem to think anything was strange about that.
"Oh, phew!" I laughed. "I thought I had done something really bad for a moment there. Can I leave these bats with you?"
The clerk shook her head. "Oh no. Please don't. I'm allergic to them. And besides, Michael just went out of town yesterday. He won't be back until around winter time, so I'm afraid you'll have to keep them until then." She gave me a look that pleaded with me not to saddle her with the bats.
I stood there chewing on my lip and staring at her, not exactly sure what to think.
One part of my brain was ecstatic. Here were four well-trained mammals I could utilize for the next six months without having to do any training.
I was also feeling a bit crappy about not getting the bats back to him for four days so that he had to leave town without his pets.
Well, no time to think about it now. I was going to be late to the rendezvous point. "I guess I'll take them with me then. If you get a chance, could you message the owner for me and tell him that I'll take good care of them until he returns?"
The woman nodded with a smile of relief and I turned to leave the bookstore.
I had to get to the fountain. I only had ten minutes left. If I ran all the way, I just might make it.
I could already see the disapproving looks and sarcastic comments that would be coming from a certain cranky twin. But there was one important thing I had to do before I went off to meet them.
Facing the wide open courtyard, I closed my eyes and reached out to touch the bats' minds. They were warm and open to my contact, ready to receive my instructions.
I smiled with a wistful feeling almost bordering on jealousy. The bookshop owner had trained his bats so well that they were open and ready to receive information without having to prepare their minds and instruct them about the instructions being given.
I would miss these guys when it came time to return them to their rightful owner.
'Fly home. Window is open.'
The bats squirmed on my shoulders for a moment as they reoriented themselves and resolved their flight plans. Then they took off into the air, four small fluttering black dots heading towards my apartment in Topaz.
9:03 am
I was running a few minutes behind by the time I reached the corner where the chapel grounds began. As I got closer to the fountain, I slowed my movements down when I realized I wasn't the only one who was late.
Simon was standing on the fountain's wide ledge, playing with a yo-yo and making it disappear and reappear with each stroke of his hand. Nearby, Connor sat cross-legged on his hoverboard, floating three feet off the ground.
He had wireless earbuds in his ears and was listening to music streaming from his mobile phone but pulled them off when he saw me coming.
Corwin was nowhere to be found.
I approached them, trying not to huff and puff.
"Hi guys! Where's Corwin?"
Simon returned my greeting as Connor raised his eyebrows, his lips forming an 'Oh' of surprise.
"You can actually tell us apart?"
"Always." I laughed.
I had always been able to tell the difference between the twins even though they were physically identical and tended to wear the same black body suits and green high tops. They even wore their red hair in the same long spiky manner and had similar mannerisms and quirks.
Outwardly, they could have been the same person, manifested twice. Indeed, most folks could not tell them apart.
The difference I found was in the way their magikal energies swirled around them. Corwin's always spun clock-wise, a tell-tale sign that he was left-handed, whereas Connor's magikal energies always spun counter-clockwise because he was right-handed.
It was the slightest of differences, but because the difference was at the base of their personalities, the result was that one twin was an extrovert while the other was an introvert.
All I had to do was watch how they held themselves and instantly, I could spot one from the other.
"Why are you two the only ones here?"
"Corwin and I split up to take care of some urgent matters. He's probably on his way." Connor checked his watch. "He hasn't called yet, so it's probably nothing critical."
"Well, I was at the Magik Bookshop, and guess what I found out?" I said.
"Pray tell." Connor said.
I quickly outlined the situation regarding the rats and the bats, ending with the conversation I had with the bookstore clerk.
Connor whistled when I mentioned the part about the one-hundred-year-old books. By the end of the story, Simon was excited and jumping up and down.
"See! Aren't you glad I pocketed one of those books? I wonder how much it's worth if it's a hundred years old!"
"They can't be that valuable," I pointed out. "There are several dozen copies that we delivered to the class at the end of Alder Alley."
"That class does not exist." A voice spoke up from behind me. I froze, the hairs on the nape of my neck stood up on end.
"Wowzers!" Simon jerked his head up. "You scared the mage-gas outta me. Stop sneaking up on us like that!"
"Corwin," I breathed, and turned my head. He approached the group with a calm gait that did not match the worried look in his eyes.
"Care to explain that?" his brother asked.
"What is there to explain? The class that they delivered the books to does not exist."
"Yes it does!" Simon insisted vehemently.
Corwin shook his head. "There is a classroom at the end of Alder Alley with the number 142 on the door, but there has been no assigned class to that room for this summer. In fact, the last time that classroom was used was—"
"A hundred years ago," I interrupted.
Corwin turned to me in surprise. "How did you know?"
"Never mind that." Connor interjected. "The real question is—why was that classroom not available for a hundred years?"
"Hold that thought, Nana." Corwin held up a finger in my direction.
He turned back to Connor. "It was sealed by a powerful mage a hundred years ago—for whatever reason that we may never know. No one has ever been able to penetrate the protective barriers all those years."
He shot intense blue eyes back at me. "Until now."
"What are you talking about? We just walked into that room yesterday." Simon laughed.
Corwin shook his head and turned to Simon, his eyes indecipherable.
"Yes, you did. That was the first time it had been opened in over a hundred years, and she was the one who opened it." he said with finality.
They all turned and stared at me.
I blinked. "Wh—what? Me?" My face grew hot. "It can't have been sealed for that long. Wouldn't other people have gone in and out without you knowing it?"
"No." He stared at me unflinching. "This morning, I went back to the classroom and did an auratic scan. Your magik aura's signature, puny as it is, was the initial one that registered, followed rapidly by six other delinquent students of which," he suddenly turned to Simon. "one of them was you."
Simon squirmed but said nothing.
"There were no other magik signatures in and around the doorway. I scanned back for decades to look for clues but found nothing." He turned back to me, his deep blue eyes flashing with a strange glittering anger.
"So, let's get back to what you just divulged to me earlier, Nana. How did you know that classroom on Alder Alley was last used over a century ago?"
I scratched my head. "I had a hunch this was the case since the clerk at the Magik Bookshop told me that the Demons books were over a hundred years old."
I bit my lip. That didn't even sound convincing to my own ears. Why oh why did I blurt such a stupid thing out!
"Or the two of you could have realized how valuable those books were and decided to filch them," Corwin snapped. "So you stashed the books away somewhere thinking to make a quick fortune."
He raked a hand through his deep red hair making them even messier than they already were.
"Once you found that you couldn't open the books, you realized they were worthless to you so you figured you would locate a couple of gullible besotted wizards you could trick into helping you if you could fabricate this entire drama in a way that would absolve you of any guilt."
"…gullible besotted wizards?" Connor laughed. "Come on Corey. I hope you're not talking about us. We may be besotted, but we're hardly gullible."
Corwin ignored Connor's attempt at humor.
"Why don't we start asking questions from this shyster," he pointed to Simon.
Simon stomped his feet, yanked his blonde hair with frustrated fists. "I am perfect innocence!!!" He yelled adding wild gestures "I don't have anything to do with ANYTHING even remotely shysterish!"
"Says the thief who stole valuable school property," Corwin glared at him.
"Look Corwin," I held out a hand to placate him. "Maybe we can go back to the Magik Bookshop and ask the clerk about the order for the books. The clerk has an entry in her accounting book that shows this order being placed for delivery to that classroom."
"There is also the fact that I got an order from my boss to pick up the books and deliver them to that classroom. Someone had to have placed that delivery order."
Corwin shook his head. "That was the first thing I checked. There was no order on file at the Thaumaturge office. It just looks as if you went there on your own and represented the school to take the books out of the Magik Bookshop. Your name would be on the delivery ticket as the only party responsible for the books."
I scowled. "Does that even make sense to you Corwin? Why would I steal a bunch of books and then deliver them to a classroom that no one has had access to for a hundred years? I saw an entire classroom filled with students. There was a professor. There were students. There really was a class—"
"There was no one there!" Corwin interjected, cutting me off mid-sentence. "The magik signatures only showed seven living beings inside that room yesterday." He paused, visibly upset.
"I went back as far as I could and found no traces of sentient human presence. There was absolutely nobody in that classroom up until yesterday for the simple reason that—as I said—the room had been sealed by an impenetrable force which no one had been able to penetrate, whether by magik or brute force…"
He pointed a finger at me. "Until you showed up."
"But," I swallowed, thinking furiously, "Simon. You saw that class full of students, didn't you?"
"Yes!" Simon affirmed with anxious enthusiasm, but then shrank from Corwin's heated glare.
"Stuff it, Simon. You were the one who stole the book in the first place, so you have just as much, if not more blame in this."
"Hey, she was the one who asked us for help! Her stupid bats dropped the box of books and she was so lame she couldn't get the box to levitate again, so me and Tory and the rest of the boys, we all pitched in to help."
Corwin glared at Simon and then scratched his head in frustration.
"Damn it! First we have a mysterious wave disruptor causing magik to fail all over the Academy. Then we get a magikally-sealed classroom that the best mages in the world cannot open, but all of a sudden, it's just somehow accessed by a girl with a cooking degree, along with her six delinquent goons."
He gave a mirthless laugh. "I don't get it. What's the connection?"
Connor cleared his throat. "Who says there has to be a connection? Why can't it be just some isolated incidents?"
Corwin looked askance at Connor. "When have we ever been that lucky? As a matter of fact, with our track record, I'm waiting for one more shoe to drop. It always comes in threes, doesn't it?"
"What does?" Simon asked.
"Trouble."