"A what?" Tory asked, but Simon was already in his zone and ignored Tory's questioning look.
"Ooooh!" Simon pursed his lips as he assessed the object. "Sexy. That purple part looks like the bell speaker of a Victrola and appears to be there just to amplify the effect. The actual object is probably located some distance away."
He headed towards the direction of the courtyard, and then turned around and walked back to us. As he walked towards the hills, he began yanking his ears and sticking his fingers into them.
"It's getting stronger as I move towards the hill, and less so as I move away from the hill, towards the outer Courtyard. Ugh! The vibration makes my ears itch."
"Are you saying the--whatever it is that's causing this disruption--is located near the hills?" I asked. "Why would someone put that up there just to mess with my bats?"
"They're not." Simon shook his head. "You just happened to be walking by with bats tuned into the frequencies that this thing is broadcasting. They probably just tuned in when you were passing by.
When the bats hit the waves, they scattered and couldn't figure out what they were suppose to do. Right now, they're confused by all the wave disturbance, so they're sticking close to you."
I looked up at the fluttering bats, swooping about my head and shoulders. Now that I understood what was happening to them, I had to intervene on their behalf.
I reached up and, with a few small nudges, managed to get the bats to cling onto my shoulders, two apiece. My dress was already stained by the chili pepper plant pee and my hand was a bloody mess. A bit of guano from the bats wasn't going to make me look any worse than I already did.
"Hehehe. Look at her. She's not Banana-Nana any more, she's Batty-Nana!" One of the other boys laughed raucously.
"Shut up, Bonehead." Tory growled again. He turned to me, but without meeting my eyes. "Look Nana. We didn't do anything to your bats, but we can help you. Come on you guys." He turned back to the boys.
I raised my eyebrows, not sure how to react to the sudden change in his behavior, but I wasn't about to turn down their help.
The boys all rallied and between the six of them and myself, we managed to gather all the books and divided them amongst ourselves in a fairly even manner. Then, we hauled our loot up the hill to its final destination.
The boys had enough magikal abilities to float the books to the classroom because there was no doubt that they'd all passed Farkworth's Levikinesis class. However, in deference to my lack of ability, they trudged up the hill with me.
Huffing and puffing with the weight of the tomes, they fought the forces of gravity and their own hefty frames.
With that many hands to help, it only took a few minutes for us to deliver the books to the professor and his class full of students.
As we left, I smiled at the gangly group. "Thanks guys. I appreciate your help. I'm really sorry I accused you at first."
"Hey, not a prob, but you owe us one now." Simon grinned.
"Of course," I smiled. "I'll do what I can if you ever need me for anything."
"We'll take you up on that offer very soon. Don't forget it," he said.
The walk back down the hill was much less tortuous, and the lunch bell was starting to toll. I was about to say my goodbyes when Simon grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the side of the building, away from the other boys.
"What--what the--" I protested.
"Shhhh!" he shushed me and yanked me into the recess of the nearest building which happened to house a stone statue of some ancient, obscure mage who stared down at us with his hollow pupil-less eye sockets.
Before I had a chance to ask Simon what he was doing, he had pulled out from within his windbreaker, a thick leather-bound book.
My eyes widened in horror. It was one of the books that had fallen on the ground which was supposed to have been delivered to the Alder Alley classroom.
"What the--Simon! Why'd you steal it?" I choked and sputtered.
"Because it says 'Demons' on the front cover!" He cackled with glee.
I stole a glance, but since I never did that well in ancient mage languages, all I saw was a strange symbol which did not convey anything meaningful to me.
"That's suppose to say Demons?"
Simon shook his head. "Not exactly. It's the symbol for Shadow Beings, which we translate into Demons for lack of a better word. In other parts of the world, these Shadow Beings are known as Djinns---same difference."
I sighed and rubbed my temples.
The Demons class was one which only certain disciplines, Wizards and Necromancers for the most part, were required to take. It was a difficult class and fraught with dangers of the supernatural sort.
At the age of ten when it was time to choose my magikal field of study, Mother had placed me in thaumaturgy, the least precarious magik discipline available. She knew early on that I was never going to have the kind of magikal powers to control the more dangerous of subjects,
Since I was not privy to classes that were reserved for wizards-and-necros-in-training, I had no experience with the subject at all other than a basic rudimentary understanding of what demons were.
"Simon, we have to return it. You can't steal a magik book from the school. They will know it has gone missing and they will come for me!"
"No they won't." Simon waggled his finger at me. "That wave-disruptor is a signal scrambler of sorts. It has mixed up all the numbers on the magik-receipt. Since the box is busted, there's no way for anyone to know how many books were suppose to be in a complete parcel. As far as they are concerned, there are only those that were delivered."
I sighed. Now I understood why they were so willing to help me carry the books up the hill into the classroom. They weren't trying to be nice--the little thieves!
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I want to know what's in the book."
"Then why don't you just take the class when you're a senior?" I suggested hopefully, although I didn't think it would work with a boy like Simon.
"I can't. " Simon grimace. "My major is Alchemy, not Wizardry or Necromancy. This class is never going to be available for me, but I'm dying of curiosity and I want to know what's in this book."
"Your curiosity is what's most likely going to kill you if you aren't careful. Anyway, why are you even bothering me about this? If you really want to know that badly, just read the book."
"I can't."
"Why not? You can't read the text?"
"I can read all the ancient mage languages!" He boasted, but then his face fell. "I just can't open it."
"What?" I took the book from him and examined it more closely.
It was a solid block, twice the size of my hand, and an inch thick in width. It was exquisite in binding, a burnished gold and green leather of superior quality, stamped with the gilded Demon symbol on the front face.
I could see the wisps of the seal's faint but unmistakable aura exuding like a protective green dragon, curling and writhing around the edges of the book with a silent pledge of magikal bonding.
As far as I could tell, there was no physical way to open the covers of the book. It was completely glued together by the magik seal. There was no way, short of destroying the book, to open the covers and expose the contents.
"You can't open it either?" Simon asked.
"Obviously." I sighed. "My major's thaumaturgy. I don't have access to the kind of magik required to open this book--but..." and my eyes lit up, "I know someone who does."
Simon's eyes lit up. "Here, take the book." he shoved the tome into my bag, and then held out his fist with his pinky sticking out.
"Huh?" I stared at his hand, not sure what to do.
"This is important, Nana. We have to do a pinky swear," he said in a surreptitious manner, his blue eyes serious and full of angst. "You have to promise to keep the book a secret, except of course, to the person who might be able to help us open the book, and you have to promise me that you'll call me if you find out anything."
Feeling a bit foolish, I stuck out my pinky and he glommed onto my finger with his own, shaking it up and down. "Okay, now we thumb stamp to seal the deal." He extended his thumb and waited for me to do the same.
"Simon, this is so stupid. Can't I just say I'm gonna do it, and you just accept it?"
Simon's eyes grew angry. "No. We have to do it in an official manner or you may renege on your promise."
"Okay, fine." I stuck my thumb out and we finalized our agreement with me pressing my thumb onto his for the final all-too-important thumb seal.
"One more thing we need to do," Simon said as he pulled out his mobile phone. "We need to share numbers."
I sighed and pulled mine out from its little pocket in my messenger bag.
He held out his phone. "Ready?"
"Yeah." And we tapped our phones together. His number registered on my screen immediately and took the first speed dial spot, one which I had been saving all this time for that mysterious, yet-to-be-acquired boyfriend.
I stared at it with disgust.
I only had two numbers stored in the phone's speed-dial memory, all of them family, and none of them in the first slot. I had been saving that spot for a potential boyfriend. Instead, it had been stolen by a little blonde fourteen-year-old book thief who had somehow pinky-locked and thumb-stamped me into doing something questionable for him.
I sighed. Who was I kidding? A real boyfriend was not going to be something that would happened any time soon in my life, not while I was out running random Academy errands and helping young teenage brats doing loosely moral things.
"Don't forget to call me! I don't care what time of day or night." Simon held out his thumb and pinky in that ubiquitous pinky-swear signal and then took off running down the hill to rejoin his group.