Thaumatology 101 Page 3

  ‘Oh!’ Ceri enthused, looking inside. ‘I haven’t seen one like that in ages.’

  Within the box were two copper needles mounted against sprung counterbalances. Set to start in the middle of the box and swing outward, the needles twitched off their mounts as Looper removed the lid, and settled to a balanced position about a tenth of the way along their tracks. From this angle Ceri could not read the scales, which were just numerals etched into the copper gauges. ‘I’ve had this a long time,’ Looper said. ‘It comes in useful now and again. You fused two very expensive digital thaumometers before I got this out of my office.’

  Ceri looked at him, not quite believing what she was hearing. ‘Doctor… what was my field strength?’

  ‘Your Doctor Tennant acted very promptly,’ the old man said, avoiding the question. ‘She called in an emergency team and evacuated the room once she’d made it safe. They had to work in two teams to get you into an isolation suit to bring you here and…’

  ‘Doctor?’ Ceri said calmly, though she could feel her stomach starting to twist.

  ‘We had to use the Life Mirror amulet to monitor you because the normal electronic systems were just burning out,’ he rambled, closing up his thaumometer box.

  ‘Doctor,’ Ceri said, ‘I grew up with magic. I can’t do it, but I understand magical theory and thaumatology as well as my parents did. I want to know what I was reading. Please?’

  ‘We’re not exactly sure,’ he admitted. ‘My meter caps out at twenty thaums and it hit the stops. The techs say the heavy duty meter they tried took at least fifty thaums before it blew.’ He smiled weakly. ‘You’re down at about two now. It dropped off fast, but the decay rate has been tailing off. We’re not absolutely sure when you’ll be down to a background level.’

  Ceri’s mouth was dry again; she was glad when Lily returned with a mug of coffee. ‘Got this from the nurses’ ready room,’ she said. ‘The stuff from the machine would make you sicker.’ Ceri gulped down a mouthful.

  ‘Miss Carpenter mentioned your protective enchantment,’ Looper said. ‘It seems you have that to thank for your survival.’

  ‘My parents were very good enchanters,’ Ceri said, feeling sick. Over fifty thaums? That was insane! No one could survive that, well, except a demon.

  ‘David and Marion Brent, yes?’ the Doctor asked. Ceri nodded. ‘I remember hearing about the accident. I’m sorry. It was a considerable loss to the magical community. I have to say I was surprised to hear that you were… not a magician.’

  ‘Most people are,’ Ceri replied. ‘I’m, uh, kind of tired. I’d like to rest.’

  Looper nodded. ‘I’ll come back later to check you over,’ he said. ‘I think I’d like to keep you in overnight, but assuming no complications develop, you’re safe enough to allow home tomorrow, I think.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Ceri said as he turned and ambled toward the door.

  Over fifty thaums? “Safe to let out” was right; at that level she had been an environmental hazard.

  ~~~

  The door to the room opened and a head poked in. ‘May I enter?’ The voice was immediately recognisable to Ceri and she propped herself up to look at Doctor Tennant.

  ‘It’s okay, Doc,’ Lily said from her chair, which had been moved closer to the bed. ‘She’s barely glowing now.’

  Tennant stepped through and approached the bed. Her stride was a little less confident than Ceri was used to. ‘Miss Carpenter,’ she said, nodding to Lily. ‘Miss Brent, good afternoon. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine,’ Ceri said. She did. Aside from the mild shock anyway. ‘Did it work?’

  Lily giggled and Tennant’s look of mild worry cracked into a smile. ‘Despite the containment failure, which we are looking into, we got good readings. We have a lot of data to analyse, but I think we have evidence of T-Null bosons within the circle.’

  ‘Yes!’ Ceri exulted.

  ‘At least you didn’t get fried for nothing,’ Lily said, still grinning.

  ‘Hmm, yes,’ Tennant mused. ‘I should very much like to examine those tattoos of yours when your burns have healed. Truly amazing enchantment to have protected you like that.’

  Ceri lifted her bandaged forearms, looking at them. ‘One of the hospital witches coated them in gunk while I was out,’ she said. ‘I’m to keep the bandages on for another week.’

  ‘Did they always release so much heat when working?’ Tennant asked. Lily supressed another giggle as she watched the two thaumatologists fall into a pattern of enquiry about second degree burns.

  Ceri ignored her, or did not notice. ‘Nothing like this,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never been hit with anything like that before. When Lily uses her aura, or there’s magic near, they tingle. They sting a bit if it’s more of an attack. The lab makes them itch.’ She flexed her fingers. ‘Considering I’m still a bit hot, I’m surprised they aren’t burning now.’

  ‘The nurse said there was a pain relief mixture in the paste they put on,’ Lily said. ‘A numbing agent, she said. Otherwise you’d be feeling the burns.’

  Ceri shrugged. ‘I guess that explains it,’ she said. ‘Shame it doesn’t reach my hand.’ The nurse had removed her drip earlier when Looper had given her a physical check-up. She had passed with flying colours, but the back of her hand was still sore from the large-bore needle being stuck in it for days. She looked up at Tennant. ‘They’re letting me out tomorrow,’ she said. ‘When can I get back to work?’

  The researcher laughed and Lily swatted at Ceri’s leg under the covers. ‘I think they’ll want you to rest for a while longer,’ Tennant said. ‘Don’t worry, there’s lots of data, we’ll be working on it for weeks yet.’ Her hand hesitated slightly before patting at Ceri’s thigh, a rather familiar gesture she was obviously not sure about making. ‘You did well, dear,’ she said. ‘You cracked our problem and gave us a chance when I was starting to think we were getting nowhere. You sit back on your laurels and get well.’

  Kennington, September 3rd

  ‘You live here?’ the driver said as he pulled the ambulance car up outside High Towers. ‘This is like… the Addams Family’s house!’

  Ceri giggled. ‘It’s mostly just illusion,’ she said. ‘My mother was a witch and she liked the idea of living in a haunted house. The inside looks like any other home.’ Which was something of a lie; most houses did not have a second kitchen for brewing potions, a huge library, and a lab and two summoning rooms in the cellar.

  ‘Right,’ the driver said. ‘Well, good luck with your recovery.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ceri said, climbing out and closing the door behind her.

  As the car drove off she looked up at her home. From the outside it did look like a haunted house. The broken, dirty window panes and cobwebs were pure illusion, enchanted in by carefully placed runes. The architecture, three floors, with a tower climbing up over a large portico, was strictly out of a horror movie. The railings around the flat roof even had bats in the design.

  The house stood in a fairly large plot of land near to Kennington Park. Her parents had been well off, very well off, their money coming from providing services as enchanters to various corporations and celebrities. They had bought the land and had the entire house constructed to their specification not long after Ceri had been born. She had grown up in the place. Her birthday parties had always been the best; having your birthday on All Hallows’ Eve and living in a haunted house was considered pretty cool.

  She pushed open the gate and walked into the front garden. Almost immediately one of the two big front doors opened and Lily came running down the gravel path toward her. It was incredibly early for the half-succubus to be up, but Ceri was really happy to see her. She guessed Twill had sensed her entering the property. While it was not technically the fairy’s land, she had sort of adopted it and could always tell when someone entered her territory.

  ‘Come on’ Lily said, lifting Ceri off the ground in a hug. ‘You are to sit in one of the big chairs in the loung
e and not move a muscle. Twill’s been worried sick about you. She’s been cleaning all the time you were in hospital.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘I think she’s polished the dust,’ Lily said, giggling.

  Twill came barrelling down the stairs as soon as Ceri was through the inner doors, a ball of light which resolved into a beaming, nut-brown fairy talking too fast to make any sense of. Ceri had rarely seen her so excited in the three years since she had arrived in the house, uninvited and initially hidden in the attic.

  As the manic buzzing slowed, Ceri began to make out a few words. ‘…lounge is clean and tidy… bathroom… fire set if you’re cold… really must rest as much… very worried…’

  ‘Okay, Twill, okay!’ Ceri half-yelled, half-giggled. ‘I get it, you were worried and you’re glad I’m back. Okay. Slow down. You know you’re hard to understand when you get excited.’

  Lily’s hand pushed slightly, steering Ceri up the stairs and to the left. The ground floor was where they spent a lot of their time in the house; it had both kitchens and the utility room, and, aside from the hall which featured a lot of dark wood panelling, the rooms were bright and friendly. However, the main living rooms of the house were actually on the upper floors. The lounge occupied the south-facing side of the house, so that it got more sun. It needed it; the entire middle floor had more of the dark wood which sometimes seemed to absorb the light. It had a large fireplace which Twill had set up with logs to burn if Ceri wanted, and two big leather chairs which faced it. It was, actually, not a room Ceri really liked, but as she was directed into a chair and a blanket tucked in around her, and a bundle of daily papers was handed over as well as The Wednesday Witch and the new copy of Thaumatology Monthly, she was pretty much forced to sit still and be mothered there.

  It took a little less than two hours of Lily and Twill constantly asking if she wanted anything, whether she was warm enough, was she sure she did not want a nap, before Ceri exploded and shooed them out of the room so she could read in peace.

  The accident had made the newspaper, if only on page five. The report said that there had been a “release of magical energy during an experiment to detect fundamental magical particles.” It mentioned her and Doctor Tennant by name, but Shane was “another research assistant.” Ceri giggled slightly at that; Shane would be hating it. Tennant was fairly well known as a theoretical thaumatologist in contention with the team at Cambridge. The press liked an underdog and it was well known that she was working with less resources and doing fairly well.

  The article mentioned that Ceri was the daughter of David and Marion Brent, noted practitioners who had provided enchantments and other services to various celebrities. Whenever they came up in the news, the story mentioned their deaths in a car accident six years earlier. Ceri’s mood darkened and suddenly the lounge with its memories was not such a great place to be. Picking up one of the magazines she kicked the blanket off her legs and headed upstairs. She wanted to be in the sun.

  There were, in fact, three loungers on the roof. They had put a third one up there for the rare occasions that Twill went up to enjoy the sunshine. Today was one of those days, which meant that Ceri had two girls scolding her for emerging from the lounge. ‘I didn’t want to stay in there,’ she said, closing the hatch and walking over to the remaining lounger. ‘Besides, the sun will do me good. I’m just going to lie here and relax, okay?’

  Twill fumed in the middle of the human-sized lounger. It was a funny sight, in a way. ‘You better rest! And you’ll be taking a nap later. We changed your sheets and everything.’ Ceri tried very hard not to smirk; the fairy could get a little vindictive if she was not taken seriously.

  ‘She’ll rest, Twill,’ Lily said, lying back and stretching. It was still fairly hot for so late in the summer and Lily was exposing all her skin to the sun, as usual. Ceri watched the languid stretch, swallowed, and opened her magazine.

  She had brought The Wednesday Witch, a weekly trade magazine which her mother had subscribed to and she had never got around to cancelling. Her mother had taken it for the adverts, mainly. The back half of the thing was full of large and small panels for reagent shops, herbs, witches offering charms and potions, and a few enchanters and wizards for hire. At the front were the articles, usually about the best moon phases to plant and pick your herbs, or in-depth coverage of the latest recipes for love potions. There was a gossip column covering celebrity witches and who they were currently dating, which always made Ceri giggle, and each issue had a free potion recipe or instructions for a charm, talisman, or amulet. Aunt Agatha’s advice column was terribly popular, topped with a picture of an aged witch smiling sweetly. Ceri had met the real Agatha once. She had turned out to be a twenty-something woman with a sour expression and a degree in psychology.

  ‘Dorian Watts is dating Philipa Claremont,’ Ceri commented into the silence which had descended. She put the magazine down and pulled her T-shirt off. It was hotter than she had thought it was.

  ‘That won’t last,’ Lily said without opening her eyes, ‘he’s gayer than… um… something really gay. Help me here?’

  Ceri giggled. ‘Huh, Suzie Shore was seen at a midnight orgy last full moon.’

  ‘Isn’t she a parson’s daughter?’ Lily looked around at Ceri and blinked. ‘You’re topless.’

  ‘Huh? I was hot. When did you get prudish?’ Ceri continued reading about the bacchanal the young witch had apparently taken part in. Even though the events had been kind of sensationalised, she got the impression that the party had been less an orgy and more a “bit of riotous behaviour and few people having sex in the spare room.”

  ‘Ceri,’ Lily said, ‘I’ve never seen you topless!’

  ‘Of course you have,’ Ceri said, laughing.

  ‘Outdoors?’

  Her wings shimmering, Twill floated over to hover beside Ceri. ‘She’s right,’ the fairy said, ‘you’re usually more… shy.’

  Ceri looked between the half-demon, naked on the longer, and the fairy, who only dressed when they had company. She felt her cheeks redden. ‘I…’ she said, faltering, ‘I was hot. First time for everything?’

  Twill floated forward and rested a tiny hand on Ceri’s forehead. Ceri went cross-eyed trying to focus on her. ‘You are hot,’ Twill said, ‘and I don’t mean that in the colloquial or thermal senses.’ She backed away again, looking stern, and hovered with her arms crossed.

  Lily’s voice had a concerned tone. ‘You should be careful, hun. I don’t think anyone’s ever survived what you have before. We don’t know how it’ll affect you.’

  ‘Look, both of you,’ Ceri said keeping her voice level despite the irritation she was feeling, ‘I feel fine. I feel better than fine. I feel like… like someone opened a window and let the air in.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s a little odd?’ Lily asked. ‘Y’know, considering you should probably be dead, or a frog?’

  ‘No,’ Ceri replied emphatically. ‘Maybe it’s just that I feel lucky I am alive… and not a frog. Besides, undirected thaumic energy has a miniscule chance of invoking a frog transformation.’ She giggled. ‘Orang-utans or chimps are far more likely.’

  Lily laughed and even Twill made a sound like wind-chimes, which was her way of laughing, before buzzing back to her lounger and settling back down. ‘All right,’ Lily said, closing her eyes once more, ‘but do me a favour and get your dad’s old thaumometer out when we go down. Just to set our minds at ease, yes?’

  Ceri picked her magazine up again. ‘Okay, sure, if it makes you feel better.’

  There was a few seconds of silence before Lily added, ‘And you’re wrong, Twill.’

  ‘I am? What about?’

  ‘She is hot in the colloquial sense.’

  Ceri covered her embarrassment by burying her nose in her magazine as the sound of wind chimes filled the air.

  ~~~

  Her father had, in fact, six thaumometers, all in beautiful, inlaid boxes made of rosewood, and all kept
in a special cabinet in the basement which insulated them from magic fields to help keep them accurate. The largest could read field strengths up to a hundred thaums and her father had almost never used it. Ceri took out a box with red dragons inlaid into the lid, closed the cabinet, and took it over to a small table at one side of the room.

  Lily and Twill watched from a distance as she undid the catches and lifted off the lid. The needles twitched and then jumped up to a little less than half-way along the scales. Lily gasped. ‘The Doctor said you were getting cooler!’ she exclaimed.

  Ceri giggled. ‘I am. This is way more sensitive than the one he was using. It caps out at a thaum. I’m reading… point oh-four-three.’ The other girls let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘Okay,’ Lily said. ‘Y’see? I told you it’d make us feel better.’

  Ceri put the lid back and took the box to the cabinet. ‘And me, if I’m honest,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here. This room always makes my skin crawl.’

  It had been her father’s summoning room. In the centre of it was a ten foot wide slab of granite, two feet thick and sunk eighteen inches into the floor of the room. Carved into the black stone, the colour chosen so that salt would show well on it, was a perfect demonic summoning circle. Magic could pass into a summoning circle, but it was impossible for anything much to get out. Lily had told her once that she did not like even treading on the granite; it was like she could feel the demons that had been summoned there.

  Not that there had been that many, Ceri thought to herself as she headed out to the stairs up. Both of her parents had majored in enchanting, her father’s wizardry and her mother’s witchcraft had been more like hobbies. Still, as with everything her family did, from magic to madness, they had done well at their hobbies. Her father’s demonology had been used, primarily, for information; demons had been working with magic for millennia longer than humans had and some of their most potent enchantments had been learned from demonic sources.