Modern Magick

Toil and Trouble: 14

Zareen lunged for her tab again, and then wandered off to feverishly scan her bookshelves. 'There's something about skeletons,' she muttered. 'I once read about a spate of grave-robbings — fifty years or so ago now — that puzzled everyone at the time for the same reasons you've just come up with. The graves that were targeted were all the resting places of magickers, and all ancient. None of the disinterred were under three hundred years dead. What would anybody want with a crop of crumbling old bones, as you put it? I don't remember now if that mystery was ever solved, but, there was another case in the late Victorian era where someone went so far as to advertise. Advertise! Some chap was paying well for the bones of magickers, with a fat bonus offered for a complete skeleton. He was shut down pretty quickly, and no record remains as to what he wanted to do with the bones.' Zareen wandered from shelf to shelf as she spoke, occasionally tapping at her tab. I realised I had entirely lost her attention, and stood up.

'Let me know what you dig up,' I said.

Zareen grinned, not too lost in thought to appreciate my execrable pun. 'Will do.'

My phone buzzed as I stepped out into the corridor. Jay calling.

'Can I borrow Bill?' I said without preamble.

A slight pause. 'By "borrow", do you secretly mean "elope with to the border"?'

'No.'

'Then yes. But quickly, we're leaving for Lavenham any minute.'

'We are? What for?'

'Drogryre's grave.'

'You found something!'

'Not as such. It occurred to Milady that Amelia will notice her notebook missing as soon as she wakes up — which probably happened about an hour and a half ago — and she and her esteemed colleagues will probably speed up the timetable on whatever they are doing accordingly. Ergo, she would like us on the scene.'

'Genius.' Why bother figuring out the site of the grave ourselves, if we could just let them do it and then follow? 'Provided we can find them, of course.'

'I put my tracker on Mercer.'

'You... you did? When?'

'In the middle of that fist-fight you were so eager to break up.'

Ah.

To hide my embarrassment, I hastily told Jay about Zareen's theory. 'Great,' he said. 'She can do that, you and I are going to go do this.'

'Yes, sir.'

He hung up.

It had not occurred to him to mention where he was, or anything useful like that. Nor had it occurred to me to ask. So, I merely checked that I still had my Sunstone Wand within reach, and headed off to the Waypoint in the cellar.

Though I did pop back into Zareen's room first.

'Zar, we're going grave-hunting.'

She was up out of her chair like a shot. 'Don't you dare go without me!'

'Wouldn't dream of it.' I grinned.

She tried to take all seven of her books along, then regretfully bowed to practicality and set four of them back. Then another one.

'Corpse-hunting now, reading later,' I told her.

The last two went back onto the desk with a thump. 'There's vital information somewhere in there.'

'They will wait for you. Boots! Phone! Quickly!'

Zareen scurried about in a brief frenzy, and within moments we were both on our way downstairs.