Ghost's Stories, part seven

He wasn't there when it happened; of course he wasn't. That had been the whole point of the elaborate preparations he'd been making. He needed to be unmistakably somewhere else when it happened, and Elyssa needed to be genuinely, honestly surprised when a vengeful ghost intervened to prevent Julius Thornblade from assaulting her.

Even so, he didn't think he did a terribly good job of looking surprised when a pair of unfamiliar older magi showed up at his door the following evening. "Christopher Black?" asked the taller one. 

He nodded, studying them. The one who'd spoken had dark brown hair, an aggressively square face, and wore a suit jacket over jeans and a button-down shirt; he looked like a cop. They both did. The shorter -- and probably somewhat younger -- one wore a black leather jacket and black cargo pants, but had set them off by actually wearing a tie. He was slim, blond, and handsome, with a narrow face and high cheekbones. "Agent Caldwell and Agent Spencer," said the shorter one, gesturing to himself and then his partner. "We have to ask you to come with us." 

Chris sighed. "All right. As I am? Or do you mind standing in the doorway while I put shoes on?"

"Shoes are fine," asked the taller one. 

Chris motioned them into the sitting room, and walked over to where he'd taken his shoes off beside the couch; his socks were still there too, so he pulled them back on and then straightened. "Am I in trouble?" he asked, because that seemed like the sort of thing that anybody would ask under the circumstances. 

The two men exchanged a glance. "We're not sure yet," said Agent Spencer. "Right now we just need to ask you a few questions."

Chris glanced down at his shoes and then up at the two magi. "All right... well... lead the way."

They escorted him out of his room and out of the small apartment building that housed the ROs who were still being trained and evaluated by the Ministry. Caldwell led the way and Spencer followed behind, presumably to make sure that he wouldn't try to escape. A few people glanced at them curiously, Grundus among them -- how did the older wolf manage to be anywhere there was drama to be found? -- but Chris kept his face blank and his walk casual; he knew he smelled of anxiety, but so would anyone in his position. 

They brought him into the offices, and down a long hallway to an unmarked wooden door. Caldwell leaned forward and knocked. 

"Who is it?" 

"Caldwell and Spencer. We have the wolf Christopher Black with us."

There was a brief pause, and a very faint shuffling of papers. "Bring him in." 

The room was a small office with a large desk, with a comfortable chair behind it and a much less comfortable chair in front. Chris stood waiting until the man behind the desk looked up at him and said, "Take a seat." Then he stepped forward and sat down. Spencer and Caldwell took places in the corners of the room behind him. 

The man behind the desk was silver-haired and portly, but his light blue eyes were still sharp. He lowered his brows as he studied Chris. "Do I know you?"

"Yes, Magus Frummelt. You interviewed me when I first applied to be a Registered Outsider."

Frummelt looked down at a sheet of paper in front of him, frowned, and set it aside and opened a folder instead. "Christopher Black. Yes, I remember: you arrived in the wake of the Pettibone Disaster."

Chris nodded. "Sir... may I ask what this is about?"

"Not yet," said Frummelt, paging through the contents of the folder. "You've been with us... what? Eight months?" 

Chris nodded. "Nearly nine now, I think." 

"And your partner is Antoinette Gillespie... Ah, yes, the incident in Charleston; Captain Dalmorden was extremely relieved that you both survived. Nobody expected you to stumble into a full nest of nightwalkers there. And then that bit with the missing jogger..." He looked up at Chris, meeting his eyes with the kindly expression of a sympathetic uncle. "You've distinguished yourself surprisingly well for someone who's been with the ministry for less than a year, though there's some debate as to whether your actions have been courageous or foolhardy."

Chris nodded but didn't answer; he was waiting for whatever came next. Frummelt had prepared for this interview; his ramblings weren't anywhere near as casual as they were meant to seem. His scent was focused, not unlike that of a wolf on the hunt.  

"How have you found the Compound?" he asked. "Your last evaluation suggested that you hadn't made many friends, but the people who'd worked with you directly seemed to like you."

"Sir?" Chris made himself sound puzzled. "Are you asking about my social life? In an official capacity?"

Frummelt sighed, as if he were reluctant. "Unfortunately, I am." 

"What do you want to know?" 

The older magus regarded him for a moment, then said: "Elyssa Tannhauser claims that you're her boyfriend." 

"True," said Chris. They bought that much, at least. "I am." For as long as she needs me to be.

"Would you say she's trustworthy?" 

Chris frowned. "Yes, absolutely. Why?"

"I can't tell you that yet. Do you know her partner?"

"Julius Thornblade. He introduced himself at lunch yesterday. He seemed a bit upset that Elyssa and I were an item."

"And that's all you know of him?" 

Chris shrugged. "Rumors, gossip. But he's a Thornblade, he's going to attract a lot of that."

Frummelt paused for a long moment, studying him. "What kind of rumors and gossip?"

"He's adept at shaping the Grey. He's high-handed and tends to order his partners around." Chris hesitated, then added: "Things happen to his partners sometimes." He didn't know that, but he doubted that Clarissa was the first person he had hurt. 

"What kind of things?"

"They get hurt more than they should. I think one was supposed to have vanished entirely."

"Who told you that his partner disappeared?" asked Frummelt, his voice suddenly sharp. 

"I don't know, I try to stay away from most gossip." Chris looked dismayed. "Has something happened to Elyssa?"

Frummelt sighed. "Elyssa's fine." He hesitated, then added: "Julius Thornblade, however, was torn apart."

Chris opened his mouth, then closed it again and tried to look thoughtful. "Here," he said after a moment. "In the Compound."

Frummelt nodded, looking serious. 

Chris tilted his head and asked cautiously, "By Elyssa?"

"Maybe," Frummelt, for his part, sounded dubious. 

"Then it was self-defense," he said, sitting back. The chair in front of the desk wasn't as nice as the one Frummelt was sitting in, but it wasn't uncomfortable either. 

Behind him, Agent Spencer grunted. 

"Oh," said Chris. "That's the problem, isn't it? He's a Thornblade. Whoever killed him can't have done it in self-defense. The world isn't allowed to be that way."

Magus Frummelt huffed. "You, my boy, are entirely too sharp for your own good." He leaned forward, studying Chris' face with an intensity that Chris really didn't like. "You're quite right. The Thornblade family has traditionally been a strong supporter of the Ministry's required training program, and the inclusion of Registered Outsiders such as yourself. An incident like this could put that relationship in jeopardy. But it's more complicated than than a case of self-defense: Elyssa says that she was standing helpless, trapped by magic while Julius Thornblade was torn apart by some sort of ghost or spirit."

Chris nodded slowly. His plan had been to say as little as possible, but Magus Frummelt wasn't going to be satisfied with incomplete answers. Changing plans completely, he went still for a moment. Then he said, "That seems possible."

"What do you know about it, kid?" asked Agent Caldwell. 

"It's kind of how we met," Chris said, twisting to look back at the older magus. Everybody in the room was at least twice his age, and he didn't like that; it meant he didn't know what all they might pick up on without him realizing, or what they might know about magic that he didn't. "Elyssa and I, I mean. It was how we got to be an item. I was in the gym late at night, and she burst in from the stairwell saying that something had tried to grab her in the pool, something she couldn't see. She wasn't making it up, either; she was really scared."

"Go on." 

Chris made traced his hands uncertainly in the air. "I went back late the next night and looked around the pool. It felt like someone was there, but I couldn't see anybody -- or smell anybody. We didn't check again last night -- we were too tired. And then today..." He sat back, considering the timeline as he turned to face Magus Frummelt again. "So maybe there was a ghost by the pool, and it... kind of latched onto Elyssa because Julius was her partner?"

Frummelt glanced at Spencer, who shrugged. "Spirits and Ghosts don't usually last long in the Mundus unless they're near a passage, but..." he shrugged. "I mean, we are, so maybe. The residue from practicing magic might be enough to let it fully manifest. And the girl didn't have a drop of blood on her."

"Can anybody verify any of this?" asked Agent Caldwell. 

Chris decided that the question was probably directed at him. "Grundus was there when Elyssa burst into the workout room. He could verify that much."

"Magus Gillespie?" asked Frummelt pointedly. 

Chris shook his head. "She doesn't know about any of it. Not even Elyssa and me."

"There was ghost in the pool and none of you reported it?" asked Frummelt, sounding disgusted. 

"No, sir," said Chris, chastened. "In my defense, though... I believed Elyssa when she said something tried to grab her in the pool, I just didn't immediately think it was a ghost. It could just as easily have been a magical prank, and... well, for the next night... I know what I felt down there, but nothing actually happened. I had to allow for the possibility that I was just spooking myself." He swallowed. "I might have gotten very, very lucky."

"Indeed you might," Magus Frummelt affirmed. He leaned back in his chair. "Spencer, Caldwell, I think we've heard everything we need to, here. Follow up with this Grundus fellow, and see if anybody else has felt like they were being watched while alone in the pool. I'll talk to you both in the morning." 

The two Ministry agents nodded, then sauntered out the door, leaving Chris alone with Magus Frummelt, and vice versa. 

Frummelt leaned forward and pressed something on his desk, which clicked loudly. "There," he said. "The interview is no longer being recorded." 

"Sir?"

"I know that you have been out in the Grey recently," the magus said quietly, "and I know that some of our ROs can charge themselves with it, and use that residual Grey to do things that would otherwise be impossible here in the Mundus -- shapechanging, for example. However, I also know that you were at the shooting range when Thornblade was killed. This puts me in a difficult position."

"Because you don't have anyone to blame?" Chris asked, remembering at the last possible moment to moderate his tone so that it came across as curious rather than accusatory. 

"Nobody but a vengeful ghost, it seems." Frummelt shook his head.

"Sir?" Chris asked tentatively. "It seems like a Truthspeaker could clear this up pretty easily."

Frummelt looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. "Possibly. Do you have any idea how rare that particular talent is, though? There are maybe a dozen magi on the entire planet who bear that curse."

"...Apparently I don't, sir." 

"I could bring one in," magus Frummelt told him. "She could get to the truth of what happened. And then we'd be stuck with whatever she found, now matter who it might anger or what they might do to retaliate -- and I use that word advisedly."

Chris swallowed. He hadn't expected magus Frummelt to take his suggestion -- in fact, he wanted nothing less -- but this cold-blooded explanation of why less truth was more desirable chilled him. "I understand... I think."

Frummelt nodded. "No... Unless we discover something very different, Magus Thornblade will have learned that his new partner was being haunted, and he will have bravely decided to face off with the ghost. He will have banished it in a battle of magics, but died of his wounds afterwards." He sighed. "I hate to do it that way, but it means that I don't have to tell Ambrosius Thornblade that his favored firstborn son was a rapist and possibly a murderer, and I don't have to admit that the Ministry failed to acknowledge that and immediately assigned him another young woman for his next partner, and..."

"Sir?" Why are you telling me this? Chris was worried now, partly that magus Frummelt was trying to entrap him somehow, and partly that the older man actually was confessing to him. 

Frummelt nodded and straightened. "Regardless, assuming that both you and Elyssa weren't just taking another opportunity to murder helpless magi -- and I guarantee that somebody is going to come up with that accusation, given your shared presence at Pettibone -- we'll need to do something with you that keeps you both out of the way until this settles down. Would you have any objection to venturing out into the Grey again? Deliberately, I mean, on Ministry business?" 

He considered that for less than a heartbeat. "No, Sir."

"Very good. Off you go, then."

Chris offered a slight bow, then turned and left the office.