Greg and Kassidy Planning a Group Project

The lights are brighter here than my usual place, but I don’t really trust Kass. Not like that. Still, this place is good enough to meet someone in a light level of privacy. I head over to a corner table, and seat ourselves. It’s not warm, nor friendly, but it is quiet. No one listening but the people that are always listening. I slouch there, in my hoodie and jeans, sipping on the beer that I ordered. Gathering my thoughts for the discussion to come.

After a few minutes, Kassidy walks into the place. She heads over to the bar, orders herself a drink, then scans the barely half full room. It takes a moment, because of the intentional placement of these booths, but she does shortly lock eyes with me, nod to acknowledge my existence, then turns right back to the bartender. Probably chatting while she waits for some cocktail. A moment later, she collects what indeed does look like a cocktail, and heads right on over.

“Greg,” she says, “What’s with this place?” She seats herself in the booth across from me.

I shrug. “It’s a race, right?” I reply, “Figured we should have a place out of the way to strategize without our competition listening.”

Kass takes this in, and nods. “Still doesn’t explain the bar thing,” she counters as she takes a drink.

I smirk. “I just know you too well,” I joke.

She looks at me and smirks herself. “I feel like that’s a bit offensive, but also like it would be much more offensive if I wasn’t actively drinking right now,” she jokes right back.

I chuckle, shrugging. “On to brass tacks. The project.”

Kass groans, loudly, and shakes her head. “The worst. We don’t have near enough to work off of.”

I begin. “Well, let’s go through what we do know. We know the size of the box. That can narrow down hiding spots and what is inside.”

“We know the contents will need to be able to be refilled whenever one of the partnerships takes them,” she realizes, thinking about the puzzle.

“Probably not by one of our professors, because they’re busy with research and teaching, but one of the Agents stationed here,” I offer.

“Since it’s a challenge where the timing matters beyond simply the race, Court Magister Yildiz would make sure finding it second wouldn’t be any easier than finding it first, so it would have to be somewhere that one of the agents frequents often enough that they could replace it whenever it goes missing.”

That doesn’t make sense. While they very pointedly don’t keep specific schedules, there’s no telling how many pairs would find the box in the same day, and going to the same place more than once would be suspicious. “No, it’s going to be somewhere more than one frequents. At least two, probably three.”

Kassidy picks up on the logic almost immediately. “So if someone finds it in the morning and another around noontime, they wouldn’t be returning to the same place. Makes sense. Part of the test was subverting magical sensors, so it would likely be somewhere with magical sensors, right?”

“And definitely somewhere they could put the mundane security systems too, sure, but how does that narrow it down?” I ask.

She looks at me, baffled by my confusion. “Beasties, remember?” she explains, “The Magisterium isn’t about to throw our entire class to the beasties, so it’s got to be in a place that has been secured with the Magisterial Wards, which we could detect without doing anything close enough to trip the actual magic sensors, right?”

I nod. She might be wrong, heightening the risk of outside exposure might be exactly what they intend to teach with this project, but he isn’t sure that is the case, and if it isn’t, the wards are a great way to eliminate a lot of possible locales. “So, now we know how to find it. I can shut down sensors, but it tends to be fairly obvious. You have any more subtle options?”

Kass bites her lip, thinking, then pulls it out as she starts to smile. “I have a bad idea,” she says. “I mean, depending on the specific circuit there are some ways, but if there was a second layer of security, we wouldn’t be able to deal with it fast enough. Right?”

“I guess, if it’s so dependent. What’s the bad idea?”

She leans in, takes a sniff, and says, “You’re one of the bloody guys, right? How much death would you need to black out half the city?”

“A lot. That sort of ritual would draw a lot of attention, though. Both from our instructors and from outside entities,” I warn her.

“Not if we time it right, and shunt it through a storm. That downpour on Monday should be wide enough to move the apparent source all the way to the Aegean. Assuming you can keep it not obviously you, we should be fine on both fronts. Now, what would you need to ruin the magical sensors of half the city?”

“A hippopotamus and a snake. Preferably adult, and the snake should be at least a meter long and venomous. If I do this, I’ll be worn. Can you get us in and out without tripping the mundane stuff?”

“I can make it so we don’t exist to non-magical things. Don’t you worry.”

I laugh at that one. “You don’t need anything to pull that off?” I ask.

“I’ll get them on my shopping trip. You should be focused on getting your friends in town to tell you where the Agents all pass through.”

“I hate you,” I joke.

She shakes her head. “No you don’t, I’m much too awesome to hate,” she counters.

“Why did I ever tell you about knowing those people,” I groan out.

She shrugs. “Because you make terrible, dumb decisions when beautiful women and promises are involved?” she posits.

“Calling yourself beautiful, are you?” I ask.

She smiles a wicked, wide grin. “No, I was actually referring to Vlahou. Interesting you immediately thought I was talking about myself, though…”

I sigh. “Because you talking about Vee makes no sense in context,” I counter.

Still grinning, she shakes her head. “And to you, me being beautiful does make sense. Thank you, I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

“Shut up, you have to go buy some weird animals.”

“Buy?” Kass jokes, I think. Then, shaking her head, she adds, “But that can wait until after my drink. Are you sure you can figure out where they frequent by Monday?”

I nod. “Yeah. It will probably be more than one location, though.”

“Then we need to figure out who or what as well,” she says as she drinks.

“Yildiz wouldn’t give the job to either of the Agents that she’s closest to, that would be too easy to guess.”

“Also not Baran. While he’s reliable, when he gets high in the stacks, he struggles to keep anything a secret.”

Which means all the most trustworthy people to the Court Magister are out of the picture. “So, it can’t be anything too important or valuable.”

“No, it needs to be unique or valuable enough that knowing what it is would risk it being scryable, remember. But also there needs to be at least six of them.”

“Five. The last group might not be able to succeed,” I counter.

“The size…What if it’s files of some kind,” She offers.

I shake my head. “You really think she’s trusting secrets to random Agents. Or us, for that matter?”

“Not important files, per se. I was just thinking about the box. There needs to be some way of the Court Magister knowing who turns in the contents from tripped security. Easiest way to do that would be marking it somehow. How do you mark something with a box that big?” She’s leading me to her idea and I understand.

“It could have a message-scramble curse with a trip. Probably with a switch too. Which would mean documents are the obvious choice.” I admit.

“Which means you’re looking for places where the other agents frequent while bringing their bags. That should narrow it down for us.”

“I’ll reach out then.” I start to send vague messages to some people, asking to meet. Kass watches me carefully, but I keep it so that she can’t see the screen. Better that way.

She clearly takes offense to this secrecy, as she begins to ask me personal questions. “So, you and Elodie,” she wonders aloud, “How is that going?”

“How is what going?” I ask, still focused on the messages. We’ve got a job after all. Need to finish this before anyone else. Because we aren’t about to lose this.

She shrugs. “Not to speak out of turn, but we all did notice that you two got really really close last year, were always disappearing at the same time and wheat not. And now, you guys are very clearly not anymore. Now, Faisel is quite dumb in the arts of romance and assumes you two are broken up and whatnot, but I feel like it’s too intentional. Which brings me back to, how is it going?”

I shake my head. “It’s not like that,” I insist. She’s partially right, of course, they are intentionally not hanging out anymore to the world’s eyes. But not because of something so unimportant as romance. We have bigger fish to fry.

She smiles. “Interesting that you deny it. But what part are you denying? The romance? Ah. But then, why else would you be so openly not seeing one another. There is a reason, is there not?” she begins to cold read me. I hate it. “There is, so it must be something juicy.”

“Look, I’m sorry I’m not sharing all my contacts with you, but it’s as much for your own good as it is for mine. And, if we’re honest, theirs. Now please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop trying to pry into shit.”

Kass smiles and shakes her head with a light, breathy sigh. “Well you’re no fun when you’re pouty. Fine, you can keep your secrets.” Then after a pause, she leans in. “Unless you want to tell me sometime. You know, in private,” she jokes.

“If I wanted to tell you my secrets, that’d mean I trusted you. And we both know I can’t do that,” I counter.

“Hey I’m the most- wait, no, that’s Parvaiz. Second most- no that’s Elodie. Thir- nope, forgot about Myrto again. Well, I’m at least in the top ten most trustworthy people in our class, though,” she jokes. Well, half jokes, she does have the order right. She’s probably right there in that next group with Lawan, Eduard, and Faisel.

I shrug. “Probably,” I say, then add, “On the other hand Chris might just fully forget you said your secret.”

Kassidy laughs a bright laugh at that, quickly riffing. “Oh for sure, he’s way up there, like fifth. I had Holger below me, mostly because he fails his face-test real bad.”

Smiling but holding back the chuckle, I nod. “That’s fair, he does kind of look like he’d sell his own children to the highest bidder.”

“Aw, it’s sweet you think he’s ever going to have children,” Kass says.

I shrug before replying, “I mean, he’s rich, don’t they all?”

Kass and I laugh a moment, before she finishes her drink. “Welp,” she says, “Off to find a goddamned hippopotamus somewhere,” she says as she gets up, then adds, “And don’t worry, I told our bartender Spyros, lovely guy, you probably should ask him about his family when you go back up there, that this was a date so you’d be paying for my drink. So have fun with that, babe.” And with that she begins to whisk herself away.

I shake my head. Of course she did. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, anyone asks we both can honestly say we were kind of on a date, and technically not be lying for any sort of mystic detection of such things. But still, springing that on me is rough. I down the rest of my beer, I head back over to the bar to pay. “Hey Spyros,” I say, “Just paying the bill and closing out.”

“That was a fast date, man,” Spyros remarks as he presses some buttons on a tablet behind the bar, “You good?”

“Well, sometimes you just click and sometimes you don’t,” I offer meaninglessly.

He catches my smile. “And which is this?” he asks, sliding over the bill.

I grin as I pull out the cash. “That would be spoiling. How’s your family doing?”