Therese's Winter Break Investigation

It’s nine at night back at my Villa. And at Maestro Leyten’s. Things are happening that I am almost certainly missing. I am not a fan of missing things. But, this is far more important. He won’t let anything slip unless he’s unsettled. That’s, in theory, a part of his training these last two years. The best way to unsettle him is to be in person. Unfortunately, he lives in a warded dorm, which means I do not get to bring anything with me. Backdooring a vacancy in the wards to myself is draining enough, but overwriting the technologic filters would have deathly consequences. And would likely be a big enough change that all these spies in the building might notice. So instead, for the last half hour, I’ve been seated in the corner that isn’t covered by the three mystical scrying sensors that were put in recently. He should be waking up any moment now.

He begins to stir, so I put a finger to my lips, hoping to delay his loud exclamations long enough for him to do the logical. He sees me, his eyes widen, and he mutters, “What the f-” before cutting himself off. I gesture towards the sensors with my hand that isn’t doing the universal sign of ‘keep quiet’. He understands me. Cutting his palm and tracing the blood with his opposite hand, he lets out a pulse that should, in theory, blind the sensors for a time. Assuming they aren’t being actively used, likely thirty four minutes. Less if they are.

As the pulse hangs over the sensors, I give him a polite nod. “Court Magister Gilcrest,” I begin, staying polite.

Gregory is clearly unhappy about my sudden appearance. “The fuck are you doing here, Therese,” he mutters at me.

“I came to visit you, Gregory,” I say with the minimum amount of menace I can muster. “And on Saturday Mornings, this calendar year you have been in this room rather than your own forty three of those weeks.”

“I hate you,” he mutters as he sits up in the bed and starts getting dressed in his clothes from the prior night, strewn about the ground. “Doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well, I have a bit of an issue. See, you have been gathering a lot of information. And yet, as far as I can tell, you have not looked into it any. I know this to be false, which leads to you intentionally hiding this investigation of yours from me. Or from everyone. Meaning you’re investigating the Magisterium, as you wouldn’t be foolish enough to investigate me,” I slowly explain. I’m on the right track. He has admittedly gotten much better at hiding his reactions, but most of this is just common sense. “Given a discussion a pale friend of mine had with you once, I reckon I know what else your investigation might be about, loosely. But I would appreciate some specifics.”

“And why would I give you any?” Gregory shoots back, before giving a very pointed, “Magister Scott.” He is reminding me that our roles mean he is my superior, technically. Mostly, he is making fun of me, or at least trying to.

“Well, that is simple,” I respond, letting my voice chill with each word, “We have history, so I come to you with a pleasant face and ask politely.” I let the implication hang. I know he has a partner in this, either Court Magister Al-Alami or Court Magister D’Enclos, given how he’s moved since arriving in town.

“You wouldn’t dare piss me off by going after her,” he spits out. Her. So it’s Miss D’Enclos. Good to know. Surveillance on her is harder, she has many other eyes on her as well. Magisterial eyes, meaning someone suspects her of something nefarious. But not Gregory. I’ll need to do a deeper dive once I’m out of this warded apartment building.

Beside him, this outburst begins to stir his evening companion from her rest. I reply, “Honestly, I likely wouldn’t. She has far too many other eyes on her, It would be exhausting. No, much easier to use some of those other eyes to figure it out.” Something about what I said scares him. Interesting. He has some idea of at least one of the eyes, and it is someone as frightening to him as I am. I will definitely need to deep dive into this Elodie D’Enclos.

“What,” Kassidy Connell begins, then sees me. “Who is this beautiful young woman sitting creepily in the corner of my room, Greg?”

I cock my head at her. Greg answers her question with his usual brevity. “The devil.” His joke does manage to bring a hint of a smile to my face, before I smother it.

“Court Magister Connell, it is lovely to meet you,” I greet her, “But I think it might be best for all involved if you were to partake of a shower now, and let Gregory and I finish our conversation.”

Her face grows grim as she sits up, unlike Gregory not bothering to dress herself. “Or what?” she asks.

“Or you’ll hear the end of our conversation,” I answer earnestly, “Some information, it is best not to know until you are supposed to know it.”

Gregory laughs. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he says. I cut off his laughter with a cold stare.

Miss Connell, noting my ability to silence her normally unshakeable friend and sleeping buddy, almost immediately understands the gravity of the situation. “I see,” she says, nodding and standing up, “It was interesting meeting you, miss devil-lady.”

I give her a polite nod as she passes to the bathroom. “And me you, Miss Connell.”

“You’ve seen me naked, you can call me Kass,” she jokes, heading inside. The look in her eyes isn’t concern, or fear, or anger like most people. It’s interest, which is a bit disturbing. An interest in the unsettling and mysterious would explain her interest in Gregory, though.

As I wait for the shower to begin to run, I turn to Gregory. “Your girlfriend certainly has strange tastes,” I try to make a joke.

It does not lighten the mood. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he insists, in a way that tells me I’m not the first to make such a statement in his recent memory.

The shower begins to run. I can hear her still waiting by the door, listening and breathing at the unnatural rhythm one gets when they’re trying to hold their breath and be quiet. She didn’t understand the lesson, she is merely smart enough to try to stay unnoticed. So I must remain vague. Gregory isn’t listening, I doubt he would notice. “You are afraid of one of those eyes, should I be?”

He nods. “Probably,” he says, “Though I know almost as little about Him as you do.”

I shake my head, moving back to the point at hand. “Tell you what. Let us return to the good old days,” I half-joke, before offering, “Give me what I’m interested in knowing, and I’ll owe you a favor.”

“And what if that favor is not to look into us anymore?” he asks.

I give a thin smile before letting my face return to normal. “Favors must be discrete, you know this,” I remind him.

He thinks a moment, then gestures around. “This. I want everything on whoever is behind this, they’re trying to spy on my friend, and I want to make them pay.”

I shake my head. “You. These are very recent and I’m not the only one who knows your habits. Someone is trying to get dirt on or spy on you,” I inform him as I stand up. “So, where will our lovely exchange be?” I pull some powder and a flower from my pocket crushing the latter in with the former.

Gregory furrows his brow. “I do my morning jog in an hour and change. Along the route, there is a bench that isn’t in view of any cameras. Can you have the information by then?”

I don’t even bother to answer such a rude question, instead blowing across the newly flowered powder and drawing sigils along the dust. Every scrying sensor has a series of unique signatures. The most skilled among mages can alter their own, but it takes relearning from the bottom up. And that is incredibly rare, especially since for most people, knowing a signature only means knowing whether the same person is behind two separate sensors. To be able to do anything more specific with one, someone would need to be obsessive enough to catalogue every single scrying project from the lower Magisterial classes across the Villae, and match the sensor signature with the anonymized grading ID numbers, then in turn match those numbers to the the Apprentices. Fortunately for Gregory, I am exactly that obsessive, at least for our generation. Ever since Isaac told me about Alina’s old friend Hilarie and her plans, and more importantly since I met the fascinating helLHound, I have realized the import of knowing who is watching whom. I note down the signatures, I’ll have to cross reference them outside. Walking up to the bathroom door silently, I say in a soft spoken and mildly menacing voice, “Dearest Kassidy, spying on me is quite rude.” As I hear some scrambling behind the door, I give Gregory a nod goodbye and walk out of the apartment. The building is waking up, which means I need to be out of it swiftly. I walk down the stairs and outside, keeping my eyes on the floor about three paces ahead of me. Anyone watching will likely make assumptions about me, finely dressed, walking out of the building at five in the morning. And, as no one will know where I am coming from and no one has the whole picture, they will make assumptions based on their limited knowledge but be too nervous to confront people about those assumptions directly, and any indirect confrontation will sound like a confession to others. And, with all those assumptions, confrontations, and confessions, most people will forget about the very important question of who that woman was.

Across the street from the apartment, I walk into an alley. Tracing my finger along the old wall’s mortar, I find a small gap that I made an hour ago. Digging my fingers in, I pull out a cellphone. An old brick, but cheap and effective. I call Irene as I head towards a library.

“Where have you been, Therese?” she asks immediately. Of course she would realize I’m not in the city. She’s made yet another poor life choice, I’d bet. Though I supposed this one is less dangerous, just more problematic. I should get her in touch with Sierra about how to deal with it.

I ignore her question. “I need you to go to my apartment and attach three file folders to a draft.”

She sighs, and replies, “I’m already here. What numbers?”

“Breaking into apartments is rude, you know?” I joke with my old friend, before giving her the sensor signature numbers. There are about seventeen elements to a signature, and each one is one of about nineteen options, so I just encoded each option as a vigesimal number, and each member of the Magisterium is filed under their signature for simplicity’s sake.

“Be back soon, we have to talk,” she says before hanging up.

I make it to the library, log into my spam email from middle school, and sure enough in the drafts folder are three zip folders. I begin to open them and make files to print for Gregory. The three sensors are from three separate sources. Also of three different ages. One is from this morning, and I suspect I would find something similar on many of these apartments, as it belongs to Court Magister Lysenko, one of their teachers in External Agent skills. Whether the sensor is a test or a means of keeping track of his students is unclear. The other two are classmates of Gregory. Phoebe Sonnen and Holger Nystrom. Both are outwardly very clean, suspiciously so. Though, admittedly, if I recall his classmates correctly, they all are. And everyone has secrets.