That didn’t mean she wanted to work with him all the time, but the whole thing hadn’t turned into the disaster she’d expected.
Working on the right side of the law will allow me to learn to trust people a little bit more. Just...
Time to switch gears a little and get into her role as professor. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from scanning the different clusters of students and professors all hurrying off to a class or sitting on nearby benches.
Not a bad impulse to keep. Getting lazy about surroundings is how even a retired hitman gets herself killed.
Shay adjusted the satchel in her hand containing her notes, and a small throwing knife in the side pocket just in case, and quickly strode up the wide steps, taking them easily in her three-inch heels.
She got to the lecture hall, the rows where the students sat rising up in front of her and put down her belongings. The room was already filling up, students eagerly taking up the front rows. Shay gave a cool glance around, inwardly pleased that the word was spreading across the campus. This was a hot academic ticket.
She glanced at her phone and saw a text from Peyton to pick up more flour and some good coffee, arching her eyebrow and tucking the phone into her bag. Useful annoyances can wait an hour.
Shay glanced up at the large clock at the back of the room, perfectly situation so only she could see it without craning a neck. “Okay, everyone settle down. Time to start. Someone please close the doors at the back.” Shay already had a reputation for stopping the class whenever someone came in late, silently waiting till they took their seat before picking up the lecture again. The same was true if anyone tried to duck out early.
No one dared to make either move. It didn’t matter, the topics kept everyone interested and Shay was able to give such details it was like the students were there. It helped that some of the time, Shay was there.
“Recently a group of two-thousand-year-old skeletons were found at the foot of a massive coal-fired power station in Kostolac, in north-eastern Serbia. They were discovered on the site of what was an ancient Roman city, Viminacium. Remember, the borders of Rome stretched far and wide in those days, aided we now know by magic.”
There was a murmur through the crowd and Shay looked around, waiting till the slight buzz of chatter calmed down.
“Found grasped in each hand of one skeleton were two small lead amulets.” Shay showed a picture of them on the virtual screen behind her. She had taken the pictures herself before carefully locking the amulets away in one of her warehouses. The picture showed two amulets, both three inches long, one more circular than the other.
“Inside of the rounder amulet was a two inch by three-inch rectangle of thin gold metal with ancient Aramaic inscribed on it. Inside the other amulet was a similar silver sheet with more Aramaic inscriptions. Both are ancient spells forgotten to the past till now.”
And locked up safely in my vault where no one can use them.
“In the past we would have written off the idea of magic as the way ancient civilizations explained things they didn’t understand. As it turns out, we called the existence of magic bunk as a way to explain what we feared.”
A hand shot up from a curly-haired freshman who Shay recognized from the girl’s stops by her office on campus. “Yes, Sandy?”
“Did they discover what kind of spells?” The words came tumbling out of her.
“Two thousand years ago all spells were called, binding spells, whether they were for good or to cause harm. The spell attached an intended outcome to someone to fall in love, or to drop dead right where they stood. These particular spells were to keep the dead from coming back, and this case… again.”
Other evidence had told Shay the ancient wizard was good at bringing himself back to life. “The dead man was believed to have been a powerful Oriceran who was defeated in a battle that raged between the two worlds.” And then came back to life to turn the tide, putting Earth at risk. Others prevailed at the cost of some of their own lives, silencing him for two thousand years with two small curses.
Shay had gone on the trip with instructions from a wizard who liked playing fast and loose with the law but had managed to stay away from any bounty hunter, so far. She had traded him a minor artifact with limited powers for the details of how to make the dead stay dead, and still be able to grab the prize.
They started with a blazing bonfire and a carefully whispered spell that turned the flames blue. She carried his bones to the fire, placing them on top with his bony hands outstretched toward Shay. At the last moment she snatched the artifacts out of his clutches and watched in awe as he briefly came to life, his bones momentarily taking on flesh only to realize he was in a trap that he wasn’t going to escape this time.
Shay had let out a deep breath of relief, even as she waited till all the fire had died down and prepared to bury the ashes, repeating the spell just as she was told to do. “Skip nothing,” the wizard had said, tapping the side of his long, broken nose. “The success of your operation will be in the details.”
The ashes swirled around her as she repeated the spell, the artifacts carefully tucked in her bag, sucked into the hole at her feet as she whispered the last words. Zayin Peh. Sword ends.
Shay told the entire story to the rapt students replacing herself in the adventure with an unknown Serbian scientist who had supposedly related the entire story to her. She
