source and target showed definite differences. Small, but there. “I went back as far as the Egyptian burial symbols. Ten separate files, ten languages, which is crazy ’cause none of us can speak all of those languages.”
“What about the Aramaic and Babylonian?”
“I haven’t entered them yet.”
Trey thought about it, then nodded. “Okay, let’s do this. Go in and make the corrections. Before you do, though, I’m going to set you up with a new username and new password.”
“Okay.” She looked relieved.
“How much do you have to do on this?” Trey asked. “Are we going to make the deadline?”
The deadline was critical. Professor Davidoff was planning to make an official announcement in less than a month. He had a big event planned for it, and warned them all every chance he could that departmental grant money was riding on this. Big-time money. He never actually threatened them, but they could all see the vultures circling.
Anthem nibbled as she considered the stacks of folders on her desk. “I can finish in three weeks.”
“That’s cutting it close.”
Anthem’s nibbling increased.
“Look,” he said, “I’ll spot-check you and do all the transfers to the mainframe. Don’t let anyone else touch your laptop for any reason. No one, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, relieved but still dubious. “Will that keep whoever’s doing this out of the system?”
“Sure,” said Trey. “This should be the end of it.”
It wasn’t.
“Tell me exactly what’s been happening,” demanded Professor Davidoff.
Trey and the others sat in uncomfortable metal folding chairs that were arranged in a half circle around the acre of polished hardwood that was the professor’s desk. The walls were heavy with books and framed certificates, each nook and corner filled with oddments. There were juju sticks and human skulls, bottles of ingredients for casting spells—actual eye of newt and bat’s wing—and ornate reliquaries filled with select bits of important dead people.
Behind the desk, sitting like a heathen king among his spoils, was Alexi Davidoff, professor of folklore, professor of anthropology, department chair and master of all he surveyed. Davidoff was a bear of a man with Einstein hair, mad-scientist eyebrows, black-framed glasses and a suit that cost more than Trey’s education.
The others in the team looked at Trey. Anthem and Jonesy on his left—a cabal of girl power; Bird and Kidd on his right, representing two ends of the evolutionary bell curve—evolved human and moneyed Neanderthal.
“Well, sir,” began Trey, “we’re hitting a few little speed bumps.”
The professor arched an eyebrow. “‘Speed bumps’?”
Trey cleared his throat. “There have been a few anomalies in the data and—”
Davidoff raised a finger. It was as sure a command to stop as if he’d raised a scepter. “No,” he said, “don’t take the long way around. Come right out and say it.
Kidd coughed but it sounded suspiciously like, “Nut up.”
Trey pretended not to have heard. To Davidoff, he said, “Someone has hacked into the Spellcaster data files on Anthem’s computer.”
They all watched Davidoff’s complexion undergo a prismatic change from its normal never-go-outside pallor to a shade approximating a boiled lobster.
“Explain,” he said gruffly.
Trey took a breath and plunged in. In the month since Anthem sought his help with the sabotage of the data files her computer had been hacked five times. Each time it was the same kind of problem, with minor changes being made to conjuring spells. With each passing week Trey became more convinced that Kidd was the culprit. Kidd was in charge of research for the team, which meant that he was uniquely positioned to obtain translations of the spells, and to arrange the rewording of them, since he was in direct contact with the various experts who were providing translations in return for footnotes. Only Jonesy had as much contact with the translators, and Trey didn’t for a moment think that she would want to harm Anthem, or the project. However, he dared not risk saying any of this here and now. Not in front of everyone, and not without proof. Davidoff was rarely sympathetic and by no means an ally.
On the other hand, Trey knew that the professor had the typical academic’s fear and loathing of scandal. Research data and drafts of papers were sacrosanct, and until it was published even the slightest blemish or question could ruin years of work and divert grants aimed at Davidoff’s tiny department.
“Has anything been stolen?” Davidoff asked, his voice low and deadly.
“There’s . . . um . . . no way to tell, but if they’ve been into Anthem’s computer then nothing would have prevented them from copying everything.”
“What about the bulk data on the department mainframe?” growled Davidoff.
“No way,” said Bird doubtfully. “Has that been breached?”
Trey dialed some soothing tones into his voice. “No. I check it every day and the security software tracks every log-in. It’s all clean. Whatever’s happening is confined to Anthem’s laptop.”
“Have all the changes been corrected before uploading to the mainframe?” asked Davidoff.
“Absolutely.”
That was a lie. There were two hundred gigabytes of documents that had been copied from Anthem’s computer. It would take anyone months to read through it all, and probably years to compare every line to the photocopies of source data.
“You’re sure?” Davidoff persisted.
“Positive,” lied Trey.
“Are we still on schedule? We’re running this in four days. We have guests coming. We have press coming. I’ve invested a lot of the department’s resources into this.”
He wasn’t joking and Trey knew it. Davidoff had booked the university’s celebrated Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and hired a professional event coordinator to run things. There was even a bit of “fun” planned for the evening. Davidoff had had a bunch of filmmakers from nearby Drexel University do some slick animation that would be projected as a hologram onto tendrils of smoke rising from vents in the floor around a realistic mock-up of a conjuring circle. The effect would be the sudden “appearance” of a demon. Davidoff would then interact with the demon, following a script that Trey himself had drafted. In their banter, the demon would extol the virtues of Spellcaster and discuss the benefits of the research to the worldwide body of historical and folkloric knowledge, and do everything to praise the project, short of dropping to his knees and giving Davidoff some oral love.
There were so many ways it could go wrong that he almost wished he could pray for divine providence, but not even a potential disaster was going to put Trey on his knees.
“Sir,” Trey said, “while I believe we’re safe and in good shape, we really should run Spellcaster 2.0 ourselves before the actual show.”
“No.”
“But—”
“You do realize, Mr. LaSalle, that the reason the press and the dignitaries will all be there is that we’re running this in real time. They get to share in it. That’s occurred to you, hasn’t it?”
Trey held his tongue and gave a single nod of acquiescence.
“Then we run it on schedule,” the professor declared. “Now—how did this happen? By
A couple of the others laughed at this, but the laughs were brief and uncertain, because clearly this wasn’t a funny moment. Davidoff glared them into silence.
Trey said, “I don’t know, but we’re doing everything we can to make sure that it doesn’t affect the project.”
