Worldweavers: Spellspam (9 page)

T
HEA HAD NOT BEEN
able to take Humphrey May into the Alphiri city itself, so she deposited him, after he gave her a few essential details, in his Bureau office before using her Road tendril to get back to her own room at the Academy.

Humphrey had pulled every string at his disposal, slashing through protocol and red tape and charging into the Alphiri heartland demanding Signe Lovransdottir’s instant repatriation. The Alphiri had tried to bargain, seeing the possibility of turning the situation to their profit, and their own version of the story had emphasized that Signe was of Woodling blood, and thus Faele, therefore she belonged far more in the nonhuman polities than in the human world. That version of events collapsed when it turned out that it had
been a high court of the Alphiri themselves who had exiled Signe from her own home, destroyed her spirit tree, and sent her away with a single branch of it to cling to for survival. Without the tree, Signe could not live very long in any polity, and in fact she had already been very weak when she was found. When Humphrey threatened to take the matter to an emergency session of inter-polity court and invoke possible trade sanctions, the Alphiri handed over Signe without any further spin.

Humphrey brought Signe back to the shielded grounds of the Academy, where she could safely retreat into her spirit branch and spend time healing and regenerating. Before leaving again for Washington, he sought out Thea.

“Signe was almost transparent by the time we got her back—but once she’s had a chance to recover a bit, I’m sure that she will very much want to thank you herself for your part in all of this,” Humphrey said.

“You didn’t tell anyone else…?” Thea said. That was the one thing she had made him promise—that he would tell no one about her own role in the whole affair. “If the Alphiri found out…”

“No, and I have no intention of doing so,” Humphrey said. “I keep my promises. I don’t know why you are so afraid of the Alphiri—they cannot do anything to harm you, not while we are watching over you, and we
are
, Thea—but quite aside from any of that, telling anybody would mean telling them about that awful, awful place I got myself trapped in, and the fact that it took a
kid
to spring a high-powered government mage from there. I still don’t even understand
what
you did, let alone how you did any of it.”

“I’m figuring it out as I go,” Thea murmured.

Humphrey grinned.

“However,”
he said, “I do think the time for concealment is over, Thea. If you think Luana will keep her mouth shut, you’re sorely mistaken. If she cannot find a way to pin any of this directly on you, at the very least she’ll manage to make your inability to fully understand or control your own gift a part of the plot to regain her own standing in the Bureau. Much of this Alphiri mess was Luana’s own doing, and she’ll try very, very hard to focus everyone’s attention elsewhere right now because she herself would collapse under too much scrutiny.”

“So they’ll still think that I did it all,” Thea said.

“I seriously doubt that a case could be made for that anymore,” said Humphrey.

“Anymore?”
Thea echoed.

“You did some pretty strange things back in the principal’s office the first time I saw you work,” Humphrey said gently. “I had no explanation for any of it.”

Thea simply stared at him.

Humphrey sighed. “You seem to have been riding to everyone’s rescue from the sidelines, but it’s high time that someone came riding to yours—and now I think it’s time we let a real expert do a little digging.”

“Who?” Thea asked. And then, hopefully, looking up at him, “You?”

“I don’t have the credentials,” Humphrey said. “Even if I thought I had, you taught me different when you hauled me out of that appalling trap I had managed to get myself into. Let me discuss this with the principal, and I think I’ll call in your parents, too. I do have someone in mind. There’s only one man I can think of who knows enough on the background of this. Trust me.”

It was left at that. Shortly after that conversation, Humphrey had made himself scarce again, leaving Thea alone to try to pick up the unraveled threads of her academic responsibilities. But he returned to the Academy before the end of the month, took Thea and, somewhat unexpectedly, Terry aside for a private chat.

“You know the Nexus has been placed at the Academy because it can be well concealed here,” Humphrey said. “All of our people here were effectively undercover agents, acting as instructors at the Academy—there were others before Patrick Wittering. You might say this school was built around the Nexus. But there are
two
Nexus sites. And the second Nexus is notable not for its location…but for its keeper. You’ve heard of him, no doubt—he is one of that rare breed of mage, of which Patrick was also one, who actually understands the working innards of a computer.”

“Professor de los Reyes,” Terry said faintly.

Humphrey nodded. “He has been known to take in students for the summer, especially since he’s supposedly retired from Amford. So I figured, we could send him both of our young stars. It will seem, to any prying eyes, to be no more than the professor taking on an interesting
summer project with a couple of promising apprentices. Proximity to the other Nexus will give Terry valuable experience. And the professor can concentrate on figuring out the puzzle that is Thea…and perhaps all of you can find the answer to this spellspam problem, while you’re at it. I can’t think of a better man for the job than Sebastian de los Reyes.”

“How long are we supposed to be there for?” Terry asked.

“Four weeks, at the outset,” Humphrey said. “If that needs to be adjusted, it can be.”

But Thea was thinking about what Tess had told her recently—
you can forget your summer
. She became conscious of a profound sense of growing up too fast—of missing her family, or even just missing a summer vacation.

“
After
you’ve both had a chance to catch up with your lives,” Humphrey said gently. “Your summer internship doesn’t start until July.”

Naturally Magpie, Ben, and Tess were all waiting impatiently to hear what the meeting with Humphrey had been about.

“Well?” Tess said. “What did he say?”

“We’re both being sent off to summer school,” Thea said.

Ben blinked at her. “Why? Your grade average is better than mine.”

“Not remedial, silly,” Tess said. “Where?”

“They’re sending us to Sebastian de los Reyes. The professor,” Terry said. “
God
. Do you think Isabella will be there?”

“Was she the one who applied to be Uncle Kevin’s intern last year? The one whose résumé you saw and drooled all over her photo?” Tess said. But Terry didn’t laugh, and Tess gave her brother a beady look. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “You’ve never even seen her in the flesh, Terry. All you know about her is that she’s a brain, and she’s
hot.
”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Terry said, snapping his head back as if Tess had struck him.

“Oh, yes, you are soft on her!” Tess crowed gleefully. “She won’t give you the time of day, you know—you might be a prodigy, but she’s a sophomore at Amford and gorgeous and probably can’t even remember being fifteen.”

Terry stuffed his hands into his pockets, his eyes sliding away from his sister’s. “I wonder if they’ll let me take along the palmtop link to the Academy N…,” he began, and then halted, as Ben drew breath to interrupt. He looked around
with deliberately exaggerated care, and then said loftily, “Well, we can’t talk about it here. I’d better talk to Humphrey about it later. In the meantime, I have some thinking to do.”

“Whatever the original idea was, sending
you
there will prove to be a total waste of time if Isabella is in residence,” Tess said.

Terry gathered up what shreds of dignity remained and sauntered off, head held high, trying to look very casual—but his sister stared after him with an expression that eloquently conveyed that she, at least, was not fooled.

“Smitten,” Tess said as Terry rounded the corner of the building out of earshot.

“Sophomore at Amford, eh?” Thea said thoughtfully.

“She’s blond, aristocratic, and by all accounts she was a child prodigy at whatever she put her hand on,” Tess said. “Don’t know much more than that.”

“I have brothers who will,” Thea said. “I knew I’d find an actual use for Anthony someday.”

“You’d do better to pump your father for information on the professor,” Tess said, suddenly serious. “I’ve never met him, but by reputation he’s a crotchety, moody old medieval Spanish
grandee transplanted into a modern world, and he isn’t supposed to like it here much.”

Thea shrugged. “Then being under Mr. Siffer’s thumb all these months will have been good training.”

The worst of the epidemic was over. Over the next few weeks, one or two pieces of spellspam popped up like poisonous mushrooms, but people were being careful and Terry’s filters seemed to be holding the spellspam at bay—at least in the protected environment of the Academy.

The rest of the school year flew by with startling speed, and then the summer break was upon them.

“You
will
write and tell us what’s going on, won’t you?” Magpie said as they were all saying their good-byes.

“E-mail?” Thea said with a grin.

“That would be just fine. I have the spellspam dreamcatcher with me,” Magpie said, “but I have no e-mail access at home, and I don’t think you’ll want this floating around the rec center computers…so that settles that.”

“I have the filter,” Ben said, clearing his throat. “You can e-mail me.”

He was sounding very awkward, even for Ben, and Thea gave him a startled look. “Okay, if you like, I’ll try—but I’m not the greatest correspondent.”

“Well, I just wanted to say…,” he began and then stopped. “Have a good summer. Hope they don’t keep you too busy….”

“See you in the fall,” Thea said.

Ben just smiled, raised a hand in a half-wave, let it drop, and turned away.

“What’s the matter with him?” Thea muttered, staring after his departing back.

“He only wanted to ask you to the Harvest Ball, when we get back in September, that’s all,” Magpie said.

“Well, why didn’t he?”

Magpie shook her head. “Figure it out, doofus. I think he’s jealous, actually—there you’ll be, cooped up all summer in some exotic household with Terry—even if Terry
is
interested in someone else altogether—but there you two will be. Please do write, by the way. Promise?”

She was curious, naturally, as was everybody.

By the time Thea got home, her brothers all knew about her summer internship. They all thought
that her spending the summer with Amford’s most famous academic in his own private retreat in San Francisco was, in their terms,
awesome
. Frankie was openly jealous, and sulked for three days before the curiosity overwhelmed him and he joined the others as they questioned Thea as to the details of the trip. Anthony was the only brother who wasn’t home, and that frustrated Thea’s own original intention to pump him for information on the fabulous Isabella, but at the mention of Isabella de los Reyes’s name, her second-oldest brother, Ben, himself a student at Amford, merely laughed.

“Anthony would not have told you a thing about her. He rarely boasts about his failures,” Ben said.

“Did he try dating her?”

“She turned up her nose at him,” Ben said. “She turns up her nose at pretty much everyone. The last I heard she was seen out on the town with a member of European royalty. Anthony’s pedigree just wasn’t up to scratch.”

Thea snorted. “I didn’t
think
I would like her,” she said.

But the best news came when Aunt Zoë bounced into Thea’s room a couple of days before
she was due to depart.

“Could you use company?” Zoë said.

“Huh? Right now?”

“I have some vacation coming,” Zoë said. “I thought I’d spend it in San Francisco. You and I could go down together, and then I’d be doing the tourist thing—for a week or so at least. When you have some free time, I could take you and your friend Terry out to see the Golden Gate Bridge, or into Napa, maybe…. What do you say?”

No words were necessary, as Thea wrapped herself around her aunt in a tight hug.

“That’s settled, then, I take it?” Zoë said, amused. “I’ll go and make arrangements. Go pack!”

They flew down to San Francisco from Seattle, and then Zoë rented a tiny hatchback at the airport and handed Thea a map.

“Presidio Terrace,” she said. “The swanky part of town, by all accounts. You’re the navigator.”

Swanky was an understatement.

“Can’t I just stay at a hotel with you and come up here if I need to see him?” Thea asked as they
swept onto the tree-lined entrance of the Presidio Terrace estate. “What do I call him, anyway? Professor de los Reyes is such a mouthful.”

“I think ‘sir’ would do,” Zoë murmured. “As for the rest…Thea, the idea was that you spend some time with the man. Terry will be around, too. It isn’t like you’d be entirely alone—”

She swung the car into a wide, brick-paved circular drive outside a white-washed house of palatial size, with a huge carved double door that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a medieval castle, and windows adorned by elaborate wrought-iron grilles in the manner of an old Spanish hacienda. On the island in the middle of the drive, a fountain played quietly over smooth stones.

Zoë pulled up in front of the three stone steps that led to the carved door, and turned to her niece. “Well, I’ll get you checked in and then I’m off,” she said. “You have my cell number. Just call if you need me, anytime.”

“Thanks for coming with me, Aunt Zoë,” Thea said. “I wish you could stay here….”

“That would defeat the object of the exercise,” Zoë said. “Now go on, ring the doorbell.
I’ll get the luggage out.”

Thea got out of the car and dragged her feet up the stairs; finding no doorbell, she picked up the enormous brass knocker and brought it down hard on the door.