Suspicion

Chapter 9

The thought of a third trip to the village in less than a week was not exciting. Once a week was more than enough for her. Still, she had promised. The hours of the government-run shops were later Fridays. She had until 1900 to get Gregorov’s liquor. Unfortunately, she had to exchange money.

She let her last class out fifteen minutes early. It wasn't even 1500 yet. Usually, she would have been eager to get out of Durmstrang. Almost any excuse would do, but this was the third time. She forced herself up the stairs and over to the bursar’s office. Without a time deadline pushing her along, there were no obstacles in her way. The frequently slow bursar sped through the transaction. Gregorov’s money quickly became the bills and coins of the village. She tried to keep track of the exchange rate and the percentage the school kept but, as usual, the transaction did not make complete sense. "Whatever," she muttered, pocketing the money.

She took her time returning to her quarters. It was impossible to work up much enthusiasm for her trip. Forgotten projects suddenly became important and she cleaned out her coat pockets and sorted her satchel’s contents. Even taking her time, the clock had barely ticked by an hour. Might as well just get it over with.

She grabbed her jacket and left. As she neared the central door, she wondered if Wronski had finished her translation. Probably not, especially since she had seemed to set him off earlier, but might as well check. To her surprise, she found Wronski holding office hours. He usually avoided his Friday hours, preferring to work in his own lab that had taken the place of his living quarters. He grunted a greeting at her and went back to what he was writing. Looking around various piles of books and papers, Jones was pleased to see that he was working on her translation.

"I’ve done most of it," he muttered. "There are some words in here I’ve never seen before. Archaic French is different from what I’m used to reading. There are whole passages in Latin, too, but I’ve worked them out already."

She was impressed. He might not be able to dispel fumes, but he spoke at least three languages and read several more. Why the heck was he at Durmstrang? Wronski would never talk about it. While she waited for him to complete the translation, she amused herself by reading some of the books’ titles that were lucky enough to have space on his shelves. Most of them were either chemistry texts or statistics books. Dull reading there. Scattered here and there were spell books, generally marked with "used" flashing on the spine. Those must be the ones his friend had brought back from England. Some luridly colored tome by someone named Lockhart. There were several others by the same author. Wasn’t he some Defense guy? Not a single book dedicated to the dark arts. She sniffed. Nope. Not a bit of that dense, almost rotting smell that she associated with the spells, curses and hexes of her work. Wronski had managed to turn what was usually a very dark job into the closest approximation of his former work as a chemistry professor. Whatever works.

The scratch of the pen stopped and Wronski read what he had written. "I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for." He paused and reread part of it. "Interesting names here and there. What are you trying to find out?" He passed his handwritten pages over to her.

Jones started to read it. Some of the descriptions were disgusting. She had done worse, but a lot of this had been done to children. After a bit, she began to scan Wronski's clunky printing for something to catch her eye. There it was: de Laval. Baron de Laval. So, this de Rais fellow was also the baron. Then he was executed. Nothing unusual there. Didn’t they execute people all the time? She continued to scan. Ah. This fellow was accused of sorcery. Interesting. Strangled and then burned. Cut off his right hand. Wonder why just the right hand? Why not both or neither? She folded up the translation and the original printouts and put them into her jacket’s pocket. She had no idea what to do with the information. It was interesting – in a gory sort of way.

"Thanks. I guess. I’ll have to read it through more thoroughly later. So, I’m off to town. Last chance to order something from the happy village. I wonder where it is? Could be anywhere. Looks like it’s around here but…" She let it trail off. Portkeys could send you anywhere. "Do you know where the village is?"

"I’m not even certain where we are. All I can say for certain is far north. It doesn’t really matter. We’re here." With that insight, Wronski leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the desk and produced a journal. "Bye." He buried himself in its research and ignored her.

She tarried in the hallway. Her enthusiasm level continued to be low. She looked at all of Mueller’s diagrams, checking to see if they were the same. They were. Too bad. It would have been more interesting if they had all been different. She stopped Lowenstein and tried to get him to discuss the diagrams, perhaps divulge some of what Mueller had said the night before. Lowenstein was not interested. As far as he was concerned, the school week was over and it was now time to relax. She did manage to get him to tell her what spell was used to produce the grid. Lowenstein knew a great deal about wards, their uses, how to detect them and kept it to himself. She often wondered if he shared more in his classes than he did when questioned informally. After wrenching that bit of information from him, he walked through his wards and left her alone in the hall. She spent the next ten minutes wondering how he had set them since he seemed put off by blood.

If it hadn’t been for Gregorov’s arrival, she might have managed to forget going at all. She tried to chat with him. Gregorov was not much of a conversationalist. With the exception of Kessler, Gregorov hardly talked to anyone, preferring being alone, but seemed to need company to get any of his schoolwork done. He made sure no one enjoyed his need for companionship. He had a sarcastic sense of humor that Jones liked when she found him willing to talk. Most of the time, she wasn’t sure why she liked him at all. He could be incredibly cruel and abusive. She knew he slept with the students, but not as often as Kessler. Maybe because he was the only man close enough to her own age who didn’t seem to be married. Wronski and Rabe were at least ten years younger than she was. She knew Haken was married and she thought that Kessler was, too. Lowenstein, for all of the women who clustered around him, seemed to quite happily married to Magda. I must be afraid of dying alone. I’ve really gotten soft. The ugly thoughts flitted by quickly.

"If you have a choice, which do you want?" She decided to see if the decision between vodka and whiskey could prompt him to speak.

He shrugged. "Whichever bottle holds the most, bring it." With that, he went into his office and shut the door.

So much for pleasant conversation. By now, the time had grown late enough that she had to leave or the stores would be closed until Saturday morning. The now-routine path was taken, the small bribes paid and she eventually stepped out of the tavern and into a huge queue of people who all wanted the same things she did. It felt as though getting through the queue took hours. It was very dark by the time she reached the front of the line. Since it was the cheaper liquor, she ordered two large bottles of vodka.

Stepping outside into the cold night air, she counted her change in the yellow light from a shop window. More than she had expected. She considered her choices and went back to her favorite café.

The young man waved at her, but there was no place to sit. The piles of papers to grade started to nag at her conscience. The term would end soon and she really needed to keep her grading caught up. She ordered some falafels and a soda to go. When the food arrived, she lugged Gregorov’s bottles and her food outside and found a bench.

There was no moon. The stars were blue-white and hung close in the darkness. A light breeze sighed through the newly-leafed branches. Spring had finally taken hold of the area. The sweet scent of hyacinths folded into the aromas of dinners and wood smoke. She finished the last bite and enjoyed the evening. No one bothered her and soon the streets were almost empty. It was nice to be outside. She hadn’t been out hunting for months. Far too long. Her short badger legs weren’t long enough to keep her out of the snowdrifts during the winter. She liked to wait until enough had melted so she could enjoy her times out. Maybe after finals…

She started rummaging for her cigarettes when the breeze shifted. There it was again - that smell. She tried sniffing for it, but couldn’t track it. The school had said time and again, "No unnecessary magic when in town". She batted the idea back and forth for a bit and decided that she had to know what it was. Picking up her sacks, she found the darkest place she could and, when she was completely certain that no one else was around, became the badger and tried to pick up the scent. The gentle wind obligingly blew it to her and led her away, toward the edge of town. Now, the annoying part began. She couldn’t carry her bags as a badger and she knew that leaving two large bottles of alcohol would result in having nothing to bring back. She had to transform back and forth to move herself and the damn bottles. She thought several unpleasant thoughts about Gregorov as she slowly moved out of the village and into the fields beyond.

In a fallen part of a stone wall, she finally ditched the vodka. They would be safer there than anywhere else she had seen. Then, she sniffed for the smell. Even without changing, it was strong. The moonless night made it difficult to see any details. Newly plowed fields stood empty, making a slate to write on. Always a bit shortsighted, Jones found herself bent over, squinting at the ground. Here and there, she saw what might be footprints. Maybe. The smell led her along a low stone wall and down a small hill. She couldn’t see the village from there. The wall led her around to a place where all she could see was fields. It all looked gray to her and more than a bit fuzzy. The smell was strong and fresh. There was a familiar tang to it that she couldn’t place. She stopped and tried to puzzle out what the scent was when she heard the noise.

It was a liquid sound, wheezing and bubbling. Then a noise that reminded her sharply of how Kessler had sounded after the Aurors had finished with him. It was the sound of pain when there is no speech possible.

She pulled out her wand, readied a defensive spell, and mentally listed several spells that would kill. And as silently as she could, she crept forward. In short order, she saw that the land dipped down into a small bowl. There were two shapes, dark against the tilled earth. One stood, the other seemed to shake on the ground. The standing one raised a hand and the other contracted. The smell was fresher now. She’d smelled it before.

The last hunt she’d gone on, she’d had to run as fast as she could to try and keep the others in sight. With her short legs, she had fallen further and further behind the larger predators. By the time she had caught up with them, they had made their kill, a deer, and the smell that had been so enticing to her as a badger was the smell of fresh blood and of the newly exposed entrails. It was the same.

The scent told her that, even if she was to interfere, it would be of no use. The creature would die soon. It was hard for her to feel anything but her ever-present curiosity as to who or what the victim was. Over her long career, she had sent a lot of people to their deaths, although she rarely saw the victims. She could sit in some safe place and use their own fluids, their skin, or their hair against them. She had done line-of-sight spells to take a target, but they were more unsettling. They cost a lot more than the cleaner, safe-in-your-office spells, but she had done several. She had never, ever drawn a death out like this. Whoever was doing it, enjoyed it and had made a study out of it. The smell of blood was very strong and it played itself out to older, dry blood and the newer spills of red to her nose. She sat, waited, and watched as best she could.

When the pathetic thing finally died, the dark figure reached down and seemed to pick something up, wrapping whatever it was in a piece of cloth. She sat very still and watched as the other shape turned and started walking towards her. Even in the dark, she recognized the stride, the grace.

"Good hunting?" she asked. She felt no fear, only a coldness as if the resolution of the puzzle was a disappointment.

"Yes. The game is growing scarcer. I could not resist when so many came so near." The breeze caught the fronts of the long leather coat, fluttering them slightly. It was the least elegant she had ever seen him.

"So, you're done?"

In the light from the stars alone, she could see his eyes – a shiny darkness within the shadowed oval of his face. "You need not fear. I hunt only my own. Soon, the last of my line will fall. Perhaps in this field, perhaps another. If not soon, then later. I can wait. It is, after all, the hunt itself that matters."

She watched him turn to leave. "What about Werner?"

The dark shape slowed briefly. "He is nothing."

"Then make the nothing leave us alone."

A soft sigh. "Yes. I shall attend to it." He turned to go. "Their tactics have improved greatly. Far more elegant then they were so long ago. I rather enjoyed the colors and shapes." A hand raised, made a small movement and a green grid hung in the air, the dark skies shown through its mesh.

She wasn’t certain, but she thought for an instant that something flashed where a hand should have been and then she watched as the figure carefully pulled on a pair of gloves.