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She took a seat at one of the chairs as the little table as she looked at the cover. "I am surprised that went well." She had been dying to look what was inside. "I'm not," Artie signed and gestured between the two of them. "We're pros and libraries are way lower security than they'd like to think." He switched to text, adding "Can you put it on the table here? I'll bring up Topaz." Here was in view of laptop camera. It took a moment, but finally the bouncing picture of Midnight on screen switched over to a side-view from Topaz, leaning over a very boring, very normal textbook, tapping a pen against the page. "No breaking news about anyone getting arrested," she said dryly. "I wish I could say I'm a little disappointed the security wasn't tighter, but they clearly weren't worried about security if they basically put up a 'come rob us' sign." She looked up finally, looking at the book in front of the camera. "Well, we already know it can be handled without anyone's limbs falling off. You probably don't need to take it out and light it on fire right now." Clea placed the book on the table, "We are pros." The red head smirked, clearly thrilled to be called a pro. Clea turned towards the screen as Topaz came up and nodded, "For a four hundred year book, I am shocked. You think they would care better for rare books." She took chop sticks out from the bag and snapped them before continuing, "I really want to open it. For a spellbook, I am not getting much magic residue off it. Can age do that?" "I have no idea," Artie typed. "To be fair to the library, grad students don't usually steal things. Eat anything that's lying around, sure. Do illicit printing but they don't steal much, especially not old, valuable books." He poked it cautiously with a finger. Nothing happened. Same as when they'd stuffed it in a bag, snuck it out of the library and taken it on a suspicion-dampening day long tour of Chicago. "What do you think, Topaz? It feels inert but spellbooks don't always do anything if you're not ... doing the spell. They're not all artefacts on their own." "They probably also haven't slept in three days. I think they can be forgiven." Topaz leaned closer to the screen, frowning. "I can't really sense anything through Skype, but I trust Clea's senses. Age can have an effect on weak magic, but I've got artefacts that have sat in Avalon for thousands of years and are still as potent as ever. So if the original magic was already shoddy to begin with, the best an amateur would be able to do is maybe set a fire. I'd put it in the 'will not kill you' section. But like I said, that's all guesswork just based on Clea's input and experience. And the lack of any articles about the book maiming a student." "Maiming a student," Artie typed and rolled his eyes. "See, this is why I leave the magic to you people. Where I come from, books don't do that." He opened the book, moving past the terrible illegible handwritten instructions to the diagrams scattered throughout the writing and projected the first one in front of the camera so Topaz could see it better. It was the sort of spell diagram or summoning circle he'd seen before, usually in Amanda's things. "What about this? Could this have power if you drew it up with the right instructions and correct chalk or whatever? I mean, are we talking 17th century LARPers or 'oops, that's a demon'? Amanda's spells work because she has power and that fuels them but some spells work because the work is inherently powerful. Can you tell which we're looking at?" "Well, that is Avalon. That place is already magical in itself, right. Earth is a little different." Clea held her breath as Artie thumbed through the book. She couldn't help but be on edge, but it was fine. She didn't sense much. But there was tiny traces. Looking at the diagram and titled her head. "No. This book could have easily belonged to a witch. Just not a demon summoning one. The faintest magic I am picking up is not demonic." "Yeah, but that doesn't mean everything in it is automatically magical. I could stick a radio in there for a hundred years and it would still just be a radio." Topaz took a sip of tea. "Some objects can give people power. I'm guessing this isn't one of them. So a few grad students might've just lost their internships, but the likelihood of magical portals is low." "Still it would be bloody wicked if we could translate this." She turned to Artie. "Looks like this motel will stay unhaunted for tonight." "That was a sentence I could have done without hearing." Artie shook his head and kept typing. "If it's not going to cause any harm, should we return it?" "Hmmm." Topaz made a face. "You've already got it. And I guess I'm more inclined to take it if we've got it." No matter how flippant she was, she didn't mess around when it came to possible magical threats. Clea nodded in agreement with Topaz, "The book we replaced it with is harmless. They wouldn't be able to tell the difference." "They might." Artie switched to floating text, letting it sit in front of the webcam as he stood and carefully put the book and wrappings on the room's dresser and started to open a container of food. "They were looking into having it transcribed. But whatever. I think we've got you a present, Topaz. Call it an early Christmas present, maybe?" |
