Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

“And—?”

“The stuff I entered last night was different.”

“Different how?”

“Let me show you.” Anthem leaned past him and her fingers began flying over the keys. Whatever else she was or wasn’t, she could type like a demon. Very fast and very accurate. The world lost a great typist when she decided to pursue higher education, mused Trey.

Anthem pulled up a file marked 18CenFraEvoc , scrolled down to one of the spells, then tapped the screen with a bright green fingernail. “There, see? I found the first changes in the ritual the professor is going to use for the debut thingy.”

Trey’s French was passable and he bent closer and studied the lines, frowning as he did so. Anthem was correct in that this ritual—the faux summoning of Azeziz, demon of knowledge and faith—was a key element in Professor Davidoff’s plans to announce their project to the academic world. Even a slight error would embarrass the professor, and he was not a forgiving man. Less so than, say, Hitler.

Anthem opened a file folder that held a thick sheaf of high-res scans of pages from a variety of sources. She selected a page and held it up next to the screen. “This is how it should read.”

Trey clicked his eyes back and forth between the source and target materials and then he did see it. In one of the spells the wording had been changed. The second sentence read: With the Power of the Eternal I Conjure Thee to My Service.

It should have read: With the Power of My Faith in the Eternal I Conjure and Bind Thee to My Service.

“You see?” Anthem asked again. “It’s different. There’s nothing about the conjurer believing . That throws it all off, right?”

“In theory,” he said dryly. “This could have been a mistype.”

“No way,” she said. “I always check my previous day’s stuff before I start anything new. I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

The pride in her voice was palpable, and in truth Trey could not recall ever making a correction in any of her work before. The team had been hammering away at the project for eighteen months. They’d created hundreds of pages of original work, and entered thousands of pages of collected data. After a few mishaps with other team members handling data entry, the bulk of it had been shifted to Anthem.

“It’s weird, right?” she asked.

He sat back and folded his arms. “It’s weird. And, yes, you’ve been hacked.”

“By who? I mean, it has to be one of the team, right? But Jonesy doesn’t know French. I don’t think Bird does, either.”

Jonesy was a harmless mouse of a kid. Bird was sharper, but he was an idealist and adventurer. Bird wanted to chew peyote with the Native American Church and go on spirit walks. He wanted to whirl with the Dervishes and trance out with the Charismatics. Unlike Trey and every other anthropologist Trey knew, Bird was in the field for the actual beliefs. Bird apparently believed that everyone was right, that every religion, no matter how batty, had a clue to the Great Big Picture as he called it. Trey liked him, but except for the project they had nothing in common.

Would Bird do this, though? Trey doubted it, partly because it was mean—and Bird didn’t have fangs at all—and mostly because it was disrespectful to the belief systems. As if anyone would really care . Except the thesis committee.

“What about Kidd?” asked Anthem. “It would be like him to do something mean like this.”

That much was true. Michael Kidd was a snotty, self-important little snob from Philly’s Main Line. Good-looking in a verminous sort of way. Kidd was cruising through college on family money and never pretended otherwise. Even Davidoff walked softly around him.

But, would Kidd sabotage the project? Yeah, he really might. Just for shits and giggles.

“The slimy little rat-sucking weasel,” said Trey.

“So it is Kidd?”

Trey did not commit. He would have bet twenty bucks on it, but that wasn’t the same as saying it out loud. Especially to someone like Anthem. He cut a covert look at her and for a moment his inner bitch softened. She was really a sweet kid. Clueless in a way that did no one any harm, not even herself. Anthem wasn’t actually stupid, just not sharp and would probably never be sharp. Not unless something broke her and left jagged edges; and wouldn’t that be sad?

“Is this only with the French evocation spell?” he asked.

“No.” She pulled up the Serbian Gypsy spells. Neither of them could read the language, but a comparison of 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. Own it, Mr. LaSalle.”

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.”