my temple. “Two teams. One heads up to Scotland, digs beneath the pub and sees what they can find. The other digs into Joseph Lang, see what we can learn about him.”
“Done.” Tabitha releases Kayla’s phone and grabs a manilla folder off the table. She slides it toward me. “All here.”
All right then, so we have a few more breadcrumbs than I’d assumed. I slip a smile over at Felicity. That seems a lot like professionalism.
“So,” I say, “do we have any idea where his belongings ended up? Anything not go with him back to Germany?”
Hannah stirs again beside me. “Well, if they kicked the bugger out,” she says, “they’re bound to have confiscated his research. Least, as much of it as they could lay their grubby fingers on, right?”
Tabitha’s expression lies somewhere between grin and grimace. “His whole apartment,” she says. “Confiscated his home. How we have the schematics. But most stuff is still on site.”
“On site?” I lean forward. “But he was kicked out in 1938. His apartment can’t still be—”
Tabitha stabs a finger at the folder. “Can be. Is. Bloody read that.”
“You literally just gave it to me.” The words escape my lips before I remember we’re trying to be professionals. “I mean, I will as soon as this briefing is over.” From Felicity’s expression that was too little, a little too late.
“It’s actually a rather interesting legal loophole,” Clyde starts before anyone can stop him. “You see early thoughts on magic resembled a lot of current popular fears about radiation. There were all these worries about extra-reality contamination around sites of magic. Sullivan’s Polluted Ether Theorem of ’36 to give it a name, though by any other name it would still be as awfully wrong as it is under that one. There’s not even such a thing as ether. The man barely deserves the name thaumaturgist, to be honest, and his Latin was laughable. Not that I want to brag about my own handling of a dead language, but if one commits to the path of tearing reality open, one might as well have the decency to learn one’s tools, I always say. Well not always. Just in this one case really. But if I were to talk about it more often, I would say it more often. Because it really is true. Just common decency really.
“Anyway,” Clyde continues, somehow failing to pause for breath, “because of that, there were a lot of concerns that the apartments of early government-sponsored thaumaturgists were horribly contaminated and would basically cause anyone who entered them to turn into mutated gloop. So they waited for the contamination to become more diffuse. Except no one knew when that was going to be. Well, not until Barkman got around to refuting Sullivan’s theory in ’76, though at that point it was basically common knowledge and Barkman was just a glory hound who managed to swing writing the actual paper. But at that point, no one really gave a damn about these old apartments. They were far more interested in creating something that would actually cause inter-reality contamination and turn people into mutant gloop. Really, the cold war was a very odd time for thaumaturgy.
“So the apartments basically stayed protected by these outdated laws that no one’s got around to repealing. There’s about eighty of them scattered around the country. Mostly in London really. Though there’s a concentration up in York too. Big hotbed of thaumaturgy in the late forties up in York, as it happens.”
And finally the breath happens.
“So,” I jump in as fast as I can, “basically you’re agreeing with Tabitha’s initial statement of, ‘yes.’”
Clyde thinks about that for a moment, opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “Yes.”
“OK,” I nod, “so basically we can go there and clean out the rest of his stuff, right?”
Another pause. “Yes,” Clyde says. He opens his mouth again, checks my expression, closes it.
“All right then,” I say,
“Done.” Tabitha releases Kayla’s phone and grabs a manilla folder off the table. She slides it toward me. “All here.”
All right then, so we have a few more breadcrumbs than I’d assumed. I slip a smile over at Felicity. That seems a lot like professionalism.
“So,” I say, “do we have any idea where his belongings ended up? Anything not go with him back to Germany?”
Hannah stirs again beside me. “Well, if they kicked the bugger out,” she says, “they’re bound to have confiscated his research. Least, as much of it as they could lay their grubby fingers on, right?”
Tabitha’s expression lies somewhere between grin and grimace. “His whole apartment,” she says. “Confiscated his home. How we have the schematics. But most stuff is still on site.”
“On site?” I lean forward. “But he was kicked out in 1938. His apartment can’t still be—”
Tabitha stabs a finger at the folder. “Can be. Is. Bloody read that.”
“You literally just gave it to me.” The words escape my lips before I remember we’re trying to be professionals. “I mean, I will as soon as this briefing is over.” From Felicity’s expression that was too little, a little too late.
“It’s actually a rather interesting legal loophole,” Clyde starts before anyone can stop him. “You see early thoughts on magic resembled a lot of current popular fears about radiation. There were all these worries about extra-reality contamination around sites of magic. Sullivan’s Polluted Ether Theorem of ’36 to give it a name, though by any other name it would still be as awfully wrong as it is under that one. There’s not even such a thing as ether. The man barely deserves the name thaumaturgist, to be honest, and his Latin was laughable. Not that I want to brag about my own handling of a dead language, but if one commits to the path of tearing reality open, one might as well have the decency to learn one’s tools, I always say. Well not always. Just in this one case really. But if I were to talk about it more often, I would say it more often. Because it really is true. Just common decency really.
“Anyway,” Clyde continues, somehow failing to pause for breath, “because of that, there were a lot of concerns that the apartments of early government-sponsored thaumaturgists were horribly contaminated and would basically cause anyone who entered them to turn into mutated gloop. So they waited for the contamination to become more diffuse. Except no one knew when that was going to be. Well, not until Barkman got around to refuting Sullivan’s theory in ’76, though at that point it was basically common knowledge and Barkman was just a glory hound who managed to swing writing the actual paper. But at that point, no one really gave a damn about these old apartments. They were far more interested in creating something that would actually cause inter-reality contamination and turn people into mutant gloop. Really, the cold war was a very odd time for thaumaturgy.
“So the apartments basically stayed protected by these outdated laws that no one’s got around to repealing. There’s about eighty of them scattered around the country. Mostly in London really. Though there’s a concentration up in York too. Big hotbed of thaumaturgy in the late forties up in York, as it happens.”
And finally the breath happens.
“So,” I jump in as fast as I can, “basically you’re agreeing with Tabitha’s initial statement of, ‘yes.’”
Clyde thinks about that for a moment, opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “Yes.”
“OK,” I nod, “so basically we can go there and clean out the rest of his stuff, right?”
Another pause. “Yes,” Clyde says. He opens his mouth again, checks my expression, closes it.
“All right then,” I say,
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