WebMage by Kelly McCullough Page A

it over with." She set the gun down. "But I won't. All right. Turn around."
    Part of me wanted to protest that since she was already naked, there wasn't much point in my looking away while she got dressed, but the admittedly small part of my brain devoted to self-preservation overrode my mouth. So I spent what felt like hours staring at the iron plate welded over what had once been a fireplace.
    "All right," said Cerice after a while. "Against my better judgment I'm going to give you a chance to state your case before I throw you out." When I turned back, she was wearing a heavy skirt of red wool and a yellow-gold T-shirt. She looked fabulous.
    "First," I said. "I'm very, very sorry I haven't gotten in touch. It's inexcusable."
    "We agree on that at least."
    "But I had no choice."
    "No choice? No choice?" Her voice was rising again. "You had no choice? What kind of crap is this?"
    "I've been cut off from the mweb. Lachesis revoked my access. I can't send anything between DecLoci. There was literally no way for me to get a message to you."
    "Can you honestly stand here and expect me to believe that? Do you think I'm an idiot, Ravirn? If you can't use the mweb, how the hell did you get here?"
    "I built a faerie ring."
    "You—" She stopped, her mouth open. "That's insane. Faerie rings are chaos magic. Do you know how dangerous that is?" She shook her head abruptly. "No. I don't believe you. Even you aren't that crazy."
    "I can take you to the terminus on this end," I said quickly. "It let me out by the student union. I sealed it to keep it from swallowing up innocent bystanders. Would that be proof enough?" She nodded. "Show me."
    * * * *
    "All right," she said after examining the ring. A wry smile touched her lips. "I believe you're a maniac, and about the mweb access. Next question. Why did she cut you off?"
    So I told her about the nocturnal visit I'd received from my grandmother and about Saint Turing's. As we talked we walked, heading slowly across the campus. It seemed to be earlier in the season here, more late fall than early winter. The dead leaves crackled underfoot. We'd just reached the steps of the main library when I finished my account.
    "But that's less than half the story," I said, turning onto the stairs. "And I owe you the whole thing."
    I stopped. From here on out, everything I said was going to be filtered through Atropos's curse. I wanted to scream. Instead, I turned to the concrete wall that ran beside the stairs and smacked my forehead against it. Cerice looked at me curiously, but didn't say a word. Instead, she continued upward and took a seat on the top step. I sat down a few feet away. It was a good place to talk, well above the general level of the campus, where no one could sneak up on us. The silence stretched out, and the expression on Cerice's face began to darken.
    "Well?" she said after several minutes.
    "I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to go about this." I pressed the palm of my left hand against my forehead and squeezed.
    "Begin at the beginning," said Cerice, as though she were speaking to a child. "Pass through the middle, and wrap up with the end."
    "That's not the problem," I replied.
    "What is the problem?"
    "You aren't going to believe a word I say."
    "You sound awfully certain," she said, some of the anger returning to her tone. "Is that because you don't trust me to judge what you say honestly? Or because you aren't planning on being honest?"
    "Actually, it's neither." There was no good way to go about this. I was going to tell her everything, she wasn't going to believe me, and our budding relationship would come apart like a hard drive when the head touches the disk. "Look," I said finally. "For reasons I can't explain beforehand, I know you're going to find this unbelievable. The only thing I can do is ask you to listen to the whole thing before you make any judgments. Will you do that for me?"
    "I suppose," she said, leaning back on her hands. "Though I can't think of a good reason