Doomsday Exam [BUREAU 13 Book Two] by Nick Pollotta Page B

bag of PURINA DEMON CHOW. The oven was set to explode if turned on, but Sir Reginald found that trap. Plus. Patricia opened the refrigerator, but not the freezer. A minus.
    Of course, the pantry was filled with pants which produced the expected mass groan of pain. I had no idea who the punster was at the Academy, but someday I would find the nitwit and personally shoot him/her in the spleen.
    Apparently satisfied, Ken used handsignals to say the first floor was clean and they should move on. Tsk-tsk. Sloppy work that. There were twelve places they had failed to search for clues, two operational procedures forgotten entirely, and they hadn't found the special message for them on the telephone answering machine. It was obscene, but useful. Still, not bad on the whole.
    "Cellar, or second floor?” Connie asked, in her sweet contralto. The operatic twins were still holding hands. Bio-harmonics? I wondered.
    "Cellar,” Katrina suggested, nervously fingering her staff.
    "Second floor,” Sir Reginald said, taking a pinch of snuff from an ornate Nathan Mills gold box. “Nobody hides things in the cellar anymore. It's gauche."
    In a juicy Bronx cheer worthy of any New Yorker, Patricia expressed her sentiments on the matter.
    Drying sweaty hands on his pants, Ken agreed. “We'll hit the upper stories, but let's protect our rear."
    With her wooden wand, Katrina put a low-grade Sealed spell on the cellar door so that it could not be opened from the other side. Using a pocketknife on a chair leg, Ken whittled a doorstop which he then shoved tightly under the doorjamb. Meanwhile, Sir Reginald removed a lock pick kit from his tailored jacket and operated the ancient key latch, lubricating it first so there would be no noise. The twins kept guard.
    Endlessly adjusting the controls, Prof. Burton nodded in approval.
    "They're not bad,” Raul said around a mouthful of popcorn.
    I stole a buttery handful from the huge carton that had materialized in his lap. “Shaddup and watch."
    "Will there be a cartoon later?” Mindy asked. George hushed her.
    In standard formation, the students stepped upon the first stair and a ghostly figure appeared floating in the air before them. Moaning and groaning, the hideous vision warned them of unseen dangers and then faded away as only a ghost can. Because it wasn't a laser holograph, but an actual ghost, Abduhl Benny Hassan, an ex-member of our team. Not willing to lose trained personnel under any circumstances, Horace Gordon had conjured poor Hassan back from his icy grave. Not even death could stop an agent of Bureau 13! Only major holidays.
    Averting her gaze from the screen, Mindy gave a heartfelt sigh. She and Abduhl had been close friends, getting a lot closer, when he had died. But as a spirit, he no longer had any interest in the pleasures of the flesh and that sort of put a damper on their relationship.
    Dutifully, Katrina recorded the speech on a tiny tape recorder, Patricia took several flashless pictures with a pocket digital camera and Reginald made a rough sketch of Abduhl's face.
    Proceeding carefully up the stairs, I noted with pride that they walked along the extreme edge of each step, exactly where the board met the wall. That was where stairs were their strongest, the least likely spot to creak and announce your presence to an enemy.
    Just for fun, I asked Prof. Burton to make the eyes of the portraits on the wall track their passage, even had one old lady get out of her rocking chair and leave while the students were alongside. That caught their attention, but Steven and Connie urged the team on by emphatically saying that it was nothing. Another plus mark by their names. I glanced at the clipboard. One telepathic and one a mage. The siblings were a powerful occult team, but only as long as they were in direct physical contact with each other. I wondered if the Dean of Doom had an answer to that?
    "Yes,” Jessica said, adding salt to the popcorn. “Itching powder."
    Hmm, efficient,