10

I was getting worn thin, so I did what any good wizard would do: I had fun. Magic is will and belief. That’s a fancy way of saying that it comes from inside you. As a Catholic, I believe it’s part of what it means to be made in the image of God: everything He can do, I can, too, just on a smaller scale. Of course, He’s got several billion years of experience on me and presumably limitless energy resources, whereas I am fully enclosed within the laws of thermodynamics. So if I was going to go around flinging magic out of me, I needed to do something to bring energy back into me.

The first shopping center I stopped at didn’t appeal to me. Dorothy and I hadn’t been spending as many miles together as usual, so I found another mall clear across town on the map. I took a roundabout way and might have kept my foot a little heavier on the gas pedal than was ideal, but a guy has to show his car he loves her somehow. The next mall had me hooked the instant I saw the store directory: a Ghiradelli chocolatiers and a video arcade. Energy intake didn’t get any better than good chocolate and pinball.

My stop at Ghiradelli required little in the way of explanation. My purchases fell into three categories: chocolate I ate while still in the store, chocolate I ate while still in the mall, and chocolate I would eat later on. I bought enough to feed a platoon for several days, that is to say, enough to last me ’til Tuesday. Maybe. I justified the extravagance by telling myself I might have to trade some of it to a hungry fairy.

“Hey, no need for that. If your soul is on the market, I can get us a great deal on some heavy hitters from the outer darkness. The wendigo won’t know what hit him.”

“Neither my chocolate, nor my soul, is going anywhere,” I assured my inner voice.

“Oh, come on. Have you ever seen it? Touched it? You’ll barely even miss…hey, put that down…mmph mmrrm.”

“That’s better.”

After Ghiradelli, I had to stop by the ATM. I wasn’t out of pocket change yet, but based on my last few shopping experiences since meeting Valente, I would be broke by the time I left the mall. Nothing from the nefarious electronic spaces tried to eat me or my debit card while I used the machine. From there, I went around in a whirlwind of capitalism. I got a new pair of jeans, some new steel-toed boots, a couple of CDs (yes, people still buy those, Internet problems, remember?), a leather duffel bag, titanium-rimmed sunglasses, and a katana. I had no delusions about the quality of the sword, but I was so surprised to see one for sale in a mall that I bought it on general principle. Against some spirits, especially the fae, any steel is better than no steel.

“Rrhhrrm mmrph.”

“Yeah, I know. Karmic balance means that against some spirits, steel, regardless of quality, will be worthless. Given my luck, wendigoes will probably fall into that category. Now, shut up, and let me enjoy my last Saturday on planet Earth.”

The arcade was everything I hoped for. There was a prize counter for trading in tickets earned in the skill games, tons of older machines, and a few of those new-fangled work-out-while-you-play type games. Looking over the prize case, my eye settled on one of the bins and I decided it was time for a little skee-ball. My hand-eye coordination wasn’t what it used be in my Xbox in the dorm room days, but I figured the game out soon enough. I blew through five bucks worth of tokens, racking up what I needed for the item in the case, and had a blast doing it.

After that, I wandered through the aisles, stopping to play anything that looked even remotely fun: a new Street Fighter, old school Space Invaders, some game with a winged chimp, an alien shoot-em-up game that mixed in cowboys and dinosaurs. I dropped coins in all of them. The pinball selection was not up to my exacting standards, but I played each machine once just to make sure. I was in a generous mood and started leaving an extra token or two on top of each machine when I was done. What good was a dangerous job with a huge paycheck if I couldn’t spend it all?

I had gotten my inner groove back.