Donovan almost didn’t take the call. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and Matt was still there, crashed out on the couch, and the coffee wasn’t done. So, when Skype notified him of an incoming call from Fenwood, Donovan very nearly ignored it. But he was awake, Susan and Marci had left, and he wasn’t in the middle of anything critical; there wouldn’t be a better time, and the Black Hole couldn’t be ducked forever. Then he took a breath, let it out, and clicked the answer button.
The familiar long, cadaverous face appeared. “Good day, Mr. Longfellow. This is Boyd Fenwood from Budget and Oversight.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fenwood,” he said.
“If you please, Mr. Longfellow. This is not a joking matter.”
“Oh. It isn’t? Well, damn. And all the other times we’ve talked, I thought you were just kidding around.”
“If you please.”
“Sure. Can I call you Boyd?”
“I would prefer you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m gonna keep asking. You gotta break down eventually.”
“Mr. Longfellow.”
“Well, all right then. I guess you’d better tell me about it. What’s on your mind? How can I help Budget and Oversight? Because you know that with everything I do, keeping Budget and Oversight happy is my first concern.”
“Mr. Longfellow, are you aware that every time you activate the Remote Portal Device it requires both the work of a skilled technician and certain expensive materials, costing the Foundation over two thousand, two hundred dollars to reset it? And nearly half that much for the return trip?”
“Why, no, Mr. Fenwood,” said Donovan, who had been given this figure roughly ten thousand times. “I had no idea. Is that what this is about? I’d thought you were going to ask for my recent expenses, so you could make paying them your top priority, like you usually do.”
Fenwood’s face kept jumping around on the screen, like he was moving his head all the time and Skype was having trouble keeping up. It was oddly disconcerting after Becker’s stillness.
“Mr. Longfellow, will you at least do me the courtesy of being serious?”
“I’ll try.”
“You have authorized the device for your team on six occasions in the last week. Are you absolutely certain that none of those trips could have been taken by mundane means?”
“Not if we wanted results. More time to the site means more time until the results of the investigation are in, and sometimes it means the thing we’re trying to investigate is no longer in condition to be detected.”
“I am aware of this. But you, in turn, must be aware that if we were to authorize fast travel for every investigation we would soon be out of money for, among other things, your wages.”
Why wait? Haul out the heavy artillery right away, as some general somewhere must have said. “Mr. Becker was insistent on results. If you would like to check this with him, I have his number right here.”
There was a pause. Becker was a trump card that could be played over and over, and the fact that Fenwood knew exactly what Donovan was doing did nothing to diminish the effectiveness. There was, however, a downside: Fenwood might cave, but he would have his revenge.
Donovan sat there for another ten minutes as the man from the Black Hole explained in detail the meticulous accounting necessary to stretch the meager funding from Grants and Acquisitions (“the Vault”) to not only continue the services the Foundation provided to its members but also simply keep it operating. Was Mr. Longfellow aware of what the Euro was doing in Spain, and the mere cost of maintaining the headquarters building, and paying the salaries of the clerical staff? It was not his, Fenwood’s, place to decide what services must be reduced, if not cut out entirely, but he would take his oath—yes, his oath—that it wasn’t Donovan’s, either, and yet by his promiscuous spending he, Donovan, was taking that decision out of the hands of both Budget and Oversight and the Executive itself, and surely even Mr. Longfellow could see that the Executive would not be pleased by this usurpation of their power.
There was another pause; Fenwood seemed to think he had perhaps gone too far with the “even Mr. Longfellow.”
“Very well,” said Donovan, in his best cold, deeply offended voice. “If that is all, I really must not keep Mr. Becker waiting any more.”
“Yes, of course. You understand, I’m only doing my job.”
“Yes, Mr. Fenwood. I understand entirely.”
With a barely concealed sigh of relief, Donovan ended the call and returned to his guest.
* * *
We were at the bus station, sitting in plastic seats facing away from each other, and he was telling me more about how magic works. I listened carefully, then said, “Why do you call it a grid when it isn’t even in squares?”
I could see him fight the urge to turn around and stare at me. “Nick, I’m telling you that magic is real, that miracles are possible, that sorcerers walk among us, and you’re worried that the language doesn’t make sense?”
“Okay,” I said. “Fair point. So, this stuff you do, you have to have a knack for it?”
“Yes, to feel and identify the grid lines. My theory is that it isn’t magic as such, just something we don’t understand yet. Clarke’s Law and all that.”
“Whose law?”
“Doesn’t matter. But you can do it, or you can’t. After that, it’s a matter of aptitude and training, like everything else.”
“What about you? Can you do it?”
“No,” said Charlie.
Was there the least hesitation before he’d said that? I wasn’t sure; I set it aside for later consideration. “How do people get the training?”
“The Mystici, or the Foundation.”
“The Foundation?”
“They’re the ones who are after us.”
“Oh.”
“So one group or the other, or else trial and error. Trial and error is a poor idea—it tends to create problems. Although there are a few who—no, that’s just a distraction. Skip it.”
“So, these groups. They’re, like, enemies? Competitors?”
“Not enemies. Maybe competitors. ‘Rivals’ might be the best term, at least in some things. They both look for sensitives, and offer to train them, and sometimes recruit them.”
“If I had the talent, would they find me, or would I find them?”
“Can work either way. They’re always looking, and have various ways of finding you. But some sensitives will feel a grid line and follow it to a node, and they have people watching a lot of the nodes in case that happens.”
“Node?”
“Where three or more lines come together. A lot of power there.”
“Then how—”
“No, that’s enough questions for now. You’re set with the next name on the list?”
It isn’t a name, part of my mind responded. It’s a person. Yeah, said another part. And a person I want to kill. That was as much of a peep as I ever got out of my conscience.
“Yes,” I said. “What do you have for me this time?”
He hesitated. “You don’t like this guy much, do you?”
“No.”
“Then you’re going to like what I have. One thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Once you’ve used it, don’t discard it. I’m going to want it back.”
“This one can be used again? I thought that was impossible.”
“It is impossible. That isn’t why.”
“Then—”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Whatever you say.”
* * *
“What are you grinning about?” asked Donovan as he turned from his computer.
Matt shook his head. “Just, you know, how the universe works.”
Donovan grunted.
Matt sat back on the sofa, stuck his arms out, and stretched his legs. “So explain,” he said. “Who are the good guys? I mean, what do you do?”
Donovan rolled his computer chair the five feet from the kitchen to the living room, sat. “The main purpose is to study how magic works, what the limitations are, how it can be used. And to keep it secret. Mostly to keep it secret. Beer?”
“What kind?”
“Jesus. Picky motherfucker, aren’t you? Rolling Rock.”
“No th—oh, what the hell. Sure.”
Donovan got one for each of them. There were six left. He handed one to Matt, sat down with his, and they made a sort of vague toasting gesture toward each other, drank. Donovan liked the beer more than Matt seemed to.
“What will you do to keep the secret?” said Matt.
“Let’s cut to it, all right?”
“I thought that’s what I was doing.”
“We won’t kill anyone. I mean, I won’t, and I’ve never heard of anyone in the Foundation ordering it.”
“Not killing leaves a lot open.”
“Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”
Matt shrugged.
“Yeah, it does leave a lot open. But you’ve killed, haven’t you?”
Matt shrugged again.
“And you’ve killed innocents?”
“What’s an innocent?”
“I’m saying, don’t judge us.”
“I’m not judging; I’m trying to find out who you people are. You said you’re the good guys. I want to know what that means.”
Donovan realized he had, in fact, been getting defensive. He nodded. “All right. My bad. Keep asking.”
Matt crossed his legs, ankle over knee. “When was it founded?”
“Nineteen thirty-nine.”
“Really? That recently? I was thinking, you know, thousands of years of ancient lore and all that.”
“The group it split from goes back to the Middle Ages, if that helps.”
“Oh. What’s the group they split from?”
“A bunch of pricks.”
“Really?”
Donovan tapped his beer bottle against his teeth and thought about how to answer. “They protect each other, help each other, and at least some of them are total bastards.”
“So, let me guess: They’re the bad guys.”
“Not this time. The bad guy is killing them.”
“Oh. What do you mean when you say some of them are total bastards?”
“Well, let’s see. Of the people whose deaths we’re investigating, one of them was a racist asshole who got people beaten and maybe killed. Another made reporters disappear if they were going to expose something embarrassing to whoever was paying him. And the third was, at least, a corrupt State Senator.”
“Really? It doesn’t seem like killing them is such a terrible thing to do.”
“I had that conversation with my boss not long ago.”
“And?”
“It’s bad because they pay me to think it’s bad. That’s the best answer I could get.”
“How much do they pay you?”
“Minimum wage, plus a stipend, plus the apartment is free.”
Matt looked around the room. “That doesn’t sound like a lot.”
“No. If it was a non-rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan, that would be different.”
“Can you live on that?”
“Sure. Easy. As long as I also get in twenty hours a week or so doing medical billing.”
Matt tapped his fingers against the beer bottle. “Why do you do it?”
“I can do it at home. It’s very exciting work. I recommend it.”
“I meant the other. Why do you do the investigations?”
“Oh. I ask myself that a lot between jobs. Maybe I’ll get a PI license one of these days.”
“So, you investigate when people are killed using magic?”
“Or when magic is used for crime, or anything else that might get noticed.”
“How long have you been doing it?”
“Eleven years.”
“How many times have they called you in?”
“Thirty-nine. This makes forty. Most of the time, it turns out to be a new sensitive playing around, someone missed by Recruitment, so we just turn it over to them.”
“And the others?”
“Some are false alarms—someone picks up indications of magic, or hears a report, and it turns out to be nothing.”
“And?”
“And sometimes it’s a bad guy. Someone using magic in a way that could get discovered.”
“What do you do when it’s a bad guy?”
“Depends. Sometimes you can intimidate the guy into stopping. Threats. Shows of force.”
Matt was staring, intense. “And if you can’t?”
Donovan hesitated, then said, “There’s a thing the sorcerer is trained for. It, like, pulls out the person’s ability to sense the grid lines. Takes away his ability to do magic.”
“You can do that?”
“We don’t like to. It leaves the guy magically dead, completely, can’t even trigger an artifact like normal people can.”
“An artifact?”
“Never mind.”
“So, Marci’s done that?”
“No, but her predecessor had to a few times.”
“What happened to her?”
“Him. He got old and retired.”
Something about that must have struck Matt as funny, because he started to smile but stopped himself. “Is there a pension plan?”
Donovan had another swallow of beer. “Yeah, but it sucks.”
“Health care?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty good, actually. Like, ten-dollar co-pay, twenty for dental. Pretty sweet, really.”
“So, you’ve never taken a life?”
“Me personally? No.”
“Your team?”
Donovan looked at him, looked at his beer, looked up again, and nodded. “Twice. Susan once, the sorcerer once. Not the guy we were after, guys that were backing him. Like, say, what you were doing. We like killing people even less than we like de-sorcelling someone.”
Matt laughed. “‘De-sorcelling’? That’s the term?”
Donovan felt his lips twitch. “That’s what I call it. There’s a technical term that everyone else uses.”
Matt nodded and became serious. “So, what are you going to do with me?”
“I told you. I’m going to let you go.”
“Then why are you answering all my questions?”
Donovan shrugged. “You seem like a decent guy for someone who tried to kill me. I don’t know. Why does it matter?”
“If secrecy is such a big deal—”
“Like I said before, who will you tell? Me, I think they’re a bit paranoid about it. It would take something really fucking huge to convince the public that magic was a thing. But, hey, I’m just a hired grunt.”
“I want to help.”
“I heard you. But the only thing I know for sure about you is that you took five hundred bucks to kill a complete stranger. I mean, that’s not all that much of a recommendation, right?”
Matt nodded.
“Ever done that before?” said Donovan.
Matt shook his head. “First time. It just, I don’t know, it fell into my lap, and I said what the hell.”
Donovan waited, looking at him.
“Okay,” said Matt after a moment. “A couple of months ago I needed some dental work I couldn’t afford, so I knocked over a couple of stop-and-robs. I never thought of myself as being that guy, but I did it. And then this … shit. You know how they say sometimes you have to hit bottom before you can work up again? Well, everyone has a different bottom. I kind of think taking money to kill someone is mine. I want to start working up again. I want to be a good guy.”
If Marci had been there, she could have told if he was lying. Sometimes you can tell if someone is lying by following his eye movements, but Matt’s eyes weren’t giving anything away. Donovan’s Uncle Gary had said that you develop an instinct for when someone was lying, but Donovan was still waiting for that instinct to kick in.
“All right,” he said. “I’m going to believe you. I’ll send your name up to Recruitment.”
Matt finished his beer, set the bottle on the end table. “Where’s the head?”
Donovan indicated it with his chin.
When Matt came back out, he said, “What about working with you? On this? I mean, I’m already involved.”
Donovan shook his head. “Yeah, sorry, but my team is pretty set. We have Hippie Chick to be the tough guy if we need it, and Marci handles the magic.”
Matt sat back down on the couch. “What do you do?”
“Investigate.”
“You any good at it?”
“Which came first, playing guitar, or collecting comic books?”
Matt stared at him, then looked at his fingertips, nodded, smiled. “Yeah, Mom was always on me about washing under my nails. You got training in that?”
Donovan nodded. “My mother’s brother. He was, like, genius level. Sometimes he’d scare me he was so smart. He got a scholarship, full education, then became a fed. Mom was so pissed.”
“Why?”
“Seriously? A fed? When I told them I was going to go live with him and learn how to be a PI, Dad smacked me across the face. Mom didn’t invite me for Christmas that year. They didn’t get over it until he—Uncle Gary—died.”
“Killed in the line?”
“No, cancer. He’d quit the feds by then.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t talk about it. I got a suspicion he found out Mom and Dad were right about ‘em, but he never said so. He wasn’t big on admitting he was wrong.”
“What was he like?”
“My uncle? He had, like, an on-off switch. He liked to sit around in his underwear, drink beer, and watch ball. But, man, then he’d start to teach me something, and he just got ice in his veins. He could make you feel two inches tall just by the way he looked at you, and he’d stay on you with shit until you had it perfect, and then he’d grunt like he was saying, ‘Took you long enough.’ Then you’d be done he was all slapping you on the back and, ‘What do we eat tonight, Donny? You make some of that Hawaiian bread, and I’ll do a pot roast.’ Weird motherfucker.” He shook his head. “Man, you’re bringing back memories.”
“You get along with your folks?”
“Now I do, yeah. Don’t see ‘em much. They live in Philly.”
“That’s not that far, is it?”
“Not in miles. Tell me, other than hit people and shoot people, what can you do?”
“Back to me, huh? I was trained in interrogation.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I know.”
Donovan smiled a little. “What else can you do?”
“Talk down a drunk before he gets aggressive.”
“Oh? What’s the technique?”
“Shake his hand.”
“Yeah?”
“Shake his hand, put your other hand on his shoulder, look him in the eye, shake your head, say, ‘Yeah, man, I know what you mean.’ You’d be surprised.”
“That doesn’t come up that often in what we do, but it might be useful in my personal life. What else you got?”
“I can get hit a lot and keep going.”
“That isn’t something we need. I hope.”
“Some demolition. I’m not an expert.”
“I’d like to believe we won’t need that.”
Matt sighed. “So, sounds like I’m confined to the titty bar.”
“Sorry. And sorry to leave you on the wrong coast.”
“I’ll get by. And, well, you know, I did sort of try to kill you.”
“I don’t take that personally.”
Matt nodded. “One more beer for the road?” he said.
“Sure,” said Donovan, and headed for the fridge. He had the door open when Matt said, “You know what? Skip it. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
Donovan nodded, returned from the kitchen and opened the door, stepped aside. “I’ll send your name upstairs. Maybe you will.”
* * *
Sometimes it seemed like Susan put as much effort into doing nothing as she did into training. Thirty minutes before her own official Game of Thrones start time, she did a quick pickup of the apartment: She put her gi into the hamper, put the plate and glass into the sink, and put her artifacts into the closet. There were only three artifacts she carried with her: a smoke bomb (with an enchantment to prevent dispersal) in the form of a golf ball; an earring that would improve all of her senses; and her belt buckle that would generate a field of magic protection when she gripped it and said “velociraptor.” Of these, the belt was the only one she ever used. She just never seemed to remember the others until after the point she should have used them. Nevertheless, they all went into the closet along with the other gifts from the Burrow that she never used. Then she double-locked the closet.
Twenty-five minutes to go.
She got out the ice bucket, filled it, opened the wine, and set it in the bucket next to her chair. Then she cut up the celery and spread cream cheese on it, put that on a plate, added some carrots and some exquisite little pickles acquired from the Russian Deli. She brought the plate along with what had become her official Game of Thrones wine goblet (acquired at King Richard’s Faire outside of Chicago when she was nine) and set these next to the ice bucket. Then she used the bathroom; then she gave the computer the traditional you’d-better-not-go-off-for-the-next-hour glare, picked up the remote, and sat down.
Still five minutes to go.
Sometimes she wished she had someone to watch with her. Even a dog. Maybe a dog. Be nice if it was a guy, but she hadn’t yet met a guy who could stand to be around her for more than a week. It wasn’t just that she was so intimidating; there were boys who could handle that, even liked it. It was the secrecy, all the things she couldn’t share, the way she might have to just run off with no notice, and wouldn’t say why. And every time—every goddamned time—she could see, Are you secretly a call girl? in their eyes, and that would do it. If they’d asked, Are you a call girl? it would have been different—she’d have said, Sweetie, if I were a call girl I wouldn’t hide it. But no, they’d thought it, and it made her want to break their legs, which was really no basis for a long-term romantic relationship.
She and Laughing Boy had hung out together a few times, talked about it. He’d even braved the wrath of Oversight a couple of times and visited her, staying on her couch. They’d talked about how hard it was to find anyone who could deal with the lifestyle. In Donovan’s case, sometimes girls thought he must be some kind of secret agent. The ones who thought that was hot turned out not to be the ones Donovan wanted in his life.
How did Marci do it?
She shook her head.
It was time. She turned on the TV, fiddled with the TiVo, and settled in. Damn, those pickles were nice.
* * *
Camellia Hortense Morgan pushed her chair back from the long glass table, and decided she needed to be patient and diplomatic. It was already getting dark, and it was way past her dinnertime, so it was difficult, but she had to. She spoke English, because that was the only language they all had in common; it gave her an advantage because she was a native speaker and could perfectly express the nuances she needed.
“You are,” she said patiently and diplomatically, “all idiots.”
Hodari Nwosu twitched his lips at her. “You are charming as always, my dear,” he said in his Oxford accent. “Care to expand on that?”
Camellia barely nodded to him. Hodari was perhaps the sharpest person in the room; he’d jumped in to smooth things over before the others got annoyed because he knew her, because he would have realized that she wouldn’t have let herself say that unless there was something going on far more important than whose feelings got hurt.
“The rumors of Mystici presence within our organization have been going on as long as we have existed, and we have yet to find a shred of proof. Nevertheless, I do not propose to dismiss them, as Madeleine has implied. Nor do I wish to panic, as Sir Thomas seems to think we should. Yes, there have been murders, and yes, this is a threat. But we are investigating it as we always do. That is what the Ranch is for. If every time this happens we throw away the systems we have built up exactly to deal with it, we may as well abandon everything else we do at the same time, because nothing will survive.”
She looked around the table; the three men and three women were all focused on her, even Fat Harold, who lifted his head—it had been drooping onto his chest as if he were sleeping—and said, “You contend, then, that these events are ordinary?”
Camellia avoided making eye contact with him, because this wasn’t the time to remind him how much he irritated her just by existing. She studied the glass table while she let the annoyance wash over her. I really need to get rid of this stupid thing and get something nice, like cherrywood. Something less antiseptic, less corporate, more real. And replace those goddamned fluorescent lights. She raised her head and stared at the far wall, with its plaque listing, in Latin, the Three Laws that they all ignored.
“No, Harold, I am not claiming the events are ordinary. In fact, they are quite extraordinary. Having been the one to bring them to your attention in the first place, I am not in the least suggesting that this is business as usual. What I am contending is that there will be consequences if our response throws away seventy-five years of protocols and systems that we’ve put in place for exactly this.”
“If I may,” said Nwosu.
Camellia hesitated, then nodded. Nwosu rose to his feet—he knew damned well how imposing he was, how he took over the whole room when he stood. Worse, he was unpredictable; there was no way to know what position he was going to take. She kept her face expressionless and listened closely, ready to shut him down if necessary. If possible. He nodded back to her, then turned to the others.
“I would put it this way,” he said. “No one denies the seriousness of what is happening. It has exactly the earmarks of something big, organized, and, obviously, well funded. But what we do not yet know is why it is happening, who is behind it. If we react to it by throwing aside our security protocols, are we doing exactly what those behind the attacks are hoping we will do? Ms. Morgan is proposing we discover the answer to that question, and, in the meantime, carry on the investigation in the usual way.”
He sat down while the others thought about it.
Yes, he was exactly right. What he hadn’t said, and perhaps hadn’t considered, was that the security protocols had been a mistake from the day they were implemented. And what she couldn’t say was that she would love to see the idiotic, paranoid compartmentalizations thrown into the dustbin where they belonged. She didn’t say this, because there was one thing she didn’t know: Was this the best possible time or the worst possible time to do so? She imagined the looks on their faces when, after the crisis passed, she walked in with a proposal identical to the one Ursine had just introduced, and had to keep a smile off her face.
“Mmm,” said Harold to Hodari. “Ten minutes ago you were ready to approve the motion; now you sound like you’re against it.”
“Yes,” said Hodari. “I have changed my position. She convinced me. That will happen, sometimes, when reasonable people speak with reasonable people.”
“All right,” said Betty Ursine, nodding her head slowly, her pink New England skin looking somehow unhealthy between Hodari and Nailah. Betty’s fingers were tapping on the table as she studied Morgan. Careful, thought Morgan. Careful. She’s no fool. Then Betty nodded. “All right. I’ll withdraw the motion for now.”
Camellia nodded back, keeping the relief off her face. “Then unless someone objects, I’d like to hear a short—I repeat: a short report from Grants and Acquisitions, after which what I really want is lunch and a strong drink. You can get your own lunches, but the first round of drinks is on me.”
The motion was passed by acclaim.
* * *
To Marci the grid lines were an instrument; she played them that way. Each line had its own vibration, its own tone. She would give herself to the line so that she could take from it, shape it into something beautiful; the final effect was merely an afterthought. It wasn’t about the result; it was about the process—working the lines, the patterns, shaping them, exploring them; testing her abilities, filled her with a euphoria like nothing else. What could she do with magic? The question was more what couldn’t she do, because that question led her to try things, to fall into it until she felt she wasn’t so much an actor as a conduit between the power she touched and the matter she manipulated. It was a problem in three-dimensional mathematics, where the numbers were tangible and the operations excited the sensations. Marci didn’t practice meditation, or, really, know anything about it; but when she heard about the serene joy of vanishing into one’s own head, she thought she might understand just a little of what that must be like. What can you do with magic was, at this point, not even the question.
“What can you do with magic?” she’d asked Sam, one of her instructors, years ago, at the beginning of her training.
“What can I do?”
“No, no. You know, I mean—”
“What can be done with magic?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything that can be done without it, and nothing that can’t be done at all.”
They were in one of the large practice rooms. It had a high unfinished ceiling and concrete walls. There was a rectangular table with three chairs to one side, where judges sat when someone was being tested, but it was unoccupied. The room felt more than anything like a gymnasium with the bleachers and basketball hoops removed—it even had the same echoes. All it needed was the musky smell of locker room instead of the faint antiseptic smell and she’d have been convinced she was back in high school. Marci had been assured that there were spells all around it to make sure none of the students could do any damage to anything past the metal doors.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“What can be done with muscle? With brain? With muscle and brain working together, along with the materials the Earth provides?”
“Well, anything, I guess. I mean, anything that, uh, that doesn’t violate natural law. Depending on, you know.”
“Depending on what, Marci?”
“Well, on how much muscle, how much brain, what kind of materials.”
“Well, there you go. The grid lines and points and nodes provide the muscle; the skill of the user provides the brains. The materials you have to find, but they’re all around you, and can often be transformed into something else.”
She caught herself playing with her hair, and stopped. “Transformed?”
“The technical term is ‘transmutation.’”
“Like, lead into gold?”
“That would be atomic level, not molecular. There have been a couple people able to do that, but it’s a fluke talent. And even for them it was slow and hard. How are you on physics and chemistry?”
“A little. I have the math background, but haven’t actually studied them much.”
Sam sat on the floor, cross-legged. Marci sat down facing him.
“You’ll need to learn more,” said Sam.
“I need physics and chemistry to be a sorcerer? That’s—”
“Not ‘need,’ exactly. But the more you understand how things work, the easier it is to manipulate them.”
Marci put her elbows on her knees, rested her chin in her hands. “So then, the more I understand natural laws, the better I can violate them?”
“Actually, that isn’t a bad way to think about it, for now. Of course, there’s a lot more than knowledge that determines what comes easy, what comes hard, and what’s impossible for you.”
“Like what?”
“Do you sing?”
“You know I’m tone-deaf.”
Sam nodded. “And no matter how much you studied the techniques, you probably still wouldn’t be very good at it.”
“So there’s talent involved.”
“Yes. A mix of talent and knowledge and willpower.”
“How much of each?”
“It varies with each person.”
Marci started tracing circles on the floor with her finger as she worked on that. Sam let her think. After a moment, she said, “So, then, you’re saying that underneath it all, natural law is still natural law.”
“Yes.” He looked at her. “Are you starting to understand?”
“Sort of. Can you give me an example? Something practical.”
“All right. Suppose someone is shooting at you.”
“I’d rather not.”
Sam’s lips twitched. “Work with me, Marci.”
“All right.”
“If you had some stone, and some stone-shaping tools, and the muscle and skill to build a wall, you could build one that bullets couldn’t get past, right?”
“It’d take a while.”
“Yes it would. My point is, magic can do the same thing, only faster. And with the added advantage of it being invisible, so the shooter will freak out a bit.”
“Faster than a bullet?”
“Well, it’s best to have the shield up before someone starts shooting.”
“It’s best if no one starts shooting.”
“Well, yes. That is its own skill. To manipulate the will, the feelings, the emotions, of another.”
“That seems kind of…” She fell silent.
“Morally dubious?”
“Yeah.”
“It is. One difference between us and the Mystici is that, as a rule, we don’t hold with that. We feel it is a violation, and only to be used in an extremity, or in the case of a subtle effect we are certain will do no lasting harm.”
“And they don’t agree?”
Sam frowned, as if looking for words. “It isn’t that, as much as it is they don’t think it’s their business to tell anyone what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“Okay. How about immortality?”
“No.”
“Extended life?”
“Yes and no.”
“Hmm?”
“Certain diseases we can cure, others not; some we’re working on. But in general, magic can’t be used to extend life, but we can do better than that.”
“Oh? I can’t wait to hear this.”
“There is a spell—a very recent one, perfected by the Eggheads—that causes organs to fail all at the same time, within two or three weeks.”
“Wait. How is that—”
“You don’t understand—you can’t understand, yet, and really, neither can I. But one of the worst aspects of growing old is how you grow old in pieces—eyes, memory, kidneys, who knows? The spell ties all of your major organs together, so you remain, in all important ways, young, until your body fails and you die.”
“That doesn’t sound all that good.”
“Not to me, either, but I’m only forty. I’m assured that someday it will.”
“All right. I’m more interested in that shield spell. Can you teach it to me?”
“A shield spell? Why? Planning to join I and E? I’d figured you for research.”
“No, it isn’t that; it’s just, I don’t know.” Who would not want to know how to do a spell that could stop bullets? I mean, it wasn’t as cool making lightning shoot from your fingertips, but she didn’t have the nerve to ask for that. Yet. “I just figured it’d be a good example,” she finished.
“Sure,” said Sam. “We can do that. It won’t work if you’re on water, though. Or, at least, without adding a spell to freeze the water first. But dirt will work, sidewalk, most floors.”
“Show me!”
“All right.” Sam stood up, Marci did the same. Sam reached out to the empty air with his hands, fingers moving like he was playing an invisible piano. “We’ll use the floor here. Now, to start, touch the node and feel your way into the floor. Eight or ten inches should do it.…”
* * *
Manuel Becker left work every day, including Saturday, at 8:01 PM CET, having shifted his schedule somewhat to accommodate his North American contacts, and took the bus across the river, then walked to his home on Calle Juan Pérez Almeida. It was a good ten-minute walk—actually a bit more, as he usually stopped for groceries—and one he took every day, regardless of weather. He didn’t own an umbrella, so when it rained he got wet.
During the bus ride, he always thought about grid lines, and points, and nodes; he couldn’t keep himself from wondering if he was crossing any. Once he would have been able to feel them. Now he refused to look at the maps on which they were marked, but he couldn’t stop himself wondering. This was why he preferred not to travel. What he did not think about was work. If there were an emergency, he’d be informed; if not, he would think about it again tomorrow morning.
He arrived home and removed his coat, his tie, and his shoes and socks. Walking around barefoot comforted him. Then he put on music—today it was Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 in E flat Major, Opus 11, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, Galliera conducting, Dennis Brain as soloist, because it had been a difficult and vexing day; he wanted something triumphant. He sat in his favorite chair and did nothing except listen until the end—the touch of hunting horn and the strings coming in leaving the piece not so much unresolved as hinting that the story went on.
He got up then and made dinner: chicken paella, accompanied by brown rice with lemon, followed by leche frita. Like so many Englishmen living in Spain, he’d become more Spanish than the Spaniards he knew, so many of whom had become Anglophiles. But after all, Spanish food was better. He ate like he’d listened to the music: with his full attention. When he was done, he put the leftovers away for tomorrow’s lunch, then washed the dishes, wiped the table and the sink, and sat down at his computer, where he worked on a jigsaw puzzle, this one a picture of the Himalayas. He had the border pieces done, and a lot of the obvious sections, so he was at a slow point. After exactly forty-five minutes he closed the puzzle, checked his email, deleted some spam, and shut down the computer.
He spent an hour with a novel by Julio Llamazares, then put it down, marking his place with a bookmark from La Fugitiva.
Then he went into his room and pulled open a drawer of his bedside table, removing an old and beaten folder that contained the notes he’d made in his efforts to perfect a spell to create a technical-magical interface for prosthetic limbs. He read over the notes until the tears came, then put the folder away.
He took off his shirt, knelt beside the bed, took the flogger from the bedside table, and whipped himself until he was ready to sleep.