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Detroit, Michigan, USA
8th of April, 8:30 a.m. (GMT-4)
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If there was one complaint Martinez had about her new job, it was the elevator. She understood the need for security, but having to present her eye and palm for scanning just to get the Salt Mine elevator moving was a serious pain in the butt, as was having to go up to the fourth floor just to have someone with the right authorization scan their palm and eye to grant you access to the sixth floor. Heaven help you if you forgot something in your office. All the other agents seemed to take it in stride, but it still stuck in her craw.
Martinez slung her bag with her notes over her right shoulder and carefully stacked the brown bags of confections inside—no one liked smooshed muffins. She didn’t bake often, and when she did, it was imperative that she got the goodies out of the house as soon as possible before she ate them all—it was impossible to bake in reasonable amounts when you lived by yourself. Coffee in one hand, she rode the elevator up one floor, where LaSalle greeted her. She presented him with a bag of treats. “Homemade pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, baked last night.”
The tall black man opened the bag and inhaled the spiced aroma. “Thanks, I love muffins,” he replied before he scanned his eye and palm and pressed the button for the sixth floor.
“They’re made with whole wheat flour, so I guess I’m counting them as healthy?” Martinez added for the benefit of Leader, who struck her as a little granola.
LaSalle smirked, picking up her gist. “I’ll let Leader know,” he assured her as the elevator doors closed.
The sixth floor was the same as she had left it before going to San Diego. She veered down the hallway to Weber’s lab and knocked on the open door. “Harold, it’s Lancer. I brought muffins,” she called out.
The inventor looked up from his work and flipped the magnification lenses off his glasses. “Good morning, Lancer. Muffins, eh? What’s the occasion?” He slid off his stool and took the proffered sack.
“I had a good weekend and did some baking,” she replied. “Hey, I used the vape pen last week—it worked like a charm.” She appreciated that Weber chuckled at her Monday morning pun before taking his first bite.
“Excellent! About the pen and the muffins—very moist,” he elaborated. “Any feedback?”
Martinez thought about it. “I was only able to make three passes before I was worried about running out of salt. Usually that’s enough, but it would be nice to get more passes out of it before needing to refill the chamber.”
Weber popped the rest of the baked treat into his mouth. He grabbed a pencil from behind his ear and took notes on a scrap a paper. “I’ll see what I can do. Did you use the amulet or the rosary?”
“Not yet. Thankfully, no magical attacks or casting on the fly during this mission,” she replied.
Weber shrugged. “They can’t be all whiz-bang.”
“I have to run—I’m meeting the twins. I’ll let you know how it goes when I do use them,” she promised.
“Please do,” he mumbled halfway through his second muffin.
Martinez doubled back and cut through the stacks until she reached the librarians’ desk. “You’re late,” Dot noted the time.
“Sorry about that—I was delivering baked goods. I brought you muffins, if it helps.
“You bake?!” Chloe exclaimed.
“What kind?” Dot inquired skeptically.
“Pumpkin chocolate chip,” Martinez answered, holding out a bag to each twin—even though they were conjoined, they were very much their own person.
“That is so thoughtful!” Chloe said graciously.
“Chocolate’s a good start,” Dot commented, accepting Martinez’s peace offering. “You look like you have news.”
“After we finished up the case, I was able to do some magic this weekend,” Martinez announced as she put down her coffee and bag and pulled up a seat.
“That’s wonderful,” Chloe praised her. “Tell us all about it.”
Martinez walked them through the spells she’d used as they partook. Chloe’s cheerful disposition was unwavering as usual, and even Dot’s attitude seemed to improve with a little sugar and chocolate.
“So, how did you feel afterward?” Chloe inquired when Martinez finished her account.
“I felt great! It was nice doing it, instead of just reading about it,” she answered.
Chloe and Dot exchanged a quick glance. “What do you mean when you say ‘great’?” Chloe asked coyly. “Do you mean relieved that it worked—”
“—or were you high as a kite?” Dot finished her sister’s sentence. Martinez’s brow furrowed. “You know: stoned off your gourd, rolling, tweaking, chasing the dragon, getting fried,” she elaborated.
Martinez laughed out loud, in part at Chloe’s expression with each euphemistic turn of phrase her sister spouted. “I know what you mean, Dot. No worries—it was solidly in the realm of personal satisfaction at a job well done.”
The librarians breathed a sigh of relief and resumed eating. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Chloe clarified, “But if you were so affected, we would need to work more extensively with you to tailor your magical practice.”
“I mean, you did waltz in here with fresh-baked muffins,” Dot came to her sister’s defense, albeit obliquely.
“No offense taken,” Martinez brushed it off. “So what are we working on today?”
Dot swiveled and pulled out a stack of books. “More reading for you to round out your general knowledge on non-Greco-Roman magic.”
“And since you’ve been practicing, I think it’s time we talked about charming,” Chloe added. “More specifically, how to approach enchantments on other people.” Martinez pulled out her pen and notepad and started by putting the date at the top of the page.
“The brain is a tricky thing,” Chloe began. “It fills things in all the time, so much so that magicians can take advantage of that feature. Technically, you can charm without speaking, by directing your magic at a person and using other cues, things like body language or eye contact.”
“But that is a lot harder,” Dot picked up. “If you can use language, you can make shifts much easier and can essentially trick their brain into thinking that what you are suggesting is in fact the truth.”
“The more you know about your target, the better. That can include superficial things, like what they look like, their age and profession, family life, etc, but if you can understand some aspect of their personality, no matter how trivial, that’s the jackpot,” Chloe continued.
“The whole walk a mile in someone’s shoes thing,” Dot interjected.
“I think the word Dot is looking for is ‘empathy,’” Chloe managed to say without being snide about it. “If the target thinks you ‘get them’ on some level, they are more likely to roll with the magic instead of fight it.”
“That makes sense; like how the FBI uses psychology and profiling in investigations,” Martinez drew a parallel to something she wholly understood. “What do you mean by fighting the magic?”
“The brain does not like to be messed with,” Dot spoke, dusting off the crumbs from her shirt. “It can fight back and resist if it has reason to believe it’s being tampered with—this is the foundation of magical defensive training, which we’ll start shortly.”
“That’s why it’s best to take a soft-power approach when you can,” Chloe suggested. “If you apply sheer brute force, there is a higher likelihood that the target’s brain will revolt against the magic.”
“That said, if you need to bump them with a little more magic to get things started and then smooth it out, the brain will make the appropriate excuses to keep everything reasonable,” Dot cut in.
Martinez scrolled down her list of questions from the past weekend. “How long can someone be affected? When I was at the dog park, as soon as I dropped the magic, the dogs returned to their normal selves.”
“It depends on how you shaped the magic,” Dot fielded this question. “As a general rule, the longer you power it, the higher the karmic kick, and once you are no longer actively powering the magic, all bets are off. The effects may linger after you are no longer feeding the spell, but if someone or something breaks the reality you created with your magic, the person is likely to come to their senses.”
“There are some workarounds, but they are generally considered the most heinous of charm enchantments, basically akin to driving someone crazy.” Chloe didn’t bother to hide the disgust in her voice. “We call them ‘earworms’ for lack of a better term. You can essentially take some aspect of the person’s interest or personality, and turn up the volume to eleven.” Martinez smiled at Chloe’s use of a This is Spinal Tap reference—no doubt Dot made her watch it.
“It basically turns a person into a manic obsessive—they don’t eat, they don’t sleep, they only think about and do whatever was triggered in their brain by the magic,” Dot spoke with a hint of sympathy.
“Sounds very much like the Midas coin,” Martinez noted. “It picked up whatever someone wanted and amplified it until the desire for it consumed them.”
“All that glitters is not gold,” Dot cited, and Chloe nodded in agreement.