Hard Magic

The thought, I admit, made me giggle, even in my depression. J is such a gentleman in a lot of ways, old school, and yet he kept up with me pretty well. I wonder sometimes what crimes he committed as a young’un, that he was the one to be landed with me.

Far as I could tell, his only mistake had involved being in the wrong place at the right time. Zaki had enough sense to know he wasn’t a strong enough Talent, and didn’t have enough patience to mentor me, but his first choice was a disaster waiting to happen, and even as a kid I knew that the moment he introduced us. The guy was … well, he wouldn’t have sold me to pay off his gambling debts, but I wouldn’t have learned a whole lot, either.

The moment was still crystal-sharp in my memory: Zaki’s worried presence, hovering; Billy’s pleasure at being asked to mentor someone for the first time in his life; the smell of a freshly washed carpet that didn’t hide the years of wear and tear …

With an amazing lack of tact that still dogs me, I’d used my untrained, just-developing current to yelp for help. That had attracted the attention of a passerby on the street below, who—despite having already done his time as a mentor, and being way out of our league—came up the stairs, took one look, and took on the job.

Zaki had been lonejack, part of the officially unofficial, intentionally unorganized population of Talent. J was Council—the epitome of structural organization. Despite that, they both got along pretty well, I guess because of me. I wasn’t the only lonejack kid mentored by a Council member, but I was the only one we knew of who stayed at least nominally a lonejack.

“Maybe if you’d crossed the river, you’d have had a job offer waiting for you when you graduated,” I grumbled. “Why do you insist on thinking that nepotism’s a dirty word?”

Truth was, I didn’t think of myself as either one group or the other, and maybe that was part of the problem. Born to one magical community, raised in another, Latina by birth and European by training, female imprinted on a—oh god, use the word—metrosexual male … Issues? I probably should have subscriptions at this point.

My hair’s short enough that it doesn’t take long to wash, and by the time I got out of the bathroom, toweled off, and wrapped in one of the complimentary bathrobes, the strands were almost dry. I’m a natural honey-blonde, thanks to my unknown and long-gone mother, but it hasn’t been that shade since I was fourteen—I was currently sporting a dark red dye job that I had thought would look more office-appropriate. So much for that thought doing me any good. Maybe I’d go back to purple, and the hell with it.

Contemplating an interviewer’s reaction to that, I walked to the bedroom, and saw that the light on the phone was blinking. Right, the call I’d missed. Whoever called, they’d left me a message.

My heart did a little scatter-jump, and my inner current flared in anticipation, making me instinctively take a step away from the phone, rather than toward it. Normally, like I said, my current’s cold and calm, especially compared to most of my peers, but I’d been out of sorts recently, and wasn’t quite sure what might happen. Bad form to short out your only means of communicating with potential employers. Plus, the hotel would be pissed, and complain to J.

Once I felt my current settle back down, I let myself look at the blinking light again. You could call first thing in the morning with bad news. Okay. You didn’t call and leave a message with bad news, did you? I didn’t know. Maybe. Just because everyone seemed eager to tell me no to my face didn’t mean that was the only way to do it.

All right, this was me, keeping calm. Hitting the replay button. Stepping back, out of—hopefully—accidental current-splash range …

“This message is for Bonita Torres. Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.” The speaker gave an address that I didn’t recognize, not that I knew damn-all about New York City, once you get past the basic tourist spots. “Take the 1 train to 125. Be on time.”

No name, no indication of where they got my name or number, just that message, in a deep male voice.

An interesting voice, that. Not radio-announcer smooth, but … interesting.

Someone smart would have deleted the message. Someone with actual prospects would have laughed and said no way.

I’ve always been a sucker for interesting.

two

One of the first things J taught me was, before I decided on anything with repercussions, to step back and consider that decision from every possible angle. It only took a few minutes of thought, and sanity reasserted itself. The voice-mail message was weird, but intriguing. Or maybe it was intriguing because it was weird. Did that make it a good idea? No. In fact, it probably made it a very bad idea.

J said I should consider, and think sanely. He didn’t say anything about listening to that sane voice, and very bad ideas were often a lot of fun.

The guy hadn’t left a phone number for me to call back and say I’d be there, though. Oh god, and if this was from one of the résumés I’d sent out, I’d look a proper idiot calling now to follow up, if I’d already gotten an interview.

I picked up the phone and was about to dial the callback code when I realized that, idiot, the call had to have come through the hotel switchboard. So I dialed 0 for the front desk, instead.

“Hi. This is room 328? I just had a call come in, and they didn’t leave a name or number to reach them at, I don’t suppose …?”

No, the woman at the front desk told me regretfully, they couldn’t. I didn’t know if it was a technological thing or a legal thing, and I didn’t bother to ask. The reason didn’t make a difference. I hung up the phone, still clueless, and stared at the paper with the details written on it, on top of the list of names and places I was supposed to call back. Handwriting was supposed to tell you about a person, right? My handwriting’s like J’s—squared and solid, and easy to read. I’d have made a crappy doctor.

Maybe it was one of these places I’d already submitted my résumé to. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was through a contact of J’s who had thought my mentor would tell me to expect the call. That didn’t sound right—-J would never forget to tell me something like that—but it was a possibility. Maybe it was a joke, a prank, or a weird cold-call solicitation. I had no idea, and no way of finding out—except for showing up.

Tomorrow afternoon. All right. That gave me the rest of the day to follow up on my other résumés, and still get out and wander around the city before dinner with J. And then tomorrow … would bring whatever tomorrow would bring. Maybe J would have some idea what all this was about. I was pretty sure he’d have an opinion, at least.

The carrot of playtime in Manhattan dangling in front of me, I made short work of the remaining names on my list. Not that it took much; two résumés were still “under consideration”; two were thanks-no-thanks; at one place the HR person was out and would get back to me at some point before the next millennium, maybe; and one place, hurrah, they wanted to see me again on Friday!

The fact that this was Monday didn’t fill me with huge levels of optimism, since if I was a hot prospect they’d get me in quick, right? But it was the best offer I’d gotten so far, so I thanked the nice guy on the phone, confirmed the time and place, and hung up the phone not quite as terminally depressed as I’d been earlier. Also, I’d determined that the mysterious phone call hadn’t come from any of these places, so that option was dealt with.

Was I going to show up tomorrow? I honestly didn’t know.

But for now, I had the afternoon to myself. I threw on a pair of black pants and a hot-pink T-shirt and my boots, left my stress at the door, and made my escape.

Johnny, the twenty-seven-year-old engineering student from Tehran, was doorman today. He wished me a nice day and held the large glass door open, and I hit the sidewalk like a greyhound sighting a rabbit.

I grew up in Boston, went to school outside the city, had been to Rome and Paris and London and Dubai and Tokyo and a dozen other major cities with J dragging me around. All that travel gave me a reasonable sense of sophistication, but drop me in the middle of New York City and I felt like a little kid again. There’s not more current running through the wiring of Manhattan than anywhere else; it’s not any more vibrant or powerful … but somehow it always feels that way to me.

Not just me, either. J says there’re more Talent in New York, Chicago, and Houston than anywhere else, and more of the fatae, the nonhumans of the Cosa Nostradamus—those with and of magic—too. I wasn’t so blasé that I wouldn’t be excited about the chance to see more fatae. Sure, there were some up in Amherst; my freshman composition teacher had been a dryad, and a couple of centaurs used to hang around the stables I rode at, taunting the ponies and stealing grain and treats. But the exotics, the rare breeds, they were in New York, where nobody even looked once, much less twice.

The hotel was only a ten-minute walk from my destination: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Specifically, the Temple of Dendur, the reconstructed ruins of a building once dedicated to Isis. Anytime the museum’s open, you’ll find people standing there under the glass walls, staring at the installation, soaking up the ancient ambience. Some of us are soaking up more than that. The Temple by itself may or may not have been anything especially mystical or magical in its original location, beyond whatever the faith of its followers gave it, but when it was relocated to the museum, they managed to place the sandstone structure directly over a major ley line convergence, one of the sweetest in the city.

Ley lines are like a funnel for natural current, the energy of the earth itself, the basic stuff magic is formed around. I wasn’t going to suck any of it up today, just say hello, make my curtsy, as J always said. It’s only polite.

Someone came up next to me. I assumed another tourist, someone who didn’t know not to stand so close, gawking at the Temple, same as me. Half-right, anyway.

“You’re new.”

Oh lord. Not that I didn’t appreciate attention, when I was in the mood, but … “You’re using a very old line.”

“Old and tested and true. I’m none of those things.”

I laughed, and turned to consider the owner of the voice. Tall, well above my own five-six, and nicely built, with deep blue eyes and raven-black hair setting off evenly tanned skin. Might be too old for me, by a smidge, but if he didn’t mind I wasn’t going to say anything.

Oh, the outlook for the afternoon had definitely improved.

“I’m Gerry,” he said, offering one nicely formed hand, the fingertips bitten but not torn up. There were just enough calluses to make his skin firm, rather than soft, and he shook like a guy who had nothing to prove, a single solid pump. “I’m harmless in public, entertaining in private, and up-to-date on all my shots and papers. May my old lines and I buy you a cup of coffee?”

This hadn’t exactly been the distraction I’d been thinking of, but when you’re made such a very nicely packaged offer … I cast a look over the Temple, and be damned if I didn’t feel a very distinct smirk coming off the energy rising out of it. Or maybe that was just me, projecting.

“You may, indeed.”

Three hours and more than one cup of coffee later, I knew enough about Gerry to know that he would be a disaster long-term, even if I had been thinking that way. I also knew that he had a very confident appeal and a sweetly coffee-scented kiss, and if I hadn’t been otherwise promised for the evening, we might have gotten better acquainted. Not that well acquainted, no; I’m an unabashed flirt, not a skank. But he was sweet, and he gave me his phone number and e-mail, with strict instructions to get in touch.

Maybe I would. Maybe not. Gerry was sweet, but he didn’t have even a twitch of Talent, didn’t seem to know anything about the Cosa Nostradamus—I’d been subtle but thorough on that—and I’ve always been shy about getting involved with Nulls. It gets … complicated. Better to stick to your own kind, who already know the deal.

I made it back to the hotel just in time to change for dinner. J’s not a fuddy-duddy, even if he is Council, but there are standards for our dinners together, and I appreciate them as much as he does.

Promptly on the dot of 6:00 p.m. I was dressed in my favorite red dress, a Monroe-style haltertop, pearl drops in my ears and rings on my fingers, feet cased in strappy gold sandals and my hair combed into a semblance of tidy curls. A spritz of perfume, and I was ready to go.

At the dot of 6:02 p.m., the touch of current that felt like J wrapped around me, and a second later the Translocation took effect, moving me from my hotel room in Manhattan a hundred-plus miles north to J’s place in Boston.

Translocation’s a basic current-skill. I’m decent at it. J’s prime. I landed in his living room like I’d stepped in from the hallway, not a hair out of place.

“Good evening, my dear.” He was pouring wine, a deep red liquid that made my mouth water. I was more of a vodka martini girl, but my mentor had a fantabulous wine cellar, too.

He was looking good, and I told him so.

“Well, I had a hot date tonight, had to brush off the good suit.”

Joseph Cetala had just pushed over seventy, and looked it, but every year had been kind. His hair was still thick, if bone-white, and his patrician cheekbones were hidden under still-firm skin. I have no objections to my looks—they do the job and pale skin and a pointy-pixie chin suit me—but man did I used to wish I were his biological daughter, just for those cheekbones.

I took a glass from him, and sat on the sofa. The shaggy white-and-brown throw rug got to its feet and shuffled over. “Hey there, good boy. How’s my good boy?”

“He’s getting old, same as me.”

“Nah. You guys are never gonna get old. Are you, boy?”

Rupert woofed, and shoved his wet nose into my hand. I wasn’t much for pets, but Rupe was less a pet than a member of the household. J said all Old English sheepdogs were smart, but I personally thought Rupe got a double helping of brains. I always got the feeling he wasn’t so optimistic about me.

J took his own glass over to the leather chair and sat, crossing one leg against his knee, and looking, I swear to god, like an ad for something upscale and classy aimed at the Retirement Generation. Even in my nice dress and pearls, I still felt outclassed.

Funny, really. I leaned into the sofa and looked around. The only way to describe J’s place was “warm.” Rosewood furniture against cream-colored walls, and touches of dark blue and flannel gray everywhere, broken by the occasional bit of foam green from his Chinese pottery collection. You’d think I’d have grown up to be Über Society Girl, not pixie-Goth, in these surroundings. Even my bedroom—now turned back into its original use as a library—had the same feel of calm wealth to it, no matter how many pop-culture posters I put up or how dark I painted the walls. And yet, J was just as likely to wear jeans and kick back with a beer when he was in the mood, so I guess I should know by now that you can’t judge a body by the decor.

J used to tell me, when I was, oh, thirteen and felt particularly floundering-ish, that I would grow up into who I always was. It sounds nice, I guess, but I’m still not quite sure who that is. She uses a lot of hair dye and has an interestingly eclectic wardrobe, and might have a lead on a job, though. So that was all right.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked.

“I’m trying something new.”

From some people, that news would make me nervous. J, I swear to god, was born in the kitchen. I don’t think he owned a single cookbook or has any of his recipes written down, but he’s never fed me anything that was less than really good, and it frequently goes into orgasmic culinary experience range. I learned how to cook by the time I was ten, just by osmosis, and had my first set of proper knives when I was fourteen. Haven’t done much cooking lately, though. Nobody around to feed since graduation, I guess.

“You are looking particularly glowy tonight, dearest. Either the job hunt has resulted in a hit, or you have met a new admirer.”

I think J gets a kick out of my social life, although he tsk-tsks periodically over my inability—lack of desire, really—to settle into one steady relationship. So long as I’m happy, he’s happy. I mean, he didn’t blink the first time I showed up with a new girlfriend, and never asked when she went away and a new boyfriend showed up.

I’m not particularly into labels. I just like people, is all. Doesn’t matter what body parts they’ve got, so long as there’s a brain and a sense of humor and a healthy idea of companionship.

“Both, maybe,” I told him. “But it’s the job thing that’s interesting. I was in the shower when the call came in ….”

J listened the way he always did, with his entire body leaning forward, his hands cupped around his glass, his gaze not unblinking but steady on my face. When I finished, he leaned back, took a sip from his glass, and didn’t say anything.

“What?”

“You intend to follow through on these instructions?”

“I’d planned to, yeah. You think it’s a bad idea? Are you getting a vibe?” I had what J called the kenning, not quite precog but a sort of magical sense about things. But he’d been honing his current for a lifetime before I came along, and that meant he picked up more than I did on a regular basis.

“Nothing so strong as a premonition, no. I will admit, however, to a sense that something is slightly … What is that horrible word you used to use? Hinky Something feels hinky about it.”

That made me laugh. “Well, yes. That probably goes without saying. Anyone calls out of the blue, doesn’t give basic details, all mysterious and like?” I didn’t roll my eyes, but my voice conveyed the “well, duh” more than J deserved. “That’s half the fun!”

My mentor shook his head and mock-sighed. I love J more than life, but he and I diverge pretty seriously on our ideas of fun.

“If you wanted me to, I could get you a job …” He let the offer trail off, the same way he did every time he made it. J had, once upon a time, worked for the State, and then did some work for a high-powered law firm that still listed him on the masthead, even though he hadn’t, as far as I knew, taken on a case in over a decade. If I couldn’t be a cop, I guess his reasoning went, why not be a lawyer?

Just the idea made me want to tear my fingernails off and use them to dig an escape route. I never, ever told him that, though I suspected he knew.

“There’s just something about that message,” I said, doing my usual not-a-response to his offer. “Something that makes my ears prick up, and no, I don’t know why. I figured I might do a scrying, see what comes forward.”

“You and your crystals.” The disgust in his voice this time was real.

“Just because we’ve gone all modern and scientific with current doesn’t mean some of the old ways aren’t valid.” It was an old argument, older even than the split between Council and the scruffy freelancer lonejacks. When Founder Ben—Benjamin Franklin to Nulls—nailed the connection between electricity and current with his kite-and-key trick, most Talent changed, too, working the scientific angle to figure out more and more efficient ways to do things—and how to work this increasingly electric world to our benefit. A lot of the theories and practices of Old Magic got tossed, and good riddance, but I’d discovered that I could scry better with a focus object than with current alone, and the smoother and rounder the shape, the better.

So yeah, I have a crystal ball. Deal.

“I just …” It was difficult to vocalize what I wasn’t really sure of. J was patient, waiting. I might have mentioned the dream, but I didn’t. Talking about Zaki always made J feel guilty, as if there was some way he could have prevented it, or stopped me from finding the killer, or done something.

“There’s something familiar about the voice. No, it’s not someone I’ve ever met. I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard the voice before, either, so it’s not a radio announcer or anything. But it’s still familiar, like I’ve got memories associated with it, except I can’t access those memories, either.” I’m usually pretty good at that, too, so J didn’t press further.

“Hinky,” my mentor instead diagnosed with confidence, putting his glass down and heading into the kitchen as something chimed a warning. Rupert abandoned my petting and trudged after his master. I could have followed, but we’d survived this long by not crowding each other in the kitchen. Tonight he was showing off.

J was probably right. Whatever that mysterious call was about, it was not going to be for an entry-level office management job with decent pay and benefits. But it wasn’t as though I had anything else urgent or particularly interesting to do, except maybe give Gerry a call.

This mysterious meeting sounded like it might have more potential.

“Dinner’s ready,” J came back to announce. “Bring your wine. And you’ve made up your mind already, haven’t you?”

J long ago taught me not to shrug—he said that it was an indelicate movement that indicated helplessness—so instead I lifted my free hand palm up in supplication for his understanding. “It’s not like anything else is panning out. And if it is hinky … I may not be as high-res as some, but I can take care of myself. You taught me well, Obi-Wan. Worst case scenario and it’s for a sleazy, low-paying call-girl job, I Translocate out and have a good story about it later.” I wasn’t quite as breezy as that sounded, but I did a pretty good job of selling it, because J’s shoulders relaxed just a bit.

I knew what he was worried about, even if he didn’t say so. J was twice-over retired now, but once upon a time he’d been a serious dealmaker in the Eastern Council, maybe even a seated member although if so he never admitted it, and even now if he said jump a lot of people made like frogs, both here and in the Midwest. There were also a lot of people he’d pissed off along the way, some of whom might want to take a late hit, if not directly on him, then through his family. And to the Cosa Nostradamus, the mentor-mentee relationship was as tight as it got, even more than blood.

He’d had another mentee, years ago, but Bobby was not going to be the target for anyone, anyhow. Not now. Full Council honors out in San Francisco, and you’d better have a topped-up core to take a whack at him or he’d eat you alive. So it was just me J got to worry about.

“And you’ll ping me as soon as you’re out?”

He had to be worried to ask me to ping. It was a good way to send a quick message, but not much on the formal manners, and most of the older Talent seemed to think the way we used it now was a sign of the coming Apocalypse or something.

“Yes, Joseph.” The use of his full name was my sign that the discussion was over, and since he knew better than anyone how like unto a pit bull I could be in the stubbornness category, he let it go and fed me, instead.

* * *

Later that night, back in my hotel room, I got out my crystals. The plain wooden box, about the size of a shoe box, was lined in thick, nubby linen—silk was so clichéd—and held three scrying pieces: a rose quartz ball about the size of my palm, a clear quartz shard the size of a pencil, and my traditional, kerchief-and-skirts scrying globe, also clear quartz. The third piece wasn’t entirely clear all the way through, with an imperfection about midway, but that really didn’t matter for my purposes.

The rose quartz stayed in the box; I wasn’t going to need that one tonight. Sitting cross-legged on the hotel-room bed, the lights out and the television off, I put the ball down in front of me and kept the shard in my hand.

It was warm, as if it had been waiting for me to pick it up. J taught me that everything had current, even inanimate objects, but I wasn’t sensitive enough—what the old-timers called Pure—to pick it up.