Spell Games

by T. A. Pratt

  Marla smacked him on the back of the head, but lightly; he was driving, after all. “You're going to make me install one of those sound-proof privacy barriers like they have in stretch limos, aren't you?”

  “Huh,” B said. “I didn't know you had a brother. No, no dreams.”

  Marla sighed. “I was hoping for some insight, but I guess no news is good news. If you do have any noteworthy nocturnal transmissions, let me know, all right?”

  “Sure thing. So do I get to meet this brother?”

  “Doubtful,” Marla said, but she had a feeling Jason wouldn't cooperate. He was the inquisitive type, and if he hung around town long, he'd doubtless pry into all corners of her life. That kind of curiosity was a family trait.

  “You're going to be staying here,” Marla said when Rondeau pulled up in front of the club.

  “Oh?” B said. “Huh.” He didn't sound disappointed, exactly, but she could tell he was trying not to.

  “You don't want to be roomies?” Rondeau said. “I cleaned out my media room for you!”

  Marla snorted. “Media room? You didn't have anything in there but a laptop and an external hard drive full of porn, plus that ancient boom box, which doesn't even work.”

  “No, it's cool,” B said. “I just expected… don't worry about it.”

  “Ah, I see.” Rondeau shut off the car and turned around in the seat. “B wants to know why he has to live with me in my apartment over a nightclub when you live in palatial splendor all alone in an old hotel. That, movie star, is a fair question.”

  “It's hardly palatial splendor.” Marla rolled her eyes.

  “It's an old flophouse, and only one floor is even suitable for human habitation. Anyway, there's a good reason. When I was out of town this last time to visit you, some bastards broke into my place, kicked the crap out of my mystical security system, and stole some very valuable items. I had to beef up security in the place a lot, and now nothing bigger than an inchworm can even walk onto the fifth floor, except for me. Now, I could build some exceptions into the spell, to make it possible for you to enter safely, but that shit is all DNA-based, and what if somebody killed you and wore your skin and did some sympathetic magic to trick the system and get at me? That's no good for either of us.”

  “Since it's only keyed to Marla's DNA, the only way anybody can get in there now is to kill Marla and wear her skin,” Rondeau said, “and once she's dead and flayed, she probably won't be so paranoid about people stealing her stuff.”

  “Forgive me, B?” Marla said. “We'll get you set up in a decent apartment of your own soon, but I want to keep you close at first. Just not so close that you melt into a puddle when you get off the elevator. My office is in Rondeau's other spare bedroom, so I'm over at the club most of the time anyway Go grab a shower and change into some fresh clothes, and meet me after. Then we'll start the Felport magical mystery tour.”

  “You're not missing much anyway,” Rondeau said. “Marla's place is kind of a shithole, and the water pressure sucks.”

  “He's used your shower?” B said, raising an eyebrow.

  “It's not what you think.” Marla shook her head vigorously “We'd just limped home from a fight and he was covered in slime-demon ichor. I got tired of him dripping on the carpet.”

  “Good times,” Rondeau said. “We hardly ever go out together like that anymore.”

  Half an hour later, B knocked on Marla's office door, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and good walking shoes. He looked well scrubbed and was, amazingly, clean-shaven; she wasn't sure she'd ever seen him with less than a day's stubble. “You look like a ten-year-old when you shave.”

  “My boyish charm has taken me a long way Is this the part where I start learning the ropes? Should I prepare myself for some supernatural initiation? Am I gonna get jumped in?”

  “Not exactly, though meeting the other sorcerers in Felport can be worse than getting beaten up by gang members.”

  “That's comforting. Are we taking the Bentley? I've never been a car fanatic, but that's a beautiful machine. I wouldn't mind driving it.”

  “Nah, we're taking the bus. First rule of being my apprentice, Bradley—don't drive when you can take a bus, and don't take a bus when you can walk. You get a totally different view of the city when you're on mass transit or pounding the pavement. I only drove to the airport because it's so far out, and because I wanted us to be able to talk privately, and you never know where the other sorcerers have spies. There are eyes and ears everywhere. So while we are on the bus, keep the conversation away from matters magical, you hear?”

  “I am the soul of discretion.”

  Marla and B walked the few blocks from the bus stop to Hamil's penthouse, strolling on a sidewalk strewn with blossoms from flowering trees. Marla considered their situation. She was not a teacher by nature, and having an apprentice was going to be an adjustment. She'd just have to wing it, like she did most things, and hope for the best. “When I started out in this business,” she said, “I had a magical cloak and a reputation as a crazy bitch who was willing to do anything, and those were basically my only assets. My days as an apprentice weren't that productive in terms of practical magic. My mentor, Artie Mann, introduced me to the right people, but he was a pornomancer, specializing in sex magic, and I had no particular affinity for that kind of work. It's all about repression and release, and I'm lousy at the first part.”

  “So how did you become the well-rounded sorcerer I see before me today?”

  “I've always been a magpie. I figured out early on that I didn't want to be a specialist, because I knew I'd get bored if I didn't study anything but divination or illusions or necromancy or whatever. When I was just starting out, I refused to take money in exchange for my services—I'd only work for knowledge. Any sorcerer who wanted me to kick down doors or bust heads or loom around looking threatening or steal back property they'd stolen from someone else in the first place had to pay me with esoteric secrets. At first, when I didn't know much, they pawned low-grade stuff off on me, but as I got more experienced, I was able to strike better deals, and learn serious shit.”

  “Such as?”

  “How to fly. How to avoid being seen, and how to become invisible—and those aren't exactly the same thing, by the way. How to teleport, though I don't recommend it, since there's a double-digit percentage chance you'll be eaten by multilimbed things that dwell in the interstices between universes every time you try. At first I was fanatic about learning powers, you know? Things I could do, which made me even more valuable to potential employers, which enabled me to demand bigger and better things in compensation. After a few years I started trading my services for knowledge instead, and I learned a lot of things that conventional wisdom says man was not meant to know.”

  B nodded. “I get occasional glimpses into that sort of thing myself, in my dreams. Human brains haven't evolved to even perceive some things in the universe.”

  “Oh, yes. I learned stuff I wouldn't have believed, stuff I still find hard to believe…. I found out what really killed the dinosaurs—not the asteroid, but the entities that sent the asteroid, and why. You know that giant enormous hole of nothing that scientists discovered in the constellation Eridanus a while back, a space a billion light-years across with no matter inside? Some sorcerers have known about that hole for a long time, and there are two or three guys on Earth who don't do anything all day and night but astrally project themselves out into the universe to keep an eye on that hole, and on whatever might someday come out of it. Less cosmic stuff, too. I learned things like who Kaspar Hauser really was. The real facts about the chupacabra.”

  “The true meaning of Christmas?” B grinned.

  “The sinister origins of Secretary's Day, at least. I don't like to let people in on my weaknesses, B, but I might as well tell you—knowledge is my drug. I want to know everything, and I want to know it right now. To succeed as a sorcerer, you gotta be voracious. Are you voracious?”

  “I'm starving. In th
e metaphorical way we're talking about. Though I could also go for a Danish.”

  “Good. Because I've pulled some strings. All the sorcerers in the city pay me tribute, you know, just a little slice of their action kicked up to me, since I'm first among equals and all that. But I've made a deal with them to forgo the usual cash payment this month in exchange for, well, magic lessons. For you. You're going to learn six or seven impossible things before a week is out.”

  B whooped. “Marla, I love you! That's fabulous. Cole was so cautious, he always wanted me to learn all the background before he let me try anything practical—he's the kind of guy who'd make you take four years of music theory before letting you put your grubby untutored hands on the keys of a piano. I had a feeling you'd be more of a hands-on teacher.”

  “You gotta learn by doing,” Marla said. “At least, I did, so that's the way I'm going to teach you. You probably won't kill yourself in the process, and if you do, hell, then it just wasn't meant to be, B.” She felt a little bad, since she wasn't being entirely straight with B—she had an ulterior motive for sending him to meet all the major sorcerers in Felport, and she'd tell him about it soon, but she didn't want to put a damper on his enthusiasm just now. “Here's Hamil's place. Get ready for some tea and sympathy”

  “The art of sympathetic magic is the art of deception.” Hamil held up a bagel. “You create an association between two objects, so they become magically indistinguishable, and whatever you do to one, also happens to the other.” He rolled the bagel back and forth on the table, from one huge hand to the other. B had heard a lot about Hamil—he was Marla's consigliere and close advisor—and had even talked to him on the phone once or twice, but his rather dry and calm voice hadn't prepared B for the enormous bald black physical reality of him.

  “Like voodoo dolls?” B said.

  “Generally speaking.” Hamil's voice held just a hint of disapproval. “But there's so much more to my craft than sticking pins in a poppet to harm your enemies. With the right training, and practice, and luck, you can create a sympathetic link between all sorts of unlikely things. It's all about deceiving the universe, convincing reality that two unrelated things are the same, and when you've been at this for as long as I have, you'll be able to pull off some very big lies.”

  “Hamil says he can create a sympathetic association so strong he could throw a rock out a window and make the moon come crashing into the Earth,” Marla said from the couch. “But he's never proven that boast to my satisfaction.”

  “For obvious reasons.” Hamil held up the bagel. “This is round. It is a wheel.”

  “I can see how it's like a wheel—” B began.

  “No,” Hamil said. “It is a wheel. Go to the window and look down.”

  B did, and Hamil joined him. The big man held the bagel edge-wise on the windowsill. “It is a wheel,” he said, softly, as if speaking to himself, and then rolled the bagel along the windowsill.

  The right rear tire of an SUV parked at the curb popped off its axle and went rolling down the sidewalk, falling over at the precise moment the bagel did.

  B whistled. “Wow. Impressive. Tough on the guy who owns the SUV, though.”

  “How right you are. Good thing I have this.” Hamil went to a bookshelf, took down a hand-sized plastic model of a car, and pulled off the right rear wheel. He went back to the window, humming, and handed B the model. “Why don't you fix it? Admittedly, adding complexity to a situation is harder than increasing entropy, but the fundamentals are the same.”

  “Um…what do I do?”

  “Convince the universe that this toy is exactly the same as the car below. That by changing one you change the other.”

  “Okay. But, practically speaking…”

  “Do you know how sorcery works?” Hamil asked.

  “Here we go,” Marla muttered from the couch.

  “Quiet, you,” Hamil said. “Do you want me to teach him, or not?”

  “I guess he'll be exposed to a variety of viewpoints, so knock yourself out,” Marla said. “I just think you anthropomorphize the universe too much.”

  “And I think you underestimate the potential sentience of all things. As I was saying, Bradley: do you know how sorcery works?”

  “There are lots of different theories….”

  “True, but most agree on one point—sorcerers impose their will on the workings of the universe. They change the world just by wanting the world to be changed. And that, Bradley, is a power rooted in deception. You must convince the universe that your will is a force of nature, that your desire can no more be ignored than can the forces of gravity or the strong nuclear force. The first step in convincing the universe is to convince yourself. You must be supremely confident and certain of your power.”

  “Okay.” B stared down at the SUV below, and at the toy in his hand, and tried to will them to be the same. He stuck the wheel back on the toy, and absolutely nothing at all happened to the car below. “Well, that didn't work.”

  “And it probably won't, not the first hundred times you try But the trick is, even when you fail, don't let yourself believe you're a failure. Try again, visualizing your success. The ability to hold contradictory thoughts simultaneously is crucial for a sorcerer.”

  “Okay.” Some of this was familiar from B's work with Cole. He went through the meditation exercises he'd learned, clearing his mind, narrowing the world to the toy in his hands and the car below, trying to make himself a conduit, popping off the wheel and putting it back on, again, and again, and again, and again—

  “There!” he said. “The tire moved! I didn't get it all the way on, but it moved.”

  “Really?” Hamil and Marla rose from the couch and came to the window. The tire had risen, wobbled, rolled a few feet back toward the SUV, and then fallen over again.

  “Good job, B,” Marla said. “And now you're even more confident in your abilities, so it'll work better next time.”

  “That's… that's… well done,” Hamil said. His voice sounded oddly shaky. “Keep practicing on your own. Tonight try to, ah, create an affinity between the contents of a glass of water and the contents of a bathtub. Slosh one, and see if you can make the other slosh. Water is one of the easiest things to manipulate, because all water remembers mingling with other water in the past, and the sympathetic association comes naturally. Marla, could I speak to you before you go?”

  Hamil shut his office door. “What's up?” Marla said.

  “The task I gave Bradley was meant to be impossible. Impossible for him anyway. I was going to let him bang his head against the wall for an hour or so, then teach him ways to enhance the sympathetic association between two objects. That toy car didn't really look much like the real one, so I was going to show him how to paint it to match, and to scrape a little paint off the real car downstairs to rub on the model, to further enhance the connection between the two. I thought maybe then he'd be able to make the tire twitch, but he got that far just on sheer force of will. He actually has potential, Marla. You chose your apprentice well. I've met more promising prospects, but not often.”

  Marla grinned. “Good to hear, because I'd be stuck with him at this point even if you thought he sucked. And thanks for not saying that in front of him. You know movie stars and their egos.”

  “With training, he could be a very valuable addition to the city. I know you don't like to discuss matters of succession, but you'll almost certainly… retire someday, and Felport will need—”

  “I'm way ahead of you,” she interrupted. “You think it hasn't crossed my mind?”

  “I think you have a tendency to assume your own indestructibility”

  “Haven't met anything that can destroy me yet. Let's not borrow trouble, fat man, or get years and years ahead of ourselves, okay?”

  “Yes, all right, fair enough. But try not to scare him off, hmm?”

  “Tomorrow I'm taking him to meet Viscarro. If that doesn't scare him off, I doubt anything else will. You mind hanging out wit
h B for a while longer? It's his first night in town, and I don't want to leave him alone with Rondeau's corrupting influence yet—I need him sober and not apocalyptically hungover in the morning.”

  “Certainly. He can keep practicing here. You have plans?”

  “I gotta meet a guy.”

  “This guy wouldn't happen to be your brother?”

  “You and your spies.” Marla sighed. “I need to see if I can get rid of him.”

  “Don't underestimate the importance of family, Marla. My own relationship with my brothers is a source of great comfort to me.”

  “But they live four states away and you only see them on occasional holidays. My brother's right here. Besides, you're my family, and so's Rondeau, and so's B. But my brother? Maybe once, but at this point, our relationship is just an accident of blood.”

  ason came strolling around the corner right on time, which was the first surprise. He'd never been especially punctual when it came to family matters, though he was meticulous when dealing with people he planned to fleece. Now I'm suspicious. She stuck out her hand before Jason could hug her again.

  If Jason was offended by the preemptive handshake, he didn't show it, taking her hand in both of his warmly for a moment. “Come on, Marlita. I got us a reservation at Étienne's. I'll drive.”

  “I'm not dressed for a place that fancy.” She scowled, gesturing at her cotton pants and rumpled button-down. Jason shrugged. He was immaculate in a gray suit, every stitch the successful businessman, though that old twinkle in his eye suggested it might be a slightly disreputable business. “I think you look fine, but we can stop by your place and you can change, if you're uncomfortable about it.”

  “Look, I know this great diner south of the park—”

  “Please, let your big brother treat you to a nice dinner, would you? In honor of our heartfelt reunion?”

  Marla didn't want to get off on the wrong foot—she was hoping to keep this pleasant, shallow, and brief—but she could have told him going to her apartment wouldn't help. The closest thing to formal-wear she owned was the costume she'd worn to the Founders’ Day masquerade, and that made her look like a prosperous pirate queen. “Fuck it. My shirt's clean. Let's go.”