The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Best SF & Fantasy of the Year)

by Jonathan Strahan

  Yes.

  THE MASTER CONJURER

  Charlie Jane Anders

  Charlie Jane Anders (www.charliejane.com) is the author of Choir Boy, which won a Lambda Literary Award in 2005. Her story "Six Months, Three Days" won the 2012 Hugo Award. Her journalism and other writing has appeared in Salon, the Bay Guardian, the New York Press, Mother Jones, McSweeney's, and the Wall Street Journal. With Annalee Newitz, she edited the anthology She's Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff (Seal Press, 2006). She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where she is the managing editor of the science fiction website io9.

  Peter did a magic spell, and it worked fine. With no unintended consequences, and no weird side effects.

  Two days later, he was on the front page of the local newspaper: "The Miracle Conjurer." Some blogs picked it up, and soon enough he was getting visits from CNN and MSNBC, and his local NPR station kept wanting to put him on. News crews were standing and talking in front of his house.

  By the third day, Peter saw reporters looking through the dumpster in the back of his L-shaped apartment building, which looked like a cheap motel but was actually kind of expensive. He couldn't walk his Schnauzer-Pit Bull mix, Dobbs, without people – either reporters or just random strangers – coming up and asking him what his secret was. When he went to the office, where he oversaw pilot projects for water desalination, his co-workers kept snooping over the top of his cubicle wall and trying to see his computer screen as he was typing, like they were going to catch him logging in to some secret bulletin board for superwizards.

  Peter had a hard time concentrating on work when the TV set in the breakroom was tuned to CNN, and they were showing his bedroom window, and a million people were staring at the pile of unfolded laundry on his bed and the curtains that Dobbs had recently half-destroyed. Could the Clean Spell revolutionize spellcasting? a voice asked. Was there a secret, and could everyone else learn it? CNN brought on an Enchantress named Monica, who wore a red power blazer. She frequently appeared on talk shows whenever there was a magical murder trial or something.

  By day four, Peter's building was surrounded, and his phone at work pretty much never stopped ringing. People followed him wherever he went. It was only then that it occurred to Peter: Maybe this was the unintended consequence of his spell.

  Peter had never liked looking at pictures of himself, because photos always made him look like a deformed clone of Ben Affleck. His chin was just a little too jutting and bifurcated, his brow a little too much like the bumper of a late-model Toyota Camry. His mousy hair was unevenly receding, his nose a little too knifey. Seeing the least attractive pictures of himself on every newspaper, website, and TV show was starting to make Peter break out in hives.

  "I'm not talking to you," Peter said to his former best friend Derek, the tenth time Derek called him. "You are completely dead to me."

  "Hey, don't say that, you're scaring me," Derek said. "If the Master Conjurer says I'm dead, then I'm worried I'm just not going to wake up tomorrow or something."

  "You were the only one I told about doing the spell," Peter said. "And now, this."

  Peter was sitting in his car talking on his phone, parked two blocks away from his apartment building because he was scared to go home. Dobbs was probably starting to bounce off the walls. At least the dog seemed a lot happier lately.

  "I only told like a couple of people," Derek said. "And it turned out one of them was best friends with a newspaper reporter. It was an amusing anecdote. Anyway, you know it'll blow over in a week or two. You're just like this week's meme or something."

  "I hope you're right," Peter said.

  "And you should milk it, while you got it," Derek said. "Like, you know, you're famous for doing something perfectly. Something that requires immense concentration and sensory awareness and a lot of heart. Basically, they're as good as announcing to the entire world that you're an excellent lover. This is probably the closest you will ever come in your entire life to being a chick magnet."

  "Please stop talking now." Peter was practically banging his head against the steering wheel of his Dodge Neon. "Just, please, stop."

  The interior of his car always smelled like dog; not like Dobbs – just, like: generic dog. Like a big rangy golden retriever smell. Even if Dobbs hadn't been in his car for days.

  "Okay, okay. Just an idea, man. So are we good?"

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  Peter hung up and steeled himself to go home and walk the dog, while people asked him his secret over and over. Nobody would ever believe Peter when he said there was no secret – he'd just lucked out, or something. Why couldn't Peter have gotten an intimidating dog that he could sic on people, like a Doberman or a purebred Pit Bull? If he unleashed Dobbs, someone might end up with a tiny drool stain on one shoe.

  But Peter couldn't stop thinking about what Derek had said. He hadn't been on a date, a proper date, for years. His last first date had been Marga, five years ago. Peter wasn't just out of practice dating, or asking people out – he was out of practice at wanting to. He hadn't even let himself have a crush on anybody in forever.

  He started looking at the women around him as if he could actually be something to them. He didn't perv anybody, or stare at anyone – after all, everybody was still staring at him, all the time, and his instinct in that situation was to look away, or just hide. But it was hard to go from never noticing women – except in a super-business-like way – to checking them out, and he might have overcompensated. Or maybe he overcompensated for his overcompensation. It was tricky.

  Nobody at work was Peter's type, and anyway they wouldn't stop asking him over and over if he would do a spell for them. He had already made up his mind that he would never do a spell ever again.

  He couldn't be attracted to any of the women who kept coming up to him when he was trying to eat dinner at the Shabu Palace, either the reporters or the professional witches or the random looky-loos. They were all a little too sharky for him, the way they circled and then homed in, and they mostly looked as though they used insane amounts of product in their hair, so if they ever actually rested their heads on his shoulder, there would be a "crunch" sound.

  The weirdest part wasn't the stalkers or the peepers or the people asking him to do spells for them. The weirdest part was: after about a week, Peter started noticing that everybody had their own "this one time" story they wanted to tell him. Things had slacked off just enough that Peter wasn't quite under siege any more, and strangers were having conversations with him on the street instead of just rushing up and blurting questions. And every conversation included a "this one time" story. They were usually really sad, like confessions that people had never told anyone, that – for some reason – they felt safe telling Peter.

  Like, one woman with curly red hair and a round white face and a marigold sweater was telling Peter at the supermarket, by the breakfast cereals: "I never tried to do any magic myself. Too risky, you don't really know. Right? Except this one time, I got wasted and tried to do a spell to make my dad give back the money he stole from my mom. It wasn't even my problem, but I was worried about Mom, she had a lot of medical expenses with the emphysema. And Dad was just going to waste it on his new girlfriend (she had expensive tastes). So I just wanted him to give back the money he took from my mom's secret hiding place."

  Peter knew this was the part where he was supposed to ask what terrible fallout the woman's spell had had.

  "Oh," she said. "My dad went blind. He gave Mom her money back, and as soon as it changed hands, there went his eyesight. I've never told anybody this before." She smiled, nervously, like Peter was going to tell on her. Even though he didn't even know her name.

  "You couldn't know," Peter said, like he always said to people after he heard their stories. "You had no way of knowing that would happen. You were trying to do the right thing."

  Peter had done a few spells before he cast the world-famous Clean Casting, which by now had
been verified by every professional sorcerer who had a regular television gig. (There had been a lot of incense burning around Peter's apartment building for a while there, which had helped banish the stench of his neighbor Dorothy's homebrew experiments.) Peter had taken a spell-casting class at the local community college a few years before, with Marga, and they had done a few really tiny spells, lighting candles from a distance or turning a pinch of sugar into salt. They got used to weird smells or small dead creatures popping up an hour or a day later.

  If the spell was small enough, the unintended downside was part of the fun – an amusing little surprise. Oh, look. A goldfish in the mailbox, still flapping about. Get a bowl of water, quick!

  By now, the actual doing of the spell – the Clean Casting – felt like a weird dream that Peter had concocted after too many drinks. The more people made a fuss about it, the more he felt like he'd made the whole thing up. But he could still picture it. He'd gotten one of the stone spellcasting bowls they sold on late-night cable TV, and little baggies of all the ingredients, with rejected prog rock band names like Prudenceroot or Womanheart, and sprinkled pinches of them in, while chanting the nonsense syllables and thinking of his desired aim. The spellbook, with its overly broad categories of enchantments that you could slot your specifics into like Mad Libs, was propped open with a package of spaghetti. All of it, he'd done correctly more or less. Not perfect, but right. He'd done it in his oversized pantry, surrounded by mostly empty jars of stale oats and revolting cans of peaches, with Dobbs goggle-eyed and drooling, the only witness.

  * * *

  The time came when Peter could leave the house again without people shoving things in his face. He still had people coming up to him in the bookstore to ask him if he was that guy, and his co-workers would never stop making weird remarks about it. And he made a point of not googling himself. Or checking his personal email, or going on Facebook.

  But just when Peter thought maybe his life was returning to seminormal, some guy would see him and come running across the street – through traffic – to belt out something about his baby, his baby, Peter had to help, the man needed a spell and the consequences would probably be unbearable if anybody but Peter attempted it. Peter would have to shrug off the crying, red-faced man, and keep going to the pet food store or supermarket.

  There was a girl working at the pet food store who apparently knew who Peter was, and didn't seem to care. She had curly brown hair and really strong lines from the bridge of her nose down around her eyes, which made her look sort of intense and focused. She had a really pointy chin and a pretty nose, and seemed like the kind of person who laughed a lot. Even when she looked serious, which she mostly did. She always smiled at Peter when she rang up the special food that Dobbs needed for his pancreas, but not in a starey way.

  Finally, one day, a few weeks after all this started, Peter asked her why she hadn't ever said anything about his claim to fame. She rolled her eyes. "I dunno, I figured you were sick of hearing about it. Plus, who cares. It's not like you won the lottery or anything, right?"

  Peter immediately asked her if she wanted to grab some dinner sometime. She was like, "Sure. As long as it's not medicinal dog food." Her name turned out to be Rebecca.

  Actually, they went to the Shabu place that was Peter's favorite restaurant in town. He always felt guilty for eating there alone, which he did often, because it was kind of an interactive experience, where you grilled your own meat and/or made your fancy stew, and you really needed someone else there to join in. The staff wore crisp white uniforms to underscore that they did no actual food preparation themselves. There were tables, but almost everybody sat around a big U-shaped bar in the center, which had little grills embedded in it. The sound system blasted a mixture of Foreigner, 38 Special, Yes, and some J-Pop from a CDchanger.

  Peter was nervous about being seen out on a date, and having people act weird about it during or afterward. (Did you cast a "babe magnet" spell? Ha-ha-ha.) But the Shabu Palace was pretty empty, and a few people stared a little bit but it was no big deal. Peter found the meat vapors comforting, like carnal incense.

  "I hate this town," Rebecca said. "It's just big enough to have restaurants like this, but no actual culture. We don't even have a roller derby team any more. No offense, but that's one reason why you're such a big deal. We finally have a local celebrity again, to replace that sitcom actor who was from here who died." Peter wasn't offended by that at all, it explained a lot.

  Rebecca was saving up money from her pet store gig to go to L.A., where she wanted to go to barista school. Peter didn't know that was a thing you went to school for, but apparently it was a big deal, like knowing the science of grinding the beans just right and making just the right amount of ristretto and steaming the milk to the edge of burning. And of course latte art and stuff. Rebecca had tried to be a psychologist and a social worker and a vet, but none of those career paths had worked out. But she was excited about the barista thing because it was hip and artistic, and you could write your own ticket. Even start your own fancy café somewhere.

  "It's cool that you're so ambitious," Peter said. "I think L.A. would drive me insane."

  "I am guessing L.A. would be okay as long as you don't want to be a movie star or whatever," Rebecca said. "I mean, the barista school is probably hella cutthroat. But I can handle that."

  Peter hadn't really thought of this as a small town – it seemed pretty big to him. There was a freeway, and the downtown with the opera house, and the art museum, and the world headquarters of a major insurance company. And there was a small zoo during the spring and summer, with animals that wintered in Florida somewhere.

  "People hate you, you know," Rebecca told Peter halfway through dinner. "You're super threatening, because you're the proof that there's something wrong with them. If they'd only been good people, they would have gotten away clean, too. Plus, it offends our sense of order. Power should have terrible consequences, or life would be too easy. We want people to suffer for anything good they ever have. People are governed by envy, and a sense of karmic brutality."

  "That's a very bleak view of human nature," Peter said. But he found it kind of a turn-on. Misanthropy was just undeniably sexy, the way smoking used to be before you had to do it out in the cold.

  It turned out Rebecca had never even tried to do magic herself. "I never wanted to risk it," Rebecca said. "I'm the least lucky person, of anyone I know. I can only imagine how badly I would be screwed if I tried to bribe the universe to give me a shortcut."

  By now, Peter was really hoping that Rebecca would go home with him. He could almost imagine how cool it would be to have her naked and snarky in his big four-poster bed. Her body heaving to and fro. The way her hair would smell as he buried his face in it. He almost started getting hard under the counter of the Shabu Palace just thinking about it. Bryan Adams was singing about Heaven on the stereo. Everything was perfect.

  "So," Rebecca said, leaning forward in a way that could have been flirtatious or conspiratorial. "I gotta ask. What was the spell that you did? The famous one?"

  "Oh man." Peter almost dropped his meat piece. "You don't want to know. It's really dumb. Like really, really dumb."

  "No, come on," Rebecca said. "I want to know. I'm curious. I won't judge. I promise."

  "I... I'd rather not say." Peter realized he'd been about to lift this piece of meat off the grill for a while, and now it was basically a big carcinogenic cinder. He put it in his mouth anyway. "It's really kind of embarrassing. I don't even know if it was ethical."

  "Now I really want to know," Rebecca said.

  Peter imagined telling Rebecca what he'd done, and tried to picture the look on her face. Would she laugh, or throw sake at him and tell him he was a bad person? Immature? He couldn't even go there. Even Bryan Adams suddenly sounded kind of sad, and maybe a little disappointed in Peter.

  "I'm sorry," Peter said. "I think this was maybe a mistake." He paid for both of them and got the hell out of t
here.

  By the time Peter got home, Dobbs was freaking out because he really needed to go out and do his business. Dobbs ran around a tree three times before peeing on it, like he was worried the tree was going to move out of the way just as Dobbs was letting go. Dobbs looked up at Peter with big round eyes, permanently alarmed.

  Of course, Derek called Peter the next morning and wanted to know how the date went. They ended up going for breakfast at the retro-1970s pancake place downtown, and Peter grudgingly told Derek the whole deal.

  "So what you're saying," said Derek, "is that you plied her with meat and soft rock, and you had her basically all ready to Shabu your Shabu. And then she asked a perfectly reasonable question, and you got all weird and bailed on her. Is that a fair summary?"

  "Um," Peter said. "It's not an unfair summary."

  "Okay," Derek said. "I think there's a way this can still work out. Now she thinks you're complicated and damaged. And that's perfect. Ladies love men with a few psychic dents and scrapes. It makes you mysterious, and a little intense."

  "You're the only one I've told about that spell," Peter said. "You didn't tell anyone what the spell actually was, right?"

  "That part, I haven't told anyone," Derek said. "I only mentioned the part about how you had no complications."

  "Okay, cool," said Peter. "I don't want people to go nuts on me. Even more than they already have."

  "Listen," Derek said. "I'm kind of worried about you. I think this spell you did is just a symptom. I feel like you've been kind of messed up ever since Marga..." Derek trailed off, because Peter was scowling at him. "I just think you shouldn't be alone so much. I feel like a new relationship, or a fling – either way – would be good for you."

  Derek and Peter had been friends since college, where they'd bonded over hating their History 101 professor, who had a cult following among almost all the other students. Literally a cult – there was a human sacrifice at one of the professor's after-exam parties, and it'd turned ugly, as human sacrifice so often does. Peter and Derek weren't so close lately, because Derek had gone into real estate and never had time for Peter; plus until pretty recently Peter had just been hanging out with Marga's friends all the time. Like Marga herself, her friends were all erudite and artsy, with clever tattoos.