by K. F. Breene
I needed to make a decision.
I glanced back up and started.
His footsteps had been silent, his approach sly. Yet there he stood, a muscular man a few years older than me, looking at me with an impassive face.
“Hello?” I asked, like I’d answered a phone call.
He moved forward with a sure step. The wind worried the dusty blonde hair that fell across his broad forehead. “Are you still open?” he asked, his eyes not leaving mine, even to glance at the table full of objects. It felt like he was assessing me, reaching in through my eyes and down to my soul, finding and reviewing all my secrets along the way.
“Oh.” I glanced out through the opening to the angry sky above. “It’s probably going to rain soon.”
He stood just behind the client chair. Clearly he was waiting for me to give a solid answer, and his patient silence had the odd effect of drawing the words from my mouth.
“Sure,” I said, shrugging. I had an umbrella. I’d chance a few drops for another paying customer.
Without a word, he stepped around the chair and sat, not flinching or hesitating when it whimpered in warning. His intense stare never left my eyes, and his face remained perfectly impassive. Like a serial killer’s.
I had the sudden thought that there weren’t enough closets in the world to save me from him.
“What…would you like?” I asked, running my hand over the table like Vanna White. “Tarot?” I touched the cards before glancing at the crystal ball. I weakly gestured that way instead of actually saying the words.
His gaze followed the movements of my hands, eyeing the tarot deck first and then the crystal ball. Without warning, he palmed the ball with a large, calloused hand and held it up for inspection.
“Ohhh…” I said like a tire losing air. “You’re not supposed to touch that.”
He squinted into it, as though trying to see the middle.
“I have to…” I made a circle in the air with my pointer finger. “I have to evoke the images, actually. They can’t just be gawked at like that. They won’t show.”
The corner of his mouth stretched into a half-smile before loosening again, back to stoic and serious. He dropped the ball onto the table, next to the stand.
“That just needs—” I flinched as he reached out, fast as lightning. My tarot deck was whisked away. “I’m not sure what experience you’ve had with these sorts of booths, but this level of manhandling is usually forbidden.”
He flicked through the deck, looking at various cards, before dropping them in a mess next to the crystal ball.
“This isn’t off to a great start,” I mumbled, at a loss. I’d never had someone so confidently wreck my setup before. Clearly this was the same guy that had visited Geraldine. The situation was a little off-putting, yet strangely gratifying.
His gaze landed on my newly acquired opal.
“Nope.” I jabbed my hand in front of it before his quick-draw-McGraw snatch could take hold. Instead, his fingers curled around mine.
A bolt of electricity blasted up my arm and into my chest. It stopped my heart and fried my insides as it shot down to my feet. I sucked in a pained breath. Adrenaline rushed into my body. The tug on my ribs that I’d felt in New Orleans was back, only this time it felt like a thick cable attached to my bones was being pulled by a semi.
The turning of the world ground to a halt. The wind died down to nothing and the canvas that had been whipping in the wind fell straight. The murmur of voices deadened.
We were two people moving in a frozen world.
Chapter Eight
His eyes widened as he stared at me, and it felt like that was a big deal. Like he was a man not surprised by much, and this had blindsided him.
I was a woman surprised by a whole lot. But after New Orleans, this didn’t seem like much. Just another weird thing following me around like an elephant I pretended not to see.
I drew back my hand. My arm stung from the rush of electricity, and my body trembled from the flash of pain. But I kept my composure and watched the stone, for no other reason than that I didn’t want him to take liberties with my gems. That seemed really important for some reason.
“So no on the tarot and crystal ball, then?” I asked lightly.
As suddenly as it had stopped, the turning of the world resumed. The wind rushed back in, pushing at my shabby tent. Birds squawked, probably yelling at each other before finding a place to hunker down for the rain. The chatter of booth workers and the clang of the others putting their things away filled in the background.
His eyebrows dipped low over his expressive eyes and he slowly withdrew his hand.
“Not much of a talker, huh?” I asked.
He leaned back slowly, and the chair leaned back with him. He didn’t seem to notice. “Do you know how to read tarot?”
“Yes,” I said confidently. “Would you like me to…” My words dried up under the force of his straightforward stare. Silence once again filled the space between us. Just as before, his waiting had the effect of drawing the words out of me. “You caught me. I really don’t. I just make things up based on the pictures. When people get the death one, things can get a little dicey on the communication train.”
He tilted his head, and it seemed like a nod of approval.
“The ball?” he asked, back to his serial-killer expression.
“I mean, do any crystal balls really show images?” I chuckled.
“Yes.” His eyes took on a haunted look and his face shut down into a block of granite.
I was out of my league, and I had no idea why, how, or even what league I had wandered into. “Right. Well then, no, that is not a crystal ball. It’s a cheap lump of glass.”
He nodded again. “So what is it you do…”
“Penny. Penny Bristol.”
“What is it you do, Penny Bristol?” He spread his hands, indicating my whole setup.
“Well, I…” I looked at my table. With the tarot and crystal ball cleared off to the side, all that was left was a haphazard layout of gems and stones. My chances for getting paid for this visit were diminishing. “I play poker, really.”
“Poker?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. What was the point in lying? He’d seen right through me, I could tell. “I read people and tell them what they want to hear. That’s what I do.”
“And what do I want to hear?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
A smile slowly worked up his face. “This isn’t the right job for you, Penny Bristol.”
“Tell me about it.”
He leaned forward and put his forearms on the table. The loud creak didn’t seem to bother him as he gazed at the various items laid out before him. “May I touch your rocks?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. The way he’d said that sounded dirty.
When his eyes came up, though, they were inquisitive instead of filled with mischief.
“They don’t really like to be handled.” I clenched my teeth, realizing what I’d said. “I mean, I don’t like them to be handled. That’s what I meant.”
“No, it isn’t.” Another pocket of silence, and I got the distinct impression he wanted me to wave my weird flag.
“Fine, you want the whole shebang?”
“Yes.”
“Each of those rocks holds power. They like to be laid out in various ways, which changes nearly every day. If I get it right, this game of poker is much easier. The right words come to me. If I get it wrong, I get very little tips on what my customers want to hear.”
“Do you ever get it wrong?”
“In the beginning, I did, yes. They were for decoration, so I just placed them randomly.”
“What changed?”
“I spent more time at the library, researching power items. One day I got it right, and it felt…balanced. Peaceful.”
“Powerful.”
“Yes,” I said, shivers coating my body. “Powerful.”
“I have some knowledge of po
wer rocks, Penny Bristol, though the ones I use are significantly larger than these.” He ran a hand over the table. “You are wrong. They like to be handled. They like to be used, some more than others. But you are right in that they have a will of their own.”
The shivers turned into prickles and I straightened up, fear worming into my middle. Flashes of burned bodies and zombie corpses invaded my mind. The feeling of power that had flooded my senses when I was reading that spell…
The memories rattled me, throwing me into a darker place.
Back into that church.
“Do you know of magic?” I asked in a strangled voice.
The glimmer in his eyes dulled. His gaze roamed my face, then my neck and shoulders. He leaned away from the table and dropped his hands into his lap. “I apologize. I think I’ve overstayed my welcome.” He rose and stepped behind the chair. His gaze went back to serious and intense, the brief sparks of humor from moments ago completely gone. “I know your fear. I know it with everything in my person. But remember this. As Nelson Mandela said, courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. If you hide from that powerful thing inside of you, it will take over in strange ways. It will rule you, and not you it.” He turned to go, but stopped mid-turn and swiveled back around. “And remember this also.” He touched a scarred finger to the center of his chest. “You don’t need fancy words or different languages. You don’t need more than what exists in the wild. You just need the strength of your will to make it so. Good luck, Penny Bristol.”
And with that, he was gone.
The increasing patter of raindrops sounded overhead, but I couldn’t move. My brain whirled with what he’d said, and more, the way he’d said it. Like he knew what I was going through. Like he’d been on the same journey at one point in his life, and he’d overcome the crippling fear.
Like he was encouraging me to overcome it as well.
I took a steadying breath and glanced at my gems and stones, replaying our conversation word for word.
It will rule you, and not you it.
The scenes in the church came back to me again. The decisions I’d made out of ignorance.
I did have some magic. How much or how little was still up for debate, but it was impossible to deny that if I continued to ignore the whole thing, I’d be acting out of fear…just like the stranger had urged me not to do. I’d be hiding from what I was. From finding out exactly what that meant.
Another thing occurred to me.
He hadn’t snickered at me once throughout that whole thing. He hadn’t made a jest at my expense, or a face that suggested he thought I was loony tunes. He’d been on my same page.
Emotion welled up, shifting things around in my chest. Excitement and anticipation built, along with anxiety.
Callie had said I could live in her house. That she had too much money for her own good and could cover my expenses. That would loosen the hold my mother had over me. It would erase my monetary obstacles.
Was I really contemplating accepting the dual-mages’ offer to train me?
Did I have any choice?
A sour face appeared within the front opening of my tent, followed by a wiry old body with droopy man boobs. I’d never seen a thin man with droopy man boobs until Albert, but there you had it. His white mustache curved down toward his chin, following the contours of his equally downturned mouth.
“Who are you trying to impress?” he asked.
I lifted my eyebrows. “You?”
“Bah!” He batted his hand through the air before pointedly looking at the sky. “Can’t you see? It’s starting to rain. There’ll be a storm tonight, mark my words. Those weather people wouldn’t know their business if it was handed to them.”
“Well…it is handed to them. Via a teleprompter.”
“You know what I mean. They said it’ll be light showers. Does that sky look like light showers to you?”
No, it did not. It looked like I needed to start building an ark.
“So what are you waiting for? A second all-clear?” He frowned at me.
“Did we get a first one?” I asked, standing.
He rolled his eyes and walked away.
That was probably a yes.
I stared at my gems and stones for a long moment before picking them up one at a time.
You just need the strength of your will to make it so.
But what was the “it”?
In a daze, I took my tent and whatnot down and piled it onto my cart. It was annoying to set up and take down every day, but management reserved the right to move us around or cancel us at any time. Clearly they thought keeping us mobile was the easiest way to handle things. For them.
The lane was mostly cleared away as I made my way out, and only one guest of the village was hurrying through the hardening rain. Even in a panic to keep from getting wet, he noticed the strange stain on the side of my umbrella.
I rotated it away from his judgmental eyes. I honestly had no idea what it was from, but it wouldn’t let the rain wash it away, and I never remembered to pick up a new umbrella when I was in the store.
At my car, I loaded everything in (the poles were always a problem) and sat in the driver’s seat, checking out the mostly empty parking lot. The afternoon sky, dark with clouds, rumbled in the distance. Albert had been exactly right. This wasn’t any old rainy day. There was a storm brewing.
Halfway home, after stopping by the store to grab a few things for dinner, I slowed at a barricade blocking off the street. Rain pounded my windshield. The squeak of my wiper blades competed with the radio.
I frowned because this way was never closed. It was a larger street that didn’t host any street fairs or races—not that it would be a likely day for such a thing.
I glanced in my rearview mirror, seeing that I’d missed a standing sign that probably read “Detour.”
At least they had signs. I’d never strayed from this route, and I’d learned it from MapQuest (flip phones didn’t have GPS). I didn’t trust my ability to figure out a workaround without guidance. Streets around these parts were windy affairs that messed with my nearly nonexistent directional sense.
A car slowed at the detour sign and turned. Another followed behind.
At least I’d have someone to follow.
As I straightened in my seat and grabbed the gear shift, my gaze caught the barricade again. The image wavered, just for a moment. I turned the wipers on a little faster, trying to see through the driving rain.
My heart quickened.
It wasn’t a barrier at all. It was a tightly woven band of multiple colors, patterns, and textures.
It was magic.
Chapter Nine
Adrenaline coursed through me. Without thinking, because that was clearly my jam, I threw the car into drive and lurched forward.
The hood of the car sliced through the artfully crafted spell. I stopped on the other side and looked back.
The magic was still there, untarnished by my intrusion.
I turned back to drive on, but it occurred to me that an essential part of training was analysis. If I wanted to learn how to work spells, I needed to know how other people put them together. What went into them. I was being presented with that opportunity right now, which clearly meant I should head outside in a storm. Clearly.
Why did I have to think so much?
I pulled over to the side of the road and grabbed my umbrella. The driving rain beat down hard, splashing the concrete around my shoes. I hurried forward, getting hammered in the shins as I did so. They’d be soaked in no time.
The weave was magnificent, like the design of a master seamstress. The colorful patterns twirled and spun together, exquisite and exciting. I felt the pulse of the spell throbbing in the air before it soaked into my middle, its intent clear.
Keep out. Danger ahead.
I felt goodness within the spell. Light. Good intentions. Whatever was happening, this spell had been crafted by someone with his or her heart in the right p
lace.
I ran back to my car, my shins getting another blast of tumultuous water. A gust of wind layered my side with rain.
What a day to stumble upon magic.
Back in the car, I drove ahead slowly, looking carefully for any sign of additional magic. I felt it before I saw it. Evil intent. A vile undertaking. Something that would cause serious harm. I didn’t see any magic, but I could feel it, clear as day. The spell was in the stages of being cast, I’d bet my life on it. Soon, the colorful jet of destruction would bloom over the street toward its intended victim.
I didn’t think that was imagination talking, though I couldn’t be sure.
I pulled to the side of the street again, watching. If I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me.
I paused.
If magic could make people into zombies, it could also make people invisible.
Adrenaline mixed with fear had me outside of the car in a flash, umbrella and purse in hand. I thought about grabbing a tent pole, too, just in case I needed to javelin someone or something, but a quick glance at the sky made me think better of the idea. Holding a big lightning rod in a storm wasn’t the smartest of moves.
Although my umbrella wasn’t far from…
I scurried toward a leafy bush at the side of the road. A streetlight clicked on over me, showering me in its glow.
Great timing.
I tiptoed farther along and crouched beside another bush, looking out at the quiet street. A small, deserted lot sat off to the right, the green grass stretching to the playground beyond. On the other side was a tire business, its windows dark and bays closed. The burger joint was likewise closed, very peculiar for this time of day on a weekday.
“I just want a name,” someone shouted, and I recognized the voice immediately. Gravelly and low, it was the stranger from earlier in the day. I couldn’t see him, but it sounded like he was on my side of the street.
I patted my pockets, more of a nervous gesture than an attempt to find something. My stones were in my bag in the car. Not that I knew how to do anything more than throw them at someone, but I sure would’ve been happy to have them with me.
