by Jim Johnson
Robert was droning on about mom and dad and the money and the expenses connected to grandpa’s care and a bunch of other bullshit I’d heard like a dozen times before. All of which ultimately added up to me not getting access to any more of the money Grandpa and Grandma had theoretically left for me.
With the ley thread in hand and feeling justifiably pissed off, I glanced at Robert and pushed the thread toward his cell phone. At first nothing seemed to happen. In my mind’s eye I could see the ley thread sort of superimposed on the phone, like a movie special effect, but the two things didn’t seem to be directly affecting each other, like they were out of sync or not quite in the same dimension as…
That was it. Miss Chin had told me that the ley grid and threads, the Veil, and the Holding were all closely related to the mortal world, but that they were on slightly different frequencies, sort of out of phase with each other.
I’d remembered the concept from some old Star Trek episode. Two things occupying the same space, but not quite in sync with each other. All they needed was a little tweak…
I caught my lower lip between my teeth and focused while Robert started to wind down from his usual ‘no more money for Rachel’ dissertation. I focused on the ley thread and brought it into phase with the regular world.
There was a sudden flash of blue and silver-tinged lightning, little more than a brief flash, but enough to imprint on my retinas and stand up all the hairs on my arms. I felt like I’d hit a static charge.
Surprised, I glanced at Robert, who was leaning back from the table, shaking his hands as if he’d accidentally touched a hot griddle.
In the center of the table was his smartphone, its screen blackened and cracked. Wisps of smoke oozed out of the case. The pungent tang of ozone hung in the air, mixing with the sweeter aroma from my latte and the pastries the cafe had to offer.
I schooled my features and glanced at Robert. “What happened?”
He stared at his phone. “I have no idea.”
Our server stepped over with the bill for my drink and glanced at Robert’s smartphone. “Oh, man. Your phone blew up big time. Not the first time that’s happened.”
We both focused on her. “What?” we said, in unison.
She reached down and pulled Robert’s charge cord out of the wall socket, which was also blackened. “This old building doesn’t have the best electric system. Sometimes when the cooks fire up the electric pots, we get an electrical surge and stuff that’s plugged in gets a pop.”
She dropped his charge cord on the table and swept up our bills in the same motion. “Drinks are on us. Really sorry for the trouble.”
She took off for the kitchen before Robert could say anything. I raised both eyebrows, impressed and a little bit scared. Miss Chin hadn’t told me about this particular application of the ley threads, and the possibilities had me thinking all sorts of thoughts. I had popped Robert’s wristwatch a few weeks ago, when I was just starting to mess with the ley threads, and had thought it was an accident.
Robert glanced at his new watch, grimaced, and then scooped up the remains of his phone and charge cord. He shoved them into his briefcase and then shot me a look. “Anyway, I’ve gotta get on the road to the airport. I’m sorry that we still haven’t worked out the money thing for you, but rest assured that we’re working on it and we’ll have a resolution soon. Until then, take care of yourself, all right?”
He glanced at the still-smoking wall. “And, I’d avoid eating here again. This place is liable to burn down if they’re not careful.”
I offered a distracted wave as he left, far more interested in my newfound power than in his rambling and his hollow promises. I finished my drink as I rubbed down the hairs on my arms.
This was new, and scary, and cool, and way beyond anything I knew what to do with. I couldn’t talk to Miss Chin about this just yet, and there’s no way I was going to tell Abbie that, in addition to everything else, I could blow up electronics.
No, there was only one person I could really chat magic with, and she was just a few blocks away. I downed the last of my latte, tossed the cup into the recycle bin, and then headed toward BeanTown to get drinks for me and Bonita.
Chapter Seven
IT WAS A SHORT IN AND out to the BeanTown, and then a brisk walk down Mount Vernon to reach her shop. Bonita was ringing up a customer as I walked in. The little bell attached to the door dingled merrily.
Bonita and the customer both glanced at me. Bonita gave me a little wave. She turned to the customer and finished the sale, and then I met her at the counter.
She offered me a smile, though I bet it was more for the grande mocha in my hands than for me. “I see you brought me nectar of the gods.”
I grinned. “Steamed milk plus an extra shot. Just the way you like it.” I handed the concoction over and took a sip from my own cup.
She took it with a nod, pointing out her pinkie as if it was some fancy drink. She took a healthy swig and then smacked her lips indelicately. “That’s my jam, right there.”
“Got a few minutes to talk?”
She glanced at the old clock hanging over the front door. “Just after eleven. Let’s call it lunch time.” She pointed toward the back room and I headed that way while she moved to the front of the store to lock up and to flip the old plastic sign from “Open” to “Closed.”
I settled into the old wooden captain’s chair in the back room, which groaned and settled in all the right places as I found the comfortable position to sit in. I helped myself to a chocolate peppermint cookie that was just brazenly sitting on the table waiting for someone to eat it, along with a few of its brothers and sisters.
Bonita joined me and perched on a metal stool along with her coffee. She helped herself to one of the few remaining cookies and then glanced at me as she took a bite. “My niece roped me into buying a few boxes.”
I snorted. “I’m sure you fought tooth and nail to resist.”
She giggled around a mouthful of cookie. “I guess not. I’m a sucker for these.” She finished off the one in her hand and then focused on me. “So. What’s cooking in the world of Rachel Ray?”
I rolled my eyes at the nickname. She didn’t use it much, but when she did, she knew she’d get one of my patented eye-rolls. I think she enjoyed making me do it.
I shrugged as I sipped from my coffee. “I just met up with my brother. For once he met me here in Del Rey.”
Bonita offered a raised eyebrow. “Why’d he come out this way? Usually you meet him in the city, right?”
“Maybe he was taking pity on me, knowing it’s the end of the month and I’m close to broke again.”
“Gotcha.” She took a swig of coffee and then grabbed one of the remaining cookies. “So he came out here so that you didn’t have to beg someone for cab fare or a metro ride?”
“Pretty much. Though if it came down to it I could borrow Abbie’s car and drive into the city.”
Bonita made a face at that. “You hate driving, though. In the city or otherwise.”
“With a passion. Why drive when we have generally good public transit?”
She nodded. “So what happened at the meet-up?”
I sighed around another jolt of coffee. “The usual. ‘We’re working out the financials and, in the meantime, here’s your pittance. Good luck for another month’.”
She groaned. “So you’re still on five hundred for the month?”
I couldn’t stop the frown from dragging down my face. “Yep. Until mom or dad gets the stick out of their butts and works things out with the lawyers or financial advisors or whatever.” I shrugged. “I guess I can make it work for a little longer.”
Bonita put down her coffee cup. “I can give you a few more hours here. Business is kinda picking up now that the weather is getting a little warmer.”
“Or may be, anyway. One day it’s balmy in the sixties and the next day its below freezing.” I chuckled, then nodded. “I’ll take any extra hours you can spare. You kno
w I’m good for them.” Well…as long as I wasn’t stuck out late at night shepherding lost souls to the Holding.
She nudged her chin toward me. “There must be more, Rachel. You wouldn’t bring me my favorite coffee and eat my cookies just to bitch about Robert. That’s been going on for over a year.”
“I know.” I put my half-full cup of coffee on the table and snatched one of the last two remaining cookies out of the sleeve and handed the last one to her.
“Something weird happened during our talk. I was getting tired of hearing the same old crap, and I was playing around with the ley threads, and…I sort of blew up his cell phone.”
Bonita stared at me with wide eyes. “Chica…you did what to the what, now?”
“I torched his phone, Bonita. I was curious to see what would happen when a ley thread interacted with something electronic in our world, and…well, it was impressive.” I grinned impishly at her, but faltered when she didn’t start smiling with me.
She said, “I didn’t think the etheric energies worked like that.”
I shrugged. “Miss Chin told me that with careful application, they might.”
Bonita nodded, a sage-like look rolling over her features. “And…do you think you were being careful?”
I blinked, then stared hard at her. “I just…I don’t know. I was bored and curious, and I had the means to experiment.”
Bonita scratched at the base of her neck, one of her signs that she was about to get serious. I raised a hand to try and fend off the impending lecture. “Look, I didn’t come here to get the song and dance drilled into me. I have Miss Chin for that.”
She took a deep breath, then finally nodded. “You’re right. It’s none of my business. I don’t know exactly what you’re able to do, and I’m not familiar enough with the ley grid or the etheric energies to really say much of anything.”
She glanced at the clock on her phone, then back to me. “But, I will ask you to please don’t experiment like that while you’re around me. Is that all right?”
A mix of emotions surged through me, from surprise to hurt to anger and back again. I looked into her eyes, usually so kind and open. Right now she looked worried and unhappy and even a little guarded. Jeez. I was really having a rough day so far—first Abbie and then Robert and now Bonita.
If I wasn’t careful, I’d alienate everyone that mattered to me. I figured I better be careful next time I go to see my grandpa.
Finally, I focused on her. “I promise. I wouldn’t put you or the store in any risk.”
She smiled at that, a halfhearted one but a smile all the same. “Would you be mad at me if I also asked you to be careful?”
“Of course not. And I will. When his phone sparked off and the screen cracked, I think I even scared myself.” I lifted my arms in a shrug, then dropped my hands into my lap. “I really don’t know the limits of my power, and knowing I can make the ley threads interact with the real world is scary all by itself.”
“Are you going to talk to Miss Chin about it?”
I shrugged, and then sparked by the comment, checked the clock on my phone. “I wasn’t planning to, but I will. Not today, though. I have a training session with Malcolm in a couple hours. I guess I better start getting ready and head that way.”
Bonita picked up her coffee cup and drained it and then tossed it into the nearby trash can. “Is there anything else going on? Not that blowing up phones with magic isn’t enough.”
I shrugged. “Just…I don’t know. Abbie and I had a little fight this morning.”
She gave me an inquiring look. I added, “I got home really late last night after working on a ghost thing with Miss Chin.”
She smirked. “A-ha. A little jealousy starting to creep in?”
“Yeah. It’s the late nights strung together one after another. And I forgot to text her last night to tell her I’d be home late. I’d say it’s no big deal, but this was the second night in a row and like the fifth in two weeks.”
She patted my leg in sympathy. “I remember Steven being jealous the first few weeks I got involved with my midwife and doula work and started going on call at all hours of the night helping my clients with their deliveries.”
“How did you work it out?”
She grinned. “Treated him to his favorite beer a couple times and gave him some really good sex a few other times, you know. The basics.” She snorted, then added, “But also reminders that I loved him and that he had nothing to worry about. I amped up the communication a bit after that, and things got better.”
I gathered up my satchel. “I think that’s the route I’ll take, except that Abbie doesn’t drink beer. Maybe a box of her favorite wine.”
Bonita stood up and led me to the front door. “So classy. A ‘box of wine’.” She chuckled as she unlocked the front door and opened it for me. “Maybe really surprise her and bring home a bottle.”
I laughed and leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I could do that, but boxed wine is cheaper. Five hundred a month, remember.”
She rolled her eyes and nudged me out the door. “Go on and get your boy trained up, magic girl.”
I headed off toward my meeting with Malcolm, my lifted mood already starting to level off and head downhill. About all I could think about was what I had done to Robert’s phone and whether anything electronic was safe around me.
Chapter Eight
SINCE I HAD SOME TIME BEFORE meeting up with Malcolm, I ran home to complete a few chores and gather some supplies. It’s so much easier to clean and wash clothes when other people are out of the house. The washer and dryer were on the main level, just past the kitchen, and I had to navigate the laundry basket around our new roommate’s piles of boxes in the hallway. Clearly she hadn’t unpacked yet. I guessed she worked during the day like everyone else in the house.
Well, except for me. But I was working on that.
After getting a load in the washer and another in the dryer, I took a few minutes with Abbie’s home desktop computer to check a few job sites. I managed to find a couple openings that I was kinda-sorta qualified for, so I submitted my resume to both. Even if they didn’t lead anywhere, it felt good to at least make an effort.
And, it wouldn’t hurt my relationship with Abbie to know that I was trying to find a job that wasn’t essentially charity from a friend, such as my job at Bonita’s. Feeling like I had checked the adulting box for today, I grabbed my satchel and tossed a couple candles and some chalk and incense into it. Malcolm wasn’t much for preparation prior to training, and always forgot his accoutrements.
I felt like it was up to me, as his sort of unofficial Miss Chin, to provide that stuff, though I have to admit that there were times I wondered why I bothered. If Malcolm was capable of using his talents without preparation, why go through the gyrations?
I’m sure Miss Chin would say something about how deliberate preparation can help place you in the right mindset prior to working the ley threads. Which made sense to me. Lack of preparation and planning had led me to blowing up the Veil, and if a little preparation meant helping Malcolm avoid making a similar mistake, then it would be worth it.
After double-checking to be sure all the lights were off in order to give Penny one less thing to bitch about, I locked up and headed for the bus stop. It was a couple blocks from the house and had become our regular pick-up and drop-off spot whenever I relied on him to drive. I had talked to Abbie about it, and Malcolm agreed that it’d be better if he didn’t pick me up or drop me off at the house. We didn’t need Penny or the other housemates to notice and ask questions that would have awkward answers. It’s not like I could just up and say, “He’s my friend and he’s here to pick me up for our magic practice.”
Penny and Cooper and Tonia could handle some weirdness, but that might be too much for them. The less they knew about my secret life, the better. It was important that Abbie knew, of course, but the rest of them sure didn’t need to know.
I texted Malcolm while
walking to the bus stop. He was waiting for me when I arrived. I climbed into his black Mustang and settled into the passenger seat. As he pulled away from the curb, I glanced at him. “Right on time. Thanks for being punctual.”
“Ain’t no thing. I had most of the day free. Practiced this morning, ran some errands, got some grub, you know.” He took a slug from a Red Bull can and then placed it in the drink cup in the dash.
I glanced at him. He had silver studs in his ears today, which stood out in sharp contrast against his dark skin. He had on his customary Baltimore Ravens jacket and a pair of black jeans. I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but the jacket looked new. The one he’d worn during the fight at Branchwood had gotten pretty well torn up.
As he guided his car through traffic, he shot a glance into the rearview mirror and then took another swallow of Red Bull. “So how you doing, Rachel? Learn any more tricks? Send any new ghosts to the other side?”
I fingered my crystal and then tucked it into my t-shirt out of habit. It’s not that I didn’t trust Malcolm, it was just that I was tired of his glance constantly darting to my crystal, which had a tendency to glow pretty much on whim.
Thought he might have been looking at my chest too, I dunno. But I doubted it—he knew that’d be a waste of time. He was the wrong gender for me.
I said, “Miss Chin and I got another one through the Veil last night. An old soul that had spent a lot of time around Christ Church in Alexandria. He wasn’t too hard.”
He grinned as he drove. “Good to know.”
I focused on him. “How about you? What have you been up to?”
He shrugged and gave me a strange little smile. “Been practicing. Trying some new stuff out.” He wiped his mouth and then cleared his throat. “Not sure I’m getting it all right, though. It’s hard for me to reach out for the…things, the threads?” He looked uncertain.
“The ley threads?” I guess the terminology came easier to me.
