Hard Magic psi-1

by Laura Anne Gilman

  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 qua
rtz 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.

  Pure or low-res, all Talent use current, and we all use it about the same way, but I’ve never heard anyone describe it exactly the same way. It’s like sex, or religion, I guess; you gravitate toward whatever works for you. Me, I like things tangible. As in life, so in my head; as in my head, so created in current.

  The smaller crystal helped me ground and center. I had an even smaller black quartz one that I wore on a chain when I thought I’d need a boost on the go, but J thought that was sloppy, and reflected badly on his training, so I didn’t use it too often.

  “Breathe in, breathe out. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6…”

  By five, as usual, I was deep in my own core, the current I carried with me all the time. You could source current from outside, either tame—man-made wiring, power plants, stuff like that—or wild. Wild was ley lines, electrical storms, that sort of thing. Nature’s own energy. There were pluses and minuses to both, which was why you always wanted to maintain your own power, filtered, tamed, and tuned to your own quirks. Core-current was safer to use, faster to call up, and no surprises lurking in the power stream.

  I put the fragment down, and placed my hand on the globe, palm curved over the top. The stone was cool at first, and then my fingers began to prickle. I opened my eyes and looked down. Sparks were flicking inside the globe, running from my fingertip down to the imperfection, where they fractured and bounced back to the surface. They were mostly red, which wasn’t what I wanted. I focused, turning one strand this way, another that, and the hues faded to a more useful blue. Like cooking, you could do a lot with basic ingredients and a few pots, but it was easier when you had everything properly prepped.

  “All right, baby, show me what you got. What’s waiting at tomorrow’s interview for me?”

  That was about the level of specifics I hung at. There might be a way to get actual details out of the future, but I’d never known anyone who could do it consistently—and then there was the problem of interpreting those details. What seems perfectly obvious in a precog has a tendency to go another way entirely when it’s all happening.

  But vague? Vague I could do.

  The crystal was filled with blue sparks now, and I lifted my hand slowly, not wanting to startle anything. “Whatcha got for me? What’s waiting for me?”

  The sparks began to settle, and I opened myself up to whatever visual might come.

  Letters. Black against pale blue, hard and spiky letters, like someone writing fast and angry.

  No Cheating.

  And then the crystal—my damned expensive quartz globe—cracked like overheated safety glass, shards and chunks scattering all over the bed.

  I stared down at the mess, feeling the sting on my skin where tiny fragments must have nicked me.

  “Sheeesh.” I pulled a shard out of my hair, and dropped it into the largest pile of debris. “All right, fine. I can take a damned hint.”

  At least I knew one thing for certain. Whoever had called, whoever was setting this up? Way stronger Talent than me. And there was something else to seriously consider: that blast could have hurt me. Any of those shards might easily have done damage—but didn’t.

  I got up, yanked the cover off the bed and wrapped up the useless corpse of my crystal in it, and dropped it to the side of the room, where Housekeeping could deal with it later, then put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

  Big day tomorrow. I needed my sleep.

  Three

  My interview—or whatever that mysterious summons actually ended up being—wasn’t until 2:00 p.m. So, of course, I slept through the wake-up call, and the usual breakfast knock, and even the construction work being done on the street outside, courtesy of ConEd, finally waking up a little before noon. This wasn’t as unusual as it should be; I was born a night owl, and J never really trained it out of me. The one single 8:00-a.m. class I had in college, I dealt with by staying up all night and going to sleep afterward.

  The sight of the crumpled-up bedspread in the corner was a sobering thing to wake up to, though. Last night I was tired and well fed and probably more than a little inebriated—we had knocked off that bottle of wine, and then another during dinner—and the real hit hadn’t settled into my brain. This morning, it was all cold hard facts. I was going into an unknown situation that was clearly run—or at least guarded by—someone with way more mojo than I had. Someone alert to, and unhappy about, anyone scrying what they had planned. Suddenly, J’s concerns weren’t quite so dismissible.

  I was still going—pit-bull stubborn, that’s me—but with caution, damn it. And, I decided suddenly, without pretending to be anyone I wasn’t. Screw that—it hadn’t gotten me anywhere so far, and whoever this was, they were the ones who came calling, not the other way around. Let them get what I got.

  Out went the demure, if very nice, navy blue interview suit, and the sleeked-down, styled hair. My own, comfortable clothing, and my own comfortable look, thank you much. When I got out of the shower I applied my makeup and then ran my fingers through my hair and ruffled it madly. The image that stared at me from the full-length mirror was a hell of a lot more familiar now: my hair, still dark red but the short strands now fluffed around my face like a bloody dandelion puff, my eyes lined with a discreet amount of black kohl and mascara, and three basic gold studs in my left ear, while my right ear displayed a single sapphire stud, a fourteenth-birthday present from J.

  I’d been tempted to finish it off with buckled cargo pants and a mesh T-shirt, all in black, but common sense won out. I was going for me-hireable, not Goth club-kid. So a bright red silk shirt; sleeveless, like a fitted vest, went over my favorite skirt, a long black linen circle with enough pockets and loops to carry everything you might need in a daily routine, up to and including a carpenter’s hammer. J might be hoity-toity lawyer-man, but Zaki’d been a craftsman, and I learned early on about always having room for your tools.

  I didn’t like the way using the pockets interfered with the swing of the skirt, though, so everything—date book, newspaper, wallet, sunglasses—got tossed into my carryall. It was a graduation present from J—soft black leather, and probably the most expensive thing I owned—so I didn’t think I’d lose presentation points for using it instead of a briefcase.

  There was a moment’s hesitation at the shoes, but I squashed J’s voice in my head and went for my stompy boots instead of the more interview-acceptable, sensible heels. Shoving my feet into them felt like coming home, and when I stood up again, I felt ready to take on the whole damn world.

  Never underestimate the power of a pair of good, stompy engineer boots.

  Leaving the hotel, the daytime doorman—an older Asian guy named Walter—wished me good luck, making him third after the two chambermaids in the hallway on my floor. I thanked him, too, not sure if I should feel good that they bothered, or depressed that everyone in the hotel seemed to know I was job-hunting. Still, the entire staff had been really nice to me, and it wasn’t like I was in a position to turn down good wishes.

  The smart thing probably would have been to take a cab once I got cross-town, but the racket-clack of the subway was like a siren’s lure. They’re noisy, and usually overcrowded, but I could get a pretty current-buzz off the third rail without trying, and you see way more interesting people on mass transit. I’m all about the people-watching. Unfortunately, Tuesday at 1:30 p.m., heading uptown
, seemed to be the dead time on the 1 train, and it was just me and an old guy reading a day-old newspaper, and two teenage girls in Catholic-school uniforms, whispering and giggling to themselves.

  It took about twenty minutes to get uptown, with me obsessively checking the subway route map on the wall behind my seat at every station. Damn, I was going to be late…. I got off at what I hoped was the right stop, and left the guy to his paper, and the girls to their giggles. Places to go, people to impress!

  The office—or whatever it was—didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The address was a mostly kept-up building off Amsterdam Avenue, seven stories high and nine windows across. Brick and gray stone: that looked like the norm in this neighborhood. We weren’t running with a high-income crowd, here. Still, I had seen and smelled worse, and the neighborhood looked pretty friendly—lots of bodegas and coffee shops, and the kids hanging around looked as if they’d stopped there to hang on the way home from school, not been there all day waiting for their parole officer to roll by.

  And only one of them, a short kid with Day-Glo green hair, shouted out a comment to me, and yeah it was rude, but it wasn’t insulting, so I gave him a grin and told him to call me as soon as he could grow some facial hair, too. His friends hooted and shoved him hard enough to knock him off the stoop. Normal stuff.

  I could work around here, yeah. Assuming this wasn’t just some recruiter’s office, or… Nerves surfaced again, and got shoved down. Come on, I chided myself, hoisting my bag more firmly over my shoulder, you faced off against a cave dragon when you were nineteen…how much more difficult could this be?