The Late Great Wizard

by Sara Hanover

  “Come on, silly. Quit staring.”

  “But it’s beautiful!”

  “Isn’t it?” Joanna agreed. “My mother helped design it.”

  “She’s talented.”

  “Yes. She was.” Joanna stepped ahead and opened the doors leading to the treatment rooms. Her words sounded as glacial as the marble, reminding me that she came from a single-parent family, too. It had happened so long ago that I had forgotten about it, and felt my cheeks warm in an apologetic blush. Joanna beckoned me onward.

  Under my brace, the stone began to heat in warning. I curled my fingers in acknowledgment, praying that it would not get so hot that it scorched me. Thanks to Steptoe, I’d gained a rudimentary idea of how it worked and what it might and might not do for me, but I hoped to keep it under wraps until the actual happenings began. Whatever they would be. I expected fireworks but hoped they might be duds.

  Outside a flock—no, a murder of crows—peeked in through the windows at me, windows showcasing the private river and peaceful greens and pines beyond. At night, the barges would take guests to the restaurant and country club venue, with paper lanterns swaying with the movement of the rowers and kimono-clad hostesses attending to the various groups on board. Hironori had planned the experience as no less than a trip to a fantasyland, as exotic as he could make it. No BBQ here. The moon hung in the spring sky as it does sometimes, silvery and partial, unafraid to invade the sun’s empire. As if Joanna disliked my view, she pulled a sash and the shutters closed, leaving us entirely immersed in the spa atmosphere.

  I thought I heard a caw of disagreement as she did.

  Evelyn escorted me into the group massage room where three beds had been set up. A fountain in the corner flowed into a room-long pool—or perhaps it was a miniature river, burbling quietly as it streamed slowly past, disappeared down a drain in the far corner somewhere, and circled back around to cascade downward again. It not only looked beautiful but it sounded that way, too. On the adjacent wall stood the bank of lockers, this time in a tasteful, almost Scandinavian light wood, very minimal and efficient looking. “Put your clothes in here, and there’s a kimono for you, too.”

  “Great.” There was also a racquet of some kind, left behind I presumed, so I ignored it. I stripped down as much as I intended to while the two of them, distracted as their masseuses entered, turned about. I wrapped a towel around myself, covering up my athlete’s running bra and shorts. I had no intention of running around in the altogether while throwing salt or tossing one of Steptoe’s flash-bangs. My brace came off, and I held my bracelet in my curled hand, hiding both it and the stone as my masseuse entered and motioned me to my table, parallel to the wall fountain and brook. I climbed up on my stomach and found myself looking down at the floor through the head brace. She said nothing as she loosened my towel and began to oil down my shoulders.

  My ears muffled, I managed to hear Joanna leave as someone came to the door and asked softly for her. Evelyn switched her joyful chatter from that target to me and didn’t seem to mind when I just managed a soft murmur now and then. Evelyn in talk-mode is like a freight train barreling down the tracks: you don’t stand a chance and should never get in the way. I did gather that my driver was likely to be my escort, and he was the tallest of the three volunteered for the jobs tonight. Evelyn seemed pleased over the moon about it, and I thought of telling her that not all was as it looked, but decided against it. Some things just have to be experienced in person.

  In the middle of a sentence, Evelyn said “Oh!” and then went rambling on as though she hadn’t interrupted herself. In the next minute she let out a big yawn. “I’m soooo sleepy,” her words nearly hidden by the soft drumming of hands against flesh.

  I started to turn my head as she drifted into total silence, but then something sharp bit into my shoulder. “Hey!”

  The masseuse continued working on my upper back and neck as if nothing had happened, talking in Japanese to the other masseuse, their rhythm lulling, and my eyelids drooped. I found myself echoing Evelyn’s yawn. My stone began to grow heated, sending sparks through my hand as though we’d been short-circuited and my eyes flew open. Footsteps circled my platform.

  “Come help me!”

  “She’s not asleep yet.”

  I could sense my masseuse pausing over my form and looking to her teammate before slapping me once, hard. Biting my lip, I kept from jumping and deepened my breathing.

  “That one is light. What’s your problem?”

  “My back hurts. Come on, let’s get her out. Joanna-san is waiting. I’ll help you with that one, she looks taller and heavier.”

  “No kidding. A lot of muscle though. All right, but only if you help.”

  “What? You don’t trust me?”

  “Never.” And the two voices blurred into Japanese as the two debated what was obviously an argument as old as the hills: not everyone did their share of the work.

  I could not turn my head to see what was happening, but I got a view of two pairs of feet shod in white canvas shoes and legs in white pants dragging a bare-legged and footed person between them, and from the bright red polish on the toes, I knew it had to be Evelyn. From the silence I also knew she had to be out like a light or she would have been all over them with questions and protests.

  She seemed to be as unconscious as I was meant to be if the stone hadn’t been throwing a hissy fit in my palm. My head worked and my arm worked but the rest of me felt like lead. As the room cleared, I tried to roll onto my side and nothing happened. They’d be back for me as soon as they disposed of Evelyn. I got my arm under my torso and pushed. With a grunt and a roll, I managed to get on my side. Not great, but some improvement. That spot on my shoulder ached like a bee sting. It seemed a little early to call for help, but since I had no idea what they had planned for us, I decided to let out a shout.

  But my face didn’t work right. Or rather my mouth and voice box, the important parts of it, didn’t work, although I have had flirty guys suggest that my eyes and freckles are my best features. A string of drool managed to escape my lips but that was the extent of it. Maybe a ghoulish-sounding moan did as well.

  I tried to sit up. Nada. Move a toe. Zilch. Turn my head to stare at the ceiling. Nope. Except for one arm, and a slight ability to move my head, ever so little, my body had frozen solid.

  I stared at my arm. I couldn’t even uncurl my hand. Brian’s weighty book on one’s self suggested that I was only imprisoned inasmuch as I thought I was. But whoever wrote it in the Dark Ages had obviously not had a poison dart stabbed into their body. The author wouldn’t dispute that I had to use whatever came to hand and that was, well, my right hand.

  It felt like doing a one-armed push-up, but I got it straight under me and pushed, hard as I could. Rather like tipping a cow.

  Again! I held my breath and tensed my body, pushing with muscles that I couldn’t feel respond, but I knew I couldn’t afford to fail.

  I went over backward, prepared to hit the floor, hard.

  Instead, I nearly drowned. I fell into the ornamental river backside first in a spray of foam that rushed in to cover me.

  That very slight movement of head came in handy. Rather than drowning in the bubbling brook edging the room, I managed to keep my head above water. Bracing, very cold water. Water that shocked me to my toes and back to my head with wetness. And a lot deeper than it looked, too. I floated down toward the drain while prickling sensations of feeling returned to me in lightning, stabbing pain, but by the time my feet bumped against the recycling drain in the corner, I could move and hauled myself out.

  Sorta. Let’s just say if a zombie (one of the slow ones) came after me in a fifty-yard dash, it would win. But I’d be hobbling as fast as I could go, and I did now to the lockers. Jeans. Check. T-shirt, check. Shoes, double check. Fancy purse with a pound of crystal salt in it, triple check. It is really difficult to dress
yourself when you’ve been numbed within an inch of your life. I managed somehow though the inside of me didn’t seem to be waking up as fast as the outside. If it had, I’d have thought to grab my clothes and run rather than stand there, hopping around in front of the locker, trying to get dressed.

  Seriously. Hindsight and all that. The door burst open and a very angry woman charged in. Luckily that ignored handball racquet in my locker looked useful, and I could swing it when my masseuse came after me with a shout and a string of colorful curses. I unloaded my best field hockey goal shot on her. She staggered back from the racquet, slipped on the wet floor where I’d climbed out of the riverbed, went down, clipped her head on the edge of the fountain and lay still when she finished. Most of that, I thought, had nothing to do with me, but I’d take whatever fortunate accidents came my way.

  I kept the racquet. Took the main door out of the room and moved slowly down the hallway in the opposite direction of voices I could now hear.

  My shoes squelched. I was neither as dry or stealthy as I wanted to be. Had to be. Whoever found the masseuse wouldn’t know how I took her down, but they were bound to be better equipped and trained for hand-to-hand than I was. So, I needed to find Evelyn and Joanna, determine what they were up to, stop them, and get the hell out of Dodge before things got worse. And I’d found a second door out that would aid in that endeavor. Opened it and hobbled swiftly right into the janitorial closet.

  I’d expected that. Steptoe had mapped out the place for me, and I pulled his map out of my jeans pocket only to find the ink running together messily. Don’t ask what favors we traded, but I ended up with the map and another handful of flash-bangs and I think I might have given him a book of his choice out of Brian’s library. I exhaled gustily over the map to dry it, but did manage to locate my position. I’d tried to get his magic invisibility coat off him to use myself, but he’d insisted only he had the talent to wield it and subsequently insisted on doing the recon. Running ink told me that not all bargains were good ones. I waved it a little in hopes of clearing it up. My room stood out. It was the rest of the spa that looked blurred. The location of the casino, a separate building just off the country club, had disappeared altogether in an interesting blob of smeared ink. I might not need to break in there, however, depending on what I found here. Offices needed bosses, and I doubt Hironori trusted more people than he had to. Joanna was surely one of the highest on the list.

  I squinted and turned the map in a few directions, getting an idea just where I was as well as where I had been, followed by the reason maps were created: deciding where to go. What Steptoe had detected as a very tech-oriented room had to be an office of some sort at the spa, and if it was, I knew I had to get in there. I blew on the map a few more times to get it dry, folded it back up and put it away, put my ear to the door, and listened.

  The nice thing about upset people is that their voices get high, loud, and shrill, i.e., easy to hear. I heard nothing. I did three stretches to confirm my body could now move and opened the door carefully. Out and to the left, then a quick right, keeping to the walls and praying that Steptoe’s observation about the cameras had been correct also. I shouldn’t be in their range if I hugged the walls. That handled the tech aspect. What I couldn’t guess for sure would be the magical element. The corridors had to be warded. I couldn’t see them, but my palm let me know when something stirred or snagged or broke as I moved through the building. The stone, if it worked, should be nulling whatever signals the wards attempted to send. If I’d done my part correctly. I had only the two books read under my belt, but what I’d learned so far signified that will had a great deal to do with magic. I didn’t know if the Hashimotos were on the good side or bad side of Malender, but I was convinced they’d spirited my dad away, leaving grief and estrangement in their wake. They owed me. For that, I intended to own them. I would bring them down and my father back.

  As always, easier said than done. The spirit might be willing but my flesh basically gave up. Sapped of energy, I barely moved. Huddling against the wall kept me on my feet as I raced an imaginary sloth down the corridor, and lost. That’s when I realized that magic has a very real, very definite price, and I had gone bankrupt. Or perhaps the stone took its power from my core, and the more I depended on it, the lower my body functioned. If it couldn’t feed on chaos, it fed on me. Not a pretty thought.

  I made it to the tech room door and slipped inside, panting. The room stood empty of personnel but not equipment, and the computers, two of them, were up and running. I hooked a chair with my foot and pulled it to me, collapsing in the seat. I rolled back over to the desk and began searching the drawers for whatever I could find. I struck gold. A handful of candy bars and a can of caffeinated soda goodness. I ate two bars and washed them down hastily before my eyes crossed so badly I couldn’t see the computer monitor. Powering myself up should only take a few minutes. Tapping the keyboard experimentally, I pulled up the command screen and began looking for programs or documents. The stone hissed and fizzed a little as I did, deflecting whatever safeguards they’d put on the machine. It took a moment to focus, no fault of the computer, I was the one who needed rebooting. As soon as the snacks hit my stomach and then my bloodstream, I began to hum along with the computer.

  This one had a few hidden files. I didn’t bother to decipher the name or open them up to see what they were. I figured if they were hidden, that was reason enough to copy them. I didn’t have time to rifle through the files now. Opening my purse carefully, to keep the salt from spilling out, I found the small plastic baggie holding my flash drive and extracted it.

  If my life was a thriller movie, I’d be frozen in the seat waiting for the download to finish while a werewolf tore away at the closed door and I feared for my life. Luckily my greatest danger at the moment was falling asleep. I unwrapped and gulped down another candy bar. I finished with all I could see to steal from that computer and wheeled over to the second one. The first had been a PC but this was a slim, sleek laptop.

  It sat reigning over the middle of the desk, like a prince or a king on its throne, and from the heat in my stone and the spats growing louder, wards were wrapped around this computer like a spiderweb. This was the one I should have hit first.

  I stood up and leaned over the laptop and dangled my arm over it, hand down, and began to make circles around it, counterclockwise, as though I were spinning cotton candy. In actuality, I hoped I was unwinding all the wards and spells that had locked this computer in place, the stone doing all the hard work in its job as protector and shield of moi. As a relic and as I worked it, the value of the maelstrom stone struck me. Practically idiot proof, it could do almost anything defensive. How had the professor not grabbed this up and utilized it? Tried to convince me to give it over to him? No wonder Remy wanted it so badly. Steptoe not so much because, as he’d explained it to me, he wasn’t that far from the stone itself with regards to chaos, and it wouldn’t function the same with him, but he’d wanted to learn about it to control his own forces. Its value though, seemed clear. I understand why people might kill to possess it. Even the lowliest magic user could be a wizard with the maelstrom in his hand.

  My palm let out a loud crackle and hiss, and then the web cocooning the laptop disappeared.

  “Bingo.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Now all I had to worry about was passwords. Hit the wrong one enough times and the laptop would either lock up or maybe even fry, if set to react to that way. I could possibly just put it on my body somewhere and smuggle it out, but the drive seemed much easier to hide, not to mention transport. I opened the lid, turned it on and sure enough, the password prompt came up. I thought for a second, or rather the soda and candy bars chased themselves around in my brain like a hamster in a wheel. A sleek, fast hamster.

  Then I typed in “cherry blossom” and held my breath, praying that the password was not in Japanese. But since the k
eyboard was a standard US QWERTY, I had hopes.

  The laptop opened up. My jaw dropped. That easy? Surely not.

  And it wasn’t. I hadn’t disarmed all the wards, just the easy ones. This one felt lethal. As I dropped my fingers to the board to do some searching, it fought back. White lightning flashed through my hands and up to my shoulder. My mouth clamped shut and my teeth ground. I think only my sneakers kept me from being fried.

  The stone lit up. It glowed buttercup gold and pulsed as if it swallowed the curse, wave after wave after wave. My ears stopped buzzing. My jaws relaxed. Then I could swallow and stretch my neck a bit. Another moment and the shock and pain disappeared into the palm of my left hand. I examined the maelstrom. The surface I had thought to be immutable marble danced in beautiful color and swirls, folding over and over on itself, bringing fresh and rich new brilliance to itself. When it cooled, it returned to its stony finish, but its pattern had changed, although the richness of the ivory, gold, caramel, and obsidian stayed. Now it had flecks of red-gold copper studding it. I stared at it, lost for a few long heartbeats in its glory.

  It let out a tiny spit, like an irritated kitten. I jumped in surprise and then returned to my hacking. Let me say that hacking is not a skill taught in class. Not officially. But frankly, in any computer lab on any campus, there are ways to learn whatever you might want to know about computer systems. Just not endorsed. And let me add, that while I’m not a criminal, I am curious about a lot of things in life, including technology. Not a lot, but I do have some game. I plugged in my drive and prepared to steal whatever evidence I could.

  I didn’t need a lot. As I explored the laptop, I knew instantly who it belonged to and what she could do with it. More than myself, surely, but not enough to keep me out of the folders I wanted. She had protected it very well, but once past that, Joanna obviously hadn’t expected anyone to get past her firewalls, and left it wide open to navigate and use. She probably utilized this laptop every day and had no patience for a laundry list of safeguards and passwords. I looked at the icons and folders waiting to open for me. The contents seemed legion.