by Martha Carr
Whether it was because she had no temptation to use such a dangerous object or her own lack of innate magical ability, she couldn’t say.
She also didn’t care. Magical artifacts had their uses, but they were hard to trust. The witch’s final fate had only reinforced that.
When Shay shot her gun, she knew it wouldn’t turn her into a small animal if it took issue with her moral choices or used it too much.
The Professor’s curious gaze roamed the Scepter for a half-minute before he knelt and stowed the powerful wand in the case. “We got lucky this time, and I wholeheartedly thank you for your assistance in this matter.”
“You’re welcome. And lucky? You mean we were lucky because she didn’t blow up half of Paris?”
“Aye.”
“Did you expect something like that?”
“Not necessarily.”
Shay grimaced. “That’s comforting.”
“And that’s the problem with powerful artifacts, Miz Carson. They can find their way into the hands of dangerous people.”
Shay shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think she was evil, just power-tripping—not that I care she ended up turning into a bird. Bitch did try to kill me several times. If I weren’t so badass, I’d be dead.”
“A sad, misguided soul with a powerful artifact is as dangerous as a wicked one.”
Shay smirked. “Now you really do sound like a priest, Father O’Banion.”
He shook his head. “Alas, I think my blood alcohol level has been allowed to reach zero. I should remedy that soon. The successful recovery of the Scepter of Dagobert is worth more than a few beers.” He leaned over and narrowed his eyes. “Show me your back.”
Shay turned. She hadn’t bothered to change. The earlier blast had destroyed her jacket, but only scorched her shirt and skin.
“I’ve had worse,” she pointed out. “Though it’s going to make me invest in a few more healing potions.”
“I think the injury is worth a bonus. You’ve earned it.”
“That, and saving millions of people’s lives?”
The Professor chuckled. “That was part of the main payment.” He picked up the case. “Always a pleasure, Miz Carson, but I have to hand this over to some people.”
“Sure thing, Professor.”
Time to go home and take a long, well-deserved bath.
12
Peyton checked his hair in his rearview mirror one last time before stepping out into the parking lot, a smile on his face. Between Shay’s French job and fighting off hackers probing the net, he’ had no opportunities to follow up on any of his dating leads. Now, with a few free days and no threats, it was time to get his dating game on.
He sighed and looked down.
Is this a mistake? I mean, the last time I tried this it was a disaster, but here I am again, going out on a date with a woman who thinks I’m a random IT guy and not a research assistant for a tomb raider who used to be a killer and faked her own death.
Am I just setting myself up for pain?
He chuckled. How would women react if he added, “Faked my own death to escape a hitman” on his profile? All the advice sites always said a man should lead with his most interesting quality.
Maybe it’s not a big deal. After all, everyone lies a little when they start dating. I just need her to not be as paranoid as Tricia was.
Peyton frowned.
Also need a better story. Avoid bullshit about tech start-ups or anything that’ll lead to questions about stuff that’s different from my normal day-to-day work. Just need to spin my normal job in a less obvious way.
This can work. I deserve it. I do a good job, and I don’t want to date some strange criminal woman from Dante’s or the Black Sun.
Peyton nodded to himself. He could do this, and there was no reason he shouldn’t.
If Shay of all people gets to have a life complete with friends and a boyfriend, then I want that, too. Well, not a boyfriend, not even Captain Muscles Brownstone.
He slapped his cheeks to clear his head and headed toward the gastropub in a cocky strut. A pale, skinny woman with dark hair and dark glasses stood near the front, looking around. She stopped and focused on him.
Nice. Very nice.
It was Amber, his date. She looked exactly like her picture from the dating app, all the way down to the same navy-blue maxi dress.
Peyton had worn his powder blue suit for his most recent dating photos, but had gone for something a little more casual for this date: khaki shorts and a shirt that looked like a skull from a distance, but a closer examination revealed it was composed of several overlapping black and white images of cats.
He wasn’t sure if it told people he was quirky or psychotic. He knew what Shay would think but, he’d find out soon enough how a normal woman would react.
“Hey,” Peyton offered. “Nice to finally meet you in person.” He extended his hand.
Amber smiled and gave his hand a gentle shake. “Glad to see you’re not some creeper who used a fake picture.”
“The same.”
Peyton stopped himself from wincing. It wasn’t the smoothest line in the world.
Amber laughed. “You never know anymore.”
“Yep.”
“I mean, who does that, right? Like I wouldn’t walk away if I show up to my date and find out that he’s been lying. Being truthful is important in all…” She ran a hand through her hair. “Guess I’m babbling. I do that when I’m nervous.”
“No, it’s okay. I agree. I can’t stand liars.” He let out a little chuckle, hoping it didn’t come off as nervous. “No reason to worry.”
Yeah. Like lying about what I do for a living? Keep it together. This is just about having some fun, not trying to take her to Vegas tomorrow for a quickie wedding. Also, not going to try and rush things and take her home tonight.
This can work. I can have some fun if I don’t overthink it.
Peyton hurried over to open the door for her. “Your table awaits, my lady.”
“Thanks.”
They headed inside and found an empty table. Light jazz played over the speakers at a reasonable volume. Only half the tables were filled, and the background chatter remained light. It made for good ambiance when combined with the music.
A waitress descended on them like a hawk as soon as they sat. After ordering a few cocktails, the two smiled across the table at each other.
“So,” Peyton began, his hands folded in front of him, “you’re a physicist. That’s got to be interesting. Probing the fundamental mysteries of the universe and all that.”
Amber laughed and waved a hand. “Oh, is that what you thought from my profile? I can see how it’s confusing, but I don’t want to misrepresent myself.” She bit her lip. “Now I’m really embarrassed.”
“You’re not a physicist?”
“I…” The woman looked down. “Sorry.”
“No, no. Not a big deal. It’s not like I have some big impressive job. I’m just a computer guy. Great at my job, but still just a computer guy.”
Amber looked up, hope in her eyes. “Same here. When I said I worked on computational physics, that’s true. It’s just that I don’t do the research. I work with the physicists in the department who need help refining simulations for their work and developing custom simulation code for the scientists who are a little more clueless about programming in general.”
Peyton nodded. “Sounds to me like you still have to know a lot about physics, though. It’s not like they can give you a couple of lines about what they want, and you come up with a complicated simulation.”
Scarlet spread on the woman’s pale cheeks. “I guess that’s true when you talk about it that way.”
“Of course, it’s true.”
“What about you, Peyton? You mentioned computers before and on your profile, but you didn’t talk about the kind of work.” She let out a little laugh. “Are you working for some start-up? Are you going to be a billionaire in a few years?�
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“No!” Peyton insisted.
Amber blinked at his vehemence.
Peyton gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, just really not into the whole start-up thing. I spend a lot of time doing research, and I develop specialty centers on natural language processing and filtering heuristics for autonomous internet research.”
“That sounds interesting. I messed around with some of that in my undergraduate research, but it’s not something I really have much need to do for the job I have now.”
Peyton shrugged. “It can be interesting, but it’s not like helping with physics research. I was reading the other day how the rise of magic resurrected string theory. Now everyone’s saying it’s the strongest chance we have, not only as a grand unification theory, but also as a magic and physics unification theory.”
Amber nodded. “Yeah, one of the guys in my department is working on a unification theory centered around thirty-two dimensions.”
“Thirty-two dimensions? I thought a lot of the string stuff centered around much lower numbers, like eleven.” Peyton let out a nervous chuckle. “I’ll be honest, though…a lot of that is way over my head. I read a book about Calabi-Yau manifolds, and I was glad I chose to go into computers instead of physics.”
“Most people don’t even know what a Calabi-Yau manifold is.”
“I’m still not sure I do, other than a bunch of dimensions folded up.”
“Kind of.” Amber shrugged. “But that solution was to explain things before magic. Now a lot of scientists are focusing on magical and normal physics unification. It’s exciting because now they have a whole new frontier to understand.”
“I can imagine. People used to talk about how we were at the edge of new discovery, and now we know there’s so much more out there.”
Amber grinned. “Exactly. After all, you can’t claim you understand the fundamental structure of the universe and then ignore the fact that you have witches and elves running around casting spells.” She slapped a hand on the table, her face alight with excitement. “Kind of like this project I worked on.”
“I’d love to hear about it.”
“I helped the guy in my department with some simulations last year that suggested that you can account for the effects of some types of magic via lower-order strings that are way shorter than Planck Length. Some of the topological spaces he’s proposing make Calabi-Yau manifolds look like something a five-year-old thought up.”
“A damned smart five-year-old.”
Amber laughed.
Peyton allowed himself a cocky grin. Things were going well. Very well. “So magic is just physics that hasn’t been explained?”
“Sure. It’s not like it’s that random. It still seems to obey rules and has limits and that sort of thing, even if the rules are kind of weird sometimes. Just because it breaks the rules of the physics we know doesn’t make it that mysterious. Many branches of physics are weird, like quantum mechanics, and they seemed almost beyond reason at first.”
The waitress arrived with their cocktails. They thanked her, and both took a few sips before continuing their conversation.
Peyton rubbed his chin. “Yeah, I guess it’s like Newtonian physics was true enough for what we could see and experience, and then with relativity and quantum mechanics, we realized what we thought we understood wasn’t the case. They explain stuff that we’re just not used to encountering on a daily basis, so it’s hard to wrap our minds around it. Our common sense fails us.
“Now, we have a whole planet of people coming with things that they take for granted, but we always thought were kid’s stories.”
“Exactly!” Amber looked down, her cheeks reddening.
Peyton gave a look of concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to get geek out so much.”
“I’m wearing a cat-skull shirt. I’m more on the geek side than anything.”
Amber laughed. “I like the shirt.”
“Thanks.”
She sighed. “I just really like this sort of thing. I talk to people at work about it, but it’s hard to find people outside the department who want to talk about it, and it doesn’t help that I double-majored in physics and CS back in college. I only didn’t go into physics because I’m just not that creative.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Woah. I wasn’t even trying to be smooth, but that was totally smooth. Good job, me!
Amber smiled softly. “The problem is I kind of need to have a concrete problem set in front of me, and then I can go about solving it. I’m not a good theorist.”
“Not every scientist is a good theorist. Just think of yourself as an experimentalist.” Peyton shrugged. “I’m the same way.” He took another sip of his drink. “But don’t you think that’s where creativity can shine?”
“What do you mean?”
“If it were so easy to do what you do, all those physicists would be able to do it, and you’d be out of a job.” He reached over and put his hand atop hers. “You’re applying creativity to problem-solving. That’s the way I look at it.” Peyton removed his hand and leaned back in his chair, not sure if he was relaxed because of the booze or because of how well the conversation was unfolding. “I’ve always been good with computers. It may sound arrogant, but I’m a natural. I develop new algorithms and techniques all the time. I think it’s creative, and I’m helping push knowledge by using those creatively developed tools, even if I’m not the guy actually thinking up what questions to ask.”
Amber stared at Peyton, wide-eyed. “Just…wow. I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
Peyton’s stomach tightened. Had he screwed up somewhere? Did he sound too arrogant?
“Most of the time I go out with guys and start talking about this sort of thing, and their eyes glaze over. If it’s not the computers, it’s the physics.”
“I consider myself a bit of a Renaissance Man.” Peyton winced. “Did I just sound like a douchebag? Be honest.”
Amber let out a quiet laugh. “I don’t think so. I think you’re pretty interesting.” She shrugged. “And cute.”
Wow. This date is going better than I could have possibly imagined.
Peyton finished off his spicy chicken wing and set it on the growing pile of remnants on his plate. “I never even thought to modify the algorithm that way. That’s brilliant. I can save tons of time on a lot of data processing if I implement that.”
Amber beamed. “I’d like to say that I thought it up, but to be honest, I made a mistake in the code and it just happened to work better.”
“Hey, I’m not the person to complain about a lucky accident. They’ve gotten me this far.”
A comfortable silence descended upon the pair as they finished off their food.
Things are going super-well. Sure, I’m not exactly being a hundred percent honest about who I work for, but everything else I’ve said is true. And it’s not like she’s asking me a bunch of questions I’m having to lie about, so that’s a good thing, I think.
She seems to be into me, and she’s cute and smart, and she doesn’t look like the kind of woman who will threaten me with a gun if I piss her off.
“What are you thinking about?” Amber asked, her voice soft.
“About the importance of honesty.” He winked.
Amber smiled as they stepped through the front door of the gastropub. She pointed in the distance. “Well, that’s my car. I should get going.”
What does that mean? Did she have a good time, or didn’t she? Guess I should check.
Peyton leaned in for a kiss, but she turned her cheek and hugged him. He hugged her back.
Is this a good sign or a bad sign?
Amber released him and waved. “See you around.”
“See you around.”
Peyton could finally move his feet once the woman pulled out of the parking lot. He was still unsure if he’d had the most awesome date of his entire life or crashed and burned.
Peyton rested his hands on the back of his head as he stared up at the night’s sky sitting in a lawn chair set up on the beach. The bright lights of LA pushed a dome of illumination into the night sky. Osiris rested on his chest.
“Man looked up at the stars and wondered for so many years, and now we’re slowly blocking them, even at night. I read the other day that there are cities on Earth now where people can’t see a single star at night.”
Osiris meowed.
“Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t worry about that. I should figure out how I might make things work with Amber. She’s definitely my type.” Peyton tilted his head up to where several pops of light were shooting overhead and toward the ocean. “Those make me think about aliens, you know, Osiris? I know they’re real now. Maybe a lot of them are. Oriceran is one thing, but what if the entire galaxy is teeming with life?”
Several more pops of light flew overhead, and loud booms echoed. Osiris hopped off Peyton’s chest and hissed. This sort of thing had become far too common lately.
Peyton sighed and rolled his eyes. “Magic returns to Earth, and what do we get? Assholes using their wands to annoy people. Great. Thugs with wands. The aliens would probably just be thugs with spaceships.”
13
Shay sighed as she looked at the sign taped to the front window of the gated store. She recognized Tubal-Cain’s atrocious handwriting.
Due to employee vacations, Prophecy Gaming will be closed for a few days.
Not that the average person could even perceive the store to enter it. Who was the sign even for? Her?
Shay ran a hand down her face and let out a loud groan. The gnome’s aversion to using a cell phone always made getting hold of him an adventure. His recent trips out of town were making it downright annoying. It was almost like he knew she had the information and was purposefully avoiding her.
No, that’s not it. The guy thinks it’s going to take me months to find his cousin. Just bad luck, but I really could use those magical lockpicks. Could make my next job way easier.
