Magic Ain't a Game

by P. D. Workman

  “Corvin and Damon are not the only prospects, and they are not even a good representation of the warlocks you’ll find in the community here. There are so many more options, Reg. You shouldn’t limit yourself. Get to know more people. Have some fun.”

  Reg shrugged. “Right now, I feel like all I want to do is stay home. There are so many people in town for the Games…” Reg closed her eyes, trying to push away the sensation of so many consciousnesses intruding on her thoughts. She rubbed her temples. “So many thoughts and voices.”

  “You should work on blocking them out,” Sarah advised. “There’s no reason you have to be in contact with everybody in town.”

  “You think? I am trying, you know! But they’re not quiet. It’s not that easy.”

  “I imagine a lot of the people visiting town, especially if they are here to perform, are probably very strong and loud.”

  “Yeah. It’s not easy to ignore.” Reg paced across the room. “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight. I’m all hyped up after the opening ceremonies, and with all of these people disrupting things.”

  “Do you want me to make you something to help you sleep?”

  “No.” Most of Sarah’s potions were vile, and Reg didn’t want to try any new experiments. “No, thanks. Maybe I’ll try a sleeping pill tonight.”

  “If you prefer.”

  “I’ll be just fine. I’m sure. You don’t need to stay with me.”

  Sarah sipped her tea and nodded.

  “I just have to…” Reg motioned to the bathroom and again retreated. It was going to be a while before she had flushed out all of the water that Sarah had forced her to drink. It was a good thing she hadn’t ended up with water intoxication, having to drink so much in such a short period of time. Reg still thought it would have been better to just light a small fire and let it burn off like a safety valve. That would have been a lot more satisfying.

  She finished and returned to the kitchen, where Sarah stood drinking her tea and checking through the appointment book.

  “You haven’t had very many readings lately. I thought you would be able to get more with all of the people in town.”

  “Well, I’ve been busy. I haven’t had a chance to contact a lot of tourists. And I’ve had that investigator on my case, harassing me to meet with him.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with that young pup. Just put him in his place. If you can’t handle him, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do. I’ll have him pulled from the case before you can blink. He was very disrespectful toward me today.” Sarah’s cheeks took on more color, thinking back to the way that Julian had talked to her.

  “I’ll talk to him. That’s all he wants, right? Once I answer his questions, he’ll leave me alone.”

  “More than likely,” Sarah agreed. Which was a little less definitive than the answer Reg hoped for.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Reg took a sleeping pill to help her to get to sleep once it was past midnight. Several, in fact. She didn’t know what time Julian Sabat would be pounding at her door the next day, but she suspected he would not want to wait until Reg had taken her beauty sleep. The man was a bloodhound. Reg just wanted to be rid of him and not to have to remember things from when she was in foster care. That life was behind her. She was her own person, strong and independent, and she wasn’t going to let a few lousy childhood experiences get in her way.

  She slept. It was a restless, nightmare-ridden sleep, and she still had to get up several times to the bathroom even though she was sure she had processed all of the extra water long before that. She’d had three bottles of water, but she was sure she had peed at least six.

  Several times when she finally reached a deep sleep state, Starlight woke her up, pawing her face and meowing loudly. It wasn’t something he normally did. Maybe he was irked by all of the extra souls in Black Sands during the Spring Games too. He was very sensitive psychically.

  It was no wonder Reg was still tired and groggy when she got up in the morning. She wanted to go back to sleep but had been woken up so many times she knew that was not going to happen. After a couple of cups of coffee, she would be okay.

  Reg waited for the coffee to brew and glanced over the datebook to make sure she was aware of any upcoming appointments. She saw the little terrarium she had made with Zinnia at the equinox celebration. Some tiny green leaves were poking up above the surface of the soil already. She remembered the seed-planting activities she had done in kindergarten or the early years of elementary school. Beans, usually. Something that would send up shoots within a couple of days and grow very quickly to get the kids interested in their projects. They never actually got to the stage where the plants would produce beans themselves. Which didn’t hurt Reg’s feelings too badly because she didn’t particularly like beans. But she had been excited by those projects and seeing the first green leaves that indicated the magic of growth taking place. Reg picked up the terrarium and studied the little plant inside. As she watched, it seemed to get bigger. Just a trick of the eyes, Reg was sure. Plants didn’t grow that fast, not even in Black Sands.

  She put it back down. Starlight howled at her.

  “Oh, brother. You can’t tell me you’re that hungry,” Reg objected. “I just fed you.”

  He reached out his paw and clawed at her leg.

  “Hey! You don’t do that. Be nice.”

  He blinked both his green eye and his blue simultaneously, which was unusual for him. Reg glared at him, trying to match his disapproving gaze, but she had to look away. She wasn’t sure what he was grumpy about. He wasn’t the one who’d had two bad nights plus dealing with three bothersome warlocks while trying to ignore the thoughts and voices of several thousand witches and warlocks coming to Black Sands to watch the Spring Games. All he had to do was find a nice sunbeam to stretch out in, and that was the extent of his difficulties. Maybe in the next life, Reg would be a cat. She wasn’t sure she actually believed in reincarnation, no matter what Harrison had said about Starlight’s previous life.

  There was a sharp knock on the door. This time, Reg knew to expect Julian. Sarah would knock softly to give Reg a warning if she were up and not wake her if she were still sleeping.

  Reg went to the door and peered out the peephole. She was correct; it was the uninvited, irritating warlock who had at one time been her older brother.

  Reg swung the door open. “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want. We have matters to discuss.”

  “You can’t come in here.”

  He looked as though he had been expecting that response. He gave a brief nod. “Then you tell me where you want to meet. Somewhere quiet where we can discuss matters.”

  “You don’t have some kind of branch office here?” Reg asked snidely.

  “Black Sands is hardly big enough to warrant our notice,” Julian sneered, giving as good as he got. “Why would we have a branch office here?”

  “It’s the town with the highest concentration of magical practitioners in the country. Why wouldn’t you have an office here?”

  He shrugged. “Do you have somewhere you wish to meet?”

  “How about The Crystal Bowl?”

  “A bar?” He wrinkled his nose.

  “A restaurant and bar. And they have private meeting rooms. I know because I’ve used one of them before.”

  “Fine,” Julian nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

  “When do you want to meet?”

  “Now.”

  Reg resisted. “I have things to do. We can meet later in the day…”

  “You have delayed for long enough. We really must attend to this matter. Grab your purse, and let’s go.”

  Reg looked down at herself to protest that she wasn’t yet dressed for the day. But either she had slept in her clothes or she had already gotten dressed and didn’t remember it. She looked behind her for some other excuse or distraction. Starlight. Her suitcase. Maybe she should reconsider her previous position. Set
up a mid-afternoon meeting with Julian, then pack her bag and disappear. She could get a good start and he wouldn’t know where she had gone. She wouldn’t know where she was going, so it would be impossible for him to guess.

  “Let’s go,” Julian repeated in a firm voice.

  And why not? Why not just get it over with instead of avoiding Julian at every turn? The man was obviously a persistent investigator. He wasn’t going to give in just because she dodged his calls for a few days.

  “Okay.” She picked up her purse. She again wondered if she should throw a few extra things in it. The gems that were hidden in her bedroom. Another set of ID so she could start somewhere fresh with a new name and be harder to track. Just a couple of necessities.

  Starlight yowled mournfully and Reg gave up on that idea. He was her responsibility and she wasn’t just going to leave him for Sarah or Francesca to deal with. He had picked Reg as his owner. It was the first time anyone had picked Reg.

  “I’ll be back,” she told Starlight firmly. She didn’t put anything else in her purse. She just picked it up and stepped out the door to join Julian.

  “We can take my car,” Julian suggested, walking toward the street in front of the big house.

  “I’m not going in your car. I’ll take my own vehicle.”

  “Wasting non-renewable energy sources,” Julian observed, “not the best way to save the planet from further harm.”

  She just stared at him. She had never claimed to be living green or eco-friendly. Julian shrugged and continued to his car, which was a little two-seater that probably ran on batteries. Reg rolled her eyes at this and got into her own junker.

  They didn’t have to drive far to get to the Crystal Bowl. Reg wasn’t sure what the procedure was for reserving one of the private meeting rooms in the back, so she approached the bartender polishing glasses to ask for one.

  “It’s early,” he said. “I don’t think anyone has anything booked. Wait here and I’ll get right back to you.”

  Reg waited, avoiding looking at Julian, pretending that she was perfectly comfortable meeting with him. He just had a few questions about what had happened in the Everglades. Why should she be worried about that?

  She didn’t have anything to hide.

  She had gone looking for the lost wizard, had helped Damon to find him, and they had taken him back to Black Sands. Under his own power and by his own choice. It wasn’t like they had kidnapped him.

  And if they had done something horrible like step on the last flower of a particular species, then it was an accident and not something they could have helped. She hadn’t done anything intentionally harmful to anyone.

  The bartender returned and nodded. “Yeah, you’re good. Come this way.”

  Reg and Julian followed. He led them into a back hallway and unlocked a door for them.

  It wasn’t like a private room at Corvin’s exclusive club. It was more like a stock room. Just bare walls and floor with a few chairs and a table. Something quick and dirty for when people needed to spread out papers or have a private place to carry on a discussion. Reg thought back to the last time she had been there. The night that she had been reunited with Harrison. That had definitely been an interesting time.

  But this time, it was just to answer the questions of a bureaucrat. He needed to fill in some paperwork to do with their trip, and then it would be done.

  Julian could go home and Reg would never have to worry about running into him again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They looked at each other. The room was very quiet, every movement they made echoing. Reg pulled a chair away from the table with a loud grating noise and sat down.

  Julian seemed to consider whether it was better for him to be standing, in an apparent position of power over Reg, or to be sitting down with her, offering camaraderie and ostensible equality between them. He eventually decided on sitting. He placed a folder he must have had in his car onto the table with dramatic flair. It was a textured black cover, very official-looking. He opened it and examined the first couple of pages contained within it.

  “You are Regina Rawlins?” he said formally.

  Regina rolled her eyes. “You know I am.”

  “For the record.”

  “Yeah. For the record, I am Regina Rawlins.”

  “Good. First question down.” He gave her a thin smile, but his humor fell flat. “Your residence is in Black Sands?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “I… don’t know. A while.”

  “A while?”

  “A few months.”

  “And before that?” he raised his blond brows. “We don’t seem to have a very good record of your previous residences.”

  “Here and there. Why do you need to know?”

  “What was your permanent residence prior to moving to Black Sands?”

  Reg considered, staring over his shoulder. “I didn’t really have one,” She shrugged. “I moved around.”

  He studied her for a minute and then moved on. “You are friends with one Damon Knight.”

  “Friends is a bit of a stretch.”

  “Oh?”

  “We were… we know each other. But we’re not friends. We never were.”

  “You haven’t been… dating him?”

  “Is this part of your investigation?”

  “We need to establish what kind of relationship the two of you had before embarking on a trip to the Everglades together.”

  “Well then… we knew each other. He asked me to come along to help him.”

  “Help him in what way?”

  “To find someone he was looking for.”

  “And how were you expected to do that?”

  “He wanted me to use my psychic powers to find Wilson.”

  “Is that how you make a living?”

  “No. I can find things. Sometimes. Or people. But you can’t make much of a living from stuff like that. Unless you’re finding really valuable objects.”

  “Like Mr. Wilson.”

  “Well… yes. If I had a few gigs finding things for a reward of a quarter of a million dollars, then yeah, I’d be able to make a living at it.”

  “A quarter of a million?”

  “The reward money was five hundred thousand, and we were to split it fifty-fifty.”

  “That’s remarkably generous.”

  “I was the one who would be doing the actual finding.”

  Julian nodded. He made a few notes in a yellow legal pad. Reg squinted at his words, but they were cursive, which she was useless at, and upside down, so there was no chance she could make it out.

  “So that was your contract with Knight. You would use your powers to locate the missing person and he would share the pot with you half and half.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any other provisions?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It was pretty simple.”

  “But you didn’t actually earn the money.”

  “The reward wasn’t paid out,” Reg admitted in a grumble.

  “Because you didn’t find him.”

  “Because he wouldn’t go back to the Spring Games. That was part of the requirement for the reward to be issued. He had to register for the Games. And he never did.”

  “Why not?”

  “Long story.”

  He considered this, then decided to move on. Maybe he planned to circle back later after he’d seen what else he could get out of her.

  “You traveled with Mr. Knight?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was there anyone else in your company?”

  “Uh… Corvin Hunter. He came along, but he wasn’t really… he wasn’t really part of it, though. He was just tagging along.”

  “Who was going to pay him?”

  “No one. He was just interested in going to the Everglades at the same time as we did.”

  “He didn’t go the same places you and Damon did?”

  “Well… he stay
ed with us, yeah.”

  “But Knight wasn’t paying him?”

  “No… Corvin said he could help out. He could get us a good guide.” Reg rolled her eyes at this.

  “But he didn’t?” Julian inquired.

  “He found a guide.”

  Julian waited for more. Reg didn’t feel the need to tell him anything else about their guide or how bad a choice he had ended up being. It wasn’t that the guide was inexperienced or inept. It was worse than that.

  “Are your Mr. Knight and Mr. Hunter good friends? Colleagues…? Lovers…?”

  Reg snickered. “No. They don’t like each other very much.”

  “Then why would Hunter attach himself to your company?”

  “Because Corvin is used to getting pretty much whatever he wants.”

  “And he wanted to go to the Everglades.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a professor. He studies all kinds of stuff.” Reg made a gesture to wave this off. “Different magical species. Even plants and animals. He talked quite a bit with Tybalt about them.”

  Julian wrote more notes in his legal pad. “Hunter was quite familiar with endangered species?”

  “I don’t know. He talked about a lot of stuff I didn’t know anything about. And about… corvids…?”

  “Birds?”

  “No… that’s not the right word. Rare animals that they can’t prove exist.”

  “Cryptids.”

  “Right.” Reg snapped her fingers. “That was it.”

  Julian wrote this down too. “Hunter is familiar with cryptids?”

  “He knows about them. He loves to tell you all of the weird and unusual stuff he knows about zombies or pixies or whatever other creatures. He knows all of this mythology from all over the world. Likes to show off.”

  “Zombies?” Julian lifted his brows in disbelief.

  “Draugrs. Apparently, they show up in all kinds of mythologies all over the world. I don’t see how it makes any difference whether you call them zombies or draugrs. If all the different countries call it something different, what difference does it make whether you call them by their American name or Viking name?”