Spell Games

by T. A. Pratt

  “Oh, good. It's just so much more fun when there's money on the line.”

  The first bar they went to was a trendy crowded joint with blues on the jukebox and abstract neon artwork on the walls. Jason bellied right up to the bar, next to a yuppie in steel-rimmed glasses who'd just ordered a nice glass of scotch. Marla lingered near the end of the bar, watching.

  Jason was suddenly drunk. He didn't look like a guy pretending to be drunk, hamming it up—he looked like a guy who'd started out the night having a good time and had proceeded to have a blitzed time. Everything about him, from posture to body language to voice to facial expressions, radiated good-natured inebriation. “Hey, buddy,” he said. “I'll bet you, I'll bet you, I can drink that glass of scotch without touching the glass.” He held up his fingers and waggled them. “No hands! No elbows! Nothin’!”

  The guy raised one eyebrow and shook his head. “No way Seen that one before. You pick up the glass with a napkin, or your sleeve, or something, forget it.”

  “Nope.” Jason spoke with the exaggerated seriousness that only a total lush could muster. “No hands, no nothing, if I touch the glass at all, with anything, you get, uh…” He groped in his jacket. “Five bucks. Yeah? Look, look, we'll get a partial, no, whatsit, impartial judge.” Marla thought he was going to beckon her, that she was going to be his shill, but instead he plucked the sleeve of a cute young woman passing by. Jason beamed at her—even in drunk mode he could charm birds down from trees and panties down around knees. “Hello, there, hoping you can settle something for us.” He explained the bet—having neatly skipped over the part where the mark actually agreed to the bet, Marla noticed, but the yuppie was going along with it—and said,“If you think I'm violating the, whatchamacallit, spirit of the thing, you just give the money to him.”

  She agreed, and the yuppie put a fiver on the bar next to Jason's bill. Jason made a great show of shooting his cuffs, waggling his fingers, leaning close to peer into the glass, extending his tongue until it almost touched the liquid inside, then rearing back. “Here goes.” He plucked a straw from inside his jacket pocket, put one end in his lips and the other in the scotch, and in a couple of seconds had slurped up the entirety of the drink. He winced. “Not the best way to sip good whiskey,” he said, “but better than going dry”

  The judge awarded the point to Jason, and the yuppie laughed. “I'm going to try that at my next party”

  Jason sketched a little bow. “Tell you what. Order another, and I'll drink that without touching it and without using a straw. Same stakes? You still willing to judge?”

  “This I gotta see,” she said, and the yuppie bemusedly agreed, glancing at the girl. Maybe he was hoping that when the drunk fell over, he could start charming her. Jason had certainly provided him with a conversation-starter. The yuppie called for another glass, and Jason went through his whole rigamarole again, peering into the glass, waggling his fingers—and then frowning. “I saw this earlier tonight,” he muttered. “Guy showed me this trick, I swear, he… He… Ah, fuck it.” Jason picked up the glass and downed it one gulp, over the protests of the judge and the yuppie.

  “You lose,” she said, laughing.

  “Next time.” Jason swayed a little. “I'll get you next time.” He pushed a five over to the yuppie and made his way down the bar toward Marla.

  When he'd settled in beside her, Marla said, “Well, you broke even, I guess, but what happened with that second bet?”

  He grinned. “What happened is, I just paid five bucks for a couple of twenty-dollar glasses of whiskey That was eighteen-year Macallan he was drinking. Or, rather, I was drinking.” Jason sighed. “Of course, now he's chatting up the Honorable Judge Hotness there, so maybe he's getting the better end of this deal, after all.”

  “You got a lady in your life, Jason?”

  “Just lady luck, and I cheat on her all the time. You got a fella?”

  “I don't have time for one. I was seeing a guy earlier this year, but it didn't work out. He tried to screw me—and not in a good way.”

  “Men are pigs,” Jason said. “This place is too hoity-toity for my tastes. Want to find something a little more down-and-dirty?”

  “I thought you'd never ask.”

  The next bar was a dive apparently much beloved by students—one of those townie bars that gets colonized by self-consciously slumming college kids during the academic year—and Jason did a trick where he put a coaster on top of a beer glass, then balanced a cigarette on its end on the coaster, then put a quarter on top of the cigarette. “Bet I can get the quarter in the glass without touching the glass, the cigarette, the coaster, or the coin,” he said, and he had a couple of takers. Marla even scared up a couple of side bets, as Jason had suggested. Jason bent over the bar, turned his head, and blew a puff of air up at the underside of the coaster, sending the coaster and the cigarette flying—while the coin's greater weight sent it plunging straight down, to land in the bottom of the glass.

  “Anybody want to see another trick? I've got a great one, if the bartender will be so kind as to lend me an empty pint glass.” Burned by their losses, the clustered college kids hesitated, so Marla stepped forward. “What's the trick?”

  Jason took the glass and said, “If we measure with a piece of string, which do you think is greater, the circumference of the glass, or the height of the glass?”

  One of the kids stepped forward. “The circumference. Duh.”

  “Spoken like a true math major,” one of the others said, and everyone laughed.

  “How about now?” Jason took a pile of coasters about an inch thick and put the glass on top of that. “From the top of the glass to the bar, is it still less than the circumference?”

  “Maybe about the same,” the math major said, squinting.

  Jason added another inch of coasters. “Now?”

  “That's definitely taller,” he said firmly.

  “Care to place a wager?”

  “You're not allowed to measure with, like, a rubber band or something,” Marla said. “And you can't move the glass down off the pile of coasters, either.”

  Jason glared at her for just an instant—long enough for the kids to notice—then was all smiles again. “Come on, we're all friends here—”

  “Nope, I'll bet, but under her terms.” Math Major plopped a bill on the bar.

  “Okay, kid. Lend me one of your shoelaces? So you don't think I'm cheating?”

  After unthreading the lace and trying to hand it over, Jason said, “No, you're the expert, you do the measuring.”

  Math Major carefully wrapped the lace around the mouth of the glass, measured off the circumference, then let the string dangle down the side of the glass… where a significant amount of its length rested curled against the bar. He gaped. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Don't blame me,” Jason said. “I never got past basic algebra in high school.” He picked up the money and breezed out of the bar.

  Marla commiserated with the kids for a few minutes, then left herself. Jason was around the corner, smoking a cigarette. “See, not even a con. Just a little optical illusion. Best part of that bet is, if the guy gets pissed, he can't even chase you, because he's got one shoe off, with the lace pulled out.”

  “Heh. You do figure all the angles, don't you?”

  “I love this shit. The old-school stuff, you know? The classics. You can learn this stuff out of books now, off the Internet. It's not like it used to be, but you can still find takers for just about any bet you care to name.”

  “In bars full of drunks, sure. Talk about choosing your audience.”

  “God must love fools, because he sure made a lot of them. In bars and out of them. Want a smoke?”

  Marla hadn't had a cigarette since she was a kid, when she'd smoked them in secret with her friends behind a barn, but she and Jason were bonding now. “Sure.” They puffed in companionable silence for a while, though Marla didn't inhale as deeply as he did.

  “I liked that,” J
ason said after a moment. “You know. Teaching you tricks.”

  Marla thought of Bradley's magic lessons, and was amused at the idea of herself as a student—everybody had something to teach somebody, she supposed. “Big brother being a big bad influence, huh?” “This from the crime queen of Felport?” “It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.” “I'm proud of you, sis. You really made something of yourself.”

  “Doesn't look like you turned out so bad yourself, bro.”

  “Maybe we didn't become doctors and lawyers, but we're not selling shoes in a strip mall in Nowheresville, either. We're living life on our own terms.” “I'll drink to that.”

  “Then we'd better find a place that's got drinks. And maybe a game. Have you ever played liar's dice?” “I've heard of it. Bluffing game, right?” “Yep. I love games where lying is part of the rules.” “Didn't, like, pirates used to play that game?” He presented her with his most charming, cockeyed grin yet. “We still do.”

  he next morning B opened one eye and saw Marla sitting at the tiny desk in the corner, an open manila folder before her.

  “Sweet dreams, sleepyhead?” She didn't look up.

  B groaned. “More mushrooms. Not sweet. Earthy. Would somebody tell the vision dispenser in the sky that I get it? Beware the fungus among us.”

  “Mushrooms are interesting,” Marla said. “Just about anything is, if you look at it hard enough, but mushrooms… very interesting.”

  B picked up an alarm clock from the floor and squinted. “It's, what, 5 A.M.? Don't you ever sleep?”

  “Sure. Four hours a night, usually, though Jason and I rambled around too much for that last night. I'm good, though.”

  “You and Jason are getting along?”

  “Better than I expected we would. Given my position, it's hard for me to find someone to just hang out and raise hell with—not that I usually have time for shenanigans. Last night was kind of like the old days, when we were kids, only with more booze and profanity.” She paused. “Well, maybe about the same level of profanity”

  “I'm glad. You could use more people you can trust.”

  Marla made a pfft noise. “Just because I enjoyed his company doesn't mean I trust him.”

  “But maybe it's a start.” B got up and rummaged in his duffel for some fresh clothes. Eventually he'd get unpacked and get settled, and that would be nice, but in a fundamental way he already felt he was home. Working for Marla was frustrating, dirty, and very likely dangerous, but it was right. They were protecting the city, and even if the city wasn't in his blood and bones the way it was in hers, that connection would come, in time. The bad parts of Felport weren't so different from the bad parts of Oakland anyway—just as dirty and junky and dangerous, albeit with fewer stucco houses and a total lack of palm trees. He yawned. “Maybe we can sleep in tomorrow? Lack of sufficient sleep can lead to psychotic breaks.”

  “Psychotic breaks can be useful if the timing's right.” She tossed the folder and its contents onto the mussed covers. “Give that a look.”

  There wasn't much there, a computer printout with a thumbnail bio of a sorcerer named Bulliard, resident of some forest in Oregon, with a special affinity for—

  “This is our mushroom man?”

  “The world's leading mycomancer, apparently Not that there's a lot of competition, though I gather it can be pretty potent magic—poison, rot, hallucination.

  Hamil says Bulliard is probably our impending visitor. If it's not him, it's somebody we've never heard of, and that's too depressing to contemplate, so let's go with this theory. We don't have a photo, and no real history, not even a first name. Bulliard could even be an alias. The guy's a hermit, eats roots and bugs, talks to himself, shit like that.”

  “Then how do we have any information on him?”

  Marla shrugged. “Got it from Dee's Peerage. Used to be a book, now it's on disc, sort of a Who's Who of sorcerers. Hell, you'll probably be in there next year. Nobody knows who compiles it—presumably some fucker named Dee—or where they get their info. It's just basic biographical shit, but it's helpful if you're going out of town and want some idea who you're likely to encounter. Which is how we know Bulliard worships a giant honey mushroom colony Now, I ask you—do you think a giant mushroom colony is likely to be sentient, let alone possessed of godlike attributes? I'm thinking no. I'm thinking you might as well worship a coral reef or a pile of rocks, and I'm sure there are wackos out there who worship both. I don't know what it is with sorcerers pledging allegiance to weird gods. It happens a lot. Even when the gods are real, the relationship seldom ends well.”

  “So we know who we're looking for. What's the plan of action?”

  Marla shrugged. “Hamil's calling people, alerting them to be on the lookout. When and if Bulliard shows up, I'll have a little talk with him, and if he's not the talking kind, well…maybe his name won't be in Dee's Peerage next year. Dead sorcerers don't get included.”

  B frowned. “If we're just hanging tough, then why did you wake me at 5 A.M.?”

  “Magic lessons. You thought your little supernatural head cold would get you out of your chores? Get dressed. We're going to the biggest junkyard in the universe.”

  “Think fast!” Ernesto hurled most of a carburetor at B's head.

  B swore, lurched left, slipped on oily gravel, and landed on his ass in the shadow of a pile of wrecked cars.

  “At least the carburetor missed him.” Marla sat in a sagging lawn chair drinking from a bottle of Mexican Coke—”the good kind, with sugar, none of that high-fructose shit,” she'd said.

  “I guess falling to the ground qualifies as thinking fast,” Ernesto said. “But I don't think it counts as thinking well.”

  “I'm getting flashbacks to dodgeball in junior high.” B got to his feet, not even bothering to brush the dirt off his jeans—after all, the lesson wasn't over, and he would only get dirty again. “Is this really—”

  “Again!” This time Ernesto threw a hubcap, spinning it through the air like a discus, right at B's face.

  This time B resisted the urge to dive and instead drew on the techniques Ernesto had spent all morning drilling into him. Space was a flexible thing, B knew, and could be distorted by forces as everyday and ubiquitous as gravity With the right training, a sorcerer could twist space, too—exerting a sort of gravity of will. B stared at the oncoming hubcap, watching the light glint from the shiny scratches on its edge, and time slowed down. Since space and time were inextricably linked, the ability to alter one incorporated the ability to alter the other … if you could keep the balance right. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead—forget walking while chewing gum, this was closer to conducting neurosurgery while juggling pineapples.

  Only B's subjective sense of time had changed, so his body couldn't move any faster than usual, but his mind could, and the feat Ernesto and Marla expected from him was a feat of the mind.

  B flexed, the space around him curved slightly, and the slowly spinning hubcap lazily shifted in its course, describing a parabola around his body, avoiding contact with him entirely. Normal time slammed back onto him, and B stumbled, gravity yanking on him harder than usual for a moment and blurring his vision, but fuck, he'd done it, by the gods, that was sorcery—

  An empty Mr. Pibb can bounced off the side of B's head. “Aw, fuck you, Ernesto, no fair.”

  The salvage sorcerer laughed. “When the bad guys start chucking grenades at you, and you need to make space-time twist like a pretzel to send the bombs back at them, is that gonna be fair? Still, pretty good, kid, for your first time. That's how we dodge bullets, you get it? Don't move yourself, and don't move the bullet, just move the space the bullet travels through. Keep it up and you'll be able to do all kinds of neat tricks with geometry”

  “Give my apprentice a soda, Ernesto.” Marla rose from her chair. “Fucking with reality is thirsty work.” She sauntered over to B, grinning, while Ernesto went into his trailer to get a drink. The trailer was a tiny silver tin c
an of a thing from the outside, but B had gotten a glimpse through the open door, and the place was the size of a palace on the inside.

  “How big is this junkyard?” B said. They'd walked a long time after passing through the wire-and-sheet-metal gates, and B had the feeling if he climbed to the top of one of these scrap-metal mountains, there'd be nothing but junk as far as he could see.

  “Hard to say” Marla passed him a handerchief, and B blotted at his sweaty face. He was beat, and his head thudded like someone was pounding a drum inside it. This made doing sympathetic magic seem about as strenuous as taking a nap. He was going to sleep hard tonight, and he already dreaded the certainty that Marla would have him up again tomorrow at the crack of dawn.

  “Ernesto's our resident spatial specialist, and he's carved all sorts of folds and scallops into the geometry here. If the whole junkyard took up the surface area it actually contains, it'd be—”

  “Bigger than Felport itself. Which makes me a more important civic leader than Marla here, right?” Ernesto said, emerging from the trailer and handing B an open bottle, which B quickly tipped back. It was better than the usual stuff.

  Marla snorted. “Right. Except Ernesto's only constituents are rats and oil-stained apprentices.”

  “Wow.” B looked around, a little unnerved at the yard's weird immensity

  “Anybody ever get lost?”

  Ernesto shrugged. “Not forever, though I've had a couple of apprentices come stumbling out after two or three days of drinking puddle water. Some of them come out raving about finding other people in there, and things that aren't exactly people, but I don't know how seriously to take all that. One apprentice went hiking in with a pack and enough food and water to last a few days, and came back telling stories about some kind of dragon sleeping on a pile of wrecked ocean liners, but come on. Dragons? Thpt.”