Mr. Kim sat, rubbing his chin, then locked eyes with his wife. Kera could not tell what was passing between them, but the years’ worth of understanding and trust made her ache.
She was never going to have that, was she?
Finally, Mr. Kim sighed. “Yes, it is true. Once you accept that you are something the world doesn’t see very often, your whole life changes.”
Kera swallowed and looked down at her lap.
“My reputation suffered in my town,” Mr. Kim told her honestly. “People looked at me differently and had different...” He searched for the right word and waved his hand eventually in defeat. “Different expectations. There is a mixture of fear and admiration. They will not think of you as one of them the way they used to, but they also look to you to solve their problems for them.”
Mrs. Kim nodded and placed a hand on her husband’s knee. He automatically put his hand over hers.
Kera nodded. “I see. What about other people—mentors who are already part of that tradition?”
The man shrugged. “They exist, but they are rare. And you must do things their way. There are good reasons for that—tried and true wisdom—but there is also vanity. Sometimes the masters get too attached to their traditions and miss what the point was originally.”
Mrs. Kim added, “Yes. Must respect what has worked before, but also understand that things change.”
Kera sat in silence as she thought, chewing her lip. She kept thinking about gangs and the way they formed in a particular area and exerted control but protected their members in exchange for loyalty and conformity.
At last, she spoke. “Someone put this book out. They gathered all the information and wrote it, then published and distributed it. Someone who knew what they were talking about. They were well aware that it could and would train people to practice thaumaturgy…uh, gatha.” She tried to reproduce Mr. Kim’s pronunciation of the unfamiliar word. “Whatever you choose to call it. In every hidden world, every subculture within a culture, there’s a pecking order, right? Someone who’s in charge. Knowing that, I have to assume they’ll be coming for me.”
Mr. Kim frowned. “Why shouldn’t they be friendly? Think about it. They should be proud of you for having learned so much on your own and all you have accomplished.”
She shook her head. She supposed he had a point, but somehow she couldn’t believe that was the case. “I’m not part of their group. I didn’t go looking for them and volunteer to play by their rules.”
It was hard to imagine that if people were tracking her down after observing her, they’d have her best interests at heart. Her gut told her otherwise. If there was an organization, its primary goal would be to protect itself, then its members.
She was down the list somewhere, and she didn’t know how far.
Until she knew what was going on, she didn’t want to trust them, and that meant she had to come up with a way of disguising herself and her activities.
“What I need,” she began, “is a method to cloak my power so it doesn’t, um…send ripples through the magical atmosphere? I don’t know how it works, exactly; it just seems like there must be a way they can track who’s using magic.” She bit her lip. “It makes me think I ought to use magic less often.”
The Kims met each other’s gaze for a moment before they looked at Kera.
“Maybe you are right,” Mrs. Kim murmured.
“Yeah.” Kera nodded. “The more I think about it, the more I remember something my dad told me long ago. ‘The most important thing to do with any tool is to only use it at the correct times.’ I wanted to make my magic use more efficient. Meld it with my martial arts and make sure I was enhancing my abilities, but now I think I shouldn’t be using thaumaturgy when other methods will get the job done instead. That means using weapons, martial arts, and my brain before I go casting spells.”
Ten or fifteen seconds of silence passed, then the Kims smiled in a subtle, understated way and nodded at the young woman.
“You are wise,” said the man, “not to rely too much upon the strongest tool you have, and the one that will confuse people the most. We are proud of you for coming to that conclusion.”
Kera flushed. Their praise meant a great deal to her.
Mrs. Kim added, “Come practice now.” She gestured in the direction of the outbuilding, where they had a small dojang set up.
“Wait,” her husband interrupted. “First she needs to eat something. Don’t you?”
Kera grinned. “Yeah, I probably do.”
James Lovecraft and Mother LeBlanc sat in a small black room on small black chairs before a small black table. The wall facing them was a mirror, obviously of the one-sided variety. The room was also certain to be bugged.
The two made a series of inane-seeming comments to one another, waving their hands or scratching their noses and adding half-assed sighing sounds. To an uninitiated observer, it would look like a harmless conversation. In fact, it was their way of camouflaging the incantations and gestures necessary to cast a joint cloaking spell.
Once it was complete, anything they said would sound like muffled noise to others, and their images would be similarly blurry and indistinct, meaning the federal agents on the other side of the mirror would not be able to read their lips.
Once the spell was complete, LeBlanc gave a sigh and rolled her neck, stretching. “I have my share of concerns and reservations about this whole matter,” she told her companion. “We have always avoided contact with the authorities unless absolutely necessary. They come and go while we remain. Not to mention, their motivations are hardly trustworthy.”
“True,” James agreed, “but then again, we’ve unleashed something that must be stopped, and there’s always memory-wipe for covering our tracks. The way I see it, we can either deal with their interference at a time when we most certainly do not need it, or we can handle their involvement and knowledge after we have our potential recruits taken care of.”
“Not my preferred method, but you make a valid point.”
James raised a finger. “By tagging along, we can figure out how much the feds know about us already and plan accordingly.”
“Yes.” LeBlanc smoothed her billowing skirts. “This will be temporary, however. I have no intention of allowing them to further contact us once the crisis is passed.”
James cracked his neck. “Right? I can’t believe they want to ‘deputize’ us. Black suits aren’t your look, are they? Although...” He glanced at her, finding the mental image surprisingly agreeable.
His partner narrowed her eyes. “James Lovecraft, I can make you hurt in ways you did not know were possible.”
Before he could respond, the door opened, and in walked Agents Richardson and MacDonald. James turned his eyes toward them, smiling as he canceled the cloaking spell with a surreptitious flick of his hand.
He read the agents’ moods and attitudes. Though they were trying to appear impassive, subtle twists of the mouth, twitches of their facial muscles, and beads of sweat suggested the truth. They were flustered and aggravated at the failure of their attempts to surveil the thaumaturgists.
And coming into the room with them made them nervous. In other words, James and LeBlanc still had the upper hand.
Both agents took a seat, and Richardson took point.
“We all know the plan,” he summarized, “but we’d like more detail on the specific procedures. Not right now, but as we go along. We need a frame of reference for what we’ll be witnessing.”
“We’re curious about one thing in particular,” MacDonald added. “From what you’ve told us and what our research says, the vast majority of new…talent…has been shut down. By you. But why? Why don’t you encourage more of them?”
Mother LeBlanc explained with the patient, half-amused air of an adult explaining a new idea to a small child. “It has always been like this. Few qualify. Most people who have any aptitude for magic either have flaws in their grasp of the power or they are unsuited to thaumaturgy
from, shall we say, the standpoint of personality and temperament.”
“Right,” James confirmed. “A lot of them would do something ill-advised. Vigilante justice, for example, stirring up more problems than they can solve, and in general overestimating their own intelligence.”
The two agents sat in silence a moment, their brows furrowed in contemplation.
“Is that assessment objective or subjective?” MacDonald finally asked.
The thaumaturgists hadn’t expected the question, and they exchanged glances. James shrugged.
Mother LeBlanc gazed at the agent. “Subjective, but let us say that our opinions have been shaped by a great deal of knowledge and experience.”
MacDonald frowned. “Still, it seems unfair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” James pointed out. “Do they still teach that to kids?”
MacDonald bristled, and her co-worker jumped in. “Okay, we see the logic to an extent. Perhaps our more, ah, modern sensibilities can’t fully grasp what is, I’m guessing, an ancient tradition.”
LeBlanc nodded. “Yes. It has always been the case that there are only a few of us. Very few.”
Richardson nodded and quickly wrapped the meeting up. Clearly, he wanted to avoid an argument.
James, however, watched as the door closed after them and then exchanged glances with LeBlanc. They did not need words to know they were thinking the same thing: they would watch MacDonald closely.
Chapter Four
Pauline’s mouth slowly twisted into a smile as she watched the spectacle unfolding before her. It was pitch-black in the building, and she had taken up a position in a second-floor window with a nice view of the darkened alley below. The window was cracked to allow her to hear, in addition to her wearing an earpiece linked to Johnny’s microphone.
Lia had been Pauline’s product acquisition specialist since the beginning, but Johnny was the one Pauline had chosen to find talent in the more recent conflict. Although Johnny’s plans had so far proved insufficient to deter the LA Witches, Pauline could not help but notice that he was the only one who was taking the threat seriously.
Lia and Sven understood that looking weak was bad, but Johnny felt that on a visceral level. He understood Pauline’s hatred for their opponent.
At the moment, Johnny stood facing a large group of LA’s more promising young criminals. They had all been vetted to weed out the imbeciles, low-functioning psychopaths, and other unreliable types.
They all looked excited, and that excited Pauline. She folded her trembling hands together and briefly closed her eyes in pleasure.
Her reputation was growing. Not as meteorically as she’d like, but she was not a nobody or a wannabe anymore. On the contrary, whispers were going around the underworld that she was an up-and-comer in Southern California’s organized crime scene.
She’d worked hard to cultivate a certain mystique. People knew her alias and had heard stories of her organization’s growing power and influence, but no one had seen her in the flesh, and no one knew her real name.
Johnny addressed the troops with an easy nonchalance. “Folks, you will soon be engaging and confronting ‘Motorcycle Man’ with the intent of taking him out of the picture.”
He was still wearing his suit, but he managed to project an image completely different from that of the high-level professional he pretended to be in their downtown office. His posture, his expressions—everything had changed to allow him to fit with the group before him.
“As you’ll have noticed,” Johnny went on, “that motherfucker has some balls on him, and he’s done us a lot of damage. All of us, no matter the organization.”
The assembled group nodded and muttered in agreement.
“Now, Vox and Dread and the Union don’t want any part of this. They’ve gone silent. They gave up their territory to those LA Witches. That means, unless we want our streets to go to someone who doesn’t even know ‘em, we need to take those fuckers down now. I need people in Little Tokyo and Chinatown to make sure those areas don’t go to anyone else in the meantime.”
The assembled thugs nodded.
“You want the bad news?” Johnny asked.
There was some good-natured complaining, and a few people groaned or laughed.
“You all heard what happened at the warehouse.” Johnny leaned against the wall and shrugged. “You probably didn’t hear what happened to one of Vox’s contractors, but let’s just say it was more of the same, and it wasn’t pretty. Those fuckers got busted up so bad they went to a hospital.” Doing so, and thus going on the radar, was rare.
“So, you’re going to go out in teams and wreak havoc,” Johnny said. “But not all at once. Xavi, man, you okay picking a team to go first?”
The other man nodded, and Pauline sighed in the darkened room. She had been right to pick Johnny for this job. Sven’s looks meant he was noteworthy in a way Johnny was not, and Lia did not switch between formal and informal speech as easily as Johnny did. Between those factors and Johnny’s familiarity with most of the people here, he was the best person to get those gang members to sign up for what was quite frankly suicide.
“So, you’ve heard Motorcycle Man does some weird mind-trick shit,” Johnny told them. “You’re gonna do this fight in earplugs.”
Xavier and his team frowned as everyone else laughed.
“Hey, if he can’t talk to you, he can’t get in your head, eh?” Johnny grinned. “If you get the chance, you’re gonna either capture or kill this dude. Capturing is preferable, but if you think he’s gonna escape, do what you gotta do. One thing we do know? You wreak enough havoc, and he’ll show up.”
More nods from the group. Pauline noted the air of anticipation among them. She supposed that part of it was the usual mixture of eagerness and trepidation that preceded a battle, but there was something else, too. Something almost...fannish. Motorcycle Man was a local celebrity, and they were looking forward to meeting him.
Even if it was as an enemy combatant in a fight.
The gangsters started to banter among themselves and show their weapons off to one another or tell stories of brawls and hits they’d been involved in, but Johnny snapped his fingers and called them back to order.
“Hey. Not done. One more thing; this isn’t an isolated job, it’s a trial. You want to get in good with the one I work for, this is your ticket.”
There was a round of goodbyes, various people clapping Xavi or Johnny on the shoulder, and Johnny doing a circuit to say hello to some of the established members of the group, as well as introducing himself to new ones.
When the crowd cleared at last, Johnny ducked into the dark building and met Pauline on the stairway.
“Good.” Pauline nodded at him. “You handled that well. Of course, we have yet to see how well they handle their jobs. I’ll be curious to see if they succeed where we’ve failed.” She stressed the “we” faintly. She believed in owning her mistakes.
Johnny nodded. “Maybe. Maybe not. Xavi’s not an idiot. He’ll pull his men out if he needs to, which means we won’t be sifting through bodies to figure out what went wrong.”
“Excellent.” Pauline made her way past him down the stairs, letting him take up position at her shoulder. “Before dinner, I think we should observe operations at the docks.”
“Sure,” Johnny said easily. “Let’s make sure they know we’ll be able to tell when they skim some.”
“Yes.” Pauline’s voice was cold now. “Has anyone?”
“One person. I figure we should take care of him in front of everyone.” Johnny’s hand slid beneath his coat to the familiar shape of his Beretta. “You want to do this one?”
Pauline did, but she knew it wasn’t worth compromising her anonymity.
“I wish I could.” She allowed her regret to show. “I’ll leave it to you, however. Make it satisfying to watch.”
Johnny chuckled. “Will do, boss.”
Chapter Five
James Lovecraft and Mother LeBlanc sat a
t the table, each wearing the same calm, pleasant, understated smile. After doing some research of their own while the FBI agents conferred with their superiors, the two groups had reconvened.
This time, the venue was less suited for interrogation. They were in one of the conference rooms at the FBI’s field office in Las Vegas. There was a potted plant in the corner and a coffee machine with cups and creamer and sugar.
MacDonald and Richardson had come back to announce that the two thaumaturgists had been invited to discuss things with the feds as equals, in casual circumstances. The Bureau had abandoned their attempt to treat them like they were suspects in custody.
It was comforting to know they would get to continue working with Agents Richardson and MacDonald since they had a decent rapport with them. Also, it meant they wouldn’t have to repeat themselves to a series of half-informed new people. Accordingly, James had mentioned to them that he and LeBlanc had come to their own conclusion, which they would be happy to share with their new colleagues.
Richardson coughed and ruffled his hair before sitting down. MacDonald looked at the pair, nodded, and seated herself as well.
“Okay,” the male agent began, “you said you’ve arrived at an important conclusion about the situation in Los Angeles but wanted to tell it to us in person, and that you and I might be ready to move against the intended targets.”
LeBlanc inclined her head. “Yes, that is accurate.”
The female agent was having trouble hiding her eagerness. “Please tell us what you concluded.”
James took a long, slow sip of coffee, then leaned back in his chair, exhaled, and folded his arms behind his head. He delayed further by sniffing. He was choosing his words, yes, but he was still feeling the agents out, and he wanted to gauge their impatience.
Judging by the faint twitch in her expression, MacDonald was the more impatient of the two.
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Three Page 3