Fire Sorcerer (The Sentinels Book 1)

by David J Normoyle

  Being only seventeen, I should have been too young to have learned that parenting was a bitch. My pseudo-children were only a few years younger than me, and I tried to be as little like a real parent as possible, with soccer ball dents and stolen signs decorating the walls, but ultimately I was responsible for them. Ten months ago I had had no idea how much having to be responsible for others could change a person. Stomach acid burned new pathways through me every time I worried.

  “You’re missing the point,” Pete said. “Good parenting will never involve restraining potential. Children have to grow up. Remember when Hagrid arrives and says, ‘You’re a wizard, Harry.’ Still gives me chills.”

  I used to feel the same way. Until I found out what it meant. “It’s a children’s series. It’s dark at times, but the magic is fundamentally fun. I bet that in real life, if magic exists, it’s better to stay well away from it.” I knew that for a fact.

  “Real life, dude. Who said anything about real life.” He shivered. “Real life is all about responsibility and boredom. Listen to someone who knows. Stay away from that shit.”

  “If only I could,” I said. “How do you manage? Teach me your secrets, oh wise one.”

  “The key is to stay young.”

  “Doesn’t the beard get in the way when you are applying the Oil of Olay?”

  “Not look young. Be young. What do they teach you guys in school these days?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “The trick is to keep the number of responsibilities to a minimum. The more responsibilities one has, the older one gets. It’s simple math.”

  It was hard to argue with that. Taking care of Alex and Jo was likely to age me twenty years, if it hadn’t already. “What responsibilities do you have?”

  “Exactly, dude.” He raised his thumb and pointed his forefinger at me like it was a gun, made a clicking sound with the side of his mouth, and winked. “Exactly.”

  “Your full name wouldn’t be Peter Pan, would it?”

  He winked again, then pointed at the screen. “Hagrid’s arriving with the birthday cake. He’s about to say the line.”

  I stood and made for the door, not wanting to watch any more. “Poor Harry. Little does he know what he’s in for.”

  “Dude.”

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday 07:50

  “You’re a wizard, Rune,” Hagrid said.

  “You were supposed to come when I was eleven,” I complained.

  “I couldn’t come earlier,” Hagrid said. “I was busy.”

  “Busy for six years? With what?”

  Hagrid’s eyes glowed red. “I was burning things.” He raised his hands and flames shot out from them. He spun around, fire spouting from his whirling arms until the roof and walls were on fire.

  “No!” I shouted as the flames came for me. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. This isn’t—”

  I shot forward into a sitting position, my blanket sliding to the floor.

  Jo sat on her bed, watching me with an expression of concern. “Nightmare?”

  I nodded. “Hopefully, Hagrid will stick to my dreams and not actually come to collect me.”

  “Hagrid?”

  “Forget about it.” I glanced across at Alex’s side of the room, where the bed was made. “Is he already gone?”

  Jo nodded.

  “Leaving early for school again. I never knew Alex was so studious.”

  Jo didn’t reply. Instead she pulled her laptop onto her lap but didn’t open it. I sensed she wanted to tell me something.

  I swung my legs into a sitting position.

  Jo shielded her eyes with her arm. “Rune, we’ve talked about this. Just because we live together doesn’t mean I have to see your white spindly legs.”

  I pulled on my jeans and picked up my T-shirt, gave it a sniff, then threw it over toward Jo. “Still good?”

  She caught it and threw it back. “I’m not smelling your shirt, Rune. I’m sure it’s perfectly rank, but when has that stopped you before? Isn’t that the same T-shirt you’ve worn for the last ten months?”

  “You wound me. Just because most of my T-shirts are black.”

  “There are other colors, you know?”

  “It’s my style.” Black jeans, black T-shirt, black leather jacket.

  She sighed. “A color isn’t a style.”

  “You can talk. With your grungy sweaters and tattered jeans.”

  “Grunge is a style.” She shook her head and clicked open the laptop.

  I pulled on my T-shirt, then went to the corner and picked up the soccer ball. “Catch.” I threw it to her. She looked up from the computer in time to get two hands up and grab it.

  She threw it back to me. “What are you doing?”

  I grabbed it out of the air, spun around and threw it back at her with a behind-the-back toss.

  Jo protected the laptop with her arms, but the ball went wide of her, rebounded off a bedpost and hit a shelf. A plate fell and smashed to smithereens on the floor.

  Jo gave a long-suffering sigh. “Aren’t you supposed to be the grown-up here?”

  I shrugged. “We are living the dream. A family without grown-ups to tell us what to do.” I went to get the brush and began to sweep up the pieces of plate.

  “If this is a dream, we’ll need to wake up.”

  “I’m afraid that process is already starting.”

  Jo took the brush from me. “Leave this to me. Go to work.”

  “I can’t go yet. You still haven’t told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m still waiting to find out.”

  Jo paused her cleaning, but she didn’t look up. “Alex shouldn’t have pushed you so much last night. It’s not your fight.”

  “If you two are fighting, then I’m in your corner.”

  “You’ve already done more than we can ever repay,” Jo said. “Helping us escape the orphanage. Taking us in.”

  Her gratitude made me feel terrible. Whatever I did for them would never be enough. “Just tell me,” I said. “There mightn’t be any grownups in it, but it’s still a family. If there’s a way I can help, you have to tell me.”

  Jo resumed sweeping. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

  “Then no harm done in me knowing about it.”

  She leaned the brush against the wall and tapped her fingers on the front of her leg. She clearly wanted to tell me, but Alex must have made her promise not to. Finally, she went over to my desk and picked up a pen and my notepad. “Ever see those shows where a detective is able to see what was written on earlier sheets of paper?” she asked.

  I nodded. “A bit elaborate, isn’t it?”

  She bent down and wrote something on the pad, then tore the sheet off and put the page in her pocket. “Humor me. If nothing goes wrong, it would be best if you aren’t seen. Now get to work before you are fired.”

  I laughed. “Being at work is where I usually do the stuff that’s likely to get me fired.”

  “Findley can’t be as bad as you’ve made out.”

  I put the notepad in my pocket. “He’s worse. Words can’t do justice to the thing that is Findley.”

  Chapter 4

  Tuesday 08:45

  If I had to choose between function or style, I’ll go style every day of the week. Maybe that made me shallow, but heck, everyone’s ultimately shallow in some way or another, and we might as well look good while sailing through this sea of making-things-up-as-we-go-along we call life.

  Unfortunately, style is usually more expensive than function. Which left me riding a Vespa, an underpowered scooter, to work, and trying to pretend it didn’t make me look like a tool. Reaching the offices of Transkey Incorporated, I pulled in close to reception, kicked out the side stand and got off.

  Being able to dodge through traffic, not needing to worry about parking, and being able to leave the scooter right next to reception meant functional points of the Vespa were ten.
Of course, being close to the building meant that everyone looking out the window saw me arriving on it. Style points, zero.

  I lifted the seat and put my helmet into the space underneath. I didn’t bother chaining it to anything. If anyone went to the trouble of robbing my old scooter, they were clearly much more desperate than me and needed it more.

  Inside Transkey, the carpets and cubicle walls were gray, designed to deaden noise and reduce distraction. The thermostat was set slightly below room temperature, at a level scientifically proven to keep concentration at its highest. The partition walls were at chest height so when anything happened, heads tended to poke up to look around, meerkat-like.

  I reached my desk without running into Findley, which was a nice start to the day. I sat down and switched on the computer monitor, then swung the office chair around in circles a few times. I had to pretend to be a grownup, but I wasn’t really one yet, so whenever no one was looking, I loved unleashing my inner child. I was unprepared for the responsibilities of parenting, and no one was prepared for the passive horrors of cubicle life.

  I took the notepad from my pocket, retrieved a pencil from a drawer, then rubbed lightly across the whole page. A scribble gradually appeared that read: Three o’clock, Jeffries Parking Lot, 3rd level, Red 45.

  I presumed that Alex and Jo were meeting someone there and that Jo was worried that it might be dangerous. What could it be about? The two of them should be in school at that time.

  “What do we pay you for?”

  I jerked, startled, then swiveled my chair around.

  Findley leaned against the outside wall of my cubicle. He looked like a red-haired Danny Devito in a suit—which is as scary as it sounds.

  “You pay me to show up and look pretty?” I asked.

  “You aren’t a model. I sent you an email this morning, and you haven’t responded yet.” He glanced down at the notepad in front of me. “Have you even logged in? Are you drawing something?”

  “It’s still not nine.” I tore the top sheet off the pad, scrunched it up and threw it in the bin. “What was the email about?”

  “We need you to set up an important cross-site meeting tomorrow. Set up the correct video conferencing. It’s for Harriet Ashley.”

  His voice hushed as he said the name, like I should know who it was. “Harriet Who?”

  “The new boss of Transkey. Didn’t you read the company memo email from last month?”

  Dealing with Findley was exhausting enough without worrying about bosses further up the line. “It must have gotten stuck in my spam folder. I have a special filter for the words company and memo. Keeps my email streamlined to the important ones such as ‘Which Harry Potter Character Are You?’ Neville Longbottom, if you are interested.”

  “This isn’t a time for joking. Harriet Ashley hasn’t spent much time in here since she took over, and we want to impress her with our capabilities. Nothing must go wrong.”

  “Then why are you putting me on it?”

  “Because that is what we pay you for. To take care of all our I.T.”

  Anything with a modicum of technology involved, and Findley expected me to take care of it.

  I sometimes fantasied about how happy I would be if Findley actually followed through on his subtle hints to fire me. But monthly paychecks were useful things with hungry orphans to feed. Essential even. And since all my qualifications were faked, no company which did proper due diligence would hire me.

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “I expect your full attention.”

  “Of course you do.” He’d also expect my full attention to be on all my usual duties as well.

  Findley moved away. I logged in, but I didn’t go straight to check my email. Instead I called up a browser and did a search on Twitter.

  @RedWhiteandTrue55

  Follows: 10, Followers: 24,378, Tweets 37

  That was a lot of followers for thirty seven tweets. The back picture for the account was a picture of Christopher Reeve flying above Metropolis as Superman, the dodgy special effects evident even in the still picture. The profile picture was a stylized representation of the curl of hair that fell across Superman’s forehead. Whoever controlled the account had a serious Superman complex.

  The account had sent its first tweet four months earlier.

  The Reds are now run by a shade. Hugo Yarley take a bow. #shades #taking #over

  That name didn’t mean anything to me. The Reds were traditionally run by the Machet family, so it was surprising to see another family in charge.

  I looked down through further tweets. The handle was all business, no noise; every tweet revealed names of gang members and companies owned by both the Whites and Reds. I didn’t recognize any names until I came to the twentieth tweet. Policeman Connor Duffy is an errand boy for the Reds. #police #corruption

  That Duffy was working with the gangs wasn’t news. I was surprised to see him called an errand boy, though, since I’d figured him to be a major player in the crime world.

  I continued through the tweets, scrolling past all the names I didn’t recognize. Then a tweet jumped out at me, and my mouse jerked, causing the screen to jump back to the early tweets. I slowly returned back to my original place, hoping I’d read it wrong.

  I hadn’t.

  Now the Whites too are under new control. Is Harriet Ashley one of them? #shades #hidden #plainsight

  I opened my email to make sure I had the name right. With Findley’s propensity for all-caps, the message header jumped out.

  URGENT: Cross-site meeting requirement for Harriet Ashley, Transkey CEO. GIVE IT YOUR FULL ATTENTION

  So according to this RedWhiteandTrue, the new CEO of Transkey was the leader of a crime gang and possibly a supernatural.

  I flicked through the remaining tweets, coming at last to one which had been posted yesterday. The one which set Alex off.

  Sammy Williams, arrested for burning down the Collier Mansion, is one of them. #shade No record of him in the justice system. #conspiracy

  I was leaning back in my chair, still considering what I’d just learned when Geraldine from accounts appeared. “I moved my computer and now it won’t work,” she told me.

  “Is it plugged in?”

  “I think it must be. There’s a blue light on the monitor.”

  “That means the monitor is plugged in. The computer also needs a plug.”

  “Two plugs.” She looked at me like I had two heads.

  I sighed. “Show me.” Giving my full attention to the Harriet Ashley meeting would have to wait.

  Being the company I.T. guy was a cross between foiling hackers who’d been reading Pentagon missives before they hit puberty and teaching four year olds how to use crayons without turning the walls into modern art exhibits.

  Chapter 5

  Tuesday 13:25

  “Where is he?” I peeked over the top of the cubicle wall to see a woman in a dark business suit striding down the corridor with Findley trailing behind her.

  “You don’t need to meet him,” Findley said. “I’ll make sure he has everything ready.”

  She turned around. “I’m told too often that something can be done by management, who later find it to be impossible. Who’s the person who will be setting this up?”

  “This way.” Findley gestured in my direction and I ducked down.

  When the two of them arrived in front of me, I pretended to be typing furiously.

  “Rune?” Findley said.

  “Yes?” I turned.

  Findley turned to Ashley and nodded at me. “This is Rune Russell. He’s our I.T. guy.”

  I nodded but didn’t get up.

  “He doesn’t look like much, but he’s a wizard with computers,” Findley said.

  “A wizard?” I asked. “I’ll have to bring that up in my next pay review. Is that a rank between senior engineer and staff engineer?” Findley had never given me a compliment in his life.

  Findley chuckled nervously. “Rune, this is Harri
et Ashley, who I was telling you about.”

  Harriet was tall for a woman, late thirties, black hair, reasonably good looking.

  “I’ve just been reading about you,” I told her. Even as I said it, I regretted it. Best not to bring up what I had learned about her.

  “Yes.” Findley bounced forward nervously. “The two-page article about Harriet in the Lusteer Gazette was riveting.”

  That was good. Findley gave me an out. I didn’t have to mention RedWhiteandTrue.

  “I don’t read tabloid trash. I was actually looking at Twitter feeds.” I couldn’t just keep my head down and say nothing. Something inside me meant I had to let my big mouth throw me into the deep end.

  “The Gazette is the premier newspaper in Lusteer,” Findley said to me, frowning. He then turned to Harriet. “Don’t mind him. Rune has strange ideas, but I’ll make sure everything goes smoothly.”

  Harriet was ignoring Findley and staring straight at me. “Twitter is a black cave full of trolls.”

  “If only trolls were the worst thing to be found in this world,” I said.

  Findley stepped between me and Harriet. “Let’s go back to my office; I’ll deal with Rune after.”

  “You go back to your office,” Harriet told Findley. “Let me talk with this person.”

  Findley looked at me, then Harriet, then reluctantly started to leave. He gave me a final forlorn look, probably imagining all sorts of ways I would mess things up with the new CEO.

  “What was your name again?” Harriet asked, leaning forward.

  “Rune Russell.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No reason why you should. I’m just the I.T. guy here in Transkey.”

  “Then why antagonize me?”

  The back of my chair hit the desk behind me. The cubicle had never felt so small.

  “Would you believe I’m just that stupid?” My big mouth had gotten me into trouble as long as I could remember. I’d had an uncontrollable compulsion to chip away at authority figures ever since I was a five-year-old orphan. It didn’t matter whether they were foster parents, social workers, policemen, even the head of Gorlam’s.