Black Magic

by Russell James

  “You said it,” Autumn said. “Snakes give everyone the creeps.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The NSA tower rose from the abandoned Apex plant parking lot. Vicente Ferrer sat on a folding chair in the stripped-out cargo area of an idling, windowless white van beside the tower. Piles of computer components and assorted other electronic junk littered the rusting floor. The sliding door was open. Sweat made his silk shirt stick to him in the oppressive humidity. He wouldn’t even be out here for this, but he’d learned years ago, if you wanted something done right, you might not be able to do it yourself, but you’d damn well better supervise the person who did.

  An open manhole yawned close enough to the van that Vicente could have stepped into it. Squirrelly Wilson stuck his head out. His tangle of long blond hair gave the young man the aura of a 1970s rock star, but a mouth full of crooked, stained teeth put any teen-idol impression to rest. He tossed a handful of plastic connectors onto the pavement.

  “That should do it,” he said. “Spliced and diced and checked on twice.”

  Even at this distance Vicente could smell Squirrelly’s breath, a rank combination of cigarettes, coffee and tooth decay. He wrinkled his nose. A man should have standards.

  “Then get back in the damn van before someone drives by,” he said.

  Squirrelly climbed in and Vicente cleared a way so he could get to the driver’s seat. He rolled the door shut. Blessedly cooler air blew across his arms from the front vents.

  “There’s no way to track what we’re doing, right?” Vicente said.

  “Can’t see how,” Squirrelly said. He gave his head a shake like a dog trying to dry itself. “We aren’t rerouting any of the information. We’re just reading it as it passes. Data mirrored on the fly as it goes by.”

  Vicente was about ready to punch Squirrelly in his mismatched teeth if he uttered one more moronic rhyme. But the loser had been arrested for just this kind of scam, so he’d endure his jabber to access his skills.

  “Then we send the info wirelessly to your computer,” Squirrelly said. “Even if someone finds the skimmer, they don’t know where the data’s going.”

  Data flowed through the NSA tower like water through a fire hose. The project was supposed to monitor overseas communications, but there was a healthy flow of domestic information as well. Bank transfers, credit card purchases, cell phone call records, airline reservations. All the little details that NSA supercomputers would piece together to create the mosaic of future terrorist attacks. Vicente needed but a trickle from that information torrent. Credit cards and social security numbers would be more than enough. A few tapped from one bank’s data stream, a few tapped the next day from another’s. Never enough to warn of a major security breach, but cumulatively enough to sell for a good price. His connections in Colombia had connections in Kiev and the connections in Kiev had cash. Who knew a thumb drive of zeroes and ones would be worth so much money?

  “And to review,” Vicente said. “If anyone finds out what you’ve done?”

  Squirrelly’s face went dark. His earlier skimming scheme he’d been caught for had earned him some lengthy prison time. “Violation of probation,” he said. “A bad situation, a hallucination.”

  “Probation will be the least of your problems,” Vicente said. “Our Ukrainian friends will make sure you never see the inside of a cell. Trust me.” He rolled the door back open. He stepped out and around the open manhole cover. “Now put this cover back on and then get the hell out of here.”

  He turned on a heel and left for his car. Squirrelly’s usefulness was about to run its course. Once the system proved out, his Ukrainian friends might need to tie up that loose end early. Someone like Squirrelly wouldn’t be missed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Later that evening, oil dripped on the bridge of Vicente Ferrer’s nose and splattered into one eye. He spewed a stream of curses and rolled out from underneath today’s old Dodge pickup trade-in. He groped until he found a rag and wiped the stinging liquid from his eye.

  He was alone in the shop behind Ferrer Motors. The neon lights gave everything within a fuzzy edge, a faded color treatment. The soft lighting didn’t do much for the dilapidated Dodge. The red paint had faded to a rusty rose and a gash ran down one side of the pickup’s bed like someone had attacked it with a chain saw. The prior owner had nursed the pile of crap down from Eustis that day. Vicente gladly took the trade and finally unloaded that lemon Escalade.

  He wasn’t smiling at the damn truck now. Smaller cars were so much easier to turn into drug mules. The parts just weighed less.

  He pulled the oil pan with him as he rolled back under the truck. He’d finished the modifications to it. He’d pulled it from the bottom of the engine, put a load of shrink-wrapped cocaine in it, and welded a false bottom above it. Once the pan was bolted back on and the tired engine refilled with used oil, the contraband would be undetectable, hidden in a sealed container, surrounded by a noxious mélange of petroleum-based scents no drug-sniffing dog could penetrate. His repertoire included hollowed-out transmissions and fake gas tanks, but the oil pan trick was his favorite, because the vehicle still ran, making it less suspect.

  Vicente spun the oil pan bolts on with two hands. He was way behind. In a perfect world the mule cars would have all been prepped and ready to load when the coke shipment arrived. But Vicente did not live in a perfect world. Creative as he was, he still needed at least one more car, unless he was going to duct tape the shit inside the fenders of the ones he had. And the cars he did have weren’t quite ready. He was supposed to prep them last night but—

  “Cente,” Juliana called from the doorway to the office. Her voice was slurred and guttural, her brain just reviving from a catatonic dose of the same thing Vicente just secreted in the bowels of the Dodge. She looked smoking hot in tight denim shorts and a red tube top. Her long hair looked like she had just crawled out of bed, and for good reason.

  She staggered toward him with half-closed eyes and a dreamy look. “Cente, that is some excellent blow.” She sniffed back a trail of mucous into her damaged sinuses. “How about some more to keep the party humming?”

  Vicente didn’t have time for this. Juliana had performed her required duties with the usual enthusiasm. She had been paid in kind and promptly inhaled her fee. He didn’t have time for a second round with her and he sure didn’t have more coke to send her way. There was only so much he could safely skim off the Colombians. The bastards weighed everything twice and had no concept of inventory shrinkage.

  “You’re done for the night,” he shouted up through the Dodge’s engine bay. “Beat it.”

  “No, no,” she whined. She knelt next to the truck. “I’ll make it worth it.” She reached underneath and gave Vicente’s crotch a sloppy tug.

  He startled at her touch and banged his head against the underside of the truck. A shower of rust flaked down into his face.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  He blindly kicked out and his boot caught Juliana in the chest. She went flying backward and crashed into a rolling toolbox. He launched himself out from under the truck and onto his feet.

  “Beat it, you drugged-out bitch! I’ve got work to do here. When I need you, you’ll know.”

  Juliana looked up with the confused, contrite look of the chronically battered. “Lo siento, Vicente. I didn’t mean nothing. I’m sorry. I just—”

  “Go!” he yelled.

  She rose and teetered off on her red stilettos.

  He grabbed a rag and wiped the rust from his face. The scrap yard south of Macon expected the mules in a few days and the Colombians were big believers in just-in-time inventory. One more trade-in tomorrow and he’d have what he needed. Someone was going to get the deal of a lifetime.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Barry was the last to join the other three Outsiders in front of the Magic Shop Tuesday afternoon. He huffed and puffed with each labored pump of his bicycle pedals, white knees poking through the
holes in his jeans. He coasted to a stop in front of the store.

  “Late,” Zach said, “for everything but a meal, as usual.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” Barry said. “My mom—”

  “No one cares,” Zach said. “Get your asses inside before Lyle cancels class on us.”

  Each of the boys had their school backpack slung over a shoulder. Each pack carried the owner’s magic purchase. A gold coin lay nestled in the bottom of each boy’s pocket. They entered the store to the falsetto ring of the door’s bell. Lyle leaned against the back wall of the empty shop, arms folded across his chest, a look of profound satisfaction upon his face.

  “Apprentices!” he said. “Come to master the craft that has thrilled and confounded man for millennia. Enter!”

  He stepped before the beaded curtain that covered the entrance to the back room. The boys gathered round. Lyle held up a finger to pause their advance.

  “Here is a last chance,” he said. “Magic is not for the weak, the confused, the uncommitted. Through this doorway you will find secrets others will never know, powers others cannot comprehend. But when you cross the threshold, you cannot go back. This is the moment when you commit to complete this education in the Dark Arts, and then reap all its benefits. No one will think less of you if you are not up to the task.”

  Ricky was reminded of the signs at the entrance of the rides at the county fair that warned pregnant women and people with heart conditions to stay the hell off. His judo teacher and his Cub Scout pack leader had never given such an ominous warning before an event. He caught a tiny tremble in his knees, a little knot of dread in his gut. Barry’s slack-jawed look telegraphed similar feelings.

  “What’s the hold up?” Zach said, chin thrust skyward. “We’re not afraid. Let’s go.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Paco said. “Let’s do it.”

  A little flash of fear crossed Barry’s face, like he was about to be left alone in some cave without a flashlight. “Yeah, yeah. I’m pumped.” He stepped closer to Lyle.

  All four turned to look at Ricky. He took a half step back. A voice deep inside of him shouted that he needed to run, fast and hard, as far from here as he could. He needed to throw the deck of cards in a fire. Whatever was on the other side of that curtain of beads was on the other side of the line between good and evil. He could practically feel it breathing.

  But if he walked out, he walked out alone. And he was sure that the cards, if he kept them, would never be magic again. He felt the tug of a current that had the other three in its grip, a current that rushed toward Lyle. Ricky stepped forward.

  “What are we waiting for?” he said.

  Lyle led the four through the beaded curtain. It sounded like rain as the strands brushed each other. The other side of the shop was everything the front half was not. Magic tricks were stacked against each other. A box to saw a woman in half. A glass booth with a hose at the top and a water drain at the bottom. Cloaks. Multi-colored strings of scarves. Hoops. Straitjackets. Lengths of chain. In the center stood a black oak table, thick enough to weigh a few hundred pounds. At its center was a crystal ball the size of a basketball atop a solid gold plate. Plywood blocked the room’s windows from the inside.

  Lyle led them into a circle around the oak table. The boy’s eyes flitted from amazing item to amazing item around the room.

  “Apprentices,” he announced. The boys all focused on Lyle. “Look down and take your position on a point.”

  A five-pointed star within a circle circumscribed the oak table. Lyle stood on one point. The boys shuffled to the other four.

  “Now you will be sworn in to the brotherhood,” Lyle said. “Repeat after me.”

  Lyle recited the following oath, pausing after each phrase to allow the boys to repeat the section back to him.

  “As a practitioner of magic, I promise never to reveal the secret of my power to a non-magician, unless that one swears to uphold the Magician's Oath in turn. I promise never to perform any magic for any non-magician without the consent of my master. I shall follow the orders of my master without question. In return for the powers I practice, I pledge my eternal soul.”

  The last word withered as Ricky spoke it. His soul? The Reverend said the soul made humans special in the eyes of God. The soul would live forever. What had he just traded it for?

  A blinding, glaring light exploded from the crystal ball. The lines of the five-pointed star lit up like the script on a neon sign. Ricky went flash blind. His feet hummed. The coin in his pocket blazed without burning.

  The light died down. The crystal ball sparkled from within like a snow globe filled with silver swirling flakes. Ricky’s vision faded back in. His fingertips tingled, as if some power danced at them, ready to be used. The others had similar looks of stunned amazement. Paco had a double-strength version of the crazy eyes he got when he set something afire.

  “Magic is all around us, apprentices,” Lyle said. “It surrounds all living things. Early man felt this, but attributed it to spirits. Through training, you will be able to unbind it from its host, draw that energy to yourself. That is the power you feel now.”

  Zach pulled the rings from his pack and held one in each hand. They sang with an almost musical hum as they vibrated in Zach’s hands.

  “Each of you has his own phrase,” Lyle continued, “his own key to unlock the magic from the world around you, and use it with your talismans.”

  “Bakshokah shuey,” Zach said. He brought the two rings together and they joined with a chime.

  Lyle’s eyes lit up. The sapphire ring on his finger glowed. “Now you are channeling the power. Push it. Feel it. Release it.”

  Zach let the rings go. They hung suspended in the air. The boys gasped. Zach grabbed them where they joined and they dropped together with a musical note.

  The other boys grabbed their tricks. Paco had his wand out first. Lyle made a circle with his wrist and a small white ball appeared. He rolled it toward Paco across the tabletop.

  “Vanish it,” he said.

  Paco stopped the rolling ball with his wand. “Bakshokah korami.”

  The ball disappeared in a puff of white smoke. Another appeared at Lyle’s fingertips.

  “Again,” he commanded. “In the air!”

  He lobbed the ball upward. Paco locked the ball in his bug-eyed gaze and pointed the wand at it. “Bakshokah korami.”

  The ball flashed into a tiny white cloud and never hit the ground.

  Barry already had his magic hat out and opened on the table, his mother’s red silk scarf across the top. He needed no prodding from Lyle. “Bakshokah apnoah.”

  He flipped away the scarf and reached in. He pulled out a yellow parakeet perched on his forefinger. He laughed and flicked his hand in the air. The parakeet fluttered off.

  Paco didn’t miss a beat. He tracked the flying bird with his wand. “Bakshokah korami.” The bird evaporated with an audible pop of yellow-tinged smoke.

  Adrenaline surged through Ricky’s veins. He pulled his cards from their case. The entire deck moved in his hand, dancing to some unheard beat. “Bakshokah serat,” he said.

  He put his hands palms up and the cards ran in an arch from one hand to the next like a Slinky going down steps, then reversed course. He spread the deck out across the table and he held one hand above it.

  “One-eyed jack,” he commanded.

  A card floated up out of the deck and rolled face up into his hand. The one-eyed jack of spades.

  “Excellent,” Lyle said. “Talismans down.”

  Three of the boys put their tricks on the table. Paco eyed a painting on a far wall and pointed his wand. Lyle’s eyes narrowed. His hand shot out in Paco’s direction. The ring glowed bright blue and he snapped his wrist to the right.

  Paco screamed in pain. The wand flew from his hand and bounced on the table. He tucked his right hand to his chest.

  “Remember your oath,” Lyle said. “Follow my orders without question. You don’t want to feel the
repercussions.”

  Paco nodded rapid fire.

  “You will practice for two days,” Lyle said. “Never together. Never in front of others. Doing nothing that will arouse suspicion. You will master feeling the flow of the power. On Thursday you will return to continue your education. Now scatter.”

  The boys grabbed what Lyle had called their talismans, loaded them into their packs and scrambled for the front door. They winced at the bright sun as they exited the darker shop. A few stray cars rolled down Main Street but pedestrian traffic was nil. They formed a huddle around their bikes.

  “That was radical,” Zach said. “Could you feel the magic run through you?”

  “I felt like a super hero,” Barry said.

  “When you dropped the wand…” Ricky asked Paco.

  “It felt like someone snapped my wrist,” Paco said. “I swore it was broken. Do not screw with that guy.”

  “Then follow his rules.” Zach said. “Home and practice. In secret.”

  Lyle told the boys only half the truth. They did indeed draw magic from the world around them. But like atomic fission, the tearing asunder of the magic released another type of residual energy. A huge burst of it had just rolled from under the Magic Shop along the water mains beneath Citrus Glade. It followed the path of earlier pulses and ended its run in the vast underground cavern beneath the sagging Apex Sugar plant. The cavern now glowed with the illumination of the energy echoing back and forth within its walls, far more powerful than when those first weak pulses arrived days ago.

  Lyle could never fill the cavern in time by himself. But now, four times faster, it would be completed right on schedule.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Later, Zach was alone in his room, door shut behind him. He said the magic phrase for the second time and joined the third ring to the other two. He gave the chain of three a twist and they stuck together.

  The feeling of exhilaration was beyond anything he’d experienced. Not just the amazement at completing the impossible, though that was part of it. It was the power. The rush of energy though his body, the way the magic made his heart race and made every nerve ending buzz and kick. He’d never felt so good before, so alive. He said the magic phrase and separated one of the rings.