by Paul Duffau
Mitch glanced at Hunter to see if he was serious. The other youth’s eyes held a queer glow that triggered a revulsion deep inside Mitch. He glanced ahead, saw a light on in the lab, and buttoned his lips rather than make a joke about master races. He didn’t think Hunter would find it funny, anyway.
Paulson was hidden by a stack of boxes marked with the Amazon smile. He craned his neck around to peer at them as they wandered into the room.
“Hey, guys. Getting some extra work done over the break?”
Mitch answered ahead of Hunter. No need to do the whole hand-waving routine when the teacher would probably simply give them what they wanted.
“Hi, Mr. Paulson, we figured we might borrow Alice for a couple of days and work on tuning her up at home, if that’s cool with you.”
“You got her rebuilt?”
“Mostly,” said Hunter, taking the lead. Most of the damage had been in his domain of electronics. “We might want to check out some components, just in case. If we don’t use them, I’ll check them back in.”
Five minutes later, Mitch tucked Alice under his arm, making sure all the cords were bundled up so he wouldn’t step on them. Hunter held a small box that contained an assortment of capacitors, resistors, transistors, and a small roll of soldering metal.
“See you, Mr. Paulson,” said Mitch as the two of them left.
“Have fun. Don’t blow anything up,” said Paulson with a laugh.
“That’s no fun,” said Hunter, matching Paulson’s tone. Mitch saw his free hand lift, but the teacher already had his head back down, working on his laptop.
“Let’s go,” said Mitch.
They went left from the doorway, in the opposite direction from where they’d come.
“Hit the chemistry lab and out the side door?” asked Hunter.
“Yep.”
Apprehension tightened his shoulders. Once they hit the chem lab, they’d find the powdered aluminum and ferrous oxide, though the second item wasn’t critical. Mitch could find plenty of rusty things in the garage, although the rendering of that rust wouldn’t have the same purity. Until then, the two of them were students working through spring break. Stealing materials for thermite put them into teenage terrorist territory, worthy of SWAT team responses.
Which is why, Mitch thought, he’d brought Hunter and his hand jive along. If he was supposed to be keeping Kenzie safe and out of trouble, staying out of jail, even over a “misunderstanding,” was essential. He counted on Hunter taking control of anyone who interrupted their excursion. A chill traversed his spine at an image of his uncle, jolly and laughing one second and blank-faced the next.
He glanced at Hunter. Did he ever think that denying a person their own identity was wrong? Another thought hit. Was he any better, using Hunter to do it for him?
He shook the thought away with a short but violent arcing shake of his head.
Hunter saw the motion. “What? Losing your nerve?”
Mitch responded by increasing the pace of his casual walk into a brisk stride that forced Hunter to half-jog to catch up. They turned one more corner. The room they wanted was closed up. Mitch slowed and grabbed the knob.
Locked.
Mitch signaled to Hunter with a come-on crooking of two fingers, then pointed to the door. “You’re up.”
“You didn’t tell me that we’d have to break in.”
“What did you think? They’d leave everything in the hallway with a note to be super damn careful not to blow ourselves up?”
Hunter fidgeted, glancing up and down the darkened halls as if he expected the janitor to show up any second. “I don’t know how to open locks,” he admitted.
Mitch leaned his head to one side, mind swirling. “Just use your . . . ,” he said with a suggestive motion of his hand.
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Hunter. He shuffled his feet. “I mean, there are spells for all sorts of stuff, but it takes years to learn how to do all that, what all the rules are.”
“Well, I don’t have time for rules, and I don’t want to smash in the door, so you need to figure something out. Can you use your magic to recess the tongue of the lock long enough for us to slip in?”
Fear trembled in Hunter’s eyes. “Maybe, but you really don’t understand. If I get caught by my Family acting like a deviant, they’ll . . .”
“They’ll what?” Mitch didn’t mean to mock his friend, but the tone in his voice carried his exasperation. Hunter and Kenzie could do amazing things, the crazy stuff that you read in fantasy books, but both of them seemed totally locked in against using their powers, to the point where something that seemed simple and straightforward brought them to a trembling stop.
“Deviancy is not permissible,” said Hunter, sounding like a student repeating a formal lesson. He took a step back from the door.
Alarmed, Mitch spoke quickly. “Deviancy would be operating against the interests of your dad, right? And you said that we probably were allies now, so you’re in effect helping your dad when you help me.”
Hunter gave him a sharp look, and Mitch saw a wavering in the fear. Maybe he was getting through.
Mitch pressed his advantage. “All we have to do is acquire the materials by getting through the locks. There’s no one here except you and me, so the chance of discovery doesn’t exist.” Mitch took a breath. “Plus, I double dog dare you to try.”
Hunter laughed, and the tension in his face disappeared. “Oh yeah, because you can never turn down a dare.” He shook his head, but he kept smiling. “Okay, I can try. The worst that happens is that my father kills you.” He turned to face Mitch. “Just kidding, man.”
Hunter focused on the door. Mitch scrutinized his friend’s face for some clue as to what he was doing. Other than a narrowing of concentration, Hunter did not display any indications of the efforts he was making.
“Push,” said Hunter.
Mitch interpreted that to mean the door. He placed the back of his hand against the door and applied a steady pressure. Nothing happened for a moment. Then, it opened. The snap of the tongue returning to the locking position echoed from the concrete and metal that lined the hall. Both boys checked to see if anyone came to check what disrupted the silence.
Mitch leading, they passed through the opening.
“Toss me a book,” said Mitch, propping the door open with his foot.
Hunter removed the first one that came to hand from a nearby shelf and handed it to him. Mitch leaned it against the jamb and let the door fall back.
The inside of the lab would have been familiar to anyone who had ever taken a chemistry course. The black bench tops were made from a nonreactive epoxy resin designed to be durable. Gas fittings for Bunsen burners were built into the counters. The peculiar odor of the lab awoke a sense of pleasant familiarity. Mitch got the same sensation from the electronics labs with their pervasive ozone taint. Above the benches were the ventilation and exhaust hoods, and there was an eye wash station at each end of the laboratory.
The various chemicals, mixtures, and solutions were secured in a second room, past the instructor’s desk. The door on this one was constructed from solid metal, and the lock was a stiff deadbolt, not a relatively easy doorknob.
“Don’t know if I can do that one, Mitch,” said Hunter, doubt clear on his face as well as in his voice.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” said Mitch. “I don’t suppose you can teleport, too?”
“Don’t think so,” replied Hunter. “Never really thought about trying. Plus, making a mistake could be really messy. Any suggestions on how to break this bad boy are welcome.”
Mitch thought. He knew Hunter would wait for an answer. A detached part of his brain, not currently occupied on breaking and entering, realized that this was all part of the pattern between the two of them. For all of his genius with electronics, the guy lacked the spark to initiate projects.
“We can’t use simple pressure with that lock,” said Mitch, surfacing from his calculations.
“The best bet is to emulate a key using force and lift the pins in the lock until we find the right combination. If I remember correctly, most locks have five pins inside, with ten possible positions, I think. So, if you lifted the pins until they reached the shear point in the cylinder, it should open.”
Hunter’s eyes flitted around the lock and door. “’Kay. So, how do I know when the pins are in the right spot?”
“Can you see inside?”
“No,” said Hunter. “It’s more like a feeling, like you can touch something with a hand you don’t have.”
“Phantom limb syndrome, like an amputee,” said Mitch.
“Close enough,” said Hunter. “Let me give it a try.” His eyes closed. On his right hand, the fingers twitched like those of a sax player riffing to a jazz routine. Mitch surmised that the movements corresponded to Hunter’s efforts at moving the pins. He could hear ticks from the mechanism. Sweat broke out on Hunter’s forehead.
“It’s no use,” said Hunter. “I can’t feel when I get it right. As soon as I try to shift the pressure from the pins to the cylinder to rotate it, everything goes to hell.”
“What if I applied the sideways pressure?” asked Mitch. “I mean, if I don’t get in the way.”
“Unless you can climb into that lock, you won’t be in the way,” said Hunter. “It’s not like physical objects interfere with magic.”
“It’s not like I know,” said Mitch, with a wry smile. “Hold on, I’ll get something to work the cylinder.”
Mitch rummaged around the teacher’s desk. A slender metal letter opener—a tool for the teacher, a weapon if a student got caught with it—looked perfect. He took it to the door.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” said Mitch, dropping to a knee at the door.
Hunter nodded, and his eyelids dropped.
“Now,” came Hunter’s strained voice.
Mitch inserted the tip of the letter opener into the key slot and very gently twisted it sideways. The pins’ movement made the metal in his hand vibrate nearly imperceptibly. He held the pressure and felt a sharper click.
One down.
In quick succession, the trembles of pins releasing tingled through Mitch’s fingertips, and with a smooth motion at the fifth, the lock turned, and the door opened.
“Good job, man,” said Mitch, straightening out the kinks in his back and lifting his right hand to fist-bump. The other boy met the gesture with a tap of knuckles.
“Grab the stuff and let’s get, buddy,” said Hunter. “We still have to lock it again.”
Mitch hurried into the room. The supplies were laid out on the battleship-gray shelves while an exhaust fan whispered overhead. Mitch looked at the markings at the front of a bank of cabinets holding the corrosives, flammables, and acids, special items segregated due to their potential for booms and burns. Each cabinet bore a warning symbol indicating the contents. What he needed would be on the shelves. Separately, the metals were reasonably inert.
A quick glance showed the remaining containers were grouped according to their properties instead of alphabetically. Made sense, Mitch thought.
He found the ferrous oxide. He pulled a pair of sandwich-sized Ziploc bags from his back pocket. He opened one, squared the bottom to get it to stand partially open, and then loosed the catches of the container with the iron rust. Using the scoop inside, he quickly took as much of the black powder as he needed, plus an extra scoop just in case. He squeezed the excess air from the bag and pinched it shut.
Using the bottom of his shirt, he wiped the surfaces he had touched.
Mitch walked to the section with the metals, though in his head he classified the aluminum as a post-transition metal, which is how it appeared on the periodic table. He had considered using copper for the metal component of the chemical reaction, but it was too reactive, giving more of an explosion than a fast-burning sizzle. Kenzie would be near the thermite when he set it off, and he didn’t want to take any chances of splatter reaching her. His stomach clenched at the thought of molten copper cauterizing her skin.
There were two types of aluminum, granulated and powdered. He stole the granulated—aluminum powder could become unstable in certain conditions, and he had no desire to have a premature eruption.
Mitch shoved the baggies into different pants pockets and repeated the cleanup process. He strode to the doorway. Hunter turned his head as Mitch swung the door shut with a shove of his shoulder.
“Ready,” said Hunter as Mitch put the letter opener back into the cylinder lock and applied pressure in the opposite direction. The snapping of the pins back into the locked position happened so quickly that Mitch was taken by surprise.
Hunter shrugged. “Practice,” he said.
“Fine with me,” said Mitch. “Let’s wipe down everything we’ve touched and get the heck out of here.”
Two minutes later, the lab door snicked shut behind them, and a minute after that they were sucking in deep breaths in bright sunshine.
Hunter started to laugh. “Dude,” he said, “you know how to break up a boring day.” He put up a hand for high five.
Mitch smacked the proffered palm with a loud whack and smiled himself, though not from humor or relief. He had the first part of his arsenal against Lassiter. His mind was racing on to the next point of attack.
“Let’s go get some phones.”
Chapter 39
Kenzie was suitably impressed.
“As you can see, the Æstatosa spell is possible,” said Harold, “but the strain is quite significant.”
His feet were several inches off the ground. He allowed himself to descend to the grassy interior of the teaching circle. He wheezed a bit as though he had run hard, and he ran a hand across his brow. He had begun the lesson with a discussion of moving physical objects and the raw power that was necessary to use magic to overcome the effect of gravity.
The demonstration of the incantation for flying had left them all spellbound.
“Mind you, not everyone can perform the necessary magic at that level, either due to a lack of natural talent or physical vigor, or not applying the careful attention such a spell requires.”
“When do we get our brooms,” said Belinda, staring big-eyed at Harold. The Wilder perched on her seat with a definite curvature to her spine that must have hurt, but managed to pull her virgin-white robes against her chest.
You don’t need one, Kenzie thought. She chalked the uncharitable judgment up to fatigue but didn’t retract it.
“That actually brings up an interesting theoretical point,” responded Harold, “about the stories from the Dark Ages of witches flying. In the literature of the period, and especially the art, witches would always be depicted as riding brooms, chairs, or animals. The spell I performed,” he lifted his hands to imitate the levitation, “was unheard of. Theories within the Family abound, but the most prevalent is that the early wizards and enchantresses, our ancestors, would imbue a physical object with magic, much as we do with amulets. The mundane world”—Kenzie felt oddly reassured at the way Harold avoided the term “Meat”—“resorted to slanders that the witches would put herbs with psychoactive properties on the broomstick to administer the effect of the drug more directly.”
He paused, and Kenzie tried to picture applying a drug from the broomstick through clothes. It didn’t fit, until she realized that the robes would have gotten in the way and been abandoned. Then the picture came too clearly, and she blushed. She saw burning cheeks on the brother-sister pair who were the only others in the Family close to her age. Wilders filled out the rest of the group. Ten feet away, Belinda laughed throatily.
Harold saw the discomfort in their faces.
“Maybe that was too much information,” he murmured, not quite to himself. He gathered himself. “Right, watch closely.”
His hands, graceful as a pair of mourning doves courting, weaved themselves into a rolling motion, with the right hand sliding intimately over the left three times, always in contact.
At the end of the third roll, the fingers on the right overlaid the finger of the left to form an inverted V with the thumbs pointed out. The Vs sank toward the ground, fell apart from each other, and then rose cupped as though describing the bottom of a large urn.
Kenzie noted that Harold inhaled as his hands lifted.
In front of Harold, a fist-sized stone, smooth as a river rock, flecks of red in the grayness catching the moonlight, elevated to the height of the wizard’s hands and hovered. He left it suspended for a few seconds before turning his palms down and releasing the stone. It landed with a muffled thud.
“I’ve placed smaller pebbles in front of each of you. See it clearly first; I don’t want you tearing the living,” he said, referring to the grass laid across the circle like a carpet. “Take your time and concentrate. Do not get discouraged if you can’t make this spell work the first time out. Very few people can. Most of you will not even realize how ingrained to your subconscious the idea of gravity is. Contrary beliefs will inhibit performance, so try to open yourselves to the infinite and allow for the possibilities that imbue the universe.” Harold swept his eyes around the students.
“Begin,” he said.
The two embarrassed siblings immediately launched into a hurried version of the spell, hands darting like herky-jerky finches. Their pebbles stayed safely snuggled between the blades of grass.
Kenzie stood while the kids wasted time, and took two casual steps to look at her pebble. She lowered herself with a curtsy-like motion to touch it with a tip of her finger. It bounced slightly at the contact. A frown creased her face. Other than shape, none of the other characteristics of the pea-gravel manifested. Unsure of the reason, she picked the stone up between her thumb and forefinger.
Inspecting it more closely, she saw that the stripes of color, taupe, umber, and faded yellow, testified to the origins of the rock. She put it into the palm of her other hand. The skin of her palm picked up the chill of the pebble. She focused on the small object. Kenzie’s peripheral vision darkened as the tightening focus on the pebble left her mesmerized. Specks of individual grains appeared under her close examination, and a definite weight became apparent.