Laverne shook her head. “Thanks, Madge, but we have a problem we need to get started on.”
I swallowed the last of the bite of my cheeseburger I had been chewing on and pushed the rest away. When Laverne came looking for us like this, it meant eating was going to take a back seat very quickly.
Besides, my stomach was already twisting from my sense of looming danger, so putting more food down there wasn’t a good idea at the moment.
“What’s happening?” Stan asked, then took another bite of his cheeseburger.
“All the thirteenth floors are vanishing,” Laverne said, as if she said a statement like that every day.
Then she took another fry.
“No building or hotel in this city has a thirteenth floor,” Terri said, looking puzzled.
“Floor Twelve B or the Fourteenth Floor, whatever they are called,” Laverne said, shrugging. “They are all vanishing. They will still be there, so no building is going to fall down, but the floors will become totally invisible by midnight.”
“The Magician is back,” Madge said, shaking her head and sighing in a way I had never heard before.
“Maybe,” Laverne said, taking one more fry. She gave me that serious stare that scared me down to my very toes. “And if The Magician is behind this in any way, we need to stop him. And quickly.”
At that, she vanished with one of my French fries in her hand.
The stunned silence around the office matched how I felt.
I just wish I had a clue what was happening.
And how she seemed to know something that was going to happen in two days.
And who the hell The Magician was.
Two
Everyone had stopped eating.
Terri was just shaking her head, her long black hair going back and forth around her face.
Madge was frowning, never a good sign when a waitress used to attempting to smile was frowning.
Stan looked angry and Patty looked confused, just as I was feeling.
“Time for milkshakes,” Madge said.
At that moment every bit of food on the table vanished and Madge turned and stepped through the door back to the Diner.
The group had a habit of ordering milkshakes when we were working on a problem. Usually only big problems. So Madge thought this problem big enough for milkshakes and had cleared the table.
Again not a good sign.
I stared at the place on the booth where my French fries had been and kind of wished I had the power to bring them back. And then I wondered where they had gone, and then finally decided I didn’t want to know any of those details. Not at the moment, anyway.
I glanced around at my team, then decided that none of them were going to speak, so it was up to me to be my normal clueless self and ask dumb questions. Sometimes my dumb questions got to the heart of the problem facing us, sometimes they just made me look silly for asking.
I wanted to start with how someone knew what was going to happen two days in the future, but decided on something more basic. “So someone want to give me the background on The Magician?”
“Right now he goes by Nick Scipio,” Stan said without looking up. “He’s been around for longer than anyone knows for certain. The protector and father, basically, of modern magic. Over the centuries he’s taken many names when free, from Dedi in Egypt to Robert-Houdin.”
“Is he a god?” Patty asked.
“He’s an elf,” Stan said.
I moaned. We had dealt a number of times with the elves and trolls and their fights. Because I had caught the one person causing elves and trolls to always battle, I was honored in their hidden casino here in Vegas, but I seldom went there. Just often enough to not insult them by never going there.
“You said something about him being free?” Screamer asked, and Terri nodded beside him, her black hair moving around her face.
“He is sort of locked up in a time cell,” Stan said, “between moments of time, that should make it impossible for him to escape. But he often does. It’s been a good fifty years since his last escape, at least that I heard about.”
“So why make all the 13th floors disappear?” I asked.
“You could ask him yourself,” Madge said, appearing from the doorway of the Diner carrying six milkshakes.
Behind her strolled a tall, thin man with black hair covering the tips of his pointed ears. He wore a white frilly shirt like he was on the way to a wedding and a long, black cape. In one hand he carried a cane, but clearly didn’t need it.
“I figured Madge would know where you all met,” he said, his voice low and soothing in an odd way.
He looked around at the view, clearly impressed, then he stopped in front of the booth and bowed slightly. “The Magician at your service. And I want to be very clear that I will have nothing to do with the building floors disappearing in just under two days. But I must admit, it’s a nice bit. I kind of wish I had thought of it.”
He pulled up a chair and sat on it, facing all of us.
“Vanilla as always,” Madge asked, placing the milkshake in front of him and then continuing on with the rest of ours.
“A wonderful memory,” The Magician said. “Now a glass of fine whiskey and a cigar and I would be as happy as can be.”
“Drink your milkshake, Nick,” Madge said, shaking her head and moving off to one side behind the booth. She never sat with us, but often took part in the meetings and it was clear she had no desire to miss this one.
“Good seeing you again, Stan,” The Magician said, as he stirred his milkshake and sipped it.
I stared at Stan, then back at Nick Scipio, The Magician. Clearly they had history. And I was just about to ask what that history was when Lady Luck appeared and scooted into the booth beside her daughter.
“Nick,” she said, nodding.
The Magician bowed slightly. “I am honored, as always.”
“Cut the crap,” Laverne said, “and explain to me what’s happening and how you know about it.”
When Lady Luck gets blunt, things really have to be going wrong. This just looked worse and worse by the moment.
Three
The Magician didn’t let Lady Luck’s brashness even seem to phase him. He took a sip of his milkshake, nodded a thank-you in Madge’s direction, and then turned to face Lady Luck. From my position beside Patty across from Teri and her mother, I could see Nick’s dark eyes. And I watched them closely as he spoke, seeing if I could get a read on him and if he was lying.
“In my little confines,” The Magician said, “which are very comfortable, I might add, I have sometimes been able to see out ahead in time. Not far, and often not that accurately, since the future is always in flux by events of the present. But I did see that in two days all the 13th floors of every building in Las Vegas will become invisible. For some reason, all authorities will, at the time, know this will happen and will have all the floors from twelve-up completely evacuated. It will cause a very large event that will be difficult at best to explain away, except as a magician’s illusion gone horribly wrong.”
“I know all that,” Laverne said, waving her hand in dismissal. “So who could actually pull off this kind of illusion?”
“Besides me?” The Magician asked. “No one. Which is why I don’t think this is an illusion.”
“Magic?” Stan asked as Lady Luck frowned.
Silence fell over the booth. And I had no idea why so many of them were upset. We were sitting in a booth in an invisible office five hundred feet above the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. If that wasn’t magic, what were we talking about?
“So who could pull off this level of magic?” Lady Luck finally asked. “And why would anyone break the ban?”
I wanted to scream WHAT BAN? But instead I just sat watching The Magician. From what I could tell, he had been telling the truth and seemed as worried as the rest of the people around the table.
I’m sure I looked worried as well, but not for the same reason. I was worried because I h
ad no idea what they were talking about.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” The Magician said. “But I will be glad to help find out. If this actually happens, it will give all magicians a bad name and magicians in general will take the blame since it will be the only way to explain away such an event.”
“Thanks,” Lady Luck said, nodding. “You up for talking to your people?”
He took another long sip of the vanilla milkshake, then nodded. “Let’s go.”
“The rest of you keep working on this,” Laverne said.
And she and The Magician vanished.
I sat there in the silence they left behind, so confused I didn’t even have a question to ask. So Patty got the ball rolling.
“What did he do?”
Stan shook his head. “Not much, actually. Just pissed off the wrong god at the wrong time with a stupid trick. He and Laverne actually like each other, so she put him in a comfortable cell to keep him out of the way for a few centuries. He comes out, or as he likes to call it, “escapes” when he wants or needs to.”
“So,” I said, taking a deep breath, “someone want to explain to me the difference in magic and what is holding this office in the air?”
Screamer and Teri both laughed and Stan just shook his head. Patty just patted my leg, which meant my question was really stupid.
“Real magic,” Teri said, “not the illusions that magicians do, is powered from the dark side. It does not come from any one person or skill, but by tapping into the pool of dark energy that rests just under the surface of everything.”
Stan nodded and looked at me. “Your power to teleport, step between moments of time, and keep this place in the air comes from you, the depth of your ability to help others. It is a power of your mind and who you are. Just as studying another person and knowing how they are going to act in a hand of cards is a trained skill.
“Okay,” was all I could manage to say. I sure didn’t feel like I had a powerful mind. Far from it at the moment, in fact.
“That’s why some of us can see slightly into the future as well,” Stan said. “Like you watch a person and can predict a play or know his cards, others can watch life and know what might be possible in the future. A skill.”
Well, that sort of explained that question at least, so I nodded.
He looked squarely at me and then went on, his tone and voice very, very clear. “All our powers are powers of light and come out of who we are and our own skills and talents. Nothing we do is actually magic.”
I decided to just keep pushing my ignorance out there for everyone to see. “So this stunt of making entire floors invisible comes from a magic that is banned?”
Stan and Terri both nodded.
Stan said, “Actual magic has been banned for centuries, but some people try it anyway at times.”
“And what happens to them?” Patty asked.
“The dark magic consumes them,” Screamer said, his voice sounding disgusted. “And they became part of the dark pool of power. Not something I would ever want to experience. Think of the worst images of hell and multiply that by one hundred.”
With that the silence just settled over the room again. Outside the windows, the sun was shining, planes were landing at the airport, and the world kept going, unaware that entire slices of buildings were about to vanish.
I took a sip of my milkshake and let the coolness calm me a little. I just couldn’t get one word out of my head and I finally just blurted it out. “Why?”
“Why do they get consumed?” Screamer asked, looking at me as if I had lost my mind completely.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Why make floors invisible? If this really is someone using magic and risking his or her life to do so, why do this stunt? It seems very petty, has no obvious return for the stunt, and flat makes no sense.”
And yet again the silence filled my office around the booth.
I was right.
I knew it. And their lack of an answer confirmed that for me.
No one who knew how to do dark magic and the repercussions from the use of dark magic would ever do something this stupid and out in the open.
And for no gain that I could see.
Suddenly I had yet another idea.
“What happens if this isn’t real dark magic? What happens if it is a superhero having some issues with power control?”
Stan looked at me with a look that I couldn’t read, but that wasn’t unusual for me with Stan. He was the God of Poker, after all.
“Are you suggesting,” Screamer asked, leaning forward, “that what is about to happen to all the 13th floors might be nothing more than an accident about to happen?”
“Possible,” I said. “So what kind of superhero needs to learn to make things vanish in their training?”
Teri started to say something, then shut her mouth and shook her head.
Screamer just shook his head.
Stan and Patty both said nothing.
Finally, from behind the booth Madge said, “Cleaners. And some food superheroes as well.”
“Like you made our lunch remains vanish,” I said, glancing back at her.
She nodded.
“Are there Gods of Cleaners and Superheroes of cleaning?” I asked, then knew the answer. Of course there were. I had watched a person come into a room and it seemed to just get clean, as if by some sort of magic, which was more-than-likely a special power. I always admired people who could do that type of cleaning, since every time I tried to clean something, it looked worse instead of better.
“Damn,” Stan said softly. Then he said, “Everyone’s with me.”
“Except me,” Madge said. “I’ll have milkshakes ready for you when you get back.”
Stan nodded and then a moment later all five of us were standing in a huge warehouse that smelled of ammonia and other cleaning solutions.
Four
The building around us was so large I couldn’t see any wall in any direction. Nothing but aisles between huge stacks of cases of what looked like varied cleaning solutions and supplies.
The roof had to be ten stories overhead, the lights dim, the floor smooth concrete, and the temperature worse than air conditioning set too low. The stack closest to me had to go up four or five stories into the air, pallet on top of pallet. How they stayed stacked like that was anyone’s guess, or how anyone did the stacking was another skill I really didn’t want to watch anytime soon.
A moment after we arrived, the Magician and Lady Luck arrived as well.
She turned to me. “You think this might be a new superhero having issues with powers?”
I nodded. “An idea that makes sense. Other than to do as an illusion, this future event makes no sense otherwise.”
The Magician nodded. “Now I see why these people hang around with you.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but why are we standing here in this warehouse?”
“What, you don’t like my office or something?” a voice blurted behind me.
I spun around to face a short, stout, matronly woman wearing a light blue cleaning uniform. On the cloth sewn-on name badge it read “Hygieia” and under that it said in small letters “Call me Jean.”
Laverne stepped up in front of me to face the new woman before I could say anything about her “office.”
“Jean, thanks for meeting with us,” Laverne said, her voice very stern, so much so that I shuddered slightly. “Every 13th floor of every building in Las Vegas is going to vanish in just under two days.”
“Good,” Jean said, shrugging. “We won’t have to clean them.”
“We think it’s one of your people who is going to cause the problem,” Laverne said.
She frowned at Laverne, started to say something, then stopped and really looked around at all of us. “Stan, Poker Boy, Patty Ledgerwood, Screamer, your daughter, and The Magician. You have the A-Team on this, so it must be serious.”
“It is,” Laverne said. “Very serious. We can’t let this
happen. Are you training someone in the Las Vegas area?”
“Always training someone it seems,” Jean said.
Beside her a very, very short man appeared wearing a hood over his head and only allowing just part of his face to show. I had no idea who he was or what his job was.
“You are training one called Dee, my sister,” the short man said, his voice very deep.
“Oh, yeah, her,” Jean said, nodding. “She’s a strange talent, very powerful, only been on the job a few months, but seems to learn quickly.”
“She has many fears,” the short man said. Then he vanished.
At that point I had about fifty questions I wanted to ask, but as I had learned years before, when dealing with Gods, it was better to just keep silent and let them go on and then have someone explain later what happened.
“I’m not sure how Dee having fears could cause this,” Jean said, looking puzzled.
“Maybe she’s afraid of the number thirteen,” I said, instantly breaking my rule about keeping my mouth shut.
Silence.
And in a huge warehouse with the ceiling towering four stories over my head, that silence seemed awful loud as everyone stared at me.
Finally Jean said, “I will bring Dee.”
I instantly felt sorry for the poor girl. If I had been brought into a group like this, I would have more than likely fainted during my first years of being a superhero.
“Hold on,” I said before the God of Cleaning could jump away. “I’m afraid, as a new superhero, she won’t be able to answer any questions with a crowd like this. This group still intimidates me at times and I’ve been at this for a decade or so.”
Jean nodded. “What would you suggest, Poker Boy?”
“Patty and I could go talk with her alone and the rest of you can keep track of how the conversation goes.”
Fiction River: Hex in the City Page 15