On the Verge (A Charmed Life Book 1)

by Joseph Bonis

Tracy nodded, absorbing this relatively easily. “That all makes a lot of sense,” she mused quietly, half to Jacob, half to herself. “So what about the more rare elements, like your shadow?”

  Jacob smiled, looking down at the charm hanging from his knife. “Shadow creates a … a patch. An illusion of health.”

  Tracy looked confused.

  “Imagine I broke my leg,” Jacob tried to explain. “I could use shadow to,” he hooked his fingers in air quotes, “'mend' my leg so that it looked and felt perfectly healthy and I could use it just fine. As soon as I stopped using the shadow bandage, my leg would go back to being broken, but I wouldn't have damaged it any further by using it while it was broken.”

  Tracy nodded. “Kind of like fire - instead of keeping someone alive while they're supposed to be dead, you keep someone moving when they're supposed to be down.”

  Jacob nodded. “Yup, that's a good way of thinking of it.”

  “So,” Tracy asked, “If you use it on a severe fracture, or a dislocated arm, then remove the shadow bandage, will the bone be set, or the arm back in its socket?”

  Jacob blinked. “Ummm … I … don't actually know. Happily, I've never been in a situation to test that.” He thought about that for a few moments, then shrugged. “Anyway, the gear token, like the one Lord Pax will be using, enhances scientific healing. Bandaged wounds heal faster and leave less of a scar. Medicines last longer and work better. Transplants have less of a chance of being rejected. We have an actual medical doctor on staff who uses a gear token in that manner.”

  “Oh, wow,” said Tracy. “That token must have gotten more powerful as the years went on. What did it used to do?”

  Jacob chuckled. “Well, our records aren't really all that great if you go past a few decades, but from what I've been told, it used to make folk remedies actually work – or work better, depending on who you talk to. As for the mind token,” he paused, then slid up the wall to stand and walked over to her. He stretched out his hands towards her. “Do you trust me?”

  Tracy nodded, looking to him curiously.

  Jacob's fingers touched her temples, and he closed his eyes to concentrate. She saw the mind charm dangling from the hilt of his knife start to glow. A presence made itself felt next to her mind, not intrusive like the other touches she had felt over the last few days, but instead, just a friendly, silent closeness – somehow inside her head, but without invading her personal space. The migraine she had felt coming subsided to a mere dull ache, and her bone-weary exhaustion receded to being merely a bit tired.

  “Ohhh,” she sighed happily. “Thank you!”

  “It's just enough to help you sleep tonight,” Jacob said. “If I did it any more strongly, you wouldn't need sleep at all, but that sort of use has … side effects. I'm sure you can imagine the side-effects for people who don't sleep, and it's a little different for each person, but usually, you know… paranoia, jitters, hot tempers, inability to focus, that sort of thing.”

  Tracy grinned. “I'll avoid doing that, then. Wow,” breathed Tracy, eyes shining. “See, this sort of stuff? This sort of thing makes me interested. I've always wished I could heal people who are hurt.” She paused again, thinking of the possibilities. She wondered how many incurable diseases could be addressed with the charms. “Well, water and air sounds like the best place to start, so why not tell me how?”

  Jacob chuckled. “And I always thought water and earth was the best place to start, but no, I don't want to start that now.”

  “What?” asked Tracy. “Why not?”

  “Well,” said Jacob, “Either I hurt myself and you heal me, or we find an animal to hurt so you can heal the animal. Neither option really sounds like something I want to do.”

  Tracy grimaced. “Oh,” she murmured, taken aback. “I hadn't thought that out very much.” Then she grinned teasingly. “Wait, you're the big tough guy, with your tough-guy bike and your tough-guy knife. You're scared of a little scrape?”

  Jacob laughed. “I may be a tough guy, but I'm not a stupid guy! If you want to get some healing training, there's some metals who hold sessions that we can sign you up for.”

  “Metals?”

  Jacob nodded. “Dual fire/earth tokens are called 'metal'. They keep people from feeling pain - so some metal-wielders scratch themselves, and some healers guide people through healing the scratches.”

  Tracy nodded, then straightened up, her eyes widening. “Uh … Jacob? That guy we're fighting – he's going to use a metal charm, right?”

  He nodded.

  She took a deep breath, clenching her jaw, struck by the unfairness of it. Then she sighed, releasing the stress. She'd just have to deal with it. “Most of the martial arts I know involve convincing people to stop fighting because they're in too much pain.”

  Jacob looked back at her, his face going through a series of emotions. First, she saw reassurance, then a dawning realization. An angry reaction, cut off by him closing his eyes and taking a breath. Then he sighed deeply and covered his face with his hand. She didn't need empathy to know exactly how he felt. “Dammit!” he swore.

  “All right, then,” said Tracy, “Tell me about metal.”

  Jacob nodded resignedly. “Metal is the dual token of earth and fire. The two key elements of metal … not magic elements, just … y'know, mainly what they do, are pain and protection. Like your weather token makes it so that you don't feel the weather and can walk around in 10-degree weather in shorts or 90-degree weather in a parka, people with a metal token don't feel pain. Normally it's just that pain doesn't mean as much to them - but moreso when they actively use the magic. The other thing they do is the metal body. Pretty much the ultimate in physical defense, giving up some of the strength of earth for truly impressive protection.”

  Tracy nodded. “Can they shape metal, like I can shape water?”

  Jacob shook his head. “Sort of … it makes it easier to forge metal, but on the fly? No. Water and air are always changing, so it's easy for you to change their shape. Changing is part of their nature. Earth and metal have as their basic nature, immobility. Resistant to change. Metal is meant to stay the same - metal wielders find it much easier to strengthen that implacable nature than to undo it. The equivalent is if you were to try to make a bulletproof shield out of air. It's technically possible, but it's extremely difficult and goes against its basic nature. It can happen at the higher levels of power, but not at any level you're going to have to worry about anytime soon.”

  Tracy nodded. “Fair enough,” she said. “All right, then. What about machines? Machines are mainly made of metal. Can someone with metal control machines?”

  Jacob hemmed a little. “That's really done more with the gear token,” he said, “So we need to be careful of that anyway, but with the metal token - they could control an empty suit of armor, albeit with difficulty, but a modern machine has so much more than just metal. They have insulation and ceramics and hydraulics and chemicals and all sorts of other things. Again, it's technically possible, but not likely at the level you'll be worrying about anytime soon.”

  “All right, makes sense,” Tracy nodded. “At least we're not dealing with Magneto.”

  With a laugh, Jacob shook his head. “No, not that bad. Metal's best use is as an incredible defense, or with a great deal of planning. They can make alloys that no one else can make – like Orichalcum. They're helpful in mines, sensing the ore in the ground, and they can disrupt technology. They can purify metals, drawing out impurities. Or drawing the metal out of the impurities, more like.”

  Tracy sighed. “Sounds like such a waste to have them in a fight – they're so much more powerful creating than destroying.”

  Jacob nodded his agreement. “But this is the world we're in. Anyway, in battle, this guy we're fighting has an animal as a focus, not a weapon like I do.”

  “But he could slow your weapon down, right?” Tracy asked.

  Jacob nodded hesitantly. “You can't affect other people's foci quite as easily a
s anything else… our foci have some slight protection against control, but yes, he can hold me up a little like that - but not if he's in metal body. Can only do one thing at a time with each token, and his strategy is usually to start by using one to give himself a metal body, and the other to give his wolf a metal body.”

  Tracy nodded, and then what Jacob said sank in. She stared at him as she went over his last few words to make sure she heard right. “WOLF?” she cried. “A metal wolf?!”

  Jacob nodded. “He's got an animal focus, like I have a knife and you have a bracelet. You can put tokens into your focus in order to power it. Like the first night that I met you - I used shadow in my blade to stop those guys who were attacking you.”

  Tracy looked at her wrist. “Huh … how can you power up a bracelet? And when were you planning on telling me?”

  Jacob laughed softly. “Dunno, each person's focus works differently, even if they look pretty much the same. It's part of your personality, I think. And I was going to teach that after you got a handle on that attack spell, but I suppose I got too stuck on my schedule.”

  Tracy nodded. “OK, so … how do I do it?”

  With a shrug, Jacob offered, “Again, it seems different for each person. But it looks like variations on 'put a token in it' to me.”

  Tracy considered… “All right,” she murmured uncertainly. She took the earth charm from her bracelet and looked at it appraisingly, then pressed it against one of the links of the bracelet. Nothing happened – she just pressed the metal chain against her wrist firmly. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly – and a faint wisp of mist appeared. She smirked, and instead of relying just on physical force, she mentally willed the charm to pass into the bracelet. A sense of wonder filled her as she felt a little bit of give. Slowly, the earth charm slid into the bracelet. It looked like she was pushing the small charm right into her arm, but it was just a gentle pressure as it disappeared into the chain. Spreading out from that first link, the bracelet darkened from its normal bright silver into a thicker, dark brown stone streaked with gray.

  Tracy held up her wrist and shook it, experimentally. “Do something,” she told it, and gestured down the hall, much to the consternation of a young blond man who had been walking peacefully down it, but now leaped into the nearest doorway with a look of brief panic across his face. A feminine scream and Tracy's memory of the hall told her that he'd just stumbled into the women's restroom.

  “Sorry!” Tracy called contritely. “I didn't mean to startle you!”

  The man was thrown from the restroom with a massive burst of air, thudding against the far wall. He didn't look at them, just fled down the hall and around the corner. There was an unseen crash, and some man's voice cried, “Dammit, Jinx!” Tracy winced guiltily.

  Jacob roared with laughter. He tried to say something, but whatever it was didn't come out coherently, and he leaned back against the wall with his eyes screwed shut as he just kept laughing.

  Tracy crossed her arms and let out a 'harrumph' noise. “It's not that funny,” she accused Jacob.

  Jacob nodded vigorously as he wheezed out, “Yes it is!”

  She tried to keep her face dire as she glared at him, but couldn't hold it for long. The corner of her mouth quirked up, then she started giggling. “OK,” she admitted, “Maybe it's a little funny, but that wasn't nice to that poor guy, and especially not to the lady he walked in on.”

  Jacob shook his head again. “Not your fault,” he chuckled, only partly recovering from the bout of laughter as he stood up. “That's just Jinx. Stuff like that happens to him all the time.”

  Tracy tilted her head to look at Jacob. “Jinx? Not his real name, I take it…”

  Jacob shook his head. “Nah. He's got one of the rarer tokens - the token of luck. But it affects him the opposite of anyone else with that core token … sorta. Most people just get good luck. He gets wild sequences of bad luck but often comes out ahead all the same. It's a hectic life he's got, but don't feel too bad, he never gets seriously hurt.”

  Tracy laughed and dropped her face into her palm. “Oh no … I just became part of a catastrophe comedy!”

  Jacob nodded, grinning, still chuckling a little. “I'm so rarely there to see it. Usually, I just hear about it after the fact. You think people exaggerate, but wow… it was that 'dammit, Jinx' at the end that got me.” He stifled down another threatening burst of laughter.

  She looked down at her wrist, then, and the stone set into the chain, which had started the little sequence. “But still, why can't I figure out what to do with this, now?”

  Jacob shook his head as he stepped closer. “Dunno. You'll have to play with it a little. Think about what it is you want it to do. How would you use it? I can't tell you that. Maybe you can bind people with it, or lengthen it to use it as a whip…” He peered at the bracelet curiously.

  Tracy shook the bracelet a little. It just jingled. She shrugged helplessly – she had no idea what she'd do with it. Her imagination failed. Even Jacob's suggestions didn't seem to spark anything.

  “Well, we'll figure it out eventually,” Jacob said reassuringly. “In the meantime, though, we should really get back to practice.”

  Tracy sighed and slumped, the stress rushing back at her.

  “Let's try restraints,” Jacob said. “We'll see if you can build ice up fast enough to make cuffs or something like that. Freeze someone's feet to the ground. That seems like it would be more your speed.”

  Tracy perked up. “I could probably do that!” she exclaimed, grinning. “That's a great idea!”

  “In the meantime,” he said, “I'll think about how you might fight a man of metal. But fair warning - I'm really not the expert there.”

  “So who is?” asked Tracy, then drank down the rest of her water and tossed the plastic cup into the trash.

  Jacob made a thoughtful noise. “That first day, when you signed up, and you went to meet someone. Who'd you go to meet?”

  “You mean Slate?” Tracy asked. “I mean, uh … shoot, what was the name on his card…”

  “Slate?” Jacob asked. “Um … you do mean Nick, right?”

  Tracy nodded.

  “Good. Did he like you?”

  Tracy blinked. “Ummm … he seemed to. Said a lot of fortune-cookie junk.”

  Jacob laughed. “Yup, that's Nick,” he responded. “Slate, huh? Not a bad nickname. He ever succeeds in his bid, that'd make a suitable Lord's name for him. Anyway, you want to learn how to fight a metal man, you talk to Nick. He's the expert.”

  Tracy groaned lightly. “I … didn't exactly leave on a good note. I might have … said some things that wouldn't exactly endear me to him. Especially if I came back asking for a favor.”

  Jacob blinked in surprise. “Oh!” he paused a moment, looking thoughtful. “That … that surprises me. You usually seem so … well, nice!”

  Tracy gave him a flat look. “I was having a pretty bad day, if you'll remember.” Then she remembered what she had promised herself. “Speaking of which … I've been having a hard time on this training, as well. I haven't been as appreciative as I should… I was pretty rude, actually.”

  Jacob laughed. “Don't worry, you lasted a lot longer than I did before I blew my top. Thanks.”

  He got to the door and jiggled the handle a bit. The corridor wasn't hot, but there hadn't been a lot of ice in lock to melt, and he was able to break the slight hold it had on the latch. “Good work on this, by the way,” he said. “That impressed me. It's what gave me the idea of using restraints.”

  The evening passed a little more quickly after that. Tracy wasn't good enough at restraints to actually hold someone by the time the end of the evening had come - she couldn't form the ice around Jacob's foot fast enough, and he could easily break it just by taking a step before she was finished. She felt that she had come a lot further than with the icicle attacks the last several evenings, though, so she was feeling rather accomplished. Though tired, she was feeling downright hopeful
and energetic as Jacob dropped her off at her apartment and wished her good night. So it brought her a special level of frustration when she opened the door to her apartment to see dark-soiled feline paw prints tracking across her tan carpet.

  “Nameless!” she cried in exasperation. “What did you do to my plants?!”

  Nameless was curled up on Tracy's soiled pillow as she came into her bedroom, licking at his quite-clean paws. He looked up with a completely innocent expression on his face. Tracy shook her finger at him. “Don't give me that look,” she scolded. “You're the only cat in here.”

  Satisfied that there weren't going to be newly appearing paw prints, Tracy went to assess the damage. Though the paw prints went near several of the plants, Tracy couldn't find any actual damage or paw prints in the soil of the pots themselves – no obvious source of the footprints. Nameless followed her along curiously, peering into the pots along with her. Tracy gave him a suspicious look.

  Finally, sighing at the phantom damage, she settled with the knowledge that her plants at least looked all right, and went to fill a bucket with warm, soapy water so she could clean up the trail of paw prints. She got down on her hands and knees and carefully started soaking, then patting down the carpet, careful not to grind the surface dirt in deeper. It was slow work, and before long, her hands were starting to ache from resting on them. She sat back, sighing, and wrung her hands, massaging first at her left, then at her right, groaning and looking at the long row of footprints.

  “Wait a minute.” She lifted her hand over the bucket of soapy water and gathered her mind. Despite feeling calm and half-rested, the magic responded sluggishly to her call, and she could feel that distant ache in her head that had been developing over the long evenings of practice. Still, the magic responded to her need, and her breath misted out of her lips. She had to remember to ask Jacob why she had an indicator that she was using magic and no one else did. And hope the answer wasn't yet another iteration of “we don't know.”

  Her hand started tracing slow circles in the air, and the water in the bucket responded by swirling until it matched the speed of her hand. She lifted her hand, and a tendril of water came up from the bucket, a sphere balanced on top of it. She reached out her hand and picked the ball of water out of the air, letting the tendril slide back down into the bucket. She turned the spinning, watery ball over, watching the ripples over the surface. In all the practice and work, yelling and failure, and frustration, and the need to get ready for the fight, she'd rarely gotten to really delight in using her new magical powers, but in this quiet moment, she felt a new sense of wonder. She hoped she would never lose that sense of wonder and just take this for granted.