Jimmy swallowed nervously. This was happening really fast; he was excited but also fighting a rising panic. Lydia was a senior, at least three years older than Jimmy, and she looked experienced. Jimmy wasn't sure she'd be impressed with his skills, which he knew were seriously lacking in practical application.
Lydia turned to close the door and frowned, having spotted for the first time the trio of ladies that had poured into the room behind Jimmy.
"What the hell?" Lydia said, disgusted.
Jimmy didn't have a reply. He wasn't sure he could speak even if he knew what to say. He hadn't invited the girls along; they had just followed. He couldn't control the magic that was obviously swirling around him, enticing women to follow after him.
"Ladies, I'm not sure who you are," Lydia began in a condescending tone, placing a hand possessively on Jimmy's shoulder, "or why you're following us, but this isn't an orgy." Lydia lifted her chin toward the door. "Out!"
"I'm not in your sorority. You can't boss me around," a tall black student snapped back.
"This is my house, bitch," Lydia said, stepping forward. "I'll throw you out on your skinny ass."
The room's other occupants looked up, curious at the sudden shouts and negative vibe.
Even though Jimmy was turned on by the fact that these two beauties were arguing over him, he didn't want a physical fight to start – that was just crazy. Jimmy wondered how much control the magic actually gave him. Could he defuse the situation?
"Whoa . . . hey now." Jimmy wasn't sure what he should say. His ability to speak to the opposite sex was limited even when they weren't angry. "There's no reason to get angry. We can all . . . you know, hang or whatever."
"I wanted some alone time with you," Lydia pouted.
"Right, yeah – we'll have our time, of course, but maybe we can all just – you know . . ." Jimmy was out of his league and out of ideas. He gave a weak smile.
Lydia sighed and returned his half-smile with a big toothy grin. "Okay, if that's what you want."
Jimmy was startled by Lydia's quick acquiescence; it had to be the magic.
"Agreed. My name is Stacey," said the pretty black student.
The two other girls introduced themselves and then they all converged on Jimmy, backing him into a corner of the room. They peppered him with questions and all found reasons to reach out and touch his arm or hand, laughing at every stupid comment he made. Jimmy absorbed the attention like a sponge, he talked non-stop about himself, about how smart he was, about how he was planning to launch a start-up – not true – and how several venture capitalist firms were starting to fight over his ideas – very not true.
As he spoke, Jimmy was oblivious to the fact that the other couples that had been in the room when he first entered were having issues. All the women in the room kept looking over at Jimmy, and the men they were with were not happy. One couple started arguing, the guy trying to pull the girl from the room without success. This kerfuffle finally got Jimmy's attention. He glanced over and saw the guy, having given up on getting his date to leave, give him a murderous look. Jimmy looked away quickly; he didn't want any trouble. He kept the guy in his peripheral vision and was relieved when the guy threw his hands up and stomped to the door.
A loud crack resounded as the guy slammed face-first into the solid double doors.
"Damn it!" the guy shouted, rattling the doorknob with no effect. "Who locked the door?"
The lights flickered.
The music, which had been a muted thumping, seemed to be getting louder. The guy started hammering on the door, yelling for someone on the other side to open it. The guy's date had made her way over to Jimmy's group and had a maniacal smile on her face. She tried to push her way past Lydia and Stacey.
"Hold on there, girlfriend," said Lydia, blocking the girl's path.
"Yeah, crazy-eyes. Nobody invited you over here," Stacey added.
The lights flickered again.
The guy trying to leave the room had lost all patience. He began kicking at the door.
"Open!" Kick. "The!" Kick. "Damn!" Kick. "Door!"
The lights flickered again and then winked out. The music, however, was now so loud the walls were vibrating. With the room plunged into darkness, the ladies surrounding Jimmy decided to make their move. Several hands grabbed at Jimmy's butt and one brave hand cupped his crotch.
Jimmy gasped. His body reacted on instinct; the hands roaming over his sensitive parts had him shaking with pleasure.
The moment didn't last nearly long enough because the temperature in the room dropped instantly – the air becoming freezing cold. Jimmy realized, for the first time, that there was something odd about the darkness – it was too dark. Some ambient light should have been coming through the windows and the crack around the doorjamb. He fumbled for his phone and thumbed it on. Nothing happened. He mashed the buttons, but the phone seemed like it was dead.
"My phone isn't working," a scared voice called out.
"Neither is mine," another voice agreed.
"Just turn the lights on!" That was Lydia; Jimmy was sure of it.
"The lights aren't working," yet another voice answered. "What's going on? Is this a joke? Because it's not funny."
"Why is it so cold?"
"Help me get these doors open," said someone, followed quickly by the bang of another kick against the wooden barriers.
"Screw the door. Somebody break a window."
Jimmy listened as people fumbled around the room, some banging on the door, others attempting to find a window. A creeping fear began to take hold of him. Whatever was happening was not natural: the darkness, the cold, the sealed doors. They were trapped in this room.
Magic.
The word leapt into Jimmy's mind.
A deep, terrifying rumble cleared all thoughts from Jimmy's head.
"It's an earthquake!" somebody screamed.
The banging and shouting escalated. People were terrified.
A flash of light appeared in the darkness. At first, Jimmy thought that somebody had gotten their phone working, but then the flash turned into a jagged slash. It looked like a lightning bolt, but it didn't disappear the way lighting does. Instead, the slash turned into a crack, and the crack began to expand.
CHAPTER 11
The sun was down; the sky turning a deep purple by the time Lucy and I reached the building where the Wiccan club was meeting. Unfortunately, there was no Dahlia.
"We're going to have to go in guns blazing," Lucy said, rolling her shoulders and cracking her knuckles, as she prepared to storm the meeting.
"What?"
"Somebody has to know where she is. Plus, Wiccan clubs are notorious for dabbling in magic they have no business messing with. Like I said, they're probably the source of the potion Dahlia used this morning," Lucy answered.
"So, what's the plan? Rush in and bust heads?" I asked.
And Lucy shocked me by replying, "Works for me."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I was joking."
"Orson, I don't think you're quite grasping the situation. Ogres and trolls don't just go cruising outside of the areas designated for them. And mimics . . . they're only used for one thing."
"I get it. Something seriously weird is going down, but smashing up a meeting of college-kid-Harry-Potters seems a bit extreme . . ." I trailed off; my super sniffer had caught an unpleasant smell. I sniffed the air, trying to pinpoint the odor.
"What is it?" Lucy asked, dropping into a defensive stance. "More ogres?"
"No. It doesn't smell that bad . . ." I turned in a circle. There was a tree a few yards away. "I think there's something behind the tree – maybe – no, up in the tree."
I scanned the upper branches. It took a second, but I spotted the guy who was trying to hide in the tree's thick foliage. In the magic spectrum, he had a faint glow of magic around one of his hands, but that wasn't what had drawn my attention. The guy stunk, bad. It was more than just an unwashed body. He had deliberately rubbed something foul a
ll over his body – it was coming off him in waves.
I didn't keep staring at the tree; I didn't want the lurker to know he'd been spotted. I turned to look in the opposite direction and whispered from the side of my mouth, "Get a whammy ready."
"A whammy?"
"Just get ready to catch."
"Catch what?"
I didn't answer; instead, I moved in a blur, claws out to help me scale the tree. The guy shouted when I grabbed him, cursing in what sounded like Latin. I threw him, not super hard but hard enough that his shouting turned into a scream.
Lucy was a pro. She caught him with a telekinetic spell before he hit the ground and broke anything important.
I jumped down, landing lightly next to the stinky guy who had rolled into a ball and was whimpering to himself. I wasn't sure what he was saying because he was still speaking a different language, but I knew spell-casting lingo when I heard it. I growled in his ear, and he pissed his pants, but he stopped with the jabbering spell language
"Oh, that's so gross," Lucy said, holding her nose.
I tapped the guy with my foot. "Who are you?"
"And why were you up in that tree?" Lucy demanded, crouching down. "But, more importantly, where oh where did you learn those fancy Latin words?"
"Dissapati perribunt," stinky-dude croaked.
Lucy calmly pulled one of her daggers from beneath her coat. "Try that again and I'll cut your tongue out. Understand?"
Stinky-dude's eyes widened at the sight of the blade, and he nodded silently.
"What did he say?" I asked, curious.
"I think he was trying to cast an invisibility spell," Lucy replied. She shifted her feet to get a better look at the guy's face. "Which is ridiculous, because true invisibility is impossible. But whoever taught you that awful attempt at a spell didn't teach you that, did they?"
"So, he's a mage?" I asked, confused. "Because I'm not getting that from his aura. The only thing magical about him is the bracelet on his left hand."
"No. He's no more a mage than I'm Beyoncé," Lucy said, using the tip of her blade to poke at the bracelet. "But somebody charmed this little bit of metal. What does it do? Something simple I'd imagine, like a detection spell?"
Stinky remained silent, so I tapped him with my foot again. He flinched, but nodded.
"What does it detect?" I asked.
"Probably magic," Lucy responded, "but it's a very weak spell, almost useless. It's like I said yesterday, there's no way to keep an item magically charged."
"If he's not a mage, then what is he?"
"A hedge-witch." Lucy spat the word out like she had tasted something bad.
"Hedge-witch?" I repeated.
"A person who plays at being magical. They give the Society a ton of headaches. You can find them all over YouTube and the Net, spouting crazy theories and trying to convince anyone who will listen of their power. The smarter ones are actually able to make decent money by scamming the more gullible idiots. Isn't that right, hedge-witch?"
"Warlock," Stinky mumbled.
"Excuse me?" Lucy said.
"I'm a warlock." Stinky did his best to sound important, but the wet stain spreading across his pants, and his general dirtiness and smelliness, did nothing to help him sell the idea.
Lucy laughed. "Oh, sweetie, there is no such thing as a warlock."
"I am—" Stinky began.
"A sad, pathetic loser who was sold a load of crap. The bracelet was the clincher, wasn't it? Up to that point, you were skeptical, but then you were handed a piece of magic jewelry that made your arm tingle when it detected other magic. Am I right?" Lucy sighed. "Of course, what you didn't know – what you couldn't know – was that magic is everywhere. It's in the very air we breathe, and so that tingle you feel is just residual power. The question is: why are you here at Stanford? I don't believe in coincidences, so what am I missing?"
Stinky didn't look happy. Lucy's words must have hit too close to home. He tried to nonchalantly take in the surroundings – looking for an escape route, I assumed.
"If he has no real magic, what was with all the Latin?" I asked. "And what is that crap he's rubbed all over himself?"
"Oh, he was taught some basic herbology. That's what you're smelling. Probably some foul protective concoction," Lucy answered. "And he's memorized really cool sounding spells, but there's no power behind them. They're just words." Lucy stared down at Stinky, who continued to avoid eye contact. "But no matter how hard he tries, how much he believes, nothing ever happens when he recites the spells. That's because of the missing, integral, key ingredient."
Stinky's eyes snapped up. Lucy had his attention now. I could see the eagerness, the longing to know how to make the magic real.
It was blood.
Blood powered magic – either the blood coursing through the caster's own body, or in the case of blood mages, the blood forcefully taken from an innocent – a sacrifice. I knew Lucy wasn't about to share that knowledge, but I didn't think dangling it in front of this guy was a great idea.
"Okay, sharing time is over," said Lucy. "You need to tell us why you're here, and why you're spying on a bunch of hippie Wiccans."
Stinky surprised me by crossing his arms and turning his head in defiance. "You're not the cops. I don't have to answer any of your questions."
"Wrong answer, dude," I said, letting my hands morph into claws, Wolverine style, and my eyes glow bright. All my practicing in the mirror had come in handy after all.
Following my lead, Lucy ignited a fireball and tossed it back and forth between her hands like a baseball. I'd once asked her why she used fire as her go to spell, she'd explained that it was flashy and even though it was 2018 fire still freaked people out. Stinky proved her point, because if he had not already relieved his bladder, he would have done so then. He did start whimpering again, not in Latin, just in good old-fashioned terror.
"Let's try this again: why are you here?" Lucy asked, grinning wickedly. I think she enjoyed scaring the crap out of Stinky. The girl had issues.
Stinky spilled his guts. He started talking so fast it was hard to understand him. "It's all over the message boards that there's a nexus of power building over the entire Stanford area – power like no one has ever seen. It's all pointing to an event . . . a super convergence, some believe an ancient one – one of the twelve keepers of arcane knowledge will reveal themselves, the signs are everywhere . . . The Wiccans seemed like the best place to start looking . . . I've been faithful. I've kept—"
"Stop," Lucy commanded. She ran her fingers through her hair and blew out a long, slow breath.
"What?" I asked. "Don't tell me that any of that made sense."
"No, he's crazy," said Lucy, "but that doesn't mean he's wrong."
"Huh?" I was confused, again. Dealing with the Paragon Society and their nonsense often left me feeling that way, and it was starting to get old real fast.
"Ancient ones and convergences: that's a bunch of hedge-witch mumbo-jumbo, but something is . . . off. Maddie's energy signature, for one, not to mention ogres at In-N-Out . . ."
Stinky perked up at the mention of ogres. "You've been witness to a creature of the forest?"
"Shut it," Lucy said, flicking a small thumbnail sized fireball sizzling into Stinky's pants, causing him to jump and yip in pain.
"You said the Society map indicates magical flare-ups. What if somebody else has figured out how to track them?" I theorized.
"That would be very bad," she answered, in a chilling tone. Lucy stopped tossing the fireball and pressed the flame way too close to Stinky's face, "When is this convergence supposed to occur? I will know if you lie to me, hedge-witch, and I will burn you alive."
"The next couple of days," Stinky answered immediately. "It's supposed to happen in the next couple of days. That's all I know – please don't set me on fire." He started crying.
"Lucy." I nodded to her hand.
She pulled it away from Stinky's face and let the flame die. "We're going
to need reinforcements," she said.
"What about Stinky here?" I asked.
Lucy answered my question by grabbing Stinky's head between her hands. He fought her at first, but after a moment his body went limp and his eyes stared blankly.
Lucy began to speak in a quiet, but forceful voice: "You will not remember us, you will not remember anything you witnessed us do, you will not remember any words spoken by us or any answers you gave us."
Lucy peered into Stinky's eyes, seeing something I could not discern. I switched on my sight. In the magic spectrum, long red strands of energy connected Lucy's aura to Stinky's aura. Energy was pulsing from her, directly into his skull and brain.
Memory modification.
Poking around the heads of non-magical citizens was one of the Society's main tools of enforcement. It was brutal, but efficient.
Lucy continued to repeat the words until she was satisfied with whatever she was seeing inside of Stinky's brain. Then, as an afterthought, she added, "You will also have a strong desire to return to your home and take a long hot shower with lots of soap."
I chuckled.
Lucy eyed me. "What? The guy stinks to high heaven. He's a walking health hazard." She dropped her hands from his head, and Stinky sat back on his butt. A small string of drool slipped out from the corner of his mouth.
"Um, is he going to be okay?" I asked, snapping my fingers in his face and getting no response.
"He'll be fine. His brain just needs a minute to reboot." Lucy pulled out her cellphone and gestured me to follow her. She called Cynthia, turning the phone on speaker. I listened in as she explained the situation.
"The map hasn't registered any other major spikes," said Cynthia. "Are you sure the information this hedge-witch provided is accurate?"
"Normally, I would just blow him off as a nut-job, but the presence of Low Creatures and the strangeness surrounding Maddie's aura leads me to believe that something is happening – or is about to happen," said Lucy. "If Orson had more training . . ."
I frowned at Lucy's unspoken assessment of my ability or lack of ability. Even though it was accurate, it still stung my stupid man ego. Lucy stuck her tongue out at me.
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