Hard Magic

by Laura Anne Gilman

  None of them denied her claim. None agreed with it, either, although the other woman nodded her head thoughtfully. They all knew Ian.

  The first woman went on, selling her position. “I’ve kept my mouth shut until now. I’ve not interfered with Council decisions even when I thought they were dangerously misguided. But this… Ian’s gone too far now. All indications are that he’s gathering his tools even as we speak, and despite what he may say—despite what he may even believe!—nothing good will come of this. Nothing.”

  She might have been desperate, but her words carried a sound conviction to them, the undertone of authority almost impossible to deny.

  “What would you have us do?” a second man asked, raising his now empty glass over his shoulder to signal for a waitress to bring a refill.

  Her own glass was still half-full: she had been too busy talking to do more than taste the contents. “Help me stop him. However and with whatever it takes. For our safety—and his own.”

  six

  “Focus. Stay focused….”

  “I am focused!” Or I would be if Nifty would stop hovering over me like a huge, dark-winged moth on steroids. “Back off, big guy. You’re supposed to be helping, not pestering.”

  Trying to ignore my partner’s looming presence—no easy thing considering the sheer bulk of him—I returned my attention to the pattern on the paper in front of me.

  I could do this. I knew I could. It was easy, once you knew the steps, and the steps had been hammered into us for two weeks now. I could do it.

  When Stosser had told us, that first day, that we were going to learn, I’m not sure what we were expecting. Handouts, maybe, or lectures, based on how many books there were in the office? What we got was hands-deep in the guts of magic theory. Most of what you learn in mentorship, past the basics, involves memorizing spells handed down, tested and true, that have a distinct result to a specific invocation. What we were doing here, now, was none of that. It was stripped-to-basics logic and intent-to-cause current-use. If anyone had ever thought that magic was a game, that current was a soft skill, they knew better now. This was pure New Ways—current as hard science.

  The past two weeks we’d been under a strict no-use rule in the office—no current allowed for anything. Instead, the time was filled with lectures, and readings, and theoretical exercises designed to break down what we thought we knew, and rebuild it in the service of whatever Benjamin Venec and Ian Stosser told us to do; reading up about blood splatter and bullet trajectories, fingerprinting and footprint identification as it was done in the Null world—and then talking, endless talking, about how it might be done with current—and, more important, how it might be hidden by current. Because that was the thing; using current to bring down current. Theoretically. We were, as Nick said more than once, making this up out of hope and whole current. And that meant we had to understand it.

  I’d never been on the cutting edge of anything before. I wasn’t sure I was enjoying it.

  It wasn’t helping that in the past week, anything that could go wrong seemed to be doing so with a gleeful glint in its eye. First the coffeemaker had died in a splutter of sparks that had us all looking accusingly at each other. Then Sharon had gotten stuck in the elevator with Nifty when both of them were coming back from lunch—not together—and I don’t know what they said to each other but body language when we finally got them out said it probably wasn’t polite. And, just yesterday, Stosser had hit the table with his fist, trying to get some point or another into our heads, and the entire table—a solid wood table—collapsed as though termites had taken up residence in the legs.

  “Gremlins,” Nick had diagnosed. “We definitely have gremlins.”

  “There aren’t any such thing,” Sharon said. “It’s just a myth Nulls made up to explain a series of noncatastrophic events.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Normally, I’d side with Sharon on this one. Sometimes crap happening was just crap happening, and we were under enough stress that any mechanical failure in the building could easily be explained by someone’s current getting a little frisky, even without them realizing it. But I couldn’t see the Guys not noticing—especially since they were the ones driving us so hard. And I didn’t know of any current-flare that would take out the legs of a wooden table….

  So, gremlins? I didn’t know. But I was looking around carefully whenever I entered a room, and taking the stairs whenever possible, rather than the elevator. Just to be cautious.

  Somehow, we managed to survive without anyone getting killed, or saying anything too regrettable, and finally, reluctantly—as much to shut us up as because they thought we were ready—the Guys were letting us try actual physical tests of what we’d been discussing. I was so very tired of theory at this point, being able to actually use current rather than just talking about it was a relief. Except for the part where translating theory into practice was damned difficult.

  “You going to stand there and stare at it all day, or what?” Nifty wasn’t quite as annoying as Sharon, but he had the needling thing down to a damn art.

  “Shut up.” Dipping a mental finger into my core, I drew out a slender cord of current, waiting while it soothed from a deep blue to dark green, responding to my will. I saw it as a malleable cord, just so long and just so wide, and it became that cord. Behind me, I could feel Nifty grounding himself, creating a pocket of current that would, ideally, support and balance me while also protecting anyone passing by. Ideally.

  He was doing his job. I needed to do mine. The trick was to do it delicately, with just the right touch, and not overdo it, not overstress the powder…. You just touch the tip of the current to the paper, and—

  The next thing I knew, I was flat on my ass about six feet away, and there was a large lump of ex-football player lying on top of me.

  “Normally I don’t mind being on the bottom,” I managed to get out, “but damn it, Nifty, off!”

  He stirred, but didn’t get off me, and his elbows were pointy as hell.

  “I mean it, Lawrence, you’re crushing my damn ribs. Move!”

  “I’m trying,” he muttered, digging his elbows in even more, just as the door crashed open and the workroom was filled with people.

  Or three people, anyway. When you’re flat on the floor, even one body’s too much of an audience.

  “Everyone all right?” Venec asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” I said, still trying to get air back into my lungs.

  “Man, Torres, you really blew that one,” a voice said from somewhere to the left of Venec.

  I was in no mood for puns, and just turned my head and glared at Nick from under Nifty’s tree-trunk arm. I’d done some hand-to-hand with the guy—that was part of our training, too—but somehow he seemed heavier now.

  I was just about to use current to shove him off me when someone beat me to the push. His body lifted smoothly—more smoothly and way more gently than I would have done it—until he was standing on his feet again. Sharon went over to check him out, but he waved her off. They weren’t exactly buddy-buddy with each other, and there was no way he was going to let her see any weakness. “I’m okay. Just gotta get the ringing out of my ears.”

  He wasn’t talking about a possible concussion; we had—all right, I had—managed to set off the office’s internal alarms. Again.

  “Torres? Are you all right?” Venec asked again.

  “Yeah.” Everything felt okay, anyway. I was sore, and pissed off, and probably bruised seven ways from Sunday, but nothing was broken.

  Thankfully, the alarm shut off then, and I felt a little better.

  “Maybe you should just give up on the delicate jobs,” Sharon suggested, managing to sound both concerned and bitchy in the same tone. I glared at her. Snooty bitch, just because she got it right the first time…

  Venec interrupted then. “All right, everyone, back to work. Lawrence, take ten. Outside. Let Mendelssohn fuss at you. It will make her feel better. Torres, let’s do
it again. Without the explosions this time, if you please.”

  He didn’t offer me a hand—or current—up. I didn’t expect it. The one thing I’d learned over the past few weeks of training was that if you screwed up, you had to get yourself out. The Guys were all about building teamwork—that’s why we worked in pairs or groups, not alone—but they’d hammered into us that you also had to be ready to deal on your own in an emergency, too. There just weren’t enough of us to go around, and not all of us, apparently, worked well with each other. Nifty and I were fair enough, and Sharon and Nick were a charm. Me and Nick complemented each other surprisingly well, but put Pietr and Nifty together and all you got was ugly, et cetera. Pietr and I got along so well they’d stopped pairing us together, which was disappointing. And Nifty and Sharon? Not even Stosser was optimistic enough to pair them together without supervision. Not until they got their respective egos under control, anyway.

  Sharon, also, we’d discovered, had paramedic training, and that made her the de facto medic for the group. Venec was right. Being able to boss us around like that always put her in a better mood, especially when she could do it to Nifty.

  I really hoped to hell that Venec and Stosser knew what they were doing, pairing us all up and down like this.

  “Torres? Today, please.”

  I crawled to my feet and limped back to the table. The paper with the gunshot residue was ash now, naturally, but I was pretty sure…yep. Venec slid another sheet onto the table, and stood there, his arms crossed, watching me.

  “Again.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  Some of the others were…not scared of Venec, exactly, but cautious around him. You got the sense that he had a nasty edge, if pushed, and god knows that he didn’t hesitate in telling you when you hadn’t met his standards. Nifty seemed to soak it up; I guess it was a lot like training camp.

  Okay, it was training camp. Only without the Gatorade.

  Me? I don’t know. I guess I’m just not easily intimidated. Venec was trying to change that. If he could shake me, he’d know where my weakness was, and then he could hammer on that until it wasn’t a weakness anymore. The Guys had been up-front about what they would be doing, and why.

  So far, I felt relatively unhammered. By them, anyway: this gunpowder trace was kicking my ass. Literally.

  Unlike Nifty, Venec didn’t crowd me, physically or currentwise. He stood nearby, close enough that I could smell whatever cologne it was that he used, something with lime and spice and something stale, like tobacco. It didn’t sound nice, but it made me want to put my nose to his skin and just inhale.

  Uh-oh. I pulled my libido in for a scolding. Bad form, that. If you don’t fish off the company pier, you sure as hell don’t cast your line off the corporate yacht, either. The image was amusing enough that the moment of heat faded away. Not gone—once you’re aware that someone’s hot it never quite goes away—but under the surface, where it wouldn’t embarrass me.

  Magically, it was easier to relax into him. Reaching out with those other senses, I could feel him next to me, solid and grounded like he was made of flexible concrete, ready to catch whatever needed catching, without breaking.

  Reassured that he had that side of things handled, I brought my attention back to the assignment.

  Current, check. Pull and extend, steady hand, strong but gentle control, like petting a skittish kitten….

  Some Talent used spoken spells, or waved their hands, or some other way to focus their will. We weren’t allowed to do any of that. “Senseless showmanship,” Stosser called it, ignoring the fact that he was the showiest showman I’d ever met. Venec practiced what his partner preached, though; when he showed us something, it was stripped down and sparse. That was what we were supposed to be. Efficient and understated.

  “I’ve never been understated in my entire life,” I muttered, even as the slender cord of current touched the residue.

  No explosion this time. Current glimmered, then sank into the gunpowder dust, filling it the way water filled a sponge.

  Now, the next step. Remembering to breathe slowly, evenly, I called the current back to me.

  “Steady,” Venec said, as if I needed the reminder. My ass and back still ached, and I had no desire to take another flyer across the room. Calm, calm. The rumble of disturbed current subsided back into my normal cool swirl; my control held; and the grains of gunpowder, plumped with current, rose off the paper they had been caught against and reassembled in the air. The next step was to draw out from their scattered display something more compact and readable.

  Venec’s voice was soft in my ear: there, but not interrupting my concentration. “Let them show you. Don’t force your will on them.”

  I nodded, feeling a trickle of sweat drop down the side of my face. Using current burned calories; the more you called down—or the more focused your control—the more you burned. Right now I was dying for a chocolate milkshake, a thick hamburger, and a plate of pommes frites.

  Hunger aside, my current behaved itself, drawing the gunpowder off the page and then allowing it, as directed, to retrace its original trajectory, back to the point of explosion.

  “There. The shooter was standing at a…forty-degree angle. Approximately.” I studied the hovering display, and tried to translate it into a horizontal display, rather than a vertical one. “To the left. About two feet away?”

  “To the right, and closer to three feet,” Venec said, totally ruining my sense of accomplishment. I drooped, and the powder fell back onto the table, scattering in a totally useless pattern.

  “Damn.”

  “Oh for— Torres.” His hand came down on my shoulder and turned me around to face him. The interesting thing about Venec was that, yeah, he was good-looking, but his dark eyes overpowered the rest of his face, pure damned charisma pulling you hip-deep and close to drowning. Egomaniacs and geniuses had eyes like those. “You just manipulated gunpowder remnant with current. Without blowing anything up. That alone should have you feeling pretty damn cocky. So you didn’t get every detail right—you managed to perform the test properly. That’s all this is about, right now. We don’t expect perfection.” He dropped his hand away from my shoulder as though he’d just realized he had touched me. “Yet.”

  “I bet Sharon nailed it,” I muttered, aware I was sulking and not really caring if the boss saw it or not.

  Venec’s gaze stayed on me, but it wasn’t quite so piercing, letting me breathe a little. “Sharon is older than you are—” all of five years, yeah “—and you each have different strengths.” I was going to argue, but he overrode me. “What was Ian wearing this morning?”

  I had barely seen Stosser before we were sent off to practice, and it took me a minute to remember. “Ah, jeans, blue, acid-washed, so he probably got them in some thrift store somewhere, but they didn’t have any holes so they might have been really expensive jeans made to look like they came from a thrift shop. On top, a red dress shirt, three-quarters buttoned over a blue rib tank. Hiking boots, brown. Don’t know about socks or underwear. Hair was pulled back with a leather clasp. He really can’t work the crunchy granola look, you know.”

  “He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a bad fairy in his closet,” Venec said, like it slipped out without his brain’s knowledge. He shut down right after that, his entire body language denying he’d ever said any such thing about his partner.

  Too late. I managed not to laugh, but felt better. Even the bastard taskmaster had a snarky side. Good to know.

  Venec recovered fast. “But there, you just made my point for me. A recall like yours—the ability to not only observe quickly but to retain accurate impressions hours later—is as useful a skill as any Sharon, or any of the others, bring to the table. If you all repeated the same skills, you would be a horribly one-dimensional team, and that’s useless to us.”

  I lifted the paper and used a breath of current to wipe the debris back onto the sheet. “You think we’re ever going t
o actually get to use any of this stuff? I mean, for real?”

  Since we’d signed on, the Guys had been running our asses ragged learning how to sift physical debris without compromising it, raise fingerprints off a dozen different surfaces, and extrapolate blood splatter and gunpowder residue, along with a few classes in lock picking and identifying basic current manipulations. It was all interesting, and every day we figured out new ways to use current, but that was all that had happened. The Cosa was keeping their distance. Nobody—as far as we knew, anyway—had come calling for our services.

  Sure, we got paid, and learned stuff, and the Guys seemed unconcerned about how long it was taking for us to start earning our keep, but I wasn’t about to sign a lease on any of the apartments I’d seen, just yet. Not that any of them had been blowing my socks off. Two weeks of searching the ads and calling after leads, and I had my choice of either crap apartments in neighborhoods that would give J nightmares but were within my price range, or getting a roommate in a better area. I really didn’t want a roommate. Did that for three years of college, and that was three years too many. Waking up in the morning with a roommate giving me the hairy eyeball because there was someone sharing my bed, or trying to lecture me on self-respect was not my idea of good living conditions. I had no self-esteem issues, thanks muchly, and my personal life was nobody’s business but my own.

  “What’s the matter, Torres?” Venec goaded me, instead of answering. “Worried that you’re going to be running scenarios for the rest of your life?”

  “Or at least until the money runs out.”

  There was a flash of something on Venec’s face; I’d hit a nerve, I guess. I went back to staring at the gunpowder residue, coaxing it into cleaning itself onto the sheet of paper. Stosser had money, and from the way Venec looked and talked I’d guess he had access to some, too, but I was betting they’d mortgaged everything they had on this, and it had to pay out, probably sooner rather than later.