by Ramsey Isler
“Did Cecil give us any actionable intel?” Newton asked.
“I guess you could say that. He told me everything about Mater. He volunteered all the info before I could even ask.”
“So he did give the kill order.”
I nodded. “Kellar was telling the truth.”
“And he’s going to rip Cecil’s heart out,” Newton said.
“Cecil’s taking a lot of precautions that seem to be keeping the nightcrafters off his back for now,” I said. “But it might just be a matter of time until they catch up to him.”
“Unless he’s actually working with this mysterious spy of ours.”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” I said. “But you’re right, we still have to consider it a possibility. And it would explain why Kellar and his pals haven’t been able to get to Cecil yet. Cecil’s security is pretty good, but not amazing. Maybe another nightcrafter is helping out by protecting him from hostile spells somehow.”
“And we have no way of knowing for sure,” Newton said. “I’ve been working on extending the range of my sensors so I can detect nightcrafters better. But since you’re the only nightcrafter I can reliably test against, I’m not sure if this is going to work for others. Other nightcrafters might be able to hide better now that they know somebody is hunting them, or maybe it’s possible they can access the Rift on entirely different frequencies than you do.”
“So we’re screwed because I suck at nightcrafting,” I said.
“I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that we don’t know what we don’t know. Not enough data to be sure we’re on the right track.”
“I need to be a better nightcrafter,” I said.
“Having feelings of inadequacy?” Newton asked with a smirk.
“It’s not just a feeling,” I said. “I am inadequate here. I need better spells, but there’s no one around to teach them to me, so we’re going to have to go with the only other option we have.”
“Which means remixing the spells you already know,” Newton said. “It worked with the flying thing, that’s for sure. I’ve been going through the data from the scans we did during that process and I think I can guide you a little bit. Not sure how much success we’re going to have with the more complicated spells though. And it’s not like you know that many spells to begin with.”
“We have to try,” I said.
“Yup,” Newton said. “Not much of a choice with everything falling apart around us, so we might as well start right now. I think it’s time we got some new readings from you.”
Newton got up and searched for something in the sea of gadgetry on the floor. I was just about to ask him what the hell he was doing when he jumped up and scampered to his bedroom. Well, maybe “scampered” isn’t quite the right word. He kind of sashayed away in his boxer briefs. I wondered if he actually enjoyed prancing about in his undies. Wouldn’t surprise me if he was a closet exhibitionist.
Newton reappeared, still in his underwear but holding a skull cap dotted with electronic sensors. I recognized it from one of our earlier test sessions. He slapped the cap on my head and started affixing the dermal electrodes to my forehead and face. He grabbed a tablet computer and checked the initial readouts.
He frowned. Whatever he saw wasn’t making him happy. “Feeling particularly down today?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Your brain scans are consistent with depression,” Newton said.
“I’ve just got stuff on my mind.”
“Care to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay then,” Newton said. He went back to fiddling with his tablet and the electrodes and didn’t say another word. I immediately felt a pang of guilt for shutting him out. He didn’t deserve that. But I couldn’t tell him everything, so I tried to talk about what was bothering me without actually talking about it.
“How come you aren’t worried about them finding your family?”
Newton paused for a moment, and his bright blue eyes shifted from his work as he stared at me, confused. “My parents are dead.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt like I should have added something but that was all I could think of.
“Didn’t you read my file?” Newton asked.
“No. I felt it would be like prying. Besides, I like to learn about you the old fashioned way — talking.”
Newton smiled. “I’m done with the transcranial sensors.”
He showed his tablet to me and tapped the screen a few times. The display changed to a new series of graphs and readouts. “Could you confirm this data is close to what we saw before?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Newton went back to fiddling with the tablet and was quiet for a while. Then he said, “You can ask me about them.”
“About what?” I said. “The charts?”
“My parents.”
“Oh. That’s okay. You don’t hav—”
“Happened three years ago,” Newton said. “They were on vacation in North Carolina. The hotel they were staying at had a carbon monoxide leak. After the inspection, it turned out the hotel had just installed a new water heater that malfunctioned. My parents died in their sleep, holding each other.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Thanks,” Newton said. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“No. Why?”
“I’m wondering if certain emotional, physical, or sensory experiences have an effect on your magic.” He sat down in the nearest chair, stared at the ceiling, and rubbed his chin for a while. He seemed lost in thought, searching his impressive memory for a clue.
“Did you leave anything out of that report you made about the cave in Newfoundland?” he asked.
Memories came flooding back to me — memories of a truly magical place I’d found by accident while having a disagreement with Newton during our stay in Canada. That trip proved enlightening in more ways than one. Not only did Newton discover how to interrupt the spell the nightcrafters were using to phase into the Rift, I had discovered an incredibly old cave where the Rift had aged into something different than I’d ever seen, with amazing docile creatures I could only experience through a hybrid of senses since I couldn’t see in the darkness.
“I didn’t leave anything out,” I said. “I was as descriptive as I could be.”
“And you said that it felt like a bunch of different senses working at once,” Newton said.
“Yeah. I could see the creatures in really bright colors. But it was pitch black in there, so I wasn’t really seeing with my eyes. And I could taste things.”
“You licked them?” Newton asked.
“No, I didn’t lick them. I would just listen to them or smell something and I guess my mind would fill in the blanks that my eyes couldn’t see.”
“You mentioned synesthesia in your report,” Newton said.
“Yeah. That’s what I think it was. I saw a documentary on LSD once.”
“Interesting,” Newton said. He nibbled his lip as he stared up at the ceiling. He was still just wearing his underwear and it was starting to be a distraction. My eyes couldn’t help but wander and survey parts of him I hadn’t seen before.
Then he jumped out of his chair and ran into his bedroom. “I gotta go!” he said.
“Uh . . . what?”
Newton appeared seconds later with pants on and a t-shirt that he was struggling to get into. “Gotta get something before the guy closes up shop.”
“What guy?” I asked. Newton got his shirt on and ran for his shoes.
“The guy with the stuff,” Newton said. He slipped on his shoes, gave me a wink, and ran out the door.
* * *
About twenty minutes after Newton left on his mysterious mission to meet “the guy”, my eyelids started to get heavy. I realized I’d been running full throttle for nearly two days with only a little bit of sleep. I trudged into my bedroom and fell face-first onto the bed. The sweet bliss of sleep soon took over.
&
nbsp; I woke up when I heard a door SLAM closed.
“Honey,” said Newton from the living room of our suite, “I’m home!”
I checked the clock on the nightstand and saw that I’d been asleep for about an hour. A decent nap. Outside, the sun had gone down and the lights of the city were in full bloom. I reached up to scratch an irritating itch on my head and realized I still had the sensor cap on my head. No point in taking it off now that Newton was back. I yawned and stretched as I left my bedroom and saw Newton with a crumpled white paper bag in his hand.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
Newton grinned. “Had to go see a man about some pharmaceuticals.”
“You went to a pharmacist?”
“Yes,” Newton said, “the street vending kind of pharmacist.”
I waited a second to make sure I was understanding him right. “I didn’t know you have a drug habit.”
“I don’t,” Newton said. “But I needed a certain substance. Normally I would make it myself but I don’t know if we have the time. So I got in contact with a friend of a friend who’s a raver.” Newton reached into his bag and retrieved a small vial of clear liquid.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
“Lysergic acid diethylamide,” Newton said. “LSD.”
“No,” I said. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“Okay,” Newton said. “I won’t tell you. But I still need you to take it.”
“Dude. I’ve only smoked weed like once in my entire life and now you want me to drop acid?”
“Yes,” Newton said. “I firmly believe that you need to have extraordinary sensory experiences to do new magic. Based on your description of that experience you had in the cave, LSD will probably help with that.”
“Probably?” I asked.
“I give it sixty percent probability,” Newton said.
“What happens in that other forty percent chance of failure?”
“Worst case scenario, you have one hell of a trippy night and a story to tell at parties.”
“Yeah, because I go to so many parties,” I said. “I gotta say, none of this seems very scientific.”
“Nonsense,” Newton said, “LSD has been used in scientific experiments for decades. Actually, it even started as a legitimate drug to supplement psychotherapy. It just fell out of respectability once the hippies learned about it, but nowadays there’s a renewed interest in real scientific studies about its uses.”
“Didn’t the CIA use it for mind control experiments?” I said, with perhaps a bit too much accusation in my voice.
“Well . . . yes,” Newton said, “but, you know, those guys are assholes. Don’t let their bad behavior prejudice you. Just trust me on this. There’s real science here.”
“Okay,” I said. I knew there was little point in fighting. I had no better ideas. “So how do I take this stuff?”
“A couple drops on a sugar cube,” Newton said. He reached into his paper bag and produced a smaller plastic baggie of sparkling white sugar cubes. He took one out along with a tiny eye dropper that he dipped into the vial of LSD. Two drops of the clear liquid went onto a cube, which he handed to me.
“Just consider it the strangest candy you’ll ever eat,” Newton said.
I took the cube from his hands, holding it daintily between my index finger and thumb. “Have you ever done this yourself?”
“Just once,” Newton said. “For research.”
“Uh huh. And what did you discover?”
“My inner light,” Newton said with a sly smile. “Now hurry up and take that thing so we can get this over with.”
I popped the sugar cube into my mouth. It just tasted like sugar. Nothing special. The walls didn’t start melting and I didn’t see any rainbows. “When does it start to take effect?”
“That can vary quite a bit depending on the person,” Newton said. “Give it thirty to sixty minutes.”
“Well, shit. What do I do in the meantime?”
“Extend your presence in the Rift,” Newton said. He walked over to the light switch panel, flipped everything off, and the room went dark. “Really get in there. Balls deep.”
“We’re supposed to be hiding,” I said.
“Have you detected any nightcrafters even remotely close to this place?”
“No,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean—”
“I’m a big fan of caution,” Newton said. “But we’re kind of in a desperate situation here. We’ve reached a point where we need to take some reasonable risks. So quit wasting time and make the magic happen.”
“Okay,” I said, drawing more power from the Rift than I had in a long while. “Which spell do you want me to cast?”
“The one that requires the most exertion from you.”
“Well that’s easy,” I said. “Give me that salt shaker next to the sink.”
Our eyes had adjusted to the darkness now, and the distant city lights filtering in through the windows provided just enough glow for us to navigate the room. Newton walked into the kitchenette while I sat down in front of the glass coffee table. Newton came back with the little plastic salt container and handed it to me. I spilled a few salt crystals onto the glass tabletop. Then I stared at them, and tried to focus.
“Uh,” Newton said, “mind telling me what you’re doing?”
“I am trying to move these little ass grains of salt.”
“And why is that difficult?” Newton asked. “I’ve seen you magically move stuff with ease.”
“You’ve seen me move big things all at once,” I said without taking my eyes off of the salt. “But this is entirely different. I’m trying to move these salt crystals one at a time. That requires an incredible amount of fine control and focus. It’s easy to just summon a big old blast of force to knock them off the table. But to move each one individually, precisely? That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had a migraine for two days the last time I tried this.”
“Great,” Newton said. He did a quick check on the sensor cap on my head. “I’ll just be monitoring the data over here.”
Newton disappeared from my peripheral vision and I settled into full focus on my task. Those little white dots on the table might as well have weighed a ton; they were that hard to move. Moving something small with magic is almost like extending an invisible version of your arm and fingers out to it. But that invisible limb shakes like it has bad nerves, and it takes extreme focus and willpower to keep it steady. My forehead was dripping with sweat by the time I got one granule to move an inch. It tumbled into position like a tiny boulder.
“Your readings are off the charts,” Newton said.
“Great,” I said, but I kept my focus on the salt. “Now what?”
“Keep doing this until the acid starts to take effect.”
So that’s what I did. In the next twenty minutes I moved another grain of salt about two millimeters. I was soaked with sweat. My skin felt like it was on fire. I was seriously about to give up.
Then I saw fat, sparkling green frogs falling from the ceiling.
“Uh . . . I’m feeling a little weird,” I said.
“Good,” Newton said. “Weird is what we’re going for. Just stay focused on what you’re doing.”
“I am. But I’m getting pretty goddamn tired here.”
“Fine,” Newton said. “Let’s try to speed things up.” Then he jammed another LSD-laden sugar cube in my mouth.
A powerful wave of sensation hit my tongue, traveled up my neck, and hit my brain. It was sugary sweetness, but far more intense than I’d ever experienced before. It was almost orgasmic. But mixed in there somewhere, like backup singers drowned out by a big voice diva, were other sensations besides the overload on my taste buds. I heard the sounds of a wind chime. My tongue caught a faint hint of vanilla on the sugar cube and my mind produced a group of triangles floating in my peripheral vision. My skin tingled all over. Then I swore I could smell the ocean, bringing a flood of surprising memories of swimming off
the coast of Florida.
The recollection of the sea brought to mind the saltiness of the seawater, and my mind shifted back to the salt crystals on the table. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was salt. All I could think about was salt. Salt. Salt. I could taste it through my skin, and just thinking of its rough texture made images of the number four blossom into my vision like intricate fireworks. My senses were all mixed up in an incomprehensible mishmash. I started to tremble. The world went all white.
I closed my eyes to try to block out the sensations, but that didn’t help much. When I opened my eyes again I was lying on the couch. Newton was staring at me with a frantic look in his eyes. My mouth felt mealy, like I’d just eaten a handful of sand.
“What just happened?” I said.
“You zoned out for a bit,” Newton said. “Damn near every neuron in your head started firing at the same time. Lots of brain chemistry going on. You got lost in the sensory overload.”
“That seems like a nice way of saying I was tripping balls,” I said. “Let’s not try that again.”
“Actually,” Newton said, “I think we need to try it a lot more.”
“Why in the hell would we do that?” I asked.
Newton looked to his left. “Because of that.”
I turned my head to see what he was looking at. On the table were about seven or eight squarish blocks with sides about three inches long. They were mostly transparent, except for random striations in the center and along the side.
“Why are there big ice cubes on the table?” I asked.
“Those aren’t ice cubes,” Newton said. “Those are the salt crystals you were trying to move.”
I sat there looking at the blocks for a while. My head was still a little foggy so I wanted to make sure I was understanding what Newton was saying. “I made them bigger?”
“Yes you did. About ten thousand times bigger. I’ve seen you pull a lot of tricks, but that was certainly new. I’m assuming that’s not a spell you were ever taught.”
“Hell I don’t think there even are any spells to enlarge things. How did I do that?”
“I don’t know for sure yet,” Newton said. “But it does seem to validate my hypothesis that sensory manipulation can create neurological activity that enhances your abilities. It might have something to do with the electrical patterns produced by your brain when it encounters certain stimuli.”