The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister

by Landon Wark

  Dearest Father. I am having a good time learning sorcery—

  All joking aside he was going to have to come up with some excuse why he was not coming home yet. Most of the ones he had played with so far involved meeting a woman. Those usually fell apart when he realized he would likely have to send a picture with a girl eventually, or at least post one on social media. Maybe the woman from the bar would pose for one. She had seemed to lose interest in him afterwards, a little busy perhaps. He really didn't have any idea how to get a hold of her. Having asked the—what was it; Initiate instructor?—once how he could contact her Harold had gotten the response of 'Best forgo that squirrel, Mikey. She's got Loch Ness.' He was still scratching his head over that.

  The door down the hall opened up and his roommate, Skimbal (a street name) announced himself with a guitar riff from his oversized speakers.

  "Harooooold. Are you going to the weekly meetup tomorrow?" the grizzled and skinny man asked.

  "It's on Friday," Harold replied acridly.

  "Yeah. Tomorrow."

  "Today is Tuesday." He walked his empty bowl over to the sink and rinsed it out. "And could you make more milk when you finish it?"

  "Oh, shit. How many days have I lost? Is it earlier or later I think it is?"

  "Later. It's always later."

  "Well, not like it matters. They'll likely just break it up again."

  Harold frowned. "Are you worried about that?"

  "Bah. Not really. As long as you're not trying to organize some workers around here the government doesn't really care. They'll hassle you for two things, bribes and information on the people they do care about. Trust me. I know."

  "Oh."

  Skimbal started pulling some laundry off the floor around his door and sniffing it. Evidently coming up with an acceptable combination of clothing he started pulling off his pants.

  "All right, man. I got myself another sort of meeting, with some geiles luder."

  Harold winced. "Fine."

  He walked over to the sofa and flopped down as his roommate geared up to go out. Waiting only a minute for an invitation he quickly gave up on the idea and grabbed his phone to absently begin flicking through some of the social media of his friends from back home.

  As the door closed behind his roommate a notification popped up on the top of the screen. Hilde. Harold pulled it down into the centre of the screen.

  "Is this what you were talking about?"

  Below it was a headline obscured by the edge of the screen. He tapped on it and after a second of buffering the article came up.

  "Eastern European official murdered by cult."

  "Fuck," Harold whispered, rising quickly from his spot on the sofa.

  He looked around the apartment, desperate for someone to show the headline to, but Skimbal had left the apartment and was down the hall. He sprinted to the door and threw it open only to find the hallway empty. He thought about trying to catch his roommate by taking the stairs down to the lobby, but would never be quick enough. He sprinted back to the window that looked out onto the street two storeys below. He waited for a minute for the man to appear, watched the sidewalk closely for his distinctive man bun.

  He waited another minute and then two.

  Looking at his phone again Harold wondered if he had gone out the back exit. It was unusual as the alley back there was difficult to navigate.

  "Shit." Harold grabbed his coat off the back of a chair and headed out into the hall, intent on finding one of the others.

  Aegera Has Doubts

  Moments to breathe were getting to be few and far between lately. Following the incident with Yuri, Aegera had spent several hours trying to chase down exactly what was known about the bloody scene that the Adept had caused. Two or three of the Initiates worked in ancillary positions to law enforcement and she had been able to find that, while there was actual video evidence of what had transpired, the police were treating that video as having been altered.

  It was a merciful mistake, but a temporary one as the Initiates had informed her that the footage had been given over to forensic analysts. And when the truth of it came to light there were going to be uncomfortable questions. How much freedom was a corrupt, oligarchic government going to give literal (to use a non-Jonah-approved term) wizards who were going around killing their rank and file was a question Aegera felt should be obvious to anyone.

  But, Jonah, for whatever reason, refused to see it.

  She couldn't tell for sure if it was wilful ignorance or that he was genuinely sure that those oligarchs were suddenly going to join everyone sitting around the campfire once they saw that those people didn't need them. Shit, people didn't need them now.

  She rose from the sofa where she had flopped and proceeded, almost blindly, into the kitchen. Throwing open the cupboard she plucked a wine bottle from the shelf. A tiny amount of liquid sloshed around in the bottom of the bottle, far too little to even bother. There was the option of making more, but she thought better of it. It was already late and wine always interfered with her sleep. The last thing she needed was to wake up with a hangover tomorrow, regardless of how minor. She replaced the bottle, closed the cupboard and took to pacing the carpeted floor of the apartment.

  The idea of just leaving this place, of hopping on a plane and returning to more familiar confines came to her suddenly and disappeared just as quickly. Jonah needed her, if only to vainly attempt to shield him from his own naivety. Also, she was more than certain that she would be unable to escape what was bound to happen before long. Truth be told, she wasn't sure she would want to. She had her hand on the tiller. The tiller of the world. How many southern girls could say something like that?

  "Not many," she whispered out loud.

  It was a long way away from where she began, and she was a long way away from the person she had been even a few months earlier.

  But the world wasn't that different, something that Jonah might not want to admit to. In that former life she had slunk past bosses and middle managers who seemed to base their entire personalities on the fact they had control over their little tinpot empires. Aegera tapped her foot, wondering exactly what was going to happen when those jerks and their minor political power found employees flipping them off because it was easier to make food from nothing than putting up with some watercooler dictator. While, by definition, not in the majority they likely commanded enough capital and (by extension) media power to make things difficult. And as soon as the video forensics came back that was going to be their world.

  Aegera twiddled her fingers. She was going to need help. Tom was decent enough at controlling the Initiates, despite being—what was the phrase?—not their cup of tea?

  Grabbing the phone from its place on the hacked up end table that had been in the apartment when she had (what could generously be called) moved in she tried to recall the damned twenty digit long phone number. The dial tone buzzed several times before a croaking male voice answered.

  "What?"

  "There's trouble, Tom," she replied into the phone.

  "When is there not?" he muttered again. "It's three in the morning, Aggie."

  Aegera bristled. "Three of the Adepts killed a... I don't know... Drug kingpin? Pumped his lungs full of heroin."

  "Christ. Well, I guess we went and created magic Batman, didn't we?"

  "One of the Adepts is dead. We're going to be facing down some heavy police interference in the near future."

  "All right."

  "Am I the only one who sees this as a huge problem?" Aegera squeezed the phone in her grip.

  "It's gonna hafta be a problem for mornin' Tom, innit? Night Tom is trying to make sure that guy's rested enough to deal with it."

  "We'll meet up tomorrow night. I need you to handle the other Adepts. I have to talk some sense into Jonah."

  "Gave me the easier of the two tasks. I like it."

  Aegera snorted and snapped the flip phone shut, cutting off the call. It was the easier of the two jobs.
But she had her doubts that even she could have handled it.

  Tom Nightshade tossed his phone into his pile of study papers in a chair across the room and draped an arm over Lennie's shoulder. The muscles in the arm eased a little as the man rolled over. His brown eyes locked with Tom's for a moment.

  "What was that about?"

  "Mmm," Tom groaned. "Nothing, love. Multiple murder. I'll deal with it in the morning."

  Lennie rose and kicked a pile of papers out of the way as he tread towards the bathroom.

  "Was it that Aggy woman?"

  "Ungh. Yeah. Can we just get some sleep? Like I said; Adepts are doin' all the crimes and—" He yawned.

  "Can we get away anytime soon? It's been six weeks."

  "I don't think so, love."

  Lennie stood in his boxer shorts against the frame of the door to the bathroom. While he was a good Initiate he lacked the flair and ambition that Tom had developed over the past four months. It was getting to be more and more difficult for Tom to juggle the drive he had for the work Jonah McAllister had entrusted to him and the passion that they had shared when all of this had begun.

  Lennie had seemed bright and full of promise at first, but as time had passed it had become clear that Lennie would never be anything other than someone who repeated the spells of others. The idea that Lennie didn't understand exactly why Tom was so intent on pushing forward had been simmering beneath the surface of Tom's mind for some time.

  But he couldn't tell him because... Well, because then he wouldn't be the kind of person Lennie wanted to be with. Same as with everyone else.

  "Can you at least blow off that Aggy girl tomorrow? There's a film I wanna see."

  "Are you kidding?" Tom ran a hand through his thinning hair. "There's real, actual goddamn magic in the world. I'm getting in on the ground floor and you want to see celebrity ass?" Tom sat up a little.

  "I want to spend some time together, Tom. You blow me off for these Adepts every night an—"

  "They're means to an end, love. As soon as I get what I need we can cut 'em loose. But right now, they're important. And Aggy, more so."

  Lennie grumbled and proceeded to the bathroom while Tom lay, staring at the ceiling and listened to the loud urination for a moment or two before rolling over onto his pillow and shutting his eyes. This was the last little bit of shit that would complete the pile. How the hell could anyone want to pull him away from this? For a week? For a day? For an hour? What the bloody hell was wrong with this man? In all the five hells how could anyone who knew him, who allegedly loved him, want to derail his plans like this?

  "Christ."

  A Council of Acolytes

  The meeting place that Tom Nightshade had selected was not what Aegera would have thought it would be. A fairly nondescript Western-based fast food place in an area far enough out of the urban core that it would not be monitored with any permanent measures (at least not for the present), but well trafficked enough that it was expecting customers late at night.

  As she reached for the door handle she let out a sigh into the chilled night air. Little whirls of semi-visible vapours started to form around her face. She missed the less hectic pace of the small farmhouse. Going over a list of people she might like to recruit was far easier than setting up shop in some gathering spot and scoping out strangers. And, of course, the people here were a little less docile. She paused a moment, wondering why that was. For as long as she could remember teachers had drilled it into her that her country had been born of rebellion; throwing off the yoke of oppressive rule. Odd that none of them had thought about doing what the Adepts had done. None of their lives were much better than those of the Initiates here when they were recruited.

  She brushed aside the thought and pulled open the door. The ringing of the bell startled her a little as it caused the young woman guarding the bank of registers at the front to glance at her and then away. Bored. Maybe a good Initiate at some point, but there was business to attend to first.

  Tom was sitting in one of the dimly lit booths towards the back. His seat was just out of the field of a poorly placed window panel. She could be invisible to the outside if she sat next to him, but there was no chance of that happening. She sat down across from him.

  He was wearing his usual dark eyeliner with matching hair and nail colour—changed with magic—and if she squinted hard enough she thought that his features were looking a little more thin than they had been the last time she had seen him.

  "'Sup?" his chin jutted out briefly as if he were acknowledging a schoolmate in the corridor of a mall.

  Bristling, Aegera took a seat, sparing a paranoid glance out of the corner of her eye through the window to the dim street outside. Anyone looking inside might mistake her for a character in a famous painting.

  "We need a battle plan," she sighed.

  "Maybe summon up some enthusiasm, Aggy. Doesn't quite have that third act of the movie ring to it." Tom brushed at the edge of the window with his index finger.

  Aegera glared at him, unwilling to allow him the pleasure of an outburst for the nickname he had come up with for her.

  "Christ. You look awful," he continued. "No sleep for you then?"

  "You can sleep with the Adepts out there murdering people?"

  "Like a bubbling lipped infant. Let me ask you a question. Big J, he's responsible for—" he waved his hand in her general direction. "This whole vanilla milkshake. Why didn't you have him do something about the bags you get under your eyes?"

  Aegera felt her glare involuntarily narrow.

  "Sorry," Tom rested his head against the wall in a surprising act of genuine apology. "I, uh, I'm just used to making personal stuff as messy as possible. Less of it that way, ya know?"

  "Are-are you trying to be friendly, Tom?"

  "Well, it occurs to me that we both need to be on top of our game here and... whatever you're dealing with is obviously weighing pretty hard on you, so—" he waved his hands. "Give it this way. Give it to Uncle Nightshade. I workshopped that with Uncle Tom, but it just felt wrong."

  Aegera rolled her eyes. "Christ, Tom."

  "Do you regret it?"

  "What?"

  "The vanilla milkshake thing."

  She snorted. "Milkshake is right. I... We're really doing this? I feel like we don't have this kind of relationship."

  "We've discussed recruit meetings for weeks and we can't get down into each other's muddy waters? Fine. You want to know something about me... Uhhhh... Once I crapped my pants on a carnival ride. I wasn't even as young as you'd like. I was fourteen."

  Aegera rolled her eyes again. "All right. If it gets you into brain-working mode. I more regret that I felt the need to do it."

  His brow creased.

  "I... uh, well, this whole thing was a medical necessity. At least if I wanted to keep up with Jonah. I tried to take care of myself, but my whole... body just wasn't going to listen. The vanilla milkshake thing is a side effect."

  "Ah. A pleasant side effect?"

  Her lips pursed and she broke eye contact in favour of a less interrogative view out of the window. "I mean, yes and no."

  "Oh yeah? I know a few little crumpets who would give their eye teeth for—" He waved his hand again.

  "Well... It's just that I was the way I was for so long and this just happened so quickly that I'm not sure I know how to be... this way. I almost threw up the first time I tried recruiting out of a nightclub here. When you're growing up they tell you that it doesn't matter what's on the outside, but what's on the inside, you know. There's stories about how good looking people are secretly terrible."

  "Sure. Not exactly right, izzit?"

  "No. Good looking people get good treatment. They don't have the same hills to climb. Same with rich people. I don't know, I just got to the point where I just couldn't believe that this was my one and only life and this was the person I was going to have to spend it as."

  Tom started. "That's pretty dark for you, Aggy."

  "Ye
ah. I just... needed to get out of that life. Be a different person. Does that make sense?"

  Tom ran a finger along the edge of the window. "It does, Aggy."

  "And now, anything is possible... copyright Jonah McAllister. And I'm sitting in a crappy restaurant with you talking about my fat shame."

  Tom leaned his chest into the table, his black rimmed eyes coming uncomfortably close to her face.

  "And I told you about my poop shame. From now on, the two of us are shame sisters."

  Aegera felt her eyes widen. "Great..."

  "All right, so anyway, we've got our little fireworks display, right? Now, I was thinking that would make a ballin' distraction if we need one."

  Down below the limits of human vision and past the realms of cells and macromolecules into where even a small protein would be considered massive, a small window opened up onto the vista of the unseen. This window bore a startling similarity to the scattering field Jonah McAllister had first developed to avoid detection by the primitive surveillance cameras in the hospital months earlier. He had refined his technique since then, now able to intercept (or rather, not intercept) a small field of electrons. By using his ability to super-cool the field he could eliminate naturally occurring fluctuations and working backwards from the electron wavelength use the omissions in the field at a variety of angles to create a representation he could see.

  Jonah inhaled slowly in the midst of the long procedure to chill the small field to as close to absolute zero as he could possibly make it.

  He pulled back instinctively as the air even where he sat became intolerable. Memories of home overcame him for a moment before he realized that he only had a moment to make use of the cold.

  Extending his hand into the intolerable zone and keeping his eyes, wincing in the pain running up his arm, on the shimmering air. The noise was visible, but tolerable. He could find some way to filter it out in subsequent experiments. He just needed to see.

  The world shuddered within the field and he could just barely make out the interference patterns made by the electrons bouncing away from the newly birthed coin within. The noise obscured the finer gradations. He bit his lip and mustered his resolve, pushing his hand farther into the cold, hoping for a better signal to noise. The coin shimmered and faded from existence. Better. His nerves ached and burned as he pushed even further in. Another coin. He winced and pulled his arm out, plunging it into the bucket of warm water he had set beside himself. His white fingers flexed in a desperate bid to get blood to return.