“It was in the briefing packet,” Sven reminded him.
“Name me one legit business that has briefing packets. If I wanted that shit, I’d have gone corporate.” Johnny shook his head. “So, what do we do now? Go start making connections with bars?”
“That’s the one. I’ve got five. You?”
“Four.” It might have been five if he hadn’t spent his time at the Mermaid trying to hit on the blonde, but Johnny wasn’t going to bring that up.
“I’ll reply for both of us.” Sven started typing.
Johnny watched the conversation unfold and shook his head. Anything in writing probably should be coded, but they were using encrypted messaging. In his opinion, Pauline was wasting time that would be better spent doing business.
In the end, once all the business gibberish was decoded, their night’s directive was clear: go back to all of their bars and make offers. With supply coming in that night, Lia was hoping that distribution could begin the next day.
In Johnny’s experience, some people got weird if you didn’t have a sample on you, but he’d talked his way out of that before. He downed some of the ice water instead of the rest of his drink and stood up, pulling out his sunglasses.
“Oh, and Johnny?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t go back for that blonde, okay?” Sven looked serious. “The other thing about white chicks is that they call the cops when you come on too strong.”
Johnny shrugged. Sven had a point.
“And—man, everyone gets turned down sometimes. Don’t let it get to you.”
“Right.” The man sounded like a fucking PBS special.
Johnny threaded his way through the crush of people, hardly noticing the beautiful women he brushed past. He took his keys out of his pocket and sped up, then swung into his Cobra and considered his options.
He could go back to the Mermaid now.
No. He’d be responsible and save dessert for last. With a cold smile, he backed out of his spot and pulled into traffic with a roar of the engine.
James put the final touches on one of his ads and rubbed his eyes, which were stinging. He had been trained in marketing back when ads were printed in newspapers and magazines. As his type of work adapted to the internet, he had left his day job for his position on the council.
Diving into the constant iteration and churn of digital marketing had been incredibly fun. He enjoyed the late nights and the huge mugs of coffee. He also enjoyed tweaking text, tracking down new fonts, and adjusting colors by the tiniest margins.
It was also sucking up all his time. As with the sales, advertising results came back in close to real-time, so James found himself pushing off his next meal, his next shower, his next cup of coffee “just for a few minutes” while he adjusted an ad’s audience or tag line or…
That was probably why he smelled.
He took a sniff under one of his arms and cringed. He needed to get out of here before LeBlanc came in and saw him like this. She might be very progressive in some ways, but her opinions on hygiene and grooming were rigid.
He stood up and winced. His muscles weren’t used to moving. That was probably a bad sign.
As he was working on standing up straight, a bloom of light caught his eye. His eyes jerked over to the scrying pool, causing a crick in his neck to send shooting pains through his shoulder.
“Ow, ow, ow.” He hunched the shoulder up as he stared. “Come on. Come back. I know I saw you.”
Nothing. He maneuvered around his chair and went to the middle of the table to stare at the scrying bowl. He really had to use the bathroom, and he was becoming aware that he was ravenously hungry in addition to being exhausted, but he couldn’t have looked away now if the Kool-Aid man had come busting through the wall.
“Come on,” James murmured. “Come on, baby.”
As if it had only needed to be sweet-talked, the bloom of light came again, golden-bright in the day’s fading light.
James caught his breath and began to laugh, a rusty sound that sent him into a coughing fit. He was pounding on his chest, still laughing, when the bloom flickered out, but he knew what he’d seen. It was somewhere along the eastern seaboard; he’d guess in either South Carolina or Georgia.
“LeBlanc!” he called before remembering the current state of his appearance.
Crap.
She didn’t answer—she rarely raised her voice—but he heard her footsteps.
Crap. Well, he was happy enough that he almost didn’t care.
Another bloom of light popped up. This one was farther south, firmly in Florida. James gave another whoop. He could hardly believe it. Two.
Two. They had been waiting for days, and now they didn’t just have one candidate, they had two. For three years, they had not found even a single potential thaumaturge, and now…
“Suck on it, Mitchell,” he muttered to himself.
Then another showed up, somewhere around Nevada. Another up in the Portland area. Another. Another. Another.
Up until ten seconds ago, James wouldn’t have been able to think of a single thing that could bring him down. Now, however, his eyes widened as he stared at the map. All he could think was that this looked like some sort of post-apocalyptic mushroom cloud map with the steady flash of nukes.
This was good.
Right?
His voice when he called again wasn’t quite so certain. “Uh, LeBlanc? Seriously, you should get in here.”
Chapter Seven
“Hmm,” LeBlanc said, several minutes later. Her face was studiously blank, but James could sense the slight edge of worry behind her words. “I feel foolish that I had not considered this possibility.”
“Just to make sure we’re in agreement…” James rubbed one temple.
“We have a surplus of potential candidates,” she pronounced. Her hands were clasped in front of her sternum in the very image of any proper lady. “I believed your change in recruitment techniques was warranted due to our earlier dearth of success, but…”
James squinted. He’d been awake far too long, and LeBlanc’s habitually formal speech was not helping. “Okay, so to be clear, you thought we might find no one, but you never anticipated finding too many people?”
LeBlanc hesitated. “Yes,” she admitted after a moment.
“How flattering.”
“I know you are somewhat sleep-deprived, but please do not be childish about this.” Her tone was reproving. In the dim light, he could barely see the outlines of her face. She took a break to sweep across the room and turn the lights on. When she came back, it was to study him gravely. “After no recruits in three years, I do not think any of us anticipated such a large number of them.”
“You’re right.” He sighed. He had let Mary Mitchell get too far under his skin, which was why he was beginning to mistrust this.
“Go take a shower,” LeBlanc instructed him. “There is a plate of food for you in the kitchen. Actually, there are several, one for each meal you have missed.”
“Er…”
“I will watch.” She settled into one of the chairs gracefully, her multicolored skirt swirling around her and her brown eyes fixed on the map. “Nothing is availed by you being exhausted and unbathed, James.”
“Right.”
James headed upstairs to the bedroom suite he had used for several years now. The master bedroom was for the head of the council, and the next two nicest rooms went to James and LeBlanc, who lived here the most often.
His room had deep red wallpaper above dark wood wainscoting and a thick rug over wooden floors made from massive slabs of wood from the old trees that had been common in North America three centuries ago. The windows had glass panes that had become wavy with age and were bordered by heavy velvet drapes.
It was a little old-fashioned for James’s taste, but the house had been the property of the council for centuries, and he did not have the will to make over a piece of history.
It was strange to see the old close
t filled not with heavy gowns and suits but instead with t-shirts and jeans. He pulled out clean clothes and laid them on the bed before stripping off his days-old shirt and pants, wrinkling his nose at the smell.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t seen LeBlanc lately.
As in many older houses, the larger rooms had windows on two sides to maximize the sunlight, with one of the remaining walls butting up against a central chimney. Unlike many similar houses, however, this one had magical seals to stop drafts and mold, which James quite appreciated.
He also appreciated the magical boost to both the water heater and the water pressure. Slumped against the wall while the hot water beat down on him, he scrubbed his hair and decided to shave.
It was the right decision. Clean, with a fresh shave and new clothes, he felt like a new man. He headed downstairs and devoured most of the plate of food while standing over the sink, something LeBlanc would not have approved of. Then he went to rejoin her, bringing two mugs of tea.
She gave him an appraising look as he sat down. “You look as if you feel better.”
“There’s a crash coming on,” James admitted as he sipped his tea.
“It is long overdue, I believe.” She smiled. “Now, while you were gone, I did one test and also came up with an idea, though it will take some experimentation to get right.”
He gave her a curious look.
“First, due to your…pessimism, I tested to make sure that the results coming through on this are accurate and are tied to human users of magic, not anything such as ley-line flares.”
James nodded. LeBlanc spoke calmly, but as usual, there was a weight of experience behind her word. James remembered that she had been instrumental in mapping the distribution of magic across North and Central America, including the ways in which human use of magic affected the distribution.
“Thank you,” he told her quietly.
“Imagine how little we would like to find out we’d panicked for no reason,” she said with a small smile.
“Agreed. And the other idea?”
“Well, it occurred to me that this…” she gestured gracefully at the scrying map, “while useful, lacks both precision and historical data.”
James frowned at her. He was refreshed, but he still wasn’t tracking. Then it dawned on him. “Oh, so you want something that will keep track of where there has been magic so we don’t miss anything by being out of the room?”
“Exactly. And some way to get more exact readings. I think we should be able to modify the spell tomorrow to allow for historical readings, as well as setting up smaller scrying bowls to get more exact readings inside states where we see magic use.”
“You’re a genius,” James said fondly.
She smiled. “Perhaps. Regardless, I think you should sleep.”
“Mmf.” James sighed. “I just don’t want to miss—”
“If you miss the flares because these people only tried magic once, there will hardly be a problem,” LeBlanc said practically. “We have always known there were those who had enough talent only to do one spell. Perhaps we were simply unaware of how many there were.”
“How comforting.”
“Rest,” she said severely. “All else can wait. Once we have the other spell up and running, we can begin journeying to meet our prospective candidates. I for one am looking forward to some milder weather.”
James nodded and found himself ushered firmly toward his bed.
“Ted. Ted.” Christian poked the side of his friend’s head. “Ted.”
Ted’s answer was a groan.
“Time to go up to the bar, Ted.”
Ted picked his head up quickly and tipped sideways. “Whoa. Holy…what, wait?”
“Time to…you know what, one second.” Chris took out his wallet, counted out the price of their drinks and a generous tip for their waitress, and pondered the engineering puzzle of how to move an exceedingly drunk HR manager across a bar without doing anything that could be construed as an “HR incident.”
Eventually, he managed to coax Ted to the end of the booth’s bench.
“Ted. Come on, Ted. Ted, please.”
“Got your back,” Ted said woozily. “You line ‘em up, and I’ll…knock ‘em down. Something.”
“Uh-huh.” Christian looped his friend's arm over his shoulder and stumbled to the bar. It was good that he had Ted to manage, he reflected, because if he didn’t, he’d be thinking about what was waiting for him.
But they’d been sitting in the corner for three hours now, and he was finally getting reckless enough to talk to Kera.
It was strange. He’d brought Ted along to give him confidence, but somehow, Ted’s lack of confidence had been the push Christian needed.
Once they got to the bar, Ted leaned awkwardly against the counter while Christian pulled out a barstool and strategized how to get his companion propped on it. After a brief struggle during which Ted more than once resembled a newborn flamingo, Ted was seated and Christian, panting slightly, got himself onto his own stool.
Ted tipped his head up. “Hi,” he said genially. “I’m a lightweight.”
“Are you?”
The voice made Christian’s head jerk up. There, staring amusedly at Ted, was Kera. Like a scene from a horror movie that he could not stop from happening, he watched as her eyes tracked to him. There was a mix of curiosity and…recognition?
“Yer pretty,” Ted said. He sounded sleepy.
“I am not,” Christian said before he could stop himself.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kera disagreed. “You have a nice face.”
Christian stared at her and realized he had forgotten every word he had ever known.
She smiled slightly before nodding at Ted. “I hope he’s not driving. I’m pretty sure there’s a law about that sort of thing.”
“’M not driving,” Ted said sagely. “I never drive. Who wants a car in Los Angeles?”
“I see.” Kera was cleaning a glass. She looked as if she didn’t want to make fun of Ted but was amused by his antics.
“I’m just here because he needs me,” Ted confided to her in a stage whisper. He pointed vaguely in Christian’s direction.
Christian froze, but Kera didn’t seem to realize that Ted had inadvertently told her the truth.
“I see,” she said again, definitely hiding a smile now. She went to put the glasses back down and winced as she nicked the back of one hand on something behind the bar. Unfazed, she grabbed a cloth to clamp over the line of bright blood. “So, you guys from around here, or are you visiting?”
Christian considered her question. He wasn’t sure if that had been a joke. Did she recognize him? Was he supposed to say something witty?
God, I hate not having social skills. It was why he’d gone into IT, dammit. He wasn’t supposed to need them.
While he was still trying to figure out what to say, Kera set a beer in front of him—and not just any beer, either. A Killian’s Irish Red, his favorite.
He frowned slightly as he lifted it in thanks. “I, uh, thanks. This is my favorite.”
“I know,” Kera threw over her shoulder.
“You…do?”
She put down another glass, checked her hand, and came over to lean on the bar. “You mentioned it at the study group one night. How Killian’s was your first underage illegal beer, and you’d had a soft spot ever since. I always told myself I’d buy you one sometime, but we never got the chance.”
Christian went still with the bottle halfway to his mouth. His heart seemed to have gone off-rhythm and paused to reset itself.
“Hey!” The call came from someone down the bar. “Can I get a refill over here?”
“You sure can,” Kera called back. “It’s your right as an American.” She winked at Christian. “I’ll be back, but flag me down if you need me. Oh, and…” she pointed, “he’s about to fall off his stool.”
She headed off to fetch the other patron a beer, leaving Christian to unceremoniously haul Ted b
ack to stability on the stool.
“She remembers me,” he hissed at Ted.
“Heyyyy,” Ted said, nearly falling off the other side. He waited until he was upright again. “That’s good. Right? Wait. Did she seem to like you?”
“I don’t…not sure.” Christian was fairly sure she’d said something about buying him a drink, but now that she wasn’t standing there anymore, it seemed less like that would actually have happened. “What do I do next?”
“Oh.” Ted swayed and then focused intently, looking like an owl. “Just, uh, you know. Talk to her and stuff. See how it goes. You can ask her out later, as long as she doesn’t do that thing that women do where they suddenly turn to ice because you randomly said something wrong that pissed them off.” He coughed and readjusted his position on the stool. “But don’t worry.” He patted the bar comfortingly, perhaps under the impression that it was Chris’s hand. “That, uh, probably won’t happen. Shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Christian would have been worried except that he’d had an idea, and it was one that might just work. He scribbled something on a napkin as he waited for Kera to come back, and when she came over, he showed it to her.
“You remember that test we had on parallel algorithms?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I’m having a problem with this one fucking line of code, and I keep feeling like it’s something to do with that.” He flipped the napkin around to show her.
Kera leaned on the bar as he explained the framework around the line, using multiple napkins to sketch out the process flow. He remembered her as having a good head for troubleshooting, and he was pleased to see that he had been correct. Neither of them had the answer by the time she straightened up to take a look around, but her questions had guided him closer to the answer, and she was actually listening to what he was saying.
He felt like he was walking on air. Plus, he might now have a shot at finishing this project, which had been stalled on the back burner for three weeks.
“You’re very smart,” Ted said sagely to her. “Very smart. Blonde bar lady…knows code.” He nodded again owlishly.
How to be a Badass Witch Page 6