by Dan Willis
“Got a minute, boss?” Sherry asked.
Alex looked up from his work to find her leaning against the frame of his open door. She wore a blue blouse with a black skirt and a fuzzy white sweater. Sherry didn’t have Leslie’s beauty queen figure, but in the sweater she could turn heads. As distracting as her pose was, Alex focused on her face. She had a strange, pensive look.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She held up her deck of tarot cards and shook them. Apparently her gift was still working from last night.
“Uh-oh,” he said with a bit of trepidation. “What now?”
Sherry’s card readings were almost never good news.
“You sure you want to know?” she asked.
Alex indicated his mostly clean desk top and she crossed from the door. Without commentary, she dealt out one card face down.
“Don’t you usually use more than that?” he asked.
“I use as many as are necessary,” she said. “This is you.” She tapped the back of the card, then turned it over. The card depicted a man walking with a long stride. He had a knapsack thrown over his shoulder like Charlie Chaplin in The Tramp. The figure stood on the edge of a cliff with one foot over the edge as if he were about to fall, while he looked up at the sky without a care.
“The Fool,” Sherry said.
“Well, you did say it was me,” Alex said with an amused look.
“The Fool can mean a journey,” Sherry explained. “Sometimes literally, sometimes it’s a new beginning.”
“I’m getting a new secretary,” he guessed.
Sherry gave him a hard look.
“I thought you said you wanted me to do this.”
Alex held up his hands in a placating gesture and she drew another card.
“The Magician,” she said, putting down a card with a man in a flowing robe on its face.
“Inverted,” Alex said, noting that from Sherry’s perspective, he was upside down.
She nodded in acknowledgement.
“The inverted magician is a trickster,” she said. “He deals in falsehood and illusion.”
“Wonderful,” Alex said without enthusiasm. He had enough lying cheats in his life without a new one adding to the list.
“Temperance,” Sherry said, ignoring him and turning over another card. This one had a large chalice on it.
“Prohibition’s coming back?” Alex guessed. “I hope it’s not telling me to give up drinking.”
“It could mean that,” she admitted, “It could also mean alcohol will be important to you.”
“Like I’m going to meet someone in a bar?”
Sherry shrugged.
“Possibly, but in this case I think it means to avoid extremes, to take the middle path.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to make of that, so he just nodded as she drew another card.
“The Two of Swords,” she said, her brow furrowing as she set it down. The card depicted two crossed swords.
“Indecision,” she said, then shook her head. “Maybe a stalemate or something that has two parts. That’s all I can see.”
“So I’m going on a trip with new beginnings where I’ll meet someone in a bar who wants to fool or trick me, and I should indecisively avoid extremes.”
“Don’t make fun,” Sherry said, annoyed. “My visions are serious.”
Alex sighed, looking at the cards on his desk. Sherry’s visions usually didn’t make much sense, but this made less sense than usual.
“Do you ever have specific visions that could actually warn me of trouble before I’m neck deep in it?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact I do,” she said, looking in the direction of the waiting room. “Miss Kincaid just arrived.”
2
Distance
Alex sighed, glancing in the direction of his waiting room. It wasn’t quite eleven, which meant Sorsha hadn’t come for an impromptu lunch date. Sherry was right, that was a bad sign.
“You want me to run interference,” she asked, picking up on his mood without the necessity of foresight.
Alex shook his head and rose from his desk.
“Wait here a minute, would you.”
“Fight fair,” Sherry said, patting him on the shoulder as he passed her.
It only took a moment for Alex to move along the short hall to the door that separated the hall from his waiting area. Without hesitation, he grabbed the door handle and turned it smartly.
“Alex,” Sorsha said as he stepped into the room. As usual, she was dressed impeccably in a white button-up shirt with black cuffs and a black collar offset by an ice blue scarf and a form-fitting skirt. She was standing in front of Sherry’s desk as if waiting for her to return. The Sorceress knew very well that she could simply go back to Alex’s office, for she’d done it on many previous occasions. The fact that she was hesitating confirmed Alex’s fears.
“You can’t make it tonight,” he said. His tone conveyed that the statement wasn’t a guess.
A look of chagrin played across Sorsha’s porcelain features and she looked away, turning so the A-line of her hair hid her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Alex knew she meant it.
She always meant it.
It was her resigned sincerity that galled him. They’d been officially going out for almost four months and in that time they’d managed to get together twice, not counting the time Nazi spies had tried to abduct her from the Rainbow Room. The first time they’d gone out for lunch, but they both had afternoon appointments and couldn’t linger. The second time they’d gone to a nightclub, but Sorsha had been called away by her FBI lackeys before their hors d’oeuvres had arrived.
Since then it had been one broken date after another.
To be fair, Alex had broken a few of their appointments himself, but Sorsha outstripped him by far. He’d even tried meeting her for a cup of coffee at Empire Terminal ten floors below his office, but she hadn’t even managed to make that. It was clear, at least to Alex, that whatever he thought they had together simply wasn’t a priority to the sorceress.
“What is it this time?” Alex pressed, his voice making it abundantly clear that he would consider any answer inadequate.
“The Bureau is sending me out of town on a case,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically small.
“And naturally you can’t tell me anything about it,” he pressed. “No doubt it’s a matter of National Security or some such.”
She still wouldn’t look at him.
“Something like that.”
“Well I guess that takes precedence over your social life.” Alex knew he was twisting the knife of her guilt, but he did it anyway.
With a gasp that was half shame and half outrage, she whirled on him, sending her platinum hair flying.
“You think this is easy for me?” she demanded, her eyes flashing blue with her magic. “Half of those dullards down at the Bureau think I’m some bubblehead the higher ups are patronizing because my name looks good in the reports. The other half think the director keeps me around to play slap and tickle behind closed doors.” Her voice and her anger rose as she spoke. “I’ve worked damn hard to prove myself, and it doesn’t help when your name gets associated with my cases, as if I need my hand held.”
Alex knew she was right. She’d agreed to work with the FBI to help them with cases that involved magic, but she’d turned out to be a damn good investigator. The fact that the Bureau was relying on her more and more was a good thing, but he couldn’t help resenting it. He worked as hard as anyone, but he still managed to find time for her after all.
“I didn’t realize I was such an imposition,” he said.
Her look softened.
“You aren’t,” she said. “And once I get back we’ll figure this out. I promise.”
Alex sighed. He’d heard that before. More than once.
“All right,” he said. He didn’t believe she was serious, but his anger at the situation had been sate
d and he didn’t want to argue about it further.
She looked down for a moment, then back up to his eyes, searching for understanding. Alex didn’t have any to give, and he just stared back at her.
“All right,” she echoed him, then she turned and strode out of the office.
Alex watched her go and continued to stare at the door for a full minute after she shut it behind her. He suddenly identified with the card Sherry had dealt him.
“The Fool, indeed,” he said with a nod of acquiescence, then turned and headed back to his office. When he pulled the door to the back hallway open, Sherry and Mike almost fell out into the waiting room.
“You heard?” he said.
Sherry looked embarrassed, but Mike just nodded.
“She’s a fiery woman,” he said, putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Women like that are just like a spirited horse, you need to ease up on the reins, boss. Let her figure out how you fit. If you keep pushing, you’ll just drive her away.”
Alex scoffed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Thanks, Mike,” he said, “but we’ve got work to do.” He looked at Sherry. “My schedule just opened up tonight, so I can take any casework you’ve got waiting.”
“Sure thing, boss,” she said, giving him a sad smile, then stepping past him toward her desk.
Alex worked through lunch without noticing, swearing at his mechanical tormentor the entire time. When he finally looked up from the typewriter it was almost three. His stomach growled at him, but he ignored it. He needed something active to do.
“You’ve been sitting too long,” he declared, pushing back in his chair and rising. Honestly, he’d expected Sherry to bring him something to work on already, but he hadn’t heard a peep out of her since Sorsha left. Was this her way of giving him room to stew about his love life?
“That’s the last thing I need,” he said, striding around to the intercom box. Before he could push the call key, however, Sherry’s voice came out of the speaker.
“Boss?” she said.
Alex almost laughed. He once asked her if her uncanny ability to appear when he needed her was part of her magic or just good timing. So far she’d refused to take a position on the subject.
“Yeah,” Alex said back to the box after pushing the ‘talk’ key.
“Mr. Barton would like to see you in his office right away,” she responded. “He said it’s urgent.”
Alex hung his head before he replied. He desperately wanted something to do, but meeting with his part-time employer was never high on his list. Barton had a bad habit of either wanting to bounce ideas off Alex or showing up with magical emergencies he needed Alex to fix. Unfortunately both situations usually took far more time than Alex liked.
“All right,” Alex replied through the intercom, not bothering to hide the sigh in his voice. “Tell Andrew I’ll be up in a minute.”
Alex left his office a few minutes later, heading down in the building’s public elevator to Empire Station. The only way to reach the upper floors was to take the private elevator behind a security station on the west wall of the station. Alex had been in the building for over six months now, so the guard at the glassed-in booth simply nodded at him as he passed.
Another two minutes and the private elevator deposited Alex in the front room of Barton Electric. From there he moved to Andrew Barton’s private elevator and used his key to summon the car. This elevator had only two buttons. The bottom one led to the catwalk that ran around the etherium generators that converted magical energy to electricity. A catwalk led from the landing to the spell room, the nerve center of Barton’s operation. In that room dozens of linking runes connected the galaxy-like power spell to the generators, and then connected the generators to the two relay towers providing power to Brooklyn and the Bronx.
The second button in the private elevator deposited Alex directly into Sorcerer Andrew Barton’s palatial private office. The room was twice the size of his apartment and two stories tall. Rows of glass windows covered the back wall with an incredible view of the city and Central Park in the distance. A desk the size of a banquet table occupied the center of the room and was made of a single slab of white marble held up by an industrial-looking steel frame. As usual, the desk was littered with papers, folders, rolled blueprints, artistic renderings of buildings and machines, and several scale models of various types of equipment.
Most times, when Barton summoned Alex, he would be waiting, impatiently, for Alex to arrive. This time, however, there was no sign of the sorcerer when the elevator doors slid open.
“Hello?” Alex said after surveying the room.
“Back here,” Barton called from somewhere off to Alex’s right. Looking in that direction, Alex spotted a door that was set into the wall. He’d seen it before, but it had never been open till now.
Making his way through the open door, Alex found himself in a small hallway that ran down to an elegant foyer. The foyer was currently occupied by two suitcases and a portmanteau trunk all done in burgundy leather with gold accents. Beyond them was an apartment that closely resembled the one Barton had provided for Alex. It was neat to the point of not looking lived in, with a row of bookshelves on one side of the front room, surrounded by a tasteful arrangement of couches for entertaining. A counter ran along the back wall with stools on one side and a cutout that showed a kitchen beyond. Off to Alex’s left was a hallway continuing further back into the suite.
“I was about to go and get you,” Barton said, emerging from the back room with a valise that he set on top of the trunk. The sorcerer wore a tuxedo that shone glossy black from his shoes to his lapels. His hair was slicked back, and his pencil mustache had been trimmed into two precise lines. “Here,” he said, reaching into his jacket and withdrawing a folded paper. “Get whatever you need ready, and meet me downstairs in twenty minutes.”
Alex looked at the paper in confusion, then back to the sorcerer.
“What?” he said. Alex was genuinely confused, a condition that wasn’t unusual where Barton was concerned. The man seemed to exude chaos and then just sweep people up in his wake.
“It’s your ticket, of course,” he said as if that explained everything. “Now get a move on, I don’t want to be late.”
Rather than continue to pursue his futile line of questioning, Alex opened the paper sleeve, revealing a silver square of paper with black printing on it.
“Airship Merryweather?” Alex read the name in big letters.
“Yes, yes,” Barton said. “I know airplanes are faster, but I dislike being packed in like a sardine. I’ve got us berths for the night, now get your kit together, we’ve got to go.”
“Where are we going?” Alex asked.
“Washington, of course. The city is run by a board of commissioners and their President wants to talk to me about putting up a relay tower in the city.”
“Congratulations,” Alex said, holding up the ticket. “And I’m accompanying you for what reason?”
A look of annoyance crossed the sorcerer’s face, as if Alex was being deliberately obtuse.
“To make sure the linking runes work over that distance, of course,” he said. “Now pack your bags and put on some decent traveling clothes.” He checked his watch. “We’ve only got fifteen minutes left. Chop, chop!”
Alex shook his head, but decided not to discuss the matter further. The conditions of his employment with Barton Electric were very simple. Barton provided him with office space and an apartment in Empire Tower, and Alex was available to provide runewright services at Barton’s discretion. Usually Barton’s requests were simple and didn’t take too much time, but odd, inconvenient requests were also par for the course.
“All right,” he said with a defeated sigh. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later, Alex got off the public elevator in the Empire Tower lobby. He’d put on his tux and grabbed one of the spare doctor’s bags he kept around in case he had to replace his kit.
Since Barton said they’d be traveling overnight, he dropped a pair of pajamas into the bag along with his razor, toothbrush, hair creme, and comb.
“Where are your bags?” Barton said as Alex crossed the gleaming marble floor.
Alex held up the doctor’s bag and patted it for emphasis.
“That’s it?” Barton asked, incredulous.
Alex just shrugged.
“I’m a runewright,” he said. “I’m never more than a chalk outline away from my vault that’s got all my clothes and things inside.”
Barton pinched the bridge of his nose and then shook his head.
“I’m a sorcerer, Alex,” he said, putting his arm around Alex’s shoulders. “I could conjure everything I might need out of thin air, but where’s the romance in that?”
“Romance?”
“Of course,” he went on. “There’s something cathartic about traveling in style, just a man, his luggage, and a first-class cabin. You’re disconnected from everything, no phone, no newspapers, just the journey. You can’t enjoy that if you’re popping into your vault every five minutes. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”
“Andrew,” Alex said as patiently as he could. “I was an orphan by age twelve. That also meant that, until recently, I was church-mouse poor. The longest trip I’ve ever taken was the time I had to go to Albany to look up some building permits for a proposed hospital in Palmira.”
Barton looked confused at that, but it didn’t last. His look of delight returned with a vengeance.
“Of course! I should have thought of that,” he admitted. “This will be quite the adventure then. Your first time traveling first class. We’ll eat dinner in the observation lounge and then sip cognac and smoke cigars as we watch the sunset.” He slapped Alex on the chest with a delighted chuckle. “You’ll love it.”
Alex wasn’t so sure, but it was hard not to get swept up in Barton’s boundless enthusiasm.
“Okay,” he said with a half-hearted grin.
“That’s the spirit,” Barton said, heading for the street where a gleaming black car waited. “Let’s be off. Time and airships wait for no man.”