Inherited Magic (9 page)

Chapter 31

He was exhausted, but he knew he couldn't take any more chances, so he took a cab back to what was left of his apartment building. The whole way the car radio spilled the news about the fire engulfing the Morton Salt factory. Arson was at the tip of every one's tongues. As the early morning, DJ said; “Things only burn that way if someone wants them to burn!” The upside was that there had been no firefighters reported hurt as of yet and the public was pinning the blame on the villain of the hour. They still had no idea he was dead in at the bottom of the burning building.

There were no guards apparent at John’s building, but he was careful to stay out of sight and go in a back door just in case. The hallways already smelled faintly of mold from all the water that had come leaking down through all the cracks and holes. At least that wasn't his fault. He slipped up the stairs and under the yellow tape declaring this a “crime scene.” He could hear faint talking in one of the apartments but doubted it was a resident. He wasted no time opening the air vent and retrieving some extremely soaked cash, the ring, and the damned Book. He carefully replaced cover and was back on the street, quick as a shadow.

He hailed another cab and asked for a hotel.

“What kind?”

“Cheap, but not nasty.”

“Tough to do on this side of town.”

“Do what ya can then.”

So, in no time, he had a room, but despite the fact that he was exhausted in every sense of the word, he couldn't relax. He sat on the crappy bed and looked out over the parking lot at the liquor store on the other side of the street. He fought the urge to drink for a long time; he didn't actually know why and when he stopped to think about it, he gave up. He shuffled across the parking lot as the sun was coming up. He missed the darkness and wanted to hide away. He grabbed some random beer and some junk food on impulse.

“Rough morning?” asked the guy behind the counter, who looked to be the exact definition of rough mornings.

“Yeah.” He was not interested in talking.

The man gave him his change and a knowing half smile and nod, but said nothing more.

As John walked out, he noticed a short woman standing by the doorway; she was lighting a cigarette. Her makeup was layered on and her skimpy clothing looked more than slightly dirty. She was blond, and John briefly wondered why they were all blond.

“Wanna party, cutie?” Her voice had a noticeable lack of seduction to it. Still, he did a second take; he had never been propositioned. She was attractive, no doubt about that. John stared longer than he should have at her thin t-shirt. She smiled falsely, sensing a customer.

“Umm . . . No.” John felt decidedly shy suddenly. He looked at her pattern, and there certainly wasn't anything wrong with it. Nothing that said disease or heavy drug use. After the chaos of the night before, it looked beautiful and shining. He was momentarily tempted by the thought of human warmth.

“Are you sure? You're kinda cute. I'll cut you a cheapie” He was still looking at her, and she knew how the minds of men worked: so long as he looked, he wanted her.

Something struck John about her suddenly, and he looked at her closer . . . He was older than her—by a lot. He realized she might not be even old enough to drive.

“How—” He stopped and shook his head, knowing he actually didn't want to know. He pulled a can of beer out of the bag and handed it to her, their fingers briefly touching, warmth on the cold metal.

“Thanks . . .?”

“Yeah.” He fished into his pocket and pulled out a handful of crumpled twenties and pushed them into her hand. “Buy a bus ticket and never look back.” It seemed like the sort of thing he should say. He wasn't sure; he was in unknown territory. Before she could say anything and before he could say anything else stupid, he walked towards his hotel room with his head down. What the hell was he doing?

Chapter 32

After three days of ordering pizza, drinking, and watching pay-per-view, John counted his money. He still had just over four thousand dollars, more money than he had ever had at any one time. Yet, he had nothing else. No job, no place to live, not even a spare change of clothing. It was a state of affairs that seemed to accelerate the hangover he knew he had more than earned. He decided not to care and turned on the TV. In the interest of saving money, he channel surfed through the basic cable channels, till suddenly something caught his eye. It looked, for all the world, like a two dimensional view of a simple pattern. He turned up the volume and watched, transfixed.

It was a documentary about physics and math that explained the possibilities of parallel worlds. Much of it went way over John’s head, but he got some of it. According to the documentary, there were seemingly simple math formulas that, when mapped or graphed with a computer, created vast complicated images. These images contained smaller details that reflected exact images of the larger image and this continued no matter how small or large you went in the images. The narrator called it a “Mandelbrot set” and that it created these “fractal” images. It blew John's mind.

He suddenly grasped that there must be a way to express patterns, no matter how complex they were, in a mathematical way. It would make it easier and safer to study and explore the effects and possibility of any given pattern and any changes made to it. He realized that this math was well beyond him and that he was going to need help to continue learning magic as well, but those were solvable problems. He had no idea if this could or would work, but it was something.

He dumped out the booze, showered and shaved, and choked down some cold pizza as he locked the door behind him. He went and bought some new clothing—nothing fancy, just enough for two or three days—picked up a newspaper, some aspirin for his hangover and started apartment hunting over lunch at a fast food joint. By evening, he was standing in his new apartment on Magnolia near Wilson.

He was still on the north side and still not in the best of neighborhoods, but it had what he needed, and a few things he might need. It was right next to the Red Line stop on Wilson, perhaps the scariest L stop ever. He had a grocery store nearby, along with an army surplus, a family owned hardware store, and lots of small restaurants. The key selling point, though, had been its proximity to the local community college; Truman College. He had looked at a course catalog and knew they weren't going to have a class in magician’s algebra 101, but he tried to get a sense of what he could use, and it looked good. He just had a few loose ends to tie up, and then he had to patch things up with Owen and that was what had him nervous.

Chapter 33

John had made a point to avoid paying attention to the news since the fire. Had he made the effort, it would have saved him a lot of trouble. While he was not a suspect, he was listed as missing and a person of interest in the investigation. It was, after all, his apartment that had exploded, and no one had seen him or heard from him since then. While John considered sitting in a hotel room getting drunk for three days and paying for everything in cash a break to clear his head, it is seen by most law enforcement officials as hiding out or avoiding arrest. So when he decided it would be easier to go to his old place, pick up his mail, and settle up with the landlord, he was not expecting to end up in a small interrogation room, in a downtown police station, but that is exactly what happened and what he should have expected. Some days, it just never pays to try and do things the right way.

He had been frisked, searched, his pockets emptied, and he was given rough verbal treatment by two cops that looked oddly like two guys who bullied him when he was a freshman in high school. He had not been read his rights, so he knew he wasn't under arrest, but he didn't want to push his luck and try to leave yet. Then he was left in an interrogation room that looked like it was straight out of the movies, it was that stereotypical. John just kept telling himself to play it cool. They didn't know he was a killer, did they? Or did they?

The door opened and a tallish woman, with her blond hair pulled back harshly in a serpent of a pony tail, walked in. She had blue eyes, and there were just enough lines on her face to say she was no longer young, but not yet old. She was sharply dressed in a simple business wear (slacks not a skirt). Clipped to her jacket was an ID badge that said, in large bold blue letters, “F.B.I.” John knew he was in extremely deep shit and watched her sit at the table as if she were offended that he was across from her.

“Hello, John. I am special agent Harris with the FBI, and I'd like to talk to you about a few things.”

Once again he wondered why it always had to be blonds and if there was any way in hell out of this. “Ummm . . . Sure.”

“Good. Do you mind if I tape this?” She smiled and placed a small digital recorder on the table. “Taking notes gets in the way.”

John pointedly looked at the large video camera mounted on in the corner of the ceiling before looking at the small recorder. “I thought they already had audio in here.”

As he spoke, he looked at the patterns of the device and quickly saw it was anything but a recorder. There were several patterns locked into it that he didn't understand, and threads that leaped out to something under her coat and another that wandered outside the room.

“We do, but I find it easier to have my own copy.” Her smile never faltered. She was a predator at ease with its prey.

“I do mind.”

“That's too bad.” She made no move to recover the now mysterious device.

“Am I under arrest?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“How you answer.” She paused, giving him a chance to say something; he said nothing. “So, shall we begin?”

“Yeah.” John saw unusually clearly that his rights could vanish in an instant and was terrified.

“How long have you lived at the apartment building on the corner of Kenmore and Bryn Mawr?”

“Three or four years, I think.”

“According to the building manager, you used to live there with a Barb Gibbons.”

“Yes.”

“What was the nature of your relationship to her?”

“We were dating and talking about getting married.”

“She moved out?”

“Yeah, she moved out after she broke up with me.”

“How long ago?”

“About eight or ten months ago.”

“Why did you blow up your apartment?”

“I didn't.” John was getting more uncomfortable and was sure that 'Agent Harris' was enjoying that.

“You recently flew to Minnesota . . .”

“My father died.”

“I know.”

“Were you making methamphetamine or any other drugs in your apartment?”

“No.”

“Was it your father that taught you magic?”

“Fucking what?!”

“Magic, was your father the one that taught it to you?”

“You mean like card tricks and rabbits out of hats?” John was terrified, and about ready to shit himself right then and there. It made sense to him though. Why wouldn't the government know about magic? Something like that couldn't go unknown or unnoticed forever. In the 'wrong' hands, it could change the course of history. He wondered how much they knew, and thought again about the device on the table. Just how much trouble had he gotten himself into?

“No, I do not mean card tricks or cute bunnies.” Her blue eyes seemed to turn a colder shade as her voice and expression took on a menacing tone.

“There's another kind?” Playing dumb had never worked out for John, but he didn't have much of a choice at the moment. Agent Harris shifted in her chair, examining her nails, John imagined her picking dead flesh out from under them; hopefully it wouldn't be his.

“We know how your apartment was blown up.” Her tone was matter of fact.

“I don't.”

“We can protect you; we have people that know about these things.”

“About exploding apartments?”

“Where were you when your apartment blew up?”

“At work.”

“Where do you work?”

“Owen's Pawn Shop on Western.”

“Where?”

“On the north side, near Western and Lawrence.”

“Ahhh.” She paused. John wondered if she had known that. “Well, if you don't know what's going on and are as stupid as you pretend to be, I don't have to worry, because you'll be dead as soon as we let you go.” John did not like the smile on her face, or anything else about her.

“So, I'm not under arrest for illegal card tricks?” He immediately regretted saying it because she gave him a look that spoke volumes about the unpleasant things she could do to him.

“No. We already talked to Owen, and we know you were there because you were at work well into the night with inventory.” Had they really talked to Owen? Or was she playing him?

“All, right. Can I go?”

Agent Harris sat and stared at him for a few moments, as if debating what to do with him. He doubted that though. She seemed like someone that always had a plan. After a few seconds, she stood up and walked out the door without a word, leaving the mysterious device on the table. She was gone several minutes, and John hated himself for having a brief damning desire to tamper with the device. At the very least, he wanted to destroy it or know what it was. He was saved from poor impulse control by the return of Agent Harris and the officer that had taken him to the police station.

“You can go now. Officer Hernandez will escort you out. And John . . .”

“Yeah.”

“If you live long enough to see me again, don't play stupid again. It pisses me off.”