A Criminal Magic Page 8

  A magic within the magic. Never heard of the power of seven before, but after witnessing some of Mama’s dark spells, and how my prayers were answered in the clearing on the night she died, it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve got no doubt that magic’s possibilities are damn near limitless, for better or worse. “How’s Gunn going to pick his seven?”

  “Don’t think he is.”

  “What do you mean? Then who’s deciding?”

  “I tried to mine Gunn’s mind, get some answers on our car ride here, but the man keeps his thoughts locked tight. But I was able to amplify some of his conversations in the car with his lackey, Dawson,” she whispers. “And I almost don’t believe what I heard, but I swear Gunn was talking about the importance of having the sorcerers choose themselves.”

  Choose themselves—meaning the group of us chooses our strongest seven, instead of Gunn?

  I want to crack open this conversation, push Grace a little more on all she knows, but Stock starts stirring across from her, his cot whining like a child in a tantrum. We grow quiet as he sits up, looks around. His eyes fall on the two of us, and he flashes me a smile that reminds me of his rodent manipulation last night.

  “Aw, how precious. A little morning powwow. You lecturing New Girl on the wise ways of Dune family magic, Grace?” Stock reaches for his own pack of cigs. “Telling her all about the way you Dunes fuck cows to bring on the rain?” He laughs as he lights his smoke. “And shit in fields to make the sun come up a little earlier?”

  “Eat it, Stock,” Grace mutters, but a horrible flush starts to crawl around her ears.

  “The Dune family is known up here as a flock of strange, strange birds, New Girl,” Stock laughs. “Hate to cut off this budding friendship and all, but if you’re looking for some kind of sugar daddy, I suggest a real contender.” He blows a puff of smoke toward me. “Someone like me. I can take care of you. I’ll make sure you’ve got something warm and fuzzy to hold on to,” he says with a shit-eating grin. He wiggles his eyebrows. “That rat was just the beginning.”

  “So you conjure a rat when you’re lonely at night?” I say slowly.

  His smile falters a little bit. “That’s not what I meant.” He gives a sharp, forced laugh as he takes another drag to recover. “Your head’s completely empty inside that doll-face of yours, isn’t it?”

  I take a deep breath, quite aware that Grace is watching, that others might be watching too. If she’s right, if everyone’s supposed to be judging and assessing everyone else’s strengths and weaknesses, and I don’t know how to use magic to earn their respect, I sure as hell better find an alternative.

  “Do me a favor,” I tell Stock, slow and evenly, like I’m not somebody to mess with, like I’m someone like Gunn, “don’t speak to me, and don’t speak to Grace, until you’re ready to act like a gentleman.” I steal another breath before bringing it home. “I don’t care what a big man you think you are ’cause your daddy’s dying and you somehow stumbled into this chance. I can see right through you.” I let my eyes fall over him, from top to bottom, till I glance down at the front of his pants. I arch my eyebrow theatrically and take a chance. “And you’re small, Stock Harding. Limp.”

  Stock’s face erupts red, and he instinctively puts his hand over his crotch. A few of the eavesdropping sorcerers around us start chuckling.

  “You little bitch—”

  “Uh, uh, uh.” I raise my finger, lean forward, feel the magic coursing through me that I don’t know what to do with, but whose heady hold emboldens me just the same. “Be a gentleman.”

  I turn around and bury my gaze in my satchel, keep my shaking hands busy by grabbing a flask of water and towel to freshen up, as Grace does the same beside me. I hear Stock shift on his cot, like he’s going to move, maybe confront me, but then he stops, pauses, and mutters, “Psycho skirt.”

  He launches off his mattress and stomps away as the laughter of the crowd gets a little louder, a few of them lobbing catcalls after him, “Temper, temper!” “That’s no way to be a gentleman!”

  I can feel Grace’s stare as the heckling eventually fades. “Not necessarily the way I would’ve handled it.”

  “Thought you said it was a bad idea to start slinging magic in here.” I keep my eyes on my satchel. “Thought we should save the magic for Gunn.”

  “I did say that,” Grace says. There’s a smile in her voice. “You’re just ballsy, Joan Kendrick. And that ain’t a bad thing.”

  I look up and mirror her smile, a wave of relief passing through me. “Well, you got my back last night, right? So I get yours this morning.”

  * * *

  We take our time freshening up as the other sorcerers slowly wake up around us. The sky outside the warehouse’s windows rises to a pink hue, then settles into the glaring white of morning. We hear screeches from the other side of the door, the sound of wood scraping concrete. The door creaks open, and Gunn steps inside with an associate in tow.

  “Showtime,” Grace whispers. A rush of nerves, adrenaline, fear—it all shoots right up my spine.

  “Gentlemen, ladies.” Gunn crosses the large space to greet us. Everyone scrambles to stand, eager to greet the man who holds the golden key to some of our futures.

  “Today, our experiment begins.” Gunn looks more polished than he did last night: three-piece suit without a wrinkle, new hat, cold-blue eyes without a bruise of a sleepless night underneath them. “You each stand among the most talented sorcerers this country has to offer, so look around.” He waits for a minute as we all size one another up.

  “This country thinks it’s seen all that sorcery can achieve, thinks that Prohibition has already funneled all of America’s magic into the underworld.” Gunn pauses. “But I know better. I know that some of the most gifted sorcerers—you, your families—have kept your particular magic to yourselves.” He surveys our crowd. “Each of you was smart enough to recognize this opportunity I’m giving you, and come out of hiding for it. The magic I believe we can make together will be unprecedented, will truly change the face of sorcery as this country knows it.” Gunn paces in front of us as his young companion, Dawson, from what Grace had said, stands like a statue behind him.

  “These next few weeks will be hard. Grueling. Sorcering all day in the clearing out back, and close quarters at night. I’m not going to pretend that you won’t be pushed to the very brink, that some of you won’t be swallowed whole by the pressure.” Grace steals a look at me, but I keep my eyes straight ahead. “But for the troupe of sorcerers that emerges victorious at the end of this trial, the ones who show me that they’ve got the magic we all want to experience, to taste, to live in—it will all be worth it. There’ll be more money in it than you could ever dream. Than you can even count.”

  A few of the sorcerers give hearty, hungry laughs around me, and Gunn smiles.

  He gestures to Dawson. “My associate, Dawson, has food outside—there’s water, fruit, and bread. Help yourselves to a quick breakfast. There’s a clearing about a quarter mile deeper into the woods. We’ll begin out there once you’ve eaten.”

  The sorcerers start moving as a herd toward the door, a jostle of rough elbows and shoulders. Stock passes by and flicks me and Grace off with his middle finger. Grace just ignores him, but I give it right back.

  We step outside, and the morning light sears my eyes. A pickup truck is now parked in the lot, stocked with crates of glass bottles, long, crisp baguettes peeking out of sleeves of paper, oranges and apples and stacks of bananas piled high. It looks like the spoils of a market raid.

  Grace and I each grab a water bottle, some bread, and a piece of fruit. We settle down next to each other on a fallen tree trunk a few feet from the truck and watch the thirteen other sorcerers mosey around, divide into their small groups and factions.

  My mind’s itching to relax and just enjoy this—this small sliver of calm before the day’s impending stor
m. But Grace’s words from earlier—It’s what Gunn wants, seven sorcerers is the key to stronger magic, letting the sorcerers choose—they’re starting to buzz around and bite, like a swarm of unanswered questions. Whatever we’re here for, whatever this experiment is, and the end game that Gunn’s calling “unprecedented” magic, it’s obviously something new, rare, big. Something, my guess is, that Gunn’s been planning for a long time.

  My eyes settle on the man as I dig into my breakfast. He stands at the passenger side of the truck, sleeves rolled up, brow creased in concentration as he gives his orders to Dawson. He looks hard, sharp, but also, under the bright white of morning, even younger than I took him for last night. “You know a lot about this Gunn fella?”

  Grace shrugs as she peels her banana. “I know his name from the papers. He’s a Shaw man, practically raised by the gang from what I understand—his pop Danny Gunn even ran it once upon a time. Now he’s Boss McEvoy’s youngest underboss.”

  McEvoy. The name Gunn gave me last night. Boss McEvoy is everyone’s boss.

  “Gunn manages one of the shining rooms McEvoy owns, oversees this place in town called the Red Den, has for years. But from what I was able to gather from the car, Gunn plans to make the Den . . . bigger. More impressive than a handful of solo performances and a shot of sorcerer’s shine. He talked about the place becoming jaw-dropping, and blowing away all the city’s competition.”

  “You ever been to this Red Den?”

  “Hell, I’ve never been to DC,” Grace answers. “But I needed to get out of Alexandria. Too much history . . . and too many memories.”

  “That I understand.” I follow Grace’s gaze to Gunn’s minion, Dawson, as he jumps off the back of the truck and starts making the rounds, attempting to get everyone moving to the clearing.

  “What Stock was saying about my family?” Grace says slowly. “It’s bullshit, but there’s a sliver of truth in the lie. My family’s gifted in natural forecasts, has always excelled in using magic to commune with nature. But I swear, the more we listened, the louder and scarier nature got. Magic melded our minds with superstitious, primal forces, forces that whispered what they wanted constantly, forces that started pushing us all into stranger, darker spells. I needed to get out, go somewhere new, forget all of that,” she adds, then looks at me suddenly. “Sometimes the only option is walking away and starting over, you understand?”

  White-hot memories of Mama’s own strange, dark spells sear into my mind—Mama bent over the farm boy Skippy McGarrison, his bottom half crushed by one of his daddy’s stallions, the lanterns of her spell room casting him in a sick yellow glow, his howls, her steady hand carving out a graft of his skin as a sacrifice to save his life—

  I shake my head to chase away the memories before Grace has a chance to catch them. I don’t know how to answer her—whether to say that I do understand in my own way, or that I could never leave my family, or whether I trust her enough to share my family’s own special magic. But before I can sort it out, Gunn calls out to the crowd, “Time to wrap it up!”

  The sorcerers fall into silence. “Clearing’s not more than a stone’s throw from here,” Gunn adds. “Dawson will bring the materials we’ll need.” Then he gestures to the truck. “And grab something for later—it’s going to be a long day.”

  We take some extra fruit and bread from the truck, follow the snake of sorcerers through the wild brush, and soon cross over a border of tall grass to reach a clearing. It’s huge, three times the size of the one behind our cabin back home, with a small bordering stream and a nice, clean patch of sun in the middle. On the far side of the clearing near the stream, there’s a structure of large, stacked stones piled waist-high, almost like an altar.

  Dawson carries a crate of mismatched water bottles over to the side of the stone formation. Gunn takes a bottle and places it on the altar’s center, and then approaches a sorcerer who Grace didn’t point out to me in the warehouse. The sorcerer’s middle-aged, with hair slicked back, greased to right above his shoulders. The sorcerer just nods as Gunn whispers to him, doesn’t say a word.

  I feel the crowd’s reaction around me, the whispers and side conversations being slowly killed by curiosity, jealousy—why’s this fella being singled out, what’s so special about him—we all shift uncomfortably and watch the sorcerer wrap his hands around the glass bottle and close his eyes. Like I’ve seen Uncle Jed do so many times before, this sorcerer begins to brew sorcerer’s shine, to cast a spell without any components, other than his own magic touch. Sure enough, the water inside the bottle starts hissing, steaming, and thrashes around until it’s transformed into something else: something sparkling, deep and red. Sorcerer’s shine.

  The sorcerer releases the bottle, wipes his glistening brow with his sleeve, and wipes his palms on the side of his pants.

  “Thank you, Billy,” Gunn says. “That will be all for now.” He looks up at the crowd. “The rest of you, come gather around the altar.”

  Gunn rests his hands on the slab of stone as we form a semicircle around him. “This experiment of mine might be far different than some of you were expecting,” he says. “Truth is, I’m looking for a team, a team only as strong as its weakest member. Of course I’m looking for sorcerers who have mastered their special talents, along with the art of transference, of making shine.” He pauses, his eyes scanning the crowd. “But I also want sorcerers who are going to submit fully to my vision. What I’ve come to believe is the basest of truth about magic: that it is a living thing.” His words bring me right back to the cabin, to Mama’s words of warning, to the basest truth that I too know about magic, despite everything that I don’t.

  “Magic only gets stronger as it makes connections,” Gunn continues. “It wants to form ties, to build and improve upon itself. But that’s not something that this country understands or that many even remember, considering America’s longtime distrust of sorcery. In fact, you all are living proof that some of this country’s most powerful families have insisted on sorcering in their own silos in secret and don’t accept this basic truth.” Gunn gazes out at the crowd, like a preacher at his pulpit. “As always, I think actions speak louder than words. If you’ll entertain a demonstration.” He pauses. “Will the two strongest sorcerers please step forward?”

  No one moves. Eyes begin to turn on one another.

  Gunn clears his throat. “Come now, the two strongest in the lot,” he says, louder. “Whose magic is so astounding that I have to witness it today? Here’s your chance to stand out from the crowd.”

  I share a look with Grace. I’m more likely to go running and screaming for the nearest bus than I am to raise my hand right now, but if I was crazy enough to try it, Grace’s small, solemn head shake tells me NO. I look around, sure as hell that that jerk-off Stock is going to step forward, but two other men beat him to it.

  “Mark Saunders, from Blue Ridge,” a large, middle-aged man says as he steps forward. “I believe I can out-trick and outperform any sorcerer in this lot, Mr. Gunn.”

  “Beg to differ,” says someone else behind him. “Peter Curtin, from Charlotte. No one can rival my magic manipulations, Mr. Gunn. And my shine is like something you can’t believe.”

  “Thank you, Mark, Peter.” Gunn extends his hand, gesturing to the wide, flat stretch of clearing in front of the trees, on the left side of our crowd. “Why don’t we begin?”

  Mark and Peter glance at each other, once, before they follow Gunn to their makeshift performance stage.

  “What do you think they’re going to do?” I whisper to Grace, as Gunn guides Mark and Peter to either side of the long stretch of grass, so now they’re standing face-to-face, about fifteen feet apart, like they’re about to begin a magic duel.

  Grace whispers back slowly, “Show Gunn what he wants to see.”

  Mark begins. He stretches his arms out wide, stage-whispers the words of power, “Grow. Bloom,” and al
most immediately, the grass underneath him begins to rumble. Out of the shifting green blanket, a tangle of roots emerges, like a monster’s hands pushing out from the ground. As the crowd gasps, the thick roots fold open, grow longer, and wider, and then the center root erupts skyward, twists into a trunk, thick and textured and now twenty feet high. It throws a long shadow over our crowd, before it splits into limbs that race to fill out the tree. The limbs divide, splinter into branches, which bloom into a tapestry of leaves.

  Uncle Jed stopped sorcering manipulations around the time he lost himself to shine, but I remember this same awed feeling creeping over me and settling in, as I watched him conjure a lemon tree or shady oak in our yard. Creating something real from nothing, or protecting something with magic, or linking and binding things that have no business being linked: pure magic might only last a day, but its hold on you lasts far longer.

  But before I can fully appreciate the tree, a blinding, white-hot blast of lightning bursts right down its trunk, splitting it open with a monstrous gash.

  I whip around to find Peter—the lightning manipulation must have been his. I keep watching as he waves his hands forward like a conductor, and the lightning bursts into flames, red-hot orange waves that lap at the base of the tree, then climb onto its trunk, jump to its branches—

  Mark returns. He throws his arms up to the heavens, commands, “Fall and freeze,” and a strong burst of wind comes shrieking around the charred tree branches, blowing the orange and red flames into a thick wall of gray smoke. Snow begins to fall, not a natural flurry, but an all-out, otherworldly blizzard, buckets of white clumpy snowballs caking the tree, burying it, snuffing the fire right out—