I found 2 techniques recently that seem obvious in hindsight, and they’ve really helped me get back on track with writing:

1. Turning off the wireless to my laptop the night before my morning writing sessions. Can’t access it (easily), can’t get distracted by it.
2. Setting a timer for 45 minutes and doing nothing but writing during that time. You can do anything for 45 minutes, right? That’s just 3/4 of an hour! You’d be surprised how focused this can make you. I often keep going after the alarm on my phone goes off. Or if it’s slow, I’ll just keep putting down words, comforted by the thought that I only have a few minutes left before I can take a break…

Those tricks came from reading the blog of screenwriter John August, who has a great series called Workspace that I’m still working my way through, as well as a cool site called The Setup.

Both series focus on the tools people use to do their writing or acting or voice work, or whatever their jobs are.  I’m also discovering a bunch of cool creative types to track and read. At some point I may try to do a blog like that.

But I’m not that ambitious right now. What those sites got me thinking about today was all the gadgets we have around the house, and how all those gadgets are geekily named.

So I give you this Master List of the Jasper Gadgets–and Their Names:

• Treebeard: our wheezy old Windows XP desktop computer
• Galadriel: Elizabeth’s somewhat wheezy old iMac, forever stuck at version 10.4 because it’s so darn old
• Celeborn: the ancient iPod (pre-iPod Touch, even) that we got with the iMac in 2006
• Strider: my iPhone
• Arwen Evenstaaah!: Elizabeth’s iPhone (yes, that’s how she spells it!)
• Baggins: my shiny new Windows 7 laptop (“Shire! Baggins!“)
• Mithrandir: my Kindle Touch
• Gandalf: our rarely used digital camera

Ah, the Lord of the Rings-induced goofiness of it all… Also, we have a crapload of computers and gadgets. And I took two laptops to the recycling center last year. It’s kind of a crazy, first-world situation.

Now I just need an artistic, pensive author photo like they have for the Workspace creators… Like this, maybe:

… Or maybe not…!

Thanks so much for sticking with me and reading it through to the end. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

(And at the end of this final chapter, there’s a link to the sequel if you’re interested in reading the opening to that book. But first, of course, finish this one!)

In this chapter, Kelley shares the love, and the magic, with the good people of Dubuque, Iowa…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Twenty-Four

Numb with shock, and more than a little bit dizzy from all the sudden appearances and disappearances all around her, Kelley stood with Polly on the burning roof of the runaway riverboat. As she stared at the ongoing bursts of Blood Sorcerer magic cutting through their paltry shield, she realized that Polly was yelling something at her. Kelley grabbed her and pulled her close, surprised at how skinny the other girl’s arm was.

“Looks like,” Polly shouted into her ear, “all the boys took off on us. And Gran, too. Bunch of cowards!”

We’re the only ones left. Kelley wiped sweat from her face from the fire heating up the runaway boat. And we can’t leave all those folks downstairs to burn up or drown. Not when I can still do magic.

Not while I’m still infected…

All around them, the levitating Blood Sorcerers filled the night with a wild chanting that created a forty-foot-wide cylinder of green flame on the roof of the boat. The circle of fire started at the metal railing, melting it easily, and then moved inward. Kelley heard panicked screams from down below as the gamblers and drinkers and workers from the casino saw the unnatural green fire burning through the roof above them.

Kelley thought once more about what Azure and Jeroan had both said about magic. Azure’s final words had been to destroy “all the infected people.”

Infected, that was, with magic. Triggered people.

I don’t have to do this on my own, she realized.

“Come on,” she said to Polly.

She grabbed the white girl’s hand. Without wasting another second, Kelley felt a flush of magical heat as she whispered a Word: “Up.”

Polly tried to fight her at first, panicking as they rose into the sky, past the two dozen Sorcerers perched on the railings below them. Four of the closest Sorcerers turned their green energy on Kelley, and she had to waste more energy blocking them with a muttered, “Drop off.”

The over-aggressive Sorcerers fell away from the boat with four splashes into the icy river. The boat was maybe fifty feet from the bridge now.

“Relax!” Kelley shouted above the crackling energy and orange flames as they floated above the roof. Polly fought her so hard that she almost dropped her. “You can do this too, Polly! You did it on the basketball court today, remember?”

The other girl stopped resisting at last and gave Kelley a dazed smile.

That’s a girl, Kelley thought, her respect for Polly shooting up a notch.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll do this together. Just hold tight, okay?”

Dropping down toward the side of the riverboat, Kelley looked at all the scared and panicked people on the three levels of the casino below them. Some ran around helplessly, trying to do something, while others just poked their out of the windows or stood on the balconies and watched the bridge approaching in numb shock.

Backup, Kelley thought as she took in all those scared, shocked faces looking up at her. These people are our backup down here.

She felt a weight lift from her as Polly let go, mumbling something about floating on her own. She patted the girl’s shoulder, feeling her own confidence rise. I’m not alone in this. I don’t have to do this on my own.

Together they floated in front of the countless sets of windows in the casino below her. She took a deep breath of the frigid air.

“People of Dubuque!” Kelley shouted. “We need your help. Focus all of your thoughts on stopping these men and women up here above the boat. They’ll kill us all with their Words unless you stop them. Do you hear me? Stop the Words!”

With Polly hovering in the air next to her, Kelley pushed out with her mind in as wide a circle as she could muster.

She imagined that she was the carrier of the virus that was magic, and she was now sneezing in each person’s face on the boat.

Catch it, she thought. Get infected by magic.

“Stop the Words,” Polly muttered next to her.

In her jeans pocket, Kelley’s eGadget flashed hot as a frying pan. No more than twenty-five feet separated the burning boat from the approaching bridge.

On the three floors of the casino, people dropped their tokens and their dice and their cards, even their drinks, and a new energy filled the air. Tall and thin, short and fat, young and old, the people of Dubuque had come to life.

Every person on the three levels of the casino focused their attention on the band of Sorcerers floating above the roof.

And they chanted: “Stop the Words. Stop the Words. Stop the Words!”

The green cylinder of fire wavered as the chant continued.

Then the flames winked out with a loud poofing sound.

Up on the roof, a series of thuds filled the air. About two dozen, Kelley figured, if she’d been counting correctly. The Sorcerers’ voices had fallen silent. And when their Words had been silenced, the Blood Sorcerers lost their ability to levitate above the burning boat. They’d dropped like rocks onto the roof.

Kelley gave Polly a tired smile. “We infected ‘em all. And now,” Kelley nodded at the quickly approaching bridge. “We have one more thing to do.”

“How about we say Stop, on three?” Polly asked.

Kelley let out a laugh.

Was it that easy? Maybe it was. She nodded at Polly.

“One,” Polly began, and the magical heat filled them both, “two, three…”

“Stop,” Kelley and Polly said together.

Polly’s camera and Kelley’s phone flashed, and the riverboat—now almost exactly perpendicular to the bridge support—came to a sudden rest in the center of the river. Its middle portion kissed the concrete support with a soft crunching sound, and then it stayed there as if glued.

A series of crashes and more thuds rang out from below as the gamblers fell over from the sudden stop.

Then all Kelley could hear was the sound of the wind and the honking of cars and trucks on the bridge above her.

“We did it,” she whispered, grinning at Polly. Her head felt light as air, but she was still able to slap Polly a high five.

Back on the roof, the cold wind had blown out the fires. Kelley and Polly watched as the Sorcerers tried in vain to restart their magic, but no Words or words or anything came from any of their mouths.

She and Polly dropped to the edge of the smoking roof. The Blood Sorcerers stared at the two girls with stunned faces, powerless without their Words and their leader.

“So,” Polly said, recovering enough from her wave of magic-induced fatigue to stand on her own again. “What are we gonna do about these guys?”

“We’ll get it worked out, as soon as we get back to town,” Kelley said with a tired sigh, though she secretly felt excited about all that had just happened. She and the people of Dubuque—and Polly, too—had kicked butt here on this boat.

“I guess we should figure out a way to get this shipwreck back to the city,” Polly said. “Think the gamblers down below have enough magic juice to do that?”

Kelley gave Polly a tired smile and held up her phone.

“I like how you think, Polly. ‘Cause I’m about out of juice, myself. My eGadget and me both.”

Taking another long look at the night sky above the bridge, ignoring the silent crowd of Sorcerers staring at her, Kelley let out a long, shuddering breath and thought one last time about her brother.

He was going to have to take care of himself now. I can’t do it anymore. Jeroan Strickland is officially on his own.

Maybe, Kelley thought, that’s how he always wanted it.

“Let’s head back to town,” she said, feeling strangely relieved as she shifted her gaze from the stars to the riverboat again. “I’ve had enough fun for one night.”

* * * * *

Returning the battered and burnt riverboat to its dock took less than ten minutes, thanks to the hard work of about thirty of the newly triggered people from the riverboat. To Kelley and Polly’s surprise, over half of the people on board had already drifted back to the slots and the blackjack tables and the bar. Some of the gamblers didn’t even want to leave the casino after the riverboat was docked again.

Kelley didn’t get it. Apparently those folks thought it was easier to just forget about what had just happened than—to forget that magic actually existed—than it was to help undo the damage from their ill-fated trip on the Mississippi.

Or maybe they just weren’t interested in stuff they couldn’t easily explain. Feeling exhausted and wrung out from the craziness of the past two days, a part of Kelley really couldn’t blame them.

But that was just a very, very small part of her.

Back at the dock, she nearly shot out of the boat when she saw Maria resting on the sidewalk, patiently waiting for the boat to return. The petite shop owner proudly sat above the barred hole that Kelley had made earlier. Maria had somehow managed to stick Moammar into it alongside Orleans.

Maria’s bulky cell phone, meanwhile, had been broken into big pieces on the concrete around her. The shop owner didn’t seem too rattled by its loss; she had a windup horse with wings hovering just above her as a backup.

“Nice work, Ms. Haze—Maria. But I’ve got to get you a real cell phone.”

Back on solid ground again, Kelley surprised herself by wrapping up Maria in a big hug. The little woman felt small and quite cold in her arms.

“This is Polly,” Kelley said when she let go of Maria. She took a breath and surprised herself when she added, “She’s a friend of mine. Everyone else took off on us. It was a really crazy scene.”

“I hope they are all okay,” Maria said. “I thought I saw a streak of light shoot up out of the boat not too long ago. That was our Alexander, I would guess, right?”

Kelley swallowed and tried to smile. She missed having the little dragon curled up in her coat pocket. She wondered how long he’d been able to maintain his giant dragon body, and whether Azure had gotten to him as they flew off into the night sky.

“Yep. And he had both Archie and Azure with him.”

“Oh,” Maria said. “That does not bode well for any of them. They are bound to be fighting somewhere up in the atmosphere. If not out in space somewhere. One never knows with those two.”

Polly walked away from Kelley and sat on the steps leading to the riverboat.

“Dude,” she said. “I am wiped from all that fighting and hocus-pocus.”

“Speaking of fighting,” Kelley began, remembering the story she’d read earlier in her little book of magic, still safely tucked away inside her coat. “I think your other friend from Stonehenge just may have survived that attack, too. What was her name? Yishi?”

Maria just stared blankly at Kelley. “But how could that be?”

“I don’t know,” Kelley admitted. “Just a hunch. But that kid Jimbo took her away before I could be sure. Apparently, Yishi is Jimbo’s grandmother.”

Maria was rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “She may have also felt the pull to come here,” she said. “Just like me. And Jonathan—Archie—as well. Interesting…”

People continued filing out of the riverboat, all of them looking bedraggled and half-drunk, as if the whole trip out onto the Mississippi had just been an amusement park ride.

Kelley took Maria’s hand. “I think you should see this,” she said.

She tried to lead Maria and Polly back onto the ship, but they couldn’t get through the rush of gamblers getting off.

“Allow me,” Polly said, grabbing Kelley and Maria by the arm. “Up,” Polly said, winking at Kelley as her camera flashed. All three women lifted off the ground and rose to the roof in one smooth motion.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Polly apologized before they landed on the roof, right in the middle of the still-silent magic-users.

“How did you manage to silence them all?” Maria gasped.

“Everyone did it,” Kelley said. “All the people on the boat, plus Polly and me. But—did we hurt them? They haven’t even tried to leave.”

“I believe they will be all right. In a day or two, when the group Words wears off.”

The circle of silent Blood Sorcerers stared at them with despair. They also looked exhausted from the attempt to take down Alexander and burn up the ship.

“What a pathetic group this is,” Polly muttered.

That’s what you get, Kelley thought, for trying to squeeze magic through each other’s bloodstreams. You all really need to pick up an eGadget or two and save yourself a whole mess of worry.

“You know, I think it’s time for some retraining,” Kelley said, elbowing Polly to keep her quiet. She wondered what sort of strange control Azure may have had over these people. For all she knew, they were following his commands against their wills.

“You can never have too many Sorcerers, right?” Kelley looked at Maria and Polly. “Follow my lead, okay? And watch my back.”

Kelley turned to the Blood Sorcerers sitting in a circle on the roof. One by one, she spoke to each of them, giving them back their voices. Most of them transported themselves away immediately to nurse their wounded pride, disappearing with tiny popping sounds.

But half a dozen remained to speak with Kelley and help with the cleanup of the roof and the sections of the casino below that had been damaged by the fighting. Soon, the riverboat was back to normal, looking as if it had never left the harbor.

Kelley smiled at the Sorcerers returning to the roof after helping out. They gave her hope, right when she was starting to doubt the benefits of being able to do magic. Magic had cost her a lot in the past two days.

As if on cue, her phone buzzed once again in her pocket. She pulled it out, the metal edges still warm to the touch, and saw that she’d missed a dozen phone calls from Mom’s cell.

Oh God. The parentals. I’d forgotten all about them, again.

With a quick, almost sheepish look around, Kelley fired off a quick text: “Talk to u soon. I’m ok. Just hanging with some friends. And—”

She started typing her brother’s name, but then deleted it along with the “And.” Mom and Dad would find out about Jeroan soon enough. Instead she typed “Be home soon. “

Hitting the Send button had never felt so good.

“Okay,” she said to the other Sorcerers around her. “We’ll need to get you all some good cell phones. Maybe even an eGadget or two, if we can scrounge some up.” Kelly stretched, and her stomach growled a hungry warning. “But first I think we could all use something to eat. I know a good pizza place.”

“I agree!” Polly called out as they began walking down the steps. “Though it’d better be Rocky Rococo’s.”

“I could eat a couple Super Slices right about now,” Kelley said on their way down. She grinned at Polly and Maria. “You’d better believe it.”

At the concrete landing next to the boat, a small crowd of gamblers from the wild boat ride were waiting for Kelley, Polly, and Maria. Most of them had been part of the group of triggered folks who’d helped bring the boat back.

Now, the dock had been cleaned up, and the hole where Orleans and Moammar had been trapped was gone. The two followers of Azure must have been snatched up by some of the departing Blood Sorcerers.

Good riddance, Kelley thought.

The people from the riverboat who’d remained at the dock were gaping and pointing at Kelley, as if waiting for her to do something else amazing.

The people waiting suddenly burst into applause as the three women stepped off the boat. Kelley had never seen so many white faces all in one place. And they were all watching her, but unlike yesterday morning, she didn’t mind. Not a single bit.

Wow, she thought, waving at the cheering crowd and feeling her face turn hot. With people like this here in Dubuque, it really can’t be all that bad. No matter what Jeroan might have said about it.

Magic girl saving her new home, Kelley thought, walking back toward downtown Dubuque with a tired but proud smile on her face. Better keep an eye on her, if you can!

THE END

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BONUS: Here’s a link to the sequel, A Wild Epidemic of Magic, which will be available in June 2012. Enjoy the opening chapters right here on my site!

Of course, you can always snag an ebook or trade paperback from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, the roof of the riverboat gets really, really crowded, and then the wrong people decide to beat a hasty retreat…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Twenty-Three

Standing at the edge of the roof with the icy wind in her face, Kelley looked up, trying to track her brother flying up into the bruised-looking sky. She slid her eGadget from her pocket and tried to pick him up with its GPS. Not even a beep.

Jeroan was already gone.

For ten long seconds that felt like an eternity, she gazed at the sky as the boat rocked gently under her. High above the Mississippi, stars began popping out, distant points of light that blurred and shimmered as the wind made her eyes water. The smell of fish and mud tickled her nose from the river far below her.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, feeling nothing, just an overwhelming numbness. She didn’t even care if Azure blasted her now.

Jeroan’s gone, and I didn’t do anything to try and stop him. I’ve lost him for the last time.

Then she saw something moving through the sky from the opposite direction from where Jeroan had flown off. It wasn’t Jeroan and the henchmen, but something bigger. Much bigger, like a plane, though she could hear no engine. It had gotten too dark for Kelley to see anything but a blur of white.

A piercing scream filled the air, along with the wild rush of wind and flapping wings. The flying shape dropped down toward the riverboat like an arrow. Instead of paralyzing fear, however, Kelley felt relief wash over her like a sudden warm breeze.

She could see now that it had clawed feet instead of landing gear.

“So there you are,” she whispered as the white, winged creature blotted out the sky and the stars and came in for a landing on the roof of the swaying riverboat. “It’s about time, Alexander.”

* * * * *

Kelley remembered all too clearly the look on Azure’s face yesterday when Polly had shot him, right in the chest. There was some pain there, but mostly it was a look of shock and disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe such a terrible thing could happen to him, of all people.

Azure was wearing that same expression right now, just as Alexander the former windup dragon dropped on top of him.

When the dragon set his back legs down on the riverboat, his weight caused a series of loud popping sounds far below them, like huge bones being snapped. The boat lurched, and Kelley lost her balance. She grabbed for the railing and looked over the side at the muddy water below, where the normally calm water of the harbor had started to move.

She blinked and realized that it was actually the riverboat doing the moving.

Alexander’s arrival had knocked the boat loose from its moorings, and it was now pulling away from the dock.

Oh crap, Kelley thought, and then she turned back to see what Alexander had done to Azure.

Instead of swallowing the bald dude—which the huge dragon could’ve done with one big bite—Alexander seemed content to toy with Jeroan’s new boss. The dragon’s taloned back paws, each one easily five feet long, dug into the metal of the roof as he plucked up Azure with a front paw.

He was three times as big as he’d been earlier, in the van. The tips of Alexander’s twenty-feet-long wings batted at Azure’s face, as if tickling him, preventing Azure from saying a Word.

Alexander, Kelley wanted to shout out, quit playing with your food!

She left the railing and hurried back to Archie’s side. Polly was already there, crouched next to the old guy, trying to get him to sit up even as the unmoored boat rocked and shuddered under the weight of the dragon.

Shouting voices from the casino floors now filled the air. The gamblers below had finally broken free of the spell cast over them. Kelley didn’t think they’d ever expected their docked gambling boat to take off on them like this.

“We’ve got to stop this,” she said to Polly. “If this boat gets going out on the river, we’re screwed.”

Polly nodded and looked down at Archie, who was starting to snore, with a big smile on his face.

“Glad he’s enjoying this,” Polly said. “And your brother, taking off like that…”

“I don’t wanna talk about that,” Kelley said, peering through the wreckage and smoke on the roof.

She could just barely see Jimbo and Gran on the other side of Alexander’s bulk. To her relief, Gran had lifted her head and was looking around. When she saw the dragon not five feet from her, though, she started shouting hysterically in Chinese.

“Let’s get over to Jimbo and his grandma,” Kelley said, dodging Alexander’s madly swinging tail. “We could use his help if we’re going to get out of here in one piece.”

The boat lurched hard to one side as it brushed up against a smaller boat docked close to where the harbor met the river. In that moment, as everyone jostled for their balance and more screams filled the air, Azure slipped out of Alexander’s grip long enough to put his hands up to his mouth.

The bald man began calling out unintelligible Words in his loudest voice. It sounded like the braying of a donkey, off-key and painful to her ears. Alexander put a stop to it quickly by smacking Azure in the head.

But Azure didn’t even bother fighting with the dragon. He looked a bit smug as he crossed his arms over his chest and let Alexander toy with him a bit longer.

“What was that all about?” Polly said as they half-led, half carried Archie around the dragon’s back paws and ducked under his swinging tail.

“No idea,” Kelley said, out of breath. “But I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

As the loose casino bumped and rocked its way toward the open water of the river, starting to pick up speed, Kelley pitched forward the last few feet to where Jimbo and Gran were huddled in the doorway. She looked over at Jimbo.

“Is she okay?”

Jimbo swiped away the tears on his face. He looked like he’d just woken from a nightmare, only to realize the nightmare was still going on.

“She’s hurt,” Jimbo said. “Pretty bad, I think.”

Kelley looked from Gran’s fluttering eyelids—at least she’d stopped screaming—over to Alexander and Azure. The big dragon seemed like he was about to leap into the air, with Azure tight in his grip. His back legs tensed, and then the dragon froze.

Kelley suddenly felt a weird pressure in her ears, followed by another warm breeze that didn’t come from the dragon’s wings.

“Um, dudes,” Polly said, pointing up. “I think we’ve got some more company.”

Kelley looked around and nearly fell over. The darkening night sky was suddenly filled with floating humans, dropping onto the boat’s roof like leaves.

On her left, tall white man in a beret and faded jeans touched down, singing his Words with a lilting voice.

Next to him, an Oriental woman wearing a kimono and motorcycle boots landed, speaking her Words with a high, staccato voice.

On the far side of Alexander, a dark-skinned man in white robes and a black turban murmured his Words in a deep bass voice.

And a suntanned woman in coveralls with sandy hair whispered her Words as she touched down in front of the little building where Polly and Kelley had hidden next to earlier.

There were more, Kelley realized. Did they all work for Azure? They must have, since they’d heard the man’s donkey-like distress call and just came running. Or flying. Or whatever you wanted to call it.

And more were materializing in the air around them—ten, now a dozen, and then more—even as the riverboat slid and rocked its way out of the harbor and onto the river.

What had Azure called them? Kelley wondered. Not just Sorcerers, but…

Blood Sorcerers.

The riverboat roof became even more crowded as Azure’s worldwide band of Sorcerers surrounded Azure and the dragon, ignoring Kelley and the others. Alexander still hadn’t moved, and Kelley could’ve sworn he looked just a little bit smaller than before. The air was hot and ticklish with energy and power.

For at few long, almost unbearable seconds, nothing happened other than the ship rocking and shuddering as the panicked people in the floors below worked themselves up into a frenzy with their shouting and screaming.

At last, Alexander let out a tiny meeping sound and let go of Azure. That was all the Blood Sorcerers needed.

The shouting voices of two dozen Sorcerers suddenly filled the night, and green energy swirled into the air, from one Blood Sorcerer to another, and then shot right into Alexander’s white hide. The first round of attacks simply bounced off his thick skin and shot harmlessly up into the night sky, but he caught a blast in the mouth and his chest that made him cry out, more in frustration than pain.

Soon, the metal roof began to smoke and melt, and fires from the deflected blasts of magic sprang up in a half dozen different spots below and next to the dragon. The air was quickly becoming hard to breathe.

The Blood Sorcerers were running magic through one another to gather power, Kelley realized, and it was only a matter of time before Alexander would be overcome.

“Alexander,” Kelley called out. “Get out of there!”

Alexander was starting to squeal with pain as the Sorcerers’ blasts began to cause some real hurting. Azure walked away from the chaos of green energy and the fires the magic had started. He looked over at Archie, Kelley, Polly, Jimbo, and Gran and gave them a smile.

Then he started walking their way, trusting his Blood Sorcerers to not zap him in the head as he moved past them and the panicking dragon. Alexander was now giving off the stink of melting metal. Kelley could almost hear his gears grinding together once more.

Next to her, Archie was somehow back on his feet again, as if he’d gotten his second wind when he saw Azure approaching.

“Alexander!” Kelley yelled again. “Go!”

The dragon shrieked, but didn’t comply. The ring of Sorcerers surrounding the dragon tightened on him, still borrowing energy from each other. Green energy circled around all of them, but the blasts landed on the dragon.

“Go,” Kelley screamed, then remembered Maria’s words from earlier, back in her shop. How she’d said he was her guardian, and how he’d never leave her. “I order you!”

At last, the slowly shrinking dragon turned to face both Kelly and Azure, whipping his wings around violently enough to knock over all the Sorcerers attacking him. He crouched low and looked at Kelley for a long moment. His black eyes softened, just for a second, in spite of his pain.

Then he tilted his head at her, as if saluting her, before he launched himself straight up into the night sky. Something big and fast swooshed past Kelley, just for an instant.

Alexander was just a streak of white against black, his flapping wings spread wide and working hard. Kelley could just make out the outline of a person in each of the dragon’s hind feet. One man glowed blue, while the other was lit by an angry green light as they began battling in mid-air.

Kelley recognized Archie in the creature’s left paw and Azure in the other. Somehow Alexander had snatched both Sorcerers on his way up into the sky.

The dragon’s underbelly flashed wildly with both shades of magical energy like an emergency vehicle as it rushed higher and higher, holding tight to the fighting pair of Sorcerers.

“Take it to him, Archie,” Kelley muttered, feeling surprisingly sad to see someone else disappear into the night like this, even if Alexander and Archie had taken Azure with them. “Glad your phone’s got a good charge in it.”

The Blood Sorcerers started leaping into the air to chase down the dragon, but Azure’s voice stopped them.

“No! Forget about me!” he shouted, giving his global band of Sorcerers his final commands before his voice faded completely. “Destroy the boat and all the infected aboard it! Contain this situation. Leave no evidence, no—”

Azure’s voice was cut off as the dragon and his captives disappeared in one final flash of green and blue energy. A heartbeat later, the air exploded with a sonic boom. Kelley grabbed for the door frame to keep from falling over as the riverboat lurched again.

“Infected?” Jimbo whispered next to her once they were all able to hear again.

The boat was in the middle of the river now. Ahead of them, growing taller and wider by the second, the supports for the brightly lit highway bridge quickly approached. The boat was on a crash course for one of the eight-foot-wide concrete supports.

And the Blood Sorcerers were returning to the boat again like flies hovering over a snack. Once more, they didn’t seem to be too worried about Kelley and the others as they floated ten feet above the roof and spoke in low voices to one another. Meanwhile, the boat zigged and zagged its crooked way down the river.

“We have to do something to protect us and everyone else onboard,” Kelley said. “So how about we put up a shield over the roof?”

She tried to put on a brave face for the others, though she felt close to exhaustion already. There were just so many of those other Sorcerers. And with Archie gone, Gran not doing so hot, and Maria back at the Dubuque dock, Kelley didn’t feel much like part of a good thing anymore.

“The whole roof?” Polly didn’t look convinced.

Kelley nodded and lifted her eGadget.

“I think it’s the only way,” she said, feeling a familiar and welcome puff of hot air cover her. “Block them out.”

A layer of white energy shot out from her phone until it reached the other side of the boat. It was thin as a bedsheet from being stretched so far across the roof.

“C’mon, Polly. A little help?”

Polly lifted her camera, called out a keyword of her own, and with another puff of heat, her magical energy was added to Kelley’s shield. It looked thick as a comforter now. Not great, but it was a start.

“Hey Jimbo!” Kelley shouted. But the Harvey’s guy was whispering something in his grandmother’s ear. Kelley was relieved to see the old woman getting to her feet again. They could really use Gran’s help, too.

“But where is Jonathan?” Kelley heard Gran mutter with a hand to her head. “Magic pulled me here to help him—and you—in your time of need. And I did so well, didn’t I?”

Struggling to keep the shield in place, Kelley heard the traffic of Highway 20 approaching on the bridge no more than two hundred feet from them. The riverboat kept shifting in the river until it was almost floating sideways towards the bridge.

The bridge will split this boat in half, she knew, and do the exact same job that the Blood Sorcerers had been ordered to do by Azure. Smoke filled the air from the fires the Sorcerers had already started when they were fighting Alexander.

“Gran,” Jimbo was saying next to Kelley, “you did awesome. We’ll talk all about it, once we get back home, okay? I can’t let you get hurt again.”

“Jimbo,” Kelley said. She had a bad feeling about the way the kid was acting. The look on his skinny face reminded Kelley way too much of her absent bother. “What are you doing?”

“No!” Gran shouted. “We can’t leave. We have work to do! More fighting with these Nèi Jìn!”

But Gran was too late. The Words began to flow once more from the Sorcerers’ mouths. It was time to clean up all the evidence, as Azure would’ve said.

As easily as a scissors cutting through paper, blasts of green energy began slicing through the white shield Kelley and Polly were trying to hold in place. The ruined roof, most of its metal already melted away, quickly caught fire again in a dozen places.

“Jimbo!” Polly called across the roof. “Get over here and help us, dude!”

Kelley looked over at Jimbo just as she realized what he was about to do.

“Don’t—” she began.

But just like everyone else today, Jimbo refused to listen to her. And she couldn’t stop him, not if she wanted to keep the shield in place and protect all the people in the casino below.

“Come on Gran,” Jimbo said. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go—”

With a flash of white energy, holding tight to Gran with his left hand and his pathetic little solar-powered calculator in his right, Jimbo whispered a word—”Home“—and they both disappeared.

Can’t wait for the rest of the serialization? Here’s how to get a copy now:

• Buy a PDF directly from UnWrecked Press
  
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If you enjoyed what you read, feel free to make a donation via PayPal:

Of course, you can always snag an ebook or trade paperback from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, Jeroan tries to impress (as always) his new buddies, and gets in the last word (for once)…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jeroan felt like he was watching a tennis match that used magic and Words instead of balls and racquets. Standing outside on the metal roof that had once been his high-tech office, he watched Azure launch a burst of another blue energy at the small person in the gray robes perched just inside the doorway to the roof. The visitor deflected it back at Azure with a Word and a flash of blue-tinted energy from his or her hand. The energy rebounded off the roof, rocking the riverboat hard enough to make waves in the shallow water below.

A few feet behind Azure, the big man with the drooping mustache with the code name of York had just gotten to his feet. Jeroan couldn’t figure out why he was quivering and reeling around like a drunk, but then he remembered Jimbo in the hospital room yesterday, when Azure got a hold of him.

Azure was now channeling magic through his big flunky instead of a cell phone or a watch before launching it at the robed woman. And now that Jeroan got a good look at York, he could see waves of greenish energy flowing into the big guy like electricity, and then Azure would aim that energy at their gray-robed visitor. York didn’t look happy about the situation, but he also looked helpless to stop it.

That was a truly nasty way to use magic, he thought. Give me an eGadget any day of the week.

Polly and Jimbo, meanwhile, were trying to carry on a shouted conversation over the sounds of magical battle.

“Did you say that’s your grandmother?” Polly shouted at Jimbo, elbowing him in the side. “Get outta here, dude! She’s totally kicking butt!”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jimbo said, rubbing his side. “Though she never told me she could do magic. I don’t get why she kicked me out of the house today… Wait a sec. She’s got her music box!”

On the far side of the roof, the woman in the gray robe—Gran—was shouting in some other language, and something in her hand flashed again. It was a tiny music box, just as Jimbo had said. Jeroan guessed it had black geese flying over purple mountains painted on its side.

Gran had to keep winding it every few seconds or so, in between blocking bursts of green energy and building walls of blue energy. Apparently Jimbo’s grandmother hadn’t upgraded from clockwork magic to gadget magic yet.

A disk of green magic exploded against the doorway where the little old woman was standing, sending bits of wood flying into the air. Gran went down to one knee. Jeroan heard Jimbo yelp, and he felt a pang of jealousy when he saw Jimbo pull Kelley and Polly close. Jeroan didn’t dare try to join them, not after turning his back on them earlier by volunteering to join Azure.

“We’ve got to help her, Kelley,” Jimbo shouted. “She can’t hold out forever.”

“I know,” Kelley shouted. “But how?”

Before anyone could do or say anything to stop him, the old bum from the alley appeared in the middle of the explosions and debris, right behind Azure. Archie held a tiny pink cell phone in his hand.

“Let’s stop for a moment,” he said in his deep, clear voice. The cold wind turned hot as Archie reached up, tapped Azure on the shoulder, and said, “Gholtangara.”

Everything on the rooftop froze as bright white light shot out of Archie’s pink phone. The light expanded until it covered Azure in a glimmering bubble of energy. The rest of the world continued, while Azure remained frozen in place inside his bubble.

Azure probably never knew what hit him. Jeroan felt a pang of sympathy for the guy, getting ambushed like that.

Released from his boss’s magical, parasite-like grip, York tumbled to the rooftop with a clatter and a groan that Jeroan could hear over the wind in his ears.

“Awesome,” Jimbo said, and then he scampered across the roof, past the immobilized Azure and his two henchmen, heading for his Gran. He grabbed the old woman’s tiny hand and helped her back to her feet.

Archie, meanwhile, was muttering more Words into his phone as he moved between Azure and his henchmen, determined to not only keep Azure trapped in his bubble of gadget-powered energy, but also cut off from his power sources, York and Mexico.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeroan caught Kelley and Polly creeping to the edge of the roof. Keeping low so nobody could see him, Jeroan scurried after them.

When they stopped at the edge, Jeroan took a long look at both girls. Polly looked tiny and helpless inside her big windbreaker, and Kelley—as always—looked completely out of place up here on the roof of the steamboat.

I need to get them out of here before they get hurt. But I don’t have any juice left in my phone…

Jeroan smiled and fought the urge to snap his fingers. Insteadhe aimed his left hand at the girls and pointed his right hand at the big guy York.

Let’s give this a try, he thought.

Immediate heat poured into him as he focused on grabbing the energy out of the air and channeling it through York. The big guy jumped and turned his angry gaze on Jeroan, but he didn’t have the energy to do anything about it. Jeroan almost laughed out loud at the rush of power surging back into him.

“Shield them,” he whispered, waving his left hand in a circle at Kelley and Polly. A small ball of green light shot out of York toward the two girls, growing and growing until it was big enough to swallow them both. The ball of energy lifted Kelley and Polly up and over the edge of the riverboat.

“Put us down!” Polly screamed as they dangled over the dark brown waters of the Mississippi, then added, “You traitor!”

“No,” Jeroan began, shouting to be heard over the wind “I’m not—I, I’m trying to protect you!”

“Jeroan!” Kelley shouted, glaring at him in her trademark sisterly way. “I don’t believe you! Stop it right now!”

Distracted by a sudden movement from the middle of the roof, Jeroan didn’t respond. He saw that Azure had broken free of Archie’s bubble of energy, and he was now attacking both Gran and Archie at the same time, draining Mexico of even more energy, faster. Energy swirled around that side of the roof like a tornado of light and heat.

Azure caught Jeroan’s eye, just for a moment, and he smiled when he saw how Jeroan was using York to work his magic. Blood magic, Azure had called it. For a moment Jeroan felt repulsed by what he was doing, but then he heard Kelley the Beast yelling at him once again.

“Jeroan,” she was saying, “bring us back.” A flash of white light flashed from of Kelley’s pants pocket, and the two girls inside Jeroan’s ball of energy shot forward until they were both back over the roof.

She got her battery charged again, Jimbo thought. And she left me with my useless, juiceless eGadget. Left me hanging, as usual.

Jeroan grimaced as Kelley’s magic overpowered his for a moment. Angry now, he focused his blood magic on the ball. Ten feet away, York groaned.

“Back off!” he shouted, and just like that they were dangling out over the water again inside the green ball of energy. But this time they only went about half as far away as they’d gone earlier. Kelley was fighting it now, like a magical tug-of-war.

The back-and-forth would’ve gone on all night, but Polly wasn’t having it.

“Traitor,” she said to Jeroan, holding up her camera. “Put us down.”

Her camera flashed in her hand, and Kelley and Polly shot back to the rooftop, nearly toppling into him. His bubble of green energy that was supposed to be protecting the girls burst with a tiny popping sound.

Kelley won, Jeroan thought. Again.

The two girls stood right in front of him, arms crossed, completely oblivious to the battle going on behind Jeroan’s back. He couldn’t meet his sister’s gaze, but he felt he owed an explanation to his first real friend from here.

“Polly,” he said in a low voice, “you want to know why I didn’t want that Azure guy to get inside my head and tell you all my secrets like he did to you and Jimbo?”

“What’re you talking about, J?” Polly said.

“I’m nothing but secrets—secrets and lies.” Jeroan swiped at his eyes with an angry movement. He shook his head as the boat rocked, and something far below them snapped.

“Like the whole gang thing. I was never in a gang in Chicago.” He heard Kelley’s gasp of surprise, but refused to acknowledge it. “I just knew a few guys who were trying to get into one. But because of all that, we had to move here, of all places. I just lied about it all to look good. To look tough. And see what happened?”

“Jeroan,” Kelley said, but her voice was all wobbly with anger. “Let’s just deal with the here and now, not the past. You need to stay away from these guys, Jeroan. Azure’s a maniac. All that magic and paranoia’s gone to his head.”

“No,” Jeroan said. “You don’t under—”

Kelley grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to look him in the eye. Instinctively, Jeroan wrenched away from her, hard.

“Jeroan,” she said, “Azure and his roided-up cronies think we’re the bad guys. That we’re the magical terrorists.”

Jeroan looked at Kelley, meeting her eyes for the first time since her arrival up here on the roof. He thought about all that had gone on in the past day and a half, all the little things Kelley had done to try to make him fail, just when he’d found something amazing and incredible that he was actually good at. Every time he’d failed, Kelley the Beast had played a part in it.

And now, Jeroan realized, she was sabotaging me again.

“Little sister,” he said, backing away. “You blew up our house. I know it was you, now. You’re the one who’s out of control.”

Jeroan glanced around and saw that Mexico was back on his feet again, while his partner York remained passed out—or worse—on the cold metal of the riverboat roof.

“Just leave. Both of you. Leave now if you want to get out of here in one piece.”

“And go back to what, J?” Polly said. “To being the trashy white girl with a drunk mom? Do you think I can just walk away after all I’ve seen and done today? Do you think I’d gladly go back to being normal after realizing I can do magic?”

“Well,” said Jeroan, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “That would be the easy way for everyone.”

Polly answered that with a frustrated shriek that sounded like it came from the bottom of her toes, a sound that continued echoing in Jeroan’s ears even after Polly had closed her mouth. The scream filled the night sky like a siren that never faded, almost as if it were coming from high above them.

Jeroan looked up, but couldn’t see a thing. When he turned back to say something to Polly, both she and his sister had disappeared.

“Good riddance,” he thought, face burning with shame and anger. He headed back toward the middle of the boat, where Azure and Mexico were still trying to contain Archie. Close to the exit, Jimbo and Gran struggled to keep a shield of magic in place with his solar calculator and her antique music box.

At that moment Mexico slipped in close to Archie and caught the old man in the neck with his Pincers. Archie flailed his arms and fell flat on his back, feet kicking.

Jeroan winced and touched her own neck in sympathetic pain.

“Had to be done,” he whispered to himself as he hunkered down behind a twisted piece of metal on the roof. “Azure’s just doing damage control here.”

To Jeroan’s amazement, Archie somehow managed to lift his head to look over at the little woman in the gray robe, as if seeing her for the first time.

“Yishi?” he gasped. “Is that you?”

And then Archie’s head fell back against the metal roof with a metallic clang.

“Jonathan,” Azure said, his face red with anger. “You know what happens to people who ambush me. Or have you forgotten Stonehenge, too?”

Mexico shouted out in surprise as Azure began channeling magic through him again. With a shouted Word. Azure aimed a bolt of green energy that shot out of Mexico and flashed toward Archie.

But before the bolt could hit Archie in his defenseless state, a wall of light blue energy snapped in front of Archie to deflect Azure’s attack.

“I remember Stonehenge as well,” said an elderly woman’s voice with a heavy accent.

Azure lowered his hands and turned to look at Gran, who had just spoken. Jimbo gave a weak smile next to her, still holding tight to his solar calculator.

Jeroan left his hiding spot and started crawling across the cold metal roof toward Jeroan and the old woman. They needed to get out of here as well, just like Kelley and Polly, for their own good.

“This cannot be,” he heard Azure say. “How can you be here as well, Yishi?”

They were so focused on Azure that Jimbo and Gran never saw Jeroan sneak up next to them. He slipped up to Gran and snagged the music box from her hand.

“Jeroan!” Jimbo cried out from next to his grandmother. “You freakin’ traitor!”

“Get back,” Jeroan said, feeling magic flow through past him and into York once more. He sent Jimbo three steps back and onto his rear end close to the door leading downstairs. His grandmother dropped to one knee from Jeroan’s small burst of energy.

Sorry about that, Jeroan thought. And about this, too. But it has to be done.

Jeroan dropped Gran’s delicate music box and stomped on it.

Azure responded immediately with a Word that launched a green blast of energy at Gran. Just like his attack on Archie, she was defenseless. But this time, she had nothing to help block the attack.

The green magic hit Gran hard, sending her glasses flying off and knocking her back against the door frame leading to the steps. She went down, and Jeroan couldn’t tell if she was still breathing.

“Had to be done,” Jeroan whispered, as if trying to convince himself.

An instant later, a familiar voice pushed its way into his head.

Little brother, the voice said, filled with disgust, what’s happened to you?

Jeroan looked across the roof and saw Kelly at the other end of the boat, sitting next to the unmoving Archie with Polly next to her. She’d been hiding somewhere, but she’d seen everything.

Nothing, he replied to her without moving his lips. Nothing’s happened to me, and everything’s happened to me. Go home, Kelley.

Jeroan focused hard on blocking her voice from his head, but he still managed to hear her response just before he closed her out for good:

But I am home, little brother.

Standing in the middle of the ship, triumphant, Azure gave Kelley one last look before turning to Jeroan. Despite his fatigue, Jeroan met the bald man’s gaze for what felt like an eternity. And then Azure nodded, as if deciding something at last.

“Mexico and York,” Azure said, pointing at Jeroan, “take him to the Center.”

“What?” Jeroan said, and then Mexico was at his side. A heartbeat later, York was there next to him too, looking rumpled and dead-tired.

Azure muttered a few quick Words, and Jeroan suddenly leapt into the night sky like Superman.

At first he thought he truly was flying, but then he realized he was actually being carried away by Azure’s henchmen. For an instant, he saw Kelley and Polly looking up at him with eyes and mouths wide open as he rose into the night. And then—flying right over the highway bridge and beyond—they left the riverboat and the city far behind.

“All right!” Jeroan shouted, laughing as they rushed into the cold, darkening sky. He’d made it out of that crappy city at last. And he’d gotten away from Kelley the Beast at last. He’d gotten just what he wanted.

“Show me what you got,” he yelled at the two big men flying through the air on either side of him. “Show me everything.”

Can’t wait for the rest of the serialization? Here’s how to get a copy now:

• Buy a PDF directly from UnWrecked Press
  
• Digital versions available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and DriveThruFantasy.
• Trade paperback available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

If you enjoyed what you read, feel free to make a donation via PayPal:

Of course, you can always snag an ebook or trade paperback from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, a battle royale breaks out at the top of the Diamond Jo casino/riverboat, and Kelley gets to utter these immortal lines: “Don’t give up yet, roast beef dude.” Also, a surprise surprise visitor shows up…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Twenty-One

“Jeroan!” Kelley screamed, her brother’s name rushing out her throat without conscious thought, as if it were a magical keyword.

She couldn’t look away from him and that grin on his face. She had to get to him and knock some sense into him. Standing out there in the doorway, looking in, she felt too much like Maria, hiding in her hut at Stonehenge.

So she charged into the impossible office that had somehow been dropped smack-dab on top of this riverboat, only to feel something snap in the air around her eyes. Behind her, Archie hissed in a loud breath, and then everyone in the humming office turned from Jeroan to look at her. She must’ve broken whatever spell Archie had cast to hide the two of them.

“Oh crap,” Kelley whispered.

She’d forgotten how fast the two big goons, Mexico and York, were. By the time she’d taken her second step into Azure’s office, they’d leaped over Azure’s desk and nearly flew across the office floor, until they were right in her face, just one meathook of an arm’s length away. They probably would’ve dog-piled right on top of her if Archie, who was still standing on the moldy red carpet of the landing, hadn’t stopped them with two Words:

“Gholt. Gholt.“

York and Mexico froze in place, unable to move anything but their eyes, which were dark with rage and helplessness as they glared down at Kelley. They looked a bit shocked, too, as if they hadn’t quite expected this, right here in their headquarters.

Too bad, Kelley thought as she and Archie slipped past the two giants.

From where he was standing next to Jeroan, Azure didn’t even look surprised at the interruption. His face glowed green in the light from the screens and monitors scattered around his office. He glanced at his unmoving henchman and shook his head with an irritated twitch.

Then he put his pale hand on Jeroan’s shoulder and pushed him back toward where Jimbo and Polly still sat in their leather chairs. But Jeroan stopped a few feet from the others, trying to stay close to Azure and his desk.

“Tell me I heard you wrong, Jeroan,” Jimbo said, his face flushed with betrayal.

“Jimbo,” Jeroan said, his voice emotionless. “Chill out, man. I know what I’m doing. Just go on back to Harvey’s and make some roast beef sandwiches and forget about all this, okay?”

“Nice,” Kelley muttered as she approached them. “Nice way to treat your friends, Jeroan.”

Jeroan just folded his arms over his chest and refused to look at Kelley or Jimbo.

Azure, meanwhile, smoothed down the front of his dark jacket and calmly nodded at Kelley and Archie as if he’d been expecting them all along.

“Jonathan. So you are still alive.”

Azure lifted a hand and whispered something, and the metal door clanged shut behind Kelley and Archie.

“After your foolishness yesterday at the hospital, and then your stunts with Orleans at the shot tower today, I had hoped that magic had finally taken its toll on you. Especially after Orleans ruined your silly little pocket watch.”

Azure shook his head as he began walking closer to them, slowly. Jeroan looked suddenly unsure of himself, a look that Kelley hadn’t seen very often on her brother’s face.

“I hope you are pleased with yourself, Jonathan. You have been busy spreading magic like a carrier of disease through this city. And here are four of your young, innocent victims. Is this what you intended? To infect the young and helpless?”

Archie gave Kelley a quick, uncertain glance, and she felt her confidence drop. Why did the old guy look so uncertain all of a sudden? With the door to the steps and the casino below now closed, she was starting to feel seriously claustrophobic.

“I trust you came rushing here in an attempt to stop me, once again.”

Azure was about ten feet away now.

“But you know the importance of my work. My Sorcerers and I have kept the world safe from rogue, renegade users for over a century now. There are no longer any sudden outbreaks of magic anymore, thanks to me. And here you are, in this sleepy little city, waking up the monster that is contagious magic once more. Are you proud of your handiwork, old friend?”

Kelley watched Archie hold up his hands, as if getting ready to explain.

But Azure moved faster, pointing an index finger at each of his henchman like a gunslinger in a western. He muttered something under his breath, and a flicker of green energy shot from the black flunky’s eyes into the chest of the white flunky, and vice versa. Both men jerked back to life, tottering on their feet for a second as if the docked riverboat had just hit a big wave.

“Go,” Azure said in a sharp voice. “Time for you both to earn your keep at last. Take them.”

Kelley had enough wits about her to hit the deck. She dove behind a huge printer, just out of the white guy York’s reach. As she scrambled deeper into the office, crawling from behind one cable-filled workstation to the next, she could hear Jimbo’s voice clearly.

“Maybe Jeroan was right,” Jimbo said. “Maybe I should just walk away and go back to my job at Harvey’s.”

Oh no you don’t, Kelley thought, touching the freshly charged eGadget in her pocket as she stood up. Don’t give up yet, roast beef dude.

York was right behind her, clomping closer and chuckling to himself. Kelley caught a glimpse of Archie struggling in Mexico’s grip—the old guy had already gotten caught.

Then she focused her attention on the floor under York’s shiny black shoes. The flush of magic came over her fast as a thought. Here we go again…

“Open up,” she said.

The energy passed through her, into her phone, and then out towards York. But an inch from the big henchman’s shiny shoes, the magic popped and fizzled, and pain spiked into Kelley’s head like feedback from an over-amped microphone.

Let it go, Kelley, a voice whispered in her head. Quit fighting before you get hurt.

Even though it made her massive new migraine triple in strength, Kelley whirled around, looking for source of that voice. Deep down, though, she knew it all too well. It was a voice that she thought had stopped talking to her like this forever.

All she could see was the big chest of York, who was apparently in the running for Flunky of the Year. He didn’t have Pincers out, but his catcher’s-mitt-sized hands looked just as lethal.

“Show’s over, miss,” he said, reaching those mitts out and clamping them onto Kelley’s upper arms.

Kelley bit back a groan from the pain in her head as well as her arms, but she had enough presence of mind to position herself for one last kick, aimed directly at York’s left knee.

He can drag me over to Azure, she thought, but he’ll be limping when he does it.

Just as Kelley was shifting her weight ahead of the kick, though, a series of soft taps filled the room, and York’s vise-like grip loosened.

It took her a few seconds to figure out where the sound was coming from. Then she realized that someone had just knocked on the metal door at the top of the steps.

About twenty feet away from Kelley, like prairie dogs coming out of their holes, Jimbo and Polly poked their heads up over the tops of their chairs, while Jeroan continued to act all nonchalant from where he stood, close to Azure’s desk and doing nothing to help anyone but himself.

In the middle of the office, Mexico kept a tight grip on Archie’s arm.

Tap, tap, tap, went the door again.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Azure whispered a Word under his breath and gestured at the door. Kelley peeked around York to see who was there.

Glistening for a second in a greenish light, the metal door creaked open. At first Kelley thought that nobody was there, that they’d all imagined the knocking sound, somehow. Though she could have sworn that she heard the delicate tinkle of music coming from the doorway.

And then a small figure in faded gray robes stepped up on the landing, tapped a metal staff against the doorway—careful not to walk through it—and the world shifted.

Azure’s office flashed once, as if caught in sudden lightning, and then all the screens and computers and gadgets disappeared.

Even the chairs under Jimbo and Polly vanished, and they both dropped butt-first with matching thumps onto the cold metal rooftop of the riverboat.

The smell of coffee and the buzzing warmth of the office was gone, replaced by the smell of fish and the frigid open air of the casino boat’s roof. The sky above had turned purple with the approach of night, and the shrill, icy wind cut right through Kelley’s coat. The boat rocked slightly in the water next to its dock, and Kelley felt seasick at the motion.

The short, robed person with the staff still stood in the doorway, though the walls next to the door were now a dull, scuffed beige color instead of the smooth black of Azure’s office. Kelley couldn’t tell if the person was male or female under that baggy robe, though there was something very familiar about him or her.

And that music, Kelley wondered. There was no way I should still be able to hear that music with this wind blasting in my ears.

“Boss?” Mexico called out. “What just happened? Want us to call in the other—”

“Keep an eye on them and don’t interfere,” Azure interrupted, gesturing at Jimbo and Polly, still sitting on the metal roof in shock. “All of them,” he added, nodding at Kelley and then Jeroan, who was now standing near the edge of the roof instead of next to Azure’s now-disappeared desk, looking around at his changed surroundings as if he was in a daze.

Azure buttoned up his suit coat, calmly dusted off his lapels, and stepped toward the door with the twitching hint of a smile on his hard face.

“I believe I have another old friend to greet.”

The bald man had only taken three steps toward their new visitor when a rapid-fire string of Words exploded from the robed person in the doorway. On his way past Kelley and York, Azure paused in mid-step as if recognizing those Words—or maybe he recognized the person’s voice. A genuine look of worry flashed across his face, just for a nano-second.

And then Kelley ducked down out of the line of fire as three tiny bursts of blue energy shot across the office like tiny glowing golf balls. Each ball hissed through the air in a different direction, aimed at Azure and his two henchmen.

Azure waved a hand and spat out a quick Word that disintegrated the ball coming for him.

His two muscle-bound cronies, however, weren’t so lucky. The spheres of blue energy hit them both in the chest and flung them into the air. Both men hit the metal roof so hard that Kelley felt it move under her feet. Smoke rose in wisps from their dark suits as York and Mexico remained sprawled out on their backs, motionless.

Mexico, the big flunky with the ‘fro, had landed on top of poor Archie, covering the old man like a lumpy blanket.

She took off across the roof, making a wide circle around Azure, until she was next to Jimbo and Polly. The two of them had crept over to a small four-foot-wide building that was the only real structure left on the roof. While she was catching her breath, she dug her hands into her pockets until she had an insta-charger in each hand.

“Charge up,” she said, handing out the chargers to Jimbo and Polly. She didn’t wait on the other teens, who were both demanding answers about what was going on. She had to go help out Archie. “I’ll be right back.”

I must be crazy, she thought, as Azure launched a volley of green darts at the gray-robed visitor from barely twenty feet away. But I can’t leave the old guy out there like this.

She crept past a groaning Mexico a few feet away, his hair smoking and singed, and she half-pulled, half-dragged Archie over to the little building where Polly was charging her camera and Jimbo was looking despondent.

“You okay, Archie?” she asked the groggy old man when they got there, handing him a charger. “That big dude nearly squashed you.”

Archie nodded his head in an unconvincing way and tried to smooth down his crazy gray-white beard. Polly helped him hook up the charger to his phone, and then she stopped.

“Hey. This is my phone, you thief.”

Kelley cringed. Just what they needed—more fighting.

“Mind if I borrow it for a short while?” Archie said in a deep, clear voice that filled Kelley with confidence. “I promise to give it back, miss.” He gave Polly a slightly deranged smile, his eyes crossing just the tiniest bit.

“Fine. I’ll, um, just use my camera,” Polly muttered, backing off.

Kelley felt her skin crawl as she heard a loud sizzle of energy from the other side of the boat. She bent down next to Jimbo and watched as the little person in the gray robes finished dissipating Azure’s dart attack with a wall of blue energy. The tinkling music was louder now, and faster.

“Jimbo,” Kelley said between blasts of magical energy. “You okay?”

“That big sucker crushed my phone, remember?” Jimbo said, glaring at Mexico on the ground a dozen feet away. “Just ’cause I was trying to make a call in their van.”

“You don’t have anything else?” Kelley said. The riverboat lurched again as Azure and their visitor fought. Archie had finished charging Polly’s pink phone.

Jimbo dug deep into his jeans pocket. “Just this,” he said, holding up a tiny calculator. Solar-powered.

“Oh boy,” Kelley said. She looked into all three faces watching her, waiting on her next move. “I guess it’ll have to do. Remember to channel magic—” the word felt so odd in her mouth that Kelley nearly choked on it “—channel it through your phone or camera or calculator first, then aim all that gathered-up energy at the, um, bad guys. Let’s try not to kill anyone, though, if that’s all right with you guys. Just get ‘em out of our way long enough for us all to get the heck outta here.”

I really need to work on my motivational speeches, Kelley thought, her face hot. I’m terrible at this.

With everyone more or less at full battery power now, she looked for Jeroan. She wanted to give him an insta-charger as well, but he’d left the edge of the roof and was now walking up to Azure.

Unbelievable. Jeroan probably wanted to show how useful he could be to his new hero. Kelley kept Jeroan’s charger in her pocket and ducked as pieces of riverboat flew into the air from a stray blast of green energy.

Jeroan, Kelley thought at him as hard as she could. She had a sneaking suspicion that it had been Jeroan’s voice whispering inside her head earlier, telling her to let it go, to quit fighting.

You don’t have to follow through with this, Kelley thought, aiming her unspoken words at Jeroan. Azure doesn’t care if you join him or not.

Over the growing howl of the wind, Kelley heard the gray-robed Sorcerer speak some more Words, blocking Azure’s attack with another wall of blue energy, though this wall wasn’t nearly as tall or as thick as the first one.

Kelley wanted to keep Archie out of the fight, for now, until she could reach her brother. Archie kept repeating that he needed to talk to his old friend Michael, to show him the error of his ways.

The silence from Jeroan in her head was deafening.

“Wait a minute,” Jimbo said. “I know that melody. And that voice…”

Jimbo stood and stared, eyes wide, at the small robed figure wreathed in blue energy that stood just inside the doorway, facing off against Dr. Azure. Kelley followed his gaze and caught the reflection of light bouncing off a pair of thick glasses under the visitor’s hood.

“Gran?” Jimbo whispered. “What are you doing here?”

Can’t wait for the rest of the serialization? Here’s how to get a copy now:

• Buy a PDF directly from UnWrecked Press
  
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If you enjoyed what you read, feel free to make a donation via PayPal:

Of course, you can always snag an ebook or trade paperback from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, Azure gets in everyone’s face (and raises up some personal demons), while Jeroan… well, Jeroan makes a choice that some people (like his sister) would call a Very Bad Decision…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Twenty

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Polly and Jimbo in Azure’s hi-tech office, Jeroan had never felt so caught before. Caught, and sick to his stomach. If he made it the next thirty seconds without heaving his guts out, it’d be a miracle. Either he was getting sick, or all the impossible stuff he’d been doing all day—all the magic—was catching up to him. Probably both.

Maybe Jimbo’s right, Jeroan thought, and these new mutant skills of ours were like radiation, and we were all dying now. Jeroan had to clamp his mouth shut as his stomach did another flip-flop.

“Have a seat,” Azure said, and then he muttered something too low for Jeroan to hear. The plastic cuffs holding his hands together snapped open, as did those binding Jimbo and Polly. Jeroan fought the urge to rub his wrists like Jimbo and Polly were doing on either side of him. Instead he just stood and glared at Azure.

Apparently unconcerned about Jeroan and his friends now being free from their plastic cuffs, the bald man walked past one of the two dozen screens hung on the walls all around the room. Every now and then the office would sway, reminding Jeroan that they were actually sitting on water and not perched up at the top of some skyscraper.

Jeroan couldn’t help but take a quick look at the screens. Some showed satellite maps of various continents, while others were split up into a collection of busy cityscapes and landscapes. One even had a moons-eye view of the Earth slowly turning. Below the screens were half a dozen computer keyboards sitting on desks stacked high with printouts, phones, tablets, and other gadgets. The whole room hummed and buzzed and beeped with information. On Jeroan’s right, Jimbo was as googly-eyed as a little kid watching his first Fourth of July fireworks.

“Sit,” Azure commanded, and Jeroan—along with Polly and Jimbo—sat back immediately. They each plopped into their own black office chair.

Jeroan was glad there was one close by to catch him, though he had a feeling Azure had made the chair zip up to catch him. Remembering what happened to Jimbo yesterday at the hospital, Jeroan wondered who Azure was using as his dummy for channeling his magic through. Probably that big bruiser with the code name of York.

“Perhaps,” Azure began, “you are wondering why no one has noticed you here today. Not even the security guards? The short answer is this: we control the story wherever we go. Not even the police or the news media know that we’ve commandeered this section of the city’s beloved riverboat.”

“I knew it,” Jimbo blurted out, and then slapped a hand over his mouth. Jeroan nodded, thinking about how difficult it must have been to hide all the reports about explosions at the hospital, not to mention explaining to the fire department the cause of the fire that gutted his family’s house. She hadn’t admitted anything, but Jeroan remained convinced that Kelley the Beast was somehow responsible for the house burning down.

Azure finished glaring at Jimbo and continued talking, acting like a professor in front of a whiteboard instead of magic-wielding Sorcerer standing in front of screen upon screen of classified, high-tech information.

“We usually don’t show this kind of mercy to renegades like yourself,” Azure said. “But you three present an interesting case to us.”

He paused as he leaned back against a black desk holding three flatscreens that displayed maps of various parts of the world, each map constantly changing and switching to other locations. Red dots popped up now and then on a map. Azure glanced at all three screens before turning them black with a muttered word.

He’s messing with us, Jeroan thought, still smelling fresh coffee somewhere. The bitter, almost burnt smell did nothing to calm his queasy stomach. He’d heard this line of crap before from people just like this Dr. Azure.

The bald man pointed at the closest screen on the wall next to him and muttered again. The screen changed from a shot of an unfamiliar city to an aerial map of Dubuque. Jeroan had to admit that the details were pretty amazing—he could see cars, trucks, and semis moving on I-20, and he could even pick out Harvey’s down there in the corner.

“This map shows your lovely little river city. And this,” Azure said, touching the screen with a long finger, “this is what you have caused in the past twenty-four hours.”

Like the fallout from a paintball war, the map was suddenly dotted with red dots and circles, with most of them in the bottom right corner, close to downtown.

Jeroan looked over at Polly next to him. She was biting her lip, hard, and her hands were shaking on her lap. Jeroan felt bad for her, but he couldn’t bring himself to hold her hand or try to somehow comfort her. He kept thinking about how she’d climbed halfway up the fence above the basketball court earlier, saving her own butt instead of helping her friends. Polly didn’t have his back anymore. He didn’t think anyone had his back these days.

“Your little stunts from today,” Azure said, touching the map close to Main Street, about where the hotel basketball court was, “caused these spikes.”

Not bad, Jeroan thought, grinning in spite of his bleak feelings and lurching stomach. He counted almost two dozen of the dots, enough bits of magic for Jimbo to lose their game of Horse, that was for sure.

“And up here,” Azure said, swiping his hand across the screen to change the view, “is the fallout from our little, ah, misadventure in the hospital yesterday.”

In the upper right-hand corner of the map, the location of Mercy Hospital was covered in a big red dot, like a perfectly round bloodstain. Or, more like the crater left after a bombing. No wonder Azure and his oversized goons had come running to Dubuque to put out the magic fires, before they spread. Like magical EMT workers.

Sitting in his chair in the bustling, information-overloaded office, Jeroan fought a sudden urge to snap his fingers. The Beast always did that when she figured something out, and it drove Jeroan crazy. But he’d just made a connection in his head that he should’ve made hours ago.

Magic is contagious.

It was like the worst flu outbreak ever—you sneezed and anyone it hit got infected. It had all started when that old guy in the alley zapped Polly and me, and then he did the same thing to Jimbo. So who else did the old guy zap? And how many people had Polly, Jimbo, and I infected after that?

Turning away from his screens, Azure focused his sharp eyes on the three teenagers in the chairs in front of him. Under his gaze, Polly and Jimbo both sank so low in their chairs that Jeroan half-expected them to slide down onto the shiny metal floor.

The bald guy caught Jeroan’s eye, just for a moment, and it took every muscle in his body to meet Azure’s gaze. Jeroan held it for almost two seconds before he had to look away, his eyes suddenly watery. Azure spun on his heel, apparently satisfied that he’d scared them all enough, for now, though Jeroan thought he’d earned just a tiny bit of the bald wizard’s respect by not flinching. Just the tiniest bit.

Back at his desk, Azure gestured at his office and his endless array of equipment.

“This is my life’s work, here,” he said with a proud smile. “Many, many years of research and labor went into the creation of this portable office of mine, which I take with me wherever I am needed. I could try to explain the physics of it, but it would probably make your head spin. What matters is that my office works, and my people get results. We have successfully curtailed the spread of renegade magic for the past century, to the point where situations like yesterday are very much the exception instead of the norm. We are keeping this country, and the world, safe from the potential mass destruction that could be caused by renegade magic users.”

Azure paused again, just long enough to touch his chest. A flash of pain crossed over the man’s face, and Polly slumped even further down in her chair, eyes aimed at the floor.

“My men work for me out of this office through of a sense of duty for the well-being of the world. For the good of all, you might say. They could be powerful Sorcerers themselves, channeling magic through their own veins and arteries, and sometimes those of others—Blood Sorcerers, as they are often called. But these men have seen the damage that can be done by magic. In many cases, like those of our friends York and Mexico here, and Orleans standing guard below, these fellows have been victims of renegade magic themselves. I was able to reach them before death stole them away. I gave them life again, and the skills and equipment to contain rogue users before they could cause more chaos and destruction.”

Too bad you didn’t prevent all that happened yesterday, Jeroan thought. Guess your flunkies dropped the ball, huh?

Azure cocked his head to the side and looked directly at Jeroan, as if reading his thoughts. Jeroan met Azure’s gaze for just a second this time before he had to look away. He felt like Azure was poking his fingers into his head, sifting through his every thought. Jeroan didn’t dare take a breath.

“But I digress,” Azure said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Magic is fickle, you see. And it needs to be controlled. This is why I’m speaking to the three of you now. And this is also why this office, as well as my vans, are charmed against untrained, renegade users such as yourselves. Users with quite an amazing amount of potential, I might add.”

Jeroan hoped his poker face was working, because he felt an unexpected thrill at the strange compliment Azure had just given him. He’d never felt like he had the potential for anything, and he’d never had anyone tell him such a thing.

An amazing amount, Azure had said.

While Azure was talking, the two big guys, Mexico and York, had moved away from the computers and screens where they’d been working and crept closer to the three chairs where Jeroan, Polly, and Jimbo were sitting. Their usual sneers and frowns had been replaced by something else. Not necessarily smiles (Jeroan didn’t think the big dudes knew how to smile anymore), but expressions of curiosity. Almost as of they’d never heard Azure talk to anyone like this before.

Maybe we are special, Jeroan thought. Maybe we—maybe I—can do more than just dunk a basketball and jump onto fire escapes. Maybe…

“And so,” Azure said, now standing just a few inches away from Jeroan. Somehow, he’d made it there without Jeroan even noticing it. “And so, I am offering each of you an offer that many men—and women,” he added, with a nod toward Polly, “—would have killed to be offered in the past millennium. Many of them did just that, as a matter of fact.”

Azure paused for a few seconds of drama, and Jeroan did not dare blink or breathe.

“I am extending an invitation to you to join my team.”

At first Jeroan thought the guy was joking, but when he lifted his head and saw those weird green-tinted eyes of Azure’s staring down at him from less than half a foot away, his smile disappeared.

Jeroan tried to swallow, but couldn’t. He could almost feel the waves of power coming at him from the man who called himself Dr. Azure. He once more felt like the bald man had opened open his head and was now staring at his every thought, uncovering his every secret.

“Can we—” Jimbo squeaked from next to Jeroan, breaking the tension enough so that Jimbo could exhale and blink again. “Can we have a minute to think about this, sir?”

“Ah, Jimbo,” Azure said in a friendly tone, though he was watching Jeroan like an owl closing in on a mouse, “or shall I say Jiang—Jiang Wu, to be precise—go ahead and take a minute. Take five minutes.”

Azure stepped back, away from Jeroan, and slipped in front of Jimbo, still talking. He wore a tiny, wicked smile on his face, his teeth and eyes glinting with green light from the computer monitors and screens surrounding him.

“In that time, Jiang Wu, think about how the other children at your school have always made fun of your name, of how different you looked, of how you smelled like egg drop soup every morning at homeroom. Consider those kids now giving you the respect you deserve, just because they know the power you hold inside you.”

“Stop it,” Polly whispered from next to Jeroan. Jimbo had been slowly nodding along with Azure’s words, though he never said a word himself. Jimbo sucked in a noisy breath and stopped nodding. His glazed look turned to one of anger.

Unfazed, the bald man turned on Polly.

“Ah. So Miss Polly Erdman has already made up her mind? She would choose to turn down my offer? She’s decided she will be satisfied going back to her broken home at the end of this most momentous day, to take care of her two younger sisters all through high school, to make excuses to them for her hard-drinking mother and absent father? She won’t mind going back to being a loner and pretender, a follower all her life, thinking that if she spends time with the new, street-smart black kid from Chicago, she’ll show everyone how tough she really is?”

Off to the side, Jeroan could see the two big guys, Mexico and York, whispering to one another as they watched. Mexico was shaking his head, making his big afro sway back and forth, while York just slid a hand over his slick hair and glared at Jeroan with a sneer. Mexico elbowed York and muttered something else, and then they shook hands, as if they were betting on which of the three teens would break down first.

Next to Jeroan, Polly glared at the gray carpeted floor. She didn’t even flinch when Azure bent low in front of her, his face puckered with false politeness.

“Do I have the facts right, Miss Erdman? Is it harder to make up your mind when you don’t have a stolen weapon in your hand?”

Polly didn’t answer. She just looked away and swiped angrily at her eyes.

“Stop it,” Jeroan said to Azure.

He couldn’t let the man get inside his head like he’d just done to his two friends. And he certainly couldn’t have the Sorcerer expose him for the fake and coward he knew he was, not here in front of his friends. And especially not in front of the two big goons over there. His pride wouldn’t allow it.

“You made your point,” Jeroan said, “and they’ve already made up their minds. And so have I.”

Exhaling slowly, Jeroan stood up, hoping the nausea in his belly and the trembling in his limbs wouldn’t betray him like everything—and everyone—had done to him today. Jimbo and Polly looked at him with matching expressions of open-mouthed shock, while the two henchmen stepped closer, Mexico grinning and elbowing York once more.

I am not like everyone else, Jeroan told himself as he stood there on the gently rocking floor of Azure’s portable office. I’ve got the potential for greatness, I can totally think asymmetrically. I just needed to find the right group to run with to help me find my own way and make my big plans come true.

And today I’ve found that group. A group that Kelley and his parents would never approve of him joining, which confirmed just how correct this decision was. He felt his most charming smile slip across his face, effortlessly.

“I want you to teach me what you know,” Jeroan said, looking Dr. Azure directly in the eye. “I’ll join you, but I want you teach me everything.”

Can’t wait for the rest of the serialization? Here’s how to get a copy now:

• Buy a PDF directly from UnWrecked Press
  
• Digital versions available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and DriveThruFantasy.
• Trade paperback available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

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So. We’ve been bike riding.

After saving up, planning, and doing lots of research online and at various bike places (as well as picking the brains of our biking pals), Elizabeth and I decided to take the plunge and get ourselves some bikes. Of course, when you get a bike, you also have to buy a helmet, a tire pump, and water bottles. Not to mention a hitch and rack to carry the bikes from place to place.

Ouch. Trying not to think about the sticker shock.

But you know what? It was all worth it. At last we can keep up with our two boys on their bikes!

And man, there’s nothing like getting on a bike and going FAST to really feel like a kid again. Wind in your hair, wheels humming, getting out of breath but pedaling FASTER. Totally worth the cost.

The shot above is taken from a “rain delay” during our 2nd bike outing from last weekend up in the mountains. That’s Drew’s sweet ride up there–cost us just $10 from a garage sale, plus $5 for the “gold” spray paint, and $20 for the new seat. Not a bad investment.

Of course, now he wants a new bike that shifts like Mom and Dad’s bikes do…

Also a good investment? Mitch’s excellent “trailer bike,” pictured below behind my new ride, in the same shelter from the first photo:

So Mitch gets to help pedal, and he can keep up with the rest of us. He’s in an in-between age and size right now, so he has to pedal like crazy on his 12″ bike, but the 16″ bike he inherited from his cousin is too big. The trailer bike solves that problem.

It also gives me an extra 50+ pounds to lug around behind me. Luckily, Elizabeth’s bike is the exact same size as mine, so we can always switch bikes if we need to.

In any case, Mitch makes a great traveling companion, as he’s always chatting away as he pedals, and he holds tight when we get rolling down the roads. Meanwhile, his big brother Drew is always in the lead, chugging away on his own bike. I think we thoroughly wore them both out this weekend. Not to mention ourselves.

It’s been great having these new toys to play with, and after putting on over 20 miles on them last weekend in Boone, NC, and other locations in the mountains, I’m looking forward to the next ride. I’m feeling much younger already!

I’ll be adding two chapters a week right here, or you can snag an ebook from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, Kelley plays the game of Gather Up the Aging Sorcerers as she tries to find her brother and her other friends at the same time…

Also, the serialization wraps up next week(!) as we do a chapter a day to get to the big, explosive finale. Years in the making, I tell you. Years.

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Nineteen

“Are you sure you don’t want to slow down?” Kelley said to Maria’s back not five minutes later. The older woman in front of her had her purple hood pulled tight over her head, and she was walking fast. Before Kelley could reach Maria’s side, Maria had exited the back alley behind Haze Books and Gifts and turned right into the cold wind coming off the river.

Go figure, Kelley thought. For a few seconds there, I thought the lady was going to croak on me when she passed out, and now I have to about jog to keep up with her.

When Maria had fallen, she seemed to pass out in Kelley’s arms for a few seconds. Kelley had been surprised at how light the woman was, and how cold her hands were. But then Maria’s eyes had snapped back open again, accompanied by one more huge crashing sound from inside her shop, and Maria had pushed her way back to her feet.

The thought of Moammar breaking free of her shop had probably been a good motivator—it was for Kelley, that was for sure. Before Maria got away from her, Kelley made her eat a couple cookies from her container. Kelley had grabbed one for herself, just to be safe.

“I am fine,” Maria said now as she leaned her hooded head into the wind and marched toward the river. “But we need to get away from here, just in case he gets free of my toys.”

“Yeah,” Kelley said with a nervous laugh as soon as she was next to Maria. The wind felt like it was freezing the sweat on her forehead with each step she took. She looked over at Maria. “That was pretty awesome back there—what you did with the windup toys.”

“Thank you,” Maria said in a tired voice. She began to slow down now, as if the adrenaline was wearing off. Kelley noticed Maria was leaning pretty heavily on her staff. “I just… I wonder if that was the wisest action. Moammar was once a friend.”

Kelley led Maria to a bench at a bus stop. Maria sank down onto it with a sigh of relief.

“Well,” Kelley said, “that Moammar guy did say he wanted to take us to Azure, and that wasn’t all that friendly of him. But speaking of friends… “

Next to Maria, Kelley held up the little computer that Moammar had dropped onto Maria’s counter. With a grimace at the burnt smell, Kelley blew the last of the man’s gray dust off of it.

“Nasty. But I think this little gadget just might help. Your pal Moammar was using this back in the shop to track us there.”

Like the other handheld from York and Mexico’s van, Kelley had never seen this style of gadget before. But surely the interface couldn’t be that hard to figure out. She started pushing keys under the tiny rectangle of the screen until she found one that pulled up a map of the city. Bingo.

The hot rush of magic through her came faster than ever before. Tingling from head to toe, Kelley grinned. I’m getting good at this magic stuff.

“Find Archie,” she muttered, releasing the energy that was running through her. But instead of cooperating, the little computer gave her a nasty jolt instead. Kelley let go of the gadget.

Moving faster than Kelly ever expected possible, Maria snagged the little computer before it hit the sidewalk and set it back in Kelley’s shaking hand. Her head immediately began to hurt. There hadn’t even been a tiny buzz from her eGadget, either.

“Kelley? What happened?”

“I’m okay,” she said, switching the hands holding the computer and flexing the fingers of her zapped hand. She tried to blink away the spike of pain just behind her eyes. “But this little doodad stopped me from doing any magic. Gave me a nice little shock, too.”

We’re not playing games here, Kelley reminded herself. Think of Maria’s story from the little white book, and how Azure tried to blow Moammar and Yishi to bits. How poor Yishi hadn’t been as lucky as Moammar. Or Jeroan and Polly and Jimbo stuck in the back of that van—

“Okay,” she said, more determined than ever. Jeroan and his friends—my friends? she wondered—were still being held by those two goons of Azure’s, and they needed her help. “Let’s do this old school.”

She toggled around and zoomed in on the map until she found a trio of glowing red dots in the warehouse district. Two of the bigger dots were almost overlapping, while the third red dot flickered weakly a few blocks away.

“That must be us,” Maria murmured, pointing at the screen. “Moammar is… Fading, I am afraid.”

Kelley zoomed out as Maria spoke, and they both gave out a whoop of surprise when they saw two more dots just a dozen blocks to the east of their own, on the other side of Highway 20.

“Archie?” Kelley said, flinching as the gadget gave her another little shock. “Crap! I wasn’t talking to you, stupid computer! Just asking a question. Sheesh.”

“I believe it is him,” Maria said, looking up from the computer at the quiet road and sidewalk around them. “We should go. He does not appear to be alone, either.”

Kelley was already on her feet. Maria looked a bit less pale now, so their short rest had paid off.

“Let’s go get him, then,” Kelley said. “Three’s company, right?”

They walked east, toward the river again. Maria was moving a little quicker now, to Kelley’s relief. The cookies must be kicking in, she figured. They walked toward the rumble of the highway overpass and the dark river beyond it. Kelley kept her eyes glued to the little screen of the computer in her hands even as the cold wind blew into her face.

A train whistle blew, somewhere on the Illinois side of the river. Kelley could just barely hear the chugging sound of the train, though it was growing louder with each second.

“Looks like Archie’s about a half mile away,” Kelley said. The digital map on the computer shimmered for a second, and then both red dots began to flicker.

“Okay,” she said, walking faster now. “That doesn’t look good. What if Archie is fighting with one of Azure’s guys?”

They hurried under Highway 20, trucks and cars blasting by overhead, and walked another two blocks into the no-man’s-land close to the riverfront. Just a few buildings remained here, including a pair of fenced-in factories with tall smokestacks that no longer pumped out smoke. To the right were the mostly empty train yards, and off to their left was a tall brown tower, jutting up like a rectangular finger next to a lone set of railroad tracks. The train whistle let loose again, this time loud enough to make Kelley want to cover her ears.

According to Moammar’s computer, they were almost on top of the two dots now, and Kelley found herself slowing down. The dots seemed to be right about where that tower was. She didn’t know if she had the energy for a big scene like the one in the hospital yesterday. Especially if that second dot was actually shiny-headed Azure, picking on poor old Archie again.

Ahead of them, the freight train was crossing over the train bridge spanning the Mississippi, filling the air with the roar of its chugging engines. Kelley felt like the train was coming right for her, that it was going to go off the tracks and run right over her.

Someone grabbed Kelley’s coat, knocking her out of her mini-trance.

“Look,” Maria said. “Up on the tower.”

The top third of the old tower ahead of them was dark brown, as if its bricks had been burnt years ago, while the lower sections were tan, unstained bricks.

It was a shot tower, Kelley remembered now, still standing from the Civil Wars days when they dripped hot lead through a grate in the top to make bullets for old-school guns. Someone had done a speech about it at school.

And a huge guy in a black suit, with long black hair falling out of his ponytail, was hanging on for dear life on the very small platform at the top of the hundred-foot-tall tower.

Kelley looked for another few seconds at the big guy on the tower, even as the three engines at the start of the long train chugged past her. She could barely think from all the noise, but when she looked down from the tower, she noticed a white van idling fifteen feet away. The van was painted in roses and greenery, and a logo claimed the van as belonging to Roberta’s Flowers.

When she turned her gaze to the right, she saw a man dressed in rags standing less than fifteen inches from the railroad tracks.

“Archie!” Kelley tried to shout, but the old man had no chance of hearing her. He was getting rocked by the wind caused by the freight cars rushing past him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He seemed to be focused only on the bright pink phone in his hand.

“His watch,” Maria said, walking toward Archie now, though her sharp blue eyes were focused on the tower. Kelley followed the older woman’s gaze, and she thought she saw spilled bits of broken metal and glittering glass at the base of the tower.

Those pieces may have once been Archie’s magical timepiece. She remembered the joyous look on his face yesterday when it had clicked back to life as he fought Azure. And now it was ruined, most likely by the guy up at the top of the tower, trying hard to get into position to start climbing down.

As the last car of the train rolled off the bridge over the Mississippi, Archie fumbled with the buttons of the little phone. He gave a child-like grin when the phone finally winked into life, though Kelley could tell by the way he was standing there with his shoulders slumped that he was exhausted.

Along with Maria, she waved and called out to Archie as they hurried toward him, but he didn’t notice them. Instead, he turned his back on them to face the river.

Above them, the big man with the long hair was slowly, impossibly climbing down the side of the tower.

How many henchmen, Kelley wondered, does a guy need?

Thirty feet away, Archie lifted his pink phone in his left hand and aimed his right hand at the last car of the train, an old-fashioned caboose. Kelley heard him say, over the now-fading roar of the passing train, something that sounded like “Grchup.”

With a flash, white energy covered Archie’s upraised right hand like a magical glove. The old man reached up with his glowing hand until it hit the vertical railing of the caboose. His hand stuck there as if attached with glue.

Kelley and Maria stopped next to the tracks as the caboose lifted Archie up and away, carrying him deeper into the city. Kelley’s last glimpse of Archie the Sorcerer was of the old man looking down at the pink, glowing phone in his left hand and shaking his hairy head in disbelief.

And then he slumped down onto the platform of the caboose, his glowing right hand remained firmly attached to the railing, and the train carried him away.

* * * * * *

“Well,” Kelley said, ten feet from the spot where Archie was lifted away by the caboose, her ears still ringing from the thunder of the train. “That’s just great. We lost him again. And now we have to chase after a frickin’ train.”

Maria was just standing there, watching the now-vacant train tracks as if waiting for the train to hit the brakes, back up, and deposit Archie right there in front of them.

“He figured it out,” she said in a low voice. “He lost his watch, and then he learned how to use gadget magic. That old dog has learned a new trick.”

“He upgraded, huh?” Kelley said, thinking about Archie’s hand glued to the rail of the caboose. Her smile faded when she glanced up at the tower and saw that the big guy in the dark suit was now halfway down, climbing down the bricks like a human-sized beetle.

“We gotta go, Maria,” Kelley said.

But Maria wasn’t moving. She still had her purple hood up and her face in shadows, and Kelley had no idea what the other woman was thinking.

She checked the map on the battered screen of the computer again. The first red dot hadn’t moved, but the second red dot—Archie—was now speeding away from them. As Kelley stared at it, about to lose hope of ever catching up to Archie, his dot lurched, quivered a bit, and stopped.

“That really didn’t look good,” Kelley said. “Maria, you may want to take a look at this. I think our old dog has taken a spill.”

Five seconds later, she and Maria were sprinting next to the tracks, chasing the red dot and the old Sorcerer. His spell must have worn off, Kelley figured, and he’d fallen. Off a moving train.

Maria surprisingly kept pace with Kelley as they ran. Kelley patted her coat pockets until she felt all the insta-chargers she’d bought at the shack, thinking of Archie’s new pink phone. The empty pocket where Alexander should’ve been, however, filled her with a wave of sadness, mixed with betrayal.

When they finally caught up to Archie, the old guy was flat on his back in a clump of tall weeds, barely three feet from the train tracks. His skin was bluish under his big red hunting hat, and the only thing moving on him was his beard as he noisily exhaled through his big nose.

Incredibly, he still clutched the beat-up pink phone in his left hand.

Kelley pushed through the tall weeds to get to where Archie was sprawled out on the ground and snoring. Maria stayed up on the tracks, wheezing for breath and leaning on her walking stick.

Some crew of Sorcerers I have here, Kelley thought.

She waited a few minutes, letting Archie rest while she caught her own breath. But when she became convinced the white florist van was driving up to the tracks, she gave Archie a good nudge with her boot. Then she gave him another. And another.

The old man sucked in a noisy breath, rolled over, and sat up with a huge sneeze. As soon as he was done wiping his nose, he smiled wearily up at Kelley, and then winked at Maria.

“Have I got a story to tell you,” he began as Kelley grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. The old guy seemed wide awake now.

“I’m sure you do,” Kelley said. “But we really need to get—”

“Even though the big brute shattered my watch in the process, I got to show one of Michael’s operatives a trick or two. This guy’s name is Orleans, and I tossed him to the top of the tower back there. He’s probably still there, trying to figure out just how to get down.”

“I know—”

“And that isn’t even the best part of it,” Archie continued, holding up the pink phone that looked so silly in his old man’s hand. “I used your way of doing magic, young lady. And I believe your way is the best way ever. I barely felt a thing. And I’m as energetic as ever.”

“Right,” Kelley said. She decided not to mention the fact that they’d found him snoozing in the weeds. She wondered if the old man had landed square on his head after falling from the caboose.

As Archie talked and ate the last of Maria’s cookies, Kelley took another look at Moammar’s little computer, and then she tossed it into the weeds. It felt bad in her hands when she thought about the mostly disintegrated Sorcerer’s disfigured fingers all over it.

Follow your instincts as well as your magic, Maria had told her yesterday. Use the Force, and all that. And do it fast, ’cause time’s running out.

“Okay,” she called out, interrupting Archie as he tried to describe for the third time how he’d thrown the big guy onto the top of the shot tower after the big bully had broken his watch.

I know where my little brother is. The big guy driving the van had said they were going to the riverboat.

A rush of heat filled her, and she grabbed Archie and Maria’s cold hands.

“Let’s go,” Kelley said.

She blinked and felt a small, now-familiar—and very welcome—twinge from her eGadget. When she opened her eyes, the tall grass and train tracks had been replaced by a narrow strip of concrete in front of the white exterior wall of the Diamond Jo riverboat casino.

“Wow,” she muttered, head spinning. Hadn’t planned on doing that so fast, she thought. “Sorry about that, guys.”

But before Maria and Archie could say anything in response, a raspy, dust-choked voice filled the air.

“And there we are,” the voice said, sounding very pleased with himself.

Off to their left, in front of the steps of the dock leading to the riverboat, dusty Moammar leaned on the hood of a beat-up brown van.

His suit was torn to ribbons, and he was nursing multiple wounds on his face and hands, though there was no blood, just streaks of black dust. Kelley didn’t want to know how he’d managed to get away from Maria’s attacking windup toys.

Standing next to him was a huge, wide man in a dark suit with more than a dozen rips and tears in it, no doubt from his rough climb down the shot tower. His black hair was pulled back into a ponytail again, and he stood half a foot taller than Moammar. If possible, he looked even more mad than Moammar.

“Orleans?” Kelley guessed, looking at Archie. As the old guy nodded with the hint of a grin, Kelley could’ve sworn she heard the big guy mutter a curse word aimed at them.

Great, thought Kelley. More big dudes to deal with.

Orleans’ white van, the one with flowers painted on the side of it, was parked behind the brown van, in front of the permanently docked riverboat casino.

At that moment, Kelley felt like the concrete landing she was standing on was turning soft, about to swallow her up. But it wasn’t just from the sudden jump here from next to the tracks, nor was it from the reappearance of Moammar and Orleans here like a pair of bad pennies. It was a feeling she’d felt just a few times in her life, including once a few months ago in Chicago.

Something bad was happening to her twin brother. She knew it. He was in trouble, and sinking fast.

“Thank you so much,” Moammar continued as Kelley tried to regain her balance from that burst of negative energy, “for finding my old friend Jonathan and bringing everyone back here, Miss Strickland.”

Raising a fresh cloud of black dust, Moammar pushed away from the van and hobbled closer to Kelley and her two Sorcerer friends, smiling his too-white smile.

“We’ll take it from here.”

You have got to be kidding me, Kelley thought as Moammar shuffled up to her, spewing dust from every angle of his broken and scarred body. His wide buddy with the round face and ponytail trudged up next to him, keeping his beady eyes on Archie and a hand as big as Kelley’s head resting on the lapel of his suit jacket.

I’ve got a brother to find, she thought. And I think Jeroan’s going down, face-first, if I don’t get to him fast. And this beat-up, twisted-up old dustball and his Samoan buddy want to hassle us?

“Excuse me,” she said to Moammar, stopping him in his tracks. “But what makes you think I’m going to cooperate with you? You can’t even hold your own against a bunch of freakin’ toys, old man! Archie and Maria are staying with me, and you’re gonna let us past.”

Moammar stared at Kelley, as if he wasn’t used to being talked to in that way.

Go ahead and underestimate me, Kelley thought. You won’t be the first person to do it, but you’ll pay for it.

“Can’t believe there’s another kid,” the wide ponytail guy said in a deep voice with the hint of an accent, pushing past Moammar so he could tower over Kelley. “I’ve been hearing about you punks all day from my clueless partners.”

With a sly grin, he pulled out a small black object from his suit coat. When he clicked it, Kelley felt a tiny pang in her neck.

That did it, she decided.

She barely felt the flush of magical energy pass through her and into her eGadget in the instant before she said to the big white guy: “Get out of here.”

Her eGadget went hot in her pocket, but the flunky just smiled and shook his big head as the white wave or her magic covered all six and a half feet of him, then shattered like glass breaking. He must’ve had one of those mini-computer gadgets to block magic as well, and laughed at her as her attack dissolved.

“That’s enough, Orleans,” Moammar said, watching Kelley with a curious expression on his face.

Voices shouted from high above them, from what sounded like the roof. That’s where everyone is, Kelley could tell. Including Jeroan. We have to get up there, now.

“You are using a new method of magic,” Moammar said to Kelley, though his rough voice barely reached her ears. “I did not see you use any clockwork mechanisms, nor did you channel it through another person like a Blood Sorcerer would. And your arrival here was too effortless for you to have passed the magic through your own blood…”

The dusty man’s distracted commentary was drowned out by a long, high-pitched scream that turned Kelley’s blood cold. It came from somewhere even higher than the roof of the riverboat. Maria hissed in a breath and gripped Kelley’s arm, but before the older woman could say anything, Orleans raised his black Pincers towards Archie’s neck.

Kelley felt the heat of magic pass through her almost instantaneously. This time, instead of directing it out of her phone right at the henchman Moammar had called Orleans, she focused on the concrete landing under the big man’s expensive shoes.

“Open up,” she said.

The ground beneath the big man with the black ponytail disappeared, creating a perfect circle of emptiness. He dropped a good twenty feet, into what sounded like a couple feet of mud.

Sweet, Kelley thought. Take that, smart guy!

She grabbed Archie, who was teetering on the sudden edge of the hole, about to topple into it. He was trying to mutter some magic Words of his own to save himself.

“Save your energy, buddy,” she said, pulling him back to solid ground.

Maria was right behind them, while Moammar was caught on the far side of the hole.

“Go,” Maria said with a smile. “I will be having a… discussion with my old friend here.”

“Maria,” Kelley said. “I can’t just leave you here.”

Not in your current state, she wanted to add. You can’t even use magic to dust your shop!

“Never fear,” Maria said as she pulled an ancient, foot-long portable phone from inside her robe. “I think I shall try some of your gadget magic myself, if Moammar does not cooperate.” Maria pulled the antenna out of her boxy cell phone and waved it at Kelley. “Consider this my apology for attacking you in my store today.”

Kelley heard more angry voices from up on top of the riverboat, along with the scrabbling and cussing of Orleans as he tried to crawl up out of the hole Kelley had made for him.

“Come,” Archie said in a deep, clear voice next to Kelley. “Maria knows what she’s doing.”

Kelley turned to the old man, feeling hot tears of frustration in her eyes.

I’m tired of people needing me to save them, she thought, feeling slightly light-headed and more than a little bit overwhelmed. I’m not doing a good job at this at all.

But Archie only smiled and patted her hand. “Welcome to the life of a Sorcerer, Kelley. Now let’s get up there to the roof, where we’re needed.”

“Fine,” Kelley said, inspired by the clarity in Archie’s eyes as well as the way Maria used her big old phone to magically boot Moammar ten feet down the sidewalk, away from the boat.

“Just let me even things out here,” Kelley said. With a flash of heat passing through her and her phone, she said simply, “Bars.”

Metal bars shot out from the top of the hole made for Orleans. The bars locked him in just as one of his big hands was reaching for the top, after he’d shimmied his way up to the mouth of the hole. He swore again, then fell back into the mud at the bottom of the hole with a loud splatting sound.

Kelley felt even more light-headed after that, but she had no time to think about it as Archie charged up the steps leading onto riverboat casino. She thought about using magic to zip all of them right up to the roof, but decided to follow her own advice to Archie and save her energy. They could scoot up the stairs instead. She didn’t want to jump into some bad situation up there like she’d just done down here.

“One moment,” Archie said, putting a hand on Kelley’s upper arm before they entered the casino. He squinted down at his phone a moment, and she felt a flicker of heat touch her. Archie mumbled something, and her vision went all blurry for a second.

When her vision cleared, Kelley felt lighter, somehow. As if she wasn’t really there, in a way. She was going to ask Archie what he did to her, but the old man was suddenly sneezing, five times in a row.

“Let’s go in,” Archie said as he swiped at the back of his nose and winked at Kelley. He pulled the door open and waved Kelley inside with a flourish. “After you.”

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I’ll be adding two chapters a week right here, or you can snag an ebook from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, Kelley gets caught in the middle of two old, old friends reuniting, and she has to once more be the voice of reason in the face of magic…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Eighteen

Shielded for the moment by piles of leather books and a pair of thick wooden table legs, Kelley pulled her eGadget from her jeans pocket in a panic. It was cool and intact. She felt the edges of the little white book in her coat pocket and exhaled, glad she hadn’t lost everything—at least not yet.

She could feel waves of heat coming from the burning front door now, and the place was getting smokier. It was only a matter of time before the fire spread to Maria’s empty bookshelves next to the door, not to mention all the books covering the floor.

And once those books catch, Kelley realized, we’re gonna have an inferno here. Unless I don’t stop Maria.

She clamped her jaws shut on another cough and focused her attention on the tiny woman in her hooded robe across the store from her. Maria was talking again in some other language, gathering up her magical energy once again. In her tiny white hand, she balanced fireball number three.

No way was Kelley going to let Maria launch that third strike.

Holding one hand over her mouth and nose in the growing cloud of smoke, Kelley lifted her eGadget and felt the familiar rush of heat run through her. It was a sharp shiver of heat that ran through her blood in a way that was utterly different from the harsh sensation of the fire on her exposed skin.

“No more Words,” Kelley said, just as Maria reared back to throw the fiery blue globe at her. Kelley’s phone flashed with blazing white light.

Across the store, with a popping sound that Kelley felt more in her head than heard in her ears, the globe in Maria’s hand winked out of existence. With a strange squeaking sound, Maria toppled over backwards and slumped against the wall behind the counter.

Halfway across the store, Kelley almost called down water from the air to put out the burning door, but she changed her mind when she slid over all the toppled books on the floor. They’d all be ruined.

“Let’s just… blow it out,” she said instead, then held tight to her flashing phone. Wind erupted out of her phone and swirled through the shop. Kelley let the wind blow her tired self across the store toward Maria. The fire on the door was out, and most of the smoke had dissipated by the time she reached Maria. Kelley’s feet hadn’t even touched the ground on her way across the store.

The older woman, wearing her ancient purple robe, sat awkwardly on the floor behind the counter, her hooded head resting against the wall. She looked small as a child playing dress-up. Under the hood, Maria’s pale face seemed lined with a dozen more wrinkles, especially around her closed eyes.

“Ms. Haze. Maria. It’s me, Kelley.”

Oh God, Kelley thought. I did more than knock the wind out of her. I killed her with my stupid magic.

When Maria didn’t respond, Kelley dropped down next to her. She didn’t dare touch the motionless woman. Shivering at the memory of Maria’s mad gaze just a few moments earlier, Kelley kept her eGadget close, just in case this was some sort of weird trap.

“I’m sorry,” Kelley whispered. “You were so nice to me. But I didn’t know what else to do. You kept throwing those blue fireballs at me.”

At last Maria opened her eyes, and they were no longer filled with malice or madness. She simply looked tired. When she opened her mouth to speak, Kelley flinched back, expecting more strange Words.

But no sound came out of Maria’s mouth.

“Maria?” Kelley said, mind racing until she realized what was wrong. “Oh. My spell. Or whatever you want to call it.”

No more words, indeed. Kelley had taken all of Maria’s words from her, magic or not.

“Are you gonna attack me again?” she asked Maria, raising her phone an inch higher.

Maria gave Kelley a confused look, then her face twisted into shock as she realized what had just happened. The older woman shook her head so hard she shook loose her hood, revealing her dark hair, which was filled with more streaks of white than Kelley remembered from earlier. This attack had taken a toll on Maria.

“What happened to you today?” Kelley said, settling down on the floor next to Maria. She could still smell bitter smoke from the door.

“Oh,” Kelley said with a sheepish grin. “Wait.”

A quick wave of heat ran through her as she said, “Tell me.”

Her phone flashed again, and Maria closed her mouth with an audible snap. When the older woman opened it again, her voice worked again.

“Kelley,” she said in a hoarse voice. “How did we end up on the floor? And what happened to my shop?”

“Well,” Kelley began, eyeing the shop owner cautiously, “I walked in the door, and you started whipping magic softballs at me. You almost burned down your store in the process. And the place was already trashed when I walked in.”

“Oh my,” Maria said, rubbing her lower lip with the unsteady fingers of her left hand. “I should have known better.”

Kelley looked around at the empty shelves of the store and the smoking, scarred front door. Some of the old incense smell was coming back, to her relief, though it was tinged with the smell of burnt door.

Okay, she thought, turning back to Maria, who had started to tremble. Back to the Twilight Zone.

“You should’ve known better than to… what?” she asked, putting her hand on Maria’s cold hand. She pulled it gently down so Maria could look her in the eye. “It’s okay.”

“I answered the phone. And,” Maria swallowed, blinked, and looked away. “Oh yes. And I tried using magic. To dust my store.”

“Um, wait.” Kelley felt her legs falling asleep from being all scrunched up here behind the counter. She got to her feet and held out a hand to Maria. After a few seconds, Maria took it and rose slowly to her feet.

Kelley took a deep breath, smelling more incense than smoke now. The place was slowly getting back to normal.

“Okay, so you tried cleaning your store with magic. That shouldn’t have been that bad a thing.” It shouldn’t have driven you crazy enough to attack people, Kelley had wanted to say, but she thought better of it. “Maybe you were a little rusty after all those years of not doing it? So all the books went flying when you tried to do it?”

Maria nodded, her face coloring a bit. The old woman was embarrassed.

She almost takes my head off, Kelley thought, shaking her head, and she feels all sheepish. Great.

“Now what were you saying about answering the phone?”

“Hmm?” Maria said. She’d been busy inspecting her dark robe, as if she hadn’t realized until now that she’d been wearing it.

The purple robe was pretty fancy, actually, Kelley had to admit. It had an intricate border running up and down its front, with black curlicues and symbols embroidered into the silky fabric. Kelley squinted at the designs on the border’s fabric and thought she saw something vaguely familiar there.

“Anyway,” Kelley said. She had to practically grab her own chin with her hand to pull her gaze away from Maria’s robe. “The phone?”

“Ah, yes. I rarely get phone calls, so naturally when the phone rang for the first time today, I assumed it was Jonathan—I mean, Archie—using that little pink phone he found yesterday. But each time I answered, I heard… Well, I did not hear anything. At first.”

Kelley rubbed her now-cold hands together and wished Maria would pull herself together faster. The trashed shop was chilly and full of shadows. And the light outside was starting to fade as night approached.

Archie was out there somewhere, and she was starting to think she’d better find the old guy before too long if she wanted some more help finding Jeroan and the others. Time was wasting.

“By the third call of the day,” Maria continued, “I knew it was not the man you know as Archie talking. It was an old friend of mine, a man I had not expected to hear from ever again. Though after the events of yesterday that you and Archie shared with me last night, I should not have been surprised to hear Michael Azure’s voice again.”

Kelley shivered, thinking of the bald man in the hospital room, his shirt red with blood. Blood that I had helped push back into him, with Archie’s help.

“Did the calls start,” she asked, “before or after you tried zapping your dust away with a magic Word or two?”

Maria gave a weak smile. “After. I do not know what I was thinking, trying to do so much, so soon. In any case, I think Michael may have used some sort of charm on me over the phone lines. By the fifth call of the day today, he had more or less convinced me that the next person to walk through my door would be an enemy coming to lock me up forever, or worse.”

“And I was the lucky soul who stepped through the door, right?”

Maria nodded. “I am so sorry. I cannot apologize enough times for that,” she whispered, her face looking pale as a sheet of paper. “And I would never forgive myself if I had hurt you. I am so sorry, Kelley.”

“It’s okay,” Kelley said immediately, hating that hangdog look in Maria’s eyes, though she was quite sure everything was not okay. “It happens. I think magic can make anyone a bit… wobbly.”

Maria shook off Kelley’s casual acceptance of her apology. She took her hand and squeezed it, her gaze never leaving Kelley’s.

“You see, magic can make you lose your mind, Kelley. It might also cause your body to break down, if the right precautions are not taken. We did not warn you of this properly. That was my fault. I was too caught up in the sudden turn of events last night, with Jonathan’s return, and then with the realization of your magical potential. Magic is nothing to trifle with, ever.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?” Kelley blurted out. “That using magic could make me nuts?”

“I am sorry. You borrowed that book before I could explain.”

“Oh,” Kelley said. She still felt like a dog for doing the five-finger discount on the book yesterday. “But still, you could’ve broached this subject last night, before I left.”

“Jonathan and I did discuss such things, at different points in the evening. You did fall asleep for an hour or two,” Maria noted.

“Oh,” Kelley said, giving Maria a sheepish smile. “That’s right. I just…”

Maria was smiling a bit now, with some color coming back to her pale, strained-looking face. Kelley was relieved to not see that mad look in the older woman’s blue eyes. She must’ve been a pretty kick-butt Sorcerer, back in the day. She could certainly throw some magic around. Even if her aim—luckily—left something to be desired.

Nothing to be trifled with, Kelley thought. Too true.

“I trust you have been reading the book?” Maria asked after a few moments of silence.

Kelley nodded. “Seems like the more I read, the more stuff that’s jammed in there. I don’t think I’ll ever finish reading it all.”

“Oh really?” Maria said, rubbing her chin again. “That is interesting. Very interesting.”

“What? What’s so interesting?” Kelley touched the warm book in her inner coat pocket once again.

“The book, if you can believe it, writes itself, by capturing the memories of each user of magic. It keeps a record of all magic as it occurs in the world, constantly updating. That is, it used to, before the current dearth of magic activity in the past few decades. Magic has been waning of late, as its practitioners become more and more rare. I suppose we can pin the responsibility of that on my old friend Michael. I wonder… if magic…”

Maria trailed off, but Kelley barely noticed. She was thinking about the first thing the older woman had been saying, about how the book wrote itself. Was I in there, in one of the later chapters? And did it start with me blowing up our house, and then all the stuff at the hospital? Kelley shuddered. And do I really want to read that stuff?

With a sense of growing excitement mixed with an undercurrent of dread, Kelley pulled out the book and looked at the cover. She snapped her fingers before opening it.

“Wait a minute.” She pointed at Maria’s robe, at one of the intricate designs there, and then held up her book. “It has the same symbol on its spine, here. Sort of like Saturn and its rings, but with more squigglies. What’s it mean?”

The shadows in the store seemed to deepen as Maria looked from the edge of her robe back up to Kelley. She was relieved when Maria reached behind her to flick on the overhead lights, at last.

“It means three different things, all at the same time. The symbol means magic, it means knowledge, and most of all, this particular symbol means beware. All Sorcerers have it sewn into their robes as a reminder of sorts, to treat our work with respect and a good portion of awe. Not everyone can be a Sorcerer, you know. Everyone has the ability for it, but not everyone has the knack to maintain it and use it.”

Kelley thought about Jeroan and Polly and fought the urge to disagree with Maria’s statement. If those two jokers could somehow do magic, anyone could do it. But she kept her mouth closed. All this talk about the book had reminded her of the other item she’d gotten from Haze Books and Gifts yesterday morning.

“Oh, Maria,” Kelley said with a surprising, unexpected pain in her chest. “I have some bad news for you. I think Alexander’s gone. He took off right before I got here. I’m not sure where he went off to, or when he slipped out of my pocket. Maybe he knew something was fishy here in his old home, and he bailed. Can’t say that I blame him.”

“Is that so?” Maria said, her eyes wide as she gripped Kelley’s hands once more in an icy deathgrip. She seemed to be taking this harder than Kelley had expected.

“What? I mean, he was an awesome toy, and he was starting to do some sorta crazy stuff, changing a little bit…” Kelley didn’t want to say much more about how the dragon had managed to grow big enough to break Kelley loose from the flunkies’ van, because the bug-eyed way Maria was looking at her was starting to freak her out. “Anyway, he’s gone.”

“Ah, Alexander,” Maria said, rubbing her lip in her thoughtful, nervous way again. “That dragon is a watcher as well as a guardian. He would only leave you if a danger arose that was so great that he had no choice but to confront it. If he left you, he did it at great personal cost.”

Kelley thought about how Alexander had been floating around her right before she’d blown up her house yesterday, and how he’d come tottering up to her in mid-air after it. Had he saved my butt with his sneaky form of magic?

Kelley suddenly felt like she had a million things to do other than sit and chat here with Maria. There was the rest of the book to be read, Alexander and Archie to be tracked down, and then there was Jeroan.

“My brother,” Kelley said, slapping the glass counter in front of her. She’d let herself get distracted, talking about magic and books. “Maria—he’s been captured, along with two other kids. We’ve gotta help them. If we can find Archie, then all three of us could go together. Strength in numbers and all that. One of Azure’s guys said something about a riverboat—”

As Kelley outlined her plan for saving Jeroan, Jimbo, and Polly, she felt a cold breeze whip through the already-chilly shop. The smell of burnt wood tickled her nose again, along with the sneezy scent of dust. Maria actually had a customer. Kelley and Maria looked over at the burnt door as it opened.

Kelley’s voice died on her when a tall man stepped slowly into the store, as if each step took an effort. He looked like he was black, but something about his coloring was all wrong. He seemed… dusty, somehow.

The heel of the man’s shiny dress shoe kept the big door open a crack, letting in the cold, while his large frame blocked most of the weak winter sunlight from the doorway.

Kelley shuddered and gripped her eGadget tight in her right hand.

The man tucked a square, Blackberry-sized phone of his own into his dark suit coat and stepped into the shop as last. He walked with a strange hitch in his step, as if his joints were too loose. The whistle of the wind stopped as the door closed with a sharp slam. He wore a dark, well-fitting suit, with a maroon handkerchief in his breast pocket. His suit was so dotted with dust that it looked more gray than black. The bell above the now-closed door refused to tinkle.

Next to Kelley, Maria stood up straight, hands balled into fists on top of her books stacked on the counter. The older woman stared at the man, her eyes unreadable.

The man turned to look over at Kelley and Maria, and a tiny puff of dust flashed from the base of his neck.

“Good day,” the man said in a deep, gravelly voice. “I hope I am not intruding.”

“Of course not,” Maria said in a soft voice.

Kelley grimaced as she got another whiff of something burnt, but this time it wasn’t wood or books. It smelled worse, like charred meat. She wished she would’ve locked the door behind her when she came into the store earlier.

“You okay, Maria?” Kelley whispered, but the shop owner didn’t answer.

Giving off more puffs of dust with each slow, awkward step, the big man crept toward Maria and Kelley, wading through books and over the tumbled contents of all of Maria’s various display tables.

The man’s eyes weren’t as slow as the rest of his big body, however. His dark gaze whipped all around the store, as if taking a quick inventory of the scattered contents. He stopped looking around long enough to smile at Kelley and then Maria. He put his hands on his hips, somewhat shakily, with another puff of dust.

“Impossible,” Maria murmured. “This is impossible.”

“Maria?” Kelley whispered, but the older woman grabbed Kelley’s hand and held it in a cold, tight grip. Maria simply shook her head at her and turned back to her new customer.

At last, the man’s gaze came to rest on the table of windup toys. None of the miniature heroes and monsters had been knocked over or displaced by Maria’s magical attempt at dusting, nor had the woman’s twin fireballs disrupted them. The table was exactly as Kelley had left it yesterday, right after they’d all burst into action when she’d walked into the store for the second time that day.

The big man stopped, resting a thick, scarred hand on the empty table behind him. He stood less than fifteen feet away from the counter where Maria and Kelley were. The man’s smile widened as he turned toward them. The guy had impossibly white teeth.

“I am looking,” the man said in his deep, croaky, dusty-sounding voice, “for a dragon.”

* * * * * *

After nearly half a minute had passed, and Maria still hadn’t responded to the man’s question, Kelley pulled her hand off the glass countertop and out of the older woman’s icy grasp. Maria continued to stare at her dusty new customer with a blank look on her face.

Kelley felt like she was witnessing some kind of tense reunion between a pair of old friends who’d never planned on meeting again—but now that they’d run into each other, neither person wanted to be the first to apologize for not calling.

“A dragon?” Maria said at last, and Kelley let out the breath she’d been holding. “What kind of dragon?”

“Well, it’s a little embarrassing,” the man said as he pushed away from the table he’d been resting against. He made his slow, lurching way to the counter, walking delicately over the piles of books on the floor. When he got there, he rested his big hands on the counter and bent low until he was at eye level with Maria. Even the wrinkles around his eyes were littered with dust, though up close the dust looked coarser, like tiny bits of rock, or chalk.

The smell of burnt toast filled Kelley’s nose. She stepped back from the dusty guy, trying to look all casual, but she wasn’t fooling anyone, she was sure.

“I’ve got a friend,” the burnt-smelling man said in his scratchy voice, “who collects dragons, but only windup ones. He’s really busy, and doesn’t get out much. So, here I am. Doing a favor for a friend. An old friend.”

“I am sorry,” Maria said. She’d also been inching back from the man, until they were a good four feet apart. “I got rid of my last windup dragon earlier this week. I should get a new shipment next month. I can take your number and call you when one is available, if you like. Perhaps I can ship it to you. To wherever it is you are from.”

Faded scars covered the dark skin of the man’s face and hands, as if he’d been patched together a long time ago, using a lot of thread. Neither of them seemed to notice Kelley standing there, just a few feet away.

“I see,” the man said, puffing out more dust as he picked up one of Maria’s business cards from the silver holder next to the register. Kelley felt like they both had been having two conversations at once—the spoken one and then a silent one, where the man was checking to see if Maria recognized him, and she was refusing to answer.

“A pity, Ms.—Haze, is it?” With another puff of gray-black dust, he tucked the card into his coat pocket.

Kelley put the hand holding her eGadget behind her back. The air in the shop had grown warm again, as if the heat had finally kicked back on.

“Okay,” Maria whispered, her back now tight against the empty bookshelves behind her. “All right. I have to know.” She shook her head slowly as she said, “How can you be here, Moammar?”

Kelley nearly fell back and hit the wall herself when the man threw back his head. He created a fresh cloud of dust around him as his head bobbed up and down with laughter.

“How can I be here?” the man said once he’d gotten control of himself. “Now that,” he said, wiping his eyes and turning the dust there to black mud, “is one heck of a story.”

Kelley stared at the big man that Maria had called Moammar. Where have I heard that name before? But she knew the answer before she could even finish the thought.

“No way,” she whispered to herself. It was the book, again. From the History section. “Moammar?”

But once again, neither Maria or the man named Moammar seemed to have heard her. Kelley took a step closer, excited now. Another Sorcerer, here in Maria’s store? And he was a black guy, even. How was all this possible?

“Tell me what happened,” Maria said, her face a battleground between a smile and tears of disbelief. “I… I was there. But I did not see everything that happened after that night. At the Druid’s rocks.”

“I know. We all knew you were there that day. Don’t worry. I understand what you did. And what you did not do. I bear no ill will toward you.” His ragged voice softened, just a bit, as he whispered, “I never have.”

It was Maria, Kelley realized. Maria was the narrator in the story she’d been reading about that attack at Stonehenge. But according to the history, Moammar and their other friend had been killed that day. Nasty, nasty stuff, courtesy of good ol’ Dr. Azure.

Maria’s face was flushed now, and her eyes had some of the craziness in them that Kelley had seen earlier, when Maria had been lobbing magic softballs at her.

“But why did you and Yishi not look to me for assistance that night?” Maria asked. “And why did Michael not fear my presence there, as he said those final Words over both of you?”

Kelley watched Maria stand up straighter as she spoke. The woman was getting mad now, as if convincing herself that this was all some complex joke at her expense.

“Moammar,” Maria said. “Michael disintegrated you.”

Moammar gave a dusty shrug as he rubbed a long black scar down the side of his face.

“Mostly disintegrated,” he said. “It’s a relative thing. The automaton I used for channeling my magic was definitely ruined, but there was enough left of me for Michael to stitch together when he recovered from the battle the next day at dawn. He and his minions literally peeled and scraped me off the rocks. Not sure why he bothered, but I’m glad he did, I must say.” He shrugged his big shoulders, sending a gray cloud of dust puffing into the air. “My perspective on it is that he simply overreacted at Stonehenge. The man doesn’t like surprises.”

“Overreacted,” Maria repeated, shaking her head. “Typical of Michael. Now, what about Yishi?”

“Yeah,” Kelley piped up, then she gave a sheepish smile as Maria and Moammar looked over at her in surprise. They’d completely forgotten she was even in the same room. “Um. What about Yishi?”

Moammar shook his head, creating a halo of dust. “She couldn’t be saved. She was gone, without a trace. We couldn’t even find her music box anywhere among the rocks.”

“How did you avoid Michael all these years?” Maria asked. “Jonathan said Michael and his Sorcerers from around the world were determined to eradicate any and all Sorcerers who did not join them and practice their blood-borrowing ways.”

Moammar started chuckling as Maria spoke, creating a fresh cloud of dust around him like Pigpen from the Charlie Brown comic. Then his eyes narrowed, and all hint of levity left his deep-set, dust-rimmed eyes.

“Who says,” Moammar murmured, “that I avoided him?”

Oh crap, Kelley said. Here we go again.

Reaching into his dusty suit pocket, Moammar pulled out a shining badge in a black holder. He extended his other hand to Maria. Kelley noticed with a sick feeling that his fingers were bent at odd angles, as if each finger had been taken apart, then put back together hastily.

“Now,” Moammar said. “I need you to come with me, Maria. Dr. Azure is waiting. You can see first-hand all the good work he’s been doing since you last saw him, all those centuries ago.” Moammar swiped at the flecks of rock dust on his shoulder, leaving harsh gray and black streaks against the black material.

He looked over at Kelley and said, “You too, Miss Strickland. No hard feelings, all right? Let’s just go talk to him, okay?”

“Uh-uh,” Kelley said, pointing at the big man in the dust suit. “Back off!”

Her eGadget went white-hot against her leg for an instant, and then Moammar was covered in a white glow. But the glow broke apart like ice after less than a second. All that Kelley was left with was a pounding headache.

“Sorry,” Moammar said, turning on Kelley in his slow, loose-limbed way. He was holding a small computer in his hand, the same gadget Kelley had thought was a phone earlier, back when he first walked in. “We can’t have you use your magic on me right now, Miss Strickland. Dr. Azure won’t condone that sort of behavior.”

“Maria?” she said. “A little help here?”

“You know,” Maria said, not looking at Kelley but instead gazing at the table of windup toys, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “I may not have a dragon for your friend. But I may have something else that may be of interest.”

“Come now,” Moammar said, his gravelly voice growing impatient. “No more games. We need to go. Now.”

“No,” Maria said. “I think you need a demonstration of my best windup toys, old friend. They have a magic all their own.”

Kelley just about asked Maria what the heck she was doing, but she bit her tongue instead. Though she couldn’t believe her eyes, she could see lines of energy swirling around the woman’s face. A hot wind blew past Kelley’s face, and she ducked under a table once again when she heard Maria’s sudden inhale.

“Fyorotufall,” Maria shouted.

A ray of blue energy shot out of Maria’s tiny hand in a wave that curved around Moammar and his gadget and hit the table of windup toys. The sudden clatter of metal gears filled the air as the toys suddenly wound themselves up. There was a scary moment of silence after all the toys were fully wound, and Kelley felt her mouth go dry.

Oh snap, she thought.

A heartbeat later, the windup toys shot off the table, aimed right at Moammar.

“Awesome,” Kelley whispered from the floor, looking up.

Above her, Moammar was able to knock a flying centaur and a three-headed dog out of the air, but four more windup toys slipped around his waving arms to hit him in the head and chest. Kelley stared, amazed. The battle between man and metal toys looked just like one of those clouds of dust and violent activity she’d seen in cartoons.

“Kelley,” Maria shouted over the clacking and thumping sounds of the battle of man against toys. She was a few feet away, behind the counter, holding open the velvet curtain leading to her back room.

Kelley rolled to her feet and rushed past Moammar on the other side of the counter, just out of his reach. For an instant, their eyes met. The dusty-skinned man looked at Kelley with a panicked look in his eyes before he turned back to his tiny enemies.

She almost felt sorry for him, but then he crushed a flying unicorn in mid-air and launched it at her head. She ducked just in time, then she reached back to grab the little handheld computer that had fallen out of Moammar’s jacket onto the counter.

Even though Moammar had erected a wall of green energy in front of him against the attacking toys, a dozen more metal automatons piled on the big man. The toys quickly broke through his defenses, and he went down to one knee.

“I am sorry,” Maria whispered to Moammar as she let the curtain drop behind them.

Kelley felt a bit nauseous from the sights and sounds of the lopsided battle back in the shop. “Let’s go,” she said, heading for the door leading outside.

“Wait,” Maria said. She snapped her fingers just before Kelley could grab the handle of the door, and something popped in the air around Kelley.

“Sorry,” Maria said, her voice sounding suddenly weak. “I had a Word of Binding on that door. I do not go out much, so it has been on there a few years. It is okay, now.”

Right, Kelley thought, trying to ignore the sound of Moammar shouting and crunching into Maria’s windup toys. I’ll just let Ms. Haze open her own back door.

Maria took a quick look around her cramped little apartment, reached for a plastic container of cookies from her table and an ancient staff made of weathered oak next to her couch. She gave Kelley a nervous look.

“I, ah, have not been outside in, well, a few years.”

Back in her shop, Moammar gave out a frustrated bellow, and the sound of the attacking windup toys suddenly grew louder. Maria hesitated.

“No,” she said, more to herself than Kelley. “This is not a time to stay in my hut and watch. Not again. Michael has gotten out of control. We must act.”

Maria put up her hood and turned the knob to the door leading outside. Kelley rushed out after her, glad to leave the sounds of battle behind her.

She was about to thank Maria for taking care of the big guy, but she was distracted by a flash of white in the strip of sky visible above the alley. Something big had just passed over, like a small plane flying low. She scanned the darkening skies, but couldn’t locate it again. She shuddered.

“Now,” Maria said, out of breath all of a sudden. Kelley pulled her gaze back down to earth and stepped closer to the other woman. Maria looked even more pale than before, if that was possible. “We are outside. It is okay. To be outside, that is.”

Kelley thought of something Maria had said back in her apartment. Had she said she hadn’t left her shop in years?

“What do you say,” Kelley began, taking Maria by the elbow and aiming her toward the entrance to the alley, “we find our old friend Jonathan?”

Maria nodded, and then she simply fell forward. Now it was Kelley’s turn to catch Maria before the exhausted woman dropped face-first onto the cold, icy alley floor.

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This photo (taken with my phone, which I then retouched with Instagram), was taken at Drew’s baseball “tryouts” last week, where he got to field some grounders and swing at half a dozen balls from the pitching machine.

He did great, even though I haven’t been playing as much catch with him as I should be (bad dad, bad dad!). Got a couple hits, and didn’t let any grounders get by him! I’m really hoping he enjoys playing baseball. I loved it as a kid, though I liked the sandlot games we played with friends during the summer instead of the organized games I played in for Little League (man, talk about stressful. Like not-getting-your-bat-off-your-shoulder stressful).

I’m hoping by starting him and Mitch earlier in sports, it’ll come more naturally to them, and be less stressful… But we’ll see. I know I was a stressed-out dad just watching him go through the exercises. At least, looking around at the other worried expressions on the grown-ups hovering outside the diamond, I wasn’t alone in feeling that way.

The night was also a revelation for me in that it was Drew, me, and Mitch, too at the “tryouts.” Mitch didn’t want to play catch with us, and I couldn’t get him to stay close to me. So I took a deep breath and let him go play with the other kids under that big oak tree in the photo above.

That was hard. I’m overly protective of my kids, so letting him go off and play (he’s 4 and a half, Drew’s 7) without being able to see him at all times was like a slow torture. But I told him the boundaries and let him know exactly where I’d be if he needed me. And I let go.

It’s hard for this old oak to let go of his little saplings. But I’m hoping it gets easier, and it gives them lots of room to grow. I have no problem standing in their shadows at some later date a few years from now…

I’ll be adding two chapters a week right here, or you can snag an ebook from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

Things start to hit the fan in this chapter, especially for Jeroan, who gets to meet up with good ole Dr. Azure once more, but this time on Azure’s turf…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Seventeen

Jeroan woke up screaming, which was kind of embarrassing with Jimbo and Polly jammed in on either side of him in the back of the henchmen’s van. He’d been hoping the last few minutes before and after the big black guy named Mexico had zapped him had been part of the nightmare he’d been having, which featured some pretty crazy special effects and some really painful-looking fireworks, all of which had been aimed right at him before he forced himself to wake up.

No dice. This was reality, and right now, reality really sucked.

On his left, Polly was nursing a bloody nose, while to his right, Jimbo was holding his head. Jeroan touched a nasty welt on his own neck. Just like the other two teens, Jeroan wore nasty plastic handcuffs that were slowly cutting off the circulation to his hands.

“About time,” Polly said. “You missed all the fun.”

Jeroan looked around, remembering where he was with a sinking feeling in his gut. Kelley was gone. She’d bailed on him again. Left us all hanging. Typical.

“Sorry,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Didn’t mean to scream. I just had a bad dream that two ugly monsters in suits chased us up the bluff and tazed us with magical staplers and threw us into their crappy shaggin’ wagon. Then they tied us up and took us to their evil boss so he could do a Vulcan mind meld on our brains, and—”

“Don’t make me come back there,” Mexico boomed from the passenger seat ahead of them. “I’m already in a bad mood, kids. Don’t make it worse.”

Polly just glared at Jeroan, but Jimbo gave him a half smile and a quick wink.

“They got us good,” Jimbo whispered as the van rocked over some train tracks. “Your sister just got away, but we couldn’t go with her. Don’t ask—you won’t believe how she did it. And before you try anything, don’t—we can’t do anything special in here. Even if I did have my phone left, it wouldn’t work.”

“Did you try?” Jeroan asked, just as the van pulled to a stop. Polly rolled into Jimbo, and Jimbo bumped into Jeroan. Jeroan did his best to wriggle free of Jimbo and Polly with his hands bound.

Jimbo touched a pile of metal and plastic on the floor next to him, a pile that looked suspiciously like a pulverized phone.

“Before Mexico got a hold of my phone, I tried. Got a nasty headache as soon as I opened my mouth. I wouldn’t recommend it,” Jimbo added. “I think they’ve got something in here to cancel it out, since they work for that bald guy. Probably those crappy little computers of theirs. Shoot, these big dudes probably take out six wizards before breakfast most days. At least we got in a couple good shots on ‘em.”

Jeroan did his best not to shudder at the thought as he tried to peek through the windshield. The van was at a stoplight close to the river. The Diamond Jo, the city’s prized floating casino, bounced on the river not two blocks ahead of them.

“Can either of you get loose?” he hissed, holding up his handcuffed wrists. His fingers were turning gray, and there was no way he was getting out of these plastic bindings on his own. He needed help, as much as he hated to admit it.

Polly held up her own red fingers and locked wrists. Jeroan couldn’t tell what was going on in her head, but she looked more than just scared. She looked ready to freak out, actually.

On the other side, Jimbo just shook his head. Jeroan sat back and gazed at all the equipment jammed into the back of the van. All this tech. All these gadgets…

“Hey,” Jimbo asked Jeroan, as if reading his mind. “How did you figure out it was phones?”

“My sister,” Jeroan said. “She told me to recharge my phone today, too. She must’ve known about it, but as usual, she didn’t get around to telling me anything more than that. Typical of her.”

“Hope she’s doing all right,” Jimbo said.

Jeroan answered him his best scowl, and then the van jerked to another stop. York popped the van into Park and killed the engine.

Jeroan looked up and saw that they were parked just a few inches from the riverboat entrance. Through the driver’s side window, as Mexico got out, he could just make out another van—a white one with flowers painted all over it—sitting next to them. Then the back doors were thrown open.

“Everyone out,” York said, holding up his black clickers again. “No sudden movements and all that, unless you want another nice pop from the ol’ Pincers.”

The big man half-helped, half-pulled Polly out of the van while Mexico stepped up, and grabbed Jimbo.

Jeroan let himself out before one of the bruisers could man-handle him out of the van. As soon as he hit the ground, he heard Polly hiss in her breath next to him as a third big defensive-end-sized guy with light brown skin, a round face, and black hair pulled back tight into a long ponytail got out of the white van. The big guy stood like a guard next to the steps leading up to the riverboat.

“Don’t worry,” Jimbo whispered to Polly, as if he was putting the moves on her. Jeroan scowled even harder at him. “The casino is always busy. Someone in there will see us. At least they’ll stop yanking on the slot machine arms long enough to see these big suckers leading us in, doing our prisoner routine.”

“Yeah, right,” Jeroan said, walking three steps ahead of Jimbo and Polly. I hope you’re right, he wanted to say. But he wasn’t giving Jimbo the satisfaction. Not in front of Polly.

They passed the henchman with the black ponytail—Jeroan wanted to duck to avoid the man’s dark-eyed gaze—and walked up the two steps leading to the platform attached to the riverboat.

“Here we go,” Jimbo said to Polly as they stepped into the big open pit of the first floor of the riverboat casino. “Here are our witnesses.”

As soon as he walked into the floating casino, the stink of cigarette smoke got stuck in Jeroan’s nose. Twelve tall, green-topped tables filled the middle of the red-carpeted first floor, but a grand total of four card players stood at them, cards in hand. Three dozen gamblers took their chances on their choice of two hundred or so chirping and twittering slot machines lining the walls and blocking the big windows.

But as the three handcuffed teens, led by the two big henchmen in their suits, began their weird parade through the first floor of the riverboat and began walking up the steps to the second floor, Jeroan wondered if the place was under some sort of spell. Nobody so much as looked at them. The noisy games, the blaring music, and the flashing lights of the casino all continued around him, never stopping, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on here.

After tromping up three narrow flights of stairs inside the floating casino, even as they pushed past retired farmers on the steps, spending their inheritances, and college kids jogging downstairs to blow their student loan money between classes, nobody paid them any attention.

Jimbo even got up in one old lady’s face and shouted “Help!” But all that got him was a blank stare and a couple gold tokens from her plastic cup. That was followed by a smack on the back of the head from Mexico.

That dude was really gonna get it, Jeroan decided, when I get my magic powers back. First he uses that nasty stapler thing on me, and now he’s treating my friends like his personal punching bag.

If I ever get my magic powers back, that is.

Even now, Jeroan couldn’t feel the burning sensation in his blood that he’d felt this morning, leaping out of the gang’s windows, or this afternoon, dunking at will at the basketball court with Polly, Jimbo, and Kelley the Beast. Something here was shorting all that out, like those white-noise machines his study hall teacher turned on to get them to focus on their schoolwork. They just made him fall asleep.

Jeroan was panting for breath when he made it to the top of the last staircase, a dusty red-carpeted affair that squeaked and rattled with each step he took on it. Jeroan and Polly were ahead of him, also out of breath, while York and Mexico looked ready to tackle three more sets of stairs. Maybe they did magic Pilates every morning. Or henchmen aerobics.

At the top of the steps, Mexico not-so-gently encouraged Jeroan to step through the doorway. When Jeroan did, his mind did a little kick. Something told him they weren’t in Iowa anymore.

The musty red carpet from the stairs ended at the doorway, replaced by dark green, industrial-strength carpet. Instead of the bare rooftop Jeroan had been expecting, the door opened onto a spacious, oval-shaped office with black walls lined with huge flatscreens.

Below the screens were a dozen computer workstations, the desks stacked high with printouts, phones, handheld computers and tablets and other gadgets. The whole room buzzed and beeped with information, with the humming undertone provided by a twin rack of servers ten feet high off to the right. The smell of old carpet and cigarette smoke was replaced by the metallic zing of high-tech computers and whirring laser printers, mixed in with the scent of fresh coffee.

And standing not five feet from them inside this unexpected high-tech office was a bald man, wearing a crisp dark green suit completely free of any bloodstains. He looked up from a hand-held tablet filled with swirling green and blue words and images that vanished with a tap from one of his long, pale fingers.

“Welcome to my portable office,” the man said with a smile that never came close to touching his eyes, a smile that made Jeroan go so cold he wondered if he’d ever warm up again.

“I am Dr. Azure,” the man continued, not waiting for a response, “as you may or may not know already. Come inside and make yourselves comfortable, why don’t you? We have much to talk about, my newly minted gang of magic-users.”

When he said the word “gang,” Azure looked right at Jeroan with his harsh blue eyes. Jeroan met his gaze, even though he couldn’t even breathe. The air around Azure’s eyes seemed to swirl and blur, like waves of heat were coming out of him—or going into him, somehow.

Dude’s crazy, Jeroan thought, eyes burning though he refused to blink. Crazy with power, most likely.

“So much to discuss,” Azure said as the door to the office slammed shut behind Jeroan. “Let’s get started.”

Can’t wait for the rest of the serialization? Here’s how to get a copy now:

• Buy a PDF directly from UnWrecked Press
  
• Digital versions available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and DriveThruFantasy.
• Trade paperback available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

If you enjoyed what you read, feel free to make a donation via PayPal:

I’ll be adding two chapters a week right here, or you can snag an ebook from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, Kelley comes up with a clever way of getting out of a speeding van…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Sixteen

Kelley woke up in the back of a crowded, moving van with a sharp pain in her neck, and for once it wasn’t her brother causing it.

 ”I just got Pinced,” she whispered, just as the van hit a pothole and loose DVDs and a wireless computer mouse rained down on her from above.

Of course she remembered the Pincers now, after it was too late to do much good. She’d read about them in one of the histories of magic she’d been reading. If she could’ve moved her limbs at that moment, she would’ve kicked herself for not recognizing those nasty black clickers sooner.

The young Sorcerer in the story about the Chicago fire had nearly gotten taken out with some super-sized Pincers before he escaped some henchmen. The bruisers were led by an Irish dude with the super-secret henchman ID of Amsterdam, but the young Sorcerer knew the man’s name was Seamus O’Shea.

Kelley had no recollection of how she’d gotten from the elevator to the dirty, cluttered floor of this van, and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. At least I’m not alone, she thought, looking around a bit more now that it didn’t hurt so much to do so.

On her left, Polly was still knocked out, as was Jimbo next to Polly. Jeroan was wedged between a couple whirring computer towers on the other side of the van, and he was still out. Breathing, Kelley was relieved to discover, but way unconscious.

As she slowly regained the use of her arms and legs, the pain in her neck was slowly replaced by a pounding headache. It wasn’t helping that the big henchman driving the van seemed to hit every little bump in the road, knocking more junk from the back of the van onto her and the others.

As Kelley peeked at all the equipment bolted to the van’s walls, she understood what Jimbo had been gawking at earlier. This place was like a techie’s cubicle on wheels.

She counted four different computer towers, five keyboards, half a dozen monitors, tons of electronic maps and LED lights, and another one of those mini-computers like the one Jimbo had snagged earlier. She didn’t recognize any of this stuff, and she prided herself on being a gadget-head. It was as if Azure and company had created all this tech. Or maybe they just magicked it into existence.

As if on cue, Jimbo’s cell phone began to play the doot-de-doots from “Walk on the Wild Side.” The music seemed to bore its way right through Kelley’s skull.

“Wuzzat?” Polly mumbled as she opened her eyes and tried to sit up. Jeroan groaned again, his hand on his neck where the welt was. Jimbo, meanwhile, was furiously trying to get his ringing phone from his jeans pocket in the close quarters of the back of the van, with his hands bound together.

“It’s Gran,” he whispered. But as soon as he managed to free his phone from his pocket, Mexico reached back a long arm and snatched it out of Jimbo’s grip. The guy had quite the reach. As the phone gave out one last doot-de-doot, the henchman crushed the phone in his big hand, letting the pieces dribble down onto the van floor.

“You—” Jimbo began, but then he went silent as the big guy started to lift himself out of his seat.

Kelley rubbed her head, trying to work away the headache. Though if that were the case, she thought, why had he sent these two numbskulls after us? Unless he had some bigger fish to fry…

As she was analyzing the workings of Azure and his employees, Kelley felt something twitch inside her coat pocket.

At some point in their crazy flight and the capture that had ended it, her new coat had gotten a nice rip on the front right-hand side. Just below the tear was the pocket where she’d felt the sudden movement. She sat up as quietly as she could, with her back to the two guys in the front of the van, and reached into her coat pocket.

Alexander.

“Where were you ten minutes ago, at the elevator?” Kelley whispered to the dragon, all curled up in a ball no bigger than her fist. “I could’ve used your help,” she added.

Inside her pocket, the dragon’s black eyes opened wide, as if “help” had been some sort of keyword that got his little engine revved up. Kelley still couldn’t quite get used to the fact that the little dragon was moving on his own power. That he was actually alive.

And now, Alexander uncoiled himself and began scrabbling his way out of her coat pocket. If dragons could look determined and ticked off at the same time, he was doing it.

“Shh,” Kelley said as his head and front paws broke free of her coat. He fought to get his wings out next.

“Stop it,” Kelley hissed, but he kept squirming and kicking until he dropped out of her pocket and fell onto the metal floor of the van.

“Dude,” Polly said in a stage whisper that made Kelley grit her teeth. Polly pointed a bony finger at the tiny white dragon shaking out his wings on the floor next to Kelley. A puff of white smoke slipped out his nostrils. “What’s that?”

“Wait a sec,” Jimbo said. “I remember that dragon from—”

Before Jimbo could say anything more, the back of the van suddenly dropped a good six inches, as if the van had taken on ten more people. And Kelley felt herself shrink.

Above her, Alexander’s neck now stretched out, easily two feet in diameter, while his big, clawed paws—each paw longer than her forearm—pushed Kelley gently but firmly towards the back door.

The dragon had grown. Now he was twice as tall as Kelley, if not three times. It was hard to tell with his long tail in her face.

“That does it. I’m coming back there,” Mexico said, leaning down to unbuckle his seat belt. But when he turned, he came face-to-face with a mouthful of razor-sharp dragon teeth.

“Dragon!” Mexico shouted in an unnaturally high voice.

At the sound of the scream, York swerved the van hard to the right, and everyone went flying, even Alexander. The dragon responded with his own high-pitched scream that nearly burst Kelley’s eardrums.

“This really is the worst day ever,” Jimbo shouted as hunkered down under the meager shelter of one of the henchman’s compact desks.

Polly huddled next to the still-unconscious Jeroan near the front of the van, behind the driver’s seat, ducking out of the way of Alexander’s wildly flapping wings.

As soon as he was able to balance himself against the roof with his wings, Alexander used his long hind legs to kick at the locked back doors of the van. The van kept swerving back and forth, its big engine roaring, and Kelley could barely hear the shouting coming from the other three kids. Nobody had been expecting to share their ride with a twelve-foot-long dragon.

Alexander kicked at the back door another time in spite of the van’s crazy rolling and violent swaying. Kelley saw what he was trying to do, and she tried to get the others to follow her to the back. But they were now all huddled together at the front and staring at her in shock and disbelief. They couldn’t seem to grasp that Alexander was on their side, helping them.

“I’ll explain later,” Kelley tried to say, but there was no chance of anyone hearing her.

Kelley looked at Alexander, and she could’ve sworn he’d shrunk somehow. On his third kick, with a clawed foot that was definitely smaller and less powerful than it had been just five seconds ago, one of the doors fell open.

“Come on,” Kelley shouted at the others, hoping she’d wake Jeroan once and for all. She fell over as the van jerked hard to the left again. “Let’s go, guys!”

Cold wind whistled in from the broken back door. Kelley’s arms and legs still felt like they had weights attached to them.

Time to go. I just hope the others are behind me.

With that last thought, Kelley got her feet under her in the rocking van and leaped out the back door.

For a crazy couple of seconds, she was airborne. She heard one last squeal coming from Alexander in the van, and then the road came up to meet her head-on. Kelley raised her heavy arms and tried to shout out a Word to protect herself, but the bitter Dubuque wind took away her breath.

And then she felt something grab her by the shoulders and lift her into the air.

Kelley twisted her head around on her sore neck and saw Alexander, much smaller now, maybe half as big as he’d been ten seconds ago. He still managed to grip her tight with his hind legs.

He flapped his wings wildly as he carried her over to the sidewalk and set her down a bit unsteadily. The van roared off, already a block away.

“Jeroan,” Kelley began, gasping for breath. “We have to go catch up to them, Alexander.”

But the dragon next to her was out of gas. In just seconds, he had shrunk back to his normal size, and he had fallen onto his side, puffing out fast plumes of white smoke. He lifted his triangular head an inch off the sidewalk to look up at Kelley with a toothy smile.

“Helped,” he seemed to squeak. Then he rested his head back on the ground. Kelley picked up the puffing dragon and set him on her lap.

“Yes,” she said. “You helped, Alexander. Big time. Thank you.”

She didn’t think the dragon’s smile could’ve grown any wider, but it did.

* * * * *

After a minute passed and her pulse had returned to normal, Kelley looked around to get her bearings. They were in the warehouse district, and as far as she could tell, nobody had seen her sudden ejection from the brown van. Probably a good thing, she figured. She’d have a hard time explaining all this to cops like Jeroan’s buddies Beyers and Gregson.

“I don’t think they’re trained for this kind of action,” Kelley said to Alexander on her knee. “We’re pretty much on our own.”

The dragon gave her distracted nod and balled up for some well-deserved sleep. Kelley tucked him once more into the right-hand pocket of her coat.

She sighed, filling the air with her own plume of air. As much as she wanted to run after the van, she knew she’d never catch it. She was surprised they hadn’t turned around and come after her, but maybe the unexpected appearance of Alexander had made them rethink that plan. Those two bruisers really were out of the habit of roughing people up.

In any case, she thought, I need backup this time. It’s way past time to go see Maria.

With Alexander carefully stowed away once more, Kelley checked for the little white book in her inner coat pocket, and then touched her jeans pocket for her eGadget. She pulled it out, and the battery was so dead it didn’t even show a fraction of a bar on the battery icon.

“But before we hit Maria’s place,” she murmured with a quick snap of her fingers, “I think we need to take a quick detour.”

She hurried up the street, a map of downtown Dubuque taking shape inside her head. She had no choice but to find the place on her own now, without the assistance of her eGadget. She was getting a feel for her new city now, and it was getting easier and easier to find her way around.

Five minutes and seven blocks later, Kelley walked into the spacious, well-lit confines of the Tech Shack just off Main Street. She heaved a big sigh of relief. Between this place and Rocky Rococo’s, she had some tiny bit of hope that Dubuque would be a place worth living in after all.

And the Shack, simply put, rocked. It took all of Kelley’s willpower to not spend a precious five minutes just walking up and down every aisle of the big store, checking out the flatscreen TVs, the sleek laptops in every imaginable color, the phones and the cameras, and of course, all the accessories that went along with her treasured eGadget.

External speakers, brightly colored protective covers, headphones, armbands…

“Focus,” Kelley told herself. “People are counting on you.”

She marched up to the display case close to the checkout, waving at the chunky white guy with the goatee named Joseph who called out a hello to her. She’d stopped in the store at least twice a week ever since moving here, so she knew the place and the employees well.

She gathered up four cell phone chargers—”Charge your batteries in an instant!” the display announced in bright yellow letters—and then grabbed one more, just in case she ran into Archie again.

“Planning on making a lot of cell phone calls, huh, K-Strick?” Joseph said as he rang up her purchases.

“Something like that,” she said with a tired smile. She glanced at the little cooler next to the check-out. “Add these to my bill, too, would you, J-Mac?” she said, snagging a cold can with a crazy blue monster face on it that promised energy. She added four extra-large Slim Jims to the counter as well.

“Serious hacking fuel,” Joseph said as he swiped Kelley’s credit card. “Say no more, my technology-addicted friend. Those insta-chargers are supposed to be the bomb, by the way.”

“I’ll let you know how it goes,” Kelley said once the purchase was complete. Or you can read about it on the Net in a few hours. She was already ripping into the package of an insta-charger, nearly slicing off a finger on the hard, vacuum-sealed plastic.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Kelley said ten seconds later, when the battery icon on her eGadget showed a full green bar again. She tucked the other chargers into the pockets of her coat that didn’t already contain either a dragon or a book, and headed back out into the cold with her bag of junk food in hand.

“Give ‘em hell, K-Strick!” Joseph called out as she left the Shack.

“Thanks, J-Mac,” she said with an embarrassed grin. The guy tried way too hard to be hip, but it was kind of nice to have a nickname.

On the walk, eating Slim Jims and washing them down with the cold, caffeine-laced soda, Kelley had to laugh. Mom and Dad would kill me if they saw me eating this garbage. But times were desperate, and the growling in my belly wasn’t going away any time soon.

Her headache lessened with each block she walked in the cold air. She fought the urge to run to Maria’s, just like she’d done yesterday morning—had it been just a day ago?—with Polly and Jeroan at her heels. But she needed to conserve her energy and clear her mind.

The three of them will be okay without me, she tried to assure herself. Back in Chicago, she’d hated being alone like this. She always felt vulnerable without at least one, preferably two or three, girlfriends around her. It helped her blend in, kept her from being noticed too much. She knew Jeroan was the same way, which explained why he’d choose to hang out with someone like Polly instead of being alone. Kelley preferred letting her pal Halisa turn people’s heads and be in the spotlight.

She turned into the wind, her face growing numb. The sky was starting to darken already, though it was barely three p.m. She walked faster, patting Alexander a few times on the head every now and then, and hoped Jeroan and the others would be okay for a little bit longer.

A turn here, a turn there, and she was at the entrance to Haze Books and Gifts once more. Kelley stifled a foul-tasting belch as she stuffed the bag full of empty Slim Jim wrappers, insta-charger containers and a monster-drink can into the garbage bin at the curb. Something shifted in her pocket when she turned back to the store, but Kelley barely noticed it in her relief at getting back to Maria’s haven of books, incense, wisdom and hot tea.

“Once more into the fray, right, Alexander?” she said to the silent, unmoving dragon in her pocket as she pulled open the heavy wooden door to the book store. “Or something like that.”

Inside the little store, instead of the orderly rows of tables and bookshelves Kelley had been expecting, the place looked like a tornado had touched down. The lights were off, and the black bookcases that covered every spare inch of wall space sat empty above an ocean of scattered and piled books. Books were on the floor, on the tables of goodies, and a couple of them were even lodged in the two dusty light fixtures above Kelley. She couldn’t even see the floor anymore.

“Maria?” she tried to call out, but all that came out was a raspy whisper. The place was cold, and the calming scent of incense had been replaced by the smell of dust and something moldy.

Had Azure and his oversized flunkies already been here? Kelley crept a few more steps into the store, pushing a dozen books out of her way in the process. And what had they done to—

She never got to finish her thought.

From behind the counter on the other side of the store, a hooded figure popped up out of the shadows, cradling a crackling blue ball of energy. Before yesterday, Kelley would’ve assumed it was a flashlight or maybe even a kid’s toy light-up globe.

But today, she knew better. She recognized the look and feel of magic now. She was already stepping back over the slippery piles of books, headed for the door.

A familiar voice uttered strange Words from the other side of the store, and Kelley barely had time to duck as the hooded person launched the ball of magic at her. She heard a harsh sizzling sound as more of her hair got singed when the ball passed over her head. The ball smacked into the wooden door behind her and exploded in a burst of blue light.

“Maria?” Kelley shouted, but her shout was lost in the sizzling sound of a second ball coming her way. The person in the dark robe—a small person, Kelley noted—was fast. Instead of trying to run out the still-glowing door, Kelley dove under a table.

Catching her breath and fighting off another wave of fatigue, she peeked out between a pile of books and scattered maps toward the counter. She caught a glimpse of the person’s face under that dark hood and felt her heart skip a beat. It really was Maria, but the woman had a wild, almost crazy look filling her eyes. She already had another glow-ball in her hand.

The smell of smoke rushed over Kelley. The first two balls of fire had set the door on fire. She felt her chest constrict as she bit back a cough. The shop felt twenty degrees hotter already.

In desperate need of backup, Kelley patted her coat pocket. But she couldn’t feel the little dragon inside there anymore. She punched her hand into the pocket and checked all her other pockets, but Alexander was gone.

The dragon has left the building.

Oh, that’s just great, Kelley thought, her eyes watering from smoke and her ears filled with the crackle of Maria’s energy and muttered Words. Everyone turns against the black girl now.

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I’ve missed the old, rambling blogs I used to do about writing, what I was reading, trips we’d taken, music, or movies, or whatever popped into my head. I don’t have the energy for the almost-daily blogging I used to do (where did I find the time? And the energy?), but I have this itch I need to scratch about this kind of writing — writing that’s not as structured as working on a novel or the Day Job as a tech writer or any other kind of writing.

Journaling, you could call it. (Cringe.)

So I figured I could come up with some journal entries/blogs about what’s going on in my life for your entertainment and/or skimming pleasure.

Potential topics for these once-a-week, off-the-cuff journal entries include:

• What I’m working on with my fiction-writing endeavors (currently stuck on my novel A Wild Epidemic of Magic, but I had a mini-revelation yesterday in which I may have to toss out or heavily rework about 1/3 of what I’ve written so far on the book… Ouch.)
• What new and fun thing I’ve learned or done with my digital publishing project UnWrecked Press (currently, there’s a freebie sale at Amazon only for my baby werewolf novel — get a download of it while you can!)
• What I’m reading (currently enjoying the lovely voice of the 14-year-old female narrator of Charles Portis’s True Grit. Looking forward to watching both versions of the movie when I’m done. Reading it on my Kindle, with a buddy’s novel queued up after that, along with half a dozen MORE ebooks.)
• What I’m listening to (currently listening to my Mumford & Sons station on Pandora, but I just downloaded the Boss’s new album “Wrecking Ball,” which may be his best album in a decade.)
• What my awesome and cute kids are up to (Drew just started up coach-pitch baseball for the third time, while Mitch is back into gymnastics and tumbling, and both are more than ready for Mom and Dad to get their new bikes, which are coming soon! Jump over to my non-Author Facebook page for some recent pics.)
• What trips or adventures we’ve got planned or are about to embark upon (we’re heading to the mountains again in a week and a half, and we hope to have four bikes attached to the back of our car instead of just the two bikes for Drew and Mitch. Mountain biking! We’ve been saving up for this for years.)
• What movies I’ve seen, and my thoughts about them (most recently I watched most of the documentaries from “The Fellowship of the Ring” Extended Version DVDs, which were fun to revisit, inspiring, and also made me very glad to not be a movie director or a producer. I like my comfy home and laptop, thanks! We also watched the first season of “A Game of Thrones,” which was incredibly well-done.)
• What I’ve saved or read recently in my Instapaper queue, for when I’m really out of topics! (currently reading about five articles, most of them about writing and the publishing industry, but I’m very intrigued by this longer one: “How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love” from a site called BrainPickings. Interesting!)
• Worst-case scenario: I share with you my info from my various perambulations recorded by the awesome app called RunKeeper (I’m walking at least a mile or two a day, whenever I can, and hope to start jogging again by summertime.)

So those are some of the topics you can expect in the coming weeks. At least one journal entry about one or two of them, or whatever other topic makes me want to blather on for about 700 words or half an hour, whichever comes first.

I’m also hoping to add more photos of my own to these entries. I’m gonna have to check out the iPhone app for Instagram to make my hastily snapped photos look more vintage and cool. I cheated and used an image from LifeHacker at the top of this entry. The other entries I do after this, I think, should have one of my photos on it.

All, right so it’s a plan. I gotta have a plan. Looking forward to it! Later…

I’ll be adding two chapters a week right here, or you can snag an ebook from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, Kelley and Jeroan learn the importance of keeping their phones charged…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Fifteen

After half an hour of ricocheting like a rubber ball around and above the concrete basketball court with Polly, Jimbo, and—believe it or not, his little sister Kelley—Jeroan was completely exhausted.

The score of their impossible four-person game of Horse now stood at nothing to nothing to nothing to H—Jimbo had missed a shot that he had labeled “The Triple-Lindy-Behind-The-Back-Rebound-and-Dunk” to get his first letter.

If Jeroan had to leap in the air again, or even lift the ball right now, he was going to scream like a girl. Kelley and Jimbo looked like they were pretty much in the same boat, though Jeroan had a feeling that determined little Polly wasn’t going to give in and admit he was tired. She’d just keel over if nobody else stopped.

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Panting and sweating, Jeroan finally snagged the ball from Polly and headed for the gate. He plopped down against the chain-link fence surrounding the court, ignoring the cold, dirty snow under him. Kelley sat down on the concrete with a long sigh of relief, followed by Jimbo and Polly. Everyone’s bare head steamed with sweat in the cold air.

Jimbo pulled out a stash of Slim Jims from his backpack and passed them around. Jeroan gladly snagged one and took a big bite. It was chewy, greasy, and delicious. Even Kelley grabbed one.

They sat eating and cooling off in silence, too tired to talk. Jeroan listened to the late-afternoon traffic—what little there was—begin to pick up on Main Street in front of the hotel.

He’d never gotten used to the fact that the streets were never filled with the dull roar of cars and trucks like they did in Chicago. It always seemed so quiet here in Dubuque. He missed the noise and the chaos of the city, as well as most of his friend he’d left there.

Looking around, Jeroan had to smile at the intense way that everyone else was digging into their food. Nobody said a word.

“So,” Jimbo said at last, licking grease off his bony fingers, “think we’re gonna get sick from all this? Is it like… radiation or something?”

“Your Slim Jims?” Polly asked, giving Jimbo a confused look.

“No…” Jimbo began.

Jeroan shot a quick look at Poll next to him. He realized Polly was giving the new kid a hard time.

Nice one, he thought.

“I mean,” Jimbo said, waving his skinny arms at the basketball hoops high above him, “this. All this jumping and flying around … You know, doing impossible stuff.”

“I dunno,” Jeroan said. “Maybe it’s just a temporary thing, like a cold,” he said. “Or maybe it just comes to us when we need it most.”

“Yeah right, J,” Polly said with a belch that earned her a dirty look from Kelley. “So we needed it to help us dunk and beat ol’ Jimbo here at Horse?”

“Game’s not over yet,” Jimbo said with a grin, grabbing the basketball.

“Hmm,” Jeroan said, digging into his jeans pocket for his recovered phone. He noticed that nobody was able to call their newfound skills anything but it. Nobody wanted to use the m-word.

“So, Kelley,” Jeroan said, with his eGadget in his hand now. “Have you done some Web-searching about this? What’ve you learned?”

Kelley laughed. “Jeroan. Don’t tell me you still haven’t figured out how to surf the Net on your phone. Come on, little brother!”

“We all can’t be super-geeks like you,” Jeroan shot back. He squinted at his phone. “This thing’s defective, anyway. I think.”

“‘Least you got your phone back,” Polly mumbled. She pulled a slim blue gadget from her windbreaker and held it with her thumb and forefinger like a dead fish. “All I got is this busted-up camera. You rich kids and your eGadgets. Must be nice.”

Jimbo’s mouth dropped open as he stared at the phone in Jeroan’s hand. He stopped in the middle of trying to finger-comb his sweaty hair.

“You have an eGadget? I heard those things are unbelievable.”

Jeroan shrugged. “It’s all right, I guess. Too many buttons and doohickies on it, though. Kelley here knows hers inside-out, don’t you, sis? But she doesn’t like to share what she learns with us dummies.”

“That not it at all,” Kelley said. “Let me explain what I read—”

But before Kelley could say another word about her book, she was interrupted by the sudden revving of a big engine. Everyone turned to look as a beat-up brown van roared towards them up the narrow side street next to the hotel. Without slowing, it drove onto the sidewalk and hit the brakes an inch from slamming its front bumper into the hotel’s brick wall.

Jeroan and the others jumped to their feet, all of them still a bit wobbly from their game.

With a squeal of tires, the van backed up, tires smoking. It almost hit the big oak tree right outside the basketball court, and it didn’t stop until its rear bumper touched the metal doorway leading onto the basketball court.

Jeroan moved back away from the van, followed quickly by Kelley, Polly, and Jimbo, until they were fifteen feet from the gate. The court only had one entrance, he realized, and that entrance was now blocked by the brown van.

“What’s going on?” Polly shouted, reaching into the big front pocket of her windbreaker.

Jeroan sucked in a breath, wondering if the girl still had her gun stashed in there. He hoped not.

“Um, guys?” he said. “I think I recognize that van. I saw it yesterday morn—”

The twin clangs of the van’s back doors stopped him in mid-sentence as they flew open and hit the metal posts of the entrance to the basketball court.

Two big men—one white and one black—stepped out of the idling van and onto the court. The van’s springs squeaked loudly in relief. Both men both wore dark suits and wicked smiles. Inside the back of the van, Jeroan caught a glimpse of three glowing computer screens, rows of flashing lights, and loops of cabling and wire. And then the huge duo blocked out her view.

“Oh crap,” he whispered. “Not him again.”

Jeroan didn’t recognize the black guy with the big afro poofing up around his head, but he had no doubt about the huge white dude with the slicked-back hair and droopy mustache. He thought about how that guy had pulled his gun on him—he was fast. And he’d never hesitated before pulling the trigger.

“Hello, kids,” the black guy said. “We’d like a moment of your time, please.”

Jimbo and Polly whimpered next to him as the NFL lineman-sized flunkies reached into their suit jackets. But instead of guns, both men pulled small black metal objects that looked like a cross between oversized staplers and stun guns.

Without another word, the two huge men advanced, green sparks popping and crackling from the shiny tips of their weapons. Jeroan had a pretty good feeling they were much closer to stun guns than staplers. He felt really tired, looking at those nasty weapons.

Along with Kelley, Jimbo, and Polly, he took a dozen more steps back. But they only had so much space until they hit the far end of the fenced-in basketball court.

They were trapped.

“This,” Jimbo said, looking from the big guys to Jeroan with the desperate look of a cornered animal, “is what I get for skipping school and pissing off Gran.”

* * * * * *

Jeroan glanced around him at his fellow basketball players. Kelley was still backing up, but Jimbo had already reached the far edge of the court, and Polly had both hands and the toe of her left boot enmeshed into the chain-link fence as she got ready to climb it.

Wait, he thought, snapping his fingers. We’re not thinking this through. Let’s take the offense on this, not the defense.

Jeroan took a step toward the two guys before anyone else could stop him.

“Hey, no problem, guys,” he said. He stuffed his hands into his pants pockets, smiling his best charming smile and acting all casual. “We’re done playing here. You don’t know us, we don’t know you. Court’s all yours.”

On the other side of Jeroan, Jimbo must have decided to take the casual approach as well. He lifted the basketball and tried to spin it on one skinny finger. But his hand was shaking so hard, the ball shot off his finger and rolled right up to the guy with the afro.

“Got someone who needs to talk to you kids,” the white guy said, his brown mustache twitching as he tried to fake a smile. “Need you all to come with us. Just take a minute, see?”

“Jeroan,” Polly whispered. Her voice was bordering on the frantic. “That’s the guy from—

“Shh,” Jeroan said. “I know.”

He kept his hands buried in his jeans pockets, his right hand touching the warm, comforting metal of his eGadget.

The guy with the afro slipped his black weapon inside his suit coat as he touched the basketball with a shiny black shoe. With a sudden twitch of his foot, the ball shot up into his big hand. He flashed a mean grin too, something they must have taught them both in Henchman School.

“We truly can’t take no for an answer,” the afro guy said in a deep voice, palming the ball with ease.

“Come on now, brother,” Jeroan began, regretting his choice of words immediately.

“Don’t even start that with me,” the guy with the ‘fro said, casually. He spun the ball on his finger so fast it seemed to hover in the air. “I think you saw yesterday what happens to young fellas like you who don’t cooperate. What was that guy’s name up in that abandoned building, again? Marky. That was it.” He tossed the ball into the air and caught it. The basketball looked no bigger than a softball in his massive hand. “Bam. Right in the nose. Very unfortunate.”

The big guy laughed, and then he flexed the fingers holding the basketball. The ball burst with a loud popping sound. Next to Jeroan, Jimbo squeaked like a mouse with its tail in a trap.

The white guy clicked the small black gadget in his hand, sending sparks shooting.

“Quit wasting time, Mexico,” he said in an impatient growl. “Let’s take ‘em in and get this over with.” He turned his gaze on Kelley, and she leaned back against the metal fence. “Starting with this black girl here. She’s the one caused all that trouble yesterday.”

“Sure,” the guy named Mexico said. “I know you’re probably worried about these children packing heat, huh, York? Y’know, I told Azure he needed more backup yesterday, but does the boss ever listen to us? He just brings you along, and then he makes you wait in the lobby until it’s too late.”

“Come on. Quit talking already.”

The big guy named York stepped closer and aimed his crackling weapon at Kelley. She didn’t look like she could open her mouth to say a single word if she tried.

Enough, Jeroan thought, pulling his hands—and his phone—out of his pockets.

“Back off,” he shouted. He had his eGadget in his right hand, and its screen was glowing bright as the sun. He was thinking of a word. No, a Word. A magic Word he heard yesterday.

He lifted up his shining phone before York could get any closer. A wave of heat covered his body as he remembered the Word and spoke it out loud:

“Gholt.”

The white man was barely two feet from Kelley, reaching for her with his wicked-looking black clicker, when Jeroan’s phone gave off a sudden flash of white light. The big arm coming at Kelley simply stopped. And the rest of the guy now stood frozen just a few inches away from them, not moving a muscle.

“Idiot,” the big guy named Mexico hissed, reaching into the pocket of his suit coat. “I get stuck with all the idiots for partners. Telling me to turn on my dampener, but he didn’t even have his on.”

Jeroan was having trouble catching his breath after the wave of heat left his body, leaving him cold and tired. Luckily, Kelley took over for once. He watched her turn toward the big black henchman and show him her phone.

“Take off,” Kelley said to Mexico.

With a bright white blast of light, the big henchman, afro and all, went flying up into the branches of the ancient oak tree right outside the basketball court. Broken branches, acorns, and dead leaves rained down onto the asphalt below him.

“Awesome,” Jeroan whispered.

“Let’s get out of here,” Kelley yelled, heading for the entrance. Still staring up at Mexico up in the tree, Jeroan jumped as if waking up from a dream and jogged after her toward. Jimbo and Polly, who were halfway up the fifteen-foot fence, dropped to the court and sprinted after them. All of them gave the frozen guy York a wide berth, while Mexico cussed and fought to get free of the branches of the oak tree high above them.

“Holy crap,” Jimbo said at the gate. He was looking from one henchman to the other, one high, one low. “How’d you guys do that?”

Jeroan and Kelley squeezed their way out of the court and past the van.

“What do you think?” Jeroan said, irritated that Jimbo and Polly had tried to bail on them. Plus, he felt exposed here, with these two henchmen so close. They needed to go someplace where he could keep an eye on everything. Maybe up on the bluffs, he thought.

“Let’s just get outta here,” Kelley called out.

“Hey,” Jimbo exclaimed, his voice all crazy from adrenaline. He was staring at the bits of technology stuffed into the back of the brown van as if he was looking at a tray of his restaurant’s roast beef sandwiches. “Look at all this.”

“Come on,” Jeroan said. Kelley and Polly were already ten feet away from the van. “Just leave it alone, Jimbo.”

Jeroan was just about to grab him by the arm and pull him out of there, but when Jimbo heard the clatter and crunch of Mexico working hard to climb down out of the oak tree above them, he quickly squeezed his way past the van. They all motored out of there before the henchmen could regroup.

Jeroan wasn’t sure if their new magic skills helped him run faster than she’d ever run before, but the buildings and cars parked on the street on either side of her were just blurs as he and the others ran away from the Holiday Inn. He didn’t stop her crazy running until they reached the little elevator at the end of Fourth Street. He wasn’t surprised to see Kelley had beaten them all there. She was always a better sprinter, and Jeroan was really, really tired now.

The first of the elevator’s two boxy little cars was waiting for them as they sprinted up to the wooden platform. Polly was the first one to climb inside, followed by Kelley and Jimbo. Jeroan took a quick look behind him and then stepped inside as well. He dropped onto the wooden seat next to his sister, and nearly shouted out loud when the elevator car began to move up the steep hill.

“Dude,” Polly said first, slapping her skinny knees through her torn-up jeans. “Dudes. That was totally crazy.”

Jimbo let out a nervous laugh, while Jeroan just shook his head.

“That was awesome,” Polly continued. “When that big guy with the ‘fro went flying over the fence into the tree? Marky would’ve been proud of us for paying that big dude back for breaking his nose. How’d you do that, Jeroan?”

“How did Jeroan do what?” Kelley said. “Jeroan didn’t send that guy Mexico flying.”

Jeroan gave a tired laugh. “But I did save your butt when that York guy with the mustached came up to you swinging his magical stapler.”

Kelley bit her lip at that. “True,” she said at last.

Smiling, Jeroan peeked out the window of the car at downtown falling away below them. Still no van trailing them. He doubted York was still frozen, though, and Mexico had surely found a way down from that tree by now. He really wished this little elevator would hurry up.

Now that he was out of the wind and cold, sitting in the slowly rising car, Jeroan felt a huge weight filling him. He felt completely worn out, and not just from playing basketball. It had to be magic, taking its toll on him. Magic, and a growing sense of dread.

“You know,” he said in a low voice, “They’re going to find us. No way will they stop now, not after what we just did to them. That’ll just make ‘em more mad, even more determined to bring us in.”

“But why?” Jimbo said. “Why us?”

Kelley spoke up at last.

“Did you see any other kids today jumping twelve feet in the air to dunk the ball? Or any other kids our age in the hospital room yesterday, for that matter? There’s a reason Jimbo here didn’t read anything on the Net about the windows exploding at Mercy Hospital yesterday. That Azure guy is doing some serious damage control, and we’re the damage he’s controlling. That’s what he does.”

“He sniffs out magic,” Jeroan said with a slow nod. “Then snuffs out the person using it, I’m sure.”

Polly and Jimbo stayed quiet for a few seconds to let that all sink in. When the car was halfway up the track, passing the other car for the elevator on its way down, Jimbo reached into his sweatshirt’s front pocket as if he’d just remembered something.

“Hey. Check this out.” He held up what looked like a battered handheld computer with a tiny, built-in keyboard. “I snagged this outta their van.”

“What is it?” Jeroan and Kelley said at the same time. Jeroan grabbed it from Jimbo’s skinny hands. The black gadget was unlike any smartphone or tablet that Kelley had ever seen. It was like a Blackberry on steroids, and she could tell that someone had nearly used it to death. Most of the letters on the tiny keyboard had been worn off, and the thing was held together with black electrical tape and some wire.

A map of Dubuque showed on the cracked display, covered in red dots spattered across the streets and buildings, some dots as tiny as a pencil tip, others as big and wide as a fingertip. Each red dot had a tiny date and time next to it.

“I think they use this piece of cobbled-together crap to track people using… you-know-what,” Jimbo said. “Look at the screen.”

“Magic,” Jeroan said. It felt good to say it out loud. He looked at the spot next to the hotel where they’d been playing ball. Red dots and times were stacked on top of each other there.

“Great,” he said. “We might as well have been sending up flares every few seconds for these guys to find us today.”

They were about thirty feet from the platform at the top of the elevator now. Jeroan exhaled, his breath steaming in the little car.

“We’re in way over our heads here,” he said. “I think we’d better get out of town. Kelley and have family in North Carolina. We could borrow a car and run.”

“You don’t think they could find us?” Polly said, tapping the handheld computer meaningfully. “I doubt they’d even have to try hard.”

“Wait a minute,” Kelley said as they approached the top of hill. “Jeroan. Turn off that computer.”

Jeroan was too deep in his getaway plan to listen to his little sister. “We could use Dad’s backup car,” he was saying. “Just get in it and drive—”

“Jeroan!” Kelley yelled, her voice bouncing off the walls of the little car. “You gotta turn off that computer. I think they’re using that to—”

“Track us,” Jimbo finished for him.

Of course, Jeroan realized. What a bunch of idiots we are.

Dodging Kelley as she tried to grab the computer from him, Jeroan looked for some sort of Off button on the beat-up gadget. He noticed a few new red dots popping up on the onscreen map right next to the river, right about where the riverboat was.

Who else was using magic right now? he wondered. Archie? Azure? Or someone else altogether? The thought sort of freaked him out.

He finally made the screen of the little computer go black, his hands shaking and his stomach feeling all acidy. Before he could toss it out the door and down the hill, the elevator car ground to a halt, fifteen feet from the platform above.

“Dudes,” Polly whispered, pointing down the hill.

At the bottom of the hill, York and Mexico were scaling the tracks to the Fourth Street Elevator on foot, and they were climbing fast.

“Oh crap,” Jeroan said, digging out his eGadget. He swore again when he saw the red icon on the phone’s tiny screen. “And my phone’s dead. How are we going to do this?”

“Come on,” Kelley said. The two henchmen were less than fifty feet below them. “Let’s climb. We can make it to the platform at the top.”

“And then what?” Jeroan said. He stood up as best he could in the cramped car, swaying a bit before he got his balance. He glared down at Kelley at the bottom section of the car, and then glanced down at the two big brutes jumping from one wooden crossbar to the next like big beetles in their black suits.

“Polly’s right,” he said. “They’ll keep chasing us. You still want to run some more?”

“Yes,” Kelley said. “We run. For now.”

Jeroan just shook his head. “But we know how to fight back. I say we hit them with everything we’ve got. All four of us. I don’t wanna run, and I sure don’t wanna get caught. There’s one sure way to make sure they don’t come after us anymore.”

“Jeroan!” Kelley shouted.

Jimbo sucked in a loud breath. “You mean… Kill ‘em?”

“Wouldn’t they do the same to us?” He lifted up the henchman’s computer. “I’ll need this, since my phone’s dead. If all four of us hit ‘em at the same time, cover ‘em with magical fire or something, that would do it. No more running. Right, Polly? You with me?”

Polly already had her camera out. Kelley pulled out her own eGadget.

“Wait, wait,” Jimbo said, then added, “wait.”

“Come on!” Jeroan shouted. “They’re almost here. Let’s do this. Just run the energy through your phone, or your camera, Polly. Focus it, then aim it at them. As hard as you can.”

As he felt a flash of heat fill the tiny car from the energy gathering all around them, Jeroan saw Jimbo pull out his own cell. But instead of aiming his phone at the henchman climbing towards them, Jimbo punched a button. Speed dial.

“Jimbo…” Jeroan began, saying his voice like a warning. And then the little elevator car filled with another wave of heat, this time from Polly’s direction. The skinny white girl had figured out gadget magic, just like Jeroan had.

Jeroan held up the henchmen’s beat-up handheld instead of his dead cell phone.

“Take that,” he yelled.

But instead of the white-hot burst of energy she’d expected to shoot out of the little computer in Jeroan’s hand, all that came out of it was a tiny white spark. An instant later, another spark blipped out of Polly’s camera. The screen of the henchmen’s computer flashed twice, and then it went black again.

“What the hell!” Jeroan yelled. “Where’d it go?”

The big men were now just a few feet below them now, and they were laughing at Jeroan and the rest of them. Jeroan dropped the henchman’s gadget to the floor with a clatter and tried to get up and get away from the door. But every movement came at a terrible cost. He didn’t realize how truly tied he was until that moment.

Next to him, Polly was hitting the power button on her screen-dark camera over and over, her eyes desperate. A heartbeat later, Jeroan heard Jimbo’s cell give out a warning beep, while Kelley’s phone was quiet, its screen blank in her hands.

We’ve been betrayed, Jeroan thought, by our batteries. We wasted our gadgets’ batteries, and our own, playing that stupid game of Horse.

“Gran?” Jimbo said into the phone, and then his phone went dark as well. “Gran! It’s me, Jimbo!”

“Kelley!” Jeroan shouted. “Do something! Kill those guys! I know you know how to do it. What’re are you waiting for?”

“Run for it,” Kelley yelled, reaching for Jeroan with her free hand. But before she could grab her brother, the lower door of the little elevator car was ripped open.

They caught us, Jeroan thought. And it’s all my fault.

Jeroan saw a black, spark-throwing stapler swing his way just an instant before it clicked against his neck. He felt his arms and legs flail around wildly, as if he’d been jolted with electricity, and then he could feel no more.

The world went dark, and Jeroan fell.

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I’ll be adding two chapters a week right here, or you can snag an ebook from the links at the bottom of this chapter if you don’t want to wait.

In this chapter, a windup dragon finds a life of his own, and a wild game of basketball takes place…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Fourteen

The loud snap of the book closing in the quiet hotel room made Kelley jump. She felt like she’d pretty much had to force her fingers to shut the book before she could read more. If she hadn’t, she probably would’ve ended up reading until the sun went down.

She looked up from the book, blinking fast to clear her blurry vision. Tears had somehow filled her eyes as she read. She’d been hoping the person telling the story would be able to save his or her friends, somehow, in the end.

“I guess some stories don’t have happy endings,” she whispered, and then turned in her chair. “Right, Alexander?” she asked the dragon perched at her shoulder. At some point she must have moved him from the top of the lamp to the top of the chair next to her, though she’d been so engrossed in her reading that she didn’t remember doing that.

The dragon only stared back at Kelley, though she imagined his head dipping forward a tiny fraction of an inch, as if he was nodding.

To her surprise, she could actually see her own breath. At some point the heat in her hotel room had kicked off, and it had never come back on again. She felt cold, but more than that, she felt hopeless after reading that last story.

Standing up at last, she threw her blanket to the floor. As the cold air flowed over her, Kelley stared again at the dark blue symbol printed on the spine of the little white book. She wondered what it meant. Was that some sort of number or symbol known only to Sorcerers?

So much to learn, she thought once again, her head spinning. Words and blood and fire, betrayals and explosions and power. Druids and Sorcerers and power trips. A lifetime’s worth of knowledge.

She thought about paying another visit to Jeroan and Polly, the delinquents next door, but then she vaguely remembered the sound of Jeroan’s door opening and closing while she was still reading. They’d left, ignoring her advice to stay put.

Kelley sighed. She’d worry about Jeroan later. In the meantime, one more trek to Maria’s little book store wouldn’t hurt. It couldn’t be that far of a walk from here.

She scribbled a quick note and stuck it on the door to her parents’ room. Moving fast now that she’d made up her mind, she pulled on her boots and grabbed the expensive-looking black leather coat Mom had left hanging in the closet at some point yesterday or today.

Nothing the best for the Strickland kids, she thought, feeling both embarrassed of and grateful to her parents. It was a nice coat, with plenty of pockets. With the book tucked safely into an inner pocket of her new coat, Kelley checked to make sure her eGadget was fully charged and slipped it into her right-hand jeans pocket. She felt like she was getting armed for battle or something.

Just as she was about to walk out the door, a tiny whining sound filled the air, just for second. Kelley froze. The noise had come from the chair where she’d been reading.

“Alexander?” she whispered, tiptoeing closer to the lamp where the toy dragon was still perched. His black eyes glittered in the yellow lamp light. “Was that you?”

The metal windup dragon was neither metal nor wound up anymore. As Kelley crept closer, more slowly now, the dragon moved. His scaly neck dipped silently, as if he was watching her approach. Which was, of course, impossible. He hadn’t been wound in hours.

Then the black, glassy eyes of the toy dragon blinked.

“Oh my God,” Kelley said, pointing at him. “You’re moving.”

When Alexander lifted his head and let out another whine, Kelley had to grab the chair to keep from falling over.

“So, what—you’re… alive? Did you get… um… infected, too? Triggered, that was the word.”

What must have passed as a smile for a dragon crossed Alexander’s mouth. His chest moved gently in and out as he inhaled and exhaled, and then, with a soft swooshing sound, he lifted his wings and spread them wide.

Kelley watched the dragon for close to ten seconds in silence as he flapped his wings, with no clattering of gears or any other means of locomotion other than being alive. And then, covering her mouth so people outside her hotel room wouldn’t think she was nuts, she began to laugh like a kid about to unwrap the first of many birthday gifts.

“Alexander,” Kelley said after she’d caught her breath, wiping tears from her eyes. “You’re beautiful. And so awesome.”

The tiny dragon puffed out his muscular chest and gave a little squeak, shooting tiny blue sparks from his mouth.

I don’t believe it, Kelley thought. But I don’t care.

She plucked him up off the chair and, mindful of his claws, perched him carefully on her shoulder. Good thing Mom bought a thick leather jacket. She checked once last time to make sure her eGadget was safe in her jeans pocket and the book was in her coat pocket before she opened the door leading outside.

In spite of the Arctic bite to the air outside, she couldn’t stop smiling, even when Jeroan didn’t answer his door next door. Alexander’s weight on her shoulder was reassuring, and his grip was firm, though she did sort of feel like a pirate with a parrot on her shoulder.

As soon as she took five steps away from the hotel door, she heard a familiar thumping sound from nearby. She followed the sound to a small basketball court inside a chain link fence. On the court, Jeroan and Polly were playing what looked like a lazy game of Horse and talking trash to each other. A third teenager Kelley couldn’t quite recognize stood with them, slightly apart from them, waiting anxiously for his turn.

On her shoulder, Alexander shivered from the cold, so Kelley stowed him into her coat pocket. He curled into a ball and promptly went to sleep.

Walking closer to where Jeroan and Polly were passing the ball back and forth, Kelley found herself smiling, feeling good about seeing her brother for the first time in a long time. She was about to go join them when Polly snagged the ball from Jeroan and gave him a serious look.

“Now, watch closely,” Polly said to Jeroan.

She charged toward the basket, not even bothering to dribble. With a shout, she leaped into the air.

Kelley stared, open-mouthed, as skinny little Polly—barely five feet tall—rose up and up, until she was eye level with the rim. Polly floated in front of the basket for an impossibly long time, twirling the ball once around her body before dunking it with her right hand. She hung from the rim for a second after the ball fell through, savoring the impossible dunk, and then she did a back flip before returning to the ground.

Kelley’s first thought, tinged with disbelief and a surprising amount of disappointment, was: I’m not alone.

“Holy crap!” a voice shouted from less than twenty feet behind her. Kelley jumped, while out on the court, Jeroan grabbed the ball and spun around. Polly, meanwhile, had dropped to the pavement, looking like she was trying to dive under her windbreaker on the ground next to her.

“That was awesome!” the guy’s voice said again.

As she got over her surprise, Kelley recognized the kid who’d just wandered up. He looked less goofy in his normal clothes—jeans, backpack, and a black Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt that couldn’t have been warm enough out in this cold—than he did in his beige Harvey’s cap and uniform, but there was no mistaking him for any other skinny Chinese-American teenager.

And this was no coincidence, him being here, today. Couldn’t have been.

“Jimbo?” Kelley said at last, breaking the awkward silence. “Jimbo Wu, right?”

Out on the court, Jeroan and Polly still stared, as if surprised into silence now that they’d learned they had an audience. Polly was fidgeting nervously with her windbreaker, digging in one of the pockets. Both of them looked like they’d been caught shoplifting.

“You,” Jimbo began, recognizing Kelley now that she’d turned his way. “What’re—”

“What do you want?” Jeroan interrupted, giving Kelley and Jimbo a look of intimidation that quickly faded. “And… um. How much did both of you see?”

“Enough,” Jimbo said, his grin widening even more, if that was possible. Though he didn’t look it, Kelley could tell by the goofy look on his face that he was one of those guys hooked on playing and watching basketball. He gave her an apologetic look as he hurried past, headed for the court.

Kelley felt a twinge in her chest when she noticed him giving her a wide berth, as if he was afraid of her. Probably thought I was gonna zap him again, she figured. Then he was inside the fenced-in court. He dropped his backpack to the ground and motioned for the ball.

“Let’s play,” Jimbo the Harvey’s guy said.

“Wait a minute,” Jeroan said, holding tight to the ball and staring down Jimbo. “I remember you. From the hospital yesterday.”

Jimbo did another double-take, just like he’d done when he recognized Kelley.

“That was you two, um… too? No way.” He looked over at Polly and sucked in a loud breath. “You shot that guy,” he blurted out.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, dropping her windbreaker at last as she glared at Jimbo. “And you threw a bedpan at me, dude. Good thing it was empty, or I woulda shot you, too. Maybe.”

“This is too weird,” Jeroan said, rubbing his chin as he stared at Jimbo. He turned to Kelley at last. “What’s he doing here? How’d he find us?”

“You’re asking me?” Kelley said. She was still standing outside the court, kicking at the snow piled up at the bottom of the fence like a first grader who wasn’t tall enough to play with the big kids.

“It’s a long story,” Jimbo answered from the middle of the concrete court, and then added, “and the gears never fail to turn. I guess.”

Kelley felt a tiny tingle in her leg, and Alexander shifted inside her coat pocket. Meanwhile, Polly and Jeroan glared at Jimbo, one on each side of him.

“But,” Jimbo added with a grin. “I’ll bet I can dunk just as well as you guys. Maybe even better.”

“Right,” Jeroan said, and then he whipped the ball at Jimbo, hard.

That’s my brother, Kelley thought. Be a butthead first, ask questions later.

But to Kelley’s surprise, Jimbo caught the speeding ball before it crashed into his face. He must’ve had some experience with stuff like this from gym class.

“Thanks,” he said, dribbling the ball. “My name’s Jimbo, by the way. Nice to meetcha.”

Jeroan gave a distracted shrug. “So you think you can dunk,” he said. “Like us?”

“Uh-huh. Look—what kind of day have you guys had?” Jimbo was dribbling through his legs and around his scrawny body, almost like he didn’t even have to think about it. He gave Kelley another nervous look. “I mean, after yesterday, I didn’t think anything could get much stranger. But today, it seems like… well, impossible things aren’t all that impossible anymore, maybe?”

“Yeah,” Jeroan said. “Something is definitely messed up today.” He looked over at Polly, who was nodding, grudgingly. “If Polly here is able to dunk, there’s something seriously warped going on in the world.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Polly said sarcastically. “You’re just jealous I can get more air than you, Jeroan.”

Kelley walked inside the court at last as Jimbo bounce-passed the ball to her brother. Jimbo gave her a nod.

“Let me tell you about my morning,” Jimbo said. “I think you might be able to relate.”

Jimbo launched into a story about his morning, which had something to do with a big fight he’d had with his grandmother, who lived with him and his family.

After less than thirty seconds of Jimbo’s tale, though, Jeroan was already getting impatient.

“Why should we listen to you?” he said. “Why should we care?”

While Jimbo was talking, Kelley kept wondering how he was feeling after that Azure guy had tried to force all that green energy through his blood yesterday. The kid had really screamed.

The least we could do, she figured, was listen to him.

“Chill out, Jeroan,” she said. “Let him talk. Then you guys can go back to playing your all-important game of Horse. Okay?”

“Whatever,” Jeroan muttered, but he sat down on the basketball and waited for Jimbo to continue.

“So anyway, I couldn’t find anything online about all the craziness and explosions at the hospital yesterday—not a bit, I’m telling you, and I know how to do some serious searching—and I was taking a break for a snack. That’s when Gran jumped me.”

“Your Grandma took you out?” Polly said with a cackle.

“Hey, you haven’t seen how fast she is with her cane,” Jimbo said. “But yeah, she kind of went nuts on me. She was like ‘What have you been doing, little man?’”

Kelley shivered at the way Jimbo whispered his grandmother’s words, with a strong Chinese accent.

“She wouldn’t let it go, either. Kept saying I was…” Jimbo paused and scrunched up his face for a second. “Nèi Jìn. Gran accused me of being Nèi Jìn.”

“What’s—” Polly begin.

“Hush!” Kelley hissed. Polly looked over at Kelley like she was one tiny step away from sticking out her tongue, but she kept her mouth shut. Smart girl.

“Now I knew the old lady had lost it. She used to tell me stories about Nèi Jìn when I was a kid, to scare me, I think. Stuff about how these renegade Chinese monks living in the mountains, guys who could share their magic with one another with a touch, like a twisted game of Tag. How they always demanded something from you in return. Something small but vital, like a pinkie finger or a little toe. Or your nose.”

Kelley expected Jeroan to start laughing at that, but he didn’t make a sound. The missing nose bit made her shiver, as if her body was just now remembering it was winter time. She pulled her coat tighter around her and inched closer to Jimbo and the others.

“So she thinks I’ve gone over to the Dark Side of the Force, and she tells me to get out of the house. But on my way out, right after I grab my backpack with my phone in it, I see her drop her cane. She drops it so she can pick up her little music box, the ancient one with the black geese flying over purple mountains on it. Before I could stop her, Gran throws her music box at me.”

Jimbo shook his head.

“I just kept thinking, No. Gran brought that over from China fifty years ago. She can’t break it now. So I focused all my energy on the music box coming straight at me. I said it out loud: ‘No.’ And I closed my eyes.”

Kelley exhaled as quietly as she could, afraid to distract Jimbo from his story.

“Five seconds later, when I opened my eyes again, the music box was hanging in the air between me and Gran. Just stuck there, like it was sitting on an invisible shelf in the middle of our living room. Impossible. Then Gran really lost it. She picked up her cane again and started waving it at me. She chased me out of the house, telling me to take my wicked Nèi Jìn ways and get out, and to not come back until, until, until…”

“Dude,” Polly whispered. “You cryin’? Don’t cry. It’s okay, dude.”

Jimbo snuffled as loud as an engine revving and swiped at his eyes.

“No. It’s the wind, making my eyes water.” He let out a shaky sigh. “I’ve been homeless for,” he checked his tricked-out watch full of buttons and doodads, “five and a half hours now. It sucks.”

“She’ll calm down soon,” Kelley heard herself saying. She couldn’t believe what she was saying. The poor guy just looked so torn up. “She’s probably forgotten all about it by now.”

“Maybe,” Jimbo said, though he didn’t look convinced. “At least I made sure her music box back made it back to the end table where it belonged before I left home for good. I peeked in the window and made sure of that. I just said ‘Go’ and it floated back to the right spot, and Gran never noticed. The funny thing was that my cell phone kept beeping while I was looking in the window, but nobody was there when I answered. Weird.”

Kelley swallowed.

“Funny,” she said, thinking the words gadget and magic. “Weird.”

“And now I’m here,” Jimbo said, looking from Jeroan to Polly before his gaze came to rest on Kelley. “And I can’t tell you how glad I am to find you here, doing impossible stuff of your own. Now you can all tell me I’m crazy and I’ll be okay with that. It’s just nice to tell someone else this stuff. Did I mention how much it sucks to be homeless?”

Kelley smiled at Jimbo—I am totally losing my edge, she thought—and then gave Jeroan a questioning look. Jeroan thought for a few seconds, and then nodded with a matching grin on his face.

Jeroan stood up and started dribbling the ball again aimlessly. Kelley saw a real Jeroan smile cross his face, and the sight made a hidden weight fall off her.

“I think,” Jeroan said, “we can tell you some stories of our own, Jimbo, old buddy.”

And so, ten minutes later—after they had all shared stories of getting thrown into alley walls, using a fortune-telling camera, and jumping onto far-off fire escapes—Jeroan, Polly, and Jimbo were laughing, spinning, flying, and dunking their way through what had to be the most unbelievable game of Horse taking place at that moment in Dubuque, Iowa, if not the entire world.

At the edge of the court, under the bare branches of the big oak tree outside, Kelley watched until she couldn’t take it anymore. And then, despite the fact that she totally and completely sucked at basketball, she took off her heavy leather jacket with the sleeping dragon curled up inside its front pocket and joined their game.

Before she knew it, she was laughing her head off as she soared through the air on her way to the crooked old rim.

Can’t wait for the rest of the serialization? Here’s how to get a copy now:

• Buy a PDF directly from UnWrecked Press
  
• Digital versions available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and DriveThruFantasy.
• Trade paperback available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

If you enjoyed what you read, feel free to make a donation via PayPal: