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, Jeroan and Polly try to own up to their actions, with disastrous results…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Eleven

The blare of his cell phone pulled Jeroan from yet another one of his bad dreams. He’d been having more of these weird, freaky dreams ever since they left Chicago. In this one, he’d been covered in green fire and shot through with blue energy while he dangled high above the city of Dubuque. Whatever strange force had lifted him up there suddenly let go of him, right when he was about a hundred feet in the air. Tiny bits of metal fell around him as he dropped toward the ground.

He opened his eyes just before his dream self hit the snowy street. He found himself in a strange bed with his head swimming and his body dripping in sweat. He almost panicked, but then he realized where he was: in a hotel room with the heat cranked. The red numbers of the little alarm clock next to him read 7:05.

Maybe, he thought, my whole day yesterday was just a bad dream. Maybe I’d imagined all that mess in the hospital, including the way Kelley had—with just a few words—somehow sent Polly and me back to the alley where they’d met the old bum named Archie. He sniffed, and caught a whiff of his filthy jacket on the floor, still stained with mud and garbage from their misadventures in that alley.

Nope, Jeroan thought. No such luck. Nice try, thanks for playing.

He jumped, and then groaned as his cell phone began blaring out Polly’s heavy-metal ringtone.

Which was impossible, Jeroan thought. My cell phone was in that old guy’s beat-up satchel, along with my wallet and everything else in his and Polly’s pockets. He rolled out of bed and saw, to his surprise, not just his ringing phone on the floor next to the hotel door, but his wallet as well. Someone must’ve slid them both through the gap under the door last night, like a visit from the gangster Santa Claus.

Jeroan clicked on his phone and grabbed his wallet.

“Meet at the clock tower in ten minutes?” Polly said, not even bothering to say hello. Or goodbye, for that matter, Jeroan noted as the line went dead.

His plan for the day, after sleeping for another hour or two, had been to cut class once again and go to Marky’s hangout, with or without Polly. He figured if he got there early, he could smooth it all over with Marky before too many of the other kids showed up. It was times like this when he needed friends on his side, people to back him up—the kind of thing a gang could provide. Kelley and his parents would never understand that.

What he hadn’t figured on getting that backup from Polly, not after all that had happened yesterday. So he was pleasantly surprised to get her call this morning on his recovered cell phone, even if she did call him at the crack of dawn. Sounded like she was calling from a pay phone, too, from the street noise and static he’d heard on their short call. I guess Santa hadn’t visited Polly to return her phone to her, Jeroan thought.

Jeroan turned off the heat and groaned once more as he pulled on the same clothes he’d worn yesterday. This was all he had, for now. The parentals had sat him down late in the day yesterday to explain about the house burning down, after Dad had finally tracked him down outside Mercy Hospital.

The house—Jeroan couldn’t even think about that right now. His head still felt full of fuzz, as if he’d been drinking Red Bulls all day yesterday and never got any sleep last night. All my stuff, gone. Just like that. Thanks to the fire, he had nothing else to wear other than yesterday’s dumpster-stained clothes.

Jeroan tried to focus on Polly and his new friends, but his mind kept coming back to his dream of being dangled helplessly high over the Mississippi, like an oversized fish plucked from the river so he could be taunted and battered by magical fishermen.

After what happened in the hospital, Jeroan was convinced Kelley the Beast was somehow responsible for the fire. Just thinking about all that light and energy in the tiny hospital room—not to mention the guns and bullets frozen in mid-air and blood—made Jeroan’s brain go all muddy on him again. Too much like my bad dreams, he thought.

With one last shudder, Jeroan slipped his phone into the pocket of his grungy, smelly jeans and left the cramped, stuffy hotel room. Outside in the cold again, he glanced to his right at the two closed doors of the rooms next to his belonging to his little sister and parents. He slipped away fast, hoping neither door would open and he’d have to explain himself to his family.

Later, he promised himself as he zipped up his smelly coat against the cold and began walking with the wind at his back. I’ll enlighten them about everything later.

Jeroan walked the half mile to the clock tower downtown in a daze, working hard to keep his mind blank. If he thought too much about yesterday, he’d lose it.

“You sure about this, J?” Polly said ten minutes later, next to the clock tower. “Those guys aren’t gonna be too impressed with us if we tell ‘em the truth.”

“They’ll understand,” Jeroan said. “That’s how a gang works. “

That’s how it worked in Chicago, he wanted to add, so why not here?

“They’re not really a gang, you know,” Polly said.

“We’d better hurry,” Jeroan said, ignoring her comment, “before the school-skippers get to the courts and make this ugly. You still have the camera?”

Polly nodded, her eyes guarded as they began walking the streets of downtown Dubuque once again. Jeroan kept trying to walk faster every time they passed an alley. He forced himself to calm down.

The old guy wasn’t lurking in there, he told himself, waiting to zap us again.

They almost walked right by the abandoned building Marky and his buddies had taken over. The six-story brick building was smack in the middle of a row of plain red-brick structures, and they all were empty and same-looking. Jeroan would’ve kept right on walking past it if he hadn’t heard the familiar thudding sounds coming from the open windows high up in the middle building.

Polly gave him a sheepish smile as they both turned around and pushed their way through the broken front door.

The thudding sounds continued as Jeroan and Polly climbed the six flights of beat-up and garbage-choked steps of the old apartment building. Jeroan had to grin, thinking about Marky’s amazing set-up here.

Some building company had knocked down all the walls on the top floor of the building, hoping to renovate it into a gym or fitness center or something, before they ran out of money. Marky and his buddies had found the place, and using a bunch of balls and basketball rims they’d “borrowed” from the YMCA and school, they converted the place into two side-by-side, NBA-sized basketball courts.

When Jeroan and Polly pushed open the big metal door leading to the courts on the sixth floor, everyone was busy playing full-court basketball. Morning sunlight and cool air streamed in from the big windows on the far wall that looked out over the wide river far below them. The thunder of running feet mixed with the banging of a pair of basketballs and the sound of trash talk from all four teams.

“So much for getting here early,” Jeroan whispered, looking at all the people running up and down the dusty courts. He counted sixteen guys and four girls playing, with just one person sitting out: Big Marky, resting on some stacked two-by-fours with his back turned to the door.

That was weird, Jeroan thought. Marky hated missing a game.

He walked closer to his new friend, someone he’d met on his second day of school, while he was cutting Algebra class. Marky was pretty punky for a white kid, and just like Jeroan’s old buddy Donald from back in Chicago, his size and reputation kept the older kids at school from messing with him. As a result, Marky attracted other troubled kids to him, like a magnet picking up loose change in the gutter.

At first, nobody paid Jeroan and Polly any attention as they walked down the side of the courts, kicking garbage and bits of drywall out of their way. But then Marky turned. Jeroan bit his lip when he saw that Marky was holding a bag of ice on his nose, and both his eyes were black.

The thudding of basketballs, the pounding of running feet, and the clamor of trash talking came to an abrupt stop.

In the silence that followed, Marky dropped his bag of ice to the floor. It broke open with a clatter, spilling ice cubes onto the court.

“Oh crap,” Jeroan muttered.

“I don’ buh-lieve it,” Marky said, his voice garbled and thick thanks to his injured nose. “Don’ buh-lieve you two jokers came back.”

Someone came here, Jeroan realized, watching the others move closer, surrounding them. Looking for me and Polly. And Marky had paid a price for it.

“I can explain—” he began, but stopped in mid-sentence to catch the basketball that someone had launched right at his chest. He caught it, but just barely.

“Look,” he said, feeling a flicker of anger now, “we’ve got pictures of us doing the initiation thing yesterday—”

“Don’ wan’ hear about it,” Marky interrupted. “You probably mucked it up just like Bobby an’ Karen an’ Greg did, too. Couldn’ even jump a couple old folks without getting’ jumped themselves. At least they didn’ wait ’til now to come talk to me…”

As Marky spoke, Jeroan exchanged a quick glance with Polly. Old folks? Did someone else in Marky’s crew get jumped by the old guy too?

“But what I wan’ know,” Marky said as he moved closer to Jeroan, brushing past panting and sweating boys and girls, all of whom seemed to be holding basketballs. “What I wan’ know is how come your two friends came up here lookin’ for you both yes’erday.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jeroan said, then ducked the ball coming at him from his left.

“Two big-ass dudes,” Marky said, touching his swollen nose and grunting. “Both of ‘em wearing black suits. First one was black with a big ‘fro, an’ the other one was white wit’ slicked-back hair and a bad ‘stache—”

“They came here?” Polly said, then she closed her mouth with a snapping sound Jeroan could hear from three feet away.

Jeroan swore silently to himself. His mind raced as he tried to put all the pieces together from yesterday. The guy with the mustache sounded way too familiar. So did that bald guy have a whole army of oversized thugs doing his dirty work for him?

“Marky,” he began once again, but another basketball came winging its way toward him. Jeroan dropped the ball in his hands and snagged this one before it hit him in the face.

“Don’ worry,” Marky said. He was now right in front of Jeroan, ignoring Polly altogether. “We covered for ya. Didn’ tell ‘em a thing. Even after the dude wit’ the ‘fro pegged me wit’ a ball, right in the friggin’ node.”

“Ah man,” Jeroan said before he could stop himself, and this time two balls came at him from different directions. He used the ball in his hands to deflect them, and one bounced off his ball and nearly hit Marky in his battered nose again. The big guy moved out of the way, just in time.

“From what ever’one else tells me, the two big dudes tore apart the place lookin’ for you two. I didn’ see any of it, ’cause I was laid out on the floor. For protectin’ you two. Did I mention that?”

Keeping his mouth shut felt like the hardest thing Jeroan had ever done in his life. But he knew if he tried to say anything more, the basketballs would start flying again. He was going to have to stand here and take it. That made his blood boil—these guys were supposed to have my back, he thought not turn on me like this. I won’t forget this.

“I figure we all owe you,” Marky said, leaning down over Jeroan until his swollen nose was almost touching Jeroan’s, “for leadin’ those two narcs up here so they could rip up our place. An’ I owe ya, for my busted nose.”

Marky was reaching for Jeroan, who could do nothing but stand his ground and grit his teeth, when Jeroan heard Polly’s voice from next to him.

“Wait,” she said. The sound of her voice made Jeroan’s skin tingle with goosebumps. “Just… freeze.”

A bright flash lit up the abandoned building, accompanied by a loud clicking sound. Blinking, Jeroan stepped back and saw Polly holding up the tiny blue camera with a wicked smile on her face. To Jeroan’s surprise, the other boys and girls, including Marky, remained standing there, unmoving. He didn’t think they were even blinking.

“Run, dude,” Polly said, grabbing Jeroan’s arm. She pulled him toward the exit. They ran so fast across the basketball court that Jeroan felt like he was flying.

He tried to push open the big metal door they’d walked through earlier, but someone had come over and locked it after he and Polly had come inside.

A pair of basketballs slammed into the door, one on either side of Jeroan and Polly. Jeroan spun and saw that the others had recovered from their weird shock, and they were coming for them.

Jeroan grabbed Polly’s hand this time, and they both took off along the perimeter of the courts. There had to be another exit. With each burning breath, dodging the occasional basketball, Jeroan vowed to get his revenge, or at least teach these wannabe gangsters a lesson.

Next to him, Polly was panting like a dog already. The other boys and girls were right behind them. Jeroan pushed himself to run faster.

“Windows,” he shouted, pointing. Polly’s mouth dropped open as they ran, but she didn’t try to argue. They turned and sprinted across the second basketball court to the open windows letting in the morning sun and cool wintry air.

There were still fire escapes up here, weren’t there? Jeroan thought, wriggling free of one of the other boys’ reaching grasp.

“Get the balls,” Jeroan said, but Polly was already at the rack of basketballs sitting at the edge of the court. When Jeroan passed them, Polly overturned the rack and spilled the dozen or so basketballs onto the floor in front of the other kids chasing them. They tried to dance out of the way of the scattered balls, but were instead knocked over like bowling pins. Jeroan let out a barking, anger-tinted laugh.

And then they made it to the big, open windows.

“I don’t wanna go out there,” Polly hissed, sweat dripping off her thin nose.

Jeroan was already out the window, one foot on the ledge outside. “Got no choice, Pol. Come on!”

He pulled Polly up after him, but he let go the second he looked down. The sidewalk was a long, long way down. Breathing in noisy little gasps, Polly followed him out onto the fifteen-inch-wide ledge.

“Jeroan,” she called out to him, “you’re crazy, dude!”

“There!” Jeroan shouted. Careful not to look down again, he nodded at the rusty fire escape at the far edge of the building, thirty feet away. He knew they could make it there. He knew it.

A basketball shot through the open window inches away from Polly’s feet. Another one followed it, and more bounced off the closed windows next to Jeroan.

Polly overbalanced for an instance, then grabbed onto the windowsill for dear life.

“Oh God,” she cried out. “I don’t wanna die!”

“Come on!” Jeroan said, taking Polly’s hand as he inched toward the fire escape. “Move! We can do this.”

The other kids were at the open windows now, taking aim with their basketballs. Jeroan and Polly scurried down the ledge, propelled by fear.

“Look at the fire escape!” Jeroan said. They were twenty feet away from it, but creeping down the ledge like this was taking too long. Someone inside was going to get lucky and nail them with a basketball. “Focus on it! Don’t look down!”

A ball whizzed passed his ear.

“Jeroan,” Polly whined.

“Jump for it!” Jeroan said, tensing his legs. His skin tingled all over with adrenaline.

“What?”

“Jump! Now! Jump!”

They were fifteen feet from the landing of the old fire escape when Jeroan leaped. He didn’t have time to think or scream, but he did manage to hang onto Polly’s hand. Luckily, she’d jumped when he’d told her to, or they both would’ve been toast.

As they flew through the air, basketballs flashed past them like fat orange bullets. One glanced off his head, another off his leg, while Polly was hit in the back.

We can make it, Jeroan thought in mid-air, his blood burning and his skin turning cold, then hot. We can make it.

Five feet from the fire escape, he and Polly began to fall. The world spun around him, and his vision turned red. Jeroan squeezed Polly’s hand hard enough to make her cry out.

“We can make it,” he whispered.

As if caught in a sudden wind rushing up at them, Jeroan and Polly lifted into the air. They landed in a pile of arms and legs on the far end of the fire escape, almost overshooting it and tumbling off the other side altogether.

“Told you,” Jeroan said once he’d gotten his breath back, with the cold metal of the fire escape under his butt.

He knew better than to look behind him at the crazy distance they had just jumped. Instead he rolled to his feet and hurried with Polly down the rusted stairs leading to the street below, telling her the entire time: “I told you we could do it.”

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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, an old man speaks, cookies are eaten, and Kelley gets an earful from her mother…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Ten

Kelley had a good feeling that she was going to be sleeping in tomorrow morning.

Actually, she realized, rubbing her eyes, it wasn’t even tomorrow morning anymore. According to the clock in the back of Ms. Haze’s shop, the time was ten minutes past two. It now was this morning.

The three of them had been talking for half the night already, ever since Kelley and Archie had arrived—in a weird rush of air that was mostly a blur—at Ms. Haze’s shop. She hadn’t consciously meant to come here after the hospital, but she and Archie had just sort of appeared there on Maria’s doorstep, both of them about to fall over.

But that had been hours ago, before dozens of cookies, biscuits, and cups of tea. And talking. Lots of talking. The topic was—surprise, surprise—magic. Magic, and being reunited, too.

The old man, whose name was Archie as well as Jonathan, had been chatting with Ms. Haze, who insisted that Kelley call her Maria. It was obvious, from the minute Archie and Kelley had arrived here, that Maria and Archie knew each other. From way back.

As Maria and Archie talked, Kelley turned off the ringer to her phone and listened, soaking up their stories about magical deeds with their fellow Sorcerers until she thought her head would burst. Alexander the dragon sat on one of the arms of the couch, guarding everyone with a black, empty gaze.

“I was nearly killed by those villagers in Sicily, Jonathan,” Maria was saying as Kelley settled back on the couch with a handful of cookies. “They were convinced I was a witch. But the plague that we had been working to curtail eventually struck them all. They left me for dead in a barn next to the sea. I escaped, however, and went into hibernation for many decades. I woke a century later, and was devastated to learn that we hadn’t stopped the sickness. The Black Plague had spread through the land like wildfire, despite the Druid’s Words and our best efforts.”

Words. Kelley could tell by the way Maria and Archie both said it that they were talking about Words, not words. Words of Magic. Just like the book.

“What did you do then?” Archie asked in his gruff voice, leaning back in his chair, unable to take his eyes off Maria. “Where did you go?”

“As you can guess, the world had changed quite a bit around me while I hibernated. I pulled myself together as best I could and traveled through Italy for most of the Renaissance. What a time that was. Such art, such energy, after all that death…”

Maria shuddered.

“I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to find you,” Archie whispered. He looked like he’d been kicked to the ground and then stepped on. “I spent the rest of the 1300s hunting for you, but our work pulled us elsewhere. And you never left a hint of magic behind.”

Kelley sat up from a half-doze. Did he just say the 1300s? Is that when the Black Plague was? Were they both that old? No way.

Maria passed Archie a plate of cookies without a word. He’d already polished off two dozen of them as they talked, and they seemed to energize him.

“I have never recovered enough,” Maria said, “to dare practicing magic again. I am afraid to even try. The most I ever attempt is the tiny Word I say once a year to hold off my aging, to give me just a bit more time to keep an eye out for Michael.” In mid-cookie, Kelley jumped a little bit when Ms. Haze—Maria—looked over at her. “And any others who might come along.”

“I should have looked harder for you,” Archie repeated.

Maria simply shook her head.

“You would not have been able to find me, Jonathan. The Words of Hibernation, as I am sure you know, are powerful. After my time in Italy, I gathered my courage and sailed to America a few years before the Revolution. I came to the Iowa Territory with the first wave of pioneers and set up shop on this very spot, selling whatever people needed. But I remain a shadow of who I used to be. Practicing again,” she said, casting a meaningful look at Archie, “saying the Words again, would probably kill me. Not to mention drawing the attention of Michael and his associates as well. Just look at what happened today.”

Archie sighed and bit into another cookie.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said. “That I need to stop using magic, just like you.”

Archie gazed around Maria’s tiny apartment, as if searching for that Azure guy and his oversized henchman hiding behind the coach or the tiny kitchen table.

“But now I can make up for all the time I lost since the fire all those years ago. All those lives lost, because of me…”

Maria waved a small hand in the air, as if trying to dispel the guilt hanging over Archie’s head.

“Now tell me,” she said. “Just how did you get from Chicago to here?”

“Ah, Dubuque,” Archie said with a grin. Most of the tension left his face, but not all. “The place called to me after the fire. Azure’s men never found me that night as the city burned. I spent close to a month living under the waters of the Chicago River, coming up twice a day to gather up air before going down again. I didn’t even need to eat. I just slept and tried to heal in my cold underwater home. My own version of hibernation, I guess.”

Kelley could only stare at the old man, doing her best to keep her mouth from hanging open. Living underwater? Oh yeah, no biggie. Piece of cake when you’re a couple hundred years old.

“When I was strong enough to emerge again, I felt something pulling at me, taking me from the Windy City, toward parts west. The trip took me a few years, but I ended up here in Dubuque, and I’ve not left since.” He paused and gave Maria a questioning look. “You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?”

Maria’s only answer was a big smile as she rocked back in forth in her chair.

“Anyway,” Archie continued, “I get by these days by the occasional handout, but mainly by picking up cans and bottles for their deposit money. A nickel a can adds up, you know. I hardly ever have to use a Word now and then to rustle up some food,” he added with a grin.

Maria stopped rocking, suddenly serious.

“You know, you can continue to use magic, but your remaining years will shorten into months, if not days. You are not thirteen years old anymore, Jonathan.”

Archie laughed, and the sound made Kelley jump. She’d started to drift off again, comforted by the easy banter between these old friends, which was so different from what she heard at home between Mom and Dad. She’d been thinking of her soft bed back home. A bed that was no longer there.

I really should call them, she thought groggily. The parentals. They’re surely freaking out by now.

But it felt like too much effort to pull out the eGadget and make the call. And she knew Mom was going to yell.

“Isn’t that,” Archie said, “the way it’s always been? Years have always passed like days for us. Though I fear,” he added, gesturing at Kelley, “that this night must seem like an eternity for our sleepy young friend here.”

Kelley sat up straighter, stifling a yawn. “No. Not at all. This has been really interesting. Honest.”

Archie inched his chair closer to Kelley, kicking over his beat-up satchel in the process. Half of the contents spilled out of it, including tons of change, a couple wadded-up bills, a pair of cell phones—one beat-up and hot pink, the other shiny, silver, and sleek—and a very familiar-looking wallet.

“Hmm,” Archie said. His eyes clouded over as he stared at the junk from his bag. “Not sure how all that got there.”

“That—” Kelley said, swallowing hard. “Some of that is my brother’s stuff. You really did pick their pockets! I thought Jeroan was just making that up so I’d give him money.”

“Well in that case,” Archie said, scooping up the cash and the phones and the wallet, “please take them and give them back to their rightful owners. And give them my deepest apologies. Even if he and his little friend did try to shoot me.”

Kelley pushed the money back, figuring the old guy could use it much more than her brother and Polly, but she did take Jeroan’s wallet and eGadget. Archie slid the money, the pink phone, and the rest of the junk back into his satchel.

“Now that reminds me,” Archie said. “I am curious about something.” He leaned closer toward Kelley, as did Maria. Kelley suddenly felt like she’d been called into the principal’s office for an interrogation.

“What is in your pocket, Kelley?” the old man asked.

“Um,” Kelley said, not expecting that. She touched her left jeans pocket —empty. Then her right. Oh yeah.

“My eGadget,” she said, pulling it out with an effort. “It’s a smart phone. Just like my brother’s here. I think I may have fried it today, though. Somehow.”

“A gadget,” Maria said in a soft voice. “That would explain quite a bit.”

Archie was chuckling, his eyes clear and almost glowing blue again.

“What—” Kelley began, but it was almost as if she wasn’t even there. The two old friends just talked right over her.

“But this is, ah, electronic,” Maria was saying. “It is not clockwork.”

“Same basic concept, maybe even better, though,” Archie said with a grin. He looked over at Kelley, hand outstretched. “May I?”

“Sure,” she said, passing the old man her phone. “Did I miss something here?”

“You may have dozed off back when I was explaining the intricacies of clockwork magic to Maria. That was a method of channeling magic that some friends and I created as an alternative to the ways taught to us by our leaders —the Druid and his right-hand man, Michael. I used to know how to tear apart a watch and put it back together in no time. But this new technology, I just don’t know how…”

As he spoke, Archie held up Kelley’s eGadget and squinted at it. His furry eyebrows lowered as he hit the power button, and the cell phone lit his bearded face with a blue-white glow.

“I learned long ago,” Archie continued, “that magic loves complexity. It doesn’t mind being channeled by us Sorcerers, nor does it care what sort of container it gets funneled through. Originally, it simply ran through our bodies, head to toe and back again, until we expelled it—much like a sneeze—with a Word.”

Kelley nodded, wide awake now, though she felt a headache coming on. She remembered the “keyword” she’d spoken in her house, as she tried not to sweat, just before the whole place blew. As Archie continued, Kelley recalled something else—the sharp, jolting sensation she’d gotten in her leg, right as she said that word: Fire.

“Blood magic,” Archie said. “That’s what we used to call it. My friend Michael found his own method for enhancing blood magic and lessening the negative effects on its user. This was after we were overtaken outside the inn that night, when we lost you, Maria. And Michael tried to use his twisted version of blood magic today, actually, with Jimbo, our thin friend from Harvey’s restaurant. He tried forcing magic through Jimbo instead of himself, using Jimbo’s vitality instead of sapping his own. Good thing it didn’t work, or Jimbo would be feeling very bad right now.”

Kelley let out her breath in a long hiss. “Azure. What a parasite.”

Maria and Archie gave each other knowing looks before nodding at Kelley.

“Parasitic magic,” Archie said with a wink. “That’s as good a name as any. Me, I never cared for that invasive version of magic. So I used clockwork mechanisms instead.”

Kelley snapped her fingers, the sound echoing in the little room.

“Your pocket watch. That’s why you needed it today. It was your, um, channeler. For magic.”

Next to her, sitting in her rocker, Maria silently tapped a finger on her chin.

Kelley was starting to feel like she’d just downed a latte or a nasty energy drink, and the caffeine was going right to her brain. It must have been the overload of information tonight, along with her crazy day yesterday. Headache time.

Archie just nodded at her and smiled.

With a cold chill crawling up her back, Kelley suddenly wondered where Archie’s so-called friend Michael was. She wondered if the bald guy held a grudge. She noticed that Archie and Maria, who apparently knew the bald guy with the ‘tude as well, had barely mentioned Michael all night.

“And now,” Archie said to Maria with a boyish glint in his eyes, “there is this gadget.”

Before Kelley could say anything else, she felt something shift in the air around her, like a hot wind that she could see more than feel, somehow. The contents of the little room blurred as Archie turned to her.

His eyes were still bright, almost glowing now, and he whispered a Word that sounded like “Flegont.”

Her eGadget flashed white, and Kelley felt like Archie had just touched her head with his finger. But he was three feet away from her, holding her phone with both hands. Too far away to touch her without seeing his hand coming and going.

Whatever just happened, Kelley’s headache was now gone.

“You did that?” she asked.

“Not just me,” he said. He passed her back the eGadget, and Kelley had to hold it by its edges, because it was white-hot. “I think you, my friend, have devised a new way of channeling magic. And it just may be the most efficient method of them all.”

“Really?” Fumbling with her hot phone, trying not to drop it, Kelley said, “I didn’t mean to.”

“Amazing,” Maria agreed. A moment later, she turned to Archie with a frown. “You really did not need to be using magic again, not in your current condition, Jonathan.”

“I couldn’t help it,” he said with a big boyish grin. “I had to try her gadget. And it barely used any of my energy—her phone did most of the work. Just my Word of Healing took any effort, and there’s no way around that. Words always have a cost.”

Kelley stared at the cooling phone sitting on her lap as Maria scolded Archie. The battery indicator was red, almost out of juice.

Had magic really just zipped through this little hunk of metal and electronics? Kelley lifted the blanket and peeked at the rectangular outline of the burn marks on her jeans pocket, right where the phone had rested when she blew up her family’s house.

Magic?

Oh yeah, Kelley thought, wanting to burst out into nervous, giddy laughter. This is the real deal, here. Magic. And it’s up to me to do with it what I can, to make the most of this turn of events. This was too awesome.

“I am warning you, Jonathan,” Maria was saying.

“Well, helping people,” Archie said in response to Maria’s scolding, “has been the only thing in my life that I’ve been truly good at. How do I stop now?”

“It’s your choice, you know,” Kelley said, and immediately slapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, and now Maria and Archie were looking at her with identical looks of surprise.

“She is right, of course, Jonathan,” Maria said. “Your choice.”

Archie only looked from Maria to Kelley and back to Maria again. He smiled his boyish, innocent smile, and Kelley was immediately suspicious. He looked way too much like Jeroan with that smile.

She didn’t think Archie would listen to what she was saying for a second, but his sneaky smile, along with his little demonstration of her gadget magic that she had apparently invented today—yesterday—gave Kelley the determination and confidence to forge ahead and give the old guy a piece of her mind.

Look at me, giving out free advice, she thought as she started to talk. Hope I don’t get zapped!

* * * * * *

Kelley woke a few hours later with a start. She was stretched out on the couch, which was surprisingly comfy, and Maria was covered in a blanket and sleeping in her rocker. Archie was nowhere to be found.

She sat up, blinking in the gray light of early morning. I think we talked just about all night. Can’t remember the last time I did that—maybe at one of Halisa’s sleepovers in Chicago? This past night had been nothing like one of her old girlfriends’ slumber parties, that was for sure.

She tiptoed around Maria’s small apartment, and even peeked out into her darkened store, but she could see no sign of the old Sorcerer.

Archie hadn’t taken my advice. He probably spent the rest of the night out on the streets. Maybe he was more comfortable out there.

With a grimace, she pulled out her eGadget and touched the number for Mom’s cell phone. Hoping the battery would hold up for just a little longer, she kept the phone a good foot away from her ear and waited for her mother to start screaming at her.

As the phone rang, she hoped the old guy took it easy today. She couldn’t help but feel worried about him, even if a day ago, she hadn’t even known who he was. There was a ton of wild stuff going on in the world that she hadn’t been aware of just a day ago. I’ve got a lot to learn.

Right before Mom answered her phone, Kelley imagined a bursts of white energy shooting out of her phone, as it had all day yesterday. Instead, all she heard was her mother on the other end, and Mom was already yelling.

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.

No romance in this chapter, but LOTS of great magic and other fun, as our little hospital room from Chapter Nine gets even more crowded.

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Nine

“Polly,” Jeroan whispered, his voice just a croak outside the ruined and wind-filled hospital room. “What are you doing?”

He hadn’t stepped into the doorway yet. But Polly had just gone and charged ahead of him, checking each room, while Jeroan hung back, tempted to leave her on her own. As soon as they turned down this hall, close to the emergency entrance, finding this room was a snap. They had just followed the explosions and the shouting.

He risked a peek around the corner and was barely surprised to see Kelley in there. She stood in the middle of a windowless hospital room. Bits of glass no bigger than sand covered the floor, along with burnt paper and shredded sheets from the bed. The room should’ve been freezing, and alarms should’ve been going off, but the place seemed to be cut off from the rest of the hospital. And the rest of reality.

On the other side of the room stood a bald man in a suit with a harsh face like a cop’s. Trying to hide behind one of the beds was the skinny kid from Harvey’s. But Polly wasn’t pointing her gun at the Beast, the bald guy, or the Harvey’s kid. It was the old guy on the floor she wanted, the homeless bum from this morning.

Everyone in the room stopped to stare at the skinny girl with the gun next to him.

Polly took a step into the trashed room, gun still aimed at the old guy just a few feet away from Kelley. Nobody said a word.

Out of control, Jeroan thought. This situation has gotten completely out of control.

He peeked into the room again, and this time saw the skinny kid in the Harvey’s uniform stand up straight. The kid was holding a piece of white plastic that looked like a bed pan.

Before Jeroan could shout out a warning, the kid cranked his right arm behind his back like a major league pitcher and launched the bedpan in that hand at Polly.

The hard plastic pan slammed into Polly’s hand and knocked the gun from her fingers. The gun hit the tiled, debris-cluttered floor and went off with a small explosion that made Jeroan’s ears ring.

“Polly!” he whispered, almost breaking from his cover at the sound of the gunshot. “You said it wasn’t loaded!”

Polly had taken a step back, holding her injured hand, and nearly tripped over the bedpan. Jeroan stepped in and grabbed her before she could fall, and he heard a raspy gasp coming from inside the room.

Oh no, Jeroan thought. The old guy must’ve got hit by that bullet.

Fighting to keep his feet with Polly in his arms, Jeroan saw that the old guy hadn’t been hit at all, but his bald friend had been. Ten feet away on the other side of the room, the man in the suit stood against the wall next to a torn-up bed, holding both hands to his chest. Bright red blood soaked into the white shirt under his green tie.

The bald man tried to say something, to ask a question, maybe, and then he slid down the wall and onto the debris-filled floor.

Time seemed to slow as Jeroan’s sluggish brain struggled to comprehend what just happened. The older man crawled closer to the bald man, while on the other side of the room, Kelley and the Harvey’s guy could only stand and stare at the two older men. His sister, for some reason, was holding an all-white toy dragon in her hands. Jeroan made sure Kelley couldn’t see him around Polly.

Just as the old man was reaching for the bleeding and unmoving bald man, loud footsteps suddenly rang out in the hallway behind Jeroan.

And then Jeroan saw the gun just a few feet away from where he and Polly were standing. He bent down for it as casually as he could, keeping his face turned from his sister.

He snagged the gun just as a huge white man with dark, slicked-back hair, a drooping mustache, and a black suit filled the doorway to the room. He pushed Polly and Jeroan further into the room, out of his way, and took a long, slow stride inside himself before he pulled up short.

“Boss!” the big guy shouted.

As if in slow motion, Jeroan hid the gun under his armpit as he regained his balance after getting shoved.

“Jeroan!” Kelley shouted at the same time, finally noticing him after all his best efforts to stay out of her sight.

“There’s Michael’s henchman,” the old guy said in a husky whisper as he slumped down onto the floor next to the bald man. “I knew there had to be a henchman somewhere.”

The big man trudged forward and elbowed the old guy out of the way. The old guy went flying, dropping the gold pocket watch that Jeroan remembered all too well from this morning.

“What are you doing here, Jeroan?” Kelley shouted, but Jeroan didn’t even look at her. He was looking at the outline of a gun inside the big man’s jacket.

Time slowed further.

Jeroan realized what he had to do. Time to take control of this situation.

The henchman reached for his boss and tried to pull him up. Jeroan raised Polly’s gun, aiming it at the big man even though every muscle in his arm seemed to be fighting him. The gun felt like it weighed fifty pounds.

“That’s enough,” Jeroan said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and steadied the gun. “Step away from the wall with your hands up!”

“Jeroan!” Kelley shouted. “No!”

The bald man’s huge henchman, however, did not hesitate. He slid the gun from his coat and swung it toward Jeroan.

I’ve got time, Jeroan thought.

The movement of the big man’s arm should’ve have been a blur, but Jeroan saw each movement of his arm clearly, like the careful pivots of an achingly slow dance.

Time slowed even more as the big guy in the suit pulled the trigger.

“No,” Jeroan whispered. “Wait—”

Kelley shouted his name again, and Jeroan found himself looking at her instead of the big man with the gun. He watched the white dragon in Kelley’s hands flap its wings once, twice, the movements growing slower each time.

He heard the angry hiss of the bullet cutting through the air toward him.

I still have time to move, he thought. Time to get out of the way…

As loud as a door slamming or a window breaking, the ancient watch in the old man’s hand ticked once, loud as the shot from Polly’s gun, as he whispered a strange Word in some other language.

The watch flashed once, and then time stopped.

Jeroan couldn’t move, but he could just make out the small black slug of a bullet floating in the air not five inches from his nose. The bullet twinkled with blue light.

With another tiny movement of the hand holding his watch, the old man spoke one more Word—something like “Oskam”—and the bullet floated through the air toward him, followed first by the gun from Jeroan’s hand and then the gun from the bald man’s flunky. The guns and the bullet deposited themselves into the worn satchel on the floor next to the old man.

After the old man sniffed twice, time began again.

Jeroan exhaled and nearly laughed with relief when he realized he could move her arms and legs again.

The big man on the suit took advantage of his ability to move again by turning to reach for the old man with his big meat-hook hands.

“Gholt,” the old man said, and the big man froze in place.

The old man exhaled, looking like he was ready to drop back onto the floor again. Kelley, in the meantime, had stomped over to Jeroan.

“Get in here!” she said, grabbing him hard enough to make him stumble forward. He went to one knee onto the floor next to where the ashen-faced Polly was sitting.

“Shut,” Kelley said, and with a flash of white light, the door slammed shut behind them.

“What the—” Jeroan began, but the little dragon in Kelley’s hand belched tiny sparks at him. He shut his mouth fast.

“I know it’s nuts,” the kid from Harvey’s said as he crept up next to them. “Just watch, okay? The old guy’s name is Archie, and the bald dude is Dr. Azure. No idea what the name of the big henchman in the suit is, though.”

Polly shot the kid—his name was Jimbo, Jeroan remembered at last—a dirty look, as if expecting another bedpan to come flying her way from Jimbo’s pitching hand.

The old man named Archie wiped sweat from his face and gave all four teens a pained smile before turning his attention to bald Dr. Azure with a weary sigh.

“Guns,” Archie said, winding his watch three times before touching Azure’s motionless chest though his blood-soaked shirt and jacket. “So much damage done with guns. And people say that magic is bad for you.”

“Is he dead?” Jimbo whispered, leaving Jeroan’s side and creeping closer to Archie and Azure. Kelley inched closer and watched as well, while Jeroan and Polly stayed right where they were. The big henchman, fortunately, wasn’t moving either.

Archie started to nod, and then shook his head.

“Almost. He is no longer breathing, and his spirit is just at the surface of his body, almost ready to break loose. Which will make this that much harder.” He looked up at Kelley, and she nearly jumped back two feet. “Could you lend a hand, miss? Kelley, isn’t it?”

Why her? Jeroan wanted to shout out. Why’s it always Kelley?

The look on the Beast’s face seemed to ask a similar question of the old man, but the look in Archie’s eyes was unyielding. He needed her help. Jeroan wondered what had happened to his sister since he saw her last.

At last, Kelley nodded and hunkered down next to Archie, keeping her white dragon close at hand.

Without hesitating, Archie pressed his hand once more onto the front of Azure’s stained dress shirt. Jimbo held Archie’s shoulder, propping him up. The old man shook like a leaf, and his watch kept ticking like the countdown timer to a bomb.

“You can do it,” Jimbo whispered.

Jeroan couldn’t tell if he was talking to Archie or Kelley, or both of them. His pride kept him from getting up and helping out. What could I do, anyway? I’m useless here, he figured.

He could only watch as Kelley put her brown hand on top of Archie’s white hand. Her white dragon flew up and hovered over her shoulder, wings flapping noiselessly. Each tick of Archie’s watch was now like a tiny explosion.

White light shot out of Kelley’s leg, right where Jeroan noticed a burnt spot on her jeans. She kept muttering, “Go go go, get back in, get back in,” as Archie pronounced his own barely intelligible Words.

With a sucking sound that Jeroan hoped never to hear again in his lifetime, Kelley and Archie pushed the spilled blood back into Azure’s body.

When most of the blood had returned to its owner, Archie began to sway in Jimbo’s grip. The old man fell silent for a moment, and his pocket watch was ticking slowly now, and softer. Kelley looked over at Archie with a questioning look, but he just shook his head.

“Just a little longer, miss. Almost there. I won’t…” he took a shallow, shaky breath. “I won’t let this man die.”

When the last of the spilled blood had been returned, Archie gave a smile and tucked his now-silent watch into his satchel. Then, with another muttered word, he pressed his pinkie into Azure’s chest. He closed one eye as he moved his finger inside Azure, muttering one strange word, then another.

With a weary shout of triumph, Archie pulled the deformed bullet out of Azure and held it up.

Jeroan felt herself grinning like a fool at the sight of it.

“No freakin’ way,” he whispered.

And then Archie toppled backwards. The spent bullet rattled to the floor next him, landing in a pile of glass dust. Jeroan couldn’t tell if he was breathing any more or not. Next to Archie, Kelley slumped over, trying to catch her own breath.

After a sudden, almost unending intake of air, Azure moaned, as if he and Archie had simply switched places, one life for another life.

“York,” the bald man whispered in a strained voice. “Take him down. Now.”

In a flash of green, Azure’s oversized employee roared back to life on the floor next to Archie. The big man reached for Archie, a crooked smile on his wide face, and the old man was defenseless to stop him.

Kelley wasn’t any help either, as she didn’t seem able to get up from where she was sitting on the floor. Jeroan knew he had to make another move. But he couldn’t…

“No!” Jimbo said. He dove on top of Archie, protecting him as best as he could with his skinny body. The man named York drew back an impossibly large fist, taking aim at Jimbo’s nose, no doubt.

But Jimbo’s actions had bought Kelley a few more seconds to recover.

As the henchman swung at Jimbo, she held up both hands.

“Go away,” she said to the henchman known as York. White energy flashed again in her pocket.

The big man with the droopy mustache disappeared with a pop of rushing air.

“Holy cow,” Kelley whispered, grinning at Jimbo, eyes wide. “He really went away.”

Jeroan just stared, mouth hanging open, at the place where York had been. And then he saw the man Jimbo called Dr. Azure, up to no good once more.

“Kelley!” Jeroan shouted. “The bald dude!”

Up on one knee a few feet from Kelley and Jimbo, acting as if he’d already forgotten that Archie and Kelley had just saved him, Azure was chanting his magic Words again. A green cloud of light grew around him like smog.

But instead of aiming his attentions at Archie, Azure pointed two clawed fingers at Jimbo. A weird green light poured into the skinny kid’s eyes. The bald man was doing this to him, but Jeroan had no idea why. Jimbo cried out as the energy coursed into him, as if it was bouncing and burning its way through his veins.

“Archie?” Jimbo asked in a panicked voice as he dropped to the floor. His skinny body started shaking uncontrollably as he looked from the old man to Jeroan’s sister. “Kelley? What’s he doing to me?”

Green energy covered Jimbo until he was gasping for air. Polly hit the deck next to Jeroan, face-down and covering her head with her hands.

“Gran,” Jimbo whispered, rolling around on the floor. “I’m… sorry, Gran.”

Jeroan could see that Kelley wasn’t going to do anything. She was just staring at the weird energy filling her skinny little friend from Harvey’s. So Jeroan reached out for her, not with his hands—she was too far away for that—but with his head. Sometimes it worked, though they hadn’t done that sort of thing in years.

Don’t think about it, Jeroan thought at his sister, with his mouth clamped shut. Just make him stop.

Kelley flinched and shot a shocked look at Jeroan. He just pointed over at Azure, and Kelley nodded.

“No,” she blurted out, pointing at Azure. “Go away.”

The green light winked out, and Azure was no longer there. It was as if the bald man had simply blipped out of existence. Kelley had dismissed him, just like his muscle-bound flunkie.

Good riddance, Jeroan thought.

With Azure’s weird hold over him broken, Jimbo looked around the room for a second, swaying on his feet and looking like he was going to lose his lunch. At last he dropped face forward onto Archie’s messy hospital bed. He shouted so loud that Jeroan had to cover his ears. All the pent-up energy that Azure had somehow channeled into Jimbo exploded back out of him in a greenish-white rush, shredding the bed linens and the mattress underneath it.

Fire alarms began blaring again as Jimbo pushed himself away from the ruined bed, his face pale and his Harvey’s cap on crooked.

“Ugh. Did I do that?” he said, pointing at the ruined, half-melted bed. A sharp, burnt smell filled the room.

“Holy crap!” Polly yelled from where she sat crouched on the floor close to the door. “That was unbelievable!”

Kelley whirled on Polly and Jeroan. He didn’t want to, but Jeroan found himself taking a step back away from his sister, closer to Polly.

“I’ll see you later, Jeroan,” she shouted over the ringing alarms, “and your little white girlfriend, too.”

“No!” he shouted. “Don’t do it to me, too, you traitor. I helped you—”

“Go.”

Jeroan tried to shout, but he couldn’t even find time to suck in a quick breath. A rush of heat covered him from head to toe like a hot wind. Then the world spun away from him and went black.

This time, Kelley the Beast had gotten the last word.

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 today’s chapter, all sorts of crazy stuff comes down, in one small hospital room. Enjoy!

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Eight

Kelley walked inside the main entrance to the hospital, doing her best to act like she knew exactly where she was going. She knew she probably looked like trouble to the people from Dubuque, a black girl with wild hair and no coat coming in out of the cold like this, but this place was a hospital—if you looked like you had a reason to be here, nobody would bother you so long as you didn’t bother anyone else. Or so she hoped.

She followed the blue signs on the beige walls leading to the emergency department. As she walked, Kelley pulled out her slim white phone, half-expecting it to be smoking like the remains of her family’s house up on the hill. But it was just warm as usual, completely functional, with a little less than half the charge left on its battery.

She’d just remembered the name that the two cops had mentioned outside of Harvey’s—it was one of those silly nicknames that stuck in your head about a person. Especially if the person didn’t fit the nickname.

Jimbo. And a simple, short last name. What was it?

Kelley snapped her fingers. Wu. That was it.

Kelley tapped in his name, added Harvey’s and pressed the Search button. A few more buttons pressed and a few seconds later, she had his phone number. Love the eGadget, she thought for the umpteenth time that day as she punched in Jimbo’s phone number.

I have no idea what I’m going to say to him, she realized. Maybe I should’ve just used a magic word—or a magic Word—and zapped myself to that old guy’s room, or Jimbo’s room. Then we could talk.

“Too late,” Kelley whispered as she heard the beeping ringtone of a cell phone coming from somewhere ahead of her. She passed one more sign for the ER and hurried down a bright white hallway, listening as the ringtone grew louder. The tune was some old-school song—”Walk on the Wild Side.”

The beeping and tweeting phone was accompanied by the sound of sneezing. And not just any sneezing, but explosive, wet, snot-projecting sneezing.

“Hello?” a tentative voice said in Kelley’s phone. She also heard the voice in the room coming up on her left, along with one more sneeze that Kelley heard both in the room and on her phone. She ended the call and crept up to the room’s entrance.

“Huh,” the kid nicknamed Jimbo muttered from inside. “They just hung up.”

Kelley heard a set of bedsprings squeak, accompanied by some fumbling sounds. She peeked inside and saw the old man from the alley sitting on the floor next to a small bed, trying to pull his coat on over his hospital gown. He’d already managed to get his patched-up pants back on, fortunately. The skinny kid from Harvey’s was in the other bed, putting away his cell phone.

Kelley pulled back so neither of them could see her. The hospital must’ve been really slow today, she thought, to give these two their own room like this. Either that, or they didn’t want the old guy out in the ER area where anyone else could see him. She had a good hunch that the people of Dubuque didn’t like to be reminded that any homeless folks lived around here.

“Hey,” Jimbo called out from inside the room.

Kelley flinched, and then she realized he was talking to the old guy, not her. Maybe they knew each other, Kelley thought.

The kid in the room cleared his throat and asked in a louder voice, “You okay, mister?”

The old man answered with a long sigh and more rustling of his coat.

“Here, buddy,” Jimbo said. Kelley heard the sound of a wrapper and soft footsteps. She imagined Jimbo walking over to where the old guy was sitting on the floor next to his bed. “Gran—my grandmother—gave this to me before I left for work this morning. But I’m a chips man. Salty, not sweet. I hate candy bars. Take it. You look like you could use it. Um. No offense, that is.”

Kelley fought the urge to peek inside the room again to see what was happening. Instead, she whispered some more nonsense into her phone to make it look like she was on a call and smiled at a doctor in light blue scrubs hurrying past.

“Go on,” she heard Jimbo say. “I mean, you didn’t even get to finish your lunch at Harvey’s, before, you, um, passed out.”

A few seconds later, she heard the ripping of paper, followed by loud smacking sounds. That must’ve been some candy bar.

“So,” Jimbo said. “What’s your name?”

Now it was the old man’s turn to clear his throat. In a deep, steady voice that almost made Kelley drop her phone, he pronounced: “I am Jonathan Archibald Masterson Brightwell, Sorcerer, Clockmaker, and only son of Richard Masterson the Plowman.”

He belched, and Kelley nearly laughed out loud.

“But you can call me Archie.”

“Oh, yeah, clockmaker, I remember,” Jimbo said. “You said something about that before you knocked me out. ‘The gears never fail to turn,’ right? What did that mean, Archie?”

“Ah,” the old man said with the loud sigh. “I apologize for that little, ah, misadventure in the restaurant. I’d had an eventful morning, and sometimes I get a little bit… Erratic. Especially if I haven’t had a good meal and adequate rest. You seem to have survived the my little outburst, for which I am grateful.”

“Yeah,” Jimbo said. He didn’t sound convinced. “I thought you were dead at first, then you opened your eyes and Wham-o! But before you zapped me—or whatever that was—you said something about gears and blood.”

“Now that, my boy, is a long story.” The old man’s voice changed, growing louder and more confident. “And if I am going to tell such a story,” he continued, and a tingling sensation ran up Kelley’s spine, “I’d like our friend standing outside to come in and join us.”

Busted. He must’ve heard me suck in my breath when that Jimbo kid mention blood and gears. Maria had been talking about something just like that, not fifteen minutes ago.

Kelley straightened up outside the hospital room and thought about making a run for it. But this was where she needed to be. Magic, or luck, or whatever it was, had pulled her here. The was no more running away. Not anymore.

She was only stalling here in the hallway, anyway, she realized. She tucked her phone into her jeans pocket once more and walked into the hospital room.

The old man was still sitting on the floor, but he no longer looked so helpless. In fact, his expression was a lot like the look he’d worn earlier that morning when he’d met Kelley’s gaze—focused and slightly dangerous. She half-expected bright blue light to fill the room.

Standing over the old man with his hands on his bony knees and a shocked look on his face was Jimbo, a Chinese boy maybe a year or two older than Kelley. She thought she recognized him from school, one of those kids hunkered down in the halls between classes, never making eye contact with anyone. Someone who just wanted to get to class and not be noticed.

Kelley knew the feeling. And it was nice seeing someone else who wasn’t white, for a change.

“Nice ringtone,” she said to Jimbo, afraid to look at the old guy, much less get too close to him. “I’m Kelley Strickland, by the way.”

“Um,” the skinny kid said, “thanks, Kelley. Nice dragon.”

Kelley gave Jimbo a blank look for a moment, then she remembered Alexander perched on her shoulder. She’d been so focused on finding these two survivors of Harvey’s that she’d forgotten all about the dragon perched on her shoulder. He was still as a statue and light as a feather, but he held onto her with silent determination.

Who knows what people walking by must’ve thought, with me wandering around with a toy dragon on my shoulder. She was surprised to realize that she didn’t really care that much what the strangers thought. That was a first.

The old man named Archie watched her with the hint of a smile under his long mustache and above his furry beard. He bowed his head slightly toward her in an old-fashioned way that made Kelley think of knights or priests, even with his street-stained coat, hole-infested socks, and striped blue hospital gown. He was sitting on his red hat.

“We meet again,” he said in his surprisingly deep voice. “For the first time.”

“Sorry about those two kids this morning,” Kelley began. “I tried to stop them. But they chased me off, then they came back for you.”

“They always do,” Archie said with a shrug. “I’ve dealt with worse in my day.”

Kelley was about to ask him if he’d “dealt” with Jeroan and Polly by tossing them against the alley wall, but Jimbo had started asking questions again.

“So how long have you been a, um, Sorcerer?” He had an eager look on his face, and he inched closer to the old man as if suddenly protective of him and jealous of Kelley’s arrival.

Archie grinned and buttoned up his coat over his hospital gown. “Since I turned twelve,” he said, patting his coat pocket and taking out a beat-up gold pocket watch. “In the year 1320.”

“Uh-huh,” Jimbo said, glancing at Kelley. She could tell he was doing the math, just like she was. A sly grin crept across his face. “And that would make you about seven hundred years old. How’s that possible?”

“Magic, of course,” Archie said. He tucked his pocket watch back into his coat pocket, and then he closed his eyes and smiled. “You could say that magic is the hidden clockwork that keeps the universe running.”

Kelley inched forward and took a knee five feet from the not-so-fragrant old fellow on the floor. Surely Maria Haze had to know about this old fellow. Maybe they were working together, putting together some sort of scam. Like a fake wizard school. Hogwarts U.S.A or something. She kept her mouth shut, though. This didn’t feel like a scam.

“As a result,” Archie continued, “users of magic have learned how to bypass some of nature’s laws. We can live longer, for example. I had been able to slow my aging a great deal, until an… ah, accident over a century ago. There was this fire in Chicago, you see, a while back. Not a good day for many people, including myself. The city burned. And burned, and burned. All my fault, really. After that, my years starting catching up with me again. I am no longer a twelve-year-old boy.”

Archie sighed again, eyes still closed. His head started to nod forward, though Kelley could see a storm brewing on the man’s fuzzy face. The old guy was reliving some bad memories.

“Archie?” Jimbo asked after almost half a minute had passed. He looked at Kelley with a questioning look. She thought about calling for a nurse, but then Archie held up a knotted old hand, like a batter calling for time out so he could kick dirt out of his cleats. He continued talking with his eyes closed as if he’d never stopped.

“So, thanks to magic, the lives of Sorcerers are more like ancient trees, while the average person’s life is more like a delicate plant, lasting just a season.”

Archie opened his eyes and met first Jimbo’s gaze, then Kelley’s. The whites of his blue eyes were shot through with a road map of red lines.

“But tree or no tree,” he murmured, “magic takes a toll. It can do so much good in the world, in the right hands, but—”"

As if on cue, three loud knocks on the hospital room door interrupted the old man. And it didn’t sound like a doctor or a nurse knocking.

In the sudden silence following the knocks, the three of them looked at one another for a long moment, sharing identical expressions of surprise, and then they turned in unison toward the closed door.

The door swung open, but it wasn’t Jeroan or Polly out there. Instead, a slender, bald man dressed in a dark green suit walked through the doorway. He held a glittering badge in his left hand, while his right hand pointed directly at Archie.

“Don’t move,” he said in a calm, commanding voice. Kelley fought the urge to roll to the floor and cover her head. “By the power of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the United Nations, and Interpol, I proclaim you all enemies of the state, of the country, and of the planet. Consider yourselves under arrest.”

“Oh great,” Jimbo said next to Kelley as he raised his skinny arms in the air. “My day from hell just got worse.”

* * * * * *

Kelley thought it best to follow the orders of their unsmiling, badge-waving visitor. She didn’t move, refusing to raise her hands in the air like the goofy kid in the Harvey’s hat did. Instead, she looked over at the old man sitting half a dozen feet away from her on the cold hospital floor.

He didn’t seem surprised at all be the strange man’s entrance. In fact, he almost seemed pleased to see the bald man.

“So,” Archie said, smiling as he pushed himself up from the floor with a groan until he was standing. “You have a badge now. And a title. Does that mean you’ve become legitimate at last… Michael?”

Next to Kelley, Jimbo decided to put his arms down at last. He began creeping back toward the other hospital bed, and the bald man ignored him.

He probably doesn’t even see the two of us, Kelley figured. He was interested only in Archie, who held out his gnarled old-man’s hand, waiting for the other man to shake it.

Big mistake. Bald dude looks seriously pissed. She’d seen that look on more than one authority figure, right before she or one of her friends got hit with detention.

“Johnny?” the bald man paused a few feet from Archie, some of the steam taken out of his engines. “Little Jonathan Brightwell?”

Archie chuckled. “Imagine meeting me here, eh? You were probably expecting to find some renegade magic-dabbler that you needed to subdue in your usual way instead of an actual Sorcerer, weren’t you? Something tells me you’ve gotten rid of all your old Sorcerer enemies and friends by this point in time. Is that right, Michael?”

“I can’t believe it,” the bald man said, ignoring Archie’s jabs. “I gave up looking for you over a century ago.” The silver badge in his hand wobbled for a moment, and then he tucked it away inside his suit jacket. “You’ve… you’ve gotten old, Johnny.”

“Ah, I was only resting the past few decades,” Archie said with a laugh, his right arm still raised to shake hands. “The years caught up to me, I guess.”

Kelley glanced at Azure’s eyes and shuddered—they looked too wild, too desperate, somehow. They grew wider when Archie stepped closer to him.

“Stay back!” Azure said in a sharp voice. “Don’t turn this into a situation.”

Archie took one more step, just a little one, and Azure’s eyes narrowed and somehow—Kelley wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t been looking right at him—turned green. She couldn’t dive next to the other hospital bed fast enough, just as a sudden flash of searing heat filled the room, like the heat kicking on, full force. Jimbo joined her in the meager shelter on the far side of the hospital bed.

The bald man then barked out a bizarre that sounded something like “Alionzquo!”

Green flames burst from his hands and struck Archie in the chest, knocking the old guy right out of his boots. Kelley tried to cry out as Archie went flying over his own hospital bed, but there wasn’t enough air in the super-heated room anymore.

While he was in mid-air, though, Archie muttered something short and quick. A blue bubble formed in the air behind him, just in time to cushion his body before he slammed into the eight-foot-high windows.

“Holy crap,” Kelley whispered from the floor next to the bed.

Now three feet underneath the bed, Jimbo responded by grabbing an empty bedpan and holding it like a shield between him and the two men above them. Alexander the dragon dropped off Kelley’s shoulder and skittered under the bed to join him.

Kelley stayed off to the side of the bed and watched Archie push away from the windows, his beard still flickering with dying bits of green-tinted flames. He didn’t seem to be hurt. He smiled and shook his furry head as if disappointed, though he was also wearing a strange half-smile. Kelley had a strong hunch that Jeroan had seen that same, slightly deranged look on Archie’s face earlier today in the alleyway.

“You always did go for the easy way out, Michael,” Archie said, waving away the smoke rising off his beard and tattered clothes. “Now. Let’s sit down and talk about this.”

Instead of chatting, though, Azure made a fist and shouted out more of his strange Words.

Words of Magic, Kelley realized, thinking of the little white book in her pocket.

This time, Archie simply held up a hand and answered Azure with a Word of his own:

“Haqtinz.”

A radiant blue shield formed in front of Archie’s face just in time to block the onrushing burst of green flames. Spitting out more weird Words like a machine gun, Azure kept the flames pouring out of his hands and onto Archie.

What a waste of magic, Kelley thought with a sickening lurch in her belly.

Her disappointment wasn’t strong enough, however, to force her to stand up and try to stop the two men—who apparently had once been friends—from trying to blow each other up.

The room grew blazing hot again as the air sizzled and popped, and the two opposing forces of magic were held at a temporary stalemate. Kelley looked at Jimbo and the dragon quivering under the bed and got matching looks of open-mouth fear in return.

She just hoped Archie could stay focused. He was so old and tired.

At that moment, Archie sneezed. Azure’s green flames broke through his blue shielding and slammed the old man into the wall above his bed. This time his body left a deep imprint in the plaster of the wall. Kelley winced at the loud, sickening sound that made.

Somehow Archie was able to pull himself free and stand without falling over. As the green glow of Azure’s magical flames faded away, Archie wiped his nose, dusted off his coat, and tottered toward the bald man again. Azure stood with his hands on his knees, out of breath from his magical exertions.

“You’ve gotten… rusty,” Archie said, gasping for breath himself. “You took your job too… seriously, old friend. Got rid of all your… competition. You didn’t even bring in any… minions in as backup today, did you?”

Kelley realized that Archie was really hurting. The old guy was moving slowly, like he was swimming underwater in heavy clothes. But he wouldn’t stop.

I’ve got to do something, she thought. I need to get up and help. But these guys were Sorcerers. What can I do against guys like that?

“Michael,” Archie said. “Two centuries ago I would have expected this of you, definitely a century ago, but not now, not after all this time. You’ve got to stop attacking first and asking questions later, old friend. Let’s find somewhere to sit and talk and share a bottle of wine. I know of a good year and vintage.”

Azure’s stood up straight again, but his shoulders remained slumped in his expensive suit. He nodded wearily at Archie. A smile that didn’t quite touch his weirdly glowing green eyes crawled onto his lips when he held out his hand to the old man, offering to shake, at last.

“Don’t do it, Archie!” Jimbo yelled from behind his bedpan under the bed, making Kelley flinch. But Jimbo’s warning was too late.

When Archie grasped Azure’s trembling hand, the bald man muttered something low and guttural:

“Alionzquo.”

Tiny green bullets of flame shot from Azure’s curled left hand into Archie’s chest. Even as Archie lost his footing and fell to the floor between the two beds, The old man hit the floor, hard, face-first, less than three feet from where Kelley and Jimbo were hiding.

“Old friend,” Azure growled.

The bald man staggered backward himself, panting hoarsely. He looked ready to keel over as well, but instead he began muttering more Words of magic. Like storm clouds forming, licks of green fire built in the air over Azure’s head. The energy swirled in and out of his eyes as he spoke more of his Words. Still he paid no attention to Kelley or Jimbo.

Sweat dripped into Kelley’s eyes from the magical heat all around her. She reached down and touched the book in her back pocket, which had grown hot, just like her eGadget had done earlier today.

The old man was crumpled on his belly near the foot of the bed, his wild gray-white hair close enough for Kelley to touch.

Gotta do something, she thought again. She tried to relax and trust her thoughts, but this hot little hospital room wasn’t near as calming as Maria’s place.

The kid from Harvey’s beat her to it, though.

“Archie!” Jimbo shouted from under the bed. “Jonathan. Whatever your name is. Can you get up?”

The tired old man turned his head a fraction of an inch, then he whispered, “No. Not yet. But in my satchel. A watch. Take it. Wind it.”

Jimbo reached forward and dug his hands into the bag that had been almost hidden under Archie’s coat He pulled out a battered, gold pocket watch. He turned the winding mechanism at the top of the watch, but the clock made no sound.

“Hand it over!” Kelley shouted, furious at herself for taking so long to act. Jimbo jumped at the sound of her voice and cracked his head on a metal bar on the bed’s underside. Kelley took the opening to snatch the watch.

It wasn’t ticking. The gold-plated hands looked like they were permanently stuck at nine minutes to nine.

Here goes nothing, Kelley thought. She felt another wave of warmth wash over her, but this time it wasn’t Azure’s green fire causing the heat.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Start up!”

Something pinched in her right thigh once again as she twisted the winding mechanism at the top of the clock. The room went blurry all around her for a moment as she held the watch next to her ear. She couldn’t hear anything over the growing roar of Azure’s green energy high above them, but she could now feel the tiny thuds of gears clicking. Success!

Kelley slid forward and pressed the watch into Archie’s cold, trembling hand.

Its touch seemed to energize the old man somehow. Still lying on his back, Archie lifted up the watch and then dipped the hand holding it, as if beckoning to someone with it. Someone, or some things.

Like tiny needles, brilliant blue light rushed from a million points in the room into the watch’s face. In an instant, the watch was lighting up Archie’s hand with its warm blue glow, and its clockwork gears were ratcheting loud as a jackhammer.

Archie murmured a pair of guttural words as he sat up. The gathered blue light flooded the little room in a surreal color.

A heartbeat later, twin blasts of angry green fire shot out of Azure’s hands, aimed at Archie. But a sturdy wall of blue energy now stood between the two men.

Kelley cupped a hand over her mouth and waited for the explosion as the two opposing magical forces collided.

One standing and one sitting, both men continued speaking their magical Words, until the Words were gone and all that was left was sheer force of will as they pushed their energy against each other.

It was like a magic version of arm-wrestling, Kelley thought, gasping for air in the overheated little room. Typical guys.

The air filled with a growing roar that rattled, then disintegrated the room’s windows. Cold air tried to rush into the room, but the magical heat pushed it back. An alarm started blaring in the hallway.

On the other side of the rippling wall of energy, Azure stared down at Archie with eyes wide with disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe the old man still had it in him.

Stalemate, Kelley thought. At least for now. And what happens to everyone in this room when this draw ends? She looked down at Jimbo cringing underneath the bed. She swallowed and felt her ears pop. And all the people in this hospital?

I’ve waited long enough, she realized. She felt a fresh rush of heat cover her.

“I think it’s time,” she said, knowing full well nobody would hear her over the explosion of sounds filling the room, “to stop this nonsense and, just for a moment, be quiet.”

A blinding white light filled her vision. Kelley blinked as the white light seemed to absorb the battling green and blue energy, canceling them out. The white light winked out just as fast as it had appeared, leaving her and everyone else in the room in a sudden, unnatural silence. Even the hospital alarm had stopped.

For long seconds, the only movement was a cold breeze that slipped in through the empty window frames and ruffled the shredded white curtains. Then a small blue and green dragon flew up from under the bed and landed on her shoulder.

Kelley stood with one hand on her right thigh and the other reaching out to both Archie and Azure. Neither man was able to speak. All they could do was stare at her and struggle to get their breath back.

“Whoa,” a voice said from the vicinity of the floor below her.

Kelley looked down saw Jimbo’s face peering up at her. Kelley took Alexander from her shoulder, and in her hand, the dragon slowly changed from blue and green to a glowing white, the colors draining away like watery paint. The wings of the windup dragon opened and closed once, twice, three times.

Kelley winked at Jimbo, and then she turned back to the two gasping and bedraggled men.

“Sorcerers,” she said to the dragon. She felt a sudden stab of fatigue poking her in the eyes. The dragon in her hand seemed heavier now. “You two are both Sorcerers, aren’t you? So why are you at each other’s throats?” She gave a long, tired sigh. “Shouldn’t you know better?”

Somewhere in the back of her worn-out mind, as she waited for either man to answer her questions. Kelley heard footsteps running closer in the hospital hallway.

And then the steps suddenly stopped.

She tore her gaze away from the two Sorcerers. In the doorway stood a thin white boy wearing a filthy red Chicago Bulls windbreaker. It took Kelley a few seconds to figure out that this wasn’t a boy but a girl. And the girl was holding a gun.

“I told you,” Polly whispered in a thick voice. She pointed the gun right at Archie. “You can’t rob us, man.”

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In this chapter, an ancient Ford Escort enters the story, many things get explained (while others do not), and a dragon struts his stuff…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Seven

Kelley opened her eyes and found herself sitting behind the wheel of an ’84 Escort, smoking.

Not a cigarette, though—she’d tried that once with Halisa and the girls. Smoking their nasty Winstons had been like inhaling an ashtray. But now, her shirt and jeans actually gave off smoke, little wisps of it rising up like mini ghosts all around her in the cold. She smelled burnt hair.

She reached up, panicky. Her hair was there, most of it. But she must have lost an inch or two of length in spots, where her fingers hit crunchy, burnt ends. And she’d lost her lucky black cap somewhere along the way.

On her jeans, a brown burn mark covered the place in her pocket where her beloved eGadget was. She could see its rectangular shape outlined clearly, though she was afraid to pull it out and try to power it on.

So she sat staring at the bumper of the rusty white pickup in front of her, no clue as to how she’d ended up here. As she caught her breath and started to shiver from the cold, it all began to come back to her.

After the living room exploded, she went flying over the street and half a dozen neighbors’ yards, the ground below her just a brown and green blur. Then she’d landed inside this car—Dad’s backup transport, as he called it.

She had no idea how she’d ended up inside it. The door was closed, and she saw no broken windows.

No, she corrected herself, I know how I ended up here. It was that book.

And magic.

Kelley grabbed for the door handle, almost hyperventilating when it wouldn’t open, until she realized the door was still locked. She pulled up the button and scrambled out of the driver’s seat.

Outside in the cold, Kelley stood up—and then nearly threw up—at what she saw.

A block away, two fire engines blasted water on what used to be her family’s three-story house. Black smoke and charred papers filled the air, along with the stink of burning plastic. Only the concrete foundation has survived the explosion she’d caused, and there were big, jagged cracks in that.

Our house. Gone. My fault.

Kelley dropped down onto the curb next to the car. Her hands were shaking so badly it took her three times to look at her watch and read it properly. Twelve forty-five. She’d lost an hour between the explosion and landing inside Dad’s Escort.

“What’d I do?” she whispered, rubbing her bare arms. Her coat was back in the house, burnt to a crisp, no doubt. She craned her neck into the car and peeked inside at the small white book, sitting so innocently on the passenger seat.

As if in answer to her questions, a clicking and whirring sound tickled her ears, and Kelley ducked. When she looked up to see what was making the sound, tears filled her eyes.

Somehow, the blue and green windup dragon had survived the explosion as well, and he was now flying toward her. Without getting up from the curb, she caught the critter just as he ran out of energy and began to fall. She held him to her chest like a tiny metal life preserver.

“You made it out, little guy.” She blinked away her years and ran a shaking hand down the dragon’s scales. “So, Alexander. You coming with me?”

Standing again on shaky legs, she opened the car door and set the dragon on the passenger seat next to the white book. She couldn’t just sit there, doing nothing, being all weepy.

If she waited there too long, Mom and Dad would show up. That was something she definitely did not want to be around for. She wondered if she should text Jeroan or even Mom, but then thought better of it.

And what would I tell either of them? “The house is gone. See u at the shelter.” I don’t think so.

Back in the car, Kelley accidentally brushed her hand against the book and nearly shouted out loud. She really didn’t want to touch it, much less read any more of it. The book was surprisingly cool now, almost cold.

“The parentals are gonna kill me anyway,” she told Alexander as she pulled out the spare key Dad always kept hidden under the driver’s seat. “Might as well take a little drive first, huh?”

After cranking the car’s engine and punching its heater to high, Kelley eased off the clutch and inched away from the sidewalk. She hoped nobody noticed her behind the wheel. With that thought, she promptly stalled the car as she started down the steep streets leading to downtown. She kept the clutch in and let the car roll, riding the brake.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured the dragon riding shotgun. “I just got my learner’s permit.”

At a stoplight, she got the engine going again. Then, while she was waiting for the red light to change, she pulled out the flat little phone from her jeans pocket, afraid of what she’d see. She was convinced it would be just a wedge of melted metal and plastic now. For some reason, she could’ve sworn the explosion had started there, in her eGadget, somehow.

But the sleek little device was intact and glowing with a healthy blue-white light. She hadn’t torched it after all. Not a scratch. She flicked on the phone’s GPS tool. The place she was looking for might not show up in a search, but at least she could figure out where she was.

A car honk from behind her made Kelley stall Dad’s car again. She checked her mirrors and saw a big black SUV filling her rearview. The driver waved at her, like he was apologizing for the honk, then he pointed at the green light above them. He kept a smile on his white face the whole time, so Kelley knew he was from Dubuque.

She fumbled to get the engine going again and jetted through the intersection. Keeping the car in second gear—she didn’t want to have to use the clutch again unless she absolutely had to—she cruised down a few more blocks.

She passed a beat-up brown van with dark windows coming toward her and puttered by a Harvey’s restaurant that looked otherwise deserted. Then she drove around the traffic circle surrounding the clock tower and headed for the gold dome of the big brick Court House.

“Here we go,” she muttered as she recognized some of the sidewalks and buildings from her mad dash away from Jeroan and his buddy this morning.

And then, just like earlier, Kelley turned a corner, and she was there.

Haze Books and Gifts. The sign above the door contained the same dragon and unicorn, but the place seemed different, as if it had shrunk, or moved fifty or sixty feet further down the block than where Kelley remembered it. Like it didn’t want to be noticed.

She stalled the Escort again in front of the black awning of the darkened store. She didn’t even bother trying to restart it, but just pulled the key out.

“This is your old home,” she said to the dragon in the passenger seat, “isn’t it?”

Alexander, staring straight ahead through the windshield, had no response.

Kelley double-checked the emergency brake before gathering up book and dragon and locking the car. Her legs weren’t quite as rubbery as before, but her stomach was now growling with hunger.

Freezing from the cold cutting right through her T-shirt and jeans, she nearly ran to the shop entrance. She tugged on the big wooden door, but it wouldn’t open. She leaned on the brick wall next to her for support as she made a fist and knocked on the door. After half a minute of knocking, nothing happened.

“Where is she, Alexander?” she whispered.

The windup dragon stared back at her blankly. The little smart aleck looked like he was smiling with all those sharp white teeth. In frustration, Kelley hit the door with her open hand, as hard as she could. Pain shot up her arm, and the door didn’t budge.

Finally, she just glared at the door, feeling a sudden wave of heat fill her.

She thought about the explosion at her house, caused by just one single word.

A keyword.

“Lemme in!” she shouted. Not the greatest “keywords” in the world, but they were the best she could come up with on short notice.

She jumped as something pinched her inside her pants pocket. An instant later, the door unlocked itself with a click and swung open.

“Holy cow,” she gasped, out of breath and slightly light-headed. Her stomach grumbled, almost loud enough to hear. “It worked.”

For the second time that day, Kelley tiptoed into the shop, but this time she had Alexander in one hand and the white book in the other. The bell above her tinkled as the heavy wooden door closed with a loud click. The overhead lights were all off, but a soft blue glow filled the entire store, like the light of a cell phone.

When she took a step toward the counter with the big old metal cash register, the air filled with a buzzing that doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in volume. Kelley knew without looking what the source of that noise was—the table of windup toys. She’d set them off again.

She gave the dancing, marching, and flying toys a long look. For a split-second they blurred as her eyes lost focus and another shudder of heat ran through her. Kelley sucked in a sudden breath.

“Enough,” she said.

Immediately, each toy froze in mid-motion, and the winged creatures dropped back to the table with a clatter. Silence returned to the shop in a rush. Kelley touched her cell phone—it was luke-warm now. But it had been white-hot, just for an instant, against her leg. Hadn’t it?

She exhaled shakily and felt the world try to spin away from her.

See what happens when you skip breakfast? And lunch?

“I have been expecting the two of you, Kelley,” a soft voice said from behind the curtain, and then a small figure stepped out into the store, wearing a purple robe and hood. “I had a feeling you would find your own way in.”

Before Kelley could take another step, a wave of fatigue hit her harder than anything she’d ever felt before, and she would’ve fallen to the floor—and hit it hard—if Ms. Haze hadn’t been there to catch her.

* * * * * *

Ten minutes later, Kelley sat shivering on an old couch in the little room behind the store, wrapped in a thick blanket, with Alexander the dragon on her lap. Intricate but dusty rugs hung on the walls around her like tapestries, making the room seem even smaller than it was. A small kitchen table sat next to a stove a few feet away, and beyond that stood a black metal door that must have led to the alley.

Ms. Haze handed Kelley another biscuit to go with her cup of tea, and then sat down in an old wooden rocker. Kelley was almost too tired to worry whether the older woman was out to get her somehow, but a tiny part of her brain refused to relax, even if she felt like all the energy had drained out of her after her crazy morning.

She nibbled her sweet biscuit (her third), and wondered where she’d left the little white book. Did I leave it in Dad’s backup car? Or drop it outside the door to the shop? She was too tired to remember.

“So,” Ms. Haze began, as if reading her mind. “Read any good books lately, Kelley?”

“Ha.” Kelley said, sipping her hot, spicy tea. “You could say that.”

“Tell me,” Ms. Haze said. “What do you think caused your parents’ house to blow up? Was your first thought that it must have been a gas leak? Or did you think immediately that it was because of the book you had been reading?”

“The book,” Kelley said without hesitating, and then clamped her mouth shut. The cautious, un-tired part of Kelley’s brain was now sending out worried little flares.

Somehow Ms. Haze knew about the book. And my house exploding.

“When you woke up in your father’s car, did you think you had just experienced a sudden bout of amnesia, or did you think it was because of the book you had been reading?”

I am so busted, Kelley thought.

“The book,” she said again, after a long pause. “How’d you know—”

Ms. Haze smiled at Alexander perched comfortably on Kelley’s knee, as if he’d known Kelley forever. Then Ms. Haze stopped rocking in her chair and looked directly at Kelley.

“Now, Kelley, this is where you may tell me to stop, before I say any more.”

Oh man, Kelley thought. Can I just tell her to stop, to not say anything else? I could leave here and never deal with such crazy things again. I wouldn’t blow anything else up ever again.

Kelley touched Alexander’s scaly head and ran her finger down his ridged back. His weight was comforting on her knee, though she half-expected him to twist his triangular head back at her and give her a toothy grin.

But what kind of life would that be if I told her to stop? Would I be content walking away from here and not asking to hear more? Would I always wonder about this moment, about what could’ve been? Years from now, would I regret it?

“Keep going,” Kelley whispered at last. “Please.”

Ms. Haze smiled and gently took the dragon from Kelley’s lap. She began to turn his winding key, which seemed to have shrunk, somehow. Kelley could barely see it.

“Though it may be hard to believe in this day and age, Kelley. Magic is everywhere. You just have to know where to find it, or be open to it when it finds you.”

With a flick of her delicate wrist, Ms. Haze launched Alexander into the air. He flew silently around the small room as she spoke, circling with a quiet grace, no longer clicking and clacking with the movement of his gears.

“Magic,” she continued, “accounts for all the beautiful surprises life brings us. The unique shape of snowflakes, the seemingly random waves of the tide, the specialized whirls in your fingerprints. It’s been with us since the beginning of time, working in conjunction with the forces of nature. Men and women from all around the world have attempted to harness it, but it was only when one man and his followers began practicing their art, ten centuries ago, that there was an organized attempt to control magic.”

Kelley hugged herself under the blanket, shivering. She watched Alexander’s wings cut through the line of smoke from Ms. Haze’s stick of incense on the end table next to her. At some point he’d wind down, but right now he showed no signs of slowing.

“That man was called the Druid. He was the first, and he was a genius, in his own mad and determined way. He fused the magic, the stories, and the languages from various cultures around the globe to create his Words of Power.”

The way that Ms. Haze spoke them, Kelley could tell that the older woman intended the words to be capitalized, like proper nouns. Just like this magic guy was the Druid, not just a druid.

“With the advent of the Words, he was able to at last channel the magic that was simply lying dormant around us, unused for so many years.”

Kelley nodded along, scarcely daring to breathe as she waited for the woman rocking in her chair next to her to break into a big smile and tell her she was just kidding, that it was just a story she’d made up to trick naïve kids like her. Then she remembered the smoking shell of her family’s house, the stink of her burnt hair, and the wild rush of air in her face as she flew through the air away from the explosion.

I felt something, she realized, right before the fire shot out of me. Incredible power, yeah, no doubt, but something else, too. A kind of rightness. As if I’d known about this all along, but I’d turned my back on it. I’d ignored the fact that, just like the little white book had said, magic was in me.

“The Druid’s magic relied on blood,” Ms. Haze was saying, her soft, calm voice making Kelley feel drowsy. “It had immediate results, for all you had to do was channel magic through your own blood, and then release it with a Word. Nothing else was needed. However,” she added, her voice dropping, “the person using blood magic paid a heavy price. Since the rise and fall of the Druid, some other methods of channeling magic have been created, methods I have only heard or read about. Magic that used intricate clockwork mechanisms or even other living creatures to channel and increase the flow of magic, instead of passing it through your body. All types, however, rely on Words. You have already learned this, have you not?”

Kelley sat up straighter and gave a quick nod, thinking of the word she’d said that morning, right before the explosion. A “keyword,” the book had called it. Fire.

“Blood magic and clockwork magic and magic Words,” Kelley said, watching Alexander circle above them. “All of these rules… It sounds like a kind of game.”

“Yes. It is like a game to many of the users of magic, Kelley.” Ms. Haze paused. “Or, rather, it was like a game, until we ran out of players. Now, only a handful of us remain that I am aware of.”

“‘Us?’” Kelley asked, looking closer at the petite white woman across from her.

“I used to be one of them. A Sorcerer.” Ms. Haze bowed her head. “But I am no longer sure any of my old friends are still alive, and I do not want to risk attracting any undue attention trying to find them. Not anymore.”

“So you don’t, um, do magic anymore, then?”

Ms. Haze shook her head sadly. “After losing so many friends, and suffering capture and bad treatment myself, I found I no longer had the energy nor the desire to practice. All I do now is live my life and perform a few very minor charms now and then. Though I do keep a lookout for lost souls, like you, Kelley.”

Kelley sat back and sipped her tea, which had turned cold. She wanted to ask Ms. Haze more about that “undue attention” she’d mentioned. That didn’t sound so great. And today’s little explosion was surely attracting a good bit of well-deserved attention right now.

But before she could ask, Alexander flew closer, and after a final circle, he spread his wings wide and came to a rest again on Kelley’s knee. He felt lighter, somehow. And warmer.

Ms. Haze looked from the dragon to Kelley.

“Perhaps ‘lost soul’ isn’t the proper term,” she said, pointing at Kelley’s empty tea cup. “You are more like a vessel waiting to be filled. You see, Kelley, magic wants to be used by people, to be put in motion, instead of lying dormant. Usually a person requires a kind of trigger to—as you might say—’jump-start’ the magic within that person.”

Ms. Haze paused to sip her own tea, a spark of mischief in her blue eyes.

“And once magic is awakened, it can be quite, ah… contagious.”

“Contagious?” Kelley tried to say, but her mouth felt stuffed full of cotton. Ms. Haze didn’t hear her. It was almost as if Kelley wasn’t even sitting there any longer, or her voice wasn’t working. Kelley felt a wave of panic rise up in her.

“You have awoken the magic inside of you, Kelley.” Ms. Haze patted her hand. Kelley flinched away without meaning to and felt the book resting spine-out next to her left leg. She saw the weird planet-shaped symbol etched in blue and shuddered. “For you, that book was your trigger. There is a reason you found my store, and this book, today, I believe.”

As she felt herself drifting away, Kelley focused on Alexander. When she touched him, his metal wings now felt leathery and smooth instead of cold metal. She reached for his tiny winding key, and it fell off in her hands. The key dropped to the hardwood floor with a clatter that made Kelley grit her teeth.

“And, if I may extend and mix my metaphors, Kelley, now that you have been triggered, your cup is getting more and more full every second. The book made your dormant magic active. You can do amazing things, if you choose to do so.”

But, Kelley wanted to say. I just… I’m not…

Instead, she let her eyes close. Ms. Haze and the shop and the rest of the world fell away—all but the incredibly realistic windup dragon on her lap and the white book she now held once again in her hand.

“Go, Kelley,” Ms. Haze’s voice said inside Kelley’s head. “Follow your instincts as well as your magic. I will be watching as best as I can.”

In spite of all she’d been through that day, Kelley allowed herself to relax and let her thoughts run free. She grew warm as she thought of Jeroan, the streets of Dubuque, and the old man they’d found in the alley. At the same time, a rushing sound filled her head, accompanied by a white, cleansing light and another wave of warmth. Kelley looked down and saw that the light was pouring out of her burnt jeans pocket, right where her eGadget rested.

I’m doing it again, she realized. Whether I want to do it or not. I’m doing magic.

A place popped into her head, a tall building made of red brick, connected to a newer, beige-colored tower. A word was written on the side of the tower in big white letters.

“Mercy,” Kelley whispered.

The world shifted under her feet, and the warmth of Maria Haze’s back room was replaced by the chilly winter wind. Rubbing her bare arms in the sudden cold, Kelley opened her eyes and found herself standing under a concrete awning attached to a six-story building made of red bricks. Somewhere behind her a siren wailed, growing louder with each breath she took.

She turned and saw a tall, beige building right next door. A weird metallic taste filled her mouth, like the time she’d touched her tongue to a nine-volt battery.

“Mercy,” Kelley whispered again, reading the letters at the top of the tan tower next to her. “Mercy Hospital.”

She tucked the white book into her back pocket, and then looked up at the dragon pumping his wings in silence just over her head. Kelley let out a loud laugh. “I did this. I made this happen. And this time I was in control.”

Alexander the windup dragon glided down toward her and seemed to give her a toothy grin, as if to say, “It’s about time, missy.”

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, Jeroan and Polly hatch a plan as they take a long walk in the cold…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Six

“I didn’t know your dad lived downtown,” Jeroan called out through the closed apartment door.

“Yeah,” Polly said, her voice so muffled by the door that Jeroan had to lean close to hear her. “Ever since Dad left and got this place of his own, I’ve been coming here when I need to get away from Mom and my sisters. You should hear the arguments that go on at our house. This place is nice and quiet, and Dad gave me my own key.”

Jeroan had really wanted to go inside and get cleaned up after their dumpster dive this morning, but Polly had left him in the hallway while she went inside. The place was a pigsty, she’d told him, so she’d made him wait.

Jeroan wiped his hands on his jeans for the hundredth time and wondered about this Polly girl. She was in one of his two study halls (he’d dropped his creative writing elective the first week of school), and she kept passing him notes and cracking jokes to try to get his attention. The study hall monitor had split them up last week, forbidding them to sit closer than two rows to each other.

That was Polly for you, always into something. She was kind of cute, Jeroan thought, but he wasn’t really interested in dating anyone right now. He had bigger plans than that, and he didn’t need any messy relationships slowing him down.

He realized now that he barely knew this girl. He’d never asked her about her parents, so it was a surprise to hear that her parents had been split up. He felt a grudging respect for her, along with a growing sense of impatience for being left outside to stink up the narrow hallway of the apartment complex.

“Hurry up, Polly. You sure you can’t let me in, just for a minute? I won’t judge, I promise. My room’s messy too, y’know?”

“Just one more second,” Polly called, her voice even fainter now. Jeroan could hear shuffling and bumping sounds, like she was going through boxes, dumping them on the floor.

“Right,” Jeroan said. He leaned against the wall and did his best to breathe through his mouth.

Standing out there, giving off a nasty smell of garbage as he slowly shook off the chill from being outside all morning, Jeroan felt lost without his phone and his wallet. And Mom had just given him two twenties yesterday to get through the next week. He hoped the old guy was enjoying all his cash.

But worse than the feeling of loss after being robbed, Jeroan hated the feeling of tiredness that was now filling him. His arms and legs seemed to have twenty-pound weights attached to them, and his head felt full of static. And his stomach kept rumbling like an idling truck.

Finally, the scratched and dented apartment door cracked open, and Polly slid out quickly, before Jeroan could see inside.

“You do not wanna go in there,” she said once she was done locking the door. Her face red from scrubbing, she passed Jeroan a box of Twinkies, and he forgave her a little bit for not letting him go inside to clean up as well. She had a handful of Slim Jims as well.

“Daddy doesn’t eat the healthiest foods,” she laughed. “Guess that’s what it’s like, being a bachelor and all.”

Chomping on the first of what looked to be many Twinkies on their walk, Jeroan and Polly went from the relative warmth of the two-story apartment building two blocks from Highway 20 to the frigid and relentless wind outside.

After catching his breath, Jeroan took a quick peek at Polly. She seemed to be in a better mood now, and that bothered him. Because he could tell she was acting. As a fairly experienced faker himself, he could spot a kindred spirit pretty much a mile away.

The wind blasted them with tiny pellets of snow as they headed uphill toward the hospital. Jeroan had been completely determined to find the old guy from the alley earlier, right after they’d gotten thrown around by him, but now in the cold and wind, with his lungs aching already, he was having second thoughts. If they had a car, this would all be so much easier.

He was about to ask Polly if she knew anyone with wheels they could borrow when she grabbed his hand and pulled him into yet another alley.

“What’re you doing?” Jeroan said. His ears were still ringing from the wind that had been blasting him outside the quiet alleyway.

“I can’t wait ’til we get there,” Polly said, hunkering down against the alley wall with a wild gleam in her eyes. “Let me show you what I got from Dad’s place. Come here.”

Jeroan sighed loudly, but still went down on one knee next to Polly. He swallowed the last bit of his third Twinkie and made a face at the nasty film it left on his tongue.

“Ready?” Polly put a hand on his shoulder, as if trying to keep him from falling over.

“Yes,” Jeroan said, annoyed now. “Look, Polly, maybe we should just forget all this and—holy crap. Why do you have that?”

Jeroan was so caught up with the shiny black object in Polly’s hand that he almost missed the disappointment in his new friend’s voice.

“What?” Polly said. “You never saw a gun before? Not even on the tough streets of Chicago?”

Jeroan couldn’t stop staring at the gun in Polly’s tiny hand. It looked huge, resting on her palm. Her breath steamed all around it, making it look like she’d just fired it at someone.

“My dad says he needs it for protection. Here, in Dubuque, Iowa.” Polly gave a short, sharp laugh. “But I think it’ll work just fine for revenge, don’t you?”

Jeroan checked the entrance to the alley and tried to put a hand over Polly’s gun.

“You need to put that thing away,” he said, just as she pulled the gun out of his reach. “Do you know how much trouble you could get us into, just having that?”

Polly gave him a long look, as if trying to figure that out.

“No-ooo,” she said at last. She slid the gun back into her coat pocket and added, “Not really.”

“I have friends who got sent off to juvenile detention for doing less than that,” Jeroan said. He didn’t like the way Polly’s eyes lit up when he told her that.

“Really? Tell me more! This is so awesome. I never knew anyone who got send off to juvie like that.”

This was going nowhere fast, Jeroan decided. He put his hands on Polly’s upper arms, surprised at how thin she felt even through her coat. Polly looked up at him with a slightly dazed look on her blushing face.

Oh jeez, Jeroan thought.

“You need to tell me right now that you’re not going to shoot anyone with that,” he said, looking her in the eye and trying to use the full force of his charm and willpower on her.

“Nah,” Polly said after a short pause, as if she had to really, truly think about it. “I don’t even think it’s loaded.”

“Better not be,” Jeroan said as he let go of her. He took the last Twinkie out of the box and started unwrapping it, making sure he didn’t touch the food with his dirty fingers.

“Fine,” Polly said. “I won’t even take it out of my coat, okay?”

“Good,” Jeroan said.

Jeroan led her out of the alley, and then followed her out into the cold wind once more. They walked in silence for while, turning a corner here, passing a dozen stores there. Yet another uphill road stretched out ahead of them. Jeroan could barely feel his fingertips anymore.

I don’t want this day going even worse than it already has, he thought. I’m really going to have to find a better quality of friend here if I’m going to keep my nose clean.

As they walked, Jeroan glanced up at the nearby bluffs overlooking the city. Houses perched on them like nervous birds. And a line of black smoke trailed up from a neighborhood a quarter mile away.

“That’s weird,” he muttered.

“What’s weird? Walking to the hospital to go scare the crap out of some possessed homeless guy?”

“Never mind,” Jeroan said, walking backwards so he could look at the black smoke, which was now billowing up into the sky. He found himself thinking, for some reason, about Kelley the Beast.

Where had she gone this morning, he wondered, after she’d lost us? Had she talked to anyone else today about what she’d seen?

Knowing the Beast, she was probably back at school, sitting nice and straight in her desk, smiling at the teacher’s lame jokes. The girl was bad at thinking asymmetrically. And she never did anything interesting.

Kelley had better keep it that way, he figured, throwing another glance at Polly next to him. For her own good.

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 does some serious reading, with quite explosive results…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Five

Kelley kind of liked the sarcastic approach: “Good luck fighting the Dubuque homeless brigade, one old guy at a time.”

Or the one full of ‘tude: “Your taste in friends really hasn’t improved much in the past few months, bro.”

And then there was always the direct route: “Don’t expect me to come save your butt next time someone zaps you up against a wall.”

Kelley had been so busy thinking up the best thing she could’ve said to Jeroan’s parting remarks on her walk home that she’d gotten completely turned around. And now, though she hated to admit it, she was going to have to use her eGadget’s GPS tool to figure out how to get home. She was lost in Dubuque, Iowa.

This place was bigger than she’d given it credit for. She knew that two pretty good-sized highways cut through two sides of the downtown area, and she could just make out the high arch of the metal bridge where Highway 20 crossed the Mississippi River off in the distance. Somehow she’d ended up in the warehouse district, close to the railroad tracks.

The few people she did see there were driving big trucks, and the way they handled their horn-honking and slush-throwing vehicles told her that they were clearly not from Dubuque.

Everywhere she looked in this lower section of town, she saw more brick buildings, and they were old ones too. At least the Dubuquers in charge were trying to fix them up, instead of knocking them over like they usually did back home. That was kind of sweet.

Kelley pulled up short in her walking. Did I just think that? Did I just think a nice thought about this place?

She shook her head and started moving again. She blamed her brief lapse of niceness on the warm book inside her coat, pushing away most of the cold wind blasting at her. She still felt way too obvious out in the open—black girl, skipping school!—so she kept away from the busier areas of downtown close to the clock tower. If she could only find the clock tower again.

Thanks to the GPS and the electronic maps on her phone, Kelley finally got her bearings. She made her way at last toward the bluffs where her family’s house sat, a few hundred feet above downtown and the river below.

“Good one, city girl,” she muttered, feeling silly for losing her way, since she was just nine blocks away from the elevator, according to her eGadget.

Maybe it was her guilt after getting the five-finger discount with the little white book, or not lending him yet another twenty-dollar bill, but whatever the reason, Kelley kept thinking about how Jeroan wasn’t the only member of the family who’d gotten into trouble in the Windy City.

Right up until the day they’d had to move, she’d been spending way too much time with the girls in the same gang that Jeroan had supposedly joined. She started out just hanging out casually with them—Halisa and Maile and Arica—testing out her new bad attitude and enjoying it. She’d especially liked being part of a group like that, for the first time ever.

But then things went downhill fast. Lots of rotten grades on tests, a run-in or two with the cops, and a whole week of cutting class just before the spring semester ended. That had tipped Mom and Dad off just as much as Jeroan’s detentions and his gang colors in the laundry hamper.

Luckily, Jeroan never found out about her trouble; Mom and Dad had hushed up all talk about that at the dinner table. Otherwise he’d never shut up about it.

Then Mom and Dad freaked for the last time when they saw the news reports about one of Jeroan’s classmates getting sent off to prison after an armed robbery. Kelley knew the kid, too—he was in her Advanced Math class, though he showed up maybe three times a month. But Jeroan and Donald had been buddies ever since third grade, and that’s what set off Mom and Dad’s alarm bells. Then they found out about Jeroan and the gang.

Her parents did their research, made plans with an old friend of theirs who had a law office in Dubuque, and found the big house overlooking downtown and the river beyond it.

And here we are, Kelley thought, her eyes watering from the stiff wind coming up off the river half a mile away. She stood in front of the Fourth Street Elevator at last, and there was actually a little cable car at the bottom of the steep hill waiting for her, sitting at a cock-eyed angle.

Arms aching, she set her stuff down inside the white and black cable car, which looked like a baby-sized edition of one of Chicago’s elevated trains.

According to Dad, this was the world’s shortest and steepest railway, even though there was no engine or caboose. It was just a set of cables that hauled the two cars up and down the bluff like a pair of yo-yos.

Once she was settled into the chilly little car at the bottom of the slope, Kelley waved at the operator at the top of the hill. She really hoped that the cables pulling her car up wouldn’t decide that today was the day they’d snap.

The slow, steep ride up the narrow tracks was actually relaxing, as feeling slowly came back to her frozen nose, ears, and fingers. The ride saved her a long, steep walk up the hill in the cold, lugging her books. She really wished Ms. Haze would’ve found her some little paperbacks instead of these heavy hardcovers.

A full minute later the car arrived at the top, where there was a wide wooden platform and one of those cheesy metal binocular machines that ate tourists’ quarters and gave you a blurry view of nothing.

Instead of hurrying home, Kelley paused to take a look at downtown spread out below her. There was a big stone cathedral next to the elevator, almost close enough to touch, then the bright gold dome and statues of the Court House, the clock tower just up the road from it, and the shot tower farther away, next to the river.

To the left of the clock tower was the clump of warehouses where she’d gotten lost. She even tried to find Ms. Haze’s bookstore, but the woman kept it nice and hidden. It wasn’t listed in Kelley’s GPS system or even online anywhere—she’d checked.

She also had no idea where Mercy Hospital was, or where her trouble-seeking brother might be right now. She told herself she didn’t care about that.

Kelley left the elevator platform and walked down the street lined with leafless oaks that led to her family’s big three-story house. It was eleven thirty by the time she got back inside their house, and by that point she was dying to open up the small white book inside her coat. It seemed to grow warmer the longer she kept it next to her, so it was about on fire when she closed the front door behind her.

Glad to finally be out of the cold and wind, she set her bag of books and the box with the dragon in it on the kitchen table. After making sure her eGadget was still in her jeans pocket, Kelley fished the warm book from her coat.

Before she began reading, she glanced over at the sunny breakfast nook, which was almost as big as her old bedroom back in Chicago, and checked out the fancy kitchen full of slick black appliances. She could almost hear Dad’s voice, complaining about finances or work or the weather, while Mom argued with every point he made.

That was the thing about having lawyers for parents—they always used way too much logic, and they argued about anything. Mom and Dad called it having a “discussion,” but Kelley didn’t buy it.

No wonder Jeroan and I got in trouble in Chicago. We were never home, because we hated having to listen to all those “discussions.” It sounded way too much like fighting.

She glanced down at the now-cool book in her hand as she settled onto the leather couch.

Magic? This old place hasn’t seen much magic since we moved in.

To ward off her bad feelings, Kelley opened her new book and read the opening chapter out loud.

“‘You and every other human on Earth have the ability to use and channel magic, for magic is everywhere. You simply need to use the parts of your brain that are lying dormant, open your eyes to the magical energy around you, focus your emotions and thoughts, and above all, believe that you can do it. Belief is the first, and most important, step.”

Kelley looked up from the book with a shiver. Ms. Haze had said something like that when she gave Kelley the windup dragon: I know you still believe.

She popped up off the couch and began pacing around the house. She kept reading out loud as she paced. To her bedroom, back to the living room, through the kitchen, then around the dining room over to Dad’s humongous TV, around the big couch and the overstuffed bookcase, her boots clomping the whole time over the hardwoods.

“‘Belief in yourself is the most important aspect of magic. You must trust yourself. When you remove all self-doubt and control your emotions, you will easily control your thoughts and focus your will, like a telescope pointed at the stars. Remember, however, that the ability to channel the flow of magic will work only if you let it. The choice is yours.’”

Kelley kept catching herself wanting to smile as she read. The words seemed to be calling out to a secret part of herself she’d been trying to stifle ever since she became a teenager. The part of herself that still dreamed about flying and imagined herself being more than just an average girl with boring parents. About being more than just another face in the crowd.

“All right,” she muttered. “Let’s get to the good stuff.”

Still grinning like a goofy kid, she flipped ahead in the book, took one look at the long chapters about the history of magic in the last section, and then went back to hit chapter four: Keywords of Magic.

She skipped over the red text on the warning page and came across a black and white etching of a man in dark, flowing robes with his arms spread against a black night.

With her finger she traced the wild bursts of fire shooting from the bearded wizard’s hands. She could even see tiny, squiggly lines flowing out of—or maybe into—his wide eyes.

Now this is kind of sweet, she decided. Maybe I’ll read a bit more of this crazy book before I make some lunch. She flipped ahead, the pages whispering against her fingers like soft voices. Just a little bit more.

“‘Once magic is in you, it is your job to control it. By sending magic through the various passageways of your blood, you can harness its wild energy. Magic hungers for symmetry and complexity, as opposed to the simple, random results of entropy.”

Kelley fought the urge to pull out her eGadget and google that last word. She thought she knew what it meant. All she had to do was look at her brother’s messy room to know what entropy was.

“You can then expel magic, honed and enhanced and tamed by your own blood’s energy, in a forceful manner, with your voice.’”

She let out a quick, half-nervous laugh, imagining the wizard from the black and white drawing, wriggling and jiggling as magic tickled its way through his body.

Then he could release it and launch a ball of fire at his enemies with a shout.

Of course. Piece of cake.

Kelley thought of her old Chicago pal Halisa’s voice, how she could project her voice so well, in such a “forceful manner” that all the girls—and most of the boys—in their grade would duck their heads and look for an exit. Now that was power.

As she walked around the house, she passed the box that held her new dragon. What name had Ms. Haze given him? It’s right on the tip of my tongue.

Kelley stopped long enough to take the dragon out of his box, amazed once again that he could fly, he was so heavy. After a couple good twists of his winding key, she let him go. He lifted into the air with a clatter of gears and circled lazily around Kelley like an oversized bee as she paced.

Growing warmer by the second, Kelley threw off her coat and went back to reading out loud. Before she started reading again, she stopped, snapping her fingers.

“Alexander. That’s your name, big guy. Alexander.”

Smiling and ducking under the dragon as it cluttered past her head, Kelley began reading aloud again.

“‘The way to hold magic inside you, letting it build and spread like a virus in the blood until you’re ready to use it, is to trap it. One way to do this is by simply telling your body not to sweat. Hold the combined heat in your body, your heat and magic’s heat, and the mystic energy will continually circle through the pathways of your blood, through artery and vein. Though be warned—magic is fickle, and it will look for the first opportunity to break free. The key to fighting the wildness of magic is to always remember that your body is at the mercy of your mind. With your mind, tell every cell in your body not to release any heat or energy until you want that heat released.’

“‘Remember: if you do not control magic once it’s in you, magic will control you.’”

Was magic as simple as that? Kelley wondered. And how do I get the magic into my blood in the first place? Maybe I shouldn’t have skipped chapters one through three.

She started to pull off her black cap, imagining steam shooting out from her head as she walked faster around the living room. Instead she kept it on, her head hot and tingling, just to see what would happen next. She told herself to stop sweating.

With a sudden laugh, she dodged Alexander the clacking and flying dragon and fought the impulse to do a quick dance around the living room.

Something about the words in the book made her feel light-headed and deliriously happy, banishing the dull, sinking feeling in her chest, hopefully for good.

Magic is in me. It’s in my blood.

“‘Build this energy in your blood until you feel ready to release it. Then, all you have to do is use a keyword to let loose your magic and give it form, shape, and purpose.’”

It’s in me.

“‘A keyword can be any word spoken confidently and loudly. The keyword will focus your power with more effectiveness than any number of hand gestures or magic potions. A good example of such a keyword would be the word Fire—’”

In that instant, something jolted hard against Kelley’s leg, as if her eGadget had just exploded.

White-hot energy shot out of her in all directions, torching the couch, melting the TV, shattering the windows, and lifting her into the air.

The world spun away as Kelley flew through the empty window frames of her living room, with the tiny white book still held tight in her hand.

Can’t wait for 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, we get to see some seriously weird photos, among other things…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Four

Jeroan’s stomach did a quick flip-flop as he peered down at the camera in Polly’s muck-covered hand. The screen had been cracked almost exactly in half, which made the image captured on it all distorted and full of squiggly green lines. But he could still make out his own goofy grinning face on one side of the picture as he bent down next to the old guy.

On the other side of the cracked screen was a nightmare image of the old guy—his eyes obscured by blue light like smoke, yellow snot in his mustache and beard, and his mouth half-open, as if he was in the process of saying the first of his weird words.

“Holy crap,” Jeroan whispered. His stomach did some more flipping and flopping. He could barely drag his gaze away from that smoky light in the image, where the guy’s eyes should’ve been. He didn’t remember Polly taking that picture.

“Glad you only got one shot,” he muttered, itching to turn off the camera, or maybe just throw it against the alley wall. “I look like an idiot in that one.”

“Dude,” Polly said. “I took at least three pictures of you two best friends forever. Stupid camera just didn’t get ‘em. But it should be enough to show the guys. They don’t need to know we didn’t get any money off him. We’ll just say he was broke already, and…”

As Polly planned their triumphant return to the gang-that-wasn’t-really-a-gang, Jeroan slipped the camera from Polly’s hands and started fiddling with it. He glanced at Kelley, tempted to ask her for a little help. She always read the manuals and taught herself how to work gadgets like this. Who had time to read how-to books? But he knew better than to ask for an assist—he’d never hear the end of it.

Kelley moved in closer, and they both looked down at the image of the old man’s face. Jeroan’s head felt suddenly warm, despite the cold air in the alley.

Blue smoke instead of eyes. Mouth frozen in the middle of speaking. Shiny bits of snot in his beard. And Jeroan smiling away next to him.

“Who is this guy?” Jeroan muttered as he pressed Zoom on the camera.

He felt a warm wind puff onto him like a breath of air, and then the camera flashed and made a clicking sound, as if it had decided to take a picture all on its own. Jeroan sucked in a quick breath. Dots of sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Jeroan,” Kelley whispered. “What did you do?”

Kelley pointed at the camera, where a new image now filled the cracked screen. And it wasn’t of the alley floor, where the camera had been aimed when it flashed and clicked.

The picture was definitely not downtown Dubuque. The only light in the shot was from the full moon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Next to the crack in the screen, a young man—a boy, really—in a dark blue robe stood on top of a set of huge stacked rocks with his arms in the air.

More rocks, some of them big as cars, stood all around him, like giant dominoes waiting to be tipped over.

What looked like bright blue light poured out of the boy’s hands, aimed at a figure on the other half of the screen. The second person was mostly hidden in the shadows, but Jeroan could just make out a white face, covered in weird green lines from the broken camera.

“Hey, I didn’t take that picture,” Polly said, moving in and reaching for the camera. “Lemme see that—”

“No, wait!” Jeroan said.

But Polly was faster than him. She snagged the camera and hit the Zoom button once, then hit it a couple more times.

No flash-click this time.

Jeroan leaned in closer and saw the image of the boy grow bigger and bigger, until his face came into focus. His zoomed-in face was now split in half by the broken screen, but Jeroan could clearly see the agony in his expression. Agony, as well as anger. Like the times Kelley had made him so mad she wanted to scream at her.

And there was something… familiar about that face. Jeroan stared a few seconds more, and then he had it.

“Add a beard,” Jeroan muttered, “and about a hundred years, and this could be that old guy as a kid. They have the same eyes. Maybe this is his great-grandpa or something.”

Polly grunted in response as she clicked more buttons on the camera, moving the image around, zooming in and out, her bony fingers working fast.

“And I think I see other people in the picture,” she was saying. “One guy in the shadows and—oh snap. Lookit this. Two people are on the ground, all laid out.”

“They’re at Stonehenge,” Kelley said. “That has to be where they are.”

Polly passed the tiny, bent camera back to Jeroan. She stepped back, eyes wide and face pale. Kelley leaned in closer to the camera.

“What is this, J?” Polly said. “Those people look like they’re dead. This is all messed up.”

“Your camera just got busted, that’s all,” Kelley said, acting all confident, but Jeroan saw her chewing her lip. “And it’s distorting some old pictures, or something.”

Jeroan squinted again at the grainy image of two people slumped against a rock, one of them big and dark-skinned, the other one light-skinned and petite. Both of them had what looked like wisps of green smoke rising from their robes.

“Yeah, right,” he said, determined to not let this weird him out. “Watch this.”

His hands shook as he hit the Next button. Nothing. No more pictures.

“Maybe,” he said in a soft voice, focusing all his attention on the camera. I can figure this out, he told himself. I know I can. It’s just like one of those impossible algebra problems at school. “Maybe you have to…”

“Jeroan,” Kelley began, but he barely heard her. He was sweating like a madman now, as if all that concentrating was heating him up from the inside out.

“J?” Polly said, reaching for his shoulder.

Jeroan shrugged them both off and shook his head. I got this, he wanted to say, but another tiny puff of heat hit him again. It came from the little, banged-up camera. The camera had the answers, he knew it.

“How’d he get here?” he whispered.

The camera gave off another flash of light, followed by a clicking sound.

“No way,” Polly whispered, staring at the camera. “No frickin’ way.”

A new image now appeared on the broken viewscreen in his hands—the same boy in blue robes, dangling high in the air, upside-down.

The boy was covered in greenish light this time, and he was hanging somehow above a bridge. In the background, orange flames and gray smoke filled the night sky of a burning city.

“Oh man, oh man,” Jeroan said with a laugh that came out of nowhere. He zoomed in on the picture, stifling another panicky giggle. “Look at this!”

Kelley and Polly pushed in close to look at the battered, but still shiny, golden pocket watch in the boy’s hand. Its hands were set at nine minutes to nine.

“No way!” Polly said again. “You know who had a watch like that, don’t you?”

Jeroan didn’t say anything. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the dirty sleeve of his coat, and then groaned at the smell.

Impossible, he thought. It can’t be.

Jeroan looked back at the camera. The city behind the upside-down boy was strangely familiar, like a page from an old history book. He could just make out the words Bateham’s Mill on the side of a burning building in the distance, under the boy’s head. He was tempted to whip out his eGadget and do some googling, but then he remembered he no longer had it anymore.

“Let me try it,” Polly said, and before Jeroan could try and stop her, she plucked the camera from his hands.

“Wait,” Jeroan mumbled. “Be careful…”

Jeroan felt another burst of heat, this time coming from Polly’s skinny frame.

“Where is that old fart right now?” Polly said to the camera. Then the other girl flinched as the camera flashed and clicked again.

“Whoa, dudes,” Polly said, tottering a bit and nearly running into Jeroan. “That felt really weird.”

He put a hand on Polly’s arm to keep her from toppling over, and once more, all three of them looked at the camera’s screen.

“Whoa is right,” Kelley said.

She pointed at the new image of a fast food restaurant, with a certain elderly fellow sitting at a table with a tray stacked high with food. The old man had a huge roast beef sandwich halfway to his mouth and a dazed, happy look on his hairy face.

“That’s Harvey’s,” Jeroan said, “just up the road.”

“Looks like our money is being well-spent,” Polly said. “That thieving old fart.”

As Polly stepped away from Jeroan, she slipped on some garbage. She caught herself before she fell, letting lose a couple choice swear words.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She’d left the camera with Jeroan, and he was still staring at the picture when Kelley elbowed him in the side.

“You guys aren’t going to go there now, are you?”

“Oh yeah, we are, dude,” Polly said, now ten feet away and heading out of the alley fast. “Nobody robs us.”

“Wait a minute—” Kelley began.

Jeroan already had the phone in his jeans pocket and knew what Polly was going to do when he gave Kelley a tiny push to get her out of his way.

“Sis,” he said, “this is your turn to back off. We’re just gonna have a little talk with the guy. A little… discussion. You know. Wait up, Pol,” he called.

He gave Kelley one last look, daring her to say something, and then he jogged off after Polly. The Beast could find her own way home.

* * * * * *

To Jeroan’s surprise and annoyance, Kelley decided to tag along with him and Polly on their way to Harvey’s. It figured, he thought. She was too nosy to not come along to see what he and Polly would do. Jeroan actually wasn’t all that sure what Polly’s plan was. He hadn’t ever seen her so worked up before.

They made it Harvey’s in less than ten minutes with Polly in the lead. With the thick, salty smell of fries and roast beef in the air, the three of them turned a corner. Two police cars sat in front of the restaurant, lights spinning, next to an ambulance from Mercy Hospital.

Nobody said a word as they crept into the alcove of a dark storefront on the same side of the road as Harvey’s. As they peeked out at the restaurant three doors up, Jeroan felt a sudden pang of guilt.

Had the old guy attacked someone else? he wondered. I should’ve done something to prevent that, somehow.

Before Jeroan or Polly could say a word, two paramedics wheeled a gurney loaded with a person wrapped in a blanket into the back of the ambulance. Polly didn’t have to point out the wild gray-and-white beard poking out of the blanket, or the floppy red hat covering most of the man’s face.

That’s him, Jeroan thought, and then movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. About fifty yards away, on the other side of the street, a banged-up brown van with tinted windows rolled to a stop next to a pile of snow at the curb. A puff of gray exhaust dribbled up out of the muffler of the idling van.

Kelley elbowed Jeroan and whispered his name, but he just shrugged her off without taking his eyes off the van.

I don’t like the look of that van, Jeroan thought. They showed up here a bit too conveniently, with their dark windows and all that.

The Harvey’s door slammed open again, interrupting his dark thoughts. He watched the paramedics leading a very unsteady—and very skinny—kid in a brown Harvey’s shirt and cap. He looked Chinese or Japanese. Kelley elbowed him again, as if to say, Look! Someone else in this town who’s not white! What were the odds?

They loaded the kid, who was maybe a year or two older than Jeroan and Kelley, into the back of the ambulance as well, and then slammed the doors shut. Within seconds the ambulance sped off, flashers spinning and siren blaring.

“Uh oh,” Jeroan said.

He’d almost forgotten about the two cop cars still parked in front of Harvey’s. He pulled Kelley deeper into the alcove, shushing her along the way. Polly was already there ahead of them, crouching in the shadows.

Jeroan peeked out and saw a cop step out of the restaurant, a big red-faced guy with gray hair and a mustache. He looked like he was laughing at something said by the other cop, a tall, thin woman with her hat pulled low over her eyes. They stopped next to the first car, and the male cop reached in and flicked off his flashers.

“So what was that skinny kid talking about before he blacked out on us?” he said, brushing crumbs off the front of his uniform shirt.

The female cop flipped open her notebook as if it was part of her right hand and read from it. “The name was Jiang Wu. Nametag read ‘Jimbo.’ Employee’s exact words were: ‘The blood is weak. But the gears never fail to turn.’ Extra emphasis on the never. Sir.”

Jimbo held his breath, feeling a sudden urge to sneeze. Something was tingling in his head from what the cop had said. Blood and gears?

“Too many video games, I think,” the male cop said, stifling a burp with his fist. He’d apparently had lunch inside while the paramedics were working. “Or maybe too much MSG from his parent’s restaurant, huh?”

“Sir,” the female cop said. “Please. You said you were going to work on not being offensive like that.”

“Oh yeah,” the male cop said as he climbed into his car and belched again. “Forgot about that. See you at the station, Beyers.”

All three teenagers made themselves as small as they could inside the alcove of the closed store until both cop cars were gone.

Jeroan was shaking his head and looking at Polly. “Beyers and Gregson. Those two pains-in-the-butt. Maybe the old guy’ll zap them, too. It’d serve ‘em right.”

“You know the cops in town by name?” Kelley asked him. She sounded both disgusted and amazed, all at the same time. “Already?”

“What can I say? I don’t waste time, sis.”

When Jeroan looked out of their alcove again, the street was empty. The brown van with the dark windows had moved away as well, though he hadn’t seen it go. Just a moving van, he figured, probably dropping off stuff at one of the stores. Can’t get all paranoid after what happened this morning.

“Where to now?” Polly said, emerging from their hiding spot at last and digging inside her coat. “Want to ask the magic eight-ball camera?”

“No thanks,” Jeroan said quickly. He looked up and down the street, formulating a plan. The grin on his face made his sister cringe.

“Jeroan…” she began.

“Mercy Hospital isn’t far, is it?” he said, still grinning.

“Nope,” Polly said. “But I got one place I need to stop first. For some backup.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kelley said, gathering up her bag of books and her square box once more. She was looking at Jeroan as if she didn’t know who he was, and it unsettled for a moment. Just a moment.

“You’re going to go harass that old guy again,” Kelley said. It wasn’t a question.

“You don’t have to come along, you know,” Jeroan said softly.

“‘Cause you two have been doing just great on your own,” Kelley shot back. “Why don’t you just give it a rest for today?”

“Why don’t you just quit hassling us today?” Jeroan said. “Always messing in our business.”

“Jeroan, the guy’s like a hundred years old, and you wanna—”

Jeroan took a sudden step closer to Kelley, ready to wade into another fight, but then his stomach gave a long rumble. He remembered how hungry he was, but…

“What?” Kelley said, watching him,

Time to pull out the charm instead of the strong-arm. Jeroan turned what he thought of as his “award-winning smile” on his sister, full-force.

“Hey, Kelley. Can you spot me twenty bucks? That old guy took my wallet, and I really need to get something to eat before I keel over.”

Kelley was reaching into her coat pocket she froze, just for a second, as if she’d just remembered something herself. She pulled her hand out of her pocket, fast.

“Actually,” she said, “I’m broke, too. Guess you guys are on your own.”

Jeroan just shook his head, feeling his charm dry up, only to be replace by the familiar, ready-to-fight feeling he had whenever he had to deal with his sister.

“Thanks,” he said. “Glad you got my back, little sister. Thanks a ton. Come on, Polly, let’s go.”

Without waiting for Kelley’s reply, Jeroan turned away from Kelley and started off with Polly toward downtown again, with the cold wind at their backs. He couldn’t stop thinking about that feeling he had up at the top of the alley, pinned to the wall by nothing other than some weird energy, and how he’d almost whimpered at the sight of the old man walking away.

That was me hitting bottom, he thought. Even before we landed in that nasty dumpster. The old man needs to pay for that. One way or the other.

He didn’t want to look back behind him to check on his sister, but he did anyway. But the sidewalk in front of Harvey’s was empty except for gray blobs of dirty snow. Kelley the Beast was nowhere to be seen.

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

• Buy a PDF directly from UnWrecked Press
  
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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 takes another brief detour and gets the story from her brother, who’s just sort of… hanging around as the chapter begins…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Three

If her arms hadn’t been loaded down with a bag of books and her new dragon in a box, and if the wind hadn’t been so fierce, Kelley would have pulled the little book from inside her coat and got busy reading it on her way home.

Instead, she had to make do with walking as fast as she could on the snow-lined sidewalk without dropping any of her loot from Ms. Haze’s store.

She backtracked past the big court house with all its gray statues guarding its roof and headed down a side street. She hoped Jeroan and his sidekick hadn’t decided to come back this way while she was in the store talking about fake research papers and snitching books from Ms. Haze.

A half dozen steps later, Kelley heard a voice calling out. A mad one, but also a familiar one. She stopped and cocked an ear toward the sound. Once more she heard what had to be Jeroan’s voice, yelling for help.

And he wasn’t alone.

“Great,” she muttered, hustling toward the alley from earlier that morning. “I should’ve known they’d go back there.”

Both Jeroan and his punk buddy were now yelling, their voices all high-pitched and hoarse, which made Kelley almost break into a run to get there. A half block from the alley, though, she slowed, suddenly tentative. She wondered if that old guy had some other homeless old friends who’d come to his rescue.

She pulled out her eGadget, hit the Mute button, and saw the red light of the GPS locator blinking fast. That was Jeroan all right. Just great.

Tiptoeing closer, Kelley’s sense of discomfort grew as she listened to the shrill voice of Jeroan’s buddy. The guy’s voice must not have changed yet, because as much as she hated that expression, he really was screaming like a girl.

When she finally made it to the entrance to the alley, she peeked around the edge and looked inside the shadowy alley. Except for garbage bags and a dozen dumpsters lining the brick walls of the dead-end alley, the place was empty.

“What the—” she began, but she was interrupted by her brother and his buddy, yelling. Their voices came from about twenty feet above her.

“Jeroan?” she called, and then looked up.

Her brother and his buddy were dangling halfway up the slimy bricks of the building next to the alley, their shoes easily twenty feet above a very full and very smelly dumpster.

“Kelley! Get us down! Now!”

“Yeah!” added Jeroan’s squeaky-voiced buddy.

“Um,” Kelley asked, immediately annoyed at being yelled at by her brother. But then the sight of Jeroan and his buddy kicking and struggling two stories up was so ridiculous, so unbelievable, that she couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing. “No problem. Just give me a second. I don’t seem to have a ladder here in my coat pocket.”

“Kelley…” Jeroan began. “Quit mucking around.”

Kelley did her best to pull herself together. Not even an hour ago, she’d been hauling butt to get away from these two. She took another look at Jeroan’s squeaky-voiced friend with the long dishwater-blonde hair poking out from under the hood of his red windbreaker, and her brain made a sudden connection. Jeroan’s gangster wannabe friend was a she, not a he.

The realization made her start laughing all over again.

“Kelley!” Jeroan yelled. He kicked the wall behind him so hard, he lost one of his shoes. It plopped into the bags of garbage below him.

“So,” Kelley said at last, wiping tears from her eyes. “How did you guys—you two—get up there? And what’s holding you up there?”

“Nothing,” Jeroan snapped.

“That old dude,” his friend squeaked at the same time.

“Really?” Kelley said, glancing around the alley again. She felt a faint tinge of disappointment that the old man was gone. There was something about him, and the way he’d looked at her this morning. Like he was trying to tell her something. Weird blue light and all.

“Just get us down!” Jeroan yelled.

“I don’t know how I’m—” Kelley began, but she stopped when she saw Jeroan and his buddy start to slide down the alley wall. Before she could say another word, the two of them dropped into the dumpster feet-first, yelling every inch of the way.

* * * * * *

 A minute later, Kelley felt like she was looking down at a pair of half-drowned rats that had flopped down on the cold ground in front of the alley dumpster. Smelly rats, covered in garbage and slime.

She didn’t want to think about the nastiness covering her own hands from helping to pull Jeroan and his lost shoe and his skinny white girlfriend out from the burst garbage bags and other mess inside the dumpster.

She also didn’t want to think about the look on Jeroan’s face as he fell—he’d been looking down, right at her, and his expression went from scared to betrayed, as if she’d let him down for not managing to get them down safely from the wall, or not protecting him from the helpless old man who was now gone from this alley.

“What the heck happened here?” Kelley asked before Jeroan could get up off the ground and storm out of the alley. She reminded herself to breathe through her mouth to avoid the stink of rotting food and the variety of other, indefinable smells.

Jeroan glanced over at his friend for a second, and then began talking, in his usual fast way.

“Look. It was the old guy’s own fault that he was still here, sitting on his butt, when we came back here. It was almost like he was asking to get jumped. The old fart should’ve had the sense to get out of here before we got back from chasing you.”

“Chasing me unsuccessfully,” Kelley added. “I so blew you away, Jeroan.”

“We just wanted to talk to him,” Jeroan’s friend chimed in.

“I’m not talking to you right now,” Kelley said to her, her voice strangely calm. “I’m having a discussion here with my little brother.” She gave Jeroan her best disgusted look. “Plus, we haven’t even been properly introduced.”

“Oh, my bad,” Jeroan said. “Kelley, this is Polly. Polly, this is Kelley. My sister.”

“Didn’t wear your running shoes this morning, did you, Polly?”

“You just got a good head start,” Polly countered.

Kelley gave a laugh, but a short one. She didn’t want to be all buddy-buddy with some white girl trying to get street cred with the new black kids from the big city.

“Go on,” Kelley said. “Finish your story already. Tell me why you just wanted to talk to some poor homeless guy.”

“It was like a dare, really, from the guys.”

“This was part of an initiation?” Kelley blurted out. She fought the urge to grab her brother by the front of his stained jacket and shake him. “For a gang? You haven’t learned a thing, have you?”

“They’re not really a gang,” the girl named Polly muttered.

“It’s not what you think,” Jeroan said, holding his hands up like he was surrendering. “This is nothing like Chicago. I mean, come on,” he said with a quick smile aimed at his little girlfriend, “there’s only one gang here in Dubuque, for crying out loud. And Pol’s right—they’re not really a gang. They’re more like, like… a club!”

“Some club,” Kelley said. She glared at her brother’s big brown eyes and his nervous smile and tried not to feel like she was looking into a mirror.

She purposely avoided looking at his girlfriend, though she was pretty sure she remembered the white girl from the halls at school. Polly was usually trailing the older kids, looking like the scraggly tail to the older kids’ kites.

“So you want to hang out with a bunch of kids,” Kelley began before Jeroan could get going again. She hated the way she was sounding like Mom, using her logic and all. “A bunch of kids who think it’s a good time to jump helpless old men?”

“Dude,” Polly said. “That is one old fart who ain’t helpless. How d’you think—”

Jeroan cut her off. “Can I just finish here? I’d really like to get home and change my clothes already. And it’s cold here in this nasty alley.”

“Go on, then,” Kelley said.

“We were supposed to go up to a stranger and get him to give us some money, and bring back some sort of evidence to show everyone else. That way they could see we had the guts to do it.”

“Nice,” Kelley said. This really was like Chicago all over again.

“So Polly was going to take a picture with her new camera, but before we could do anything,” Jeroan stopped and looked around the alley, as if watching out for the old bum coming back to finish him off. “Something crazy happened.”

“Tell her ’bout the words, J,” Polly said, eyes wide next to Jeroan. “And that freaky light in his eyes.”

Words? Kelley thought, keeping her own mouth closed tight. She touched the book in her coat pocket and thought about strange words filling her head from earlier, right after that old man had looked at her. Weird, foreign, almost nonsensical words.

“Oh yeah,” Jeroan said. “Before he, um, exploded, the old guy started to seriously freak out, mumbling this crazy stuff I could barely hear. This weird blue light was in his eyes. He just looked at us, back and forth, back and forth, and each time he turned to look at me, that blue light was brighter, until it hurt to look at.”

“It was frickin’ crazy,” Polly muttered.

Jeroan gave her a perturbed look at being interrupted and continued.

“Then he looked right at me with his hair standing straight up and his beard sticking out all over, and he said ‘Mo.’”

“‘Mo’?” Kelley felt another sudden urge to laugh out loud.

“Yep. Then he said more. ‘Moammar and Yishi. Their names were Moammar and Yishi.’ Then he said these words I’d never heard before. I can’t even repeat ‘em.”

“Sounded like he was coughin’ up a hairball,” Polly said.

Kelley caught Jeroan as he shuddered.

“He says those words, in I-don’t-know-what language, and bam. Next thing I know, I’m hanging up above the dumpsters with Polly. Then he says a couple more weird words, cleans out our pockets, and picks up his red hat and his bag and just walks away. Like it was no biggie.”

“Walked away with all my money, my crappy phone, and my brother’s knife,” Polly said, wiping her nose angrily with a dirty hand. Her squinty little eyes were looking all around the alley, as if trying to spot some hint of her lost stuff. “He’s gonna kill me for that.”

While Polly talked, Jeroan had been watching Kelley closely. Kelley knew that look. She wasn’t getting the whole story here, and he wanted to see how much of it she was buying.

“And that’s how you found us, little sister,” he said when Polly was done complaining.

Kelly looked at the bag of books sitting on the cold, wet alley floor next to her, with the square brown box on top of the bag. She took a deep breath, wincing at the sour and rotten smells infiltrating her nose, and got ready to start picking holes in Jeroan’s story.

“Hold on,” Polly said. She scuttled of on her hands and knees across the wet alley floor and nearly dove headfirst into a pile of garbage. She let out a sharp chuckle. “I knew it!”

Kelley gave Jeroan a wide-eyed look of disapproval that he promptly ignored.

“What?” Jeroan called out. “You find something?”

Polly backed out of the little tunnel of garbage she’d created and jumped to her feet with a triumphant smile. Her red windbreaker was three sizes too big for her, probably a hand-me-down from the brother with the knife. She looked tiny inside it.

In her gloveless, blue-tinged hand, she held up what looked like a bent piece of metal not much bigger—or thicker—than a credit card.

“He didn’t get everything, dude,” Polly announced. “My camera!”

“That’s yours?” Kelley said, getting to her feet and stepping closer to the smaller girl to get a better look. “That’s a three-hundred-dollar camera. How did you happen to come into possession of that?”

Polly acted like she didn’t hear Kelley’s question. She was already fiddling with the camera, trying to get a picture to come up in its cracked display.

“I knew I saw this thing go flying when he zapped us that first time. And I never saw it go into that old fart’s bag.”

“It’s toast,” Jeroan said. “I heard it go crunch under the old guy’s crappy boots. Plus I don’t think Marky will want to see our pictures now, since we didn’t finish the job. We were supposed to roll him, not the other way around. Let’s just get outta here.”

He took a few steps toward the street, as if hoping Kelley and Polly would take the hint and follow him.

“Holy crap,” Polly muttered. Jeroan stopped, his back turned to them, and cocked his head in their direction.

“Oh man,” Kelley said before she even got a look at the camera’s tiny screen. “Do I really want to see this?”

“Oh yeah,” Polly said without looking up. “You really do.”

Can’t wait for 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, our buddy Jeroan puts the J in Juvenile Delinquency…

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter Two

She’s doing it to me all over again, Jeroan Strickland thought as he turned back into the alley and out of the cold wind. I can’t do anything here without the Beastly One sticking in her nose to muck it all up.

What made him so crazy was that Kelley really didn’t need to spy on him for Mom and Dad. The three of them—the parentals and him—had an agreement. They were cool with him “Finding his own way” (Dad’s term) and “Thinking asymmetrically” (Mom’s phrase). Plus they were too busy at their new law office to worry much about Jeroan. They probably figured moving to this crappy little town would be enough keep him out of trouble. This town, and Kelley the Beast.

But while his little sister could do no wrong and always did everything people asked of her, Jeroan had perfected a way of making life interesting that the Beast could never understand. You couldn’t sit still and follow the rules, he knew, and expect to do anything great.

And Jeroan had plans. Big plans. So big they changed on a pretty much daily basis.

Today’s plan was to make an impression on Polly’s buddy Marky and the other players in Dubuque, Iowa. He was determined to show them what he was made of. Polly, who had latched onto Jeroan on the first day of school, had volunteered to come along today and help him get in good with Marky. It had been her idea to go downtown this morning, after they cut class once again.

Then Kelley the Beast had butted in, and they’d had no choice but to chase her off. Jeroan thought about what they would’ve done to her if they’d caught her on the slick, snow-lined streets of this scrawny little city. Maybe threaten her with death or dismemberment. Maybe dangle her over the icy Mississippi from atop the railroad bridge a few blocks away. Or maybe twist her—

Jeroan inhaled the stink of garbage and came back to reality. He had to set his plans of getting revenge on Kelley on hold, yet again.

Doesn’t matter, he told himself. She got away, and we’ve got work to do here in this nasty alley.

With his Chicago Bears sweatshirt all pitted out with sweat under his coat from running, he stood once more over the old wino with the Santa Claus beard.

“Back off,” he muttered to Polly next to him. “Let me take care of this.”

Polly, her face still red from all their running, nodded and started digging in her coat pocket. As usual, she was dressed up like a guy, and unless you knew there was a skinny white girl underneath that baggy Bulls windbreaker, you could fall for it too.

Polly gave Jeroan a quick little grin as she pulled out her stolen camera, but he could see the excitement and fear in her eyes. He was scared too, but he knew how to cover it up with attitude. You didn’t let the guys in Chicago know you were afraid.

Shivering from the cold, Jeroan tried not to think about the weird light he thought he’d seen coming from this guy’s eyes right before Kelley mucked up their morning plans. He swore that light had been bright blue. Must’ve been the sun reflecting off a car’s hood or something. And the way the old man’s hair had turned into a pin-cushion while the Beast was yelling down the alley at them had been sort of… freaky.

But it was the old guy’s own fault that he was still here, sitting on his butt in the cold, stinky alley. It was almost like he was asking to get jumped. The old fart should’ve had the sense to get out of here before Jeroan and Polly came back from chasing his nosy sister.

And Kelley the Beast, Jeroan thought, was never gonna let me forget the fact that she outran us this morning.

“Jeroan,” Polly whispered. “Come on. I got the camera ready.”

Jeroan ignored her and focused his gaze on the old man.

“Here we are again,” he said to the smelly old guy sitting on the ground. “Looks like you didn’t get too far, ol’ man. That’s a good thing. For us, at least.”

“Yeah,” Polly added in her scratchy voice. Jerome winced. “You ain’t got no one to save you now. No nosy sisters with fancy cell phones here.”

Before Polly could say anything more, Jeroan grabbed the old man’s satchel from his side and started unzipping it. Not to be outdone, Polly jumped in and stuck a hand inside the old man’s raggedy brown coat. She pulled out an old pocket watch the size of her fist. Jeroan was digging through the satchel when the old man started screaming hoarsely, grabbing for the watch Polly had taken from him.

The guy was actually trying to get to his feet, he was so crazy for the watch, when Polly elbowed him in the stomach, hard. He dropped to the hard alley floor once more, the wind knocked out of him. Jeroan nearly dropped the satchel.

“Cut it out, Pol!” he spat. “You’ll kill the old fart.”

“Just setting up my photo, J,” she said, giving him a slightly crazed grin. “Now get down there next to him. I’m having to do all the hard work today, you slacker.”

Jeroan stopped digging through the meaningless, worthless items in the old man’s satchel—some change, about twenty mismatched socks, a couple beat-up paperback books, and a dozen sticky pop cans. Nothing valuable. He hunkered down next to the spluttering old man, breathing through his mouth from the mixed smells of body odor and garbage.

“Hurry up,” he muttered to Polly, who was balancing the old man’s watch in one hand and aiming the tiny blue camera in her other. “Take it already, then I’ll take one—”

Jeroan never got to finish his sentence. He heard a grunt, and then something solid smacked into his chest and sent him flying backwards.

The old fart hit me, he realized as he rolled back to his feet, five feet from the man still sitting on the ground. And he hit me hard.

It took everything in Jeroan’s willpower not to run from the alley right away. His chest was still tingling from where the old fart had caught him with an elbow.

No, Jeroan thought. No running. Polly’s still here, and she still thinks the sun rises and sets on me. I can’t let her down. Not yet, at least.

Meanwhile, the old guy on the ground was starting to seriously freak out. Mumbling words that Jeroan could barely hear, much less understand, the old man with the stringy beard and wild white hair had his eyes clamped shut. He shook his head from side to side. His spindly arms were raised out to the sides, as if he were pulling himself to his feet on invisible strings. Once he was standing, slightly hunched over, the man pointed his hands—one at Polly, one at Jeroan—and opened his eyes.

The weird blue light was back in his eyes. Jeroan groaned.

For what felt like an hour, the old man looked from Polly to Jeroan, back and forth, and each time he turned back to Jeroan, the blue light had grown brighter, bathing the alley with an unnatural brightness that Jeroan could almost feel, tickling his skin.

Then the man’s gaze came to rest on Jeroan. His glowing blue eyes grew focused. His lips, almost hidden under his dirty white and gray beard, stopped moving. His nose wiggled, then his ears, and then the man’s long, wild hair lifted straight out from his head as if he’d been jolted with a huge blast of static electricity.

“Mo,” the man said in a thick, low voice, as if he were talking only to himself, and Jeroan and Polly just happened to be close enough to eavesdrop. He coughed and grimaced and tried again.

“Moammar and Yishi,” the old man said in the blue-lit alley. “Their names were Moammar and Yishi.”

Jeroan felt a sudden urge to stop harassing this man and help him instead. There was something about the look in the guy’s eyes, underneath all that weird light and staticky air. He thought he recognized the desperately determined look on the man’s face. It was a look Jeroan saw in the mirror most mornings, though lately he’d been feeling more desperate than determined.

But before Jeroan could shake his frozen limbs into action, the man inhaled a raspy breath and spoke three strange words:

“Dohol Elem Kazqu.”

Crackling energy shot out from both of his bony index fingers and covered Polly and Jeroan. The man moved his hands up, with the flowing blue light still pouring out his fingers, and Jeroan felt his feet leave the ground. He was too shocked to scream. Polly was in the same predicament, her mouth a wide O of disbelief as she flew through the air, lifted by the line of blue energy toward Jeroan. As the old man below them put his hands together, they both hit the slimy bricks of the far alley wall with a dull thump and dangled there, fifteen feet above an overflowing dumpster.

Jeroan grabbed Polly’s hand as they dangled there, unable to even squeak out a single word. He could only watch as the flow of weird energy stopped from the man’s pointing fingers.

We’re dead, he thought. He skin felt hot and ticklish, as if hundreds of ants were crawling on him, and his heart was beating triple time.

But the man wasn’t looking at them anymore. It was as if he’d forgotten about them already. He tottered over to get his satchel up off the alley floor, and the effort nearly made the old guy fall over.

Jeroan hissed when the old guy stepped on Polly’s camera, then kicked it out of his way. She must’ve dropped it when he flung her into the air. Marky and the guys needed photographic evidence from this morning, or they’d never let Jeroan hang with them. And this old fart had messed it all up.

At the sound of Jeroan’s hissing, the old man stopped and looked up at them again. He cocked his head, as if he was remembering something, like when was the last time he’d washed his clothes or taken a bath, and then he made a cutting gesture with his left hand.

Jeroan felt his throat tighten up. We really are dead now, he thought.

“Oskam,” the old man said, breaking the silence of the alleyway.

A parade of pocket change, dollar bills, wallets, keys, a shiny black eGadget, a battered hot-pink flip phone, and a knife marched out of their pockets and dropped obediently into his muddy satchel. The last item to float across the alley was a scratched, gold-plated pocket watch, its hands frozen at nine minutes to nine. The old man grabbed the watch with his free hand, as if feeling a need to protect the ancient timepiece from any further damage or misdoing.

“Hey!” Polly cried out in her false-tough voice. Jeroan was impressed that she even able to talk. “You can’t rob us, man! We gonna be gangsters, so—”

Jeroan grabbed her by the coat sleeve, finding his own voice at last.

“Quiet, Pol. He ain’t from here. Look at him.”

With his white hair and beard still standing straight out in a dirty halo, the old man gazed up at the two kids through the cloud of unnatural blue light that had gathered around his face. His coat hung off his shoulders and down almost to his knees, like a ragged wizard’s cloak. He smelled like burnt toast and body odor.

Polly shut her mouth tight.

Jeroan could only watch as the man picked up a surprisingly clean red hunting hat from behind a garbage can and plopped it onto his head, covering his static-filled hair. With his bulging, jingling satchel on his shoulder and his pocket watch tight in his hand, the old man turned and began strolling out of the alley.

Jeroan and Polly remained suspended above the alley floor. They looked at each other and both began yelling at the old man before he disappeared and left them hanging there forever.

At the exit from the alley, the old man—who was no longer hunched over—paused, looked back, and smiled. Looking at that smile, Jeroan felt all of his confidence drop away from him and splat into the dumpster below him like a big bag of garbage. He nearly let out a whimper of relief when the old guy started walking away from them again.

This, he decided as he dangled above the rotting mess in the dumpster below him, was not at all how I’d planned to spend my morning. And it’s all the Beast’s fault.

He couldn’t wait to find her again, somewhere in this godforsaken city, and have a little discussion with her.

Just as soon as they got down from up here.

Can’t wait for 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.

ASOoM is a novel for all ages about magic, growing up, and finding your place within those two very different realms.

And let’s not forget that a sequel, A Wild Epidemic of Magic, is in the works and should be done in early 2012.

The story continues today with the Chapter One!

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Chapter One

Black girl on the streets. Better keep an eye on her, if you can.

Kelley Strickland felt like everyone in Dubuque was watching her today, thinking suspicious thoughts. Shivering inside her heavy winter jacket, she walked past yet another mound of gray snow piled on a street corner in this cold and dull place, in search of her trouble-making brother.

Her family had only been living in this whitebread city on the Mississippi for three and a half months, and Kelley wanted to move back to their real home—Chicago—badly. She used to be happy there, with her friends and all their favorite places to go in the city. But of course Jeroan had messed all that up with his loser friends and their little stunts.

And now he was starting that garbage again here. Already.

Which explained why Kelley found herself out on the streets on a freezing Tuesday morning in November instead of sitting next to the dripping radiator in Mr. Mottet’s Freshman Language Arts class.

Earlier that morning, she’d peeked—just for a second—at Jeroan’s laptop in his empty bedroom. Just long enough to read an email from one of his new buddies about cutting classes. The last straw. Kelley bundled up, left home, and started to track him down before he embarrassed her again and ruined her chances of ever making friends here.

As if I care about having friends here, she thought. Though she had to admit that she had a bit of revenge tied up in her plan today. Jeroan deserved to get punished for all his little schemes and lies. He never got caught. But if Kelley so much as looked at someone cross-eyed, Dad grounded her.

She shuffled past the clock tower on her left and got hit by another cold blast of wind. An old gray pickup truck rattled past, reeking of manure, and the driver lifted a hand, waving at someone. Kelley looked around, breathing from her mouth to avoid the stink, and realized that Farmer Joe had been waving at her.

That’s the whole problem, she decided, adjusting her lucky black cap against the cold. The people here were just too nice. They said “Hi” to you on the street, for crying out loud. Complete strangers. If you did that in Chicago in her old neighborhood, someone would smack you in the face. You definitely didn’t want to draw attention to yourself back there.

She looked up and down the quiet street with its brick buildings and icy parking lots full of pickups and SUVs and rusted-out compacts. Across the street sat the office for the local news station, its glass windows almost hidden behind a big monster of a satellite dish. She could almost feel the radio waves—or whatever they were—humming through the air around that rusty old dish at KWWL headquarters.

Flecks of snow swirled in the air, and she fought the urge to sneak back home, crank up the heat, and go back to bed. She hadn’t found any other signs of Jeroan all morning.

What Kelley really wanted to do was track him with the sweet phone Mom and Dad had bought her the day before they started their new school here. One of the few benefits of having lawyers for parents—they usually had money for stuff like that. Even if the parentals didn’t have time to even hang around long enough to see her and Jeroan open their gifts.

As usual, Kelley had made a point of reading the skimpy manual cover to cover before she ever turned it on. Then she went online and read all the websites and wikis and blogs she could for the eGadget. She liked knowing all the secret features, including all the good hacks. Just in case.

But Jeroan must’ve been too far away to get a reading from the tiny little GPS locater Kelley had convinced Mom to secretly sew into the lining of his coat. She’d hacked her phone to be able to find him, but she must’ve missed a step or two—the GPS wasn’t working right.

So she had to search the old-fashioned way, without any of her best tech tools. Just walking around downtown and looking for clues and hoping to catch a break. Kelley hated the old-fashioned way.

She hiked down another block of Main Street, her breath puffing out in front of her as she hurried past a busy coffee shop and a brewpub just opening for the day. Her phone gave off a soft beep, and then, after a few more seconds, beeped again.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” she whispered to herself as she slid closer to the brick wall of the store on her right. Jeroan had moved into range.

Three blocks ahead of her, on the other side of the road and moving away from her, walked a pair of boys. One black and one white—Jeroan and his buddy.

The beeping continued, each one a tiny bit faster. She pulled out her phone and hit the Mute button. Pressing a few more buttons, she keyed up the video camera tool. Gotta love the eGadget’s gadgets, baby.

She aimed the phone in front of her, squinting at the small image taking shape in the camera’s rectangular viewscreen, and waited to hit Record (she only had so much battery and disk space on her smart phone, so she couldn’t be wasteful).

She fiddled with the touchscreen on the phone to get a better angle on Jeroan and his buddy as she followed them down a side street. They were heading toward the railroad tracks and the big, brown river beyond that.

Black girl with a camera, Kelley imagined the small-town Iowans whispering to each other. Watch her closely! She’s surely up to no good.

* * * * * *

A little over fourteen years ago, Jeroan Jeffrey Johnson Strickland was born five minutes before Kelley, and he’d never let her forget it. He loved reminding her that she was his younger sister. Kelley had a pretty good idea of what had really happened: he’d pushed her out of the way so he could come out first and grab all the attention.

Well, look at my “big” brother now, she thought. Cutting class and wandering the dead streets of Dubuque with some skinny white kid in a baggy Chicago Bulls windbreaker. She’d been following them for almost eight blocks, and as she watched from across the street, the two of them headed down an alley.

Holding her breath, Kelley tiptoed behind an old brown Chevy Blazer. If she held her phone just right, she could track what they were doing without leaving her cover.

“You little hellions,” she said. On the screen of her phone, she watched Jeroan and his buddy creep up on a bearded old man sprawled out in the middle of the alley.

She felt a weird pang in her chest looking at the guy all dressed in ragged layers of clothes, with his white hair and beard standing up at crazy angles. The old guy didn’t have a clue that he was about to have visitors—he looked like he’d either just woken up or was about to pass out. His floppy red hat sat next to him on the ground, forgotten.

Kelley hit the Record button on her phone at last.

Jeroan and his skinny buddy were less than ten feet from the old man, stalking him like first-time hunters approaching a deer. Or gangster-wannabes approaching their first initiation victim.

And unless Kelley did something, fast, the Jeroan Delinquent Show would all start again.

She sucked in an icy breath, about to scream at them to stop. But for a few seconds her mind locked up, and she couldn’t think of any words to shout at them. Panicked, she looked at the helpless old guy and almost started shouting some crazy nonsense words at Jeroan, she felt so mad.

My brain’s backfiring on me. I gotta pull it together.

“Back off!” she managed to yell at last.

Jeroan jumped and stepped back, and his buddy had to actually lift his bony white hand off the old man’s shoulder.

And then the old man on the alley floor turned.

And looked right at Kelley.

The alley suddenly filled with light, as if a spotlight had been snapped on. At the same time, something surged through Kelley’s hand, and she almost dropped her precious eGadget. The weird light in the alley came from the man’s eyes.

But that’s crazy, she thought, blinking fast to clear her own vision. It was just the sun. Had to be the sun. And my imagination.

She gripped her phone tight and yelled again, “Back off, Jeroan!”

“Kelley!” her brother roared as he saw her at last. “Get out of here, idiot!”

Kelley wasn’t looking at Jeroan, though. She couldn’t ignore it now—the eyes of the old man next to her brother really were lit up like a pair of blue beacons. Their light ignited his bushy white eyebrows and static-straightened hair, which stood out straight from his head like pins in a pincushion.

As she met the man’s gaze, unable to look away, Kelley felt a warm trickle of sweat creep from under her cap, roll down her forehead, and slip down her cheek.

In that instant, she had an odd pair of thoughts, back-to-back.

The first was: This old guy doesn’t need me to rescue him here.

The second was: I may have spared Jeroan and his buddy some trouble by interrupting just now.

At last the old man blinked, and the weird blue light winked out.

Shadows fell over the alley and its three occupants. Kelley let out the breath she’d been holding and heard the echo of strange words somewhere in her head, like far-off music spilling out of someone’s car window two blocks away. Words she’d never heard before.

And then she had to stop recording and run, because her brother and his new pal were charging after her, leaving behind the old man in the alley. She tucked her phone inside her coat, spun on her heel, and sprinted hard up the street. If she had any breath to spare in her lungs, she would’ve been laughing like crazy.

* * * * * *

After ten minutes of hard sprinting, Kelley knew she needed someplace quiet and out of the way if she was going to stay safe. A store or restaurant she could go into and tell some sob story about the mean boys chasing her, and then maybe call a cab—if this city even had cabs—to whisk her back home safely.

So far, though, all the buildings on this side of the street were either empty or still “Coming Soon!” according to their signs. Kelley looked back, just for a second, and saw that Jeroan and his buddy were less than half a block behind her, cussing and yelling her name. Jeroan’s buddy already lagged ten feet behind him, fading fast.

Kelley laughed out loud as she put on a burst of speed and flew past the huge gold-domed Court House, dodging patches of black ice on the sidewalk. Jeroan could really sprint, but she could always take him in the long distances. She just had to make it a few more blocks, and she’d be in the clear.

Her good spirits disappeared, though, two blocks later, when she saw a police cruiser hum past one street up, close to the tall clock tower she’d passed earlier. She saw red brake lights. Her old Chicago instincts kicked in, and she pivoted hard and sprinted down a narrow one-way street.

As soon as she’d run a dozen steps down this street, Kelley looked to her left and saw a tiny shop with an “Open” sign in its small front window. Like magic.

She skidded to a stop and gazed up, still breathing hard. A faded wooden sign above the windowless door announced “Haze Books and Gifts” in bright blue letters. Above to the name, a winged white horse reared up next to a grinning green dragon.

Panting for breath, Kelley pushed against the heavy wooden door and entered the shop.

A tiny bell above her let out a sharp, tinkling sound that nearly made Kelley yell out in surprise. Not even daring to breathe, with her heartbeat like a series of gunshots in her ears, she stood with her back against the closed door until she heard her brother thunder past, followed five seconds later by his stumbling buddy. She gave them another ten seconds before exhaling.

Just like old times. She peeled off her lucky cap and shook out her hair. Jeroan and I will have to sort it all out tonight, back home. After he cools off. I just hope he doesn’t try to bother any more bums today to try and impress his new friend.

With that thought in her head and the tangy smell of incense filling her nose, Kelley took a cautious look around the shop.

Luckily, the store contained no people, not even a shopkeeper, but it was filled with just about everything else. Covering the walls from floor to ceiling, black bookcases overflowed with paperback, hardcover, and leather-bound books. More books were stacked on top of and around the cases as well.

In front of Kelley stood two dozen long, wooden tables, each with a different arrangement of related artifacts.

A smile crept across her face as she gazed at the neatly arranged rows of crystal balls, pewter figurines, jeweled necklaces and bracelets, wildly colored magazines and newspapers, bottled spices, and all sorts of musical instruments. There was even a table full of windup toys, which came in the shape of knights, wizards, dragons, trolls, and other fantasy creatures and monsters.

The windup toys caught her eye, and she moved toward that table in the center of the shop. The store seemed much bigger from the inside, and she felt like it expanded with each step she took. Now that her pulse had returned to normal, she crept forward, stuffing her cap into her coat pocket. She’d covered half the length of the store before she realized she was tiptoeing.

Relax. It’s just a store. Maybe the first really worth-a-crap store I’ve come across in this city. She rubbed her cold nose. Even if they do burn too much incense here.

When Kelley took a step closer to the table full of windup toys, the table exploded.

Every single one of the windup toys burst into motion—wizards waggled their tiny staffs, knights raised their shields, warrior women swung their swords, centaurs reared up and kicked their hooves, and countless other mythical beasts clattered and danced noisily on the table. Kelley fought the urge to dive under the table full of herbs and incense sticks next to her.

But instead of running off once more this morning, she stepped closer to the chaos unwinding on the table. She reached out for a clattering green and blue dragon half a foot tall, its curving gray wings beating the air madly as it hovered a few feet above the table.

Kelley stepped back, afraid to exhale.

With a graceful movement, the dragon flew toward her. Without thinking, Kelley held out her hand, and he dropped onto her palm. As soon as its cold metal talons touched her, the crazy orchestra of windup toys stopped clattering.

“Hey, little fella,” Kelley whispered to the wound-down dragon in the sudden silence, her voice cracking. She couldn’t stop grinning. “You’re the best thing I’ve seen all winter. Even if you and your friends nearly did give me a heart attack.”

Letting out a shaky breath, she admired the intricate scales carved into the dragon’s muscular back. He was surprisingly heavy, because he was made of metal instead of plastic like she’d expected. What toys were made of metal these days? Totally old-school.

She was tempted to turn the metal key in his back, just below his wings, to wind him up again, but decided against it.

“May I help you?” asked a voice from directly behind her.

Kelley jumped again and let go of the dragon. The little beast’s gears clattered back into action, and he circled around Kelley’s head twice before landing obediently next to her dripping boots. Kelley turned toward the voice with her face burning hot.

A petite white woman with black, gray-streaked hair stood looking up at Kelley from next to a table piled high with masks of all shape and color.

“I am sorry, miss,” the woman said. Her eyes were the light blue color of the summer sky, and Kelley saw a hint of laughter in her mouth. “I did not intend to frighten you.”

She didn’t seem all that sorry for scaring me.

“Um, hi,” Kelley said. “Sorry for messing with your dragon. And all your other toys.” She looked down at the metal dragon on the floor, his front paws and left wing still twitching. “Is he broken?”

“I am sure Alexander is all right,” the woman murmured, with the hint of an accent that Kelley couldn’t recognize. “I am Ms. Haze. Welcome to my shop.”

She held out a hand, and Kelley shook it. The woman’s fingers were like ice, though the shop was warm and she wore a thick purple shawl over a woolen gray sweater.

“What can I help you with today, Miss…”

“Strickland, but just call me Kelley.”

Kelley fiddled with the cap in her pocket with one hand and tried to pat down her wild hair with the other, stalling for time. She felt like she needed an alibi, since this was a school day, after all.

“Well. I have a report due for this class at school—today’s an in-service day—and I needed to pick up some…” She glanced around at the walls and gave the woman her most convincing grin. “Books.”

Ms. Haze nodded and said nothing, watching almost expectantly, with that smidgen of a smile still on her face.

In for a penny, Mom always said, in for a pound. Whatever that meant.

“So anyway,” Kelley continued, “I’ve covered pretty much everything our library had to offer, and I was hoping you’d have something more.”

“And your topic is?”

“Oh.” Kelley’s mind raced for a moment until she remembered the strange blue light in that old man’s eyes just a few minutes ago, back in the alley. She shuddered as she remembered how weird and almost dizzy that light had made her feel. And then she thought about how she’d found the store, just like that. Like snapping your fingers. Just like…

“Magic,” Kelley said, and then swallowed. “My research paper, I mean. It’s about, um, magic.”

“Ah,” Ms. Haze said, leaning closer. Her smile grew wider. “Of course.”

Kelley felt like she should say something more as the older woman gazed at her without blinking. She fought the urge to scratch her nose again as the smell of incense tickled her nose. Then Ms. Haze stepped back and made small humming sounds while she gazed around the shop. Kelley exhaled.

“Let us try something over here, Kelley, in section sixteen. Follow me.”

Without waiting for her, the little woman marched off toward a tall set of bookcases on the far wall, plucked five books from five different locations, and plopped them into Kelley’s arms.

“You could try these for a start. I do not think your school library will have these in its collection. Now, let me check a price for one of your books. One moment.”

Stepping away quickly, the petite woman disappeared behind a velvet curtain near the back of the store. Kelley hadn’t even noticed that curtain earlier.

She set the books on a rickety brown chair and picked up the first one on the pile. It was a fat leather book with a sunburst etched into the cover, and it was called An Unabridged Yet Concise History of the Mystical World, by Dr. Sarah van Prattshaw Reese. Yawn. Kelley preferred reading stuff like this on her eGadget, so she could skim faster and jump around more when she got bored.

That reminded her—she set down the big book of magic and checked her phone to see where Jeroan was. He’d gone out of GPS range again, apparently. He was probably walking by that big KWWL satellite dish again. No beeping or blinking.

Good news for me, Kelley thought, but not so good for the bums of Dubuque.

After her eGadget was back in her jeans pocket again, she unzipped her coat and looked around the store one more time. She felt relaxed here, like she could stay here all day long, finding new amazing stuff on every overflowing shelf and table, with no pain-in-the-butt brother around to muck things up. If Ms. Haze would let her.

A small white book in a black bookcase next to her caught Kelley’s eye. She reached up and pulled it out.

The book was warm to the touch. Its cover was blank, with an elaborate, dark blue symbol printed on the spine, nothing more. The symbol looked like a fancy “Q” fused with a “Z,” with about a hundred squiggles and curlicues. It almost looked like the planet Saturn, but with more rings and doodads orbiting it.

Kelley cracked opened the book, which wasn’t much bigger than her hand, and flipped to the first page. The first page inside the book announced the title as Words of Magic.

Footsteps sounded behind the curtain, and Kelley felt her shoulders hunch instinctively. She closed the book again and ran her thumb across the fancy symbol on the spine of the book. Her thumb tingled, just for a second, when it ran over the squiggly icon.

Words of Magic. Right.

Without another thought, Kelley stuffed the little white book into the inner pocket of her coat.

“Here it is, Kelley,” Ms. Haze called out faintly from the other room. She slipped through the curtain with a ledger in her hand. She set it down behind a glass countertop. She now wore tiny half-moon glasses perched precariously on her nose, and she began punching numbers into a brown metal cash register that was almost as big as she was.

“I will sell you all five books for ninety-three dollars. What do you think?”

Kelley winced at the price but handed the older woman her shiny new credit card, courtesy of her Mom and Dad. She hoped the guilt she was feeling about snatching the book wasn’t showing on her face.

“I hope these help you with your, ah, report, Kelley,” Ms. Haze said with a smile, running the card through an old, rickety card reader. “May I get you anything else?”

Kelley swallowed and looked around the shop, taking in all the fantastic trinkets and the endless array of books. She forgot her guilty conscience for a moment when her eyes fell on the dragon once more. She walked over to him and picked him up from the floor.

“I’d love to buy him, too,” she said, handing the dragon back to Ms. Haze at the counter. “He’d go great in my bedroom. But I really shouldn’t spend any more…”

Ms. Haze took the dragon from her and placed him in a small, square box. She pushed the box across the counter. “He is yours.”

“What? But I—”

“Take Alexander. There is no charge. I know you will appreciate him. And he will take care of you as well.” She gave Kelley a wink so fast that Kelley thought she’d imagined it. “And I know you still believe.”

“Thank you,” Kelley whispered as she gathered up the bag of books and the box. She walked out of the warmth of Haze Books and Gifts and into the cold with her arms loaded down. She was feeling uncomfortable and guilty, but she was also filled with a giddy feeling that she hadn’t felt since she was a kid.

The title of her stolen book echoed through her brain as she stood in the tiny alcove of the store entrance.

Words of Magic. Magic!

Kelley took a few steps forward, and the harsh wind hit her like a fist. She winced, half-expecting Jeroan and his buddy to be out there waiting for her. But the streets in this section of the city were quiet and deserted, and the small book was warm against her chest, making her forget the November cold.

Black girl with a stolen book, Kelley thought, smiling, eager to get home and start reading. Someone call the authorities, fast!

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:

Kelley and her twin brother Jeroan just moved to Dubuque, Iowa. Their parents uprooted them from their home in Chicago after learning that Jeroan had gotten mixed up with a gang. As the only black girl in her grade, Kelley is not pleased about the move.

One cold morning in November, after trying (unsuccessfully) to keep Jeroan out of trouble again, she gets “infected” by magic after reading aloud from a small leatherbound book she finds.

She also blows up the family home at the same time.

Soon Kelley and Jeroan must face up to a power-hungry, centuries-old Sorcerer who wants to rid the world of what he calls “renegade” magic-users. Only Kelley’s new way of using magic will save their new city and their magically infected friends, though she may lose her brother in the process.

A novel for all ages about magic, growing up, and finding your place within those two very different realms.

I’ll be serializing A Sudden Outbreak of Magic right here on my site, one to two chapters a week, or you can snag an ebook from the links below if you don’t want to wait. We start today with the Prologue!

(And hey, a sequel, A Wild Epidemic of Magic, is in the works and will be done in early 2012!)

• 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.

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

Prologue

Excerpted from Words of Magic, page 1533:

On that fateful day in October of 1871, the daylight in downtown Chicago was waning, the wind off the lake was at my back, and I, Jonathan Archibald Masterson Brightwell, was on the run again.

From inside my dirty wool vest, I could feel the flutter of tiny gears in the pocket watch against my chest. The time between each tick of my prized watch felt a tiny bit longer than the last.

Time. I’d spent more time running in my life than I had not running. For over three centuries—though I looked no older than fifteen years of age to most people. I tried to look older, and thicker, by wearing dark suits two sizes too large for me, like the blue suit I wore on this warm fall evening. But I was fooling no one. I was just a skinny, ignorant boy, in over my head once more.

I hurried past dusty wooden storefronts and around gaslight poles, inhaling the nose-tickling smells of horses, perfume, and manure. The other walkers around me wore their Sunday best, and many of them gave me a smile or a tip of the hat.

If only you knew my history, I thought. You’d keep your distance and not smile.

Still hurrying down the street, I dipped my right hand into my satchel and pulled a hooded, dark blue robe that seemed far too big to fit in the small satchel.

“Finally,” I whispered as I pulled on the robe. I kept the hood down, for now. After touching the round disc of my watch—still ticking!—under my robe, safe inside my vest, I felt a reassuring wave of confidence. I hadn’t worn this robe in a long time.

And tonight I would need it.

Though I’d slept most of the day in a barn in my wet clothes, buried under two feet of hay, I still hadn’t had time to recover from my misadventures last night. That was when the five burly men in long black coats had cornered me by the lakeshore. Somehow the followers of the Druid had found me, again.

I’d only been in the city a few months, working in the city’s south side, helping the always-coughing people turned away from the hospitals. I’d tried to be careful, saving those I could, comforting those I couldn’t, using my Words sparingly.

At least I got in a good shot at O’Shea, I thought. Before I dove deep into the waters of Lake Michigan, I’d blasted a hole clean through O’Shea’s brown bowler.

When I crossed over quiet LaSalle Street, three blocks from the bridge and the horse and wagon I’d rented with the last of my money, I pulled up short. I could smell smoke drifting up from the south.

“Wind’s picked up,” I muttered, and then bit down hard on my bottom lip. I’d been talking to myself too much lately, like a doddering old fool.

I passed the water pumping station and saw the metal arches of a bridge rising above the low warehouses and stockyards around it. The clank of the pumping station’s massive machinery filled the air as it drew water for the people of the city in an unending battle against time and need.

I know the feeling, I wanted to tell the water pumping equipment. The constant, thankless struggle is tiring, isn’t it?

When a harsh voice answered me, I realized I’d spoken out loud again.

“If ye are so tired, Johnny-cakes,” the voice drawled with a thick Irish accent, “p’rhaps I could innarest ye in a wee nap?”

Blocking my way onto the Randolph Street Bridge stood a red-haired man, stout and imposing at nearly six feet tall. His black overcoat dragged on the ground, picking up dust with each step he took. The other walkers scattered at the sight of the big man and the crackling tool in his hand.

“Whatever it is you have to offer me, Seamus O’Shea, must be either stolen or bad for my health. Thank you, but no thank you.”

“Call me Amsterdam,” O’Shea spat. “‘At’s me code name, boy. You shouldn’a found out me real name! Th’ boss’ll kill me!”

I had a Word prepared, but I hated wasting it on one such as O’Shea. Because if O’Shea was here, that meant Michael would be here as well.

“Where’s your hat, Seamus?”

The Irishman answered by lifting the long black object in his hand. The two tips of the arcane metal tool ended in wicked metal prongs. When he clicked the triggers next to the rubber handles, the prongs sparked with a sickly green light.

I pulled the hood of my robe over my head and—hoping that Yishi’s charms still retained their powers—I began walking toward O’Shea. As I drew within two feet of the bigger man, my pocket watch clattered louder and faster, and its metal grew hot against my chest.

I inhaled, saw the lines of power swirl and dance through the air around me, and then channeled them into my watch. Heart fluttering and then pounding, I let the energy swirl through the clockwork gears of my watch with a rush of heat and a clattering of metal. At last, I exhaled with a Word from deep inside my chest: “Gholt.”

A burst of blue light flashed from the watch hidden inside my worn robe and covered O’Shea like a blast of lightning. O’Shea froze, his big hands still squeezing the triggers to his crackling tool.

“You come at me with Pincers?” I gasped at O’Shea, lowering my hood. My hands and the rest of my body became visible again. The Irishman stared at me with eyes filled with surprise, shock, and a growing flicker of fear. The rest of his body remained motionless.

I wanted to crack O’Shea between the eyes with his own Pincers, but I reminded myself that he was just a follower. I could have ended up just like him.

So I turned instead and ran onto the bridge, smoke filling my lungs. Most nights the bridge was filled with coaches and walkers, and the air would echo with the ring of hooves, wheels, boots, and shoes on the battered wood. But not tonight.

I looked to the south and got my first glimpse of the fire. Flames licked at wooden structures of the Gas Works and Bateham’s Mills, and the fire was spreading to either side of the river.

“The wind,” I said. “The wind will make this worse.”

My nightmare memories of the battlefields from the brutal War Between the States less than a decade ago forced their way into my mind. I’d worn both the blue and the gray during those dark times, slipping behind either army’s lines so I could heal the wounded and try to save the dying. When I was caught—as I always was—I simply escaped with a Word or two, switched sides, and started all over again.

I could hear the fire wagon sirens now, mixed with screams. Each tick of my watch was a hammer blow against my chest, strong enough to take away my breath.

Pausing in the lane reserved for stagecoaches and horses, I realized that Michael and his henchmen had started the fires. He knew that I would want to help fight the fires. Once again, I was trapped in the middle, with no good option to take.

In front of me, a slender man in a dark suit and top hat stepped onto the bridge.

“Michael,” I called. “It’s been a long time.”

I hid my shaking hands with the sleeves of my robe and approached the man.

“Johnny,” he said, doffing his hat sarcastically at me. His receding hair was thinner than it had been the last time I’d seen him, before the war. Thick blonde sideburns framed his face down to his chin. “Hello again, my good friend.”

I glanced behind me. On the other end of the bridge, O’Shea and two other henchmen brandished black Pincers crackling with green energy, keeping people from using the bridge.

Meanwhile, the dry city was going up like kindling.

“All for me?” I said. “You’d burn Chicago just to find me? Not very subtle.”

Michael chuckled as he walked closer. “We will simply make up some excuse, as we always do—some old fool dropped his cigarette, or a cow kicked over a lantern. And my people—our people—will remain as invisible as ever.”

As Michael spoke, I exhaled and let my eyes cross slightly so I could again see the lines of magic that were constantly twirling in the air around me. Once I saw them, I was able to pull them down and snare them in the inner workings of the watch held snug in my vest. The gears suddenly began moving wildly, like a caged beast, as power flowed through the cogs of the watch, gathering the familiar blue energy of my clockwork magic.

I pulled my glowing, sizzling pocket watch free of my vest, aimed it at Michael, and screamed three Words. A globe of blue fire as big as my head shot out of my gold-plated watch, headed right for Michael.

But my former teacher only laughed and created a wall of green-tinted energy in front of himself with one simple Word. My ball of blue magic bounced harmlessly off Michael’s green shield, though the force of the impact made him lose his top hat and stagger back three steps.

For the first time all night, I saw Michael’s face tighten. As far as I could tell, the man used no watch or other clockwork device to channel and manipulate the wild energies of magic. Instead, I watched him wave at O’Shea to come closer.

That explained it. To conserve his own energy, Michael wanted to use the Irishman’s blood—instead of his own—to channel the magic before using it on me. Once again I felt a tinge of pity for O’Shea. He was Michael’s tool, no more important than a freshly wound watch.

“You know,” Michael said, “you really must give up your little windup toys, Johnny, and embrace the true magic taught to us by the Druid. The magic of the blood—” He gave a smile and a nod in O’Shea’s direction “—preferably someone else’s instead of your own—is much more powerful, much more efficient. And what happens if you lose your precious watch?”

I clamped my jaws closed, determined not to give Michael the pleasure of seeing my fatigue and fear. Not after what he’d done to Moammar and Yishi.

I touched the golden watch, its metal hot inside my thick vest. Michael just shook his head and smiled.

“Jonathan. It will be quick, just like it was at Stonehenge. Come closer.”

You come closer, I thought, my hands beckoning the other man. You get into position, you traitor. Murderer.

“It has been entertaining, has it not, my good, good friend?” A handful of blonde hairs now dusted the shoulders of Michael’s dark jacket. “All of the changes in this time, the new advances in science and engineering? Eighteen hundred and seventy-one—how can it be such a year, already? So much progress and so much violence, all in such a short period of time. The Gatling gun, now that was fun, eh?”

Before I could respond, a sudden explosion made the bridge under me sway.

“Ah.” Michael glanced at the orange glow of the fires to the south of us. “That would be the pumping station. Right on schedule.”

When Michael turned back to me, I was waiting for him. I held both of my hands up, all ten fingers aimed at him. My pocket watch was ticking so fast against my chest that all I could feel and hear was one solid tick, blurred together like a bell that never stopped ringing.

“Noloquorstdi!”

Blue-white light erupted out of my watch. The light broke apart and shot into Michael like a thousand tiny darts. He created a shield again, but half of the darts slipped through his barrier. Michael took a step back, almost stumbled.

“I’ve wanted to do that,” I spat, “for twenty years. Ever since Stonehenge.”

As Michael fought to stand, I looked down. My watch had stopped ticking.

That did it. I panicked and started running for the edge of the bridge. My vision was so blurred by heat, smoke, and exhaustion that I could scarcely see. The Words always came at a price, and they may just have cost me my watch, if not my life.

Curling lines of power and magnetism rushed around me as Michael reached out to magic for one more attack. He didn’t even trying to force it through O’Shea. Instead, he took all the energy into himself, into his own blood this time.

Inhaling smoke and gagging from the stink of burning buildings, I leapt off the bridge. My eyes burned at my failure to stop this conflagration. But at the height of my leap, a burst of dazzling green light from my former teacher hit me in the chest.

My watch-making tools inside my coat caught the blast. Tiny screwdrivers, calipers, wrenches, and gears exploded into the night air like metallic rain.

My final vision on that day was of my old friend and mentor Michael Azure, standing upside-down in my inverted vision, his arms raised triumphantly in front of the burning city. The image was etched onto my eyes as I hung for a helpless moment in the hot air.

And then I dropped like a stone into the river, and I knew nothing more, for many, many years to come.

And that ends the prologue! If you enjoyed what you read, feel free to make a donation via PayPal:

UnWrecked Press presents: something new, maybe?

Whoa. Just realized that tomorrow is the first Friday in over a year that I won’t be running a short story here on my site. I ran 52 stories here in 2011, never missed a Friday for my  Fiction Friday series from UnWrecked Press.

I can’t say I miss all the effort of putting up a blog post, finding cover art, designing the cover, writing a short description of the story, and then making the story into a 99-cent ebook. But it was a good learning experience, and all my old stories are now officially ebooks.

And I am glad to be done.

But…

With tomorrow being Friday the 13th, and that big gaping hole in my blog/journal… I just have to do something new.

But what? Hmmm….

Stay tuned, friends. Stay tuned.

UnWrecked Press presents: Free Fiction Friday

This week’s Free Fiction Friday story from UnWrecked Press is “Finder.” You can read the entire story, below, for free.

And… that’s it! The start of a new year, and the end to all my stories. I’m all caught up and ebooked! Check out all the ebooks at my Stories page.

Though something tells me that I’m not done writing about Bim and Hanky J, from the story below…

Finder

Wedged into the unforgiving passenger seat of a twelve-year-old Ford Escort, I took a deep breath and shoved more food into my mouth.

My old friend Hanky J sat perched in the driver’s seat, waiting on me without watching me. We were down south, ten miles north of Arkansas City. Both of us cold and miserable in the rain, parked in front of a wide expanse of brown, slow-moving Mississippi.

I hadn’t even realized he’d stopped the car. I’d been too busy working my way through an economy-sized bag of Cheetos, chewing slowly, savoring each morsel. I was shoving handfuls of food into my gob, trying to get a line on our missing person.

She was still alive, fortunately. Though I feared that my connection to her—the image of a tiny, dark room without windows, and the weight of a jagged rock clenched tight in one hand—had grown weaker. That I was losing the taste of her.

Now Hanky J was shaking his head, giving me that look.

“What?” I said around my mouthful of cheese-flavored snacks. These were the crunchy kind, too, not the nasty puffs. Definitely beat some of the other shit I’d eaten in the name of duty. “I’m workin’ on it. Don’t stare.”

Henry Johnson, aka Hanky J (his self-made nickname, which I always though broke some sort of rule, somewhere), was a private investigator. His specialty in the past few years had been tracking down identity thieves online, but now and then he liked to branch out, especially when it came to missing persons.

Hank was also my best friend since first grade, the only kid at our school who’d been on the receiving end of more shit than a goofball like me from bullies like Darren, due to the fact that he was the smallest, not to mention darkest-skinned, kid in our grade.

I don’t know what possessed his parents to move to tiny Faison, Iowa, thirty years ago, but I owed them.

Hanky J did a pretty good job of hiding his disgust at being  associated with me right at that moment, with my flab as well as my crumbs spilling over the car seat and onto the console, my bag of nuclear orange junk food growing more and more empty.

He never said anything about it. I’m sure he just loved the fact that he had to fondle my left love handle each time he shifted his Escort into gear.

“This is my m.o.,” I began, though I knew I didn’t have to explain anything to him. “I can’t help—”

“Look. I’m freezing, and this rain is making me crazy.” Hanky crinkled up his nose and cracked his window an inch. “And you’ve got more b.o. more than m.o.”

“Screw you,” I laughed, but just for a few seconds. This job was getting to Hanky J. He usually never commented on my lack of showering and my overeating when we were on a case. I think it was the water. He hated being close to so much water. It was too much like the time he lost Alisa.

“She’s close,” I said after swallowing my most recent mouthful. I really could’ve used a 20-ounce Diet Coke about now. “And she was definitely here the night she got taken. Memory’s strongest from that night. They stopped by here, for something.”

Hank rubbed the point of his carefully manicured beard and sighed loud enough to drown out the rain for a few seconds.

“Bastard probably wanted to show her where she’d end up if she didn’t cooperate. This part of the river’s deep, and that spillway over there would’ve freaked her out.”

Hank pointed a tiny brown finger at the rocks lining the riverbed not ten feet from his Escort’s front bumper. Brown water gushed from a culvert ten feet wide set in those rocks, a horizontal waterfall churning into the river.

Just looking at it made my belly recoil and clench, recoil and clench, sensations I’d grown used to in the past two decades.

With a sigh, in spite of the ache in my full stomach, I shoved another handful of orange crunches into my mouth. Hanky J had to look away.

As I chewed, I closed my eyes, forgot about my employer/best friend next to me, and blocked out the shudder of running water and the patter of rain on the car roof.

I focused only on the food rolling around on my tongue like so much starchy debris, trying to reconnect with our lost girl.

Her favorite snack had been Cheetos. Just my luck; I was a sweets guy, not a salty guy. Get lost, gag reflex. Get lost.

* * * * *

You’d be surprised at how difficult it can be to find out a complete stranger’s favorite food. Especially if that person has just gone missing.

Hanky J and I were used to weird situations, though.

He could usually dredge up some good hints using his computer skills. I was sure a lot of the software he used was illegal in most states, but that didn’t stop him. If that didn’t work, he’d impersonate a cop and make a phone call or two to the missing person’s friends. Sometimes I’d figure it out on my own, guessing at foods, looking for that connection one bite at a time.

The trick, of course, was learning this information without becoming kidnapping suspects in the process.

I remembered my first find, over twenty years and about two hundred pounds ago. Darren, our hometown’s bully, had lost his dog, and he employed me under duress: “Find Buddy or start picking up teeth off the sidewalk.”

The looks I got for asking what kind of food Buddy liked to eat, all those years ago, were priceless. A pretty innocent question, to get a better feel for the dog.

Looking at the half-empty can of Alpo that Darren brought me from their fridge, covered in Saran Wrap, I felt a pang of empathy for the other kid, even if he had enjoyed knuckling my skull for most of the fifth grade. I don’t think Darren had been able to throw away that last bit of Buddy’s memory from their fridge.

At the same time, something went “thunk” inside my head, my Eureka moment, which occurred as I was sniffing a can of weeks-old dog food.

“Can I please have a spoon?” I asked.

* * * * *

Her name was April. April Mae Honeycutt, to be exact. A name all over the Net and on every news channel in the past few days. She would turn sixteen next week. Security footage from the mall in Greenville had uncovered just two fuzzy images of a man, first walking up to April, then standing right next to her, hands on hips, looking down at her. A tuft of gray hair under his navy blue baseball cap under the harsh mall fluorescents.

That had been two and a half days ago. No other evidence had come to light, according to Hanky J’s contact in the Little Rock police department.

All of that was common knowledge, though, easily googled. I pushed away the tiny flinching fear inside of me that said, “This is it. You lost it, Bim. You’re nobody again. Just another loser living alone, two blocks away from your parents in a cheap rented house.”

“Bim,” Hanky J said from next to me, though he may as well have been fifty miles away. “Bim…”

With her favorite food now digesting inside in my sizable gut, so close to where she’d been recently, the images and memories and thoughts related to April’s disappearance now came faster, like bad dreams coming on the heels of too much pepperoni-and-sausage-and-onion pizza the night before.

I sighed. It had been years since I’d had good pizza.

“Last night,” I muttered. Take that, insecurities.

“Here,” I said, my own voice sounding miles away as I went back.

Dark. Dark out here under the half-moon, the night cold and too cloudy for many stars.

The river pulled at her sore eyes through the tinted windshield like a giant magnet.

She held her bound hands in front of her—metal handcuffs—when he pushed her out of his black SUV and onto the rocks.

Legs wobbly, as if she’d been walking all day, or standing without a break, and she tumbled, hit her shin on a rock. He’d taken her shoes, probably as a precaution against running, and her socks were already wet and muddy.

Strong hands gripped her, long fingernails biting into her upper arms.

All she could think about was food. Cheetos. Hungry.

He’d already let go of her arms. He never touched unless he had to. At least so far.

“We all end up here,” he’d said in her ear, standing behind her. Voice low and angry, hint of a southern accent that had never fully faded. “Thrown in once our usefulness is up, washed downriver out into the gulf, then out into the ocean to rot.”

April was too weak to run from him and his low, unsteady voice, and the knowledge both haunted and infuriated her.

* * * * *

I swallowed and nearly choked, and the desperate, hopeless night was replaced by gray noon light and my own coughing. Then my gut gave a lurch.

“Oh man,” I said, eyes watering. I grabbed for the door handle.

As I lost all the junk food I’d ingested in the past half-hour onto the gravel, I felt April—just April, never April Mae—slipping from my head for a second. I nearly panicked. We were too close for me to lose it now, or for the connection to just disappear because I couldn’t stay focused. Or worse.

I’d only lost the connection four times in all these years. Those missing folks hadn’t survived long enough for me to find them.

But by the time I’d finished spitting into the rain, I still had my connection to the lost girl. I dropped back into the car with a shaky groan. The Cheetos were strong, and her will to live was even stronger.

“I don’t know how you do that,” Hanky J said as he started the Escort. His right hand bumped me in the side as he put his car in reverse. “But I’m glad for it. Which way?”

I stuffed three sticks of gum in my mouth. A black SUV. A man dressed in gray. A voice tinged with madness, spouting off nonsense about water.

“Where’s the closest lake?” I said, feeling the gum dislodge the last bits of junk food from my teeth. With them came the image of a lake, a pier, and a two-story white house behind it. April had gotten a good look at the place, thank God, before he’d taken her inside.

We all end up here, he’d said to her, facing the water.

“So,” I said as Hank elbowed me again with an apologetic wince as he put the car into first gear, “at what point should we engage the local authorities?”

“Not just yet,” Hank said. “Just point me in the direction of where he’s got her. I gotta talk to this guy first. I have to know.”

I stifled a burp and tossed the empty Cheetos bag into the back.

Hank, I thought. Alisa’s safe now. Stop chasing her.

“Fine. We’ll have to stop at the first convenience store we come across, though. I’m outta fuel.”

* * * * *

Some people were cut out to be regular nine-to-fivers. They got along with others, played nice for their bosses, got raises and lived normal lives. But when you catch weird vibes whenever you share a person’s favorite food, even if they aren’t lost, it can make for very awkward social moments.

Like at my first job, at the factory in town during my first attempt at college, when we had chocolate cake for Miss Doris’ forty-year anniversary at the plant. And I learned of her hot senior-citizen lust for the new priest down at the Catholic church. Ruined chocolate cake for me, for forever.

So I started working hard on focusing my strange skills, tuning out all the static, eating only the kind of foods I figured people didn’t like: collard greens, liver and onions, Brussels sprouts, unflavored and unsalted potato chips, mac and cheese with just a tiny bit of the cheese mix added.

Either weird flavors or not enough to keep that food from being beloved by any one person. Problem was, even when I wasn’t focusing on finding anything or anyone, I just kept eating.

I ended up moving back in with my parents at the age of twenty after dropping out of school at the U of Iowa, with my prospects dimming until all I could see on the horizon were more shifts at the factory and long days of clock-watching.

So I guess you could say that running into Henry—”Call me Hanky J, Bim!”—at the grocery store that day had been my salvation.

We’d lost touch, and something in him was different. He smiled less, for one. I’d learn later that it was the bad stuff with his girlfriend Alisa that had added about ten years to him. He told me later that when they’d found her, alone and half-crazy after a week in a shack next to a smelly river, she’d only asked for Hank.

They’d never found her kidnapper, and she’d never gotten a good look at him. That had haunted both of them, and eventually killed their relationship five years later.

There in the grocery store, Hank told me how he’d gotten his two-year degree in criminal justice at the local community college. He said he’d been looking for me, ironically. He wanted to know how I’d always been able to find stuff, especially people. He never said anything about Alisa, but he didn’t need to.

Pretty soon Hanky J was hooking me up with work, getting me out of my parents’ house and building up what little self-esteem I had after dropping out of school, while he got to build his private eye reputation with my finds.

His favorite food was deep-dish sausage and mushroom pizza. Another awesome taste, off my list forever.

* * * * *

The rain finally let up the moment I spotted the white house on the lake, the place three thousand square feet, easy. The trip here had been surprisingly quick, as I chomped Cheetos and ticked off more and more of the landmarks from April’s own journey here.

The budding trees and narrow two-lane roads and the fancy stone entrance to this lakefront neighborhood looked a bit different in the post-rain sunlight, compared to the way they had appeared in the tinted glass of the SUV’s windows. At least he hadn’t covered her eyes on the way here.

Maybe the guy wasn’t as unhinged as his voice had sounded in my head. He seemed more desperate than crazy.

Speaking of unhinged—we were coming up on the part of the job that always made me question my partner’s sanity.

Hank drove his Escort right up to the closed garage door. The houses in this neighborhood five miles outside of town sat on two-acre lots surrounding a lake that must’ve been a quarter-mile wide. Lots of privacy out here, no streetlights. No cars in any of the driveway. I was starting to get itchy and nervous.

It was now Hanky J’s turn to take over. I got to sit back and watch, still munching Cheetos and tracking April’s thoughts. She was in that room again, still handcuffed, still thinking about how hungry she was. Hungry, and angry.

Hank liked the face-to-face approach with the kidnappers we caught. Said he wanted to look them in the eye, try to get them to explain why they did what they did. I’d tried to convince him to get the local cops involved at least, but he refused.

He reminded me of the gun he always kept tucked inside his little black jacket. I knew how fast he was, though that never made me feel any better.

April’s thoughts shot into high gear when she heard Hanky J’s knock. I wished my skills worked two ways, so I could send her a reassuring message, tell her to stay low.

But all I could do was feel her sting of surprise at the knock, followed by a rush of other emotions—fear, panic, and maybe even a strange kind of excitement at the sound of her kidnapper’s footsteps outside her locked room, growing louder.

Her stream of thoughts took a strange turn then. I kept feeling a rock, clenched tight in the darkness. Hank knocked on the door a second time, standing casually and acting all relaxed in his dark jeans and maroon sweater-vest.

I wanted to roll down the window and get him to come down off that front porch. But I couldn’t explain why, not for sure. More Cheetos were needed.

And then, with another handful of chips halfway to my mouth, it hit me. April didn’t want to be rescued.

That’s all I could figure. She had her own escape plan figured out, and here we were, hosing up that plan. She was thinking of the forest at the end of the road, where her kidnapper—a burly man in his mid-forties, gray hair in need of a good cutting, stubble and wire-rimmed glasses on his face—had taken her earlier.

They’d walked for an hour, then he gagged her and set her loose. Toying with her, chasing her. He eventually caught her, peeled off her ruined tennis shoes, and took her to the river. Showed her the churning water of the spillway as a warning.

Before he picked her up after she fell and barked her shin, she’d grabbed a rock just a bit smaller than her palm. A rock with a nice serrated edge to it.

Still nobody had answered Hanky’s knocks. The man was busy unlocking the door to April’s room. She could just barely hear his panicked mutterings.

The guy was cracking under the pressure, saying something like, “Can’t take it. Too much—”

April’s thoughts went black and still as the key turned in the door to her cell. Nearly choking on my current mouthful of Cheetos, I put a shoulder to the car door and opened it.

“Get in there!” I yelled at Hanky J, spraying the driveway with orange meteorites. At the same time, I keyed in 9-1-1 on my cell. Hanky J would just have to deal with that.

The kidnapper had the door to the windowless room unlocked, and all I could see was the rock in April’s hand. Then a sliver of light that grew wider as the man pushed open the door. Rock and darkness. And the darkness was disappearing, until it was just the rock.

Hanky J had the front door jimmied and was running inside, while I was moving too, at last. I panted my slow way up to the porch, rain pelting me as the storm clouds broke. I just hoped we weren’t too late.

I paused at the front door to catch my breath and swallow back a gutful of bile.

We were too late, but not for April.

Down the hall, a man in a gray sweatshirt lay crumpled on his side, his broken eyeglasses two feet from his bloodstained head. A puddle of red grew around him on his hardwood floor.

April had gone for the temple instead of the throat. Probably a good choice. Dude wasn’t moving, barely breathing.

Above him stood a teenaged girl, barefoot and bedraggled, smiling madly down at him with the rock in her hand, poised for another blow.

But then Hanky J was there, his small, strong fingers on her wrist, talking low and fast, pulling her away from her kidnapper lying at their feet.

I’ll never forget, in the seconds before I lost my connection to April Mae Honeycutt—”Just call me April, damn it!”—the way she looked at me. I felt her fear of me flash through her like the sharp spikes of pain I always felt after making a connection.

She’d thought I was working with her kidnapper and not her rescuer. That I was coming to back him up, not Hanky J. She’d thought I was a bad guy.

And then, right before her connection with me broke as she allowed herself to accept that she was no longer lost, but found, I felt her comprehension as Hank explained who I was. Her understanding was followed by a reflexive kick of disgust.

With the sound of sirens growing in the distance, I wiped my mouth and dropped out of April’s head forever. My stomach, brimming with her favorite snack, lurched as if I’d been punched.

This time I wasn’t sure if it was the girl’s revulsion or just my usual reaction to my gift that was making me so violently nauseous.

As Hanky J led April—still clutching her rock—past me to the front porch, I looked around for a bathroom, a sink, a garbage can. Anything to catch all I’d eaten on this case.

I’d like to say that I found something suitable for the event, but I can’t. I guess the kidnapper was in no position to argue with the mess I’d made on the nice hardwoods of his front hallway.

* * * * *

Hank wasn’t pleased with me for calling in the local authorities, but he handled them easily enough. He just insisted that the media tell the world that April was found via an anonymous tip. He didn’t want any of the attention, and he knew I really didn’t want it.

Before the locals arrived, Hanky J did get a chance to check out the kidnapper’s computers while April and I sat waiting awkwardly on the wide front porch. Thanks to his regular work with identity thieves, Hanky was just as fast with a computer as he was with picking a lock and disarming angry teenaged girls with rocks.

Hanky’s time on the computer helped placate him after not being able to interrogate the kidnapper, much less even look the guy in the face, thanks to April and her rock.

Turns out the man had made plans to sell April to a sex slave ring being operated out of Long Island, so he could get out of the debt he’d been in since he got laid off his job two years ago. I figured stuff like that only happened in other countries, not here. Showed what I knew.

After the cops came and whisked away April and her badly wounded kidnapper, I kept thinking about what April had thought when she saw me come charging into the house, my long hair and beard all slicked down with rain, belly hanging out of my Hawaiian shirt, mud on my flip-flops.

Panting for breath, just from running from the car to the front door.

Me, a bad guy. Me, someone who every day ate the crappy food that nobody else loved, bland food or food with an off taste to it, just so I could get by without picking up someone else’s thoughts or feelings. Me, a guy who had helped find almost five dozen missing people in the past twenty years.

There was something else I needed to find. A couple things, actually. If a young girl like April could find the steel in her to take out a man twice her side with just a rock, I could muster up the willpower to get my own shit together, before all this food I was eating killed me.

I couldn’t blame these extra two hundred pounds all on my job, either. It was me, something inside of me, that always felt hungry, never satisfied.

Along with my willpower, I’d need to find my good walking shoes, too.

I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be anywhere near as easy as finding Buddy the lost dog.

The End

UnWrecked Press presents: Free Fiction Friday

This week’s Free Fiction Friday story from UnWrecked Press is “Finders, Keepers.”

UPDATE: Now that the free week is over, you can read the rest of this story by downloading an ebook at Amazon and Smashwords. Then you can read it on your laptop, desktop, Kindle, iPad, Nook, iPhone, or whatever device you use to read ebooks.

Here’s a story about brothers and what it means to truly disappear…

Finders, Keepers

As far as Mark Rasmussen was concerned, the only really good things about living in Newport that summer were the buried glass balls on the beach and the slumgullion chowder at Maggie’s Place.

If all went well, he’d add playing football to that list, but two-a-day practices didn’t start for another two months, and school the week after that. He had a lot to accomplish before then.

He was going to jog three miles a day, lift weights like a madman, maybe make some friends. And most importantly, help his big brother Dennis find more of the tiny glass globes buried up and down the ragged, rocky coastline that formed the western border of their new town.

“No way am I bothering with these hicks,” Dennis had confided in him on their drive out in the U-Haul. Dennis was going to be a senior this year, and as always, he got the preferential treatment from Mom and Dad by getting to drive the second moving truck. “Less than a year here, and I’m back home at Portland State, sucka.”

“And where’s that leave me?” Mark blurted out as he swayed back and forth, the smells of burnt oil and dust stuck in his nose.

Dennis hit the brakes as they passed out of the cool shade of eighty-foot pines into blinding sunlight on their way west through the Coastal Mountain Range. The two-lane road disappeared on them for a few crazy seconds in the unexpected flash of brightness.

He flicked his light brown hair off the tops of his prized pair of sunglasses and tried to act cool, but Mark saw how tightly he was gripping the truck’s steering wheel.

“Shit outta luck at the coast, buttmonkey,” Dennis answered at last. “Sorry.”

The sun went behind a wad of gray clouds, the truck bounced and swayed down the road, and Mark’s ears popped. By the time they made it down from the mountains, a dull, persistent rain had started, and neither of them had said another word.

* * * * *

The next few weeks were busy with unpacking and wandering around town. The dull roar and wind of semis and pickups running up and down narrow Highway 101, just inches away from the sidewalk where Mark jogged. It reminded him, in a somehow comforting way of the downtown buses and the train back in Portland. Sickly sweet exhaust burned in his mouth, down his throat, and all the way to his lungs, but he never let up.

At home, Dennis was quiet and mopy, but not quite as bitter as that day in the U-Haul.

Mark thought by mid-June that things were going to be all right with his abnormally grumpy older brother.

Until the day at the beach when Dennis took a swing at him.

While Mom and Dad were at their new jobs, Mark and Dennis scuffed along in the water-packed gray sand close to the churning waves, sometimes climbing onto and hopping from one set of humpback-sized rocks to another. They watched the beach fill up with tourists—mostly elderly and families with little kids—the farther south they walked.

Mark kicked off his old pair of running shoes, and soon his wet toes started to go numb.

Dennis wanted to argue that day. Droning on like the low thump and slap of the tide next to them, he grumbled about whose fault it was that Mom and Dad had lost their house back in Portland.

Foreclosed—such a weird word. Mark said it wasn’t anybody’s fault, just the stupid economy. Dennis said it was due to Dad’s slack work ethic at the software company. When Mark tried to retort, Dennis’s response was to aim a punch at the back of Mark’s head.

That one swing was all Dennis got.

Dennis was taller by two inches, but Mark had been filling out in the past year, losing his baby fat at last. And he’d been lifting weights every other day, prepping for the football season.

Mark grabbed Dennis’s punching arm as it came at his skull and yanked it over his left shoulder, curling his body into a C without thinking. Dennis went up and over him, feet kicking out and a surprised shout bursting from his mouth. He landed on his back on the wet sand. Air went out of his lungs like a cough.

Mark didn’t even know what had happened for a good five seconds.

After hitting the ground, Dennis stayed down instead of coming back for more.

“Asshole,” Dennis coughed, wiping sand from his mouth. “Got lucky with that one, lard-butt.”

“Whatever,” Mark said.

His head was spinning at what he’d done. Cold water lapped in onto his already frozen feet, but he barely noticed. He felt like the lowly kicker who got called in with no time left on the clock to boot a forty-five-yard field goal to win the game.

He just took down his big, seventeen-year-old brother! Everything’s gonna change now. No more getting pushed around. No more shit about being too little to go and do what Dennis got to go and do.

People in shorts and long sleeved shirts walked past on the wide beach, peeling away from the incoming tide to give both Rasmussen boys a wide berth. It was a cool midsummer day, barely sixty, with the wind coming in off the water like a bludgeon. And Dennis was still down on one knee in the softer sand away from the water line. He was gazing at the gray sand flecked with tide-smoothed black rocks under him, looking like a too-tall toddler fiddling with his first sand castle.

I’ll wait ’til he gets up, Mark thought as he looked away. And we’ll both act like nothing happened.

Around them, the beach stretched a good hundred yards from surf to cliff, where smaller, older homes perched like painted cardboard boxes, with newer, bigger houses of more sturdy material awkwardly mixed in. Below the houses were the logs.

Ever since Mark had been a kid visiting the coast from the city, he’d always thought the fallen and burnt trees spread out all over the dunes had looked like dead giants. Soldiers of some ancient battle, cut down before their time.

He used to love hiding in them as a kid, so good that ten-year-old Dennis refused to play hide-and-seek with six-year-old Mark anymore. One trip, Mark had hidden himself so well under a fallen log that not even Mom and Dad could find him. He’d sunk into the sand enough to require six adult men to come lift off the log enough for his skinny legs to wriggle free.

Below him, Dennis still hadn’t gotten up.

Panicking for an instant, mouth suddenly dry, Mark took a step closer. Was he hurt? Or just trying to fake me out and get me to walk right into a sucker punch?

He was about to say something when he saw the purple globe in Dennis’s hand.

Dennis held it like a fallen baby bird, and it wasn’t much bigger than an orange. Maybe a plum.

As the globe caught the weak sunlight, it set off tiny shimmering reflections inside it that made the ball almost seem to be in motion. It looked like a painted globe representing some world other than Earth, or maybe even a large purple eye that never blinked.

Dennis’s own blue eyes glittered with genuine excitement as he picked wet, clinging sand off the little ball with a gentleness that Mark hadn’t seen much of in the past few months.

“What is it?” Mark whispered as the tide shushed in around him to flood his bare feet again.

“I tell you what it is, dumb-ass,” Dennis whispered, dragging his gaze from the palm-sized globe and giving Mark a goofy, manic smile. “It’s fucking magic, baby. Let’s go find some more.”

* * * * *

Read the rest as an ebook at Amazon and Smashwords.