The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

risk someone getting hit by the deflection. This seemed best for close range combat with an armed opponent.”

“Have you done anything to anything else?”

He looked perplexed. “Well, the soles of my shoes tend to wear out pretty quick, so I reinforced them. Rubber is a complex organic molecule, but the effect is fairly simple—"

“I’m already sitting down and I think I need to sit down farther,” Aegera breathed. “What else can you do?”

Jonah McAllister shrugged his best scientist’s shrug and leaned back against the wall of the range shop. “I haven’t figured it all out just yet.”

“Could you at least sound excited about this?”

“There’s still a lot of work to do before we get too excited.” He reached around the corner and heaved a heavy black case from its concealment. The latches holding it shut snapped open and he pulled two sinister looking cartridge magazines from inside, shoving one of them into the base of the rifle with a resounding click. “We still have a few more tests to run.”

It was late in the evening by the time they had finished to Jonah’s satisfaction. He had several tubes of different materials that they swapped in and out to check for resiliency and reliability, both physically and metaphysically, over the course of a few hours. Sometimes the gun would fire regularly or intermittently. When the time had come to leave they left nearly everything, rifle, leftover magazines, everything except the tubes on the range. Jonah gave the explanation that having guns around was going to arouse suspicion, and besides, they weren’t really necessary anyway.

Aegera went along patiently with his obsessive measurement taking, jotting down figures and carrying tubes, taking her turn with the rifle; though it still made her nervous. All the while something tugged at the back of her conscious thought, something which she was unable to articulate until they had piled the last of the tubes into the back of the rented truck. As he walked back to leave the range key under the mat she called out to Jonah.

“If you think everyone here is going to sit down together and have a few drinks together… why are you building gun jammers?”

His colouring became a little paler than usual and a weak little smile formed on his face. “It was more of a gift. I know you're getting nervous. Something to help clear your mind, I guess.”

The Tutelage of Tom Nightshade

Yawning with all the sun-soaked exhaustion of an African lion, Tom Nightshade swung open the tiny personnel entrance to the old garage. The glare from the sunny but cold day outside cut into the dingy fluorescent light of the interior. The unevictable smell of old automotive fluids and motor oil hit him, evoking memories of his father's old overalls hanging on the back of the kitchen chair. He wondered briefly how old dad was doing in the days since he had left home, but the thought was quickly shoved out of his mind. Dad could take a ten foot walk off a nine foot pier as far as he was concerned.

Within the garage were four men and two women whom he recognized as the Adepts that Aegera was always getting on about. Three of them were perched around a workbench, two more were conversing by the wall and the sixth was leaning against a standup toolbox with a rusted out bottom. The mood among them was downcast, but then again the cold had a way of doing that, despite the warm-seeming light blazing in through the small, elevated window along the side of the garage.

"Good afternoon, duckies," Tom said, tossing his bag against the wall next to the door the way he imagined a Uni professor would. "There were supposed to be nine of you. Where's the other three?"

Sitting at the bench a small Asian woman picked up, brushing her hair behind her ear and speaking with a moderate accent. "We are... not sure. Yuri, Borty and Dez are not terribly reliable."

So, you kicked them out, but didn't tell any of the others, Aggy.

Tom frowned. He had assumed that some kind of discipline would be necessary, but heaving two men with that kind of power onto the street seemed pretty reckless.

"Aggy must pretty pissed," he muttered under his breath.

"Where is Aegera, anyway?" Pietro, Tom remembered his name from their late night session at the restaurant, asked.

"Aggy's out with the big man this afternoon. They're..." Did the Adepts need to know that they were likely discussing things that could get some of them killed? "I don't know, making out behind a dumpster or something. Okay. Names. I need to know who you are and what you were working on with Aggy. Pietro, I know you." He pointed to the Asian woman. "You, go."

Tom pulled out a ratty swivelling stool and sat down, enjoying the shoot-from-the-hip style and its energy. He had always thought that if he had stayed in England he might have thought about teaching. Not that he could have gotten the money to get an education. And not that they would have had someone like him teaching second grade.

The woman seemed a little startled by the callout. "I am Lanying, but everyone calls me Lianne. I don't know why. Lanying is not hard to say. I came here to study European law, but the government closed the law school. I think it was you who had me waiting on your table and brought me to the first gathering."

"All right, fine. That's your whole life story, innit?" Tom yawned.

Looking miffed, Lanying continued. "We were going over some of the commonalities between some of the incendiary spells and extracting the relevant phonemes."

Tom smiled. Aggy had told him that Big Mick wanted to downplay things like spells. Of course he had ignored her. It was gratifying to learn that she had done the same. He had