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

to attract his attention. For a moment he reconsidered running out the sliding doors and into the hot spring air, but there didn’t seem to be anyone with her, no doctor, no cop, just her. He struggled out of the chair and rose to meet her.

“What happened?” he asked anxiously. For a moment he was actually curious. This might turn out to be a good chance to collect results.

She said nothing as she walked past, eyes fixed squarely ahead. By now he was certain he was in the clear. The world decompressed around him as he hurried after her, his curiosity now piqued.

“What happened?”

She wheeled her tremendous bulk around in the middle of the sliding doorway. The gust of it nearly knocked him over and he had to fall back a step to regain his sense of space.

“My insurance doesn’t cover orange thumb,” she hissed.

His face went flat. “Oh. Look, like I said, I can handle this.”

“Stay the hell away from me,” she said menacingly and for a moment Jonah was struck by disbelief that he had aligned himself with such an ugly creature. He swallowed the thought before it could reach the front of his mouth.

He could not let her go now, of that he was certain. There was too much riding on this now. If he couldn’t win her over then he would have to leave town. The probability was too great that she would tell someone and that would bring in too many questions he did not want asked, at least not at this point. But what could he do to stop her?

Outside the wind was howling, throwing the dust that laced the streets into his face as he hurried after her, actually he did not even really have to hurry, even at a run there was no way she could outdistance him. Still, out of respect and out of self-preservation he kept his distance.

“Would you just stop,” he pleaded.

No answer other than an unattractive increase in pace.

“Christ, this was a big mistake.”

What could make someone of that size stop?

“I can show you more,” he whispered, a snake in her ear.

What the hell are you doing? A small voice in his head demanded.

"You want money? You wanna learn how to make things out of nothing? I, uh, saw the book you were reading. If you want that, we can do that. You want to be that funny looking woman on the cover. I... we can work on that."

She froze in her tracks, the fat continuing a step or two before rejoining her skeleton and a feeling of nausea wormed its way into Jonah McAllister stomach. He was promising something that he had no idea how to deliver on, little better than a snake oil salesman. But, it was something he had to do, didn't he? If he had any actual friends he might later pull up a stool to a local bar and ask them to validate his decision.

Somewhere in the immense tumblers of his mind a small piece locked into place and then fell into oblivion.

The lips above her fat chin looked about ready to tell him to go to hell, but the thin sparkle in her eye, a rare mixture of cautious hope and reckless abandon told Jonah McAllister that, while he had no idea of how, he had done what he set out to do.

Anyone walking through the aisles between the cubicles of the call centre—at least anyone familiar with the personnel—would have wondered what was going on with the large brunette in the North-East corner. Whispers went around that someone had finally gotten drunk enough to bed her. Normally Sandy would pretend to not hear these sophomoric jabs, but today she legitimately did not notice.

Ironically she was thinking about a moment only twelve hours earlier when she had been lying on the bed of a motel room in the grip of what had seemed like ecstasy.

It was an odd feeling, not quite familiar, but not all together alien. It was something she was certain she had experienced in her childhood. Maybe the first time she had seen an airplane flying in real life. Wonder? Close.

She pulled her head up and looked at the pair of quarters sitting on the floor below the bed. Her hand shook. Security? That was maybe another element. The loosening of the bonds of anxiety that had been gripping her for as long as she could remember.

The recent memory of the way the first coin had quivered and then perfectly split into two was absorbed into her long-term and treasured memories almost seamlessly.

"We..." She looked over at the man she had come to know as Jonah McAllister as she struggled for the first words. "Can make as much money as we want."

"Yeah..." he frowned. "It was a lot easier back home. We have two dollar coins. I can do maybe eight quarters in a go. Takes maybe ten minutes. Twelve dollars an hour."

"And we can't do bills because...?"

"Bills with the same serial number start popping up all over, people get suspicious. And since most people use electronics these days, cash is under harsher scrutiny. Drugs, guns, what-have-you."

Sandy laughed. "It's weird to hear you be so mundane when I just created a quarter out of thin air. What about, like, gold?"

"Any element with an atomic number over thirty doesn't work all that great. Zinc is kind of the limit."

"Oh. Why is that?"

"No idea, really. I think if we can control your accent a little bit you could get up to four pretty quickly. Between the two of us that's eighteen dollars an hour."

"Um, you have the accent around here. And... that's not enough to quit my job."

His frown deepened. "I've been trying to flush out what... I guess the phrase would be 'what common thread binds