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

he was more worried about leaving the house in the hands of two people he barely knew than he was about the world outside, but he had locked up his notebooks and Sandy had vouched for both the sallow-faced woman and the priest (or whatever he was) so…

“There’s my niece!” A shadow ducked out from behind one of the booths and Jonah found himself face to face with what had to be the fattest man he had ever been in the same room with.

A bowler hat that looked to be little more than a thimble sat in the desert that was the bald spot on his head. A cheap green windbreaker covered in what looked to be oil stains bulged out around his gut and clung heroically to his hips above some funnel shaped jeans. The stubble foresting his jowls bristled as he and Sandy collided into a mesh of fat and hair. Jonah found himself wincing as he continued to kick at the stand, its owner just now becoming aware of what he was doing. He had never been comfortable around family, especially other peoples’.

“You’ve grown,” the man said without a hint of irony. “I haven’t seen you in so long. It seems like just yesterday Alice would bring you out every weekend to see my act. What happened young lady?”

Sandy blushed slightly. “I’ve been busy. How are y—”

Jonah coughed where he stood.

“Sorry. Uncle Ezra, this is Jonah.” Sandy made an awkward movement of introduction.

Jonah eyed the meaty palm that was extended towards him and shook it reluctantly. Why people insisted on doing this was beyond him.

“Oh ho.” Ezra pumped twice and released, nearly sending Jonah sprawling to the ground. “Nice to meet you, young man. The Irreverent Ezra Mansfield, at your service.” With a flourish of his hand he produced a handkerchief from an obvious hidden pocket. “Sandy, are you introducing this guy to the family? Tell me I’m before Cousin Lester.”

“Uh, not exactly...” Sandy and Jonah exchanged perturbed looks. “Listen, Uncle, I have something to show you and I...”

"I'm starting to understand why you wanted to quit that call centre so badly," Jonah muttered under his breath.

Sandy shot him a look that nearly turned his blood to ice. “Is there someplace private we can talk?” she asked Ezra.

The fat man looked to his left and then to his right as if to make certain that no one was listening. “Well… My office is on the other side of the grounds. And Tyson the Strongman is likely in there. He needs a place to mix his protein shakes and it's the only place with reliable air conditioning.”

“Do you have a place or not?”

“Uh…” Ezra looked around again, this time to see if the niece who was amazed by the endless coins he would pull from behind her ears was hiding around the booths somewhere. “Sure, no one will be using the geek trailer. They’re all at lunch in town.”

Jonah fell into step behind Sandy as she allowed Ezra to lead them through the maze of booths and tents that made up the carnival. He was beginning to have serious doubts about this foppish older man. The agreement was that they were looking for the down and the desperate. Ezra Mansfield lacked the kind of quiet desperation which he had seen in the others. Sandy had been good at picking it up, but he was starting to think that in this case her senses were being coloured by the fact that this man was family… He chewed on his tongue thoughtfully as he sidestepped out of the way of an oncoming performer with grease makeup.

Still, he had set the criteria and allowed her to choose. There was a certain amount of trust that was to be involved here.

Ezra led the two of them up to the steps of a small trailer. The broken door nearly fell from its hinges as the fat man cast it open, shuffling his bulk in sideways. Sandy followed suit and Jonah slipped in after. The darkness inside vanished with a flick of the switch and Jonah found himself in a room full of patio furniture that looked like it had been sitting around outside since the last ice age and only just brought inside. Aside from those and a grime covered fridge that looked like it might have been dredged up from the Titanic there was nothing else in the trailer. The stifling interior folded around them with the stink of body odour which piled on top of the animal smell drifting in from outside.

“Sandy, if it’s money you want I can’t help you,” Ezra said immediately. “Things aren’t as good as they used to be around here. I've had to let go five performers in the last month. The post-virus glut is officially done.”

“It’s not about money, Uncle,” Sandy interrupted. “Not yours anyway.”

“Thank god,” Ezra crashed onto one of the plastic chairs which sagged in protest. “I love your mom and everything, but...”

Jonah sat in one of the chairs in the corner of the room and tried to think about some of the problems that had arisen in his latest round of research. The plant grafts were working well... most of them anyway. He might be able to transition to higher organisms in the near future.

“Uncle,” Sandy pushed, “would you please sit down? I have something to show you.”

Exactly how much time had passed between sanity returning to the room and when the first word was uttered was unknown, though Jonah’s inner timer estimated that it had been over five minutes. He had to give Sandy’s demonstration credit. While he had had trouble getting people to believe their eyes when it came to this sort of thing she had bypassed the eyes all together and gone straight to the nerves. The little ball of flame might look like a bit