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

exactly what the other man was talking about, Paul seized on a single point. "And now you're saying it's okay because?"

"No one noticed the eggs."

There was silence in the car for a moment and then the back seat erupted into objections. Even Jenny with her normally reticent personality shouted at the back of Clay's head.

"Hey! I had the first few bites!"

"There's a thing called ethical considerations," Paul said.

"So... should we get checked for tumours?" Jenny seemed a little frantic.

"One plate was normal and the other was... What are we calling this? Conjured eggs? Nobody said they tasted any different. That's a successful test."

"You suck!" Ezra kicked the back of Clay's seat.

"I agree," Carmen shuddered.

"Say what you want, but it's possible to create complex biological molecules out of nothing... Well, not nothing. You get it."

"And you did the quarters worse than any of us," Paul said. "What if what Jenny said is right? Should we be looking for cancer?"

Jenny groaned.

"The quarters aren't mirror images which means chirality shouldn't be an issue—"

"I wouldn't tell Sandy about this," Jenny said. "Maybe Sandy, but not the other one."

"He seems like the territorial type," Ezra agreed.

"He's out in that shack working on theory," Clay said. "We're the... practitioners. We're the practical magic... society?"

"So, our acronym is—" Ezra began.

"Stop!" Carmen said.

"What's wrong?" Clay asked.

"Your shitty sitcom-esque joke is gonna make me barf!"

"Jesus. Don't scare me like that," Clay laughed.

"Yeah, all joking aside, Clay," Paul leaned over Jenny to get a better look at Carmen leaning out of the window. "You better pull over."

Clay slammed on the brake and the massive vehicle skidded on the pavement, swerving its way on the crackling gravel before coming to rest with its passenger side tires in the dry grass of the roadside. A long thin line of watery vomit trickled down the side of the passenger side door and as the passengers looked, some in curiosity and others in disgust, a lone car put on its blinker and slowly passed them on the left.

Fair Ground

Carmen Carruthers breathed heavily, trying to keep her inhales through her mouth to exclude all the horrendous vapours present in the sweltering carnival lavatory. The plastic walls around her receded a little as a narcotic induced euphoria came briefly and left almost what seemed like instantly. There was a passing gladness that there was no spike of anything worse in the drugs, just a lot more of a cut than anything she had gotten in town, weakening the high. In its place was the looming knowledge that whatever receptors in her brain that had first been so enthralled by the painkillers three years prior were now so worn out that she could never go back to feeling good. She could just put off completely falling apart.

And what was worse was that to keep from falling apart, she had brought some strangers into her own personal Hell and wrapped them up into it. They had forked over some of the hard conjured money to some guy who looked like he had crawled out of the woods after being raised by groundhogs. The most world-changing thing imaginable had happened to her and to them and she had dragged them out to buy smack from a fucking circus clown.

They were talking outside the plastic bathroom as she fought back a sob.

"No, we can't use Practical Magic Union or Users," Clay's voice was the loudest. "PMU stands for Pregnant Mare's Urine. It's what they use to make hormone replacement drugs."

Jenny and Paul said something in response. Ezra had left to check in on some friends.

They were good people. And they didn't deserve what she had forced them to do. She could hear what they were going to say already. We're all in bad places. We all need help. But their bad places were all spiritual or emotional, they could put them aside or pick them up multiple times during a weekly therapy session. They didn't need to inject a goddamn substance into their black veins just to make it through a day.

I don't need you to save me.

The last of the axe that seemed to be splitting her skull withdrew, replaced with a vaguely metallic sensation that took its place. Chills dissipated in the heat of the commode and the jittering of her legs went with them. She spit one last time onto the plastic floor, thinking that in another few minutes she might be able to walk without staggering.

"What about just 'The Society'?" she heard Jenny's soft voice.

"I think they used that in that one TV show," Paul replied. "Or was it a movie?"

"The Union?"

"TV show."

Christ, she thought as she fumbled to unlock the door to the increasingly hot commode, not knowing what was worse, their attempts to shoe horn them into some sort of wannabe Illuminati or the names they were coming up with for it.

There was a strange mood to the carnie as Ezra Mansfield sauntered along the outer rim of the booths lining the midway, a tiny bit of a spring in his step. There was magic in the world, after all. And, he had been able to get away from the kids for maybe an hour or more.

Nothing had changed in the week he had been away in that fairyland of a rural mansion that his niece had set up. The geeks were still eating way too much, the strongman was still squatting in the manager's trailer. There were intermittent power interruptions. The carnie was the same. The city was the same. Even the internet, what he could see of it through the flickering of the ancient CRT screen, was largely the same. Largely.

He waved at one of the ticket takers having a break alongside one of the trailers but did not stop. It was not