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

a good idea to converse too closely with some of his old cohorts. They could be pretty sharp as he had become aware of trying to manage them over the last little while. Sharper than the kids anyway.

The spring in his step left him as he realized that he was referring to twenty-seven year olds as kids. Hell, Jenny was in her early thirties.

They weren't bad kids to be sure, as a matter of fact they were a little too good. They had seen a little bit of life and they thought they knew the ways of the world. Clay was smart and determined, but certain no one was going to give him a chance. Paul was in the midst of a spiritual crisis that he would not acknowledge. Jenny's problems were as old as the human race itself. And Carmen, despite having been given every advantage, had discovered that America has no sympathy for deviance, even imposed deviance.

But that was just the veneer. The last two had maybe gotten a nip from the fangs of the world, but none of them had seen down the abyss of its throat. They hadn't seen the big grift.

None of them had any concept of what the future would look like.

Maybe the kid did. Ezra thought that Jonah McAllister, as young as he was, had maybe an inkling of at least what the future could look like, but like the people his niece had gathered to him he lacked the experience necessary to see it accurately. And that was what made him dangerous. More dangerous than any of the others knew.

He managed a weak smile. Being a Cassandra was a mixed blessing.

He was just completing his circuit of inspection around the carnie when out of the corner of his eye he thought he might have seen a shadow sneaking around on the other side of the trailers. He pursed his thin lips and tried to peer around the edge of the trailer facing him.

Dismissing the shadow as a trick of the light Ezra looked at his watch. Speaking of the future: he could delay it a little longer. There was no need to hang out with the oblivious kids just yet.

She knew that they were watching her. There was little question with the way they were all glancing out of the corner of their eyes.

Across the midway Carmen caught Paul and Jenny trying not to look at her while they were throwing rings over pegs.

They were looking as if she might transform into Mr. Hyde at any moment.

They really didn't know anything about that world, Carmen reasoned. Neither had she for longer than should have been possible. Her family had, unknowingly, shielded her from the majority of it. Only now was it catching up to her. Was she in the process of recruiting a whole new shield for herself?

The thin bulge in her pocket pressed into the flesh of her thigh and for a moment she looked around with paranoia at the assembled carnival workers.

Imagine shooting magically created serum into your veins.

The way Clayton had described matters, the three most likely outcomes were: nothing, it worked as expected, bloody fucking carnage. And anything in between. But just buying tiny packages of the shit on the street carried the same risks along with getting dragged in front of her dad in court to boot. So, yes, she was about to become PMS's (why the hell had that gotten traction in her brain?) guinea pig. Yes, she was about to have access to all the smack she could possibly ever want.

She shuddered.

It was a fine line to walk, requiring willpower. Willpower was not something that came up often when talking about writers.

Clay walked up to her, clutching an ice cream cone in each hand.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Better. And you don't have to ask that every five minutes," she replied, dodging around the cone he offered and taking the one he clutched closer to himself.

"So... from what I can gather," he said. "The standard stuff should work. From what I gathered the kid—Jonah's first indication that something was going on was the plants in a greenhouse were growing faster. They didn't suffer any ill effects."

"I'm not a plant," she said.

"Right. But plants require pretty specific chemical compounds in their cells to grow. Duplicating the compounds didn't change their effectiveness. And this stuff... well it originally came from plants. Right?"

"Could we not talk about this right now? I need... just a break from my own existential terror."

"All right. Fucking carnivals. The last time I came to one of these things I was... maybe fifteen," he said. "My dad gave me, like ten bucks. Cheap old fart. I had to stand by the Zipper while my friends rode it."

"Nice to not have to worry about money for a while isn't it?"

"Yeah."

Jenny and Paul walked over, her usually dower mouth curling up a little at the edges.

"Are you okay?" Jenny asked.

"You don't need to ask every five minutes, Jen," Clay said. "She's not some china doll."

Jenny's dower mood returned in the wake of the ribbing.

"The bank's closing in twenty minutes and Ezra's nowhere to be found. We're going to take a run through the haunted house," Paul said.

Clay frowned. "Lame. How old are you?"

"You don't like haunted houses?" Jenny asked.

"Ghosts are not scary," Clay continued.

"Well, I kind of like to see the work that they put into it."

"I'm with him," Carmen said. "Local carnival spook house: lame. But, ghosts are scary."

"Nope. How about you, Paul? As a man of God: Ghosts, scary or not?"

"Depends on their disposition. I take it you don't believe in ghosts."

"I believe my eyes. If I saw a ghost. Like, if I was absolutely sure it wasn't a hallucination... still not scary."

"Seriously?"