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

the last thing he wanted to do was to leave the group, the idea that the opinions of the others were starting to clash with his own faith was bubbling up to the fore.

In an instant he grasped the knob to his room, intent on seeking out some outside advice. Ezra had expressed some of the same opinions during their occasional card games and was proving a valued advisor. He might still be awake.

Local Business

Stephanie "Vern" Vernon adjusted her vest, causing her belt to twist on her waist. Groaning she attempted the whole ordeal of getting things to sit where they were supposed to. After two days off with the grandkids this was the last thing that she wanted to be subjected to, but duty called.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the window of the store adjacent to where the cruiser was parked and grimaced. She knew her appearance was the last thing she should be worried about, but the vest set off thoughts about her blockiness that were always there when she was at home.

Alongside the driver's side Terry grasped his cold coffee from off the roof of the cruiser and downed a significant gulp. He didn't seem to have the same issues with the attire. But he was taller, squarer, and the ballistic gear was designed for a certain body type. Male, mostly. Another thing that came down on their side on the scale of existence.

But mama didn't raise no quitters, she thought.

And after twenty-two years she wasn't no quitter. Still, it would be nice to have some gear that fit right.

"Ah, shit." She heard Terry mutter and looking up she accidentally locked eyes with Bill Hernandez, half shuffling towards the two of them.

Vern quickly went back to adjusting her sidearm, but Bill still stumbled towards them in her peripheral vision. She knew he was still staying at home, but he looked like he hadn't slept or showered since the last time she had seen him. As he closed within two metres she backed against the cruiser in a vain attempt to get some distance from the smell.

"Yes, Bill?" she said as Hernandez deftly circled in front of her and stood with a kind of practised exhaustion. "What can I do for you? Aliens, was it?"

"Witches," Bill replied with weary exasperation. "I know how it sounds. I know. One of them is into drugs. You guys went out there. You didn't find anything?"

Vern pulled on the handle to the cruiser, but Terry hadn't unlocked her side yet.

"First of all, Bill, even if we found something I couldn't tell you. Second, you mean the daughter of that local judge?"

Having attended a couple of barbecues thrown by the Carrutherses for local law enforcement it was hard for Vern to see how the fresh faced young woman who had just got home from—well, some Ivy League place—was into anything. But the department's budget was under strain (whose wasn't), so they had raided the place anyway.

The girl had been up there and she did look a little harried, but they had found nothing and Vern had dismissed Bill's information as the lies of a desperate man. Still, they were going back out there. Shit, there were federal marshals going up there with them. Maybe Bill was on to something after all... Well, not about the witches to be certain, but maybe he had seen something that had broken his brain. She had seen it happen before. After car accidents mostly.

"This one!" Bill turned his phone towards her. On the screen was a grainy and hard-to-make-out photo of a dark faced girl and what could have been some small exposed construction girders, or the support poles of a gazebo or something.

"Why do you have that, Bill?"

"Because I followed their car!"

"Christ. Don't do that, Bill."

"They've got my wife!"

"The cultists?"

"Witches!"

"All right. You have to put yourself in our place, Bill. Half of this job is just writing fiction." Vern held up a hand and began ticking off points on her fingers. "Mid-nineties; satanists. Late-nineties; aliens. Early aughts; terrorists. And..." She paused. "Hey, Terry?"

"Yeah?"

"What was around twenty-ten? Two thousand eight to twenty-twelve, maybe."

"Umm... Immigrants? Covid zombies maybe. Whoops, no that was later."

"Point is, Bill—"

"You know what?" Terry said loudly. "It was immigrant gangs, I think."

"Thanks Terry! Point is, Bill, there's always someone standing where you are, saying the same things you are with a different place holder. So you're really not helping things with all of this witch talk."

"But you're going back up there!" Bill inched closer and Vern found her hand inching towards her side arm, surprising her. Bill was agitated, but he had never seemed violent.

He seemed to realize what was happening and backed off awkwardly to twice the distance he had been from her.

"Who told you that?" she furrowed her brow and her eyes shifted involuntary to Terry who shifted nervously. "Fucking loud mouth," she muttered.

"Guy's gotta have hope," Terry's whisper volume was what a normal person would call above average.

She returned to Bill, intent on getting him to leave and at once feeling a deep pang of pity for the nearly trembling man before her. He might have taken losing a kid to cancer as well as a person possibly could and kept on going. Losing his wife to whatever was going on out in the woods must have been enough to lay him low.

"Bill, why don't you go over to the church. See Newman."

He looked up at her with darkened, impatient eyes. "Went there. Newman sent me over to that kid preacher of his."

"And?"

"And now the kid's up there with my wife."

Vern frowned.

"You're going back up there," Bill said, matter-of-factly. He looked like a kid who had gotten just what he asked for for Christmas and realized it wasn't really