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

and they were all that were important to him since that night at the old house.

That night had shaken Jonah McAllister down to the marrow of his bones, to the septum of his heart and the stem of his brain. It chilled him, kept him awake at night, haunted him whenever he tried to sit down and think. And whether he would admit to it or not it was worming its way into his work. Because he didn’t understand it, and what was more he didn’t think he ever could.

He had been reading almost constantly since, fighting to find some way to understand. That detective, the one with burns and scars all over his face, had followed him down farther than reason or sanity would allow. Had he even been allowed to cross the borders and jurisdictions that should have bound him? And how had the house been set ablaze if the police were watching it?

He hung his head lower.

He had let it happen.

And he sure as hell was not going to allow it to happen again. Even if Sandy (he couldn't bring himself to call her by her nom-de-guerre) was right and people didn't want to see that there was a new world opening up before them. Even if it meant that things got a little worse at first.

Jonah shook his head and reached for the coffee pot on the nightstand. His own thoughts seemed ancient as they echoed in his head.

Maybe we need to be more than mortals.

He sighed. With any luck he could have a few dozen Acolytes soon. They would do a far better job determining the direction this thing would take than he had so far. And he could simply recede into the background. Showing the world that anything was indeed possible and then fading into the background to work out new procedures and words was having a great deal of appeal since what had happened at the house. He was no leader, not fit to determine the right and the wrong about this power.

I can't change human nature.

Nevertheless, Sand—Aegera expected it of him and, because of that he felt like he was on a track, speeding towards something that was both horrific and rousing at the same time. He could see it coming, but he could do nothing to prevent disaster. Just lower his head and hope.

At times he was certain that he was having a never ending series of panic attacks, so fast was his heart pounding.

A sudden wash of dizziness and nausea swept into him as he sat looking over the disastrous apartment with its black books and half eaten food.

He certainly didn’t feel like anything more than mortal.

Scrum

It was late. The bleary eyed, sore-soled variety of late. That special blend of physical and mental exhaustion that produces an uncertainty that there is anything other than a wound down body and a shrouded mind. That hunted animal feeling that causes a breakdown in civility.

Aegera could feel it in the waitress clearing away the coffee cups from the table. Her eyes were rimmed in black and her fingers fumbled for a cloth to wipe away the stains left by the only other people in the café at that hour. Most likely she was a student, or someone who usually worked the day shift, cast into the abyss of night.

As the waitress walked away Aegera slipped an unreasonably large tip onto the table.

Tom sat across from her in the booth and two of the more talented Adepts: Uri and Pietro she thought their names were (she had a hard time keeping names straight anymore), had pulled a pair of chairs up to the front end of the table at which they sat. Each eyed the amount of money she had placed on the table skeptically.

“It’s not like I can’t afford it,” she muttered.

“We should bring her into the fold,” Yuri said with his implacable accent. “She looks… smart.”

Aegera sighed. “Jonah’s holding off on recruits for the time being. We need more trainers. We need more Acolytes.”

It was partly a lie. The decision had been as much hers as it had been his. Until they could do something about the disturbing trend of instructional videos showing up online she had decided to put a lid on new Initiates coming in. She just wished Jonah had seemed a little more committal about it, retreating back into his rooms with his usual mutterings.

Yuri scoffed. “Tell me; when do we get to meet the elusive Jonah McAllister? None of us Adepts have ever seen him. Some are saying he is nothing more than a fairy tale.”

Aegera’s hand clenched.

“Whoa.” Tom placed a hand clad in a black fingerless glove on the table. “There is one thing you never do in front of Aggie, and that's question the Big Mick. Besides, I’ve seen him. He’s real enough... after a fashion.”

There was a look in Yuri’s eye that betrayed an instant distrust in Tom. It was the familiar macho distrust that any highschooler would know by heart. Some caught it worse than others, but it almost always ended up wasting everyone's time.

“What is he planning to do about the police?” Yuri scoffed. “We can’t just let them push us out of the way forever. We will have to confront them eventually.”

“We don’t have to confront them,” Pietro asked in his calm, Italian laced English. “What we need is to enrol some of the government. If they become one of us then—”

“We're not an elitist organization,” Aegera cut in. “If some of the... patriarchs want in, fine, but I'm not going to court any of them.”

"It's oligarchs, but—I mean—don't call them that," Tom said.

“The question remains: what are we going to do?” Pietro sighed.

"I—" Aegera tucked a lock of icy hair behind her ear. Flames danced in front of her