Black Magic (5 page)

Zach gave Barry the details on his silver rings, save that he could no longer make them work. Barry proudly popped the top hat into the open position for a demonstration.

“Watch this.”

He placed the hat on the kitchen table. The brim hummed as he touched it. The coin in his pocket warmed. He unfolded a paper napkin and laid it across the top. He wondered what to pull from the hat. Nothing too dangerous. A lizard, one of the small green-gray ones always racing across his back patio, snapping up ants and mosquitos. His hands hovered over the hat. He closed his eyes and made a mental picture.
 

“
Bakshokah apnoah,
” he said.

He pulled away the napkin and reached in. A small green lizard climbed up his arm.

“No shit,” Zach gasped. He pulled the hat in front of him. “What can I wish for?”

Barry reached for the hat. “My trick. I bought it.”

Zach raised a clenched hand in Barry’s face. “My fist. You want to buy that? Now what can I wish for?”

“Any animal that will fit in the hat.”

“Cool. I’ll do a monkey!” He pulled the napkin over the hat and put his hands out the way Barry did. “
Bakshokah ano
…what’s your magic words?”

“
Bakshokah apnoah.”
Barry sighed.

“
Bakshokah apnoah
.”

Zach yanked off the napkin. He reached into the hat with a devilish grin. His smile dissolved as he ran his hand around the inside of the empty hat. He looked inside. He tossed the napkin back on top.

“
Bakshokah shuey,
” Zach said, giving his own phrase a try. He pulled the napkin away. Still nothing

“What the hell? What did you do?”

“Maybe…” Barry said. He picked up Zach’s rings from the table. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The coin in his pocket stayed cool. He muttered his magic phrase and yanked the rings in opposite directions. They clanked together, still linked.

“We can’t do each other’s tricks,” Barry said. “Just the one we own. Maybe that’s why Lyle said we had to buy them.”

Zach took his rings back. He closed his eyes and an overly concerned look crossed his face. He pulled on the rings with theatrical effort.

“Now mine doesn’t work,” Zach said. “No hot coin. Like the juice got turned off.”

Barry touched the brim of the hat. It did not hum. “Same here.”

“Son of a bitch,” Zach said. His face got that dark look that reminded Barry of vampires in movies. The dark face always brought trouble. “We both got ripped off.”

“We go back Tuesday afternoon,” Barry reassured him. “We’ll get a recharge.”

Zach banged the joined rings against the table. “We’d better.”

Chapter Ten

While two of the Outsiders struggled with the dissipation of their powers, a third stood before Lyle Miller. Paco Mason still harbored doubts about what Zach had told him of the Magic Shop.

“So you’re some kind of magician?” he asked.

Lyle gave him a wry, condescending smile. “My boy, I’m the best kind of magician. A real one.”

He walked Paco over to the front window display. He reached inside and pulled out the only item there, the one that had immediately captured Paco’s imagination. A black magician’s wand.

The wand was a solid dowel about six inches long. One tip was white. Lyle held it in his hand, white tip out.

“Now think of the white tip as the end of the barrel,” he warned. “Point that thing away from you.”

He returned to the counter with Paco in tow. Two paper cups sat at one end. The rest of the display case, and store for that matter, was empty.

“It’s a wand like Harry Potter has?” Paco said.

“Please,” Lyle said. “Wands that can do anything. That’s all make-believe. A real wand has one true task.”

He held the wand with the grace of a great painter with his finest brush, a delicate touch to direct great power.

“Now all the finest magicians master this skill one way or another,” Lyle said. “A woman enters a box, a coin hidden under a scarf, a sheet draped over an item, the setup is immaterial. One way or another, they all disappear.”

Lyle touched the wand’s white tip to the lip of one of the cups.

“
Bakshokah korami,
” Lyle said.

There was a tiny flash. A puff of white smoke appeared and dissipated in a split second. The cup was gone.

A look of awe appeared on Paco’s face. It was the same look he had when he watched a campfire burn, the same look he had when he saw fireball explosions on TV, the same look he had at the moment of ignition when a magnifying glass focused the sun’s rays on the back of an ant.
 

“Where did it go?”

“It didn’t go anywhere,” Lyle said. “It just ceased. Spontaneous endothermic combustion. Always leaves the crowd wanting more. Usually because they now have less. Want to try?”

Paco could not speak. He just held out his hand. Lyle gave him the wand. He positioned Paco’s fingers to hold it like a chopstick.

“There, hold it with reverence. It’s not a plastic fork.”

Lyle held up a hand and waved his fingers. A gold coin the size of a quarter appeared. He put it in Paco’s other hand.

“Now focus and feel the power,” he said. “It will surge to the wand at your command of
Bakshokah korami
.”

“
Bakshokah korami
.”

The coin in Paco’s left hand heated up. A tingle ran up that arm, across his shoulders and down the other. The wand between his fingers began to thrum. His pulse pounded harder.

He tapped the remaining cup. The wand jolted like the kick of a shotgun. The cup flashed and vanished.

“Awesome!” Paco shouted.

“You are a natural,” Lyle said. “The wand and you are one.”

Paco stared, enchanted by the stick in his hand. No more matches. No more firecrackers.
 

“How much for it?” he asked.

“How much do you have?”

Paco pulled a twenty and two fives from his pocket. It was as much as he thought he could take from his mother’s wallet without the loss being noticed. Lyle took the twenty. He pumped two keys and a
$10
and a
$5
tab popped up on opposite sides of the register’s glass window, like two eyes awakened. The drawer consumed Paco’s money. The two eyes dropped back into satiated sleep. Lyle returned a five to Paco’s cash hoard.

“That’s fifteen with five change,” he said. “Remember, the white tip points out. Come back Tuesday afternoon to master your new craft.”

The wand still had Paco mesmerized. He nodded and went out through the front door. He blinked in the sudden sunlight. The street was empty, but it was still best to hide his new acquisition. He slipped the wand into his pocket and mounted his bicycle for the trip home.

During the ride, his mind raced from idea to idea, the way it always did. The ADHD gift did him no good at school, where they gave him drugs to douse it. But he liked it out in the world, where it made him feel free and powerful, like he was jumping from stone to stone in a fast running stream. He faked taking the pills that slowed him down for just that reason. Yeah, it made school easier, but who cared about that when your mind no longer ran like the wind.

He thought of what he wanted to make disappear. There were a few kids from school who made the short list, as did the school itself. He wondered how big something had to be before he couldn’t make it vanish in a flash and a puff of smoke.
 

By the time he returned to his house, he knew what weekly nemesis was first on his list to make vanish. He made a beeline for the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. His target sat alone on the second shelf, wrapped in a clear plastic bag.

Broccoli. The dark green vegetable pointed its mutated heads at him like a pack of accusatory radiation victims.

Paco hated broccoli like vampires hated garlic. Tonight it was going to be him or the green stalk, and this time the stalk was going to lose. He touched the wand to the vegetable.

“
Bakshokah korami
.”

The coin in his pocket warmed and his hands tingled. The wand twitched in his fingers. A tiny flash sparked in the refrigerator and the broccoli disappeared in a little cloud of white smoke.

“Excellent!” he shouted and slammed the refrigerator door shut.

Next item on the list: Ritalin. He was done getting that crap shoved down his throat. He went to his mother’s bathroom and pulled open the medicine cabinet. There were more bottles here than he expected. He shuffled through them until he found the prescription with his name on it and pulled that one out. He set it on top of the toilet tank.

“Adios, buzz killer,” he said. He touched the wand to the cap, white tip to white top. “
Bakshokah korami
.”

The pocketed coin barely warmed. His shoulder registered a quick twinge, but no power reached his hand. The wand did not respond. It was like when his mother tried to start the car with a dying battery. Paco gritted his teeth.

“
Bakshokah korami
,” he said more firmly.

This time nothing happened at all. No juice.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. Just when he was getting started. Lyle had better refill his magic gas tank on Tuesday. This little wand was going to be way too much fun.

Chapter Eleven

Ricky Arroyo stood outside the Magic Shop and stared at the
OPEN
sign. The early evening sun had dipped lower in the sky and cast the shop front in shadows. Lately, he’d been the last to jump at whatever the Outsiders were into. Barry had always been the Pluto of the Outsiders’ solar system, but recently the little fat kid had tightened his orbit and been first to follow Zach’s lead. Ricky had sensed himself drifting a bit outside the inner circle. Now he was the last of the four to make a purchase at the Magic Shop.

He’d stopped by their houses on the way here and seen what the other kids had purchased. Magic rings, a wand that made things disappear, the hat that could deliver live animals. All cool tricks, and though none of the others could actually make them work, he believed them when they said that the things just needed a jump start of some kind. He just wasn’t sure if he was ready to mess with that kind of power.

One item sat in the window display, a deck of playing cards arranged in a fan. The box at the center of the fan had
Magic Deck
across the face.
 

Card tricks. That might just be okay. Nothing got destroyed. Nothing got created. No laws of physics were broken. Cool, but kind of safe. And if his mother rifled through his room, as she often did, how much suspicion could a deck of cards arouse?

The bell on the shop door rang a tattling proclamation of his entry. Lyle Miller stood at the rear of the empty store. His black shirt had long flared sleeves and a V-shaped corset lacing at the open neck, very theatrical looking. Ricky exhaled, relieved to see someone more entertainer than warlock.

“Ricky,” Lyle said as he approached at a trot. “Last but not least. I’m Lyle.”
 

He extended his hand. At first touch, he felt…sharp. It was the way frozen metal and a hot stove element both have the same initial dangerous feel. The sensation faded. Lyle’s grip engulfed Ricky’s smaller hand then released it.

“All magic must be tailored to the magician,” Lyle said. “The illusion must speak to him.”
 

He walked to the front of the store and scooped the deck of cards from the front window. Ricky followed him back to the vacant display case. Lyle took position on the far side and set out the deck.

“These speak to you,” he said with a soothing, easy patter. “The familiarity of the cards is the card’s draw. Fifty-two cardboard rectangles are so simple, the audience expects nothing.”

He hovered a palm over the cards and swept right. The deck spread out along the counter, but Ricky swore Lyle’s hand hadn’t touched them. With nothing but fingertips, Lyle flipped the entire deck back to front and back again. He swept the cards back together and held the deck in both hands. He pulled his hands apart and the red-backed cards fluttered from left to right like a flight of robins. He closed his hands together and spread the deck into a tight fan. Ricky stared, dumbfounded.

“Now the dexterity tricks are just the warm up,” Lyle said. “The people want the magic, the demonstration of the inexplicable. Pick a card. Don’t let me see it.”

Ricky pulled one card free with a hesitant finger and thumb and tilted it up. Six of spades.

“Now back inside,” Lyle said.
 

Ricky slipped the card back into the deck. Lyle cut and rearranged the deck with one hand. Then he shuffled the deck and fanned it again. “
Bakshokah serat.
Pick again.”

Ricky pulled a card from the deck. Six of spades.
 

How could that be…?

Lyle closed the deck, flipped it over and fanned it again face up. The cards were all the six of spades. He took Ricky’s card and reinserted it.
 

“
Bakshokah serat.”
He flipped the deck, shuffled it and fanned it out again face up. Fifty-two different cards.