Black Magic (6 page)

“Killer trick,” Ricky said.

Lyle slid the deck across to Ricky. The blue sapphire ring on Lyle’s finger flickered with different shades. “Your turn. Show me some moves.”

Ricky picked up the deck. He felt foolish. He could barely shuffle cards without having them end up all over the floor.

“Focus,” Lyle said. “Magic is all around you. You must focus it to move through you.”

Ricky stared at the cards. He waved his hand across the deck. Nothing moved. He stared harder and tried again. Nothing.

Lyle slid a gold coin across the counter. The careworn face on it stared at Ricky. “Here, put this in your pocket, say ‘
bakshokah serat’
and try again.”

Ricky picked up the coin and got the same fleeting feeling he had when he first touched Lyle’s hand. He put the coin in his pocket.
 

“
Bakshokah serat,”
he said. The coin warmed his pocket. He touched the deck. The cards hummed with a rhythmic pulse, like they had a heartbeat. He raised his hand over the deck and swept it right. He could feel his hand pull the cards, as if they were attached to his fingertips by spider webs. He moved his hand back and the cards restacked.

“Whoa.”

“Now the magic,” Lyle said.

Ricky picked up the cards and swore they fanned themselves in his hand. Lyle picked one from the pack, flashed the king of diamonds to Ricky and replaced it. Ricky’s hands tingled like they were plugged into a wall socket. He shuffled the deck like a Vegas pro and fanned it again. Lyle pulled out a card and turned it face up. King of diamonds.

“Easy as pie,” Lyle said. “Nothing to be concerned about with a simple deck of cards, right?”

Of course not, Ricky thought. It’s not like he conjured up something from thin air, or made something disappear into it. This was cool. The hard part was coming.

“What do they cost?” he asked. The others told him what they had paid. It hadn’t been much, considering what they had bought, but they had more money than Ricky did. He doubted he would have enough.

“What have you got?” Lyle asked.

Ricky pulled out two bills and an assortment of change that totaled $3.50. “I can work off whatever it costs extra,” he offered, red-faced.

Lyle broke into a crocodilian grin.

“No need. You have more than enough. It’s your lucky day.”
 

He counted out $1.75 and pressed three keys on the big register. The cash drawer rolled open with a solemn ding of the bell. Lyle deposited the money and when he pushed the drawer back in, it returned with a soft guttural sigh.

“Now come back with your friends on Tuesday. Great mysteries will be revealed.”

“We’ll be here!” Ricky said. He shoved the remaining cash in one pocket. He stuffed the cards into the other. He hit the door in a euphoric sprint.

Lyle watched him go with great satisfaction. Four would be a good number. Manageable, yet still able to spread the power across town. At first he thought the boys’ ages would be a problem, but now he saw it as an advantage. The irresistible lure of the magic combined with limited life experiences meant things would spin out of control quite quickly.

And that was just what the Grand Adventure needed.

Chapter Twelve

“What’s that?” Angela said.

Startled, Ricky jerked and magic cards sprayed from his hands all across his desktop. The desk in his room faced away from the door his little sister stood in. He shot an annoyed glance over his shoulder as he reassembled the deck.

“Pest! Stop sneaking up on people.”

“I’m not sneaking,” Angela said. “My shoes are just quiet.”
 

Since her fifth birthday she had started shadowing Ricky more often, wondering what her big brother was up to. Rather than flatter him, her curiosity had gotten on Ricky’s nerves. He wanted to kick himself for forgetting to close his bedroom door. She wandered in and stood by his desk.

“Playing cards?” she said.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“I can play too,” Angela said. Her little bangs bounced as she shook her head up and down in affirmation. “I know how.” Last week she had learned to apply her counting skills to playing Go Fish. A lamer game had never been created.
 

This deck wasn’t going to stoop to Go Fish-ing. But while Ricky had been able to practice some of his tricks, he hadn’t been able to test some without a participant to pull a card and be amazed. Angela might have a purpose after all.

“These cards are for a different game,” Ricky said. “A magic game. You can play if you will keep it a secret.”

“A secret?” Angela looked wary.

“Sure,” Ricky said. “The magic will be a surprise for Mom and Dad later. You will just be first.”

“I’ll be first,” Angela said. She straightened up like a soldier about to be decorated with a medal.

Ricky turned to face her and spread the cards into a tight fan. “Pick one.”

Angela ran her hand back and forth along the edge of the deck. She stopped and pulled out a card. She showed Ricky the four of diamonds. “How about this one?”

“No.” Ricky said. He shoved the card back in the deck. “Pick one and
don’t
show it to me.”

“You didn’t say that,” Angela said. She pulled out a second card, slapped it to her chest, folded up one corner and peered down at it. She looked back at Ricky in satisfaction.

“Now back in the deck,” Ricky said.
 

She slipped it back in. Ricky cut the deck one-handed and then shuffled the cards with the fluidity of running water.

“
Bakshokah serat,”
he said. He felt the coin in his pocket get warm, but nowhere near as warm as it had before. He fanned the deck again. “Pick again, Angela.”

Angela selected a card from a new place on the deck. She looked at it with confusion and flipped it around to Ricky. “King of Clovers,” she called the ruler of Clubs. “I had the six of diamonds before.”

Ricky turned the deck over. Fifty-one different cards. Damn.

Angela put the card on his desk and patted his shoulder. “I won’t tell Mom and Dad until you are good. Promise.” She gave an “oh, well” shrug and left the room.

Ricky slapped the deck down on his desk. He’d hoped it would be different for him, but it seemed that the magic drained out of his purchase just like everyone else’s had. Whatever stream of wonder he’d tapped into earlier had run dry.

Tuesday, he thought. Tuesday it would all come back. For all of them.

Moments earlier, a third pulse of energy, weaker than the two that had preceded it, had come to life beneath the Arroyo house. It wrapped itself around the old copper piping like a boa constrictor and then corkscrewed down to the main water line, following the path of its brethren. The pulse shot across town along the pipes, pinging from junction to junction like a disk in a pachinko machine, bouncing left and right but holding one overall course. It finally found the rarely used line from town to the abandoned Apex sugar plant.

The pulse hit the plant’s long-dead pumps and then angled down. It plummeted several hundred feet until the pipe opened up into a vast underground limestone cavern, drained by decades of the plant’s thirst for processing water. The energy flew in the darkness like a shooting star. It hit one wall, ricocheted across the cavern and bounced off another, leaving an afterglow trail.

A half dozen other pulses rebounded from wall to wall, flashes in the inky void, the first fruits of Lyle Miller’s new Grand Adventure.

Chapter Thirteen
 

Setup: How many DPW employees does it take to change a light bulb?

Punch line: One, because there’s only one to do it.

The “Department” in Citrus Glade’s Department of Public Works was a bit of a stretch. Monday through Friday, Andy was it. Andy reported to the mayor. Back when the mill was humming and the streets were alive, Andy, and the rest of the crew, would have reported to the Chief of DPW. But the city payroll had dwindled with the tax base. The town council found they could ax the position of chief, but if they axed Andy, no one cut the grass. And someone had to cut the grass. And scrape up the road kill. And man the dump twice a week.

Andy balanced on the top rung of a stepladder Monday morning at the corner of Tangelo and Main. He removed the dead bulb from the quaint iron post streetlight. After nightfall, downtown was as popular as a haunted house, so there was an element of absurdity to Andy’s morning task. But it was on the list anyway.

The clomp of high heels on concrete sounded below him. Mayor Flora Diaz had put the bulb replacement on Andy’s list and he knew she’d want to check on progress. She approached the corner wearing a sharp white linen suit, skirt professionally to the knee, and a pair of beige pumps. With shorter black hair and tasteful makeup, she looked the part of a small-town mayor. Andy always thought that looking the role of Citrus Glade’s mayor was more than half the battle. The job had shrunk to near figurehead status.

“Madame Mayor,” Andy said with teasing reverence.

“Super, super, super!” she said with the enthusiasm of a child at Christmas. “I saw the light out last night and it just isn’t right for the town to have dead lights on Main Street.”

Her positive attitude hadn’t changed since they’d both been at Citrus Glade High a lifetime ago. Andy admired her sunny disposition about the town and its future. There were days it made the difference in his outlook on his work. Add in that he felt he worked
with
the mayor, rather than
for
her, and the DPW looked pretty good.

“It will be shining brightly this evening,” Andy said. “Ready to light our new business across the street.”

He pointed his thumb at the renovated Magic Shop. Flora rolled her big brown eyes.

“Now don’t you start,” she said. “I’ve already had Reverend Wright call me twice about how Satan himself had moved onto Main Street. We’re going over together tomorrow morning to chat with the owner and put the Reverend’s fears to rest. I hope.”

“The store isn’t open much,” Andy said. “Or maybe at all. I’ve never seen the
CLOSED
sign flipped over, now that I think of it.”

“I’m sure he’s planning a big grand opening,” Flora said. “I’m just happy to have some new business downtown.”

Andy had to stifle a laugh every time she used the word
downtown
as if there was an “uptown” to Citrus Glade.

“Be safe up there,” she said and departed to City Hall.

Andy gave the Magic Shop a bit more thought. There was something creepy about it. The bland name, the black paint, the empty storefront window. Since the flurry of activity to re-invigorate the exterior, the place seemed dead. Andy made plenty of passes through the town square all day and was now positive it had never been open, nor had he seen the owner.

As if on cue, Lyle Miller stepped out of the front door with a jingle of the little bell on top. He had on a black long-sleeve shirt reminiscent of pirate garb, the kind of shirt a magician would wear on stage. He looked over at Andy and their eyes locked. Lyle smiled and waved, but both gestures were cold, calculated. Even from across the street, Andy could make out a ring with a large blue stone on one of Lyle’s fingers.

Lyle disappeared around the shop corner and into the alley. He emerged a minute later at the wheel of a jet black Cadillac Eldorado, convertible top retracted. He drove off down Main.

A chill shivered up Andy’s spine. He twitched at the top of the ladder and grabbed the lamppost for support. That guy gave him a serious case of the creeps.

He shook it off. A mysterious shop and black clothes. All the type of hype a magician would spin to create an aura. The guy will be making balloon animals at birthday parties next week and selling Magic 8 Balls in his shop.

He climbed down and tossed the ladder in the back of the town pickup truck. Bigger fish to fry today, as they say. Today was Dump Day, after all.

Chapter Fourteen

The Elysian Retirement Home day room stank Monday morning.

At least it did to Dolly. It wasn’t rotten like a bad banana or an open can of rancid tuna. It smelled clean. Too clean. A fake floral smell with an antiseptic aftertaste. As if it had worked hard to cover a host of scents no one wanted to acknowledge; the reek of soiled bed linens, the shuddering stink of vomit, and above all the musty smell of death. Before she had to live here, Dolly tended her own fragrant flower gardens where blooms sent out the bouquet of new life each morning. The day room’s smell was just the opposite, a cover for life slowly winding down.

Nurse Coldwell bustled around the room from corner to corner like one of those robot vacuum cleaners. She gave each resident a cursory inspection and flagged attendants to assist those in need.

Dolly felt good this morning, which made her feel awful about her son’s last visit to see her. She wished amnesia rode tandem with the bouts of dementia when they galloped up and trampled her brain, but it did not. She remembered every confused, embarrassing moment from her son’s visit. Andy was a saint for never bringing those times up, pretending he was the one stricken with amnesia.