The Spell Realm (30 page)

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Excerpt from 
The Thought Readers

Note
:
The Thought Readers
is the first book in a new urban fantasy series,
Mind Dimensions
. The excerpt below is unedited and subject to change.

* * *

Sometimes I think I’m crazy. Right now I am sitting at a casino table, and everyone around me is motionless, as though frozen. I call this the
Quiet
, as though giving it a name makes it seem more real—as though giving it a name changes the fact that all the players around me are sitting there like statues, and I am walking among them looking at the cards they have been dealt. Doesn’t that sound crazy?

The problem with the theory of my being crazy is that when I ‘unfreeze’ the world, as I just did, the cards the players turn over are the same ones I just saw in the Quiet. If I were crazy, wouldn’t these cards just be random? Unless I am so far gone that I am imagining the cards on the table.

But then I win also. If that’s a delusion—if the pile of chips on my side of the table is a delusion—then I might as well question everything. Maybe my name isn’t even Darren.

No. I can’t think that way. If I am truly that confused, then I don’t want to snap out of it—because if I do, I will probably wake up in a mental hospital.

Besides, I love my life, crazy and all.

My shrink thinks the Quiet is an inventive way I describe ‘the inner workings of my genius.’ Now
that
sounds crazy to me. She also might want me, but that’s beside the point. Suffice it to say, she is as far as it gets from my datable age range. In any case, her explanation would not work, as it doesn’t account for the way I know things even a genius wouldn’t know—like the exact value and suit of the other players’ cards.

I watch as the dealer begins a new round. Besides me, there are three players at the table. The Cowboy, the Grandma, and the Professional, as I mentally call them. I feel that now-almost-imperceptible fear that accompanies the phasing—that’s what I call the process: phasing into the Quiet. Worrying about my sanity has always facilitated phasing; fear seems to be helpful in this process.

I phase in, and everything gets quiet. Hence the name for this state.

It is eerie to me even now. This casino is usually very loud. Drunk people talking, slot machines, ringing of wins, music—the only place louder is a club or a concert. And yet, right at this moment, I could probably hear a pin drop. It’s as though I’ve gone deaf to the chaos that surrounds me.

Having so many frozen people around adds to the strangeness of it. Here is a waitress stopped mid-step, carrying a tray with drinks. There is a woman about to pull a slot machine lever. At my own table, the dealer’s hand is raised, and the last card he dealt is hanging unnaturally in the air. I walk up to it from the side of the table and reach for it. It’s a king, meant for The Professional. Once I let the card go, it falls on the table rather than continuing to float as before—but I know full well that it will be back in the air, in the exact position it was when I grabbed it, when I phase out.

The Professional has the look I always pictured for people who make money by playing poker. Scruffy, shades on, and a bit odd-looking. He has been doing an excellent job with the ‘poker face’—basically not twitching a single muscle throughout the game. His face is so expressionless that I wonder if he might’ve gotten some Botox to aid in maintaining such a stony countenance. His hand is on the table, protectively covering the cards dealt to him.

I move his limp hand away. It feels normal. Well, in a manner of speaking. The hand is sweaty and hairy, so moving it aside is unpleasant and is an abnormal thing to do. The normal part is that the hand is warm, rather than cold. When I was a kid, I expected people to feel cold in the Quiet, like stone statues.

With the Professional’s hand moved away, I pick up his cards. Combined with the king that was hanging in the air, he has a nice high pair. Good to know.

I walk over to the Grandma. She’s already holding her cards, and she has fanned them nicely for me. I am able to avoid touching her wrinkled, spotted hands. This is a relief, as I have recently become conflicted about touching people—or, more specifically, women—in the Quiet. If I had to, I would rationalize touching the Grandma’s hand as harmless—or at least, not creepy—but it’s better to avoid it if possible.

In any case, she has a low pair. I feel bad for her. She’s been losing quite a bit tonight. Her chips are dwindling. Perhaps her losses are due, at least partially, to the fact that she’s not good at keeping a poker face. Even before looking at her cards, I knew they wouldn’t be good because I could tell she was disappointed with her hand as soon as it was dealt. I also caught a gleeful gleam in her eyes a few rounds ago when she had a winning three of a kind.

This whole game of poker is, to a large degree, an exercise in reading people—something I really want to get better at. I have been told I am great at reading people at my job. But I am not. I am just good at using the Quiet to make it seem like I am. I do want to learn how to do it for real, though.

What I don’t care that much about in this poker game is money. I do well enough financially to not have to depend on hitting it big gambling. I don’t care if I win or lose, though quintupling my money back at the blackjack table had been fun. This whole trip has been more about going gambling because I finally
can
, being twenty-one and all. I was never into fake IDs, so this is an actual milestone for me.

Leaving the Grandma alone, I move on to the next player—the Cowboy. I can’t resist taking off his straw hat and trying it on. I wonder if it’s possible for me to get lice this way. Since I have never been able to bring back any inanimate objects from the Quiet, nor otherwise affect the world in any lasting way, I figure I wouldn’t be able to get any living critters to come back with me either. Dropping the hat, I look at his cards. He has a pair of aces—a better hand than the Professional. The Cowboy may be a professional as well. He has a good poker face, as far as I can tell. It will be interesting to watch those two in this round.

Next, I walk up to the deck and look at the top cards, memorizing them. I’m not leaving anything to chance.

With my task in the Quiet complete, I walk back to myself. Oh, yes, did I mention that I see myself sitting there, frozen like the rest of them? That’s the weirdest part. It’s like having an out-of-body experience.

Approaching my frozen self, I look at him. I usually avoid doing this, as it’s too unsettling. No amount of looking in the mirror or seeing videos of yourself on YouTube can prepare you for viewing your own body in 3D. It’s not something anyone is meant to experience. Aside from identical twins, I guess.

It’s hard to believe that this person is
me.
He looks more like just some guy. Well, maybe a bit more than that. I do find this guy very interesting. Usually, I don’t consider other guys capable of looking interesting, but I am curious about how my frozen self looks. Or, more accurately, I like the way my frozen self looks. He looks cool. He looks smart.

I think women would probably consider him good-looking, though it’s not a modest thing to admit.

I am not good at rating the attractiveness of guys—never have been—but some things are common sense. I can tell when a dude is ugly, and this frozen me is not. I also know that generally, being good-looking requires a symmetrical face—and the statue of me has that. A strong jaw doesn’t hurt either. Check. Having broad shoulders is a positive, and being tall really helps. All covered. I have blue eyes—that seems to be a plus. Girls have told me that they like my eyes, though right now, on the frozen me, they look creepy—glassy and shiny. They look like the eyes of a wax figure. Lifeless.

Realizing that I’m dwelling on this subject too long, I shake my head. I can just picture my shrink analyzing this moment. Who would imagine admiring themselves like this as part of their mental illness? I can just picture her scribbling down words like ‘narcissistic.’

Enough. I need to leave the Quiet. Raising my hand, I touch my frozen self on the forehead, and I hear noise again as I phase out.

Everything is back to normal.

The king that I looked at a moment before—the king that I left on the table—is in the air again, and from there it follows the trajectory it was always meant to, landing near the Professional’s hands. The Grandma is still eyeing her fanned cards in disappointment, and the Cowboy has his hat on again, though I took it off in the Quiet. Everything is exactly as it was the moment I phased into the Quiet.

On some level, my brain never ceases to be surprised at the discontinuity of the experience in the Quiet and outside it. It’s almost hardwired into us to question reality when such things happen. When I was trying to outwit my shrink, early on in the therapy, I once read a whole psychology textbook during our session. She, of course, didn’t notice it, as I did it in the Quiet. The book talked about how babies, even as young as two months old, get surprised if they see something out of the ordinary, like gravity appearing to work backwards. It’s no wonder my brain has trouble adapting. Until I was ten, the world behaved normally, but since then, everything has been weird, to put it mildly.

Glancing down, I realize I am holding a three of a kind. Next time I will look at my cards before phasing. If I have something this strong, I might take my chances and play fair.

The game unfolds predictably because I know everybody’s cards. At the end, the Grandma gets up. She’s clearly lost enough money.

And that’s when I see
her
for the first time.

She’s hot. My friend Bert at work claims that I have a ‘type.’ He even described to me what my type is, after he saw a few of the girls I dated. I reject the overall idea of a ‘type.’ I don’t like to think of myself as shallow or predictable. But I might actually be a bit of both because this girl fits Bert’s description of my type to a T. And my reaction is extreme interest, to say the least.

Large blue eyes. Well-defined cheekbones on a slender face, with a hint of something exotic. Long, extremely shapely legs, like those of a dancer. Dark wavy hair in a ponytail, which I like. And without bangs—even better. I hate bangs—not sure why girls do that to themselves. Though lack of bangs was not, strictly speaking, in Bert’s description of my type, it probably should have been.

I continue staring at her. With her high heels and tight skirt, she’s a bit overdressed for this place. Or maybe I’m a bit underdressed in my jeans and t-shirt. Either way, I don’t care. I have to try to talk to her.

I debate phasing into the Quiet and approaching her, so I can do something creepy, like staring at her up close or maybe even snooping in her pockets. Anything to help me when I talk to her.

I decide against it, which is probably the first time that has ever happened.

My reasoning for breaking my usual habit, if you can even call it that, is very strange. Talk about jumping the gun. I picture the following chain of events: she agrees to date me, we date for a time, we get serious, and because of the deep connection we have, I come clean about the Quiet. She learns I did something creepy and has a fit, then dumps me. It’s ridiculous to think this, of course, considering that we haven’t even spoken yet. She might have an IQ below 70 or have the personality of a piece of wood. There can be twenty different reasons I wouldn’t want to date her. And besides, it’s not all up to me. She might tell me to go fuck myself as soon as I try to talk to her.

Still, working at a hedge fund has taught me to hedge. As crazy as that reasoning is, because I know it would be the gentlemanly thing to do, I stick with my decision not to phase. In keeping with this unusual chivalry for me, I also decide not to cheat at this round of poker.

As the cards are dealt again, I reflect on how good it feels to have done the honorable thing—even without anyone knowing. Maybe I should try to respect people’s privacy more often.
Yeah, right.
I have to be realistic. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I had followed that advice. In fact, if I made a habit of respecting people’s privacy, I would lose my job within days—and with it, a lot of the comforts I have grown used to.

Copying the Professional’s move, I cover my cards with my hand as soon as I receive them. I am about to sneak a peek at what I was dealt when something unusual happens.

The world goes quiet, just like it does when I phase in . . . but I did nothing this time.