Maker

Chapter: 7-1

Chapter: 7

Rania was an upscale psychic, but her office looked like that of an average therapist. It had a solid oak desk and book shelves on every wall with titles like Neurochemistry 5th edition, Handbook of Dichotic Listening, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Anxiety… not to mention, dozens of other titles on human thought and behavior that even their authors couldn’t pronounce.

She actually did have a degree in social work, and psychology—along a few other things, most likely. That made her a good person to know. People needed to hear that they weren’t crazy when they saw a werewolf or a ghost.

She had the gift of being able to make all that go away. Talk to her for an hour once a week and the world would be a safe and reasonable place again. Of course, she couldn’t help me; I knew better.

Rania was a little tall if you included the professional black pumps she wore. Her business suit had a cream blouse under a black jacket, tucked into a black skirt that stopped just short of her knees. Her curly blond hair was shoulder length and always looked wild. She was more handsome than pretty; a beauty that had aged well as she hit her late thirties.

Her handshake was firm as always, and I felt the soft buzz that you always feel when touching another mage. She was probably much stronger than I was, but so was everyone.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” she said. There was an edge to her voice that was normally absent and she smoothed out her clothes as if trying to gain some composure. Made me wonder what was going on.

“I was around,” I replied—which was true. The house hadn’t been far from here. If her window faced the right way, we could see the smoke.

“I have an appointment in fifteen minutes, so I’ll come to the point. I had a dream about you.”

“You know that screwing with prophecy is forbidden by Merlin’s laws. I wish you would get that and stop telling me things.” I said.

“You always say that, you know.” She sighed.

“Because you never listen.”

“I listen just fine. ‘Divination is frowned upon,’ you said.”

“No one frowns like the Martinet. They’ll kill you if they even think you did something wrong. Better if you just never do anything suspect.”

“Nice to meet you pot, I’m kettle. Did you forget that almost thirty percent of my patients are referrals from you?”

“I did not forget. I do what I have to.”

“And so do I. Even if I were to stop helping people—and I won’t—I can’t help having dreams.” She could be right. I had no idea if it could be controlled or not. I offered to look into it once, and she politely refused saying that she’d be scared not to get them now. This was an old conversation.

I sighed. “Fine. What was the dream?” I asked while imagining Merlin or one of the Martinet standing over my corpse.

“It was two days ago, the night we had that storm. A month or so from now, you and I will be sitting here. I don’t know what we’ll talk about, but you’ll get up to leave. You transform into an ox and charge into a black wall with Zora on your back, along with some man I’ve never met and a vampire. You all go into the darkness and then there’s nothing.”

“What do you mean there’s nothing?”

“I mean just that. There is nothing after that. The dream itself wasn’t scary. It was actually sort of peaceful. I didn’t call Zora until I did Henry’s reading and got nothing after two months. Before him, I did myself and a few others; no one has a future that goes beyond two months.” Henry was her husband. He was a nice guy, former military. We got along the few times we met.

“So what are you saying? A bomb is gonna go off and kill everyone in town?” I said, sitting forward.

“One of my patients wanted her fortune told before she left on a trip. She will be in Malaysia for the next two months; she’ll meet a man she wants to marry there, and after that, nothing.”

I whistled. It felt like getting punched in the stomach. The future wasn’t set. It couldn’t be. Certain beings had free will—humans more than any others. Having a choice changed everything. Divination worked on probability; whatever was the most likely outcome was what Rania would see.

When she looked, she gained knowledge, and having that knowledge changed things. Even if she made the same choice she made in a reading, she made it with foreknowledge of the outcome. That was enough to make things turn out different.

The fact that she looked and then looked again should’ve changed things.

“But you had the dream, and then you looked at it. Twice.” I said. Maybe there was something in the way things changed that I could use.

“Actually, I looked seven times,” she said grimly. “It was supposed to change. It’s changed every time before now.” She sounded afraid. I couldn’t blame her. Her eyes were frightened too, reliving something unpleasant. “This one didn’t change at all Maker. It… It didn’t change.” She sniffed and went to her desk for a tissue. I was feeling taken aback myself. I walked over and gave her a hug. It seemed like the right thing to do.

“I don’t know what to do about this. According to you I’ve already done it, but I know I’m not ready to die in two months. I’ll tell the Martinet and get some help to try and stop whatever the black wall is.”

“I could try to read you again, or Zora. Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be different,” she said. She had tried to read me three years ago and failed. She couldn’t explain it. All she said was that I was “wild in time” while babbling like a mad woman. I figured it didn’t work because of an overload caused by the being in my head and we never did it again.

“No. Try not to worry and let me know if you learn anything else. I’ll handle this somehow.”

She just nodded. I got up to leave, and she grabbed my sleeve. I turned to look at her, but she’d already let go. I could hear her breathing hard, and the pulse in her neck was running wild. She kept her face placid—no doubt the mark of a great psychologist—but she couldn’t stop the slight tremble going through the rest of her body. Zora was right; she was panicked, but then again, so was I.

* * *

I needed to go somewhere, find someone, and ask some pointed questions with threats attached. I hated asking questions; where I’m from it made you look like a cop. Fortunately, I knew where to go and just what to ask. That and as far as he was concerned, I was a cop. Murder and shape-shifting would get you killed but, letting someone assume you were Martinet, when you weren’t, was perfectly legal. Merlin’s rules had never made sense to me.

His name was Soaka, and he was a toad—a beautiful toad, but a toad nonetheless. He was a halfling who dealt in arms, and he moved around a lot. He’d been supplying the vampires in the area since the war with the Martinet started ramping up however long ago.

To his credit, he’d sold me information about large shipments of arms they’d paid for in advance, and I was able to destroy them. He got them to pay in advance as much as possible. Most of the time I’d been able to trash everything after they’d taken possession. A few times I did it before—just so they didn’t look too hard at my informant.

Any magical tools I collected were interned in my pack until they could be destroyed or turned in. I didn’t wanna touch anything vampires would use in a fight. He always said it was a favor to me, but I knew the real reason was so that I’d owe him and he could order up more and charge them again. Maybe that just made it good for business all around.

He was easy to find as he was living on the north side—the nice part of town. The type of place where people stared long and hard at a black guy in cargo pants, a canvas jacket and satchel slung over one shoulder. I was wearing black today; I always wore black. It wasn’t that I had a Johnny Cash streak or anything, it was because I couldn’t do laundry to save my life. Black clothes were the only ones that consistently came out clean, and after I figured out how to enchant my clothing, I didn’t do laundry at all. At least the t-shirt was white.

The building had a doorman and everything. I walked in, took a deep breath and reminded myself that I owned the place. I didn’t own it of course, but you’d be surprised the number of places you could get into with a snotty enough attitude. I walked past the front desk and straight to the elevators.

Security just missed asking me a question. Eye contact is permission to speak. I didn’t make eye contact, not even when the elevator doors closed on his face. The place I was going was on the top floor. Soaka wouldn’t live anywhere without a penthouse.

When I got off there were two doors. I didn’t know who stayed in the left one. Maybe I’d have a look one day, but the noises from the right told me where I was going. Screams, squeals and laughter. I knocked hard on the door, and the noise died instantly—I didn’t have to wait long. A vision in red lingerie that didn’t cover much slid the door open. Her short sandy blonde hair framed an angelic face with a pointy nose, below her blue eyes. Despite the slender frame not being my preference, it was an effort to keep my eyes on hers.

“Soaka please.” I walked right in, not waiting for a response. Most beings of power were careful about thresholds. Being invited in was the only known way to avoid a supposedly massive power decrease. I didn’t know why it worked; only that it did. Some old law of home and hearth being sacred. I liked walking over them with impunity. It put people off guard.

Magic wasn’t science; like everything else it just had to obey science. Zora and I were both good at science. Two plus two equals four in science. If you did it a million times, it would always equal four. Add in a little magic, and it could equal 4.1, 4.3, 3.9. Maybe it would eventually average out to four, but there was no guarantee that a certain magic effect wouldn’t change slightly with repeated castings.

Since it didn’t violate anything we knew about quantum theory, Zora had come up with some way to flesh it out. A hypothesis that magic has something to do with manipulation of quark states, though the last time I checked her math, it didn’t look all that promising.

The security guard showed up just as the woman in red closed the door behind me. I couldn’t have timed it better if I’d tried.

There were more women and men inside. Three of each, all in various stages of undress. My eyes lingered on a brunette so lovely that I tripped over a stool. She was a larger woman that carried her weight in all the places men dreamed about. She was lying naked on a fancy looking couch with her thick black curly locks draped over her breasts and making a pile on the floor.

Apparently, everyone else was only there to pleasure her. I could almost be convinced to join them if it weren’t a trap.

My escort looked back at me and I shook my head and muttered about needing to get out more as she led me into the back room. I smirked to myself as I followed. I was using one beautiful woman to distract me from another.

I didn’t stare at her legs exactly. It was more a detached appreciation. These women were either fairies or thralls of a fairy. Nothing good would come of mixing with them.

I took a deep breath and let it out. My lust faded to background noise where it belonged; like all my other emotions.

Soaka was a halfling. Not the Baggins kind. A halfling was someone who was part fey and part mortal. Normally they chose between the two at some point, but they didn’t have to. While they were choosing, they just so happened to get the otherworldly beauty and grace that was characteristic of most fairies and wildlings. Not to mention the immortality.

This particular halfling had been putting off that decision for centuries. No one knew how he’d done it; least of all me. Soaka appeared to be my age. Late teens, early twenties or so. His light brown hair was neatly slicked back with just enough out of place to be intentional. The rest looked right out of a catalog.