Magic School for Geezers
Faith Hunter
ChapterOne
Dani
Dani was perchedin one of the visitors’ chairs in the office as the COO perused her computer screen. Margorie Devoe, the Chief Operating Officer of “The Seven’s,” was behind her desk, making her wait. Hoping to make her squirm. Make her worry.
Power games pissed Dani off; always had. But she knew how this game was played. She relaxed into the stiff-backed chair and sipped the coffee. It was still hot, so she hadn’t been here as long as it felt like. She lifted a hand and stroked her pearls, an affectation that went along with her undercover ID and fake personal and professional history.
She had spent the early morning in the lab, while the techs, the psychologist, and the counselor tested her magical abilities, and then the later morning filling out paperwork: medical records, financial records, personal and professional history. Part of the paperwork was true, the rest was total fiction and was currently being run through “The Seven’s” IT department for verification. If her cover didn’t hold, if someone picked holes in her false identification, she’d be tossed out on her butt, and their client would have no way to find their missing family member.
The laboratory testing had taken place in avoidroom and Dani had failed. Utterly. On purpose. Instead of igniting the candle, or heating the cup of water with her power, she had blown up a computer and the desk it had been sitting on, and then set a wooden doorway on fire, the blaze so hot she had set off the fire alarm and the fire department had shown up, lights, sirens, and hunky first responders, most young enough to be her grandsons.
Blowing things up and setting things on fire had been fun, and not something she’d done on purpose in years. Her cover was that of a spry, elegant woman whose power came on her late in life, and she had no way to control it.
She looked out the window of Devoe’s penthouse office and something white caught her eye. She pulled off her reading glasses and sipped her coffee, watching as if bored by waiting.
Two men wearing white hazmat suits with full face and head coverings, were across the quad from The Sevens’ main building. They lifted a gurney out of a white truck. A truck. Not an ambulance.
The men pushed the stretcher-on-wheels up a ramp toward the building. On the gurney was a sheet that appeared to be covering a person. Her heartrate sped.
Why Hazmat suits?
The breeze caught the sheet covering the body. Whipped it up in a high billow.
The woman beneath it was wearing a hospital gown. Void strips were over her head. Void strips stopped magical power. What the ever freaking hell?
Devoe spun her fancy leather chair to face Dani, her gaze one of evaluation.
Dani swiveled her head, met Devoe’s eyes, and lifted her eyebrows in question. Not speaking, not giving the woman that much control. The silence stretched. Dani sipped.
“You have a powerful and uncontrolled talent,” Devoe said. “Seven Oaks Assisted Living and Magic Training Facility is the best teaching institution to educate a woman of your advanced years in how to harness and direct that power.”
Advanced years, my ass,Dani thought. Devoe was either a rude little twit or trying to push her buttons. Maybe both. But she simply sipped.
Devoe extended a long-fingered, perfectly manicured hand across her desk, pushing an electronic pad. With her other hand, she slid paper copies across. The papers were Dani’s application as student and resident at the magic school. The electronic signature was attached to … nothing. The COO’s eyes glittered.
Dani accepted both and hoped by all that was holy her team had discovered something through the small Invader device she had plugged in to the hidden wall socket in the lab. Taking a breath, she signed her life away. Maybe literally.
ChapterTwo
Dani
Four Weeks Later
Dani glanced the others’way for a moment, lifted her index finger from her tea glass to indicate she had something, and returned her attention out the window, peering over the tops of her reading glasses. All three at their table caught her minuscule gesture, and she hoped Marvin interpreted it as a need for a diversion.
As she sipped her tea, she studied the building across the quad—Building Z—just in time to see two men in white one-piece biohazard suits get into the white truck that was always parked near the lower entrance of the building. This hadn’t happened since the day she applied to the school. As she watched, the truck pulled out of the Z’s parking lot.
She wanted to walk over to the window to see where it went, but too much attention to the outside was frowned upon, so she sipped and watched, ignoring her tablemates, as if she was fascinated by the birds at the bird feeder.
The white truck passed in front of the window and, as she watched, a garage-type door rolled up in the dorm building, the dormitory where all the inmates lived. The truck entered. The garage door closed. Her heart rate sped.Finally.After four, lousy, unproductive weeks undercover, something was happening. She glanced at Marvin and gave him a very tiny nod.
“I fucking hate magic school,” Marvin groused, deliberately too loud. “And the fucking meatloaf in the fucking dining room is theworst part of fucking magic school.” His voice grew louder with each complaint, his white beard waggling and his face turning red.
Yes,Dani thought. His cussing was proof that he had caught on. The others at the table jumped in too.
