Sandra, the third at their table and the accountant in their magical investigation firm, pursed her lips and swatted the back of his head with her Christian magazine. “Watch your language, you foul mouthed, pasty old geezer.”
Marvin ducked, chortled, and added, loudly enough to be heard at the other tables, “Okay, okay! I’ll be nice. Though I’d hate it less if it was magic fucking school. Get it?Magic fucking school?That would be golden.” He waggled his long white eyebrows at his table-mates, lifted his mug in a silent cheer to his own word play, and guzzled his coffee and bourbon.
Dani managed not to sigh. Marvin’s undercover persona was the loud, obnoxious, ladies’ man who cussed like a sailor—which he had been in his real life youth. On covert investigations, his cussing was good for two things: at keeping attention off his partners, and causing magical mayhem and mischief. On this case, Marvin’s language gave them a small amount of privacy that they would not otherwise have.
Cussing spells were Marvin’s pride and joy, seldom used spells that, employed with his verbal and magical dexterity and precision, could cause nearby plastic to turn to garden soil, including the plastic housing of pickup mics and other electronic surveillance equipment. But his cussing spells couldn’t be used often, or the warden’s IT team would begin to see a correlation and Marvin might be in danger. So to hide the spells that caused problems, Marvin had to cuss like the Marine he had been forty years ago. All. The. Time.
“Right, Mable?” he asked, leaning toward the pert blonde. “Would you go tothatschool with me? Magic fucking school?”
Mable, the fourth partner in fighting crime, and Marvin’s lady-love in real life, tittered and blushed. She fanned her plump hand at her face as if trying to cool off from sexual heat.
Sandra smacked him again, contributing to keeping the servers’ attention off of Dani. Sandra’s persona was a straitlaced former preacher, which she had been in real life until her magic fell on her. Magic that, in her case, had been a curse. “I’m praying to Jesus for you, you nasty old man, but I have a feeling even God Almighty can’t help you.”
Marvin laughed out loud.
Dani continued to ignore them all. They all had jobs to do. Right now, hers was to observe, and after four weeks at the upscale magic school for late-blooming magic users, there wasfinallysomething to observe. She scooted her seat back a bit to get a better view out the window. She hoped her concentration would be interpreted as an interest in the garden and birds or disgust with her tablemates.
Marvin
Marvin blew a big,noisy kiss at Dani, who continued to ignore him. She was good at that. Maybe better at it than his first wife Jackie had been. And Dani didn’t give a rat’s ass what he, or anybody else, thought about her. She was skinny as a rail, had mottled skin that had baked too long in the sun at Myrtle Beach for too many years, and had vibrant blue eyes. Her hair was the color of steel and she had a backbone to match.
Tridevi Investigations had been Dani’s baby, when she got bored being retired. She had pulled her two old gal BFFs together and started the firm to solve paranormal crimes. Tridevi—for the three main Hindu goddesses, because they said all women were goddesses and had thought it sounded cool—had a good success rate solving magical crimes. That success rate had only gotten better when he joined, or so he was fond of telling them.
But she was spending too long staring. Something had to be happening out that window, something important to their case. Marvin had been a Marine way back when, and that situational awareness was still with him even now. He knew where every person in the room was, including the guard watching their table. To cover for Dani, he took Mable’s hand and kissed her knuckles with a loud smacking sound. “Oh, Mable baby, tonight will be fun!”
Marvin had a lot of skills, but his best skill was his charm. Even at seventy, he was still a well-built, sizable, good looking man with a big personality, and people talked to him, spilling all kinds of beans, because he was so damn delightful. The ladies especially let things slip, things they might not have said, had he acted less bombastic. It stood him well in investigations like this one, and playing the foul mouthed sex fiend was right up his alley. The ladies still flocked to him and he didn’t mind flirting to learn stuff, though he would never act on it, not since he tracked down and wooed his high school sweetie.
For a variety of IRS and pension reasons, he and Mable had never married, but he’d never cheat on her. He blew her a kiss and she blushed, for real this time.
He liked it when she blushed. She looked pretty with her blonde hair curled like a combination of Farrah Fawcett and Princess Diana. When her face went all pink, she was gorgeous. Mable was the love of his life, and though she played the simpering doll baby, she was also brilliant.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Zeddie, their void assistant, a human with null capabilities who couldn’t be affected by magics, approaching. Zeddie was pushing their food trays under stainless steel plate covers, along with a coffee carafe and a fresh pitcher of tea.
“Fuck,” Marvin said again, drawing Zeddie’s attention. Dani wasn’t usually so obvious about her nosy curiosity.
Mable giggled.
Marvin released her fingers and raised his cup in her direction as if toasting her. “Later, babe. I’ll make you happyalllllover.”
Sandra sighed and closed her eyes, as if praying.Maybe she was.Sandra was good like that, and even though she had lost her family and her church—an apostolic black church she and her husband had started in their youth—when her magic fell on her, she kept praying. Marvin didn’t believe, but some small part of him was always happy that she prayed for him.
Dani sipped her iced tea and ignored them, as usual, but she looked around the dining room, away from the window.
“Is everything okay, Mr. Danvers?” Zeddie asked, his red chin hair twitching, his brown eyes darting between them. “Your instructors want you to use care with the language. You know. After what happened last week.”
“It was just a little dirt,” Marvin said, pretending to get huffy. “High quality dirt. If you people hadn’t quit using cloth tablecloths, there wouldn’ta been any fucking plastic around to be transmuted. I told Devoe that, but did she put cloth back on the tables? No. She’s a cheap-wad.” As Marvin complained, Zeddie put their plates in front of them.
“Let me refresh your coffee,” Zeddie said, a barely hidden threat.
“Touch my coffee, lose a hand. Fucking decaf,” he muttered, this time really annoyed.
Marvin had bribed Zeddie to supply his bourbon and his real coffee stash. A fella hadda do something to survive in magic school for old geezers. Zeddie always referred to the students as inmates or geezers, and Tridevi had picked up on the terms. Geezers. Inmates. Not students. Kids these days had no respect for the elderly. But Marvin had to stay on Zeddie’s good side or he’d lose the smuggled bourbon, real coffee, and the investigation firm’s other necessities.
Zeddie turned to look at Dani, who was still silent, and again staring out the window. Marvin had to act fast.
“And here.” Marvin grabbed up his plate and shoved it at Zeddie. “This meatloaf is shit.”
On the plate, Marvin’s cold, gelatinous meatloaf turned to good rich garden dirt at the cursing. Marvin had a talent with beef as well as plastic. Good thing there were no cattle farms nearby, or he’d have had to work real hard to keep from bankrupting a farmer.
