Out the window, the white truck returned to its usual parking place, where two men in hazmat suits got out. She assumed they were the same two men, but in magical investigations assumptions were foolish.
They went to the back of the truck and disappeared from her vantage point again. Darn it. But…
By the time order had been restored to the dining room, and desserts and a few cell phones had begun to be delivered, the white truck had been back and forth again, for a total of four trips, from Building Z to what appeared to be the garage beneath the dormitory building. Four trips. One trip for each person at Table J?
The undercover group at S table in the dining room (and sleeping in Dorm-hall Delta) might now, finally, have something to work with, something that would prove their working hypothesis. All they needed was access to the inmates’ records, which they could only get with access to a laptop for Mable to work her magic. A laptop that Zeddie was supposed to have smuggled in days ago.
Tridevi was the best at what they did. Marvin recycled plastic, cussed, and was a sex fiend; Sandra turned people into animals while dreaming, kept the books and did the work of a forensic accountant, and lived with guilt; Mable made dragons out of large birds, like crows, had uncanny electronic skills and could beat up people; and Dani, well, Dani blew things up.
Dani smiled grimly. They were here to rescue Franz, but unofficially, they intended to rescue all the geezers in Building Z, like some geriatric superheroes with magic power and bad attitudes. Dani’s grin went wider at the thought.
Marvin
The phone call toTridevi’s clerk—the twenty-something who was playing his son on this gig—had been fun. His fake son got a good ass-chewing for not visiting, followed by the usual threat to cut him out of his will. Marvin had the kid cowed, even by fake abuse. Who knew he was such a good actor? Maybe after he outlived all the broads at Tridevi, he’d take up acting.
“Come on, Mable-girl,” he said to his lady-love. “Let’s go upstairs. I got enough little blue pills to make you happy,” Marvin poured another cup of bourbon coffee.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Sandra sigh and shake her head.
“You’ll give yourself a brain aneurism one day, taking so much sex meds,” Sandra muttered. “How did you even manage to smuggle them in here?”
Marvin gave her a sly grin and waggled his eyebrows.
“Never mind. I do not want to know,” the light-skinned black woman said. “Accept it, old man. You were not given sex magic. You got garbage magic, which is a much more useful curse than sex magic.”
“But not more fun. Right, Mable?”
Mable tittered. He blew more kisses in her general direction.
Marvin’s talent had waked one rainy day with the ability to break down anything except metal and glass into good quality garden soil. Plastic was his specialty, and he had entered into a private contract with an international garbage and recycling company, a very specific and confidential contract that kept his identity classified, so he could live out his life in peace, once his five-year contract was completed. He’d made a fortune in recycling for that five years. He’d provided for his family and could now retire a dozen times over, but as he’d discovered when he retired the second time, retirement was boring. He’d gotten the roaming urge and sold his house, using the dough to buy an RV. His third wife, Coral, had not been overly impressed with the idea of moving into an RV, even a million dollar one. She had wiggled her cute little ass at him and walked out, taking her percentage of the cash, and was now living in a retirement facility for millionaires in Florida. That had led him to Tridevi. And to Mable, his high school sweetheart. The one he let get away.
The cover Mable had created for him had made use of his abilities and his cussing. Mable was brilliant like that. That cover made him both valuable and dangerous, and he was the bait to The Sevens management. He fit the profile of the people who had been disappeared. If Tridevi was right about the Sevens, and if he slipped up, he’d never be going home. He’d spend the rest of his life serving in the Geezer’s magical prison—Building Z—drugged, hooked up to a magic-collecting device, his power being harvested, used to make money for someone else, and watched constantly byvoidoverseers in case his magic went haywire. If that happened, Marvin would disappear, never to visit his granddaughters—his real granddaughters—again.
That is—ifthey were right about Building Z. Already they knew something was fishy. No one at the magic geezer school was ever allowed to leave, not for holidays or visits with families. Not even funerals. All of them were on a short leash and leaving the main building was forbidden, except for occasional visits in the central atrium, which was open to the air and sunshine, and the even rarer visits with family who were willing to make the drive here in the middle of fucking forsaken nowhere.
But so far they were golden.
Their safety was thanks to the lack of control he’d displayed—deliberately, but the school didn’t know that—turning things into dirt. The cussing was something he pretended not to be able to control and it caused accidents. Like the tables’ plastic coverings disintegrating into soil.
The catastrophic coup d'etat had been the injudicious addition of his favorite word into a recycling spell. The magic spell had been intended to turn a plastic milk jug into garden soil, but it hadmysteriouslygone sideways. The car belonging to the chief operating officer, Margorie Devoe, had been transformed into a pile of metal, glass, and good quality dirt.
Marvin smiled into his bourbon. It had been a very expensive Bentley. And it had not been a mistake. Marvin had added the word fuckety to the spell on purpose, and guided it to that one car out of all the others in the parking lot. Therefore, he was no longer allowed to speak spells unsupervised, even to practice. He was powerful and appeared to be unloved by any family, except for Mable, and unable to control his curse. He was the perfect patsy.Bait.
A bell rang overhead, the signal that supper was over. “Fuck it,” he mumbled. “I can’t wait until I can get a real burger.”
Mable
Mable patted Marvin’s hand.When Marvin reappeared in her life, she had been divorced for twenty years, had her own home, a red convertible, and had a sweet boy toy of only fifty to keep her happy in the sheets. Unlike some others, she hadn’t made millions off her magic, as her curse had limited usefulness. Instead, she had made her living off marriage to faithless men.
In her first marriage, when she thought her neurosurgeon husband, John, might be cheating, Mable had employed a really good investigator, who had caught him in the act. Pictures and everything. That taught her a good lesson.
Most men only thought with their peckers. Peckers were really stupid.
Three marriages. Three settlements. The money had been well invested.
After each of her marriages, Mable upgraded her body and moved on. She hadn’t had all that work done on her body to not make use of it.
Zeddie handed her phone to her and she simpered at him. “Thank you, dearie.” She dialed Monica, her personal assistant, and chatted as if they were mother and daughter.
