“I hate that name,” she snapped.
Marvin glanced back at her and grinned. “I know.”
Sandra huffed a disgusted breath, but her tears dried up. She scowled at him. Marvin was a nasty-mouthed cracker, but he was also wise. He knew she needed to be annoyed, not coddled. Annoyance would give her courage, while kindness would make her tear up. Annoyance was better.
She wished she had an antacid. Her stomach was burning with anxiety. And then she realized Marvin wasn’t cussing. There was something about the way he was moving up the stairs. Purposeful. Quiet. And he wasn’t griping about his knees. He was breathing deeply, steadily, as if…Right. Marvin had seen battle back in the seventies. With Marvin groaning on the last twenty steps, they left the fire stairs and entered the hallway.
Sandra blew out her worry and pulled her magic to her, the way they had tried to teach her in her first magic school, back when she had first transformed Harold. Back then she’d had a block, an emotional obstruction to using her magic. But after all this time, and the fresh exercises taught by the staff at The Seven’s, she could feel her power humming under her skin. If she had to use her curse to save Dani, she knew how, theoretically. She had never used her curse on purpose before. Never. Not once.
But for Dani, maybe God would forgive her.
Marvin
Marvin stoppedat the fifth floor and took a slow breath to rest his aching knees. He pulled his power to him. It gathered, not something he could see, but something he could feel, like a low-pitched buzzing under his skin, a sense of invincibility. He wasn’t invincible, but … he could do things with his curse that no one knew about. There had been that one time when a thug attacked him in a parking garage.
He knew what the guy had seen. Old man, in the dark, alone. A white-headed guy who couldn’t fight back. Right? Just walk up to him and take his wallet. Maybe stick a knife in his ribs just for fun. Except he had picked the wrong old man. When the thug pulled his knife and demanded Marvin’s money and jewelry, Marvin had stopped, drawn in his power, and cussed his curse spell. All the cameras broke into garden soil. Then he altered the spell. Just a little. And the guy in front of him dissolved into dirt too.
Marvin had stood there, staring at the pile of dirt. Then he had kicked the dirt away, revealing the guy’s knife, his belt buckle, and the little metal rings that his shoelaces had once passed through. There was also some cash. No plastic ID. No leather shoes or wallet. Nothing was left to ID him except the prints on the knife hilt. Marvin had pocketed the cash, used his hanky to lift the knife, and gotten into his car. Later he had carefully wiped off the knife and tossed it into the library book return box. There was no camera monitoring the box, and it wasn’t like he could turn the blade in to the cops.
He had survived, twelve dollars richer, and a lot smarter.
Marvin knew that if he used his most powerful spell, he could turn everything made of plastic and everything made of beef, like the meatloaf, to garden soil. And if he got mad enough, he could transform people too. His talent was precise, easy to target, but there was always the potential for mistakes if he got cornered. He hoped no innocent people got hurt.
He peeked out the stairway door. The hallway in front of the nurse’s station was full of medical people—nurses, technicians, aides, probably doctors too, though these days they all dressed alike. He preferred the days when nurses wore those cute white dresses, white stockings and shoes, and a hat that looked like half of a milk carton on their heads.Sexy.
Dani’s door was out of sight, around the corner. “Stay close,” he said to Sandra.
“Yes.”
The single word was breathy, as if she was about to pass out. If so, the stairway was not a safe place for her to land. She could break her neck. He looked back at her, but her face was set in firm lines, solid, sure. Marvin gave her a nod, held his magic close to his chest, and strode from the fire stairs. Mable followed right behind. Marvin took a right at the nurses desk and spotted Dani’s room just ahead. The door was open.
Dani was on a stretcher, being wheeled into the hallway by a short, muscle-bound attendant. Beside him was a big burly redheaded white guy with a nose ring, and wearing a black security uniform. The security guy wasn’t a void; he had magic. A security guy who could toss spells. A magic user who used his power against old people, old magic geezers.
He had to act fast. Marvin pointed a finger at the floor beneath Dani’s gurney and whispered, “Fuckety.”
The synthetic rubber tires on the stretcher dribbled away into dirt and the gurney dropped an inch to land with a small thump. The floor tiles beneath it crumbled to dirt too. Quickly he pointed a finger at three rolling data carts down the hall and said it again. They crumbled into soil.
“What the hell!” the nose ring guy said. He started looking around for the source of the magic.
With careful control, Marvin waved his hand in a small arc in front of himself and Sandra, and to the side of Nose Ring, and murmured, “Fuckety fuck.” Everything made of elastic and synthetic and leather crumbled away. All the employees’ shoes and underpants and bras and some of the clothing that had a low cotton content became dirt and fell to the floor.
There were screams and people grabbed at their clothing.
Marvin raced in, ready to grab Dani off the stretcher. He intended to carry her to the stairwell, but the guy with the nose ring reached out to grab his shoulder. There was power in his hand, raw, blazing power. “Fuckety,” Marvin said out loud. But his attention had been on Dani, not fully on the guy and instead of turning the security guy to dirt, the wall behind him crumbled away. The spell had brushed by Nose Ring and hit the wall.
The guy stepped back, his eyes wide. He shook his whole body like a wet bulldog to rid himself of the traces of Marvin’s spell. But he didn’t turn to dirt.
Instead, Nose Ring threw out his hand and hit Marvin square in the chest with a magic taser. Electricity lit up Marvin’s body. The world tilted. He was falling.
Throwing his last ounce of power, he whispered, “Fuckety fuck fuck,” and hit the security guy in his nose ring. Marvin landed on Dani. The world went dark.
Sandra
Sandra watchedMarvin’s magic lash out, silent, transforming shoes, clothing, and medical equipment into soil. And then the feeling of incredible power building fast. There was another magic user here. And it was far from the familiar sensation of Marvin’s magics; this magic was hot and razor sharp.
Marvin cursed. The wall behind the magic user crumbled into dirt.
The security guard at the end of the stretcher threw out his hand.
