The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister Landon Wark (free e books to read .txt) 📖

under a nearby tree reading some of the pages that Sandy had printed of for them the older man raised a meaty thumb.

"Now. Blades are up. 'Kay, go ahead and turn the key."

The riding mower roared once and then started into a grumbling fit.

"Turn the throttle down!" Clay shouted over the irregular strokes of the machine.

Jenny made a frantic grab at the controls, trying desperately to recall exactly which one of the mystifyingly labelled controls had been the throttle. His hand had just been on it a second before! The engine coughed and then went quiet.

"I'm sorry," she said, genuinely worried a tongue lashing was coming.

"S'all right," he muttered. "You're sure you don't just want me to do this?"

"I have to take my turn," she replied resolutely.

"Sure. You know what, let's take a break. You have to show me how you got the light to glow on the end of your finger. I can do it when someone says it, but reading linguistic notation is not my forte."

"Well, that's not that hard. The trick is when you hit the fifth syllable there's a clack that you have to make."

"A clack?"

"Where that g is with the double dagger beside it."

"That's a clack?"

"Well, according to Sandy it's supposed to be a click, but if you do it more like a clack then you can adjust how bright the light is, depending on the angle of your finger."

"You're shitting me."

"I shit you not." Jenny allowed a small titter.

"All right, you're down the rabbit hole now. What exactly is the difference between a click and a cla—" He paused mid-word and stepped down from the side of the riding mower. "Who is that?"

Jenny swivelled, her jeans slipping on the vinyl of the seat. Approaching the gate, still dressed in the suit she had last seen him in, its pant legs stained with grass and dirt, its white shirt now hopelessly yellowed with oils and grime, was Bill.

His eyes were ringed by heavy circles and the whites ran through with bulging red vessels. Step after step was placed haphazardly on the dirt and gravel that made up the majority of the road coming up from the highway. If she squinted, Jenny could make out their car, concealed in the trees a fair ways down the road. Any man, any sane man, would have driven the car up farther towards the house before stopping. Bill looked like he was looking at sanity, or at least normalcy, in the rear view mirror.

"Goddamn," Jenny whispered.

"My thoughts too," Clay said.

Jenny swung herself off the seat, standing next to Clay who dwarfed her by a good thirty-five centimetres.

"What are you doing here, Bill?" she asked, trying not to sound too challenging.

He stumbled, stutter-stepping to keep himself upright. He wasn't drunk, of that she was certain. Bill had never touched a drop past his twenty-fourth year when his uncle had died of bowel cancer. But he was not right either. Not right in the head. He looked like he hadn't slept in the entire week she had been gone.

"You're coming home," he managed with an exaggerated blink.

Jenny looked up at Clay who was frowning. If the larger man's presence was doing anything to dissuade her husband, it didn't show in Bill's swaying manner.

"You took my debt!" Bill shouted hoarsely. "That was my debt! My price to pay! My goddamn paternal responsibility! You had no right to throw your... witch money at it!"

Ezra placed the pages he was holding on the grass and struggled to his feet.

"We're going home and things are going back to the way they were!"

"I'm not going anywhere." Even though he was still metres away Jenny made certain the lawnmower was directly between Bill and herself. "Bill, if you want to stay here, that's fine."

"Um, sure," Clay interjected.

"With the witches?" Bill shouted. "Did they ask you to sign your name in the book yet? Did you give them your soul?"

"Maybe you should go home and get some sleep." Clay took a step around the lawnmower but Jenny grabbed his arm.

"Don't."

Clay had a few centimetres on Bill and likely outweighed him by a good deal, but he didn't look prepared for the insanity that she saw in her husband's eyes. Even if he was, there was no need for anyone to get hurt. Bill would get tired eventually and leave. He had to.

But there he was taking another step.

As the three of them carried the boxes of equipment out into the field Sandy felt a long drop of perspiration roll down the side of her cheek. The exertion was not so great, however the humidity in the air brought a heaviness to what should have been light work. The strain of trying to keep everything organized was also weighing down on her more than a little. Keeping up with the finances, settling the little tiffs that arose among the normally congenial house residents, parsing the upside-down letters and daggers and double daggers in Jonah's notes, it was all starting to get to her.

She caught herself breathing a little heavier than usual and tried to make the conscious effort to calm whatever area of her brain was so worked up.

As she glanced up at the ungodly array of spires she was walking towards she couldn't help but feel like she was gradually being drawn in to one of the pulp novels that had occupied her up until nearly a month prior.

Each one was nearly ten feet high and reminded her vaguely of the power line towers that ran around the county. From one of the lower supports, drenched with more sweat than she was, hung the slender figure of Jonah McAllister.

It seemed strange to see his pasty skin outside in the sun.

"You got a delivery," she said to his