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

And that was what had doomed their boy. He had just put it aside, like... like some chore that he didn't want to do. Because Jenny had said so. And now...

He happened to pass a picture hanging on the wall, a mass produced little printing from some distant relative that showed the Saviour walking with a boy of maybe the right age. Trees and rocks and bright brilliant sunlight filled the background. Bill reached out with a finger and flicked it from the hook where it hung. Shattered glass sprinkled the hallway before him and, while he made a slight effort to avoid it, a shard cut into the bottom of his left foot. He winced, but the pain barely registered.

The fucking protestant reverend had been no fucking good. He said he was going to help but he ended up being one of them. Who was going to help? Who could ignore the temptation if not a priest?

He knew what they were up to, trying to infiltrate the town, trying to spread some kind of drugs. He had seen them. And Jenny was doing it with them. What the hell was she thinking? He couldn't... He couldn't wrap his head around what the hell she could possibly be thinking, and the more he tried the more he found himself pacing around the house. The more his thoughts circled, dogging him through the halls and the rooms.

He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs for ten or twelve seconds and rose again.

On the table was a cluster of mail that had been accumulating for the last two weeks, growing whenever he absently wandered out and checked the mailbox. There were a couple of the usual bills, but the collection notifications had completely dried up after Jenny had thrown some of her witch money at them. More people willing to sell their souls. In beneath the top few layers a mid-sized glossy insert poked out. Bill shuffled the envelopes around and found a somewhat familiar smiling face. Looking back at him from under a Stetson hat and mirrored sunglasses he struck more than a passing resemblance to Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. Behind the man a pair of men, caricatures really, in striped convict shirts cowered behind a set of iron bars.

"Liberals and socialists are scared of your vote," the top line announced. "They want the criminals on the street. They want you afraid."

Bill skimmed down the ad to the large bottom line at the end of the promises to end 'political correctness' in law enforcement which read: "Re-elect Geoff Timmons Sheriff."

Bill clucked his tongue.

The fear he had felt upon hearing that thunderclap came back to him and his legs shook for a moment. There was no way he could go back out to that place, but he knew enough about what was going on there to maybe give it a good kick, scatter the people there to the winds like so many leaves.

Jonah McAllister Takes a Break

Jonah McAllister stayed out in the cabin for as long as he was able.

He had no desire to repeat what had happened on that night several days earlier, nor any desire to discuss it. He had Sandy bring out what he needed for food in addition to her usual deliveries of any supplies that he ordered out for.

Research was going slow. He spent days out in his makeshift laboratory, maybe adding one or two new lines in his blue notebooks (and occasionally in the one black one he kept locked away in a safe he had bought with money he had created himself) per day. The one saving grace was that he had made some major headway with his electron recalibration and its connection to voxikinesis. He was able to float a coffee mug over to his hand without spilling much more than a drop or two. But that was it. He was no closer in figuring out where it fit into the larger picture, or why high electron motion should be a boundary. He felt constantly on the verge of cracking its secret, but it remained just beyond his grasp, compounding his frustration with the recruits in the house.

They were trying to take him in directions he did not want to go.

When she came to review some of the work he was getting ready to pass on to them Sandy would try to worm in the idea that they, that he, had taken on a responsibility to them when he had asked for them. He would try to ignore her as best he was able. Sometimes she would concede... at least for a little while, only to come back claiming that a review of the words was necessary. At that time she would try to make the point again.

At least the recruits were making some progress.

Sandy claimed that Jenny and Ezra were lagging not far behind her and that the others were not far behind that.

When he became jealous of their progress he had to remind himself that they were taking the easy route. They were getting the end product without the benefit of the knowledge of how it was put together. They were little better than soldiers who had been given guns but not told how they worked.

Of course that was his job; figuring out how the gun worked. But it would just not come to him.

It was nearly ten before he finished with his morning routine. There was not a drop of toothpaste left in his tiny bathroom. He settled for using a naked brush, licking the back of his teeth for the rest of the morning in a vain attempt to get rid of the taste it left behind.

He grumbled something, shoved the empty coffee canister into the cabinet and swung open the fridge door. There was a half