Chapter 2

I hate it when it snows here in Austin. Texican's never know how to properly drive in the snow and all of the hills around here make things just that much worse. Too many fools think they can still drive sixty plus in a thirty zone and then get surprised when they brake at the last second as usual and end up plowing into someone or something else less moveable. That's the nice thing about Flyvers ... a good flying car avoids most, but not all of those idiots. Too bad they're still too expensive for most folks, and a tad too unsafe in my opinion. I'll just stick to my old Ford Pinto — it's still the most reliable and safest car ever built.

It doesn't often snow in Austin at Christmas time, it's usually a once every ten years sort of event around here. I guess there might be something to the Global Cooling panic after all. With over a foot of snow already on the ground and with more winter storms in the holiday forecast for tonight and tomorrow, Christmas Eve, I wasn't about to leave the warm comforts of home for anything less than a full blown crisis. Naturally, the phone picked this time to ring.

"Mr. Zyphyr?" A husky woman's voice asked.

"Zak will do fine, Mr. Zyphyr was my father. He got eaten by a Greenwoods Troll, but that's neither here nor there."

Actually, my father is still alive and well and living with his fourth wife down in Confederate Florida in some dodgy trailer park, fishing all day and running around all night with a vaguely criminal crowd performing minor feats of magic for highly illegal or immoral purposes. A loveable sort of rogue; we talk on the phone occasionally, but I won't pretend that we're close.

I like starting off cold conversations with this story; it lets me know if my potential client has a sense of humor and puts them a bit on the defensive and out of their comfort zone. It also helps to separate out the magically knowledgeable from the merely ignorant or down-right fools. The scariest thing in the Greenwood Plane is semi-sentient green apple tree that will talk your ear off and their apples will give you unceasing intestinal distress for the better part of a week. The local Trolls are about the height of my knee, and vegetarians to boot ... they love those green apples and consider them a delicacy.

"Oh ... I'm sorry to hear that Zak. I'm calling you on a different matter, one of desperate importance. I think my soon to be ex-husband is trying to kill me — sending Shadow Elemental Stalkers after me. How soon can I meet you, and where?"

"The Lovett Inn, just off of MOPAC on Hwy 290 West, a bit past the exit for Barton Creek. If you hit Bee Cave you've gone too far. Be there in one exactly hour. I'll be in either Conference Room A or B on the first floor."

The Lovett Inn is my preferred place to do business. They have a small conference room that is perfect for conducting business meetings and it is less than fifteen minutes from home. I never conduct any business or meet clients at home. I trust my protections, but the fewer people that know where you live, the better. The house is still registered in my Aunts name, so folks can't find me that way either.

Interesting. My potential client knows about Shadow Elementals, but not the Greenwood. Very odd.

Although technically true and of nomenclatural accuracy, no one calls visitors from the Shadow Plane "Elementals" anymore. That went out several generations ago. Even more interesting was the fact that she called them "Stalkers" ... a very specific and Victorian era term for the nastier critters at the top of the Shadow world food chain. Ergo, my client must be at least a Sensitive and possibly even some sort of minor Practitioner, but one of very haphazard education. Undoubtedly not licensed ... possibly even Renegade.

Renegades are an Adept level Practitioner (or higher) that have been officially censured by the BMA not to practice magic, but continues to do so anyway. These sorts of troublemakers are not as scarce as they ought to be. Finding and suppressing a blacklisted Renegade is a very good way to earn BMA brownie points. No, you unfortunately you can't redeem them to obtain a real Brownie, one of the rarest and most elusive creatures of Faerie.

This was a client who had probably done a bit too much late night reading. Do-it-yourself magical education from antique spellbooks or "Wizardry for Dummies" is a very hit or miss affair. Mostly miss. Half of the instructions for magic in those old books are either inaccurate or blatant nonsense ... stuff published by the truckload to pander to the trivially talented hoping for some magical miracle to turn them into a potential Merlin. Mostly all a load of mumbo jumbo, but dangerously deficient in clearly stating what proper safety wards and protections should be used for those occasional magical workings that were listed accurately.

Old bookstores and the InterWeb are full of this sort of dangerous misinformation, and I was willing to bet that my client had partaken of this foolish, but not forbidden fruit.

Driving in the snow anywhere is a pain in the butt. There are several useful minor spells that will make car tires safer in wet weather, but none of these work worth a damn on snow covered roads. Sure, the Artifice stores are full of gizmos and gadgets that claim they'll help make tires stick better to the road ... usually also causing the snow to stick to the car nonstop until it turns into a drivable snowman. This can be hilarious to watch ... but not so fun to drive with. I made my trip the old fashioned way — at about ten miles and hour, driving like my late Aunt Millie. Bless her soul.

Even after driving like a little old lady, I still arrived at the Lovett Inn about a half hour before my client. In Texas there are a lot of things named after John Lovett, hero of the Texas Revolution and major league world-class Wizard. It was Lovett's finding of the Lost San Saba Gold Mines, also known as Jim Bowie's Lost Treasure, in 1844 that saved the Republic of Texas from certain bankruptcy at its' eleventh hour.

There are countless "What-If" books of fiction that speculate that if Lovett had not found this immense lost treasure hoard and freely turned it over to the Republic to pay its numerous insurmountable debts, Texas would have soon sold itself over to the United States in return for debt relief. It is further speculated that with Texas (and all of her vast claimed lands westward that now constitute the GWA) as a part of the Union, the North would have easily won the Civil War, instead of the South, creating one immense government over all of North America, instead of the balkanized assortments of organized states that we have today. An interesting theory I have often mused about, but I now had work to do.

It is a standard security practice to use neutral third-party locations for meetings, and the Lovett Inn is always my first choice. It has a fairly secure layout with only main entrance inside and its' two conference rooms are right on the main floor next to the check-in desk. The hotel is also a bit out of the way and not normally always booked up so getting a meeting room usually isn't very difficult. They also skimp on their housekeeping, so if I could get Conference Room A, the odds were that at least some of my previously made subtle protections might still be there. With the twenty year old mechanical vacuum that they use, my collection of hidden chalk and salt marked pentagrams and protection circles imbedded in their extremely old carpets might remain there forever ... if you know where to sit.

Anyone can say anything over the phone, so you can never be sure that your prospective client is going to be of a friendly sort. My first choice, Conference Room A was available, as it usually was, but I couldn't be sure until I had arrived here; I've never seen both A & B in use at the same time, so I didn't need to take a normal guest room to meet my client ... and start frantically drawing a few simple brand new protections.

This gave me time to check on a few of the minor protective wards already in place around where I would place my chair. This should at minimum stop or significantly weaken the first unpleasant spell or Artifact pointed suddenly in my general direction. Since I also had some misgivings about my client, I added a weak Truth ward around the chair I would have her sit in. It wasn't one hundred percent reliable, but nothing in this world is. I made it weak enough that she shouldn't be able to sense it, but strong enough to just give me a tingle if her story wasn't kosher. The rest of my older existing protections seemed to be fine and adequate and need only minor refreshing.

I finished my preparations just in time. My client was early and waiting for me in the lobby ... I really hate it when that happens. It's usually a red flag indicator that they're either too worried or scared to obey basic directions, an imbecile, or they might have unpleasant ulterior motives. If the client arrives even earlier than you, this tends to send up even worse red flags and I usually find some excuse to back out at once and immediately decline the case.

Never, ever let a potential enemy be in a position to get the bushwack on you. Discretion is always appropriate, as well as being the better part of valor.

"Mr. Zak? My name is Gloria." She enquired, looking at me rather quizzically when I greeted her. She did not offer her last name. Very definitely a red flag that she had at least some sort of magical education. I guess she thought that I looked more like a frontier lawyer than a practicing magician. That happens a lot.

Ok, so I'm fairly young (not quite thirty yet) and don't really look the part. I almost never wear my robe although I do own the traditional white horsehair wig (well, actually Centaur hair, but close enough) but I can say with pride that it is still pristinely new and has never touched my head since the day I was fitted for it.

Adept level practitioners are allowed (and encouraged) to wear a formal black robe of British wool, complete with silver trim and even a wig, as if we were barristers practicing at an English court of law like the Old Bailey. Full Wizards of course have a fancier red silk robe with spiffy embroidered trim and are never seen in public without their powdered but tastefully aged gray wigs and severely old-fashioned buckled shoes. The younger, trendier Wizards even wear capes now, to make the ensemble look even sillier, if possible.

It looks absolutely 18th century, as if William Penn, Benjamin Franklin or William Pitt the Elder (or Younger for that matter) could suddenly materialize at any moment and start a tedious conversation about the East Indies spice trade.

My normal 'working' attire is a proper Texican gray duster coat and cowboy hat covering a three-piece suit. All specially tailored with extra pockets for placing my arsenal of magical gizmos and Artifices. Try putting even half of the stuff a well prepared Adept needs in the tiny pockets of most robes! A silver handled sword-cane with a blade of cold wrought iron engraved with silver runes completes the ensemble and is potent against both mortal and inhuman adversaries.

"Clothes don't make the Practitioner, nor appearances add to the sum of his magic weighed." I quoted from the famous Grandfather of Arcane Deco, the Great (and slovenly) Wizard James Thomson, inventor of the first Arc-Tec calculating machine, the Differential Analyzer, in 1876. Sure, these devices didn't get practical and become the great arc-calc devices we enjoy today until the true Arc Deco period of the 1930's. Still, it worked well enough to help get Ian Quatermass and Professor Challenger get to the Moon (and back) in 1899. What a pair of magnificent bastards ... crazy as loons, but brilliant.

The real brilliance of Arc Deco magic was the discovery that form could indeed be made to follow and even improve function, and that the esthetic beauty of art was just as important to the function of an Artifact as the amount of power it contains. Properly crafted, an Arc Deco item possesses many times the amount of power of an older Arc Nouveau item, and there were now no size limitations. Super computers that filled rooms, immense skyscraper buildings, fleets of huge passenger zeppelins, and rocket ships to the moon became fact, not fantasy.

"Ah ... I see. No disrespect intended Zak." She plainly replied, but with unmistakable annoyance and disappointment. Too bad, besides it is much easier for people to underestimate you and make seemingly trivial, but important, mistakes when dealing with a Practitioner that looks and acts different from what they had expected. Expectations lead to assumptions ... there is an ass in the word assumption (as in make an ass of you and me) for a very good reason.

Once Gloria had seated herself, I held my fingers together in a thoughtfully precise (but magically meaningless) manner and gave my client a good look-over. The superficial appearances were all pleasant.

My client seemed to be an extremely attractive woman, perhaps only slighter older than me, of about thirty or so. She was dressed to impress (a red flag) showing a lot of ample cleavage and long creamy thigh (definite red flags also), and hadn't skimped on the makeup (another red flag, but trivial).

This was prime lamb groomed to play the wolf in this comedy short, if not Red Hot Riding Hood herself. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy looking at acres of exposed boobage and leg, but these are unwelcome and potentially dangerous distractions in dealing with a client ... usually the exact reason a client chooses to appear dressed that way. To force me into making emotional decisions rather than purely logical ones.

Too many red flags ... but since we were already here and my Protections well established, I decided to feed this fish some more fishing line before I hooked her and hauled her in ... or tossed her right back into the sea.

"You have some minor magical ability, are you merely just very Sensitive, or can you qualify for Adept, if you choose? Let me see your BMA card, please."

It was really not a request, nor were those really questions, as I was pretty sure I already knew her answers, but I wanted to see how far she was willing to go to hide her light under the proverbial bushel. As a licensed Adept, I'd be able to 'read' a card and tell if she'd been trained (and where) and if she'd been in any previous BMA trouble, including being declared a Renegade, or if she had been officially warned against any practicing of magic.

"Just a strong Sensitive, I tested at 1.9." Ouch! So close to being able to use magic but just a hair away. These sorts of folks just on the cusp of having abilities are often BMA's greatest troublemakers. They often feel 'cheated' and vengeful, blaming everyone but themselves for their lack of magical success. They're often willing to do nearly anything, legal or otherwise, to find a way to boost their limited abilities, often including using illegal artifacts or contacting other planes to make proverbial 'deals with the devil'. This was a major red flag to me.

She handed me her card, which verified her claim. The card had the right emanations and was genuine. There are a lot of clever forgeries around, but nearly all of them are detectable to a properly trained Adept who knows what to look for. They just feel wrong ... as did my prospective client, but Gloria definitely wasn't a Renagade ... yet. Her BMA record appeared to be completely clean. No training, but also no history of any past practitioning without a license either. If her talents had improved into Adept level she was keeping it on the down low.

My lie detection ward didn't exactly declare her statement to be a lie, but it quivered and thought about it for a moment. Technically a true answer then, but she might be augmented to her eye teeth with arc-tech. Artifact level items to boost power were strictly forbidden to all Practioners, and MBA didn't like them much in the hands of Adepts either. Some limited artifice level magic boosters, commonly and vulgarly referred to as Hamburger Helpers, weren't quite illegal in the GWA, but their use by a mere Sensitive to artificially boost their net power into low Adept range is highly discouraged. BMA would confiscate the items on principle and place the Sensitive on their 'bad boy' list to be watched in the future. Even minimal power in the hands of completely untrained individuals is considered universally to be a very bad idea, and I'd mostly agree with that.