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“What is magic?”
Elliot’s ears twitched. She looked around the street. “I thought… I thought you knew?”
Gimble kept her focus ahead, moving up the street with confidence. Elliot kept pace, holding her coffee in both hands. It was a gray Sunday, the sun still low in the sky behind the clouds. Still, the streets in Pioneer Square rattled and popped with activity. Gimble cracked a smile.
Ahead, a gaggle of soccer fans pre-gamed outside a bar, blocking the sidewalk. Gimble flicked her wrist, slow and deliberate. The soccer fans, without seeing the two of them approach, stepped away from the sidewalk, carving a path down the middle. “Sometimes, magic is a suggestion.” Gimble said. As she passed through, she turned back to the crowd and shouted, “SE-ATT-LE!” Elliot nearly dropped her coffee.
“SOUND-ERS!” The soccer fans responded. Satisfied, Gimble turned back around, meeting a startled, confused Elliot’s gaze.
“Was that magic too?” Elliot asked, looking over her shoulder.
“No, but it was fun,” Gimble said. “Magic can be used for influence, of course. They don’t know why they got out of our way. They were compelled, and they did not think of it.”
“You intended them to get out of the way,” Elliot said, her ears twitching in thought.
“Yes,” Gimble said. “Exactly. I also intended for them to shout back at me, but no magic was needed for that. Because sometimes magic is simply a matter of knowing how to get what you want.”
“No ectoplasm required,” Elliot said. She thought a moment, taking a drink of her coffee to give her the break in conversation. “How do you do it, though?” She asked. “Shouting is easy, how do you part a sea of people? And don’t-”
“Practice.”
“-Say practi- aw dammit.”
Gimble let out a laugh. “How do you push someone downstairs from behind a closed door?”
Elliot could feel her tail bouncing behind her. Or, how do you know a jimmy bar away from a locked door? Or open a fridge a floor above you? How do you go unseen?
There was something to all of this. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“Have you been looking for magic?”
“I mean, no?” Elliot ears dropped on her head. “I don’t know what to look for.”
“The trick,” Gimble start, “is that magic is everywhere, and that most people don’t realize they’re doing magic. Have you ever seen someone catch a ball one handed? A one in a million miracle catch?”
“That’s magic?”
“They bent the universe to their will, though a small, small part of it. Their brain sees the ball, and thinks, ‘not today, I’m catching that ball.’ And their intention is set.”
“But how does the magic know?”
Gimble looked over at her. “That’s a good question! How do you do your disappearing trick?”
Elliot’s ears perked. “Ah! I don’t really think about it?”
Gimble said nothing to this. Elliot frowned, but that was as good an answer as anything.
They continued on down the street.
“I’d like to see your magic,” Gimble said.
“It’s not that special,” Elliot said, looking away.
“But it is yours. You have honed it for your entire life, that’s not nothing.” Gimble pointed to a bottle left on a bench. “There. You said you can move things. Move that.”
Elliot studied the bottle. This shouldn’t be that hard. She took a deep breath, focused on the bottle, and with a flick of her finger, the bottle on the bench ten feet away from them fell over.
“Not bad,” Gimble said.
Elliot gave her a sidelong glance. Then, flicking her wrist again, she lifted the bottle into the air and deposited it in a recycling bin.
“That is very useful,” Gimble said. “How far can you do that?”
“Not much more than that?” Elliot said. “It’s easier if I can just knock it over. But something like a bottle isn’t too bad.”
“Now…” Gimble said. “Your unseen trick.”
Elliot thought a moment. Chances were, she thought, Gimble could detect her magic. She’d need a way to prove she was going unseen. She looked across the street to the convenience store and motioned with her head to Gimble. She trotted across the street, willed herself unseen, and stepped inside the store. Carefully, she selected a conspicuous pack of cookies off the shelf in front of the check stand, turned and waved to the bored looking cashier, and waited for someone else to come through the automatic doors to step out.
Elliot held the cookies up in front of Gimble.
“Well done,” Gimble said. “You make it look so effortless.”
“Once I got the hang of it…” Elliot said. She looked down at the package of cookies. “…I’m going to go put these back…”
Gimble smiled and waited for Elliot to return.
“Okay, now,” Gimble said. She pointed across the street to a pedestrian. “Set them on fire.”
“WHAT? NO!” Elliot said.
Gimble let out a laugh. “I’m kidding. Your skills are more advanced than I had thought.”
“Oh…” Elliot said. “I don’t know what to say…”
Gimble patted her arm. “You don’t need to say anything. I’m just trying to gauge how comfortable you are with magic. It tells me how we need to train you.”
Elliot nodded like she understood. She didn’t. She didn’t quite get it. Magic didn’t feel like something you could learn completely. But then again, she had always just stumbled into it.
“Have you spotted the spells yet?” Gimble asked.
Elliot’s ears dropped. “I don’t really know what to look for.”
“Luckily, you’re in an excellent place to start.” Gimble nodded to a street sign. “Here, for example.”
“No parking from 7am until 6pm?” Elliot asked.
Gimble steered her around to look at the back of the sign. A dozen stickers had been placed on the sign, from name tags and postal labels, to custom made pieces.
“Slaps?” Elliot asked.
“Not all, but a few,” Gimble said. “Often the easiest to pick out are post office stickers. They’re less permanent.”
“Those usually are destroyed in a few days, why would-” Elliot stopped herself. The wheels in her head were turning.
“Why indeed,” Gimble said.
“Okay, so if you’re telling me that you can put spells on slaps, and you don’t want a spell to last, it’s because…”
“Magic is opportunist,” Gimble said. “Give it an inch and it’ll take a mile. A spell like that that will stay forever will start to work beyond its intended effects.” Gimble leaned forward to look at the slap. “This one appears to be protection from opposing forces. That could be a lot of things here in Pioneer Square: cops, other people, tourists, the baristas. Maybe someone set up in a tent close by only wants to be left alone. But that grows and grows and people start dropping dead for seemingly no reason.”
“Ah,” Elliot said, her eyes wide.
“You put up slaps, they have to go away.” She studied the sign. “We are convinced there’s one on Capitol Hill SOMEWHERE that was meant to attract renters to a property. It must be permanent.”
“Because of the bros?” Elliot asked.
“Because of the bros.”
Gimble continued to lead her down the street, into the park. It was a large brick plaza, surrounded by tall trees and metal tables and chairs. A guitarist was finishing up a set just as another gaggle of soccer fans, dressed in green and blue, began to congregate. Elliot made a mental note to get out of the ID before the game let out.
Elliot looked up, feeling her intuition tug at the back of her brain. Off at the periphery of the park, trying to blend in with the soccer fans, was The Nerd. He tried to look inconspicuous, but the bandana over his mouth really did the opposite. C’mon, guy.
Gimble turned to her, tugging gently on Elliot’s arm. “What is it?” She looked past Elliot into the crowd.
“I just saw someone. Just got a weird vibe is all.”
“You should listen to that vibe,” Gimble said. “Perhaps it is time that we start to head back home.”
“Can we go get more coffee?” Elliot asked. “I’m dying.”
“Actually dying,” Gimble said. She turned both of them and started towards the stadium, and towards the Link station, and that meant toward coffee.
“Literally dying,” Elliot said. “I am dead.”
They fell into a flow of people heading to the game, and Gimble continued to point out spells people had slapped up. Prosperity, safety, to ward off hunger, to win a game. There were magic users all around her filling the world with spells to help each other keep going. Except for that one on the trash can. “I’m pretty sure they just don’t want people peeing on it,” Gimble said.
Elliot caught a flash of a face in her vision, and she canned the crowd. Agent Lebeau skirted the edge of the crowd too. Was it that day? Elliot thought. Was it creep on Elliot day? Elliot sank down, getting behind some taller soccer fans.
“Another one?” Gimble asked.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s not do that,” Gimble said. “We need to get to coffee quicker.”
“Yeah yeah,” Elliot said. They broke away from the crowd, pushing against the flow coming from the International District, up the bridge and over the train tracks, darting across to the ID.
“How does bubble tea sound instead?” Gimble asked. “I know someone that will let us lay low for a while.”
“I can make it work,” Elliot said.
Gimble lead her into the ID, past the florists and Pink Godzilla, past import stores and travel agencies, and so many amazing smelling restaurants, until they ducked into a little place that sold take out dim sum and bubble tea. Gimble greeted the woman behind the counter in Cantonese, and pointed to the back. The woman smiled at her and waved her on. In the back, just off the kitchen, was a little seating area. Gimble took her seat, and the woman from up front brought them a plate of steamed hom bao and a pot of tea. They chatted in Cantonese. Elliot pulled out her notebook and wrote as quickly as she could about slaps, about suggestion, about intention. The tea would keep her up that night, but it was okay. She liked the night.