Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,37
Cyrus complained. “Every time we’ve talked you were full of info on this sort of thing. How can you not know the biggest hitters? I didn’t expect you to be partying with them, but—”
“Look, man, I barely tested as a level three,” the blond guy replied. “I can do parlor tricks at best. Sideshow carnies have more skills than I do.”
“Okay. But you hang out on those magic community message boards and blogs. Surely you’ve heard something. Everyone’s talking about this.”
“You hear a lot of things,” Chad agreed, watching another player put down a card. He shuffled through his own set and made a play. “Early frost—goes back in your hand, man.” The other player groaned and picked his card up again, muttering something about a wasted turn. “Doesn’t make any of it true.”
“Well, for curiosity’s sake, what have you heard?”
Chad frowned. “Heard that the government’s going to start charging for a license to use magic.”
“That was debunked as an urban legend on that fact-or-lie Web site,” a comic-book fan cut in. “So was the story about our dimension getting dangerously close to one of the others.”
“I wouldn’t count that out,” I spoke up. “We’re always moving closer or farther away from other dimensions.”
They all stared at me again.
Cyrus shrugged. “You should know, I guess. Go on, Chad, what else?”
He sighed. “Hmm. There was something about portents being good for some prophecy to come true in like ten years or something, bringing back some sort of demons or gods or supermagical beings . . . I don’t know, there’s always some nut on one of those boards railing on about an end-of-the-world scenario. They usually just want you to come to their church service or contribute money or something.”
That last one sounded like it could be one of the Dragon’s people. But it also could be any number of other whackos. The kid was right: there are always people spouting off about dark prophecies.
“But nothing specific about the Brothers of Power? How about people ending up in comas?”
Chad grimaced. “Someone was talking about how his college roommate’s in a coma, wondering if he would be able to get a pass for the semester because of the trauma of finding him.”
“That’s definitely an urban legend, man,” one of the other players said.
“Did they say what city?” Cyrus asked.
“No, man. You’re not supposed to give out personal information like that online.”
Cyrus laughed. “I guess not.”
“Scary techno mages may come along and steal your action figures,” I joked. The group looked a bit put out by my comment. Call me a crone, will you?
“There may have been a couple of others,” Chad conceded. “I’ll check when I get home, e-mail you any links.”
“Ask around, too,” Cyrus pushed. “Find out if anyone else you know has heard anything. People’s magic being stolen, them put into comas . . .”
“Them being driven insane,” I put in.
“Oh. There may have been something like that,” Chad said, looking up at me (and not my chest). “Someone mentioned how a friend of theirs lost their shit in school the other day. People just thought he went off his meds or something, but this kid was really concerned. His friend was the only other magic-user in his town, and he was afraid it’d get out and people would think it was something that happened to all magic-users, like a disease or something that would have to be quarantined.”
“Get online. Ask if the friend was near any technology before he lost it,” Cyrus said. “Or if anyone’s heard anything about appliances sucking magic out of people.”
They all stared at him like he was crazy.
“That’s, like, something out of a horror movie, dude,” one of the cardplayers said.
“Wasn’t that an episode of Terrifying Stories?” someone asked.
“No, man, you’re thinking of Terrifying Tales.”
“That was vampire ghosts sucking people dry of blood, not magic.”
“The ghosts lived in machines,” someone else pointed out.
“None of this means it couldn’t happen,” Cyrus snapped. “Just check it out and let me know if you find anything.”
Chad nodded. “You’ve got it, dude.” He looked around the table. “My turn again?”
“This has been helpful. Thanks,” Cyrus said. I got the feeling he was being sarcastic.
Chad shrugged. “I do what I can.”
Cyrus leaned over the pimply kid. “If you use your Werebeast along with that Feat of Strength card, you’ll get extra attack points and no one will be able to use their defense points for the rest of the turn.”
Everyone at the table groaned. Chad threw up his hands