On the streets of... #2

I spent every free minute of the next three weeks learning, or more precisely, re-learning magic. I even bought a cheap plastic wand and started to work my way through the high school textbook. First, the Sign of Movement. The first chapter in the book and the first Rune every sorcerer-to-be learns in high school.

Now, understanding how it works is the easy part. You've got a wand, a ring, a stone, a glove, a tattoo, or anything with the Rune of Movement on it. Now you grab that because you have to touch it somehow, whatever the Rune is on, it must have a physical connection with you. I think.

When you have the wand, you will concentrate on the Sign of Movement. Then you will imagine that your brain is ordering the Sign to move something at the other end of the room. Got it? Then here comes the energy. It's the same one you use for running, walking, or talking, it comes from you, so you've got to be careful not to spend too much, otherwise, you're gonna die, same as if you would run for days. Only much faster. Magic is fun, isn’t it?

Here is what it's like in practice: I lift the wand, imagine what I wanna do, send the energy and the Rune lights up on the wand with a pretty colour. Then the vase I wanted to put from one shelf to another, will fall down halfway and break into thousands of pieces, but that's okay because I gotta practice more complicated magic, namely, how to magic together the pieces of Laila's favourite vase before she gets home and cuts off my balls?

The answer, by the way, is to use the Runes of Breakage and Denial and deny the vase being broken. Or to use the Runes of Memory and Reality and make the memory of the whole and unbroken vase real. That's what they call a spell: when you make two or more Runes working together. According to the book, the Runes work metaphorically and the only limit of how you use them or for what is your imagination. But most people don't have what it takes to think up spells on the go. I certainly don’t, so the best I can do is to memorise a few useful ones and hope against hope that casting spells won’t come up all that much on the job.

'So, tomorrow,' Carlos said, looking over the rooftops.

'Tomorrow,' I nodded. 'Nervous?'

'A little,' he confessed. 'You? Are you up for it?'

We were sitting on the fire escape outside our apartment, wearing our uniforms (people like us rarely wore anything else), high above the street, drinking beer even though we both swore an oath not to drink alcohol anymore after the detective party. It was the last day of September, nice and warm with only a little chill in the wind. Tomorrow was going to be our first day as a detective. There weren’t many of those new, magic-focused precincts, because there weren’t many wizard cops, to begin with, but that meant we both got to work at the same place.

'I'm up for being a detective,' I answered slowly. ‘The rest will come, eventually, I guess. I mean, it can’t be that hard, right?’

In retrospect, I was a fucking idiot.

The next morning I woke up sometime after half-past three. I didn't have to, my shift started at eight and the new precinct was surprisingly close, but I just couldn't sleep. I grabbed my phone and wand and lumbered out to the kitchen. Now, when I say kitchen, I mean, The Room: it was a dining room, kitchen, home office, and band practice place (Carlos played the guitar and I played the drums. Laila did nothing except for asking us not to do it) and living room all in a big, open space. I loved everything about our apartment from the exposed brick walls through the worn down, comfortable furniture, the big TV we played video games on every time we could, to the fire escape, which was functioning as a low-budget occasional terrace on the warm summer evenings.

Of course, I didn’t always show that love to the apartment.

Pro tip: when you are half asleep and suck at magic anyway, do not try to make coffee using it. After I cleaned up the ruins, extinguished the small fire, threw away the melted coffee machine and switched the smoke detector off, I made a mug of instant coffee for myself. It was terrible but I deserved it. Carlos stuck out his head from their room during the process.

'What the fuck are you doing, asshole?' he asked, rubbing his eyes.

'Malfunctioning wand,' I lied. 'Sorry.'

'Why aren't you sleeping?'

'Can't,' I shrugged.

'Well, it sucks to be you,' he said and went back to sleep.

What a great friend.

I was watching an old cartoon, half napping on the couch when Laila sat down next to me. She only wore a big T-shirt and her hair was messy.

'What's up with you? Nervous?' she asked hoarsely.

See? That's a real friend, right there. You suck, Carlos. Big time.

'A little. No, I'm lying, I'm nervous as fuck.'

Laila giggled and hugged my shoulder.

'Do you remember the night before your first day as a uniformed officer?' she asked.

'Yeah, first I vomited then spent three hours looking for a new job. Then I vomited again.'

'And then you put on your uniform, you went to work and what happened?'

'A perp hit me in the head with a crowbar and I slept for three days. I'm not sure what's your takeaway here, Laila.'

She shook me gently.

'No, the point is, you did go to work that morning. And you will this morning as well. Peter Kowalsky might be an annoying idiot, be he ain't no coward.'

I nodded and even smiled a little.

'Thanks, Laila.'

She shook me again, kissed my cheek and stood up.

'C'mon,' she said. 'Let's put on some clothes. You can buy me a coffee at the coffee shop downstairs.'

So, at four in the morning, we went down for a coffee. I had a cream cheese bagel, too.