You can do a lot of spectacular things with magic. Some of them are even useful in the right circumstances. Most of the time, though, the most useful magics aren’t spectacular at all. There are no towering pillars of fire or gale-force winds, just a slight nudge of the world to set you off in the right direction. It’s sympathetic magic. The linking of related objects. It only took a moment and a word to link George’s coat in my car to the real George, wherever he was at that moment. I fired up the car and let the magic lead me to him. He hadn’t gone very far. I only drove about a mile before I pulled into the parking lot of a dive bar called The Wild Rooster. I’d heard of it but had never been in the place before. It wasn’t the kind of place you went to on a whim. It was the kind of place where the police showed up most nights after someone got stabbed or beaten half to death. Needless to say, I wasn’t shocked to discover that George had slinked there after taking out his inadequacies on his girlfriend and her kids.

I sat in the car for about fifteen minutes, debating with myself about how best to handle the situation. Part of me wanted to kick open the door and take on all comers. If my encounter with the Raven’s Council had taught me anything, though, it was that you don’t hard charge into a situation without doing at least a little recon. I could live with making mistakes. Everyone does. It’s part of the process of being alive. When you survive those mistakes, though, you’re a fool if you don’t learn from them. There were worse things than slow rolling into enemy territory, and this was enemy territory. I couldn’t bank on the people inside just letting me take George. They might, if he’d pissed off enough of them, but I couldn’t depend on that. No, I needed to keep my cool until I got the lay of the land. I could always unleash on the whole room later.

I slid out of the driver’s seat, locked the car, and walked over to the entrance. I could hear too loud southern rock wafting out from the interior like the first tenuous pain of an oncoming migraine. The bouncer eyed me, but it was the look of a guy deciding whether he needed to card someone. I reached for my back pocket, but he just gave a disinterested shake of his head and waved me inside. I stepped inside the bar and paused for a second as I took in the place. There were the usual fixtures at the bar. Old men and hard-worn women perched on stools and nursed their poison of choice in self-imposed isolation. They didn’t speak to anyone but the bartender, a heavyset bald guy with soul-dead eyes who handed out beers and shots.

A couple of bikers had laid claim to the pool tables. The green felt on those tables enjoyed the only decent light in the place. A group of college girls out for a hard night of slumming it clustered around the bikers, both of whom were old enough to be their fathers. I wondered if I’d ever been that naïve or stupid. Probably, but it was so long ago that I couldn’t rightly remember it. I’d grown up fast beneath Gran’s gaze and Bill's tutelage. I spotted a few people tucked away in dimly lit booths who looked like they probably knew the business end of a police baton. Then, there were the blue-collar types who came into places like this rather than go home, either because they couldn’t face the loneliness or couldn’t face another bitter fight with a spouse who expected more from life.

I spotted George sitting at a table with a few of the blue-collar types. He looked at ease, cheerful even, and I didn’t do anything to draw attention to myself. I walked over and found a stool where I could keep an eye on George. The bartender came over and waited impassively for me to open my mouth and ask for something.

“Beer, whatever’s on tap,” I said, tossing a ten onto the bar.

The money disappeared into a meaty hand. The bartender came back a minute later and deposited a mug and my change on the bar.

“Thanks,” I said.

He looked at me for way too long with those dead eyes, shrugged, and walked away. I nursed that mug for a good hour before concluding that George meant to leave when they pushed him out the door at closing time. I’d hoped that he’d decide to go on his own sooner than that. Then, I could have grabbed him in the parking lot without making a spectacle out of it. It seemed I was going to have to do this the hard way. I dropped my change into the tip jar and made my way toward George’s table. He was either too drunk or too unobservant to notice me coming until I was right next to the table. He saw me and tried to stand up. My hand shot out and I grabbed a fistful of hair. I slammed his face against the table three or four times before I let him slump to the floor in a bloody daze. I did a slow turn and eyed everyone in the room.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Go now, if you don’t want any part of this,” I shouted over the music.

One of the college girls let out a scream and ran for the door. That set off one of the most orderly stampedes I’d ever seen. The college girls ran, but just about everybody else made their way calmly to the front door or slipped out the back. A couple of the shady types from the booths even stopped long enough to settle their tabs. The bikers stuck around and gave me what they imagined were menacing looks while hefting pool cues. Two of the guys who’d been sitting with George got up and edged over toward the bikers, presumably to present a unified front. I notice George starting to sit up, so I kicked him in the side of the head. He dropped back to the floor again. I glanced over at the bartender to see what he was going to do. I got another of those overlong looks before he shrugged and started cleaning mugs off the bar. He was a weird dude, but apparently not paid enough to get involved. The bouncer came storming into the bar and stopped short when he saw me squaring off with four men.

One of the bikers gave me a smirk as his hand edged toward the back of his jeans. “Five-on-one, tough guy. George said someone might come looking for him. Guess it’s not your day.”

In movies and TV shows, that’s the moment where the hero always tosses off some pithy comment that triggers a lengthy fight. I have never, for the life of me, understood why anyone would do that. Why give your enemies time and a freaking cue to make some move or pull some weapon? It’s stupidity that veers dangerously close to suicidal. Screw that. Instead, I slowly lifted a hand toward them. The slowness was critical. Any fast movement would have triggered them to action. My empty hand, moving slowly, just didn’t strike them as a danger. The fools. Once my palm was facing them, I closed my eyes and uttered a word. The intensity of that light hurt even through my closed eyelids. As for the five guys who were staring at my palm, it left them in all kinds of pain. I cut off the spell and cracked my eyes open. A purple afterimage blurred my vision, but all five of them were clutching at their faces, trying in vain to ward off the searing agony in their optic nerves.

I spoke a second word and felt the whip of kinetic force congeal in my hand. I sent it hurtling toward the mouthy biker. It caught him in the chest and sent him bouncing over a pool table. He didn’t get back up. Another flick of my wrist sent the second biker flying into a wall. I dismissed the kinetic whip and regarded the other three men. All of them were still rubbing their eyes and making distressed noises. I said a final word. Magical energy hardened around my hands like steel gauntlets. I punched out the men with three precise blows. It was probably a mercy. I walked back over to George who had managed to get up enough to lean against the table and kicked his legs out from under him. He hit the floor hard and all the air whooshed out of his lungs. Once I was confident he’d be still for another couple of minutes, I went over to the bar. I dug out my wallet and emptied all the cash I had on me into the tip jar.

“For the hassle. You got a problem with me dragging him out of here?” I asked, hiking a thumb over my shoulder at George.

The bartender’s eyes traveled over to George’s prone form without a trace of emotion in them. “No. He was always an asshole. Sorcerer?”

I blinked at him a few times in surprise. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“I’ve seen some shit.”

I gave the bartender a nod. “You have a nice evening.”

The big, weird dude actually smiled at me. “Most entertaining thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

George didn’t smile once as I dragged him by the collar out to the parking lot. I zip-tied his hands behind his back and shoved him into the trunk. He looked up at me with naked terror on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m so sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“You’re damn right about that. You won’t ever do it again,” I agreed as I shut the trunk.