Three weeks ago, at 5am in the morning, in the atrium of a small shopping centre, Amy had been in charge. She had been on her hands and knees taping extension cords to a wall so they were exposed to the cameras. Cameras were very important in her line of work. Thomas’ voice barked out of the three way conference call she had open between them all.
‘Amy, I’m on camera three, but there are no VGA inputs, only HDMI ones’.
Amy frowned and picked up the phone.
‘Why do you need HDMI inputs?’
‘I don’t know, it’s what you wrote down on the plan!’
‘What box number is it?’
‘Three.’
‘Three? Nothing with a VGA cable goes into three. You have the wrong note or the wrong camera.’
‘The camera says three! The plan says three! Or I think it’s three, your handwriting is horrible. Or is it this one the plan for three … the number looks like a bear trying on a little hat.’
‘Bloody hell Thomas! Just find the camera that has HDMI cables on it and do that one!’
Amy thought for a minute. ‘The bear with a hat is a four.’
This job was significant, and would lead directly to the monk, but they had no way to know that at the time. This was the job Amy, Baron, and Thomas would completely botch, then through pure luck and bald face lying turn into a business defining victory.
Like all EMPS (Elite Magical Protection Services) jobs, this was a last minute gig in line with their informal motto ‘Not who you wanted, but who was available’. A small shopping mall on the outskirts of Sydney was hosting an exhibition of paintings honouring a recently deceased local artist. Their insurance required proof of security against theft, including magically assisted theft. The day before the exhibition was scheduled to open the mall management discovered no one had managed to organise that security, and at such late notice EMPS had been the only company available. The EMPS business model relied heavily on this exact type of incompetence. Amy continued taping up the power cords, continuously referring to her laptop to make sure they were in view of all the cameras. Cameras were the key. Cameras were the single most important piece of technology for effective security against magic. We’ll get to that later.
No one actually expected a theft. Although valuable, the painter and paintings were not widely known outside of Sydney art circles. The mall considered the locked reinforced glass cabinet the painting was displayed in already too much security. But in this instance the insurance company had been correct to insist on security, because although the paintings were of little interest to the general public, and of only marginal interest even within the art world, they were of immense interest to the artist’s siblings who had lost ownership of the paintings in a bitterly fought inheritance battle. More accurately, spiteing the deceased artist's widow was of immense interest. The whole affair was made up of unpleasant people being deeply unpleasant to each other. And in the latest round of increasingly escalating unpleasantness, the artist’s family had decided to take the paintings back.
This was why as Amy, Baron, and Thomas scuttled around the inside of the shopping centre setting up their cameras, a very thin and grizzled magician in skinny jeans, a Pantera t-shirt, and a denim jacket paced around the outside muttering to himself, counting his steps, and consulting various scraps of paper kept in multiple denim pockets. Illicit activities for unpleasant people require equally unpleasant black market magicians. High end criminal endeavours might use the services of a legitimate magician with expensive habits to maintain, but most street level crime using magic is performed by disgraced magicians who have failed to escape the consequences of their vices and now eek out just enough to keep those vices active by providing unreliable magic to unreliable patrons.
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Janik was one of these former magicians. A tragic relationship with alcohol, an inability to get on top of his rage, and a sociopathic lack of self awareness kept him at the margins of both criminal and magical society. However, although a train wreck of a person, Janik was a very competent and surprisingly professional magic user. A combination of vanity in his abilities and fear of running out of income meant that when required Janik was able to sober up, turn up, and get the job done.
That night though, the ‘sober up’ part of that equation was causing him issues. His hands were shaking as he tucked his lank hair behind his ear. Seeing himself in the mirror with sober eyes for the first time in weeks had shaken his confidence. He was disturbed by his gaunt frame, sunken cheeks, and ringed eyes. He desperately wanted to get another drink in him, but knew he needed to get this right before he could allow that to happen. It wasn’t failing to generate a magic spark that would trip him up if he drank, it was all the other nonsense. Again, we’ll get to that.
He referred to a calculation scribbled on the back of a crumpled debt notice and resumed counting his steps. Every 20 steps he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pinch of dirt that he sprinkled on the ground. He did this till he had completely surrounded the mall, leaving little mounds of dirt all over the car park. He then walked around the building and turned on every tap he found, three in total. He took off his shoes, a pair of worn old winklepickers, and faced one towards the first tap, and the other towards the last tap. He then walked in his socks around the building again and turned all the taps off. He didn’t put his shoes back on, he knew it was unlikely he would get them back. For some reason a lot of these preparations required sacrificing shoes.
As he walked back around to the front of the building Janik saw the artist’s brother and sister at the back of the car park, both middle aged and wearing the disgruntled look people put on for local newspaper photos. They were leaning against an old station wagon and giving him the look people always gave him at this stage of the process. A look of utter bafflement.
The artist’s brother waved him over and Janik crossed the car park.
‘Is all this really required?’ the brother asked.
Janik looked him in the eye and weighed up how much to tell him.
He landed on ‘It’ll get weirder.’
The brother had no response but looked to his sister, they were clearly having doubts about the legitimacy of Janik’s performance. In Janik’s experience most people did at this point, but they were in too deep to pull out now so he carried on with his preparations. And he wasn’t kidding. It was going to get weirder. He pulled out a small book from his inside pocket, purchased only for its ability to fit in that pocket. It was a cyclist's map of Belfast. He opened it up, spat in it, closed it, and handed it to the brother.
‘Put this in the glovebox of your car.’
The brother took it with a look of utter incredulousness. ‘Why can’t you put it in your car?’
Janik motioned to an old ten speed bike chained to a pole at the edge of the car park. ‘I don’t have a car.’
The sister nudged her brother in the ribs. ‘What the hell Ian?’
‘This guys is all I have!’ said Ian.
Janik ignored the implied insult. ‘Just put it in the car, Ian.’
Ian shot his sister a dark look and got into the car, putting the book in the glove box.
‘Now turn the lights on,’ Janik ordered.
Ian rolled his eyes but did as he was told, and the front entrance of the mall lit up.
‘Good,’ said Janik, ‘Now the chicken please.’
Ian got out of the car, now holding a box.
‘Are you sure you don’t need an actual chicken?’ Ian asked.
Janik opened the box, and found the brand of fried chicken he had asked for.
‘This had better be for magic,’ Ian said.
‘It is.’ Janik assured him. ‘But I might have a bit later if there’s any left.’
Janik took the chicken and walked halfway between the mall entrance and the car. He opened the box and poured the chicken (and chips and gravy) on the ground. The instructions for this bit of magic actually specified killing a chicken on the spot, but Janik knew that actually any old dead bird worked, and he had no appetite for chicken murder this early in the morning. Janik looked at the chicken and chips spread across the car park. Even to him, this all felt ridiculous. But this is the kind of pedantic, annoying, nonsense required to do magic. Let’s get into all that.