Magic Strikes Read Free

to link their wails to any deaths or natural disasters. But folklore blamed banshees for all sorts of nefarious things. They were rumored to drive people mad with their screams and kill children with a mere look. Plenty of people would be nervous about living next to a banshee, and I could understand why Mrs. McSweeney went to great lengths to hide who she was. She didn’t want her friends to shun her or her family.
    Unfortunately, no matter how well you hide, sooner or later your big secret will bite you in the behind, and you might find yourself standing on a telephone pole, not sure why or how you got there, while the neighborhood pretends not to hear your piercing screeches.
    Yeah. I was one to talk. When it came to hiding one’s identity, I was an expert. I burned my bloody bandages, so nobody could identify me by the magic in my blood. I hid my power. I tried very hard not to make friends and mostly succeeded. Because when my secret came to life, I wouldn’t end up on top of a telephone pole. I would be dead and all my friends would be dead with me.
    I approached the pole and looked at Mrs. McSweeney. “Alright. I’m going to count to three and then you have to come down.”
    She shook her head.
    “Mrs. McSweeney! You’re making a spectacle out of yourself. Your family is worried about you and you have bingo tomorrow night. You don’t want to miss it, do you?”
    She bit her lip.
    “We will do it together.” I climbed three steps up the ladder. “On three. One, two, three, step!”

    Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    I took a step down and watched her do the same. Thank you, whoever you are upstairs.
    “One more. One, two, three, step.”
    We took another step, and then she took one by herself. I jumped to the ground. “That’s it.”
    Mrs. McSweeney paused. Oh no.
    She looked at me with her sad eyes and asked, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
    I glanced at the windows of the apartment building. She had wailed loudly enough to wake the dead and make them call the cops. But in this day and age, people banded together. One couldn’t rely on tech or on magic, only on family and neighbors. They were willing to keep her secret, no matter how absurd it seemed, and so was I.
    “I won’t tell anyone,” I promised.
    Two minutes later, she was heading to her apartment, and I was wrestling with the ladder, trying to make it fit back into the space under the stairs, where the super had gotten it from for me.
    My day had started at five with a frantic man running through the hallway of the Atlanta chapter of the Order and screaming that a dragon with a cat head had gotten into New Hope School and was about to devour the children. The dragon turned out to be a small tatzelwyrm, which I unfortunately was unable to subdue without cutting its head off. That was the first time I had gotten sprayed with blood today.
    Then I had to help Mauro get a two-headed freshwater serpent out of an artificial pond at the ruins of One Atlantic Center in Buckhead. The day went downhill from there. It was past midnight now. I was dirty, tired, hungry, smeared with four different types of blood, and I wanted to go home. Also my boots stank because the serpent had vomited a half-eaten cat corpse on my feet.
    I finally managed to stuff the ladder in its place and left the apartment building for the parking lot, where my female mule, Marigold, was tied to a metal rack set up there for precisely that purpose. I had gotten within ten feet of her when I saw a half-finished swastika drawn on her rump in green paint. The paint stick lay broken on the ground. There was also some blood and what looked like a tooth. I looked closer. Yep, definitely a tooth.
    “Had an adventure, did we?”
    Marigold didn’t say anything, but I knew from experience that approaching her from behind was Not a Good Idea. She kicked like a mule, probably because she was one.
    If not for the Order’s brand on her