* * *
My illegal land-up-in-a-permanent-vegetative-state-in-a-magical-detention-center training was held in a hotel room a few hours later, just before sunset. “Neutral ground” Brent had called it.
Needless to say, it was the seedy kind of hotel located on the corner of a seedy block in the seedy part of town.
I left early, eager to be out of the house, and drove slowly. Still, I arrived forty five minutes early. This gave me plenty of time to sit in my car and gaze idly at the goings on that occurred outside of afore mentioned seedy location. Valhalla Hotel, it was called. I counted four prostitutes, two pimps and what I think was a transvestite drug dealer, although it may have just been a very stylishly dressed, extremely social homeless person. “See the magic just below the surface” Selena had said. I was not sure what magic there was to be seen in such an area, but I had no doubt that regardless how grim life got, there was magic aplenty if you knew where to look. Perhaps this place’s magic was being the inspiration for every gritty, true life drama ever committed to celluloid.
Brent pulled his car up behind mine as the sun began to sink below the city skyline. He approached my passenger window in a sort of hunched shuffle, apparently trying to hide his identity by masking as much of his face as possible with his jacket collar. This, naturally, was a very logical and realistic level of paranoia. After all, work colleges were almost certainly wondering around nearby and eagerly waiting to leap out with shocked expressions and pointed fingers of accusation.
He gave my window a tap and I rolled it down.
“Inside,” he muttered in a conspiratorial tone.
I locked my car, gave it a gentle pat of reassurance safe in the knowledge that no one could possibly be desperate enough to steal it, and followed Brent inside.
The hotel’s lobby was everything I had hoped for, managing to quite elegantly slot itself into the ‘seedy hotel’ cliché with masterful ease. A greasy man in a stained vest acted as begrudging receptionist, and nearby a shifty character hovered in a dark corner, looking to either kill unsuspecting victims and take their money, or possibly offer them money for questionable sexual favours.
We rented a room for three hours and proceeded up the stairs, the dull thump of music drifting down to meet us from somewhere up in the buildings apartments.
Upon arriving at room 204 on the second floor, Brent did a quick visual sweep of the corridors before slipping inside. It was obvious he was banking on the fact that the receptionist had taken us for a pair of gay lovers, but this was something you never brought up in an already awkward situation.
Inside, the room boasted a double bed, small central table and what appeared to be a stack of dirty magazines on a nightstand. Directly above the table an uncovered globe hung from the ceiling, bathing the room in a pasty white light.
I gave Brent a reassuring chuckle and we shuffled over to the table, each taking a seat with the sort of careful hesitation that occurs in uncertain environments.
After a moment more I noted with silent delight the heart shaped fluorescent light that clung to the wall over the bed. It was, sadly, not lit, but if there had been an award for living cliché, this hotel would have taken first prize in every category. So there was a sort of magic here after all; an ever present, quietly whispering voice that said; “Let go your inhibitions, I’m the home of illegal activities…”
“Benny will be here soon,” Brent said, taking a deep interest in the wooden table’s pockmarked surface.
“He’ll know what room we’re in?” I asked.
“Sure. That’s the kind of thing Enforcers know.”
Sure enough, after another ten minutes of awkward silence the door opened and Benny slipped in. He approached the table and shook my hand firmly, grinning like the situation was no more peculiar than a Sunday lunch. I registered with fascination how his mere presence seemed to dispel the room’s previous magic and usher in an ambience of relaxation.
“Good to see you again, Jet,” he said brightly.
“And you, Benny.” I responded, finding myself grinning despite the thick tension of just a few seconds ago.
He gave his brother a sharp, manly slap of affection on the shoulder, then took the remaining seat.
“How about this place, huh?” he continued, uttering a hearty guffaw, “If I had a buck for every crack whore in here we’d be dining on caviar tonight.”
We all laughed on cue, loud, boisterous barks that were more at home after a couple of beers between friends in a pub.
But we weren’t friends, and this wasn’t a pub. He was manipulating us. Or, manipulating me.
Only then did I realise that Benny’s Enforcer uniform had been replaced by a casual black coat and faded jeans. This man was an Enforcer. How could I be forgetting that?
And that’s when a thought occurred to me.
What if this was all a set up? A kind of customary test for new magic users? It seemed perfectly obvious. I was being tested. I was under investigation. If I agreed to this training, I was going to a magical detention centre. My body tensed and stomach suddenly felt like an empty pit.
How, exactly, had I managed to get myself into a seedy hotel sitting across from an Enforcer? A man well trained in magical arts that was, effectively, above the law. Free to do what he wanted, when he wanted, as long as he considered it to be vaguely along the lines of maintaining magical order. Or at least that’s how I understood the job of an Enforcer. And not just any Enforcer, one that was rumoured to make people eat their own livers with a bit of apple sauce.
It was a harsh realisation. A hand moved to cover my liver, as though that might offer some kind of protection against forced surgery.
“You alright, Jet?” Benny asked, sensing my change in mood.
“Okay, look here,” I began slowly, my mind grappling for the correct way in which to handle the situation. Around me, the room seemed to transform into a gloomy urban crypt, one in which I might soon be subjected to horrible atrocities. “I think I know what’s going on here.”
Benny and Brent exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” Benny asked softly, his previously jovial manner evaporating.
I swallowed hard, trying to return some kind of moisture to my dry throat. “I would just like to say that I disapprove of any and all means of using magic in a way that is incorrect or forbidden.”
The two brothers exchanged glances for a second time.
“Well, that’s good to know,” Benny declared, his voice now very loud in the tiny space.
“And I for one,” I continued, “would never receive training of an illegal nature for the reasons of gaining an advantage in gambling.”
Tension closed in like a physical force. My eyes darted from one man to the next, trying to detect an aggressive movement before it happened.
There was a heavy moment of silence, then Benny’s brow furrowed and he fixed me with a stare. I leaned back, mentally preparing for what may be the last moments of not knowing the taste of my own liver.
“Jet,” Benny started, his gaze unflinching, “That is the second time you have broken one of my spells in a matter of seconds. And, I’m more than astonished to say, followed it up with a spell of your own. You’re a real natural, buddy.”
My eyes continued to dart from face to face. “What?”
“Look, stop panicking. Please. Your Spirit is all over the place and you’re going to have us all seeing ghouls in the shadows pretty soon. Relax, okay?”
His tone seemed genuine and I made an effort to regain composure. Instantly the atmosphere of the room lightened.
“You have to be careful,” Benny said, visibly relieved. “I’m not sure you understand the potential of your own Spirit. And you seem to be gaining Spirit Level at a fairly amazing rate.”
Relaxation was returning to the scene. My anxiety drained away.
Benny grinned. “On the upside, I think you’re just the man we need for this little scheme of ours.”
“You’re not p
utting me through some kind of test?” The words sounded childishly pleading even to my own ears.
Benny chuckled in response. “Do you know what the penalty is for an Enforcer abusing his magical abilities?”
“No.”
“Life. And I would never again have the luxury of being able to feed myself. Or wipe my own ass, for that matter. The very fact that I am sitting here in these circumstances is enough to have my licence revoked.” He spoke the words with casual nonchalance and I detected no attempt to deceive me. Although, it was not exactly far-fetched to think that a practiced magic user could lie like a five star champion.
“Okay.”
I let the moment draw on, giving any unexpected surprises time to reveal themselves. Brent cleared his throat noisily.
“Then, shall we get started?” Benny said, returning the jovial tone to his voice. He took a deck of cards from his jacket pocket and slapped them on the table.
“There are three things you need to be focusing on,” he began, dealing cards from the deck, “Firstly, creating a betting friendly environment. This means that you need to get the other players relaxed, easy going and quick with the cash. That’s not hard; you can do this with a simple tweak to the ambience, just as you did a few minutes ago. You felt it, I assume?”
I nodded.
“Great. Although, you did the exact opposite of what we would want.”
I nodded again. That seemed obvious and straightforward. “How do I do that?”
“Easy as pie, Jet, easy as pie. Just remember that your Spirit is an extension of your mind. Just be positive, think positive and act positive. Then put out your Spirit and it’ll do the rest. You’ll have a room of grinning idiots in no time. Got it?”
“I think so.” I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure how I was supposed to “put out my Spirit,” but decided to leave that small detail until later.
“When you’ve done that and got a nice fat pot on the table,” Benny continued, dealing out the last card and laying down the deck, “You’ll then need to think about reading your opponents. That’s the tricky part, and that’s why we’re here.”
“Right.” I got the feeling Benny believed he was explaining things to someone who understood what he was talking about. Apparently he just assumed I would be capable of what was expected, and why that was remained a rather confusing mystery. “How do I do that?”
“Why don’t we practice by doing, shall we? Pick up your cards.”
The three of us complied.
I picked up my five cards and looked at them in distracted semi interest, not in the least bit excited that I had miraculously drawn four kings. Next to me, Brent was staring at his cards with tongue poking from corner of mouth.
“So, what now?” I asked in bemused curiosity.
“Now nothing,” Benny responded with a half-smile, “Not one person at this table has a single reason to give even the slightest shit about what cards he’s drawn. We are all blank slates. Nothing is invested, which means nothing can be revealed by physical language. If I can be more specific, the cards currently have no place in your mind, which means I have no way of reading the information.”
“I don’t really understand,” Brent declared.
I was glad he had said it. The information, although sounding logical, was still flying over my head at a hundred miles an hour.
“Let’s make things a little more interesting,” Benny said. He reached into his jacket, extracted a wad of neatly folded bank notes and tossed them into the centre of the table. “Winner of this hand takes it all. No bullshit, no lies. It’s yours.”
I eyed the cash. Quick calculation pegged the amount at an entire month of Whisperer salary. That certainly wasn’t something at which to sneeze. My eyes darted back to my cards. Four kings? It was basically mine.
“I put you at four of a kind,” Benny said immediately, grinning at me with a smile so smug it put the Cheshire cat to shame. He turned to Brent; “And I put you at a pair. Probably mid-range. I’m going to venture a guess and say sixes.”
Brent froze, staring at his brother for a silent interval of disbelief, then, put his cards face up on the table; a pair of sevens. My mouth hung upon. I laid my own cards out next to Brent’s. Benny continued to grin.
“How?” I muttered, “How could you possibly…?”
“Simple. You wrote it all over your face, buddy. And when you know how to look for it, the signs are as clear as a billboard.”
I considered this. It was some of the most impressive magic I had ever seen, and I was intrigued. More than a little. “Teach me.”
“Glad you asked.” He pushed the wad of money to my side of the table, gathered up the cards, shuffled, and dealt again. “It is possible to learn defence against these techniques, of course, but since the technique itself is illegal, defence against it is not popular. Now, the trick of this is that a person cannot help betray their own mind. It’s obviously beneficial to hide emotion and reaction to what cards you are holding, but if you tell someone not to think about a five legged, pregnant yak, for example, that is exactly what they’ll think about. So, by default a person is thinking about not showing emotion based on what cards they have. Understand? You need only read that unintentional thought process.”
“Sure, I get that.”
“Then, let’s give it a bash, shall we?” He took a second wad of money from a jacket pocket, equally as fat as the first, and tossed it onto the table. “Gentlemen, look at your cards.”
We all obediently did so. This time I had drawn a rather feeble hand, with only a queen and jack offering any hope of a fighting chance.
“Now Jet, I want you to look at Brent,” Benny said.
I did so and Brent grinned uneasily. “It’s not gonna hurt is it?” he asked with a chuckle.
“I want you to look at him and understand something very important,” Benny continued, ignoring his brother, “His mind is not so different from your own. Yes, there are the multiple layers that make up his individual personality, his history is different, his preferences in cheese and movies are different, but his base emotions remain the same. We all understand loss and gain in the same, very primal way. And one thing you can guarantee every person has a strong attachment to is large sums of money. So, ask yourself this, Jet, how would you behave if you were him? How would you behave if you were in his position…?”
I focused on Brent as Benny’s words worked their way around my mind. I still wasn’t sure what it was I was supposed to be doing…
What would I be thinking if I was Brent and had a good hand? What would I be thinking if I was him and had a bad hand…?
I studied Brent’s face, letting my eyes drift over his features. My concentration deepened as I took in the details and, in a sensation that was now becoming familiar, the room around me seemed to be getting dimmer, as if the ambient light were being drained away…
Brent was squirming under my focus; trying to decide if he should meet my gaze or rather let his eyes settle on a wall. The room continued to darken.
“You want the money, Brent, right?” Benny’s voice was unmistakably distant, despite him being no more than a few feet away.
“I wouldn’t mind…” was Brent’s response.
I watched his mouth form the words, the process seeming to happen in slow motion, seeing in clear detail his tongue clicking around in his mouth as it sounded the vowels.
He was nervous, yes. That was clear. I recognised its presence as easily as I recognised it in myself. But this nervousness was not just because I was staring at him, no. This wasn’t just nervousness based on the unnerving sensation of having a person stare unblinkingly at your face. He really did want the money. Well, of course he did, why wouldn’t he? And he was nervous because… he had something. He was holding something in his hand. Was that what I was seeing…?
For the briefest of moments something happened…
I felt a shifting of my perception and the room faded almost completely, becom
ing nothing more than vague background noise. There was a lurching sensation in my stomach, as if going over a dip on a rollercoaster, and an epiphany struck me. I was Brent, and he was me. We were one. That may sound like clichéd esoteric talk, but in this case the logic made absolute and total sense. I knew him, and I knew who he was. Not in a psychic sense of knowing what his bank account number was and what he did on the first day of school, but certainly on an emotional level. In the here and now, I understood Brent as if I was him.
The uncertain nature of his smile. It was a defensive smile. There was no good humour behind it, just a hope, a longing. I recognise that longing. I’ve experienced that longing. I knew that longing…
It was a longing, a hope … that his cards were good enough. Good enough. He did have something. But what? How good was the hand? How good would it have to be to get me longing? Like seeing the four kings a moment ago? No, I had been almost certain I was a winner with that hand; the reaction was more excitement than longing. So what? I wasn’t 100% sure.
With that conclusion I released my focus on Brent. The world shunted back into position, the light returned to its natural level.
“He has something,” I declared loudly, amazed at what I had just achieved. Absolutely astonished that I had, for the first time in my life, intentionally used magic. The feeling was electrifying.
Benny was beaming radiantly, his teeth exposed in yet another near maniacal Cheshire cat smile.
“Yes! Well done!” he said proudly, his tone reflecting empathetic pleasure. “Do you know what?”
“I can’t say for sure,” I admitted with a shrug.
“Care to guess?”
“I think maybe a high pair?”
Benny considered this, then turned to Brent and raised his eyebrows.
“Not a high pair, no,” Brent said, disappointed. He laid down his cards, revealing a dead hand. Nothing. I was stunned, then crestfallen.
“I don’t get it,” I muttered, “I was sure.”
“Relax, take a closer look,” Benny said. “You got a bit of a tricky one and the wires crossed. He has the potential to get a great hand. You see? All he needed was to draw a nine and he would have had a straight, all the way to a king.”
It was true. Brent was one card away from a straight, near unbeatable.
“Interesting.”
“I don’t mean to be an ass,” Brent said, the nervous smile returning to his face, “but if we had actually drawn cards I may have won that hand.”
Benny shrugged and pushed the wad of cash across the table. Brent snatched it up eagerly and turned it over in his hands, as if admiring a particularly impressive piece of fine art.
“Let’s try again,” Benny continued, and I found myself more than a little eager to repeat the process. Despite my other current issues in life, I was very much enjoying the idea of what this new skill could mean in my life.
“Well done, Jet, you’ve just taken your first step towards being a world class Influencer and Manipulator.”