THE MAGICIAN
By
Sammi Cox
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The Magician
Copyright Sammi Cox 2012
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This ebook is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters found within are products of the author’s imagination.
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I very much hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Feedback and comments are always warmly received.
My thanks go out to those who have kindly offered me their time, for the purpose of reading and editing my manuscript. These kind, retiring souls have opted to remain anonymous, but without their eyes there would have been more mistakes than I would care to mention in the final version of this book. Of course, the mistakes that remain are my own.
I would also like to thank my family and friends who continue to offer me encouragement and support.
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The Magician
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Chapter 1: The Game
The metallic taste in her mouth and the lingering chemical odour were the first clues that indicated to Andromache Jones she had been abducted. In quick succession, other hints followed: the blindfold over her blue eyes; the bindings around her slender wrists.
She was of medium height and not very broad, but she was stronger than she looked. However, with the aid of a chemical or drug, she would have been easy to overpower.
Sitting as still as she could, Andromache strained to hear the sound of movement that would point to whether she was alone or if there was someone else in the room with her. She heard nothing; nothing except the sound of her heart pounding in her ears and the repetitive drip-drip of a leaky pipe or tap.
The air was damp and cold, and clung to her purple-streaked, light brown hair that reached her shoulders and stuck out at funny angles when it wasn’t being restrained by a blindfold.
The air also had a peculiar taste to it, or so she thought. However, her analytical mind quickly accepted that this might be the result of the combined effect of the taste in her mouth, the chemical soreness in her nose and the disorientation of her predicament.
Andromache, or Mac, as she preferred to be called as “Andromache” sounded far too formal and always led to questions about Troy, Prince Hector and The Illiad, had made a few enemies in her twenty-four years of life, and she had annoyed a few more on top of that. This was directly the consequence of two things: her forays into the world of the private detective and the gifts she had been born with.
By trade, or perhaps destiny depending on which way you looked at it, Mac was a psychic. However, her love of mysteries and puzzles had naturally pushed her towards helping out her policeman boyfriend on a few of his cases. This led to his quick advancement up the ranks and inflamed her desire to solve conundrums and crime, with the aid of her psychic gifts, naturally.
Mac was not clairvoyant; she didn’t see the dead. She was sometimes capable of clairaudience where she could receive messages and guidance from a spirit in the form of speech, but this was quite a rare occurrence. She was however, clairsentient; she could feel the presence of the dead. Nevertheless, these abilities did not really help her in the pursuit of answers. The tarot cards, crystal ball and pendulum on the other hand, very much did.
She had played her part in the capture of murderers, drug dealers, burglars and even a bank robber. She had located lost children, stolen jewellery and once a kidnapped tenth generation pedigree dachshund. Of course, her involvement in such cases was kept very much out of the public eye; she did not seek fame and the police did not want their association to become public knowledge.
However, that did not mean that others outside of these circles were oblivious to Mac’s role in such cases, as her current dilemma seemed to prove. Mac wracked her brain, trying to think of who could have done this to her and yet it seemed somewhat of an over-reaction for most of the cases she had been involved with, especially recently. So she turned her attention away from the world of sleuthing, instead focusing on her other area of employment.
From her little cottage in the village of Bramblesgrove, Mac ran River Gardens Mystical Service, from which she dispensed herbal medicine, periodically taught yoga, offered readings, and as a member of the Coven of the Silver Star, an international coven network, cast spells. She regularly taught classes and wrote literature on metaphysical subjects, and within this circle, she was deemed quite famous, much to her embarrassment.
Yet here also enemies lurked, in the form of other witches jealous of her abilities and her success. Sure, some of them would like to see my luck change, she mused, but would any of them go to the length of kidnapping me?
Just as she was about to answer her question, footsteps, faint at first, could be heard. Mac felt the first flurries of panic in her stomach, as she sent a silent plea up to the Goddess asking to keep her safe. Then she mustered up all her courage and forced herself to calm down. Looking weak and terrified would do her no good.
‘You’ve come round! How delightful!’ exclaimed the voice of a man, a voice she did not recognise. ‘Welcome to my lair. This is where all the fun begins, and as always, I promise all my guests lots of that.’
‘You have people over often?’ Mac said dryly. She was annoyed at the jollity in his voice; she had prepared for menacing, not merry.
‘Oh, regularly,’ he replied, clapping his hands together. ‘Not as often as I would like, because my parties take so much planning. It’s all in the detail, you understand. Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we have yet to be properly introduced.
‘I obviously know who you are. Miss Andromache Jones, the “Fortune-Teller Detective” I think a newspaper once called you? What am I saying? I know that is exactly what they called you as I have the clipping on a board in my Library. I do my research, you see.
‘Now your turn; have you worked out who I am yet?’ he asked, sounding thoroughly excited to hear what she had to say.
‘To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest. The whole thing feels a little surreal to me. Perhaps if you were to take off my blindfold I might have a better chance of working out who you are?’
He laughed heartily before replying. ‘Clever, clever, but no. I must admit I am a little disappointed in you. Out of all my guests I would have put money on you working out my identity. Why not ask your spirit friends for a clue? I would love to see how that voodoo-Ouija board-magic, or whatever you call it, works.’ Mac remained silent; she wasn’t going to play his games if she could avoid it. ‘No? What a shame. I personally don’t understand any of it, this spiritual, paranormal, talking to trees nonsense, so any insights I gleam from our time spent together shall be worth their weight in gold, I have no doubt.
‘And as for my identity, I shall just have to tell you who I am, but it will have to wait for a moment. You might have a more pressing question that you want me to answer.’
‘Such as...?’
‘Miss Jones, please try to play along,’ he pleaded. ‘It’s more fun with two.’
‘This might be “fun” for you but don’t expect me to enjoy myself. I am bound and blindfolded; I think I have been drugged...where is the “fun” for me in all of this?’
He quietly chuckled at her outburst. ‘And I thought you didn’t want to play?’ he s
aid, teasingly, ‘but you did exactly what I asked of you. Your question might be better phrased as “why am I here”?’ He paused, before resuming. ‘Go on, ask me.’
‘Why am I here?’ Mac asked, as she felt the fight draining out of her.
‘For The Game, of course.’
‘The Game? What game? What are you talking about?’
‘The Game, the chase, the puzzle, call it what you will. I am about to set you a challenge, Miss Jones, one that has very real life and death consequences.’
Chapter 2: The Players
Mac felt her head spin. The man with the exuberant personality would not stop talking, and what he said made little sense to her.
‘So now we know why you are here. I did promise you fun, Miss Jones, didn’t I?’
Mac was struggling to bring her thoughts together into one coherent whole. Are the drugs still affecting my mind? She wondered. Whatever the reason, she was finding it hard to respond to this madman.
‘The next step would be for me to tell you who I am. I am assuming that you still haven’t guessed it? No; such a disappointment. I wonder with that failure already under your belt, how you will fare during The Game. Let’s just say that past games suggest the odds are not in your favour, but you might surprise us all. These things are not a foregone conclusion; a single roll of the dice can change a player’s luck,’ he offered enthusiastically.
‘So, who am I? I am who? Of course, in this business one cannot simply go around revealing their true identity willy-nilly. There must be some safeguards in place for the conductor of our little game-playing ensemble. Luckily for me I have a rather exciting pseudonym; it conjures up the perfect image. I, Miss Jones, am...The Magician.’
Mac gasped for a variety of reasons. She realised she had heard of this man after all, and was concerned that her activities had caught his attention.
The Magician had been making the national news for a year now. Every month or so, he would abduct a private investigator that he believed was at the top of their field, according to a written statement he had issued to a news channel. He only played his game with the best, pitting one great mind against the other.
‘You know my name. That pleases me, in a vain sort of way. I wonder why you did not connect the dots before...’
‘The other detectives you had chosen were always in the papers. I am not. They worked on high profile cases. I do not. They were considered the best-of-the-best. I am not.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short, my dear. If I did not think you worthy, you would not have been chosen. There is something different about you; something that I have not faced with the other competitors.
‘You are the first female contestant. Your feminine intuition combined with your other gifts interests me. I want to understand how your mind works, how you reach your conclusions, how you solve the puzzles that are put in front of you.
‘With you, I get the enjoyment of The Game plus the chance to observe how a very different mind works...pleasure and the opportunity to improve my own game; who could ask for more?’
‘But why me?’
‘Have you met any other female private detectives, Miss Jones?’
‘Some, not many.’
‘And out of those few, how many specialise in the catching of philandering spouses and the search for evidence which might suggest a pre-nuptial agreement would be advisable before a wedding? Does that sound like a critical mind to you? Does that sound like someone who is worthy of my attention, and what’s more, my time and effort? Of course not. Some private detectives are more paparazzi than Sherlock Holmes.
‘You should be honoured to be here now, Miss Jones, talking to me. It shows what respect I have for you and what esteem I hold you in.’
‘I shall have to disappoint you again then; I would rather be at home, sipping a nice, hot cup of tea.’
‘Then let’s hope you make it back there.’
Chapter 3: The Rules
Suddenly the notion that The Game was real dawned on Mac. The way which he said he hoped she would make it home made her blood run cold. She was going to have to play, whether she wanted to or not, if she wanted to live.
‘Time is moving on; we have a schedule to keep, I’m afraid. On reflection I should have allowed more time to sit and talk with you; it is not often I make mistakes, and it is even rarer that I admit them.’ He began pacing the room.
‘We have established why you are here, we have named the players. The start of The Game approaches,’ The Magician said in an excitable tone. ‘But what is a game without rules?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘It wouldn’t be fun without a set of parameters in which to confine The Game, would it?’
He walked over to Mac, removed her blindfold and untied her wrists. The sudden light hurt her eyes; she considered trying to make an escape, but quickly realised that in this condition and with The Magician’s penchant for planning, she wouldn’t get far.
‘Your eyesight will be blurry for a little while yet. I have no fear of you seeing enough of me to provide a decent description to the police, if you live. Of course, I hope you do survive, but rules are rules and we must stick to them or chaos will reign.’
Mac looked around, trying to make out details of the room she was in, but nothing stood out. She saw blurs of dark colour. She could see a faint light hanging from the ceiling.
When The Magician stood in front of her she could see what he was wearing. He looked like something out of a Victorian costume drama; he was dressed very formally. Black trousers, white shirt, black dress shoes that clicked slightly as he walked. Over the white shirt he wore a waistcoat, and over that a dinner jacket; on his head was a top hat, and soft, white cotton gloves graced his hands. He appeared to be holding a crystal-topped cane. However, just as he had informed her, Mac could not make out any features of his face, bar his facial hair; a broad black moustache swept in waves above his mouth, and a pointed goatee beard sat on his chin. For all she knew these were fake and had been glued onto his face.
‘You have a dramatic style.’
‘Thank you for noticing, Miss Jones. It goes with my dramatic nature, don’t you think?’
‘It’s very...Victorian.’
‘I knew you would understand. The era of real gentlemen, when the name magician meant something. If only we had had the chance to meet before now...every magician requires a beautiful assistant.’ He picked up one of her hands in his gloved hand and kissed it. ‘But alas, The Game calls.’
‘I have a question.’
‘That’s what I want to hear, that you are getting into The Game. It makes it so much more likely that you will survive. Ask away.’
‘What is the purpose of The Game? What does it entail? What is the point of it?’
‘Well, the purpose is to test your levels of deduction and the gifts you possess; it entails a challenge made up of smaller tests and the point of it? To see whether you can beat me at my own game.’
‘But what do I have to do? Have I to steal something? Solve a riddle?’
‘That will become clear shortly. Any other questions?’
‘No.’
‘Good, now on with the rules...
‘Number one: you must play,’ he said, beginning to pace the room as his movements became more animated. ‘Refuse to play and I will be forced to shoot you in the back of the head.
‘Number two: you must play alone. Speaking to anyone other than The Magician, moi, or yourself, will result in a bullet to the back of the head, unless of course, you are instructed to do so.
‘Number three: you may only use the items that you begin The Game with. These items can be found here on this table. If it’s not on this table, you cannot use it. Use something that isn’t on this table and you will find a bullet in the back of your head.
‘Number four: the only phone you can use will be the one on the table; you are not allowed to use any other phone until you compl
ete The Game.
‘Number five: if by chance you come across a computer or any other device that is connected to the internet, you are prohibited from using it. No internet access is allowed whilst The Game is in play.
‘Number six: do not test my commitment to my rules. I will be observing you at all times. Break the rules and you will die. You will of course, be aware that some of your predecessors did not heed this warning. I have had to dispose of six out of the past twelve contestants.
‘That makes you contestant number thirteen. I hope you approve as it was no accident. The number thirteen is considered sacred in witchcraft, is it not?’
‘It is.’
‘Splendid. So, the rules have been laid out. All the pieces of the puzzle can be found on this table. If you need to speak with me, my number is in the phone. I stress, if you are unsure of something, ask first or you will regret it, ma cherie.
‘One more thing, the challenges I create have a time limit. If you don’t successfully complete the test within the allotted time... bang,’ he said, holding his fingers in the shape of a gun.
‘Your time limit is three hours, three minutes and three seconds. I like to be precise. Again, I hope you are pleased with the reference to another sacred pagan number. You have been truly inspirational in this challenge and I must thank you for that. The others were so common and...well normal. To compete with a clever witch, a psychic one at that, has really made me think about what I am doing. It has posed a challenged in itself.’
‘It’s a shame that you didn’t delve a little deeper into The Craft and come across the ‘harm none’ tenet. Then perhaps there would be no need for The Game.’
‘Where would be the fun in that? I thought that you understood, about me, about The Game. I was wrong.’ He sounded hurt.