A Practical Guide to Sorcery for Night-Shift Workers novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Eleven O'Clock Class
Reya lights every lamp in the room on her first try, Anselm corrects her hand with his cold fingers, and a glowing glass bead rolls out of his cuff.
The sorcery class started at eleven at night, and I was the only one who showed up in scrubs.
I had come straight from sleeping on my couch in them, which was worse.
Meeting Room 2 at the Rhodes Branch Library smelled like old carpet and a tin kettle that someone had already boiled.
Eight of us sat at one long table.
Most had the same gray look I did, the look of people who work while the city sleeps.
Two bakery workers with flour still on their sleeves.
A retired school-bus driver named Winona, who had brought a Thermos and passed cups down the table without asking.
"Night shift?" she asked me.
"ER," I said. "I'm a tech. Wednesday through Friday, seven to seven."
"Then you need this more than anybody," she said, and handed me tea.
I needed it for a reason that had a dollar amount.
The county hospital paid ER techs a step higher if they held a sorcery certificate.
Warming blankets, clean-field casts, a light that did not flicker over a bleeding patient.
That step was four dollars an hour.
My landlord had just raised my rent by four hundred.
So here I was at 11:04 on a Tuesday, signed up for ten weeks.
The teacher came in last.
He was tall and thin and a little stooped.
He had curly light-brown hair that needed a cut, a gray wool vest, and a shirt buttoned all the way to both wrists.
"Good evening," he said. "I'm Anselm Corday. Welcome to Practical Sorcery for Working Adults."
His voice was low and dry and very patient.
"Nobody here is going to set anything on fire tonight," he said. "That's my one promise."
Winona laughed.
I liked him a little already, which annoyed me.
He stood at the front beside a wall of lamps.
There were fourteen of them, old brass ones, donated over the years and plugged into nothing.
"A cast is three things," he said. "A breath, a phrase, and open hands."
"You breathe out slowly. At the very end of the breath you say the phrase. You let it go through your palms."
He held up both hands.
"Tonight's phrase is 'Hold the light.' I'll show you."
He breathed out.
He said the words.
The lamp at the end of the row lit, soft and yellow, and held.
Everyone made the small pleased noise people make at a card trick.
He checked his roll sheet and looked up. "Reya Novotny?"
"Here," I said.
I watched his right hand.
His left hand stayed close to his body, the cuff turned slightly in.
I was tired, and I was mostly watching the lamp.
"Your turn," he said. "Pair up. Try the nearest lamp. Don't push. If it doesn't catch, breathe and try again."
The man in the vest tried.
Nothing.
One of the bakers tried and the lamp gave a single blink.
Winona's lamp stayed dark, and she said a word that made the baker snort.
I turned to the wall.
I breathed out the way I breathe out for a patient who is panicking.
Slow, long, all the way to the bottom.
"Hold the light," I said.
I did not aim at one lamp.
I did not know I was supposed to.
All fourteen lamps came on at once.
So did the ceiling light, the green exit sign, and the little lamp on the librarian's cart in the hall.
The kettle began to whistle on its own.
The whole room was bright and gold, and my palms were so hot I could not stand it.
"Oh my God," said one of the bakers.
"Sorry," I said. "Sorry. I didn't mean to."
Winona was grinning at me over her glasses.
Anselm had gone very still.
Then he crossed the room to me in four long steps.
"Show me your hands," he said.
I held them out.
He took my right wrist in his fingers and turned my palm up under the lamps.
His fingers were cold.
They were so cold that I felt the chill run up my arm.
"You're holding your thumbs in," he said quietly. "You don't need to. Let them open."
He straightened my thumb with one fingertip.
His touch was careful and exact, the way I handle a vein.
I felt it all the way down my spine.
I looked up.
He was a lot closer than I had thought.
His eyes were pale gray, and he looked at my palm.
"That was very good," he said. "That was unusually good."
Then he let go, and cleared his throat, and told the room to break for ten minutes.
I stayed behind to put the lamps out.
It took me four tries.
Everyone else went to the vending machine.
Anselm stood at the front table, stacking handouts, with his back to me.
When he reached for the last stack, he rolled his left sleeve up a quarter inch to keep it out of the way.
Something small dropped out of the cuff.
It hit the carpet and rolled.
It was a glass bead, round and clear, about the size of a pea.
It was glowing.
It rolled across the floor and stopped against my shoe, shining a warm, steady yellow, exactly like his demonstration lamp.
I picked it up.
It was warm in my hand.
Inside it, the light pulsed once, slow.
Anselm turned around.
All the color left his face.
He looked at the bead in my palm, and then at me, and I watched him decide not to lie.
"Please," he said. "Please don't."
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