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In the Morning of the Magicians: Chapters 9 to 13
SUMMARY: Giles and Ethan, the electric Kool-Aid funky Satan groove year, in the early seventies. Rated M. Spoilers to Band Candy. Acknowledgements and disclaimers.
9.
Ethan needed money before he could go and see Terry, but he didn't have much left, so he went out busking. It was not a good day for it: squally, grey and cool. He laid down his mat outside the Tube station in the partial protection of an overhanging roof. He started, as always, with the sort of common-or-garden sleight-of-hand that he was contemptuous of, just to gauge the crowd: vanishing coins, joined hoops, some juggling. He reached the point where he normally shifted into actual conjuration and transmogrification, but looking at the audience, it just wasn't going to be worth the effort. There were only a few people willing to stand under the rather limited shelter, with every second gust of wind dowsing them with horizontal rain. He packed it in after half an hour.
He took the change to one shop and swapped it for a one pound note. Then he went to the supermarket, picked up some groceries and paid for them with something that now looked more like a five pound note, if you didn't look too carefully or too long. He pocketed the change.
Ethan didn't like using the five pound note trick because he rather liked living where he did, and it was something he could only do at the local shops every so often without arousing suspicion. Still, it was a very useful technique when he travelled.
He dropped the groceries at home and made himself some lunch before heading off to see Terry. He tried to time the walk to avoid the worst of the rain.
The windows of The Crescent Book Exchange were grubby with dust. Faded paperbacks in plastic bags were sellotaped to the windows. From the outside, the shop very nearly resembled a respectable second-hand bookshop, but inside its stock consisted mostly of pornographic magazines and the racier sort of paperback.
There was a curtained-off doorway at the back, next to a magazine rack marked "Swedish!" As Ethan approached, a hooded man came out, holding a book. The book stank of magic the way Evelyn's demon tome had. Ethan couldn't take his eyes off it.
"Afternoon," said a voice behind him, as the hooded man left the shop. "How can I help you today then?"
Terry was reputed to be a demon of some sort. He outwardly looked human, in an ill-proportioned way: gangly, long-limbed and tall. He had dark hair and a drooping moustache that partly covered his thin lips. Ethan could sense a hum of other-worldliness around him, but that might have been the shop. Ethan had never been impolite enough to ask.
"Do you sell books like that one?" Ethan asked. He'd never seen one in stock before.
"Only to special customers," Terry said.
"Special how?"
"The kind with money."
A dishevelled middle-aged man came into the store and started to look over the magazines.
"You better go in the back," Terry said to Ethan. To the other customer, he said, "Just browsing? I'll be back in a couple of minutes."
Ethan stepped through into the back room. It was windowless and lined with wooden cupboards and drawers, all of them locked. There was a counter and a cash register to one side.
"What are you after this week?" Terry asked.
Ethan ordered his usual: candles, herbs, and rarer pieces of kit, like robin eggs and badger teeth, things he was unlikely to find roaming central London. "And do you have," he asked, "anything by or on Ciccarello?"
Terry didn't blink any more or less than he usually did. Instead he stepped behind the counter and unlocked a drawer, rummaging through at some length and frustratingly out of Ethan's sight. Finally, he pulled out an aged paperback. "Here," he said.
Living Magicians! the book was called. It was badly printed on poor stock by some obscure small press that Ethan hadn't heard of. Some of its pages had come away from the binding.
"How much?" he asked.
The total came to almost exactly the amount that he had left. He was going to have to borrow pub money from Randall again.
Terry handed him the bag.
Ethan asked,"Seriously, that book before, how much would something like that cost?"
"They start," said Terry, "at fifty quid."
Ethan tried not to blanch. That was not really a busking-for-beer-money kind of sum.
The rain had got worse. Ethan sacrificed one of his new candles for a spell to keep himself dry on the walk home.
10.
Stan helped Ripper move in. "That's me," he said, "Stan the man. Least I could do after last night, yeah?" He looked in the boot of Ripper's car. "Is this all you've got?"
"It's what I've got with me," Ripper said. "I'm only staying a few days."
He let Stan carry his clothes, but Ripper insisted on carrying all his LPs and music gear. He'd had the choice of dumping his stuff in Adrienne's room or in the spare room on the second floor.
"This is why I live in the basement," Stan said, as they climbed the last sets of stairs. "Fewer steps and I get a bit of privacy. That, and these walls are creepy. What bird's going to come up here past that?"
"A creepy one?" suggested Ripper.
"Yeah," said Stan, "but Dee's already taken, yeah?" He nudged open a door with his shoulder. "Here you go."
Ripper stepped in and looked around at the high ceiling, the peeling paint and curtainless windows. "Looks OK."
"Right then," said Stan, putting Ripper's things down on the floor. "Now, I've got to run, but if you need anything, just let me know. Anything. I'm often out, but you can just slip a note under my door. All right?"
"Yeah," said Ripper.
Too late, he realised there wasn't a lock on the door. He thought of his small fund of money and the cost of buying a padlock for the sake of a two night stay. He'd have to cast a spell instead when he left the house. He didn't have a mattress either, but he'd probably be sleeping with Adrienne.
He sorted out his stuff a bit and then settled down to practice his guitar.
11.
Ethan heard music when he got home. At first he thought it was one of Randall or Adrienne's records, but the music stopped and restarted at unpredictable intervals. Ripper must have moved in then.
He went downstairs for a cup of tea and found Adrienne in the kitchen, sitting on a stool and eating a sandwich. "Diedre said you're going to invite Ripper to a casting tonight."
"If that's all right with you. Or would you rather we left him alone?"
She shrugged. "He's just a guy," she said, "even if he is in a band."
Ethan smiled. "How long do you want to keep him tonight?"
"Not past one," she said. "I'm on early shift tomorrow."
"One it is then," Ethan said. He paused. "We're just testing him out."
"I know," she said.
"If you get fond of him--"
"Don't," she said. "Don't be worried about me, Ethan."
He nodded and went up to his room to unpack his shopping.
12.
Ripper left Adrienne sleeping and went upstairs a little before one a.m. He found Dee and Randall just finishing the clean up from the party: Dee was sweeping and Randall was shaking crumbs from a rug out of the window. Everything was still candlelit and lamp-lit.
Ethan was sitting on one of cleaner parts of the floor, laying out a circle. This was one Ripper didn't recognise. It all looked pretty ad-hoc: cheap kit and no permanent pentacle. Wax candles and a chipped ceramic bowl sat on top of a sheet of black felt, and the wishing-stones were nothing fancier than sandstone. Hedge magic by amateurs.
Ethan didn't look up as Ripper approached, but he did wave a little with the hand that wasn't laying out the stones. "So how much magic do you know?" Ethan asked him.
"Some," Ripper said.
"Any particular kind?"
"Not really."
"And where did you learn it?"
"Here and there."
"Well," said Ethan, "I'm glad to know that you feel so comfortable and effusive."
Ripper had half a mind to kick the stones at him. "Look, I don't know you and you don't know me. All right?"
"Randall first learnt magic in the Haight-Ashbury," Ethan said. "I'm home-grown. Diedre learnt from both of us. We all know people who know a little bit more than we do. If at any time you'd like to say where you fit in, please do."
Ripper didn't think he could tell them, not while he still felt he was on the run. "What about Adrienne?"
"She doesn't do this. She's not interested."
Ripper blinked in surprise. "Why not?"
"You'll have to ask her," Ethan said.
Dee and Randall were finishing up. The overhead lights suddenly came on.
"Bloody hell," said Dee, who went to switch off the electric lights in the drawing room and the hall.
"It could be worse," Randall called out to her. "They could have come on in the middle of the spell."
"We should have checked the switches first," Ethan said.
"No harm's been done," said Randall.
Dee came back into the room and sat down next to Ripper. "We're doing an illusion spell tonight," she said. "It's quite simple, but pretty."
Randall sat down on Ripper's left. "No Tom tonight?" he asked Dee.
"He's too tired," Dee said. "He has lectures in the morning."
Ripper noticed how Ethan rolled his eyes and how Dee shot him a look.
Randall passed a fat bottle around, from which each of them took a generous swig.
"What is it?" asked Ripper, sniffing it first.
"Polish fig vodka," said Randall.
It was foul but very alcoholic. It burned down his throat.
By now Ethan had the circle ready and was lighting the central candle. He took a needle and held the tip in the flame.
"We're going to conjure the illusion of an animal," Dee said. "We'll all support the illusion, but only one of us will control it at a time. We usually start small, then work our way up."
Ethan took the needle and pricked himself in the thumb, squeezing a single drop of blood into the bowl. He put the needle back into the flame for a few seconds, then passed it on to Dee.
"We all need to do this," Dee told Ripper.
"Is there a chant?" he asked as his drop of blood fell onto the candle.
"Yes," said Ethan. "Bugger, I almost forgot." He rummaged around in his bag for a piece of paper and a pencil. He wrote the words down and then passed them to Ripper. "See if you can say that."
Ripper read it out. It was in Latin.
Ethan seemed amused for some reason. "Perfect prononciation," he said. "We can close the circle now. There's no need to hold hands, touching a knee or elbow is fine." He sat cross-legged so that his feet touched Dee and Randall's legs. Ripper followed suit. "Are we ready?"
Ripper nodded as the others murmured assent. He was curious to learn how this would go.
They began the chant. The room seemed to darken, except in one spot, just above the bowl, where a vague blurry glow grew over time.
After a few minutes, Dee stopped chanting. "OK, I'm going to start with something small and innocuous now. Maybe a guinea pig."
The blurry glow shrank and darkened, taking shape into a fur-covered oval. It stretched a little, growing appendages that looked recognisably like a snout and four legs, but there was something oddly flat-looking about it, like a cartoon sketch. Dee frowned and it filled out a little. It lowered to the floor, seemingly near Dee's feet. It scuttled hesistantly, still glowing a little.
"Behold," said Randall, deadpan. "The guinea pig ghost of Camden."
Dee stuck her tongue out at him.
"May I?" asked Randall, and the guinea pig squashed back into a furry ball. Then it elongated, grew and stretched into what Ripper first thought was a large, slavering dog, its features a bit misty and ill-defined. Randall grinned and the apparition coalesced more firmly into what was definitely a wolf. It stalked behind Randall, its snout coming to rest near Randall's ear, to stare malevolently at the others.
"Your turn," said Randall to Ripper.
Ripper tried to grip the apparition with his mind. The wolf shape became distorted, twisting and stretching like squeezed plasticine. He concentrated, restoring the wolf's proportions and then fleshing them out, making it larger. Its fur turned golden and its face cat-like. It gave a low purr.
"Excellent," said Ethan. "Guinea pig, wolf, lion."
"It's a good lion," Randall said. "That's good work for a first time with this spell."
"Rock, paper, scissors," said Ethan.
"Ethan--" said Dee, with a warning note in her voice.
"Your turn then," said Ripper to Ethan.
"Randall, he's going to--"
Suddenly, Dee and Randall, who had only loosely touched Ripper before, seized his wrists tightly. "What are you--" he shouted, but then the world exploded.
The lion ripped itself apart. Its fragments flapped and soared, became a hundred birds: ravens, doves, robins, hummingbirds, parrots. Ripper tried to lift his arms up to protect his face, tried to scramble backwards away from the flock, but Dee and Randall held him as tightly as they could, and his panic subsided long enough for him to remember it was an illusion.
The birds slammed back into one another, reshaping. Its body returned to that of a lion, but its head changed to that of an eagle as its wings extended.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Ripper said.
Then it vanished and the lights came up, and Dee and Randall let go of his wrists. The three of them sat upright while Ethan lay on his back with his eyes closed. The room was filled with his strange, barking laugh.
"You ever seen anything like that?" Randall asked Ripper, a note of admiration in his voice.
Actually, Ripper had, but only under controlled conditions by senior practitioners using superior equipment.
"How, how did you learn that?"
Ethan opened his eyes and sat up on his elbows. He raised an eyebrow. "I think we need a two-way exchange of information here..."
"I, I learnt magic from my grandmother," said Ripper, which was true in part, if very far from the whole truth.
"I've practised a long time," said Ethan. "It's really just practice. And picking up tricks from others."
Ethan must be one of those natural mages he'd heard of. Really, dear God.
"You said you weren't going to do that," said Dee, getting up to stand over Ethan. "What if he'd injured himself or banged his head? Do I need to remind you that Stan pissed himself the last time you tried that sort of stunt?"
"Stan should know better," said Ethan. "And Ripper did just fine, didn't you, Ripper?"
"That was remarkable," said Ripper, "and entirely unexpected."
"Yes, it was," said Ethan. "Let's drink to that."
13.
Randall and Diedre were dancing in the candlelight to the music from the demonic record-player. Randall was in his shirt-sleeves, swaying in time to the music with his eyes closed. Diedre danced actual steps, her long hair swaying behind her.
The fig vodka was long gone, so Ethan had moved on to Diedre's stash of gin. He poured some more for Ripper as they sat together on the floor. Ripper was still enthusing about the spell. It was almost endearing.
"I mean, I know how to do basic castings by hand," Ripper was saying. "Simple wards and chants and so on. And I can do ritual magic if there are clear instructions. But the instantaneous transcendence of a routine form is, is something I've simply never attempted."
Ethan badly wanted to kiss Ripper, but he didn't think this was the right time. So he savoured the sensation of wanting, but did not act on it.
"That was much better than the party's light show," said Ripper.
"Evelyn didn't have three other adepts to draw from," Ethan said. "And she didn't want to cause a stampede."
They watched Diedre and Randall dance. Ethan poured more gin.
"You're very odd," Ethan said, after a while.
"What?"
"Most people use words of fewer syllables when they get drunk."
The comment seemed to annoy Ripper.
"Maybe I prefer you when you're drunk," Ethan said.
"I'm going downstairs now," said Ripper, "to Adrienne."
"Don't wake her," Ethan said. "She hates that."
With Ripper gone, Ethan got up to check that he was still capable of walking upstairs. It seemed so, so he waved goodnight to Diedre and Randall.
Up in his room, he pulled out the copy of Living Magicians! and turned to the section he'd read that afternoon: "Eusapia Ciccarello, born near Rome in 1898, has long been regarded as the world's greatest exponent of ectoplasmic conjuration..."
"Hm," said Ethan, and fell asleep.
9.
Ethan needed money before he could go and see Terry, but he didn't have much left, so he went out busking. It was not a good day for it: squally, grey and cool. He laid down his mat outside the Tube station in the partial protection of an overhanging roof. He started, as always, with the sort of common-or-garden sleight-of-hand that he was contemptuous of, just to gauge the crowd: vanishing coins, joined hoops, some juggling. He reached the point where he normally shifted into actual conjuration and transmogrification, but looking at the audience, it just wasn't going to be worth the effort. There were only a few people willing to stand under the rather limited shelter, with every second gust of wind dowsing them with horizontal rain. He packed it in after half an hour.
He took the change to one shop and swapped it for a one pound note. Then he went to the supermarket, picked up some groceries and paid for them with something that now looked more like a five pound note, if you didn't look too carefully or too long. He pocketed the change.
Ethan didn't like using the five pound note trick because he rather liked living where he did, and it was something he could only do at the local shops every so often without arousing suspicion. Still, it was a very useful technique when he travelled.
He dropped the groceries at home and made himself some lunch before heading off to see Terry. He tried to time the walk to avoid the worst of the rain.
The windows of The Crescent Book Exchange were grubby with dust. Faded paperbacks in plastic bags were sellotaped to the windows. From the outside, the shop very nearly resembled a respectable second-hand bookshop, but inside its stock consisted mostly of pornographic magazines and the racier sort of paperback.
There was a curtained-off doorway at the back, next to a magazine rack marked "Swedish!" As Ethan approached, a hooded man came out, holding a book. The book stank of magic the way Evelyn's demon tome had. Ethan couldn't take his eyes off it.
"Afternoon," said a voice behind him, as the hooded man left the shop. "How can I help you today then?"
Terry was reputed to be a demon of some sort. He outwardly looked human, in an ill-proportioned way: gangly, long-limbed and tall. He had dark hair and a drooping moustache that partly covered his thin lips. Ethan could sense a hum of other-worldliness around him, but that might have been the shop. Ethan had never been impolite enough to ask.
"Do you sell books like that one?" Ethan asked. He'd never seen one in stock before.
"Only to special customers," Terry said.
"Special how?"
"The kind with money."
A dishevelled middle-aged man came into the store and started to look over the magazines.
"You better go in the back," Terry said to Ethan. To the other customer, he said, "Just browsing? I'll be back in a couple of minutes."
Ethan stepped through into the back room. It was windowless and lined with wooden cupboards and drawers, all of them locked. There was a counter and a cash register to one side.
"What are you after this week?" Terry asked.
Ethan ordered his usual: candles, herbs, and rarer pieces of kit, like robin eggs and badger teeth, things he was unlikely to find roaming central London. "And do you have," he asked, "anything by or on Ciccarello?"
Terry didn't blink any more or less than he usually did. Instead he stepped behind the counter and unlocked a drawer, rummaging through at some length and frustratingly out of Ethan's sight. Finally, he pulled out an aged paperback. "Here," he said.
Living Magicians! the book was called. It was badly printed on poor stock by some obscure small press that Ethan hadn't heard of. Some of its pages had come away from the binding.
"How much?" he asked.
The total came to almost exactly the amount that he had left. He was going to have to borrow pub money from Randall again.
Terry handed him the bag.
Ethan asked,"Seriously, that book before, how much would something like that cost?"
"They start," said Terry, "at fifty quid."
Ethan tried not to blanch. That was not really a busking-for-beer-money kind of sum.
The rain had got worse. Ethan sacrificed one of his new candles for a spell to keep himself dry on the walk home.
10.
Stan helped Ripper move in. "That's me," he said, "Stan the man. Least I could do after last night, yeah?" He looked in the boot of Ripper's car. "Is this all you've got?"
"It's what I've got with me," Ripper said. "I'm only staying a few days."
He let Stan carry his clothes, but Ripper insisted on carrying all his LPs and music gear. He'd had the choice of dumping his stuff in Adrienne's room or in the spare room on the second floor.
"This is why I live in the basement," Stan said, as they climbed the last sets of stairs. "Fewer steps and I get a bit of privacy. That, and these walls are creepy. What bird's going to come up here past that?"
"A creepy one?" suggested Ripper.
"Yeah," said Stan, "but Dee's already taken, yeah?" He nudged open a door with his shoulder. "Here you go."
Ripper stepped in and looked around at the high ceiling, the peeling paint and curtainless windows. "Looks OK."
"Right then," said Stan, putting Ripper's things down on the floor. "Now, I've got to run, but if you need anything, just let me know. Anything. I'm often out, but you can just slip a note under my door. All right?"
"Yeah," said Ripper.
Too late, he realised there wasn't a lock on the door. He thought of his small fund of money and the cost of buying a padlock for the sake of a two night stay. He'd have to cast a spell instead when he left the house. He didn't have a mattress either, but he'd probably be sleeping with Adrienne.
He sorted out his stuff a bit and then settled down to practice his guitar.
11.
Ethan heard music when he got home. At first he thought it was one of Randall or Adrienne's records, but the music stopped and restarted at unpredictable intervals. Ripper must have moved in then.
He went downstairs for a cup of tea and found Adrienne in the kitchen, sitting on a stool and eating a sandwich. "Diedre said you're going to invite Ripper to a casting tonight."
"If that's all right with you. Or would you rather we left him alone?"
She shrugged. "He's just a guy," she said, "even if he is in a band."
Ethan smiled. "How long do you want to keep him tonight?"
"Not past one," she said. "I'm on early shift tomorrow."
"One it is then," Ethan said. He paused. "We're just testing him out."
"I know," she said.
"If you get fond of him--"
"Don't," she said. "Don't be worried about me, Ethan."
He nodded and went up to his room to unpack his shopping.
12.
Ripper left Adrienne sleeping and went upstairs a little before one a.m. He found Dee and Randall just finishing the clean up from the party: Dee was sweeping and Randall was shaking crumbs from a rug out of the window. Everything was still candlelit and lamp-lit.
Ethan was sitting on one of cleaner parts of the floor, laying out a circle. This was one Ripper didn't recognise. It all looked pretty ad-hoc: cheap kit and no permanent pentacle. Wax candles and a chipped ceramic bowl sat on top of a sheet of black felt, and the wishing-stones were nothing fancier than sandstone. Hedge magic by amateurs.
Ethan didn't look up as Ripper approached, but he did wave a little with the hand that wasn't laying out the stones. "So how much magic do you know?" Ethan asked him.
"Some," Ripper said.
"Any particular kind?"
"Not really."
"And where did you learn it?"
"Here and there."
"Well," said Ethan, "I'm glad to know that you feel so comfortable and effusive."
Ripper had half a mind to kick the stones at him. "Look, I don't know you and you don't know me. All right?"
"Randall first learnt magic in the Haight-Ashbury," Ethan said. "I'm home-grown. Diedre learnt from both of us. We all know people who know a little bit more than we do. If at any time you'd like to say where you fit in, please do."
Ripper didn't think he could tell them, not while he still felt he was on the run. "What about Adrienne?"
"She doesn't do this. She's not interested."
Ripper blinked in surprise. "Why not?"
"You'll have to ask her," Ethan said.
Dee and Randall were finishing up. The overhead lights suddenly came on.
"Bloody hell," said Dee, who went to switch off the electric lights in the drawing room and the hall.
"It could be worse," Randall called out to her. "They could have come on in the middle of the spell."
"We should have checked the switches first," Ethan said.
"No harm's been done," said Randall.
Dee came back into the room and sat down next to Ripper. "We're doing an illusion spell tonight," she said. "It's quite simple, but pretty."
Randall sat down on Ripper's left. "No Tom tonight?" he asked Dee.
"He's too tired," Dee said. "He has lectures in the morning."
Ripper noticed how Ethan rolled his eyes and how Dee shot him a look.
Randall passed a fat bottle around, from which each of them took a generous swig.
"What is it?" asked Ripper, sniffing it first.
"Polish fig vodka," said Randall.
It was foul but very alcoholic. It burned down his throat.
By now Ethan had the circle ready and was lighting the central candle. He took a needle and held the tip in the flame.
"We're going to conjure the illusion of an animal," Dee said. "We'll all support the illusion, but only one of us will control it at a time. We usually start small, then work our way up."
Ethan took the needle and pricked himself in the thumb, squeezing a single drop of blood into the bowl. He put the needle back into the flame for a few seconds, then passed it on to Dee.
"We all need to do this," Dee told Ripper.
"Is there a chant?" he asked as his drop of blood fell onto the candle.
"Yes," said Ethan. "Bugger, I almost forgot." He rummaged around in his bag for a piece of paper and a pencil. He wrote the words down and then passed them to Ripper. "See if you can say that."
Ripper read it out. It was in Latin.
Ethan seemed amused for some reason. "Perfect prononciation," he said. "We can close the circle now. There's no need to hold hands, touching a knee or elbow is fine." He sat cross-legged so that his feet touched Dee and Randall's legs. Ripper followed suit. "Are we ready?"
Ripper nodded as the others murmured assent. He was curious to learn how this would go.
They began the chant. The room seemed to darken, except in one spot, just above the bowl, where a vague blurry glow grew over time.
After a few minutes, Dee stopped chanting. "OK, I'm going to start with something small and innocuous now. Maybe a guinea pig."
The blurry glow shrank and darkened, taking shape into a fur-covered oval. It stretched a little, growing appendages that looked recognisably like a snout and four legs, but there was something oddly flat-looking about it, like a cartoon sketch. Dee frowned and it filled out a little. It lowered to the floor, seemingly near Dee's feet. It scuttled hesistantly, still glowing a little.
"Behold," said Randall, deadpan. "The guinea pig ghost of Camden."
Dee stuck her tongue out at him.
"May I?" asked Randall, and the guinea pig squashed back into a furry ball. Then it elongated, grew and stretched into what Ripper first thought was a large, slavering dog, its features a bit misty and ill-defined. Randall grinned and the apparition coalesced more firmly into what was definitely a wolf. It stalked behind Randall, its snout coming to rest near Randall's ear, to stare malevolently at the others.
"Your turn," said Randall to Ripper.
Ripper tried to grip the apparition with his mind. The wolf shape became distorted, twisting and stretching like squeezed plasticine. He concentrated, restoring the wolf's proportions and then fleshing them out, making it larger. Its fur turned golden and its face cat-like. It gave a low purr.
"Excellent," said Ethan. "Guinea pig, wolf, lion."
"It's a good lion," Randall said. "That's good work for a first time with this spell."
"Rock, paper, scissors," said Ethan.
"Ethan--" said Dee, with a warning note in her voice.
"Your turn then," said Ripper to Ethan.
"Randall, he's going to--"
Suddenly, Dee and Randall, who had only loosely touched Ripper before, seized his wrists tightly. "What are you--" he shouted, but then the world exploded.
The lion ripped itself apart. Its fragments flapped and soared, became a hundred birds: ravens, doves, robins, hummingbirds, parrots. Ripper tried to lift his arms up to protect his face, tried to scramble backwards away from the flock, but Dee and Randall held him as tightly as they could, and his panic subsided long enough for him to remember it was an illusion.
The birds slammed back into one another, reshaping. Its body returned to that of a lion, but its head changed to that of an eagle as its wings extended.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Ripper said.
Then it vanished and the lights came up, and Dee and Randall let go of his wrists. The three of them sat upright while Ethan lay on his back with his eyes closed. The room was filled with his strange, barking laugh.
"You ever seen anything like that?" Randall asked Ripper, a note of admiration in his voice.
Actually, Ripper had, but only under controlled conditions by senior practitioners using superior equipment.
"How, how did you learn that?"
Ethan opened his eyes and sat up on his elbows. He raised an eyebrow. "I think we need a two-way exchange of information here..."
"I, I learnt magic from my grandmother," said Ripper, which was true in part, if very far from the whole truth.
"I've practised a long time," said Ethan. "It's really just practice. And picking up tricks from others."
Ethan must be one of those natural mages he'd heard of. Really, dear God.
"You said you weren't going to do that," said Dee, getting up to stand over Ethan. "What if he'd injured himself or banged his head? Do I need to remind you that Stan pissed himself the last time you tried that sort of stunt?"
"Stan should know better," said Ethan. "And Ripper did just fine, didn't you, Ripper?"
"That was remarkable," said Ripper, "and entirely unexpected."
"Yes, it was," said Ethan. "Let's drink to that."
13.
Randall and Diedre were dancing in the candlelight to the music from the demonic record-player. Randall was in his shirt-sleeves, swaying in time to the music with his eyes closed. Diedre danced actual steps, her long hair swaying behind her.
The fig vodka was long gone, so Ethan had moved on to Diedre's stash of gin. He poured some more for Ripper as they sat together on the floor. Ripper was still enthusing about the spell. It was almost endearing.
"I mean, I know how to do basic castings by hand," Ripper was saying. "Simple wards and chants and so on. And I can do ritual magic if there are clear instructions. But the instantaneous transcendence of a routine form is, is something I've simply never attempted."
Ethan badly wanted to kiss Ripper, but he didn't think this was the right time. So he savoured the sensation of wanting, but did not act on it.
"That was much better than the party's light show," said Ripper.
"Evelyn didn't have three other adepts to draw from," Ethan said. "And she didn't want to cause a stampede."
They watched Diedre and Randall dance. Ethan poured more gin.
"You're very odd," Ethan said, after a while.
"What?"
"Most people use words of fewer syllables when they get drunk."
The comment seemed to annoy Ripper.
"Maybe I prefer you when you're drunk," Ethan said.
"I'm going downstairs now," said Ripper, "to Adrienne."
"Don't wake her," Ethan said. "She hates that."
With Ripper gone, Ethan got up to check that he was still capable of walking upstairs. It seemed so, so he waved goodnight to Diedre and Randall.
Up in his room, he pulled out the copy of Living Magicians! and turned to the section he'd read that afternoon: "Eusapia Ciccarello, born near Rome in 1898, has long been regarded as the world's greatest exponent of ectoplasmic conjuration..."
"Hm," said Ethan, and fell asleep.
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Cheers, mate. :-)