Magical Influence Book One (6 page)

Usually this wasn't my job, but
the receptionist was sick, so was the other secretary, and so was
the bos
s’
PA. In fact, I was the only person there.

It seemed everybody else at work had
taken one look at the sky, read the signs, and had wisely chosen to
stay at home.

Grumbling to myself, I'd acquiesced,
grabbing some cash and heading out the door.

I should have stayed inside. I should
have really stayed inside.

There was a small grocery store two
blocks away from where I worked, and usually the walk was a
pleasant one; it was nice to get up from my desk, after all. Today
it was one of the most nervous walks I’d ever had.

Was it just me, or did everyone
I pass seem
... dangerous somehow? I don't mean they were wielding
machetes and chasing after me, but the looks on their faces were
unsettling. Everyone from businessmen, to cab drivers, to little
old ladies.

Scratching my arms again, I turned the
corner and finally made it into the grocery store. As I plucked
some biscuits up from the shelf, something happened.

A wave of fear caught me as if I were
nothing more than a light little shell on the beach, ready to be
dragged under the ocean.

“What was that?” I whispered to myself,
hands shaking as I clutched at the packet before me.

Something happened seconds
later.

A man walked into the store. Closed
the door erratically behind him, and walked over to the cash
register. It was when he was in front of it that he pulled out the
gun.

“Everybody get down, you, empty the
register,” he brought up a simple white bag and shoved it at the
alarmed sales assistant.

I hadn't moved. I was still holding
onto the biscuit packet, eyes now wide in shock, heart beating
wildly in my chest, jaw shaking from the effort of it.

“Nobody move, nobody move,” the guy said,
twitching as he did.

Suddenly there was a gust of wind
outside on the street, a powerful one. It shook its way over the
roofs and signs, like hands grating across a blackboard.

It startled the guy. He jumped,
turning to the side. That would be when the old man next to him
decided to do something brave and entirely stupid.

He lunged at the gunmen.

You didn't need to be a genius to see
it wouldn't work out. The guy holding the gun was a good
six-foot-two, possibly in his late 30s, and had a reliable build.
The old guy was probably 75, crouched over, and though he had a
mean and determined look on his face, he had no brawn to match it
up with.

The gunman shoved him off, jumped
back, and shot him.

I screamed. I planted a hand over my
mouth, whimpered into it, and finally dropped the packet of
biscuits.

Seconds later I
realized the old
man wasn’t dead; though he had been shot, it was a flesh wound to
his arm. He was on the ground though, covered in blood, and
breathing wildly as he clutched his wound.

Everybody else was screaming,
shouting, and a quick glance out the large windows to the street
told me the people out there were doing the same.

The gunman started to panic. He backed
off, looked at the old guy by his feet, and then out at the mayhem
through the windows.

“You shouldn't have done
that,
you
shouldn't have done that
,” he said, voice pitching up and down as he held
onto the gun fast, and with his other hand made a fist and rubbed
it back and forth over his leg. “You shouldn't have done
that.”

I was still standing there. No longer
holding the biscuits, but completely incapable of
moving.

I was a witch, for heaven’s
sake, I dealt with things far scarier than a madman with a gun.
Okay, I'd read about things far scarier than a madman with the gun.
Though in those few months before I had moved in with my
grandmother I had experienced my fair share of violence and
threats, I’d never gone through anything like this. Letters, yes,
and my apartment had been broken in to, I had also been followed,
but somehow that had been different. That had been a world I
understood. This
... Christ, I just couldn't move.

“I said everybody get down,” the gunmen
stepped back again, flailing wildly with the gun, pointing it at
everyone and everything.

One moment he was telling us not to
move, the next he wanted us on the ground; I didn’t need too much
more evidence to conclude this guy was unstable.

“Get down,” somebody whispered in my ear,
placing a hand gently on my shoulder.

That did it. I followed them as they
pressed slowly and lightly into my arm, guiding me down.

As they did, my head darted out from
sight and I was no longer able to see the gunmen, and thankfully,
he was no longer able to see me either.

As the fear caused a lump in my
throat, I glanced up to see who was before me, the owner of the
hand that was still gently pressed into my shoulder.

I could have balked. Hell I could have
thrown up. Let alone got to my feet and run out the freaking
door.

It was Agent Fairweather.

He was in his suit, and as I saw his
hand slowly reach to his side, I could bet he was armed
too.

He brought a finger up and pressed it
against his lips.

I got the picture, loud and
clear.

Stay down and let the Federal Agent
deal with it. Well I had no problem with that.

....Or maybe I did. I may have been
scared, but I was still a witch. And that magical part of me
understood what was happening here. I understood the
context.

The wind, the storm, the day, it was
chaotic. It was all summing together to produce a frightening mix,
a powerful spell.

A dangerous one too.

With what was going on outside, it
should have been no surprise to me that a man would run into a
store and botch a robbery. It would also be no surprise to me if
this little situation of ours got worse quickly, far, far
worse.

Even though I wasn't the world's best
witch, I wasn't that bad, and I understood precognition when it
visited me. In that moment, it practically slammed its fists into
my face. If Agent Fairweather ducked out with his gun and tried to
take the gunmen down, or at least attempted to negotiate with him,
it would end one way. Fairweather would get shot. I was sure of it.
The certainty shook right through me.

I did the only thing I could think of.
As he moved around me, obviously intending to duck out from the
shelves, I brought a hand forward and latched it onto his sleeve,
holding him in place.

He looked down immediately,
shaking his head
. “I will be fine,” he mouthed.

He most certainly would not be
fine.

I shook my head, hoping that he would
understand. Of course he didn't. He just shrugged my hand off, and
got ready.

I had to do something.

I was the only witch here, or so I
thought.

My grandmother had always
taught me that in moments of stress, you don't just try to calm
down, you try to make the
situation
calm down. In moments of chaos, you try to bring
order. Alter your situation, and you inevitably alter how you feel
about it. But what exactly could I do here? I wasn't a particularly
strong woman, neither was I that athletic, and I certainly didn't
have the kind of skills required to force a mad gunman to give up
his weapon.

I had to do something though. Short of
offering him a packet of biscuits, a cup of tea, and a pleasant sit
down, I wasn't going to make this situation any less
stressful.

Any good witch knew that if you
wanted to reduce the chaos and uncertainty in a situation there
were several things you could try.
Minimize noise, make sure the room is not
too cold or too hot, ensure everybody is comfortable, that the
lighting is right, that everyone is well-fed, that there are plenty
of cups of tea, and that everybody is smiling. Such steps will
always reduce any level of discomfort, stress, and even terror, if
practiced by a particularly mindful and competent group of
influence witches, of course. I couldn't exactly offer the man a
cup of tea, a sweater, and a comfortable place to sit down though.
I could, however, do a little bit of magic of my own.

I made my breathing as quiet as I
could, my moves as slow and gentle and as deliberate as was
possible. But I did a little bit more than just that. I pushed my
concentration into it. All of my will, all of my desire, and yes,
all of my magic. As I quietened down, I invited the situation to
quiet down with me. If I had been a more powerful witch, it would
have been less of an invite and more of a command, but I had to
deal with what I had and what I currently was.

It was one of the hardest things I had
ever done, but I stopped the rising fear, digging my heels into it,
dragging it down until I encased myself with a warm, calm sense
that everything would be okay and despite the wind and the gunman
and the chaos, there was order and love to be had.

Despite my efforts, I couldn't stop
Fairweather. In that moment, he darted out from my side of the
shelf, no doubt revealing himself and his gun to the madman by the
counter.

I wished right now that I was one of
the other kind of witches. Not an influence witch, but one of the
immediately powerful kind, the ones with fireballs and brooms and
cats that could talk.

I wasn't.

I stood up. On impulse, you might say,
or maybe the growing calm in my mind and body had forced me to do
so.

I put my hands up in a classic sign of
surrender.

“Put your gun down,” Fairweather said in
an even but dangerous voice.

“What the hell is this, who the hell are
you?” The gunman, now sounding frantic, backed up towards the
counter, pointing his gun at Fairweather, his brow clearly wet with
sweat.

I tried to think of exceedingly
un-stressful things, like calm walks along the beach, a cup of tea,
or a snooze in the sun.

It wasn't exactly working, but at
least I wasn't a shaking puddle of fear on the ground
either.

I could still feel the chaos outside,
the wind and the storm and the general ominous touch to the day,
but I honestly tried to put them out of my mind, pushing them to
the corners of reality, and trying to ignore them.

“You do something brave, I'm going to kill
somebody,” the gunman's hand shook, and all eyes were locked on the
muzzle of his handgun.

“Put it down,” Fairweather said, that
distinctive baritone of his feeling as if it shook through the
ground like an earthquake.

Only two things could happen here.
Either the gunman would get shot, or Fairweather would get shot.
No, sorry I was forgetting a third; both of them would get
shot.

I didn't want anyone to die today.
Especially considering, according to my grandmother at least, I was
in part responsible for this. The tower card from the tarot pack
suddenly flashed before my mind. All those months of negativity and
whingeing were catching up with me, and in fantastic style
too.

“You have your money,” I said in the
calmest voice I could manage, nodding towards the
counter.

It was true. Whist I had been
clutching on hard to my packet of biscuits or holding onto
Fairweather's sleeve, the cashier had done exactly what he had been
told, and had filled the white bag with all the money from the
register.

It was just sitting there,
invitingly.

I nodded towards
it
. “Nobody
has to get shot; you have what you came for.”

I really tried to use my most gentle,
subtle, motherly voice. It didn't quite work, but at least I wasn't
screaming at him in the pitch of a punk rock singer.

“Stay out of this,” Fairweather
snapped.

No chance. If I withdrew the calm
magic I was bringing to this situation, it would collapse. With a
bang. Or several.

“You have your money, you have what you
came for,” I said again, as gently as I could manage.

I put my all into my voice, I really
did. All those years of training, of being a witch, of dealing with
magic.

And maybe it worked.

Was it just me, or did the
slack, sallow look of almost sociopathic madness on the gunman's
face waver? Did it soften slightly, the
color returning to his
cheeks?

He turned around to look at the cash
register, confirming with a glance that the bag was in fact
full.

And that would be when Fairweather
shot him.

I think I knew it would happen before
it did. A rising, sudden feeling in my stomach, somewhat like a
shot itself, warned me a nanosecond before it occurred.

When he squeezed the trigger, I
screamed.

The gunman jerked to the side, the
bullet lodging in his firing shoulder, but as the bullet ripped
into him, he stumbled back, squeezing off a shot of his
own.