The political trading had been worth it. Joseph’s aunt had been legally blind since he was a small boy, and these days she could barely perceive light from dark. Under Joseph’s close guidance, Alan Russell, his right-hand man, spearheaded a project to develop
artificial eyes.
The final tests were expected to be complete by year’s end, and Joseph planned to give his aunt a Christmas gift she would
never
forget! For a long stretch there, they had trouble finding the perfect synthetic retinas, but, ironically, the problem had finally been solved by simply borrowing from the weapons division ...
With a startled blink, Joseph realized that he was home. He experienced that unsettling
I-don’t-remember-the-last-few-miles
feeling as he pulled into his garage. He nearly drove into the motorcycle propped up to one side and he shook his head. To top off his day, his wife’s sister and her family were visiting for the weekend. Given a choice, Joseph would have rather submitted to a
root canal
than entertain Carol and her annoying husband and son, but he didn’t want to fight with Katherine over it.
"Hi, honey," his wife said when he walked through the back door into the kitchen. She glanced up from the salad she was making. "You look like hell. Bad day?"
Joseph grunted an affirmative. He kissed her on top of the head as she went back to her work. "I fired McLane today."
Katherine nodded but did not reply. She knew enough from her husband’s history of remarks that the arrogant bastard deserved it. She’d met Richard McLane once at an office party, shortly before the company converted from private industry to that wastebasket category known to the layperson as
classified
. She had never liked the man — he’d had a sort of
I-know-things-that-you-don’t
tone in his voice and a ferret-like gleam in his eye that had rubbed her the wrong way.
"The in-laws?" Joseph asked as he fished a beer from the refrigerator.
"Carol and Mitchell aren’t here yet. Dan arrived early on his motorcycle. He, John, and Steve are out somewhere."
Joseph nodded and took a long swallow of his Miller Genuine Draft as he sat at the kitchen table.
Joseph and Katherine’s two sons, John and Steve, were something of an enigma to their parents. Katherine had been an English professor before retiring to raise her family, and Joseph balanced his hardware talents with his business management skills — both of which he still used daily, regardless of the alterations to his company — but neither of their sons had yet to find what Joseph would call
direction
.
John was in his Junior year at the University, supposedly studying Literature, but all Joseph ever heard him talk about were things like the occult and magic and the practical potentials thereof. He insisted that
magic
was the answer to the mysteries of the White Flash, the Seven Stars, and the Paranormal Effect. Regardless of the changes the world had seen over the past five years, Joseph still wasn’t quite prepared to swallow
that
.
Steve, on the other hand, had thus far put off going to college, and still lived at home. It hadn’t bothered Joseph at first — he himself had taken a year off between high school and college and later again before pursuing his Masters — but one year had turned into two, and so far as Joseph knew, Steve wasn’t taking any steps to prevent there being a third. And Steve might not have spent his time studying old, arcane texts of necromancy, but he lived and breathed Judo, gymnastics, and kick-boxing. Joseph had absolutely no problem with his son’s athletic pursuits — Steve’s gymnastics coach once said that Steve could have been an Olympic contender if he had set his heart to it — but how long could a
career
last in any of these fields? And Steve hadn’t even talked about an actual career in them, anyway.
It all boiled down to this: Joseph was a self-made business man whose drive and ambition had sparked and shined long before he was even able to shave, and John and Steve ... were not.
As if in response to his silent musings, Joseph heard John’s car pull into the driveway. The three boys were laughing heartily about something — judging from the sound of their snickers, it was probably a dirty joke — as they advanced upon the house. They stormed through the front door with a flurry of noise that Joseph’s headache monster gobbled like a rare delicacy.
"Hey, Dad, Mom," Steve said as he strode into the kitchen. He was a fine looking young man with light brown hair that hung past his collar and lively hazel-brown eyes. His years of physical training gave him an impressive physique, solid and graceful without seeming too massive. Steve was
also
one of those people who was even stronger than he
looked ...
meaning, of course, that he had been able to beat his old man at arm wrestling by age twelve. "When’s dinner?"
"About eight," Katherine replied, kissing her son’s offered cheek. "We’re waiting for Carol and Mitchell."
"Cool," Steve approved. He, too, dove into the refrigerator, but he opted for a bottle of Gatorade. He sat opposite his father at the table. "How’s it goin’, Dad? You look like hell."
"Gee, thanks, Son," Joseph smirked. "I had to fire one of our employees today. The man caused a bit of a scene."
Well, Joseph,
that’s
certainly putting it mildly.
"Anybody I know?"
Joseph shook his head. "I doubt you’d remember him."
"Richard McLane, honey," Katherine piped in as she bent over to peek into the oven.
"Ah," Steve — who in fact
did
remember McLane and had formed much the same opinion of him as his mother — nodded knowingly. "Good call, Dad."
"Steven, you don’t know the half of it."
"Educate me."
Joseph opened his mouth to do just that, then caught himself. "I, uh, I can’t go into a lot of detail ..."
Steve held up his hand. "Gotcha. Don’t worry about it." He downed the entire bottle of thirst quencher in several long gulps.
"Just finish working out?" Joseph asked, grateful for his son’s ending the subject. "I thought John and Dan were with you."
"They were, so we played a game of basketball at the gym. I’ll run an extra mile tomorrow morning to make up for it."
"Just do me a favor and steer clear of his motorcycle."
Steve rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Dad, I didn’t even mention it."
"No, but I saw it in the garage when I pulled in. I remember vividly our arguments the last time he had the damn thing out here. Now, you’re old enough to make your own decision this time, but I’d appreciate if you’d remember what happened to your Uncle Daniel before you hop on."
"If I recall, Uncle Daniel was drunk at the time and not wearing his helmet."
Joseph found his fingers pinching against the Headache From Hell once more. "Steve—"
"Never mind, Dad, don’t worry about it," Steve sighed theatrically. "If it bothers you
that much
, I won’t ride it. I give. Subject closed."
"Thanks," Joseph said. He reached across the table and playfully nudged his son in the arm. "You just lowered your old man’s blood pressure ten points."
"Glad to be of service," Steve said over his shoulder as he stood and headed back toward the living room. "We wouldn’t want our financial provider having a heart attack."
"There goes your inheritance!" Joseph called. He smiled, finished his beer, and set about helping his wife with dinner.
PCA
Two minutes after five in the morning, Steve finished his stretches and thrust forward, out of the garage and into his daily run. Heading down the driveway, he veered to his left, toward the steepest hills his neighborhood had to offer. As the sweat began to creep from his pores and the familiar warmth flowed into his muscles, Steve’s thoughts began to drift ...
So Dan was off to college ... a tidbit that had turned up,
not
during yesterday’s basketball game, but at the family dinner. Carol had blurted it out, so proud of her wonderful son, and Steve had not missed the look she’d offered her sister, his mother. That look that seemed to say, "Maybe Dan will be a positive influence on the family’s little black sheep" — namely,
him
.
Steve realized that most of it was probably his own insecurity rearing its ugly head, but he
knew
that his father was disappointed in him. Neither son showed much interest in the family business (hell, it wasn’t even the
family
business anymore, not since the PCA moved in — didn’t his father
see
that?), but at least John was going to school. Sure, he was just piddling around until he decided what he
really
wanted to do, but their parents seemed to appreciate the effort, and the
image
it offered.
The problem was that Steve had
no
idea
what he wanted to do with his life. Maybe John hadn’t really decided on a major, but at least his occult studies intrigued him. Steve enjoyed his sports, and yet he couldn’t see pursuing
those
for life, either. Sooner or later, as his dad loved to remind him, he would pass his prime, and then the only option was coaching, and that held little to no appeal for him.
Take Dan, for instance. His declared major was Pre-Law, with an emphasis on Paranormal Rights. The damn thing didn’t even
exist
five years ago, so Dan obviously couldn’t have planned on it for long. Circumstances had changed — hell, the
world
had changed — and he found something that apparently spoke to him. Why couldn’t the same thing happen to Steve?
As the subject of the paranormals lingered in his mind, Steve unconsciously glanced skyward ... but the Seven Stars had long since set with the arrival of morning.
The paranormals ...
Steve’s jogging circuit closed, and he found himself back at his own driveway. But now he felt like continuing on, just to keep his train of thought. He turned to jog downhill this time when he spotted his cousin’s motorcycle. He considered his father for a moment, then shrugged. After all, his old man
had
pointed out that it was his own decision. And even if it weren’t, Joseph Davison would still be asleep for another hour.
Steve rolled the motorcycle carefully out of the garage, down the driveway, and up the street. Part of him felt guilty, but the only other time he’d ridden a motorcycle had been an absolute blast, and he’d been eager to repeat the experience.
At the end of the block, he straddled the cycle and slipped on the helmet. To his annoyance, he discovered that the fixed visor was tinted — he couldn’t see a thing in the early morning light.
Terrific,
he thought.
Wouldn’t Dad just
love
this
!
He removed the helmet and secured it behind the seat — he would simply have to be careful. He turned the key and kicked the cycle to life on the second try. A look left, a look right, and he was off.
He roared along the street, making a lazy circle around the block, the air whipping past his face and through his hair, and he breathed deeply. The first time he’d ridden a motorcycle, one belonging to the father of a friend, he’d felt as though he were flying. It wasn’t the same as performing a roundoff in gymnastics. This was a sustained feeling, a prolonged sensation of soaring through the air free as a bird! Of course, these days, doing that might cause one to run smack into a flying paranormal ...
Huh. The paranormals again. Unlike his brother John, who thought they were the coolest thing in that they "proved" the existence of magic, Steve still wasn’t sure
what
he thought of them. In some ways, he had trouble believing
that they truly existed. He’d never personally met or seen one — in fact, with the exception of the conversion of his father’s business, the paranormals hadn’t really affected
his
life in any—
Steve was coasting back toward his home when it hit. He felt it an instant before, a tingling of his skin, the rising of his hair, but he was helpless to avoid it. A bolt of pure electricity crackled through the air from his left. The bolt missed his leg but ripped into the front tire, exploding it like a pin in a child’s balloon. Steve yelped as he catapulted over the handlebars, sailing through the air over the edge of the road. A tiny, disconnected part of his mind noted that he was lucky that he wouldn’t land on the pavement, but even that small part got involved in his panic as he descended into the ditch running parallel to the street, a ditch the local teens used as a beer bottle depository.