Crimes of Magic: The Yard Sale Wand, Page 3

  “Yes, I’m fine. It was a very exhausting experience, but I’m OK now. I’m sure this will make a funny story someday.”

  Willow picked up her bag, and Rachel escorted her to the door.

  “That was interesting,” Rachel said as she came back into her office. “I guess I slept through all the exciting parts.”

  Rachel took her seat behind the desk, and I sat across from her.

  “Tell me what happened,” Rachel said.

  “Do you remember anything more since your head has cleared?” I asked.

  “No. The last thing I remember is holding Willow’s hand while you pricked her finger.”

  “Well, I pricked a finger and let two drops of her blood flow down over the sigil on the tapered part of the wand. Then I put the wand under the Coriolis, and we saw it swing back and forth. I concluded that the wand was activated, but not doing anything magical yet.”

  “Using Willow’s blood means that the Snoozer will only work for Willow, right?” Rachel asked.

  “Yes, that’s what I think.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “Let me go get the wand so I can explain it better,” I said.

  “Be careful. We don’t want any more magical accidents.”

  I got the wand and placed it between us on the desk.

  “There are four symbols engraved into the handle. This symbol is off by itself near the beginning of the taper. It’s where your thumb would naturally rest. I call this the trigger symbol. I told Willow that if she held the wand with her thumb on top of this symbol, I thought the wand could do magic.”

  “What did you tell her it would do?”

  “I told her I didn’t know what it would do.”

  “So what did Willow do?”

  “She held the wand, placed her thumb over the trigger symbol, waved it at you and said ‘Abracadabra.’”

  “And I went to sleep.”

  “More like you fell asleep. You literally crumpled onto the floor. I ran over and checked your pulse, which was slow but steady. I listened for your breathing, and it was also slow and steady. I shook your shoulders, called your name and slapped the back of your hand, but you didn’t respond. So I picked you up, put you in Fred’s back seat, and we drove to the hospital.”

  “I guess I was sound asleep.”

  “It was like you were in a coma.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “I don’t know, let me think. How long would it take for us to get you down into your car and drive to Good Sam?”

  “I’m guessing ten to fifteen minutes,” Rachel suggested.

  “That sounds about right,” I agreed. “Let’s say ten or twelve minutes.”

  “I’ve noticed from the things you and the Wizard Gabriel have said, that the numbers in magic spells aren’t usually multiples of ten.”

  “That’s very observant of you,” I said. “Most non-mathematicians wouldn’t have noticed that.”

  “Being a P.I., I notice patterns. I’ve noticed that numbers in magic are usually like three, six, seven, twelve or sixteen.”

  “That’s what I’ve observed,” I agreed.

  “So I’ll bet that the Snoozer makes you sleep for twelve minutes.”

  “I can’t argue with that logic,” I agreed.

  “You know, I’ll bet that this is what happened to me in The Case of the Wizard’s Sphere. When you found me translocated into the forest, I woke up with no memory of the previous fifteen minutes or so. I’ll bet that I was the victim of a Snoozer Wand.”

  “I think you’re right. In fact, Willow said that she found this wand at a yard sale in Astoria. That’s where Blackstone, the magician who cast the sleeping spell on you, was captured. It all adds up.”

  “Do you think that this wand is actually the wand that Blackstone used on me? Wouldn’t that be too much of a coincidence?” Rachel asked.

  “When it comes to magic, it seems that coincidences happen much more frequently. The use of magic sends out ripples in the matrix that cause things to happen that we call coincidences. When Blackstone was captured in Astoria, he didn’t have a wand on him. He could have hidden it, maybe in his hotel room. It could be that someone found it, and it ended up at a yard sale where Willow bought it.”

  “I guess I’m just going to have to get used to these so-called coincidences. The Snoozer only works for Willow, right?”

  “Yes, that’s what I think.”

  “Let me try it out on you,” Rachel said.

  “Whoa! Wait a minute. I’m not volunteering to be zapped.”

  “Why not? It didn’t seem to have any lasting effects on me. Besides, you said it won’t even work for me.”

  “OK, I guess I’ll be the guinea pig. But let me go sit on the loveseat. I don’t want to bang my head if I fall. I have further to fall than you did.”

  We went into the waiting room, and I made myself comfortable on the loveseat.

  “So I hold it like this?” Rachel asked.

  “Hey don’t point that thing at me. At least not yet. Treat it like a gun.”

  “Sorry,” Rachel said as she pointed the wand to the side. “Is this how I hold it?”

  Rachel was holding the handle with her thumb lifted off of the wand right over the trigger symbol.

  “That’s right. You’ve got it.”

  “Do I need to say any magic words?”

  “That’s the same thing Willow asked. I told her that I didn’t think it was necessary to say anything, but she said ‘Abracadabra.’”

  “OK,” Rachel said. She stood back, waved the wand at me and said, “Abracadabra!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Try shaking it in my face,” I suggested.

  “Abracadabra!” Rachel said.

  Still nothing.

  “I guess you were right, it only works for Willow,” Rachel said. “I guess it’s useless now. It’s just a stick again.”

  “Oh, I think we can reset it,” I said.

  “Reset it?”

  “Yes. I can see why the creator of the wand wouldn’t want anyone to be able to grab the wand and use it against the owner, but if I were the programmer, I would build in a way to reset it. That way, you could make a wand to sell or to give to someone else.”

  “How do we reset it?” Rachel asked.

  “In my study of magic, I’ve run across several references to ‘cleansing’ crystals, magic mirrors, etc. There are two ways to do this: Hold the object under cold running water or let it sit in direct sunlight. Willow said that she bought the wand at a yard sale. I’m sure it was out in the sun at some point in the past, so the wand was reset when she got it.”

  “So what’ll it be, running water or sunlight?”

  “Let’s do both,” I suggested. “We should definitely take advantage of this being the sunny season in Portland, and cold running water is easy to come by.”

  “Do we have to find a running stream, or will faucet water do?”

  “I think cold faucet water should do.”

  “How long do we need to hold it under the running water?”

  “How long do you think?”

  “Twelve minutes?”

  “My thought exactly. We’re starting to think alike,” I said.

  “Don’t even say that,” Rachel complained. “If I start to think like you, I’ll shoot myself.”

  “What’s wrong with the way I think?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Professor. I love your mind, but you’re a little bit of a nerd. If I were to go around talking like you, I’d never get a date.”

  “I guess that explains my lack of dating skills,” I said.

  “Oh no, I just said something stupid,” Rachel said. “Maybe I am starting to think like you. I’m doomed. You’re rubbing off on me. I’m going to go home and read a Janet Evanovich novel and eat ice cream until I get my head straightened out.”

  “While you’re eating ice cream and pretending you’re Stephanie Plum, I’ll reset the wand.”

 
; “You know who Stephanie Plum is?”

  “Sure, you’re both Jersey girls.”

  “Professor, you make my head spin. Seriously, if I keep thinking like you, I’m going to believe that Snoozer Wand screwed with my head.”

  Chapter 4

  We cleaned up the office and Rachel drove us home to the Goose.

  “I think you should activate the wand for your own use,” Rachel said.

  “Because I’m your magic expert?”

  “That, and because you need some sort of protection. You can’t shoot and you can’t fight, so you either need a stun gun or the Snoozer. Plus, the Snoozer is legal in all states.”

  “Legal because nobody knows about it,” I observed.

  “That’s the best kind of legal.”

  “You know, I agree with you. The Snoozer suits me better than a pistol or a stun gun. Plus, there’s no iron in the Snoozer. We can take it with us when we use the Spell of Translocation.”

  “Excellent! I didn’t think about the ‘no iron’ advantage. That settles it. The Snoozer is yours.”

  While Rachel was presumably eating ice cream and vicariously riding the streets of Trenton as a bounty hunter, I reset the wand. First, I held it under cold running water in the kitchen sink for twelve and a half minutes, a little extra for good measure. Then I realized that I hadn’t eaten lunch. I slapped together a peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich, poured a glass of iced tea, and took them, along with the wand, downstairs to the back deck.

  I set the wand on the picnic table in a pool of direct sunlight and checked the time on my phone. I spent the next fourteen minutes eating my sandwich and drinking tea while the sunlight reset the wand. After the wand and I were finished, I took everything back upstairs to my apartment.

  Now, assuming that the wand was reset, I had to re-activate it. I got the lancet out of my magic kit and put a fresh needle in it. I pricked my finger and let a big drop of blood run down the sigil toward the point of the wand.

  Immediately, my Spell Bell began to chime. The Spell Bell was a gift from Gabriel. He had given one to Rachel as well. It chimes as a warning whenever magic approaches. As I was turning my Spell Bell on its side to silence it, Rachel called on my phone.

  “Professor!” Rachel said when I answered. “Magic is coming! My Spell Bell just rang.”

  “That’s my doing,” I said. “I just activated the wand. Bring up your Spell Bell, and we’ll immunize it.”

  In order to prevent a Spell Bell from chiming in the presence of magical devices that pose no threat, you can selectively immunize it to specific magical objects. All you have to do is hold the magical device in contact with a specific one of the four symbols engraved on the Spell Bell. You have to hold it in place for twelve minutes. When Rachel brought up her Spell Bell, we spent the next twenty-four minutes immunizing both Spell Bells.

  “OK, that’s done. Now I have to test this Snoozer, but how?” I said. “I can’t just go down to the Starbucks and zap some random hipster.”

  “That is an appealing idea,” Rachel quipped.

  “I don’t want to zap you a second time, and I can’t zap myself. Maybe I can zap Ward.”

  Howard (Ward) Thompson is my friend who first introduced me to the theory of scientific magic. He was always an experimenter, and he had studied magic more than I had. I gave him a call, and he actually answered on the second ring.

  “Hey dude, what’s happening,” Ward said.

  “Hey Ward, it’s Robert.”

  “I know, dude, caller id.”

  “I’ve got something you’ve got to see.”

  “What’s that man, you finally get a girlfriend?”

  “No, not a girlfriend, a magic wand.”

  “Dude! That’s awesome. What does it do?”

  “It puts you to sleep.”

  “Dude, you put me to sleep without any magic.”

  “Very funny, but this puts you to sleep for twelve minutes.”

  “That’s a pretty short nap, man.”

  “It’s not a sleeping aid, it’s a weapon.”

  “Oh, I get it, like a stun gun.”

  “Yeah, but painless.”

  “Painless is good, man.”

  “The thing is, I need to try it out on somebody to see if it works.”

  “You don’t even know if it works?”

  “I know it works. I saw it work for someone else, but I need to see if it will work for me.”

  “OK, man. I’m game and in season. How do we do this?”

  “I could come over there or you could come to my house.”

  “I don’t think we should do any magic here at the office. I’ll come over there.”

  “When can you come?”

  “Hey man, I’m halfway out the door now. Be cool.”

  “Ward is at the office on Saturday?” Rachel asked.

  “Ward is always working whether he’s at home or at work. He doesn’t distinguish between days of the week.”

  “I think he’s crazy to volunteer to be zapped,” Rachel.

  “He is crazy, but he’s also a genius and a daredevil. He’s fine with it.”

  “I’ll be glad to finally meet this guy,” Rachel said. “I’m going to take my Spell Bell back down to my apartment. I’ll be right back.”

  Rachel left, and I checked to make sure I had plenty of beer. Ward would want a couple. Unfortunately, I didn’t have his favorite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, but I did have Miller Genuine Draft. He wouldn’t touch Blue Moon or Stella Artois, my usual beers, but he would drink an MGD if PBR wasn’t available.

  Rachel came up about ten minutes later, and we didn’t have to wait long before Ward arrived. Ward had been to my house many times, so he came directly up the stairs and knocked on my door.

  “Come on in,” I said as I opened the door.

  “Good to see you dude,” Ward said and he gave me the secret handshake. It wasn’t a secret, but it was one of those multi-step bump, grab, thump and slap handshakes that must be what they do in California.

  “Rachel, this is Ward. Ward, Rachel,” I said by way of introduction.

  “Cool,” Ward said. “Robert has told me about you. You’re the beautiful P.I.”

  Oh God, he said “beautiful.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Ward,” Rachel said as she offered a handshake. “I see you’re just as suave as your friend.”

  “Dude! you didn’t tell me she’s funny, too.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t always tell when she’s joking,” I admitted.

  “Professor, you can never tell when I’m joking.”

  “Professor? Dude! Did you get a job, man?”

  “No, I didn’t get a job. Rachel just calls me Professor. You’d better be nice or she’ll give you a nickname, too.”

  “Cool, can I be like ‘The Coder’ or ‘Hackman’ or other?”

  “We’ll see,” Rachel replied.

  “Come on let me show you the wand,” I said.

  We took seats in the living room and I handed the wand to Ward.

  “This is it,” I said.

  “Whoa, is it OK for me to hold it?”

  “Yes. Theoretically, only I can use it, but we’ll have to see.”

  “Where’d you get it, man?”

  “From a witch.”

  “Super cool. How’d you get it off of her?”

  “She gave it to me.”

  “No way!”

  “Way.”

  “Cool. You say it’s a Sleeper Wand?”

  “Rachel calls it the Snoozer.”

  “Ha ha. That’s cool, and you know it works?”

  “Yeah, the witch zapped Rachel with it and she fell asleep for twelve minutes.”

  “Whoa. So the witch could use it and you can use it, but I can’t use it?”

  “I reset it after she used it and reactivated it for me, but I need to test it.”

  “You’re the man, Robert. I’m proud of you, man. You’ve learned a lot since I first told you about scientific magic.
”

  “You’re my mentor,” I said.

  “How does this Snoozer work, man?”

  “Well, I put my thumb on the trigger symbol and wave the wand at you.”

  “You know,” Rachel chimed in, “Ever since you named that solitary symbol the ‘trigger symbol,’ I’ve been thinking. You said to put your thumb on the trigger and then wave it around. You don’t pull the trigger on a machine gun and then start waving it at your target.”

  “You’ve got a good point,” I realized. “I named the special symbol the ‘trigger symbol,’ but I didn’t think of it like a gun’s trigger. I’ll point first and then tap the trigger symbol with my thumb.”

  “That’s more like it, man—much safer that way,” Ward agreed. “OK then, I’m your guinea pig. You’re sure it’s painless; I’m not into pain.”

  “I didn’t feel a thing,” Rachel said.

  “And no after-effects?”

  “None,” Rachel answered.

  “OK, dude,” Ward said as he handed the wand to me. “Shoot.”

  “Wait a minute. I’d better film this, because you’re not going to remember anything. Make yourself comfortable in that chair.”

  “No memories? What a bummer. It’s not going to erase my brain is it?”

  “No,” Rachel answered. “I just can’t remember anything from a couple of minutes before I got zapped until I woke up.”

  I got my laptop and started up the video recording program. I put the laptop on the coffee table facing the armchair Ward sat in.

  “OK, I want you to remember that we set up the camera, so we should wait a few minutes before I put you to sleep.”

  “That’s cool. I can tell you about what I’ve been up to. I’ve learned a new spell that starts a fire.”

  “A big fire?” I asked.

  “No, man, a small fire. Need a fire? There’s an app for that.”

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you. You got a pencil and paper?”

  “Sure, I’ll get them.”

  “Better bring a bowl, too, to hold the fire,” Ward said. “This is a thaumaturgical spell, but alchemists used to use it ‘cause it’s so useful. Back in the day, before matches and such, starting a fire wasn’t easy, unless you knew this spell. It only works on wood, but paper is made from wood, so it’ll do.