Southwest Nights (Semiautomatic Sorceress Book 1) by Kal Aaron (large ebook reader txt) 📕

our men and women in law enforcement, but hiring a witch to come in and do dangerous magic is not a good long-term solution to solving the problem of criminal threat inflation.” He sighed and shook his head. “What if innocent people were hurt? It’s my understanding that they didn’t know about the shards beforehand, and the combination of this lethal woman flinging her powers around with these criminals using dangerous magical items? Well, we don’t know the long-term effects or if a collision of their spells might have blown the entire neighborhood away. Do you want to trust your children’s safety to a witch dressed like that?”

Lyssa rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a witch, and the only people who could get away with bowties were college professors, guys who always went by three names, and English actors playing ancient alien time travelers.

The anchor nodded. “That’s a big concern, especially with recent revelations about alleged accidents and dangerous occurrences that turned out to be the result of sorcery.”

There were many mysterious explosions and dead bad people all over the world who’d been done in by Torches. Before M-Day, the leaders of the Illuminated Society hadn’t been above trying to manipulate countries and societies both directly and indirectly. With greater numbers, they might have been more effective.

Lyssa took a sip of her drink. Grant Harris and his friends might be paranoid, but that didn’t make them wrong. The problem was his people wanted to take down all Sorcerers.

“That’s what led to the formation of the ACSS and our sister organizations across the world.” Grant shook a finger. “It’s important for everyone to remember that this Illuminated Society hid for thousands of years. Even if we believe their fanciful claims that they are descendants of people from a lost sunken continent, that doesn’t change the fact it was an accident that revealed them to the world five years ago, not their honest attempt to reach out. I don’t know about you, but if someone’s been lying and hiding from me for a long time, it makes me suspect they’re not being honest about a lot of other things.”

“The Society claims they’d been intending to go public for a much longer time,” the anchor replied. “They simply took advantage of that incident to come out of the top hat, as it were.”

“Come out of the top hat?” Lyssa chuckled. She might not like the term “magic,” but that expression was clever. She’d have to use it.

“It’s obvious that’s a lie.” Grant furrowed his brow. “And it doesn’t change that these people didn’t have a problem with hiding themselves for so long. It’s shocking to me that the government maintains such a cavalier attitude toward them.”

The anchor replied, “The Extraordinary Affairs Agency insists the situation is well in hand.”

Grant guffawed before wiping away a tear of mirth. “I don’t know about you, but hearing a government agency say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this under control’ worries me on the best of days, let alone when we’re talking about sorcery.”

The anchor laughed. Lyssa controlled herself. Unsurprisingly, growling at random TVs in public attracted attention.

“Given the range of magical abilities,” Grant said, “we can’t rule out undue influence on the government by the Society.”

“Are you stating here, in public, that you believe the US government has been infiltrated or supernaturally influenced by Sorcerers?” the anchor asked, sounding surprised.

“I’m only noting it’s a possibility we shouldn’t ignore.” Grant frowned. “I’m far more concerned about the local risks. Let’s not ignore the other frightening aspect of this situation. Dangerous criminals had illegal magical items.” He clucked his tongue. “Given how rare that used to be, it’s obvious the Society isn’t doing enough to keep their criminals in check, and now they’re flooding our streets with their dangerous magical weapons.”

“Isn’t that more reason to hire Torches and other Sorcerers?”

Grant looked offended. “Don’t you think that’s convenient?”

“Convenient?” The anchor’s eyebrows lifted.

“Dangerous criminals suddenly have magic items, forcing the government to rely more on the Society, but the only possible source of those items is the Society.” Grant’s smile became more of a smirk. “I’m not accusing the Society of anything. I’m only noting we have to keep all possibilities in mind when we’re looking into the situation.”

Lyssa clenched her jaw so hard it started to hurt. The extra-annoying thing was Grant was right. Alvarez wasn’t a god. He was a cartel thug, and unless something awful had happened, there was only a single source for shards.

She didn’t buy into Grant’s convoluted logic of a dark plan by the Society as a whole, but there could be a Sorcerer at the end of the tunnel. That didn’t fit with her paranoia about it being a trap, but a good conspiracy theory wasn’t stopped by mere evidence.

“Also,” Grant continued, his cheeks red, “we can’t ignore that we don’t even know where the capital territory of these people is. I continue to find that amazing.”

“Isn’t that Last Remnant?” the anchor asked.

“We know a name, and we know it’s an island that is, by their admission, hidden by their magic somewhere in the Indian Ocean. But where exactly is it? Would you sign a treaty with another country if you didn’t even know where they were? The Cold War didn’t become World War III because the Russians realized if they nuked us, we’d nuke them. We don’t have a similar balance with the Society.”

The anchor looked concerned. “We’re not at war with the Illuminated Society, and we’re not engaged in a Cold War either. Don’t you think most people would say the situations aren’t analogous? Sorcerers live among us.”

Grant shook his head. “And doesn’t that ever keep you up at night? You never sit in a restaurant and look around, wondering if someone eating a meal next to you might be one of them?”

An old man close to the exit slowly surveyed the restaurant. His gaze skipped right past Lyssa and landed on a Goth high-school boy wearing a t-shirt with a band logo