Magic Mansion by Jordan Price (best fiction books to read .txt) 📕

and bitter, and hateful, if he could reverse some small portion of the corrosion spreading over the poor child’s spirit, then there was still hope.

The rope-and-ring trick would be perfect, if the boy would be able to hold the rope in both hands, while John “magically” snapped the ring free. Unfortunately, with the shattered hand, he wouldn’t be much of an assistant. Unless the boy with the wounded leg held the other end—yes, even better. A symbolic gesture of cooperation, each holding an end of that rope. It would be the perfect first step out of the darkness and into the light, to have these two boys come together in the spirit of wonder…of magic.

“Observe,” John intoned. “A metal ring. Pass it among yourselves, go ahead, and verify that it is, indeed, solid.”

He handed a metal curtain loop to the burned boy, who passed it to the girl with too many “uncles,” who passed it to the ten-year-old gunshot victim, who passed it to the teenager, each of them turning the chrome ring over in their fingers with rapt attention.

It made its way back down the line to the burned boy, who returned it solemnly to John. “You have observed the solidity of the ring.” He pressed the ring into the rope and hitched it to the center with a simple slipknot. “You have watched as the three lengths of rope became one. Now, if you will assist me….” He handed the end to the ten-year-old first. Boys of that age still recognized authority on occasion. The boy took his end of the rope gladly.

“And another of you—because it will take the melding of all our minds to sever the bonds of the magical rope—and to heal them again, as strong as if they’ve never been sundered.” It might be heavy-handed on the metaphor, but so what? The burned boy had forgotten his pain, if only for a moment. And the girl with too many “uncles” was smiling. John held out the rope to the teenager. “We need someone with a strong mind. Will you do it?”

The young man wanted to scoff—because to do otherwise would leave him vulnerable. And a dollar and a few rope tricks shouldn’t be enough to buy his trust. Yet, as John looked into his eyes, he saw the boy wanted to believe. He reached for the rope.

“Okay, time for physical therapy.” The nurse’s voice was startling, and all the children flinched and drew back into their shells. The ring and the rope hung in John’s hand, and the magic fled from the props, leaving them looking cheap and common.

The burned boy whined, “I want to see the trick.” His pain was returning already.

John turned toward the nurse and said quietly, “I was told I could perform until three. It’s quarter to.”

She looked at him with hard eyes—she wasn’t quite dead inside, not like so many people were these days, but the hostility emanating from her was plain. “Tonio needs to get to physical therapy, and Jaimie’s grandma is here to visit. C’mon, kids. Quit dilly-dallying. Let’s go.”

Of the four children, the only one old enough to resist the authority of the hard-eyed nurse was the teenager. But he was also in a wheelchair, and when she snapped off the brakes and wheeled him briskly away, he chose to slump back into his state of dejection, rather than engage in a battle he had no chance of winning. John watched as the children filed down the hall to their rooms. The burned boy paused in his doorway and waved.

John lifted his hand solemnly, then turned to go.

“Mister…Topaz?” the ward’s administrator called from his office. So much doubt could be inferred by that simple pause. Yes, Topaz was John’s legal name. His mother had shortened it from Topasna after the second World War, when she’d made the move, with him just a bundle of cells in her womb, from Guam to California. Sometimes John wished she hadn’t changed it. These days, too much showmanship made people suspicious.

He loosened his impeccable silk tie, and turned to the graying man. “Yes?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, step inside and chat with me for a minute….” He was nervous. Why? “We really appreciate what you’ve been doing here….” Ah. It was time to go. Already. “…and you understand, it’s a nice perk to have a little entertainment, but what we’ve really got to focus on here is the medicine.”

Someone had complained. About what? John would never know. But he knew why. Spite. The ill-will that True magicians gathered as they made their ways through the world, like iron filings to a magnet. Even in places where one could attempt to demagnetize oneself from the malice, the envy, the inexplicable loathing, it still caught up with him, and it happened frequently enough that he could read it now in the set of the administrator’s shoulders. Thank you, but please leave. And don’t make me call security. Because that would only embarrass us both.

“I understand,” John said. He didn’t. But one thing they could never take from him was his ability to be gracious in the face of defeat.

He turned away, head high, and strode with dignity toward the door, but before he reached it, the administrator called out, “Wait.” John’s spirit leapt as if the clouds had opened and a ray of hope now shone upon him. Maybe he would be allowed to return in a few weeks, maybe at some other time of the day, when whoever it was that had hated him for no particular reason, but viscerally enough to complain…whoever didn’t want him there, was not working. If he could see the burned boy, at least. All of them needed to be healed in spirit as well as in body, but if he could help only one, it would be better than nothing.

He turned back, eager, heart filled with hope.

The administrator held out his hand, and said, “We’ll need you to return our scissors.”

_____

The stairs to John’s apartment seemed