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

wand in each hand, and his shoulder connected with Kevin Kazan’s chest. He looked, for a moment, as if he would snap at Kevin to back the hell off—especially as Kevin puffed out his chest and began posturing for a fight. But instead, Ricardo responded with a cool “I know exactly what you’re playing at” look, turned his back to Kevin and went about trying to grab whichever wand Bev was pointing out before Kevin did.

Kevin was gunning for Ricardo. No two ways about it. That realization settled like a stone in the pit of John’s stomach. Because there was competition…and there was spite. And spite, he’d always found, was a True magician’s greatest enemy. It was spite that caused normal, everyday folks to turn on people like John. It was spite that had ejected him from his work at the hospital. And it was spite, John was convinced, that energetically drew in the bizarre accidents that would be their ultimate demise.

In which case…how safe was it really to be prancing around on a reality show, exposing oneself not only to everyone else’s envy, and criticism, and spite…but to drowning, and potentially dangerous spa treatments, and pruning shears? Best not to think of it. Not in the middle of a timed challenge.

John took a breath, went underwater, and tried to convey a little bit longer to the wood. No images came back to him, and no wonder. The concept was too abstract. He took two dowels as he came up, and compared them. They looked the same. And while he suspected that it was counterproductive to attack the problem both mentally and physically at the same time, the screaming and the commotion was making it impossible to focus on just one or the other.

He dropped a dowel, went under again, and tried to convey the concept of “different.”

No. All the same. In every way that really matters.

He broke the surface with two more wands. Yep. The same, all right.

Two, three more dives, and still the dowels were the same. John checked the clock. Five minutes left. Theoretically, Kevin should leave the pool and gain another time advantage. But despite his wet contact lenses, he was circling Ricardo like a shark. And although both teams had planned to leave the pool at timed intervals, other than the ladies who had stepped out when they were supposed to, the rest of the magicians were sticking with the task in a stubborn game of “chicken.”

John gazed at the splashing, screaming hubbub for a moment, considering whether he should simply get out with whatever wand he had in hand…but then he looked above the fracas and saw the sample board on the wall. The wands were arranged from smallest to largest, like the bars of a cell phone service area. Maybe that was a strong enough visual to go on.

He stared at it for a moment, fixed it in his mind, then took a deep breath, and went under.

A few wands stirred as contestants’ bare feet kicked them up. But mostly, they lay still. Waiting.

John pictured the image of the four wands side by side as clearly as he’d just seen it with his physical eyes, and then he sent it to the wood. He held the image patiently, as long as he could while also holding his breath, in hopes that somewhere the barrier between incomprehension and understanding might break. That his intention might leak through.

Yes.

That’s all? Yes? Yes what? Time was running out.

Another image came to John, a tree with snow on the branches. Yes, some of the lumber in the pool was from the same tree as the lumber on the wall.

He grabbed two random wands, splashed up, and drank a breath of air as he checked them against each other.

The wands he held were still the same length.

He threw them down in disgust.

Longer, he thought, focusing hard on the longest dowel in his mental image. In return, he received flashes of many disjointed ideas. The gentle prick of a bird’s claws. The kiss of the wind. The sound of chainsaws. None of these were good or bad. They simply were.

Another gasp for air, and now the clock had ticked down to the final minute. “That one!” Bev was shrieking. “That one!” and Ricardo and Kevin both dove. John took several deep breaths, and went under himself for the final grab.

As he plunged down and ran his fingers over all the wands, his thumb dragged across the slightly ragged cut edge of the lumber, and a final image occurred to him. The dowels must have been cut on the miter saw from the Zig Zag Cabinet competition…but not one at a time. The saw was massive. The nine hundred short wands would have been cut in huge batches. The ninety medium wands, also. But the nine large wands? The single immunity wand? That would have gone through the miter saw practically alone…or in a pair, if one were to consider the sample on the board.

John sent the images quickly, with no time to spare, of huge stacks of dowels being chopped up in the saw.

Yes.

Then he sent the notion of only a few. The feeling of the metal table on one side and the air on the other, without a stack of other dowels piled on top. The sound of the blade cutting briefly. There was a pause in which he thought he might be understood—and in that pause, he wondered. Maybe he should have sent the image of only two wands being cut—the largest wand, and the sample. But no, that would be silly, to emerge from the pool with the twelve-inch wand. It was impossible, and anyone who did it would be accused of cheating. And all John would accomplish was drawing the sort of suspicion, the sort of lethal malignant energy to himself that he was always so careful to avoid.

He focused on his image of a small stack being cut, and he waited.

Yes—oh, yes.

John’s eyes went to