The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between Paleolithic and Neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our fathers’ lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. All before the invention of magic. In the span of my own life what has man not accomplished? Telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokinesis, biological manipulation, communication with spirits. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.
New York City, New York
There was a knock on the apartment door.
Sullivan was already awake and waiting by the time the visitor made his presence known. He’d been a light sleeper his whole life, a trait that had only been reinforced during the war. The deep sleepers hadn’t lived through the nighttime poison gas barrages.
The echo of a man’s footsteps in the hall had been enough to rouse him, and the fact that those footsteps had stopped at his door had been enough to clear his head and put his big Browning. 45 automatic in his hand. There was a bit of yellow city light leaking in around the curtains, just enough for him to make out the hands on his watch. Nearly midnight.
Odd time for a caller, but if it had been the Imperium, they probably wouldn’t have knocked.
The apartment was tiny, in a nondescript old building half a mile’s walk from the library. He lived there under a false name. He associated with no one, had no friends, didn’t even hit the bar downstairs. Nobody, not even the Society, knew where he was. He checked the black and gold ring on his finger, but its spells weren’t warning him of anything. Flexing his Power, he let his senses adjust to the world of pulls, mass, and density to get a sense of the surroundings. There was only one man in the hall.
The knock came again. A muffled voice called out. “Sullivan? You in there?”
He always left his clothes where he could find them in the dark. You never knew when you’d have to leave someplace in a hurry. “Who is it?”
“Sam Cowley. Can I come in?”
Cowley was from the Bureau of Investigation, one of Hoover’s men. Unexpected. Technically, he had violated the terms of his parole by bailing out last year, but Pershing had set things in motion to clear Sullivan of his obligations and Francis’ lawyers had made sure that everything had been signed, nice and legal. For all he knew, he should have been in the clear.
Besides, if the G-men had come to haul him in again, they would’ve known better than to send a lone agent. They would have sent a crack team and a whole lot of guns. Sullivan had cultivated a bit of reputation over the years. Throwing his shirt on, he kept the. 45 behind his back and opened the door a crack.
He kept his voice flat. “What’re you doing here, Sam?”
“Looking for you, obviously.” Cowley stood there politely, hat in hand, obviously waiting for an invitation inside.
Sullivan stuck his head into the hall and looked around suspiciously. “How’d you find me?”
“Modern law enforcement has all sorts of scientific resources.. ” As in, none of your business. “We need to talk.”
Agent Cowley was a soft-looking, plain-spoken, but hard-working cop. They had worked together on several cases and Cowley was about as scrupulous as a government employee could possibly be, but Sullivan had been burned by the BI before. The list of people he trusted was a very short one, and he wasn’t about to start putting any of J. Edgar’s men on it anytime soon. “Time’s served. Hoover’s jobs are done. I’m square with the BI.”
“The director didn’t send me. Can I come in or not?”
Sullivan stepped out of the way. “Not much to look at, but have a seat.” He gestured at one of the two ratty chairs beside the round table in the kitchen. There really wasn’t much to the apartment other than the kitchen and a closet with a bed squeezed into it, but at least the rats were small, so he’d lived in worse. With Society money, he could certainly afford something nicer now, but nicer wasn’t low profile.
They shook hands. Sullivan was careful not to squeeze too hard. Cowley was a paper pusher, and Sullivan had a grip that could make boilermakers flinch. The crumbling old building had been wired for power, but it seldom worked right, so Sullivan lit an oil lamp on the table. As expected from a criminal investigator, Cowley immediately took note of the several mirrors hung on the walls and the items on the table: a notebook, a package of marking pens, a bloodstained towel with several scalpels and picks arranged on it, and some corked vials filled with a black liquid. “Whatever have you been up to?”
Casting spells, something that nearly everyone thought was impossible. After he’d figured out how to carve a healing spell into his own chest last year, he’d had a few of his fellow knights volunteer for the same treatment. Since he’d managed not to kill Lance or Heinrich, he’d started experimenting with some of the other designs that he remembered from his viewing of the Power. Since this was uncharted territory, he had stuck to drawing them on himself. It was terribly painful, but since he hadn’t died, he called that real progress. It was terrifying work, but the next time he went up against a magically augmented Iron Guard, he’d be ready.
“Nothing important.” Sullivan swept the containers of demon smoke off to the side, covered them with the towel, and set his pistol on top.
Cowley pulled out a chair and sat down. He didn’t bother removing his overcoat. Apparently he wasn’t planning on staying long. “Well, Jake. Good to see you again. Been awhile.”
“Since Chicago…” It had been after his initial encounter with the Grimnoir. Cowley and the other BI agents had been easily defeated by Dan Garrett’s team, but Sullivan had tried to chase them down on his own. He’d managed to fight his way through most of them, thereby impressing Black Jack Pershing, and the rest was history. “When your boss chewed my ass for getting tossed off a blimp.”
The G-man sighed. “You know, Mr. Hoover’s not a bad man. He just has a very stressful job. We put a lot of bad characters away.”
“He told me I was a slave.” It was still a sore spot. Cowley had no response to that. “How do you think he’d react if he knew that you could do even a little bit of magic?”
“Got me there…” Cowley said slowly. He was a passive Torch, with just the barest glimmer of ability to create and control fire. Hoover’s distrust of magic and dislike of its users was well known. It was a growing and popular sentiment in positions of authority, especially since the destruction of Mar Pacifica. “Times are changing. Probably going to get even tougher on magicals too, I imagine, after what happened today.”
Sullivan hadn’t been close to a radio all day, hadn’t seen the paper, and his only human contact had been beating the hell out of a gang of hoodlums, so he had no idea what Cowley was talking about. “What happened today?”
“You don’t know? An Active tried to assassinate President-elect Roosevelt.”
This was not what his people needed. “How bad?”
“I don’t have any details yet. My superiors did send out a cable that he’s alive. I hear it was bad. Big crowd of admirers there when it happened. The police in Florida are still collecting body parts, so they don’t even know how many people died yet. It’s a real mess down there.”
“They sure it was magic?”
“Don’t know what kind, but he was making the air explode with his bare hands.”
“Hmmm…” That sounded like the descriptions of a Boomer, though he’d never actually met one. “Imperium, anarchist, communist, or nut on his own?”
“Nobody knows yet.”
“This is a nightmare.” Sullivan rubbed his face. “Absolute nightmare.”
“Poor Roosevelt,” Cowley agreed.
“Poor Roosevelt, hell. Poor us. I saw a mob try to lynch a little kid once because they thought his magic was scary. What’s gonna happen when they’ve got a reason to be scared?”
