A Hollywood Story

Being the wandering magician of an era means many things. Most people know few of them, for which I’ve had many occasions to be grateful. It does mean that no door is closed to my wandering, but the door I reach for practically flings itself open in an embrace. I pull wards about myself. This is not a city with strong wards, but I find a few in people waiting for their big breaks, in the manic energy driving creators onward, and some from the frantic desperation that fills the area like seeds gone to rot.

The reception area is small. It would be bland except every painting bought from a catalogue has broken and struck the floor. The computer screens are cracked, the receptionist a quivering heap under his desk. I reach out, but he mewls and flinches back from a touch. I reach out with the magic, but find no way past or around fear. I stand, spread my senses outward. Fear. Terror. Confusion. No one dead, but some terrible trauma has imprinted itself in this place and I have no idea what the source is yet.

I have allies. But I have no wish to call Jay or Charlie in, not and risk them being hurt as well. Charlie can eat gods, and Jay is eleven and from far Outside the universe. I can do things they cannot. They can be things I cannot. But part of that is knowing what not to risk.

The hallway contains shadows too scared to not be normal. I walk down it. Offices. Meeting rooms. Everyone hiding, cowering, a few shaken sobs emerging like fractured applause. Something about a TV show; I get that much, but it’s not exactly a surprise in Hollywood. There are broken doors, shattered trinkets, damaged posters. It is nothing I can’t repair, but for some reason that worries me more. I walk faster, down one hallway, another, to large double doors that shape the viewing habits of generations.

“Don’t – please. We didn’t know,” a man’s voice begs from the other side of the door.

“You cancelled a TV show that Charlie liked!”

“We don’t know what Charlie is. Please. What are you?!”

I close my eyes. I think several words in the silence of my head. The doors open when I push them, even if they’re only meant to be pulled. I think they’re wise to my mood.

Jay is standing in the middle of what used to be an office. He is eleven. And glaring at a man cowering in the wreckage of a chair at the far end of the room. Jay looks entirely human. Even to magicians, he passes as human. The remains of the office prove otherwise: every binding in here is broken, and the laptop is making noises technology isn’t meant to make.

I walk inside. Jay turns, sees me and offers up the kind of friendship only innocence can put into a huge grin.

“Get out.” I thrust power into my voice, and the bindings between us.

Jay freezes a moment, eyes wide, and he vanishes a moment later.

I relax minutely as the bindings between us remain active, focus back on the present. “Who are you?”

The man babbles his name, asks about me, what the monster was, fumbling over words.

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

“But there is a story here. Supernatural, but with –.”

“No.”

He stands. There is a magic to this place that isn’t of magicians. Driving him. Infecting him. “Demons as boys who look normal, girls as the angels to capture the 18 to 39 demographics –.”

I hold his gaze, draw the magic up about me. A word. A wound. A promise. Being a magician is always more than magic, and I let him see something of that. “If you try this, the boy will find out. You really, really don’t want to have him thinking you thought he was a demon.”

“But –. I –.That –.”

“You cancelled a TV show.” A nod. “That hurt the feelings of a friend of his. Imagine if you hurt his feelings.”

The man sits back down. The magic of the place flees, shattered entirely.

I walk back outside. Take a deep breath. Walk a good block before making a call on my phone.

Jay appears beside me, flings himself in for a hug. “That was really good, Honcho!”

“Pardon?”

“You scared the really mean unfriend of Charlie’s a lot and almost made me think you were mean to a Jay!”

“You scared a lot of people in there, Jay.”

“Charlie was pretty mad, and I thought I’d do a helping but maybe I kinda did an oops,” he says, almost making it a question

“And it’s one you need to fix. I didn’t fix it.” Jay pulls back in surprise. “You have to do in, fix all t he bindings and apologize. TV shows are cancelled for many reasons, Jay. And Charlie should have known better.”

“Oh!” Jay vanishes. A few people in the street stare, convince themselves they didn’t see anything at all.

I find the closest coffee shop, get a coffee. Twenty minutes after that, I get a hot chocolate. Jay enters at closer to the thirty minute mark, looking dazed.

“It was really hard to fix all those bindings, Honcho!”

“I know. But sometimes fixing your own oopses is important so you never do them again.”

Jay drinks his hot chocolate back in a gulp and nods firmly. “I’ll make sure Charlie knows that!”

He vanishes again.

I pay for the drinks and walk out with a sigh.