I liked this short story so much that I had to turn it into a novel. In fact it looks to be more than one novel. Keep your eyes open for The Tao of Leverage: Renegade, coming soon. The novel is in editing right now.
Length: ~8,850 words
The Story on Amazon for 99 cents.
Prologue
Magic is the art of managing the improbable, while understanding that the border between the improbable and the impossible is unmarked, barely guarded, and indistinct. To manage the improbable, one needs two things, opportunity and leverage. Modern life has created new opportunities and new means of leverage.
Let’s take gift cards for example. I carry one for the sandwich shop near my place and another for the book store. It doesn’t take very much magic to make sure that they always contain enough for a meal and a read. It’s as if the existence of gift cards has created a weakness in the universe that a mage can exploit.
Another example is the lotto. Mages have always exploited gambling, but that had usually been hazardous. There’s nothing that gamblers hate more than a player who is too lucky. Lotto is anonymous. I’ve never felt I could afford to win big. That would draw exactly the sort of attention that a mage does not want. That kind of attention solidifies the universe, making it much more difficult to manipulate. Scratchers on the other hand are welfare for mages. If I purchase five tickets, I’ll always walk away with at least a hundred dollars. I always keep each win under six hundred so that I can collect more easily and without leaving a record. Also, I try not to win too often in the same place, and when I have extra cash, I make sure to play and lose.
That almost makes me sound like a leech of some sort, but I do work. I am a professional in the magic field. A karmic agent, if you will. Not like that Dresden guy. I don’t advertise as a Wizard in the yellow pages. I work more like the psychic hot lines should work. The problem there is, if you’re so fucking psychic, why do I have to call you? Why don’t you call me? “ Hello, Mr. Roquor. This is the psychic hot line calling. Please watch your step at the corner of Lexington and 5th today, and have a nice day. ” See, that never happens because they’re frauds. I’m not. Sometimes I prevent bad things from happening to good people. Sometimes I do that by helping bad things happen to bad people. Bad people often have extra cash, and when something bad happens to them, a little of that cash can end up in my pockets. Call it pay for services rendered. An agent of the karmic wheel has to eat, too, after all. Most of the time, whether you’re a good person or a bad one, you’ll never even know that I was involved. I’m not the Lone Ranger. People don’t ever ask, “ Who was that masked man? ”
Dangerous and The Witch
Am I … lonely? I wondered. Look, I’m a typical guy, and that means that I’m closed off from my feelings, so it’s not that weird that I might not be sure if I’m lonely or not. Even at sixty-two, I’m not that aware of the contents of my heart. There have been women, of course, but I found them to be a pain in the ass. I’d mostly stuck to working girls for the last … When I worked it out in my head, it came to almost twenty years! It wasn’t the sex I was missing; it was the connection.
“Finish up, Jake,” Gordon said. “I have to meet Leanne in ten minutes. We’re going to the movies and time is tight.”
Gordon is one of my many bosses. My card says, “I’ll do anything for minimum wage.” That’s almost true. It’s not that I can’t make enough working for the Wheel, but that job won’t pass scrutiny for law enforcement and tax officials. Lottery winner is just as bad. So I do pickup work, sweeping, stocking, dishes, loading and unloading. Even the occasional bits of research and data entry, though I charge more for anything that requires too much of my attention. Mindless work leaves my mind free for other things. Things that matter.
When I thought, Am I lonely? I stopped sweeping. That made Gordon anxious, and he made that remark about meeting his girlfriend Leanne, who I liked. After his remark, I wasn’t unsure anymore. I had a new client: me! Something bad, loneliness, was happening to my client , and I’m a marginally good person, so why not? “Sorry,” I said and finished up.
A few minutes later, we both stepped into the alley behind the store. He handed me a twenty and a ten. Not bad for two hours of semi-legitimate work. My card says minimum wage, but naturally I give preference to people who pay more. “Same time tomorrow?” he asked.
“I can’t,” I replied. I usually don’t do pickup work when I’ve got a client. “I’m booked.”
“Crap! I really need you tomorrow.” He pulled his parka closed against the cutting winter wind. “I have tickets to that play Leanne wants to see. Brian still has the flu, and I can’t get out of here in time without your help. What if I double the wage?”
I couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter. Peeling the layers of manipulation and synchronicity the Wheel was throwing at me only took a microsecond. Tracing all the connections and implications could take hours, but why bother?
“What?” Gordon asked.
“Nothing. I’ll be here.” I pulled my battered duster closed and cinching the chin strap on my Stetson against the wind. I dress like a gunslinger, except for the boots. My TAC boots were a lot more practical than cowboy boots for someone who walks everywhere. If I rode a horse or motorcycle, it might be different.
“You’re a good kid, Jake.”
Another snort. This one for the kid remark. I’d gotten used to that. I’m in my sixties, but everyone thinks I’m late teens or early twenties. I guess it comes from the lean frame, short stature, and complete lack of facial hair. I hate shaving, so I just stopped it from growing. I had to wonder if I hadn’t arrested my physical development at eighteen because it was the beginning of my new life. The point where I dropped out of school, left home, and began subsisting on my craft. Born again, but not in a creepy, holy roller sort of way.
Gordon shivered in the cold and looked me up and down. “Are you sure you don’t need me to drop you somewhere?” he asked.
“No, and you’re going to be late meeting Leanne.” Internally, I added, I’ll be fine as soon as I get into the Ways, but I can’t do that until you stop flapping your gums and leave, damn it!
He looked at his watch. “Fuck! Sorry, I gotta run. See you tomorrow.” He darted down the alley toward his car.
I drifted after him and watched him drive away, then turned back into the dead end alley. Well, dead end for most people. The alley opened onto a small courtyard that gave access to the delivery doors for the businesses behind Gordon’s bookstore and that face out onto the surrounding streets. A fortunate accident in the architecture left a four foot deep, by thirty inch wide chimney between two buildings that extended up to the roof tops. I put my back against one wall and my feet against the other and began working my way up. Fifteen feet off the ground, I pulled open the slatted vent cover and eased myself into the forgotten attic of whichever shop was below. The only kind of people who ever came up here were electricians running new wiring or heating, and cooling guys working on the ancient duct work. At this time of night, I wasn’t going to run into either kind. There are thousands of such places in Akkadia. Just the normal disregarded, behind the scenes places where people hardly ever go. The Ways connect these places, and they are decidedly not normal. If I was going home, then I needed to go straight ahead and then up. If I was going downtown, then I needed to go left and down. Of course, if normal physics applied, up would put me on the roof, and down would put me inside the shop below, but it didn’t apply. Not to me, anyway.
I paused, crouching in the dark, and pulled on my battered work gloves. I realized I had a problem. My usual operational pattern was:
1. Find client.
2. Determine if client was good or bad.
3. If good, find the bad people making his life hard.
4. Fuck the bad people up.
5. Try to come away with some of their cash.
Occasionally, I’d do step #3 first, finding the bad guys right away and only find the people I’d think of as clients later or even never. In this case, however, I’d already done step #1, and step #2 was obvious, but the rest didn’t really apply, unless loneliness could be considered a bad guy who could be fucked up. I was pretty certain that concepts such as loneliness and grief didn’t carry any cash though. Whatever, I was in unknown territory and not certain how to proceed.