Finally Marvin gave in, and said, “We were able to retrieve the laptop Zeddie smuggled in, and with it, Mable got us into the basement garage. We saw the whole place and managed to also get into the utility closet where the linens are delivered.” His eyes brows waggled suggestively, “Where we got in a little hanky-panky too.”

  “We nearly got caught,” Mable said, clearly pleased at having evaded detection, “but with the laptop, I was able to redirect attention away from the closet.”

  “I do not want to know any details of what you were doing in the utility closet,” Sandra said firmly. She got up to make hot water for more tea.

  “Aw,” Marvin said. “You woulda been so proud of Mable’s flexibility.”

  Sandra blew out an exasperated breath but did not turn around.

  “With the new laptop, and thanks to my sweetie pie’s gift for destroying surveillance equipment, I can do so much now.” Mable gushed. “I wish Zeddie had been more amenable to getting it for me sooner.”

  “We had to build up his trust,” Dani said. “Better late than never. What did you see?”

  Mable

  Mable watched Sandra. She was better today. She was less tense, less fidgety. Harold must really be recovering. In her off time, Mable had researched ways to turn Harold back to human, but … there was nothing in the databanks, even on the Dark-Witch-Web, (the dark web for black witch groups) that showed her a spell for another practitioner to return Harold to human. It had to be the practitioner who turned him in the first place. A third party couldn’t force a cursed person’s return to human shape. And Sandra, well Sandra hated and feared her power so much she had never been able to pull up her gift.

  The guilt ridden former preacher stared out the window at the petting zoo, which could be seen from Marvin’s window. Mable knew that if Sandra had her way, she would live in the pen with Harold, her motives all mixed together, from self-loathing, to grief and love, to some form of penance.

  Mable turned on the smuggled-in laptop, listening with half an ear to Marvin, who was still explaining about their big adventure. It had been far more dangerous than they had expected. She was never one to turn away from a little fun and games, but last night they had been close to getting caught by people who, it was likely, had no fear of committing crimes.

  “While we were in the basement,” Marvin said, as if it had been wonderful, “some men came in through the overhead door, driving a white truck. It looked a lot like the one in front of Building Z. The men were wearing white hazmat suits, like you described, and they moved a man from this building into the truck and whisked him away.”

  “Is anyone else missing?” Dani asked.

  “We don’t know,” Mable said, patting her hair back from her face. It had been four weeks since her last haircut and style and she really needed her roots done. “He was male, short, and heavyset, but we never got a look at his face.” Partially because they had been bent over an upturned laundry cart when the garage door opened, but that was another story entirely.

  Most people were never hit with magic gifts, and few were cursed with a big ball of energy late in life, but some of the older students at The Sevens had been cursed hard, like Buck and the other missing geezers from Table J. When they arrived, there had been nine inmates on the Big Hitters list, including Marvin and Dani, the missing people at Table J, including Buck and a ninety year old woman who loved to knit, named Emogene Smathers, and a man from Table B, named Richard D. Richards, who fit the physical description of the man they saw wheeled away. Big hitters were the ones who could help save the planet. Or make big bucks for someone in the darker world of money laundering or drug-running … or power harvesting. But other big hitters had disappeared over the three years prior.

  Mable entered a line of code and hit ENTER. A database opened and Mable could have squealed in delight. She had found a way in to the log of new patients at Building Z.

  “News,” she said. “The missing geezers are not runaways or dead. We have five new admissions to Building Z in the last twenty-four hours.” She looked at her crimes-solving partners. “I’m betting they were drugged, carted away, and are now in lockdown and unconscious.”

  Dani ground out, “Our current theory was right. The power of magic practitioners is being harvested for profit, and against their will.”

  “Yeah,” Mable said. “And now that I have a computer on site, I can track everyone and figure things out.”

  “Can you get in to all the records?” Dani asked.

  Mable’s fingers flew over the keyboard, her eyes searching the security code for the weakness that had to be there. Had to be. Had to be. Had to be. “Ohhh. There you are,” she whispered. And then, the firewall snapped up again. She cussed softly.

  Marvin chuckled and rubbed her shoulders.

  Dani started again, “Have you—”

  Mable glared at her. “Stop. Before you ask, yes, I think I can get into the security system here in this building, but I’ll have to be really careful not to leave traces, so don’t ask for the moon. And no, I haven’t yet found a way to penetrate the electronic security at Building Z. I think I need to go old-school and hardwire it there. Inside Building Z.”

  Everyone looked down at their drinks.

  Marvin took her hands off her laptop and squeezed her fingers to get her to relax. He was a comforting man, and it was the little gestures like this that told her how much he loved her. She squeezed back.

  Marvin said, “More important is what the warden told the drivers of the white truck.”

  “I got it on tape,” Mable said.

  She touched the face of her illegal laptop and Margorie Devoe’s voice sounded, clipped and in control. “This is a standard removal protocol. One to transfer.”

  A man’s voice said, “Yes ma’am. We’re picking up a resident from Dorm Alpha, seventh floor?”

  Devoe said, “The desserts of the other residents on Dorm Alpha were dosed with a light sleeping medication to keep their dangerous magic down, in case it’s contagious.”

  “Magic goin’ crazy is contagious?” a second man asked.

  “It is in the elderly,” Margorie lied, her voice uninflected, as if she was talking about a mannequin instead of a human being. “The dorm will be monitored to make certain they’re all asleep. The sedative should hit them in an hour, at which time you will take the resident from his room, cover his head with void strips, and take him down the service elevator, to the truck.”

  “Why we gotta do all that?” the second man asked. “’at sounds a lot like kidnapping. I don’t know about this, lady.”

  “His magic hit his own brain and fried it,” the first man said. “It happens more often in geezers than you think.”

  Devoe added, “He signed the papers for this when he was admitted here. This method is to protect the residents from uncontrolled, dangerous, and contagious magic, not kidnapping.”

  “We strap the geezer onto the gurney and transport him to Building Z,” the first guy said. “Easy.”

  “What if he lets loose a spell? Or runs?” the uncertain man asked.

  The other man laughed. “Never happened. He’s out cold. They always are when their brains get fried. And besides, we’re faster than any old fogies in support hose and knee braces.”

  Mable touched her screen off.

  Sandra closed her eyes. “Dear God.”

  It was clearly a prayer and Mable didn’t know what to do. She had never prayed and when Sandra did, it was creepy.

  Sandra opened her eyes and looked at them, meeting their eyes, one by one, her own full of conviction and purpose. Mable felt the power in her gaze like a slap to her face. “We have to save them,” the former preacher said. “It’s why we were put here.”

  Mable wasn’t sure what Sandra meant about that, but she agreed. No one should be harvested. She went back to her laptop and a moment later said, “I got into the medical orders. Buck didn’t fry his own brain. He was dosed with a knockout drug.”

  “That’s the proof we’ve been looking for,” Dani said. “The Sevens really are harvesting power. Send that to the office.”

  Dani

  “It’s time to institute plan Blow Things Up,” Dani said.

  She glanced at her coffee and concentrated. The liquid reheated without boiling over or exploding straight up into the air. In class, when she tried that spell she never used control; there, it was as if she’d stuck a magic cherry bomb in the bottom of the mug, just like when she first got her power.

  Her talent had fallen on her like an anvil at age sixty-two, in midflight over Arizona, and had nearly brought down the 747 she was taking to Reno to visit her granddaughter. Back then, if she got mad, things blew up. Now, if she still wanted to, she could keep a small city in power through steam production, but she had all the cash and investments she and her family would ever need. After she finished her five-year contract helping to supply the energy needs of Las Vegas, she had wanted something more. Not a contract where she worked for a company, but something for her and her friends. Tridevi had come out of that need.

  Sandra clapped her hands softly. “That was beautiful,” she said of the warm coffee.

  “I like it better when she blows shit up,” Marvin grumbled.

  “So,” Dani said, “we need to get someone into Building Z as a patient. Marvin, you destroying the warden’s car didn’t work. If anything she was even more interested in keeping you here, where she could negotiate a contract for you. Sandra, no one expects you to turn another person in order to get put over there. And we need Mable free to do her electronic magic, not hooked up to a machine.” Dani thought through what she was about to say and decided it was still the best plan. “Sooo. I guess, today, I’ll blow something up, dissolve into tears, and storm off to my room.”

  The others looked at her in dismay.

  “Mable,” she continued, “I’ll need one of Marvin’s MTTs put in under my skin.”

  Marvin had invested a large percentage of his holdings into electronic companies and startups, and one such company had devised MTTs—Mini-Tracker-Transmitters. They worked alone, or in conjunction with another of the company’s devices called the Invader. The devices were the heart and soul of Tridevi’s plan to rescue Franz, and now Buck, and the others from Table J.

  “We don’t know what kind of brain damage The Seven’s magic energy collection system does,” Sandra said softly. “If we’re right and they do brain surgery to install a port, and if we can’t get you out in time, you may be … permanently ….” Her mouth closed in a firm line.

  Dani squeezed her hand. “Permanently brain damaged forever. I figured that out. But I trust you all to rescue me, and someone needs to go inside. It needs to be Marvin or me, and they didn’t take Marvin’s bait. I think they’ll take mine. With the MTT and Marvin’s Invader, Mable should be able to cut off any drugs, and I should quickly be able to wreak havoc.”

  Marvin looked hard at her. “The MTTs haven’t been tested on humans. And if we can’t get inside to place the Invader in your room, or if Mable for some reason can’t manipulate the Invader, you might be lost.”

  Invaders were cute little mini-computers that, when plugged into a regular old AC socket, allowed the software on Mable’s computer to invade every computerized unit or system within twenty linear feet. It was also a tracker, recorder, and transmitter.

  Mable opened her bag and removed the tiny surgical kit disguised as a sewing kit. From it she took the even tinier MTT. “Sandra should put it under your boob or in the wrinkles under your arm. You decide.”

  “First time I was ever happy I had batwings and floppy boobs. Better do it high in the upper arm,” Dani said to Sandra. “They’ll probably strip me and hook me up to EKGs and IV’s to drug me.”

  She watched as Sandra—the only one of them who had ever volunteered at a hospital and seen minor surgery—took the sewing kit and laid out her equipment: a tiny, sterile surgical scalpel, the MTT, and glue. Marvin pulled a pair of stolen gloves out of the drawer at the coffee maker, and some 60% alcohol hand sanitizer. It was the bare minimum, and not nearly as sterile as Dani wanted, but it was a short term implant. She hoped.

  “I never …” She stopped and wiped her hands on her dress. “I’ve never done this before,” Sandra said, “and watching doctors use superglue on wounds and videos of the proper implantation procedures didn’t give me skill. Plus …” she heaved a sigh. “I’m going to hurt you.”

  “It’s okay, Sandra,” Dani said.

  Sandra didn’t respond as she pulled a chair and a small table to the sofa and cleaned everything with the sanitizer, including her gloves, before opening the scalpel.

  Dani stood, looked at each of them, and said softly, “You— Please. Don’t leave me in there long.”

  “We’ll be behind you today,” Marvin said, “even if I have to turn every car in the parking lot into garden dirt.”

  He looked determined and stubborn, and if there was a little delight gleaming in his eyes at the idea of going rogue and destroying things wholesale, well that was okay by her.

  Mable said, “We don’t have much time left in this hour. Marvin, give the woman some privacy.” She shooed Marvin into his own bedroom and shut the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Sandra whispered, maybe to her God, or maybe to her very first patient, Dani wasn’t sure.

  “I’d rather you than Mable fainting at the sight of blood or Marvin’s baseball mitt hands.” Dani pulled off her shirt, lay down on the sofa, lifted her am to expose the skin under her arm, took a deep breath, and prepared to suffer in silence. This was going to hurt. Probably not as bad having kids or some of the so-called painless surgical procedures she’d had over the years, but not comfortable, either.

  Mable spun to look out the window. “Horrors. You know I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

  “But you beat people up,” Dani said, needing to lighten the mood.

  “Yeah and then I walk away while they bleed so I don’t pass out, bang my face, and ruin my plastic surgeon’s excellent work.”

  Dani chuckled, which was probably what Mable had intended.

  Sandra

  Zeddie approached the lunch table, pulling the dessert cart and carrying the mail bag. It was time. Sandra thought about Harold, pulling all the sadness and angst into her, to use it to fuel her acting. She focused her thoughts the way she did with prayer.

  “Mail for everyone.” Zeddie put small piles of mail in front of each of them.

  “I don’t know why you bother to bring all that stuff,” Sandra complained, as she did every lunchtime. “It’s nothing but AARP mail, Medicare garbage, and car warranty ads.” But this time she added, “And you people have already steamed them open. I hate that. And I hate that I haven’t gotten a letter from Carl since I got here.” Tears gathered in her eyes.

  Zeddie patted her shoulder and motioned to a councilor.

  Sandra sniffed. According to her falsified bio, Carl was her fake son, based upon her real son, Aaron, who had turned away from her in real life, when she developed magic and transformed his dad into Big Bird. Just like fake Carl, Aaron never accepted her calls and he never wrote. It had broken her heart. And that made playing out the scene they had planned so much easier. She whispered, “I miss my life.” All that was true. Her tears fell faster.

  Dani reached over and took Sandra’s hand. “He’ll come around. I’m sure he will.”

  “Maybe this will make you feel better. I’ve got dessert.” Zeddie reached back behind him to pick up plates from his rolling cart. “We have lemon cream pie.”

  It wasn’t cream pie. It was gelatinous goo. Sandra dropped the envelopes into her lap and burst into tears. “I want Harold back!” she wailed. “I want Carl! I want my church and … and … I want my life back!” Tears flooded down her face, the emotions easy to feel, the words easy to say, because it was all true. She banged her fists on the table. “Harold. Harold. What have I done?”

  The counselor, a void who helped the inmates deal with emotional trauma which could potentially set off unexpected, uncontrolled magic, knelt at her side. “Here. This will help.” She handed Sandra a pill. “Take this. You can skip afternoon classes and take a nap. You didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “And how do you know that?” Dani shouted. “How do you know she didn’t sleep well?”

  Dani shoved back her chair and it turned over with a thump. Loudly, she said, “The only way you would know that is if you really are monitoring us! Hey, everybody!” Dani turned to the room. “They know Sandra didn’t sleep. They really are monitoring us! They watch us all the time!”

  Several of the inmates shoved back their chairs too, getting up slowly. But what happened next wasn’t slow. It all happened at once.

  Dani

  One woman screamed, “In the bathtub? You perverts!” Her magic zoomed out like a gunshot, the tectonic force breaking a ceramic pot of silk flowers, which tumbled to the floor in pieces.

  Another man stood and shouted, “You mean they watch me with my wife?” His wife was a goat, and Dani’s brain slid sideways, not thinking about that one.

  A woman shrilled something unintelligible and the electric lights browned out all through the dining room as her magic zinged away from her fingers.

  “I want Harold back! I want Carl!” Sandra wept loudly, her fists banging on the table.

  When she raised her head to wail, the counselor dropped a pill into her mouth. Sandra coughed and drank her water. She had been warned not to swallow the pill however and when she put her head down to wail again, Dani watched to make sure she was able to spit out the pill and tuck it into her pocket.

  When Sandra was safe, Dani turned to the room, ready to become Tridevi’s sacrificial lamb, in a plan that they all had helped to craft. Unexpected fear washed through her. If this didn’t work …