it's a piece of chalk, actually

[unblinkered]

Parking on the street at Brenda's is full. It's what he gets for showing up for the 7:30 rush, instead of his usual 6AM. He takes the Volvo around to the back parking lot- the one that's not connected to the road, where you have to drive over the curb. It's... probably a parking lot. It's paved, after all. It's on the coffee shop's property. There's no "employee only" signs, anyway. There is, within reason, room to park a car. Maxwell Wax is sure the management will understand, if they even leave their room long enough to notice.

Hm? Who's this? Some kid in a hoodie, smoking a cigarette behind the building. He's standing right in the way of... what looks more or less like a parking spot, off to the side of some graffiti on the ground. He honks at the kid, who panics and drops his cigarette. Wasn't even lit. Did him a favor, in Max's opinion. He knows firsthand how bad those things can mess you up. He watches the kid round a corner, and pulls into the probably-parking-space. 

He hears a snapping sound as he pulls in. Must've run over the cigarette... do cigarettes go "snap"?

In his rearview mirror, he sees nobody standing on top of the graffiti, and then abruptly sees somebody standing on top of the graffiti. There is no transition between these two states.

Comments

[from_scratch]

"There's extremely tiny, nigh-pointless magic that humans can do besides summoning. It takes a lot of concentration - I didn't even bother trying all the exercises in the books I had until my first summon worked and I had reason to believe there was something to it, because even though it gets easier after practice you have to focus really fucking hard to do really fucking trivial tricks."

[unblinkered]

"What? How tiny are we talking? Does it require... some specific trigger that people aren't likely to stumble upon just by trying really hard, something that people wouldn't... notice, if they didn't have instructions beforehand? I can see people keeping daeva a secret, but why that?"

[from_scratch]

"I don't know nearly enough about, like, intensive meditation practices, to know if anybody's likely to have stumbled on it. And the tricks are all so stupid and tiny - would you believe somebody if he cornered you and was like "look, magic" and a blotch slowly appeared on a piece of paper, but he couldn't put it in a specific place if you drew him a target?"

[unblinkered]

"Sure, but... people pick up on all kinds of tiny hidden phenomena that don't seem significant. They become quirks of physics, not magic- ordinary, mundane things. The question is, why would these be different? If anyone can do the blotch thing, why is that a secret magic technique and not... no more special than being able to raise one eyebrow, or break glass with a high pitch?"

He thinks for a second.

"Actually... are there things like that, which people discovered but just treat as normal and ignore because they're useless?"

[from_scratch]

"I think I am not the expert you are looking for on that."

[unblinkered]

"Right, right, okay. I'll want to summon an expert, then. Is that... in here-" he shakes his notepad to indicate it- "-in the notepad, instructions on... a way to summon daeva based on particular criteria, or are your only options summon-by-name and summon-randomly?"

[from_scratch]

"Yeah, that's it. You have to know who you want or take whoever answers first."

[unblinkered]

"Hmph."

Worse comes to worst, he can ask a well-connected enough demon for a demon phone book, or a- well, summoning demons sounds like maybe not the first thing he should... oh, christ, that's racist, isn't it.

"So- god- I just want to be sure- you mentioned demons going on rampages, having to bind them- are demons more dangerous than angels or- um... fairies, in general, is there... is that racist to ask? I... oh, jeez."

[from_scratch]

"Well, let me put it this way. A fairy can kill you. An angel can kill you easily. A demon can destroy the entire planet."

[unblinkered]

Max drops his note- no, he fumbles and catches it.

"Okay, um. That's- that's scary, I took for granted they're all, powerful, but, like, I meant... temperament, like are... mythologically demons are evil, as opposed to... other kinds of... I mean, you're clearly not... uh..."

[from_scratch]

"A daeva that wants to wreak havoc won't kill their summoner," Cam adds. "They'll render the summoner unconscious and put them somewhere safe, so they don't get dismissed. Dead summoner equals instant dismissal, and you have to be conscious to non-instantly dismiss a summon. Tempermentally speaking - I don't think demons are, as a population, meaner than angels or fairies are. But demons are harder to pay. You can get a fairy to rearrange your furniture for a batch of cookies, because the fairy would have to make or buy the cookies back home, and rearranging your furniture is easier than that. You can get an angel to change stuff for you in exchange for anything complicated or that the angel doesn't have the skills to whip up, because angel magic requires doing your own detail work, an angel can't just create a houseplant or a new videogame for themselves like," he snaps his fingers, "that. The things you can produce to interest a demon are few and far between. Most of us don't want to make phone calls. So the demons who are going to bother with summons are the ones that want - let's say 'intangibles'. You are extremely lucky you got me."

[unblinkered]

"So... okay! Nearly... nearly died, there. That would have been a great start to the morning. I take it they're not... psychologically the same as humans, in the... 'killing people and causing harm is taboo' sense."

Max rubs his forehead.

[from_scratch]

"You wouldn't likely have died, you'd have been put in a chemical coma and stashed somewhere," says Cam. "And - even naturally occurring daeva aren't crystalline aliens or anything. Remember, summons are going to be a non-representative sample. Even some humans like killing people and causing harm. And I don't think the number of daeva who are into it is that surprising given how much you can tweak human psychology by making a human totally self-sufficient and magically powerful and immortal and indestructible, putting them in a social situation where nobody they have to live with will find out or care if they cause mayhem in this other place, and then turning them loose." Pause. "Oh, and the daeva generally have it as common knowledge that if they kill people worst case scenario the people go to Limbo. They don't, like, cease to exist, or burn for eternity for their sins, or anything."

[unblinkered]

"So my best bet, if I'm just looking for information, is to work with fairies, then- less dangerous, more easily bought. Anything I should know about them? You mentioned they... 'move things'?"

[from_scratch]

"Fairies are telekinetic. They can move as much stuff as they can keep track of at whatever speed and in whatever direction they like. You can get them to open doors that are locked on the far side or send things into low Earth orbit or take you flying or, if you really have something they want, sit in front of a generator and spin it for a few hours, but I'd recommend giving them a book if you want to do that last. Some of the really sharp ones can start and stop fires almost without doing anything else detectable, although of course they're really using friction and moving the oxygen away from the fire. Most of them aren't that creative on their own - for them it's utterly trivial and everyday that they can do this, it'd be like a tree going 'wow, human, you can walk, have you ever considered becoming a world class ballet dancer' - like, ballet exists, but most people don't do it."

[unblinkered]

"Right. Okay, that sounds... I can work with that, I think. ...Assuming these instructions are on the level- I can't think of why demons would generally have an incentive to spread misinformation, besides being under binding by summoners."

Max pages through his notepad.

"You said you were going to fly to your mother's house, right? How do you plan to do that without being spotted?"

[from_scratch]

"Earth still does that thing where sometimes it's dark, right?"

[unblinkered]

"...Well, yes, but there are... a lot of lights, and a lot of cameras. You'd need to plot a route that avoids population centers, and even then there's the risk of showing up on satellite imaging. And there's the matter of getting out of the city- you'd be-"

He pauses.

"...and your entire thing is letting the secret get out, right."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, even if it weren't, I don't think a couple of photographs on somebody's conspiracy theory website are going to make or break it. I can go up high. I'll look like a somewhat lower-altitude bat or a kite."

[unblinkered]

"And... until it gets dark, do you have any way of... hiding those? How do daeva usually go around doing things for summoners, if they have to keep it secret?"

He points at the demon's wings.

[from_scratch]

"I could put them under a coat?" shrugs the demon. "When I summoned daeva I did it without any witnesses while I was first setting up. I could also cut them off but that'd be messy and I'd just have to remake them to fly."

[unblinkered]

Max exhales. His brain has stopped producing obvious sorts of questions. It is time to take a moment to deliberately produce non-obvious questions.

What is the major consequence of this new information? Parallel worlds, okay. He has a semantic explanation of summoning- provided Cam is successful in neutralizing the dangers of open investigation, it shouldn't be too much trouble to find a lab with instruments for measuring the underlying mechanics. That goes on the back burner... or...

"Er- you said you got shot- do you know who did it, and how they found out you were summoning daeva? If it's just a matter of not being too overt, that's one thing, but I want to know what kind of safety measures I ought to be using if I'm doing my own investigation."

[from_scratch]

"I have a few suspects. I think one of the daeva told someone - there are so many fairies and angels who take summons that with this few summoners operative you aren't likely to get one that sees regular use by somebody else when you're taking randoms, but I summoned demons too and fewer demons take summons, so it was probably a demon. I haven't run into anybody I met while alive in Hell, though, so I can't confirm."

[unblinkered]

"So, I don't want to go around telling everyone I summon about plans to publicize summoning. But... you don't know, specifically- can you be sure that there isn't some way you could have been spied on regardless of whether you told anyone? The types of magic... there's parlor tricks, summoning, and the native magic of daeva, but none of those seem like natural kinds. Are there... any other types of magic to worry about, or is it well-established that those are the only tools available?"

[from_scratch]

"I am not aware of any other kinds. It's not impossible I could be missing something, but I've gotten a lot of reading done in the last five years."