Read Online Magic Time: Angelfire by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Marc Zicree - Free Book Online Page B

skin is gleaming with sweat.
    The other thing I notice is that there is a flare hovering winglessly over his dreadlocks. A flare —like Tina. She— definitely she—is about the size of a twelve-year-old girl, and she is making a magic of her own that drapes a sequined mosquito net of aqua energy all around her musician friend.
    This is no parlor trick. Not the sort of flashy crap I do to impress the natives. This music has a power I can feel deep down in my bones. Is that what’s keeping his flare from being sucked out of real time back to the Megillah?
    I join the Bluesman’s audience, hoping to get a better look at the flare—hoping, against all odds, that it is Tina. I shuffle up beside the guitarist, copping the same beatific smile everyone else is wearing, and I look up at his floating friend.
    The moment my gaze touches her, she feels it and looks back through eyes like topaz purie marbles; like suns. I swear to God, it’s as if she’s walked in through my eyeballs, taken the cook’s tour of my psyche, and made herself right at home.
    She’s beautiful. Her hair, short and wavy, fans out in a pale titian halo within her nimbus of light, which cycles vivid, translucent hues—aqua, azure, violet. Her ears come to a graceful point amid the strands. She’s a mermaid or a mist wraith or any one of a hundred beautiful, mysterious, and impossible creatures that are not supposed to exist in the here and now. She wears what looks like a white silk Chinese lounging outfit, trimmed in red and gold. Not standard mermaid issue, by any means.
    And she’s not Tina. This is not a child; this is a woman.
    I wonder what she was like before. I wonder why she changed. I wonder why she’s providing arcane sun block for her friend, and I wonder how far I will have to walk to find out.
    I stay in lock step with the others, noticing that several more folks have come out of nowhere to do the same—a mother towing a scrawny little boy in tattered clothes, a girl of about twelve whose eyes are empty windows.
    We’ve traveled maybe a half mile when a hand clamps down on my shoulder and I’m dragged unceremoniously into the bushes.

FOUR

COLLEEN
    D amned idiot took more than a leak. He took a freakin’ hike. It was a good five minutes before I realized what he’d done. Fortunately, he wasn’t trying to cover his tracks.
    When I caught up with him, he was shuffling along in the wake of some guitar-playing Pied Piper with a gaggle of other music lovers. I swear, except for the guitar, it looked like something right out of an old grade-B zombie movie.
    Okay, there was another difference—these folks all looked blissed, as if whatever this guy was singing was laced with eighty proof Jamaican rum. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty music, and the guy was massively attractive in a Rastafarian sort of way, but I didn’t get why everybody was so gaga over it.
    I followed along, listening and inching my way over to Goldman, when the tune changed. I’m not much into music, but I recognized the song; it was the one Goldman had been singing earlier—the “huddled masses” thing.
    My scalp tingled. I looked again at the faces of Goldie’s fellow travelers. The tingle turned to a chill. These people were dazzled. Enchanted. Bewitched. This guy was hypnotizing them and leading them away to God-knows-where.
    I was pissed. First, I tried to distract everybody by yelling and jumping up and down. They didn’t even hear me. Then I concentrated on Goldman. I walked right up in front of him, but he just stepped around me, staring at the Pied Piper like he was having some sort of religious experience.
    Only force made sense at that point. I grabbed Goldman by the collar of his flea-bit buckskin coat and threw him into the bushes. He landed hard, but when he came up I had his attention.
    “What was that ? Dammit, Colleen, I need to find out where they’re going!” He clambered up and started after the parade.
    I kicked his feet out from