Read Online The Radio Magician and Other Stories by James van Pelt - Free Book Online Page A

The air rising from the well tasted like a museum, a clean and dry library breeze that had traveled across a long desert, brushing the tops of dunes and rows of books for hundreds of miles before funneling to his face.
    “Magic’s like life,” said Jennifer. “It’s all a trade.”
    Trellis stood on the well’s edge but he didn’t feel vertigo or the normal nervousness he had about heights. At his feet, though, a dark wet stain marked the stone, and he knew before he dipped his finger in that it was blood. “What happened to the lady who came down with you?”
    “Do you still have nuclear nightmares, Trellis? Do you know how many nuclear warheads there are in the world?” Jennifer stared at him intently. “Twenty-eight thousand, give or take several thousand.”
    The hooded man said, “She made a trade. I told you, we’re suicide bombers. We’re anti-war wizards and witches.”
    The sound of footsteps came down the stairs. Trellis turned from the pit. Chastity led the Marine Corps patch man toward them. Her hand held his as they walked into the chamber. The man’s knuckles were white. His eyes were closed. Trellis imagined how hard he must be gripping.
    “You might not want to see this.” The man with the knife pulled his hood over his head.
    Trellis backed away until his hands met the wall.
    Chastity stood on her tiptoes to whisper into the Marine Corps man’s ear. He mouthed something back to her, and with evident difficulty, let go of her hand. She directed him to the edge of the pit, then faced him toward Trellis, his eyes still closed.
    Without a word, the hooded man drew his knife across the candle, as if he were coating the blade. He stepped around the bench to stand beside the man. Their breathing filled the room along with the thudding rush of Trellis’s pulse. The hooded man met Trellis’s eyes. “It’s a one to one trade. One life. One bomb.”
    He plunged the blade into the man’s chest and then pushed him over the edge in a single move.
    Trellis blinked. Except for a runnel of blood creeping down the hooded man’s wrist and a single drop that fell to the stone floor with a hollow plink, there was no motion and no sound. The rush of Trellis’s beating heart seemed to have stopped. No one breathed.
    “What did you do?” asked Trellis, his voice a dry squeak.
    Jennifer said, “Made the world safer.”
    Pushing himself away from the wall, Trellis approached the pit’s edge. The hooded man and Jennifer moved aside. From the pit, air continued to push steadily out, just as clean and dry as before.
    The hooded man crossed the chamber and knelt at a small chest. He took out a towel and carefully wiped the knife blade. A hand touched Trellis’s wrist. Jennifer stood beside him. “Somewhere in a Kansas silo or a Russian submarine in the Atlantic or an arms depot in India, what used to be a warhead is now an inert hunk of metal, and thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people are a little safer. You need the right knife, the right spell, and the throat of the world.” She swallowed hard. “And a suicide bomber.”
    “Did you really kill him?” Nothing about the scene struck him as real. The feeling that he could still be dreaming came to him again. In a moment, he would be back to pursuing starlets, and maybe this time they wouldn’t be too slippery to hold. He clenched his fingernails into the palm of his hand, but the pain did nothing to wake him. Was the Marine Corps man still falling? Trellis thought about the line of people waiting outside the trailer, all the people he’d seen gathered at the trailer since yesterday.
    “Not killing,” said Jennifer. “He allowed it himself. There’s a difference.”
    Blood rushed from Trellis’s face. He swayed, and for a second he wondered what would happen if he fainted. “You’re monsters.”
    Jennifer’s eyes teared up. “Yes, I suppose we are. It’s hard to live with. I won’t have to for long. There’s a bomb with my name