Hidden Magic (The Magic Carnival Book 5) Read online

  Something tickled her neck, distracting her from her dark thoughts. She grabbed at the metal creature hiding in her hair. Another damn stowaway. This one was bigger, but with five waving hands like a crab’s. He moved like a crab too, but he used his arms for evil instead of good. He was one of her early attempts; but instead of a handy robot to find lost items, she’d created a kleptomaniac who loved nothing more than to steal her stuff. She pulled him off, and her gold necklace landed in her hand along with the robotic thief.

  “You can’t do that,” she whispered at him. She shoved him into her top drawer and quickly shut it. Hopefully, that would keep him safe for a little while.

  She looked up again to see the delightfully arrogant—yet annoyingly clueless—Dr. Pelgrim Shaw stride over to the elevators. He wore his usual perfectly groomed shirt and pants, his hair short and his face impeccably shaven. He was the political beast among them; he knew how to work the room, and who to make up to. And obviously, the boss was the perfect place to start. She watched through narrowed eyes as Pelly shook Lucas’ hand, and then turned to the new man. As the big blond man smiled and shook his hand, and Lucas continued to talk, Pelly’s shoulders stiffened. His voice raised a little and he let go of the golden god’s hand.

  Fee smiled as tension drifted across the room. It wasn’t often that Pelly was taken down a peg or two, and it was good to be a witness when it did happen. Lucas generally left them to it; he liked to give people space to be creative in their research. Unfortunately, Pelly just wanted to rule the world. And if his world happened to consist of the research and development lab at Callaghan Technologies, so be it.

  The others were now drifting over, drawn by the raised voices and the promise of excitement. They were a team of five, and she was the only woman. Eugene, David, and Nolan were all excellent researchers in their own fields, but had the stereotypical shyness and introverted personalities of scientists the world over. Nolan led the way—he generally did of the three of them—his glasses reflecting off the fluorescent lights overhead. He was most used to dealing with people; he’d been a practicing doctor for several years before deciding research was his passion. Eugene was next; his retro 70s look accidental rather than purposeful. Then came David, the newest member of the team, who was so shy he looked like he might actually run if startled.

  Fee watched as Lucas made the introductions, wondering what he really thought of the team, and Pelly’s leadership. Their employer’s real thoughts were hidden behind his outer shell of smiling enthusiasm and affability. He had one hand casually in his pocket, a smile on his face, and laugh lines around his eyes. Fee shook her head. Before meeting Lucas, she wouldn’t have thought it was possible for someone to seem so outwardly open and yet be so good at hiding what they actually thought.

  Pelly might bluster and scoff about it; but they were significantly behind schedule on the project, and Fee had been wondering how long Lucas would let it go on. Pelly was smart in a lot of ways, but he underestimated the sharpness in Lucas’s gaze and saw only an affable, friendly—and thereby supposedly malleable—young man.

  Fee started flicking the tip of a ballpoint pen off and on. Lucas was talking as each of the three researchers shook the stranger’s hand, carefully watching their reactions. With each passing moment, Fee became more convinced this was a monumental moment for the team. Something was about to happen that would change everything. Was Lucas closing them down? Or perhaps putting this new man in charge? Perhaps he was here to buy them out?

  Her fingers stilled on the pen. Or had the Witch Hunters finally found her?

  The last thought sent a chill across her skin and she had to resist the urge to crawl under her desk. What good would that do if they were here for her?

  Pelly glanced in her direction, and motioned with his hand. She sighed. He was right, it was time to come out of hiding and face whatever was going to happen. She’d learned to be quick on her feet over the years. She would deal with this, whatever it was, straight on.

  Standing, Fee brushed at imaginary fluff on her knee-length black dress, and then pushed a strand of her long hair back behind one ear. She took a deep breath and headed over to meet their visitor.

  As she neared the golden god, she realized he was enormous. He didn’t top Lucas for height—no one did—but he had a breadth, a feeling of solidity that Lucas lacked. His alert gaze didn’t seem to miss anything, and Fee could tell he’d summed up Pelly immediately. He smiled kindly at the other three and made conversation with them easily. They were blossoming in the sunlight of his attention.

  Who was he? Why was he here? The questions thrummed in her head, making her dizzy with apprehension.

  “Ah, Fee, thank you for joining us.” The reprimand in Pelly’s voice was unmistakable. “Fee is our robotics expert. Anything robotic, she creates it for us. Fee this is Henry. He will be joining the team for a month as a...consultant.” Fee was used to reading the not-so-subtle undertones in Pelly’s voice, and he didn’t think much of Henry and his status as consultant.

  “Hi, Henry, nice to meet you,” she said with a glance at Lucas, who was chatting to the others with an easy smile on his face. He seemed pleased with Henry’s inclusion in their team. Their boss had subtle magic of his own, although he didn’t wield it in the same purposeful way Fee did. It had helped him create his company from the ground up, and Fee trusted his instincts when he was enthusiastic over some particular path.

  “I’ll gather some schematics while you introduce yourselves,” said Pelly, his chest puffed out like a gorilla protecting his patch. He would probably get old schematics, just to put Henry off. He walked away and, as he passed him by, Nolan caught his arm, asking him a question in an undertone, their backs to Fee.

  “Fee? That’s an unusual name,” said Henry, holding out his hand with a smile.

  Sighing, Fee prepared herself to tell him the usual lie about what it was shortened from. “So I’m told,” she said. The second her hand touched his, alarm bells went off in her head. A sizzle of blue lightning streaked down her arm and up Henry’s. Colors burst inside her head, exploding like Fourth of July fireworks. It was confusing, painful, and beautiful all at the same time.

  Fee felt a moment of complete chaos, and then everything went black.

  ***

  Henry only just managed to catch Fee.

  As soon as he’d touched her hand, electrical feedback had hit all his senses at once; it felt like he’d been dumped into water with an electric current running through it, while someone dragged their nails down a chalkboard, and someone else played the violin off key. Bright lights flashed in his head and pain streaked along his senses.

  However, he hadn’t reacted as badly as Fee, and he’d only just caught her before she hit her head on the hard concrete floor. Once the initial pain subsided, an uncomfortable buzzing vibration danced over his skin where he was touching her, sending prickly shockwaves down his body.

  Glancing around, he saw the shocked faces of the other researchers. What had just happened? He didn’t understand it, and his thinking was slowed by the flash of energy from Fee’s initial touch. “Is there, uh, somewhere I can put her?” he asked. He wasn’t sure who had seen the actual lightning, but it hadn’t been natural, and they were going to have questions.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” said Pelgrim, walking over from where he’d been talking to Nolan. “She didn’t report any illness to me when she arrived this morning.” His expression said he didn’t want to get closer to Fee and risk contamination.

  Henry figured Pelgrim hadn’t seen what had happened—he was the kind of guy who would question it. Gesturing to a couch near the elevator banks, Pelgrim stayed where he was while Henry strode over and deposited her gently on the couch. As soon as he withdrew his touch, the electrical current zinging along his nerve endings stopped, and Henry stepped back, letting out a relieved breath.

  He focused his attention on the unconscious woman in front of him. She was medium height
, long white-blonde hair, and freckles fighting for space across her nose. He’d noticed her grey eyes just before they’d touched hands. Nothing unusual about her—except the painful feedback they’d both experienced.

  Henry tried to reason it out in his head. What could cause this kind of reaction? It had felt like opposite forces hitting each other, or two magnets with the same charge, unable to be in the same space at the same time.

  Had the strange reaction he’d felt affected his magic? A moment of panic had him reaching inside himself to find his connection to the Carnival. It was buzzing with heat, but otherwise unharmed. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then what was happening? Who was this woman?

  “I’m so sorry about this, Mr. Kokkol. She’s normally very efficient,” said Pelgrim, a tinge of embarrassment in his voice.

  “She can’t help fainting,” interrupted Lucas, frowning down at Pelgrim.

  “Oh, certainly not, Lucas. I didn’t mean to imply...”

  “Should we call a doctor?” one of the other men suggested.

  Henry cleared his throat. “Maybe a cold cloth for her face? I’m sure she’ll come around again in a moment. Then we can find out what happened.” And perhaps he could convince whoever had seen it that the blue lightning was to do with something other than the raw magic he could still feel stinging the air around them.

  The men all looked at each other uncomfortably. “She keeps to herself mainly. I’m not sure if she has any medical problems,” said Pelgrim stiffly.

  Henry looked around at the four men in front of him, all so different. According to Lucas, they had been working together for a while now, but none of them seemed to be connected. The magic inside him stirred to life, and he knew the first step he was going to take to get this project back on track.

  He looked down at Fee. First, he had to figure out what had happened between them so that Fee didn’t faint every time they shook hands.

  Nolan had just placed a cold cloth over her forehead when Fee started to wake up. She blinked, and for a moment, just stared up at all the men hovering over her. She blinked again and this time her eyes darted around, as if she was looking for a way to escape.

  “How about we all give Fee some room,” suggested Lucas. As one, they shuffled back a step.

  “How are you feeling Fee?” asked Pelgrim.

  Fee nodded slowly. “I’m fine. I don’t know what happened. I think I might need to eat,” she said. She pulled herself up to sitting, although she kept the cold cloth on her forehead and leaned forward a little.

  Henry examined Fee’s expression as a new thought occurred to him: did she really think her fainting fit was caused by lack of food? Maybe she didn’t know about the magic? Surely, she’d felt the same burst of energy he had?

  “Take all the time you need,” said Lucas. “The rest of us are going to sit down at the conference table and discuss where things are at with the SSKIN project. We need to get Henry up to speed as quickly as possible.”

  Fee glanced at Henry, and electricity sizzled down his spine. He rolled his shoulders, trying to get rid of the uncomfortable sensation.

  “I’ll grab my sandwich and join you in a minute,” she said.

  “You’re quite welcome to go home, if you’re not feeling well,” said Lucas, his tone worried.

  Fee shook her head. “I’m fine. I’ll be there soon.” She stood up, waving away Nolan’s offer of help, and walked slowly back to her desk at the far end of the room.

  Henry followed the others to the large meeting table, and sat down near the head of the table next to Lucas. Pelgrim pushed Eugene out of the way to ensure he snagged the seat across from Henry, and on the other side of Lucas. The man had a unique sense of his own importance.

  He was going to be a problem.

  “Pelgrim, why don’t you explain SSKIN, and we can go from there?” said Lucas.

  “The whole project?” said Pelgrim.

  Lucas sighed gently. “Why don’t you start by introducing the team?”

  “We all have expertise in nanotechnology, to varying degrees,” said Pelgrim. “I also have an excellent knowledge of the field of artificial intelligence. Nolan here is a medical researcher. David specializes in patterns and learning theory in computing. Fee is our robotics expert, and Eugene is an engineer. We’re aiming to combine these fields to create something new and exciting.”

  Henry nodded. So far, so boring.

  “We initially considered smart room concepts, where a room is set up to interact with individuals using an amalgamation of robotics and advanced computing, thereby providing information and assistance on multiple levels. But it was already being done by too many other researchers. So we tried to take it further. What about something on a person? An item of clothing perhaps? Again, it was already being done, so we tried to take it another step forward.” Pelgrim cleared his throat and looked around the room, finishing on Lucas.

  “Go on, Pelgrim,” said Lucas. “Henry is part of the team now. He has to know what you’re working on.”

  “We are trying to create a computer that is also a second skin. Something that people can wear over their real skin, for a variety of purposes. It needs to be strong and durable, to protect them, but also to survive the rough treatment most people will mete out. It needs to have the technology inside it to provide all the kinds of information people expect, like the time, their email, heart rate monitors, that kind of thing. We’re also working on a skin that will help people recover from illnesses, or even catch and heal disease before they’re aware they have it. It needs to have an AI portion, so that it learns information about the person, and can increasingly make their lives easier.”

  Henry nodded slowly. “So it’s a kind of protection suit, keeping them safe from the world around them?” He couldn’t think of anything worse. A freaking body suit. But despite his personal distaste, the idea created a small spark of interest.

  Pelgrim gave a smug smile. “We believe we can make it so people will live longer if they wear the suit. It would be as close to immortality as anything is these days.”

  Henry shifted in his seat. That was a big claim. “Was there a reason you wanted to do a second skin, rather than a body suit?”

  “A body suit would be obvious; everyone around them would know they were wearing it.” Pelgrim paused. “We wanted to provide something subtle, that only the wearer would know about.”

  Again, Henry nodded. It was a worthwhile point. “You want it to be smart enough to diagnose illnesses and treat any problems?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a person who was high profile could wear it instead of a bulletproof jacket. That’s how strong you want it?”

  Pelgrim nodded. “Certainly.”

  “And also be used for day-to-day activities? So nanocomputers inside the skin? How thick is it?” Henry’s mind was already whirring with the possibilities. He’d worked on skin previously, but only because he’d wanted to provide a realistic prosthetic leg for Kara, their last Mark from the previous season. He could get Frankie involved to do a bit of global research on the topic for him. He’d have to get up to speed ASAP.

  “We have it down to five millimeters, but it needs to be much thinner to work,” said Nolan, the most talkative of the other three men in the group. He was short, going slightly bald on top, and wore his glasses like a protective screen.

  Henry nodded. “Tell me more.”

  “We’ve struck some problems; the main one being that the heat of a person’s skin brings the temperature of the second skin up to levels where it can’t operate. It shorts out every time.”

  “Makes sense. Body heat can be a problem.” When he’d designed the prosthetic leg for Kara, he’d had to tinker with heat to make sure his fake skin didn’t cause her problems.

  “We also haven’t been able to determine the best use of the nanotechnology. We’ve been arguing over what to include. We have finite space available, and can’t do it all,” said Pelgrim.

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p; “You won’t listen to me; that’s the problem.” Fee’s voice came to them just before she appeared at the table, brown paper sandwich bag in hand. Henry saw something move inside the bag before a tiny metal head poked out. She quickly shoved it down again. He frowned, trying to figure out what he’d seen.

  “Now, Fee, we don’t need to hash over old arguments for Lucas and Henry,” Pelgrim was saying.

  Henry felt Lucas stiffen beside him. “I disagree, Pelgrim. That’s exactly what we should do,” he said. “That’s the reason I’ve brought Henry into the team. You’ve stalled, and you need some outside help.” Lucas held up his hand when Pelgrim opened his mouth to speak. “No arguments.”

  If he’d been a bird, Pelgrim’s feathers would have been all puffed out. In fact, that’s what he reminded Henry of, a big puffy bird, somehow intent on protecting his territory from newcomers, at all costs.

  Henry cleared his throat. “I’m not here to cause problems, and when my month is up, I’ll disappear again. You don’t need to worry about me stealing ideas, and I don’t own the copyright on the work I’ll be doing over the next month. I’m simply another set of hands to get work done, another brain to bounce ideas off, and another set of eyes to see the problems more clearly.”

  Everyone except Pelgrim and Fee nodded. He’d need to do a little more work on those two.

  “Henry’s right,” added Lucas. “The contract he signed is rock solid. You can be open with him, and make sure you use his abilities.” He hesitated and cleared his throat. “Your team hasn’t made any significant moves forward in almost six months. I wasn’t going to mention this right now; but as you’re not being entirely cooperative, I need to impress on you all the importance of working with Henry. Because, if at the end of this month, you haven’t made serious inroads into your concept, I’ll have to close the project down and let you all go.”