Free Shifty Magic by Judy Teel

innocent smile. "Don't
follow me. I'd hate it if you got shot by accident."
    "I knew you cared!" he called after me as I
walked away.
     
    * * *
    I
settled onto the vinyl padded seat of the hoverbus and retrieved
the note from inside my takeout box. The message was hand written
in a non-descript print that could have been from anybody in
Bellmonte's employ.
    The note was simple. Only a name, address
and the words "See her." How gothically cryptic.
    As a precaution against being followed, I
switched buses three times before I stepped onto the only hover
that went out to Morrocroft Estates. When I was a kid, the gated
community had been the happy hunting ground of bankers, CEOs and
other high flyers who valued perfect lawns, decorative pools,
golfing and prestige. When the first paranormal strikes hit, a lot
of areas like it went down under the fighting and never came back
up.
    It was still a gated community, but the
pretty brick walls had been built up to about twenty feet using the
rubble from destroyed houses. After that, they'd sanded it smooth
and coated the stone with something that made the surface as smooth
and slick as glass so nothing could climb it and then put spelled
barbed wire along the top.
    The mansions that weren't part of the wall
had been renovated into apartments, and their lawns either paved
over for parking or turned into efficiency farms. If you were human
and paranoid about things that went bump in the night, then
Morrocroft was a good choice for you.
    On the way across town, I got busy with my
old iC and pulled up what information I could about the property. I
needed a cover story and I needed one fast. Info retrieval was slow
on the older technology, and I had to admit that sometimes I envied
Cooper his toys. Forty minutes later I was the only passenger on
the bus and had reached the last stop on the corner of Colony Road
and Morrocroft Farms.
    "You sure this is your stop?" the operator
asked. He was a burly, dark-skinned guy with gray peppering his
dense, curly black hair. "Weird stuff lives out here. Weirder stuff
lives in there." He jabbed his thumb toward the ribbon of road
jutting off to the left.
    "Just visiting a friend," I said.
    He grunted and pressed a series of buttons
on his spaceship-like dashboard. The hover eased down to the
platform with a hiss and a few clunks as it connected to the
walkway and then the doors slid open. "Last ride back comes at
10:30. I wouldn't miss it if I were you."
    I thanked him and headed down the beat-up
asphalt road that led to Morrocroft. About eighteen minutes later,
I arrived at the imposing gate. The twenty-foot high solid iron
composite doors stood open and the night guard lounged in the
reinforced gatehouse. He barely glanced up as I approached.
Probably because of the yellow, translucent haze shimmering between
the fifteen-foot wide opening.
    I went up to the window and noticed that the
thick grate covering it also faintly glowed yellow. With that level
of magical protection, I wasn't sure why Morrocroft even needed a
guard.
    I gave the fortyish Hispanic man a tentative
smile and put on my best young-and-innocent act. "I'm here to see
the apartment in 4244. I'm Sandy Hatcher."
    "You'll have to leave your para weapon here.
There are drop boxes by the entrance. Pick one," he said without
looking up from the football game playing on his iC. I noticed he
had one of the latest models. Maybe I was in the wrong line of
work.
    I went around to the gate and found a row of
six black boxes sitting against the side of the guard house. They
were only a few feet from the gate, and I could feel the pressure
coming off the neutralization barrier that blocked the entrance.
Placing my gun in the first box, I locked it and pocketed the
key.
    As I approached the yellow-tinted haze, the
whisper of magic played across my face and bare arms like
electrically charged air just before a lightning strike. If a human
could feel the power of the spell, any paranormal getting