Unbeknownst to Elijah Smoke, Lucifer floated there, glowing in deepening dark before him. The Sun was just about to set and the incandescent salmon of the not-so distant world had started to become obscured by the dark gray-green clouds that floated upon that belt of copper.

  “Fuck you!” came a roar, high and feminine.

  Eli's turquoise eyes looked up from his copy of Lingua et Lingua: Latīnum ad Italiano.

  Before him was an enraged knot of auburn hair. She wore dirty black jeans and a dirty grey hoodie with a big blue NASA emblem on the back and a smaller one on her left breast.

  The blackened fingers of her left hand extended in a defiant halt. Her equally dark right fingers held a blade close to her chest, the handle pointing up to the sky. The blood-red gem worked into the athame and caught the sunset.

  At her worldly incantation a plane of force appeared between her and the setting Sun. It was perfectly square and smooth. Its thickness and sides were revealed by silent specters of refracted sunset.

  “That one is pretty good,” Eli encouraged, “try to change its shape.”

  “Yessir!” she jeered frustrated as if they had not been doing this all afternoon. The little edges of rainbows showed the square instantly snap into the shape of a thin disk, then a triangular prism, then a hexagonal cylinder, then it shattered.

  She dropped the knife in frustration which came away a streak of blood. It slid effortlessly into the earth as if its tip were made of lead rather than silver. She reached the table next to the bench that Eli sat at.

  “I just don’t get it,” she said as she reached him and then into the papers. She pulled one out of the seemingly identical dozens.

  “Look see? The index of refraction is almost identical to the air’s. Why don't they look like yours?”

  Eli was not entirely sure what that was. He had never studied physics, or any science. He certainly would not have been taught magic. He was simply born psychic, with his abilities pretty much fully present, after which his devout Protestant parents sent him to school after school to cure him of the devil within.

  It worked for a while, until the Devil showed up for real. As a result he would have to live with the consequences of decades aversion to mastering the skills he needed to keep everyone safe.

  “I can think of a few things maybe,” he lied, “do your wards have to be invisible though? I mean it's just the edges.”

  “That’s the most important part to be invisible,” she said, “that is the only part you need to see to get around it."

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” he said,” You can conjure them and change their shape a lot faster than I can.”

  When they met, Isla had claimed that ‘magic is magic’ that her witchcraft would be translatable to his ESP and vice versa. She had been able to mostly replicate his wards, but he was not much help in the explanations. He had not been able to reproduce any of Isla’s magic.

  “Getting it up isn't my problem,” she said, “I just don't want anyone to see me do it.”

  She stopped mid sentence, turned bright red, then laughed at herself. Eli joined her.

  “I am sure you will figure it out soon,” he said when he recovered himself.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Do you? And who do you think you are?”

  “No one,” he said, “at least not in comparison to the mighty Isla Drake.”

  “Good answer, ” Isla said, glancing at her athame, “why not give it a go?”

  His wrist itched but what excuse did he really have. It was getting dark and he couldn’t read. Magic was magic but, more importantly, pyromancy was necessary. Fire burned. Everyone agreed on that.

  He grimaced and slid up the thin sleeve of his surplus jacket arm, revealing mismatched, jagged lines across the flesh. Mostly on his forearm though some scarring pained his palm too.

  He extended his right hand and the athame slid from its position in the earth. Then the athame had simply leapt from the ground, hilt to hand, blade at the ready. A single drop of blood dripped from Eli’s left ear.

  He went to press the blade to the soft, scarred flesh once more. Isla put her hand on his wrist.

  “Idiot, boy,” she said, taking the knife from him gently. He watched her clean and sanitize it with some medical supplies they had traded for. Trading has gotten a lot easier in the last six months since they had mostly saved New Virginia.

  Mostly.

  “Ignis,” he monotoned as he drew the blade along his arm and pointed it in front of him. He had pressed in a little further than Isla had taught him to and a broken line of blood came up with the knife.

  Nothing else happened.

  Another jeer came from Isla. He turned to face her. Her emerald eyes met his turquoise.

  “Ignis?” She said through a grin. “I don’t think I have ever heard that one before.”

  “Latin is cool,” Eli said.

  “Is it?”

  “Sometimes,” Eli half-conceded, “though maybe it would be cooler if I could even get a spark.”

  “You are not properly declaring your intent,” Isla said.

  Eli rolled his eyes . “Do you think my ears bleed more from my ESP or from you repeating yourself so often?”

  “Well maybe if you just listened to me, I wouldn’t be a goddamn broken record all the time,” she snapped, teacher mode engaging, “when I speak the very electrical signals that govern my mind trigger a series of vibrations.”

  She went back to the medical supplies and began cleaning the athame again.

  “Those vibrants travel through the air until they hit the little membranes in your ear which cause a corresponding electrical vibration in your brain,” she said, softer now and drying the knife. She returned to Eli then pressed it to her own wrist.

  She spoke aloud a word and dragged the blade just as she had taught Eli to do. When her blade came up from the thin cuts, the droplets of blood that followed ignited in a flash of searing yellow which puffed harmlessly in the dark.

  “Its almost like a little piece of me,” she said pressing her finger to her forehead where her eyes met, “becomes a little piece of you,” she finished, touching the mirror spot on him. He grinned at her.

  “Why?” He asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why does magic,” he paused looking for a word but was unsuccessful,” Uh. Let me…talk to physics?”

  She beamed at him. “Magic is physics but, I dunno,” she admitted,“I don’t know if anyone else does yet.”

  She once again began to clean the athame.“From what I have read there are still tons we don’t know. It's fascinating stuff,” Isla said, cleaning the knife faster.

  “For example, when conjuring a phantasm,” Isla asked, “does the incantation's meaning matter more to the caster or to the illused?”

  “It is definitely one of those two,” he said assuredly, taking the knife.

  There was a flash of something orange against the silver. He turned around and saw a great star, blazing like a torch, fall from the sky and descend unto the Earth.