Sorcerer on the Street

Case 7: Mrs Kendrick

We didn't go to the library right away, which surprised me. John woke early, and changed into his clean shirt. I was surprised that we were going out so soon, and initially guessed that he wanted to get breakfast so he would be more comfortable when meeting the elder Mrs Kendrick for the first time.

Once he was dressed, he looked down thoughtfully at the room's tiny desk. There were three tarot cards set out there now, making a rough cross beside the rest of the deck. John hesitated, and then picked up the desk itself and the cards he had experimented with last night. Those spells were a little uncertain, created by a boy just learning what worked and what wouldn't. One of them had already lost its power, while the other probably wouldn't have lasted long in any case. He shuffled the cards into the deck, and then slipped it into his pocket. Now, the table just held the Wheel card, keeping this space free of insects.

This time tomorrow, unless our circumstances improved, he would have to take all of them. Everything he owned would be packed into that backpack; and we would be truly homeless. It was a sobering thought.

We hurried out of the hotel, John glancing around nervously as we reached the ground floor. I could imagine that he didn't want to talk to the owner today, not until he knew whether there was any chance of staying. Then we set off down the street, but I was surprised to see that John wasn't heading for the diner this time, or for the cheap bakery. Instead he walked for twenty minutes into a marginally more prosperous part of town, where there were more businesses and fewer boarded-over storefronts. There he turned into a thrift store, and spent some time looking over the racks of dusty cast-offs. He assessed each item carefully, showing a clear attention to detail, while I waited, eager to see what he had in mind.

"Are we looking for something in particular?" I asked, as my patience started to wear thin. I wondered if I would have been able to help him. But my vision had failed me a long time before; now I could only see using the last vestiges of a spell I had spent weeks to construct, assembling a composite image from the scenes perceived by everyone else around me. I could see John clearly because of his own gift and his strong self-image; but in the racks of clothes all around him, the things that he hadn't already looked at were just a milky blur. I would be no help in this search.

"I want to make a good first impression," he said. "I would have done this before meeting a client for the first time, if I'd known we would meet one. But I think that in this case, earning the victim's trust is more important.

I couldn't argue with that, and watched patiently as he eventually picked out two items. He had selected a thick undershirt, which looked to have been heavily starched and was possibly just a little too tight for his body type, as well as a slightly worn dress shirt with blue pinstripes and padded shoulders. He seemed to be satisfied with the choice, in any case. He walked over to a counter where a bored-looking teen was listening to music on some kind of portable device. The kid didn't even seem to notice we were there; if we weren't so altruistic, it would probably have been easy to walk away without paying. After being ignored for another few seconds, John put his choices down on the counter, where the wire hangers clicked together loudly.

"Five seventy-five," the kid said, after a brief pause to look at the stickers. John quickly counted out the money onto the counter.

"There somewhere I can change?" But the question only elicited a shrug from the guy behind the counter. There wasn't any sign of a fitting room in here. After a little hesitation, John walked behind one of the racks of clothes, where he probably wouldn't be visible from the street or from the counter, and pulled off his coat and the shirt he'd started the day in. He seemed satisfied with how he looked in the new outfit, so put the old shirt back in his bag and pulled on his coat again. There wasn't a mirror in here either, but he seemed impressed by his reflection on the inside of the window. And, smiling, he decided to spend one more dollar to add a tie to the outfit.