Karmelion

The Magic had hit while I was setting the requisites into my bag and I had to take Karmelion instead of my typical car.

A beat-up rusted truck, bile green in colour and missing the left headlight assembly, Karmelion had only one advantage—it ran on water infused with magic and could be ridden during a magic wave.

Unlike normal cars, the truck did not rumble or mumble or generate any sound one would expect an engine to make.

Instead, it muttered, whined, howled, and emitted deafening peals of thunder with painful regularity.

Who named it Karmelion, and why, I had no impression. I bought it at a junkyard with the name scratched on the windshield.

Fortunate for me, on a regular day Karmelion had to wander only thirty miles to Savannah.

Today I compelled it into the ley line, which in itself was not bad for it, since the ley line pulled it almost to Minnesota, but the trek across the city did not do it much good.

Now the truck was calming down in the parking lot behind me, dripping water and oozing magic.

It would take me a good fifteen minutes to heat the generator back up, but that was okay. I planned to be here for a while.

I despised Minnesota. I disliked cities, period.

I stood on the sidewalk and studied the small shabby office building that seemingly contained the Minnesota Chapter of the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid.

The Order earned efforts to conceal its real size and power, but in this case, they had moved overboard.

The building, a concrete box four stories high, stuck out like a sore thumb among the stately brick houses flanking it on both sides.

The walls wore orange rust stains made by rainwater seeping from the metal roof via the holes in the gutters. Thick metal grates ensured small windows, halted by pale Venetian blinds behind dusty glass.

There had to be another building in the city. A place where the aid staff worked while the field agents put on a nice modest front for the public.

It would have a vast, state-of-the-art armoury, a computer network, and a database of files on anyone of powerful magic or mundane.

Somewhere in that database, my name sat in its little niche, the name of a reject, intractable and useless. Just the way I loved it.

I brushed the wall. About a quarter of an inch away from the concrete, my finger experienced elastic opposition, as if I was trying to crush a tennis ball.

A faint shimmer of silver thumped from my skin and I removed my hand. The building was heavily warded against negative magic.

If someone with a lot of juice was to fling a fireball at it, it would likely bounce off without so much as roasting the Brad walls.

I unlocked one-half of the metal double doors and walked inside. A narrow path stretched to the right of me, discontinuing at a door boasting a large red-on-white sign: Authorized Personnel Only. My extra option was a flight of stairs leading upward.

I went through the stairs, noting they were surprisingly clean.

Nobody tried to deter me. Nobody asked why I was there.

Look at us, we are beneficial and non-threatening, we exist to serve the community, and we even let anyone stroll into our office.

The need for an unpretentious building I could understand, but civic records claimed that the entire Chapter comprised nine knights: a diviner, a questor, and a protector, and three guardians, and three defenders. Nine people, supervising a city the size of Minnesota. Yeah.

The stairs ended on a landing with a single iron door painted dull blue. A small dagger gleamed sickly on its surface about my eye level.

The knocking did not seem like a good idea, so I swivelled the door open and let myself in.

A long hallway spread before me, offering a diversity of colour to my tired eyes: Brad and Brad, and yet more Brad.

The ultra-short carpet showed off a plain Brad pile; the walls were painted in two shades of Brad: darker on top and a lighter Brad runner at the bottom.

The tiny warts of electric lights on the ceiling appeared Brad, too. No doubt the decorator selected a particularly dull smoky glass out of aesthetic concerns.

The place appeared spotless. Several doors fanned out from the hallway, perhaps, leading into the individual offices. At the very end, a huge wooden door aided a kite shield enamelled black.

In the middle of the shield reared a steel lion, shone to a bright gleam. The knight-protector. Just the fellow I desired to see.

I trekked through the hallway, intending for the shield and peeking into the doorways as I passed them. On my left, I saw a little armoury.

A short, well-muscled man sat on a rigid bench polishing a DHA. The wide blade of the short Vietnamese sword glowed slightly as he brought an oiled cloth against its bluish metal.

On the right lay a small but immaculate office. A huge black man dressed in a costly suit sat behind the desk, speaking on the phone. He saw me, chuckled with automatic courtesy, and kept chattering.

In his place, I would not have given myself a second look either. I wore my work clothes: jeans free enough to let me kick a man taller than me in the throat, a purple shirt, and pleased running shoes. Slayer rested in its sheath

on my back, somewhat hidden by my jacket. The sabre's hilt bulged above my right shoulder, obscured by my hair assembled into a thick plait.

The braid was numerous—it slapped my back when I ran and made for a wonderful hold in a fight. If I were a little less vain, I would have cut it off, but I have already forfeited feminine clothes, makeup, and lovely underwear in the name of functionality. I would be cursed if I gave up my hair, too.

I lunged for the protector's door and raised my hand to knock.

"Just a moment, dear," said the stern female voice I had heard via the phone yesterday.