“We’ll be over around noon,” Killian said. “I promised to take Tally shopping first.”
“Sounds good. That will give me time to plan out where I want to put all the decorations this year.” I gave Killian a long kiss. “But now, I need to go feed the cats. See you later!” I dashed out the door to the sound of their good-byes.
On the way back to my house, I stopped at my mailbox and pulled out the stack of letters. There was an invitation from Alicia King, an older lady over on Castle Street I had met a couple months back and who was a member of the Guild. She had invited me to tea on Black Friday. I wasn’t sure I could make it, but I thought I’d call her, at the very least. I wondered if she was going anywhere for Thanksgiving and decided that, if she had nowhere to go, I’d invite her to my house.
Xi and Klaus were sitting in front of their food dishes, waiting for me. They stared at me for a moment, their empty dishes an affront to their fuzzy little butts. “Yes, yes, I’ll feed you.” I pulled their food out of the pantry. I opened two cans and upended the goop into their dishes and they began to gobble it up like they were starving.
“Oh, the drama! You aren’t that hungry. You have plenty of dry food and you know it—you weren’t in any danger of…” I stopped. You couldn’t convince cats of anything, so I decided not to bother trying. Instead, I wandered upstairs to the hallway, where I pressed the button that slid back the panel on the ceiling.
I was up in the attic, sorting through my parents’ decorations, when Rowan returned my call.
“Did I interrupt you?” she asked.
“Nah, I’m just going through my folks’ holiday decorations. Hey, I need to talk to you about Majikoil.” I put down the box I was holding and sat at one of the craft tables I had set up. “I need to run down the issues we’re facing. If we go in, we’re going to be legally bound to give Sheryl license to steal some of our energy. I have no desire to do so. Can she be brought up on charges for that?”
“Not technically, but if it’s part of a pyramid scheme, yes. The entire setup of the pyramid scheme is both against the mundane law and magical law. We have to catch her encouraging you to recruit to earn money to really shut the company down.”
“So,” I said, “what do we do next?”
Rowan thought for a moment. “When you go to sign up, you need to be wearing a listening device and get her to talk about the recruiting part—she has to tell you you’ll make a lot of money recruiting people. We—the Court—will have to be waiting to raid the place before she siphons you of life energy. Which means, you need to sign up and then, when it comes time for the energy exchange, as she puts it, the Court Magika needs to raid the place and catch her in the process. That way, they can bring her up on charges.”
“But won’t it play out like the vampires? Bloodwhores sign a contract—”
“That’s a contract with the government. They have to sign into a national register and the vampires are scrupulous about keeping track of them. Psychic vampires are far harder to pinpoint, and magical energy drain is also very difficult to prove. There’s no really good way to prove it’s happened. The Court Magika ran into that problem back when Rasputin was alive. Why do you think he was so invincible? He offered ‘favors’ for years of life, and he preyed on the desperate and the vulnerable. When you’re twenty-eight and your children are dying of hunger, it’s easy to hand over five years of your life in exchange for enough money to get ahead and keep your kids alive. Especially if you don’t really know if you’re losing life until you reach the end. And humans are far more vulnerable.”
I leaned back against the wall. “Rasputin did that?”
“Not just him. It’s happened off and on throughout history. Sheryl Brown is doing nothing less than gouging her reps’ actual lives, as well as their wallets. We need to catch her explicitly saying that you’ll not only make money but also that you’ll add to your life span, in exchange for the nebulous promise of making a lot of money.”
“What happened when they finally took Rasputin down?”
“When Rasputin died, the energy he had siphoned off of those in need was drained from his spirit and fashioned into healing potions and then given to the hospital where they took care of indigent cases.”
I let out a gasp. “They’d do that? Strip away her life energy?”
“Not to the point of death, not unless she’s killed any of her reps. Rasputin should have been dead several times over, given how hard people worked to kill him. He used the lives of others to boost his own resistance to death, since he was well aware he was a target for assassination. He carried healing potions with him like some people carry their coffee.”
“How does life energy work for healing?”
Rowan cleared her throat. “Life energy, when it’s transferred, can shield a person from what should have been a natural death. For example, say you developed a tumor and the doctors say it’s malignant, end stage, nothing short of a miracle will keep you alive. Taking a healing potion made from life energy can heal those wounds and prevent you from dying.
“Now, we have far more advanced health care than they did back when Rasputin was alive, but some things still will get you in the end. Cancer, a horrible car crash, being caught in a fire. I’m certain that Sheryl keeps several of those potions on hand for emergencies. And it takes a lot of life energy to make a potion that strong. The rest, I’ll bet she’s already absorbed to extend her lifespan.”
I hadn’t understood how it worked. “I had no clue.”
“We’ll talk more when I come over tonight for your magic lesson.”
“That’s right, that’s tonight,” I murmured.
“I’ll also bring you and Ari the checks you need to join Majikoil. We’ll discuss tactics when I get there. The Court Magika wants this handled discreetly. They don’t want the news broadcast because the more people know about it, the easier it is for someone else to start up their own scam.” With that, Rowan signed off.
I stared at the pile of boxes on the floor. I was overjoyed to see all of them, but right now, my mind was miles away. What Sheryl was doing had hit home. She was stripping away the future from others, preying on their greed—or their desperation. The former, well, I wasn’t fond of, but most greedy people didn’t deserve to have their lives cut short. But those who were desperate? Who were trying to pay the rent and feed their kids? They didn’t need this crap.
Shaking my head, I carried the boxes downstairs and went back to the documents that Sheryl had left. Finally, I found what we were looking for in the fine print. She offered financing to incentivize people to join her company, encouraging people that they could make their money back in a month, especially if we recruited others.
It suddenly occurred to me that I should take pictures of the documents, in case they got destroyed or lost or Sheryl decided she wanted them back.
“Does she think people won’t read the fine print?” I muttered.
Do you always read the fine print? What about terms of service agreements, all those contracts you essentially sign to use a website, a service, or a product?