About Color of Magic/Color of Money
by Naomi Brooks and Angelia Sparrow
30 pages
/ 12000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-381-9, 1-60370-381-0
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
Jared Byrne is a magical graduate student, ready to finish making his wand and receive his degree. Jarrett Burns is his doppelganger, a programmer who has figured out how to cross the If Barrier, the separation between worlds. Jarrett's interference causes Jared nothing but trouble, especially when it causes an emerald shortage that may cost him his degree.
When things start to get dangerous, Jared knows he has to find a way to cross the If Barrier and deal with his double. He's also going to have to deal with Conlan, the man he loves, and the man he's betrayed with his last, desperate attempt to get his stone. Can Jared make things right, and make his way home?
Sample
Jared Byrne scowled at his hand-held crystal as he shifted on the flying carpet, trying to get comfortable on his way home from the University. He hated public transportation. The carpet slowed and he saw the problem ahead. A pair of luxury pegasi stallions were mixing it up in mid-air--their riders clinging for dear life--and disrupting traffic. Stallions should be illegal in city limits anyway, he thought as he went back to trying to get a hold of his lover. The pegasi had all the air traffic jammed for blocks in every direction. Those who could landed and continued on foot, adding to the ground congestion.
Jared gave up trying to call home on the crystal. Too much interference from everyone else's crystals. He tipped the afreet and slid off the carpet and to the ground by the rope. He strolled to avoid the crowds. He couldn't afford a pedicab or taxi.
People on the streets saw the robes of a student Sorcerer and gave him space. True, he was still a year and a wand from his Ph.D., but the robes granted him automatic passage. He sighed, thinking about the wand. Emerald. He had been chosen by the Emerald Circle of Earth and Plant Sorcerers. That meant he needed an emerald for his wand, and of late, emeralds were oddly scarce.
Lost in his thoughts of green stones, he failed to notice the woman. She wove through the crowd with the grace of a Roma dancer, her eyes darting from one face to the next.
She planted herself in Jared's path and he bumped into her only vaguely noting the soft, female-shaped obstacle. He apologized mindlessly and continued on.
"Jared," she whispered. "Jared Treesinger.” The faint sound of his taken name carried over the cacophony of pedestrians and horses, over bellowing stallions and frantic police whistles.
He startled and she held up a green velvet bag, stitched in gold runes and symbols.
"I have what you need. Here you go." She strolled into the crowd, vanishing among them in a swirl of beads, hair and shawls.
Jared held the bag gingerly. Small and heavy for its size, it lay in his palm, unmoving. He peeked in and quickly pocketed it. Such things were best not displayed on city streets.
He walked the half-mile to his apartment. Carefully stepping around a troll sleeping off last night's drunk on the sidewalk, Jared ducked four pixies wearing Spyder colors who darted by in hot pursuit of a lone fairy in Vampyre colors. The gnome who sublet the backyard--in complete violation of Jared's lease, but at his landlord's insistence--had gotten into the mushrooms again and his loud yodels carried through the cul-de-sac.
Jared opened the double-wizard-locked door of the half-timbered townhouse duplex. Bad neighborhood, lousy apartment, but it was all he could afford. There, shining like a star in the middle of his dingy, third-hand living room, the one with ugly beige walls and boring gray rug, sat his lover, Conlan.
Elves, even half-elves like Conlan, always glowed, and the faint silver light filled the room. "How did the testing go, my love?" Conlan asked, coming to him and stealing a kiss. "You're late."