Halloween had come around again once more, and this time, it was my and Tish’s turn to host the party.  We had all flocked to Felicity’s place the previous year, and of course the year before that was at the Ms’ place where I first met Tish.  This time, we thought we would extend the invite ourselves so the others could appreciate the increased space we had on the top floor.  
     Our Halloween parties had become somewhat notorious in the building due to the elaborate costumes, and this year was no exception.  I was dressed as Dr. Clayton Forrester.  Not the character from War of the Worlds, but the mad scientist from Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I wore a green lab coat with a Gizmonic logo on the breast pocket, thick glasses, and my hair was stuck up in wild tumbleweed.  Tish was dressed as an angel and devil.  She wore a shiny white gown with wide sleeves, a sparkly halo on her head, and open-toed shoes, and she also wore a skin-tight red halter and short skirt with thigh-high, equally tight boots and plastic horns on her head.  She looked nothing if not sinful in that outfit, and she looked absolutely angelic in the other one.  And I’ll tell you, I still hadn’t gotten quite used to see her standing side by side, but it was positively weird seeing her in those costumes with her arms around her shoulders.  As a matter of fact, it’s weird just trying to write about it.  
     As we were getting the final preparations ready for the party, people started to trickle in to the party.  Marcus, Minerva, and Felicity were the first to arrive.  Marcus was wearing paint on all of his exposed skin, and he was dressed as a gargoyle.  Felicity was wearing some kind of futuristic Buck Rogers outfit with a visored helmet and prop pistol. She wore heeled boots, and her tail was out.  I guess she was going as some kind of space-age warrior kitten.  Minerva took the cake, though.  She came into the apartment with her halves separated.  Her top half was walking on the bottom pair of arms, which were wearing flip-flops and shorts, and her bottom half had a false head and arms perched on top on her waist with another pair of shorts pulled down around her knees and a shirt where the shorts should have been.  I couldn’t tell if she had a specific concept in mind or if she was just going for something strange-looking.  
     The next guests to arrive were Vincent and Leah.  I had invited them to the party to introduce them to the others and so they could see some examples of the kind of thing I usually did for a living.  I had worked a couple more shows for them since the first time, even going so far as to control some on-stage effects from the wing, and I had told Vin and Leah that they could feel free to bring a little of their show to the party.  I was certain that the others had cottoned to how I really did my work, and I had told Vin and Leah as much.
     When they arrived, I could tell that they had taken what I had told them to heart.  They showed up in the ninja and geisha costumes they wore in their show, complete with fan and sword.  I introduced my colleagues to my clients, and Leah and Vin saw for the first time the sort of thing I was really capable of them.  I could almost see them working out some new routines for their act.  
     The last people to arrive were James and Christina.  James was wearing sunglasses and a trench coat with a slit in the back for his wings, and Christina was in a similar outfit, but with something resembling a cloak instead of a trench coat.  Both had a pair of prop guns at their hips.  They looked the Narnia Mafia.  I made the introductions, and the party got started from there.  
     As the party was winding down, I heard a knock at the door.  I went to answer it, and when I checked the peephole, I almost thought they had meant to come to the party.  There were two men and one woman.  The woman was short, with a dark blue gown, a scarf draped across her shoulders, and long gloves.  The man next to her wore a very formal suit, almost like a tuxedo, and the other man was younger with glasses.  Everything about him screamed nerd.  He was much more my kind of person.  I opened the door.
     “Good evening.  Can I help you?”
     “Are you Brian Fontaine?”
     “Yeah, that’s me.”
     “Babe, is everything okay?” said Tish from behind me, the one wearing the angel costume.  
     “And you would be Letitia,” said the guy in the tux.
     “Yeah, how’d you know that?”
     “We’re from SORM,” said the woman.  “We’ve been keeping an eye on your activities since you registered as his assistant.  And his, for that matter.”
     “Just who are you people?” I asked.
     “Oh, forgive us,” the woman said.  “My name is Rose Fontaine.”  We shook hands, and my ears perked up.  “This is my husband, Wade.”
     “Your cousin, very distant,” he said.
     “My cousin?”  Well, this was an interesting coincidence.  “You don’t recall a very old book, do you?”
     “I sent you that at least five years ago now.  I see you’ve gotten quite prolific in that time.  Actually, that’s what we came here to talk about.  Would you come with us, please?”
     “One moment.  Hey, Vin?  Leah?  Could you come here a sec?”
     Leah came to the door, with Vin right behind her.  “Yeah, Brian?”
     “You happen to recognize these two, either of you?”
     “Well,” said Leah, “I know who they remind me of, but…”
     “No way,” said Vincent.  “Of all places, why would they show up here?”
     “They said they wanted to talk to me, and Wade there said he was my cousin.”
     Vin and Leah were startled.  “You mean you’re actually related to –”
     “You know, Wade,” I said, “I think I’m satisfied.  What do you want to talk about?”
     “We’d like to take a look at your operation downstairs,” said the guy next to Wade.
     “Brian, this is Steve Caldwell.  He’s our techie.  I imagine you’ll have more to tell him than us.”
     “Evening, Steve.”
     “Brian, I’ve heard a lot about your little toys, and I can’t wait to see your setup for myself.”  We shook hands.
     “Well, there’s no time like right now,” I said.  “Tish, you want to come along?”
     “Yeah, sure,” she said.  “I’ll tell everyone where you are.”  She followed me as I led the newcomers downstairs to the shop.
     “Wait,” said Wade when we were halfway down the hall.  “Weren’t you going to tell the others?”
     Tish poked her other head out the door of the apartment.  “I’ve got it taken care of, thanks.”  She went back in to enjoy the party as the rest of her came with me.  The other three were dumbstruck for a while, and then they came along.
     “My goodness, Brian,” said Wade.  “You’ve gotten better than I figured.”
     “Thanks, Wade.”
     We got to the first floor, and I opened the back the door of the shop and led everybody into the workroom.  “Well, this is it.  This is where I do most of my work.  I design the prosthetics on this computer, and they’re manufactured in that room over there.  It’s a clean-room environment, so I can’t take you in there, but you should be able to see it fine through the picture window.”
     Steve walked over to the window and whistled.  He seemed impressed by all the automated equipment I had set up.  “This is one hell of a rig.  Where’d you get all this stuff?”
     “I talked to some of my old professors from school, and they put me in touch with some of their vendors.”
     “Yeah, but where did you get the capital?  Some of this is pretty advanced machinery.”
     “You remember the accident?”
     “Yeah, Wade told me.”
     “Eight-figure settlement.”
     “Ah.  Nice.”
     “How’s it look, Steve?” asked Rose.
     “Looks okay, nothing magical about any of it.  It’s highly advanced technology, but otherwise completely mundane.”
     “In that case,” said Wade, “we need to talk about a few things, Brian.  Namely the extent to which you have spread your little toys around.”
     Tish and I tensed up a little.  Vin and Leah had told me about some of the things I had to keep in mind, but they never told me what might happen if I didn’t.
     “Don’t worry, Brian,” said Steve.  “If we had come for your head, we wouldn’t have bothered to knock.”
     “You see, Brian,” said Rose, “under normal circumstances, a person such as yourself who goes around using magic on people in such a way that they might figure out what you’re really doing, well, we would frown on that sort of thing.  We’d have to take you to the higher-ups, and we’d have to meet with your clients and set them straight again.”  Tish held tight on to my arm.  “However, these aren’t normal circumstances.”
     “I’m curious as to what you folks would call ‘normal,’” I said.
     “Well,” said Wade, “traditionally, magic has been kept a secret from the common populace.  But lately, there have been certain individuals within the SORM hierarchy who believe that magic should be made at least a little public.  And due to recent events, the bulk of the SORM community tends to agree.  So we won’t be shutting you down.”
     “Quite the opposite, actually,” said Steve.  “We’d like to offer you a job.  It’d involve you being a little more actively involved in SORM affairs.”
     “I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, that I have no intention of ever going on stage.”
     “Oh, that’s okay,” said Wade.  “We don’t perform, either.  We’re with SORM Special Forces, kind of a magical SWAT team.  Any time someone misuses magic on a criminal scale, we get a call.”
     “And we each have our areas of expertise,” said Rose.  “Like Steve there.  He’s not a magician at all.  He spends most of his time looking at a computer screen.”
     “I’m the surveillance expert for the team,” he said.  “The equipment I designed uses a blend of RF technology and magic to detect all people within a mile of our truck and determine their identities and rough intentions.  The magic part comes from my brother, who’s a psychic, among other things.”
     “So what do you think I could do for the team?” I asked.  “I’d just as soon not pull up stakes, if I even have a say in the matter.”
     “Well, first of all, we’d like you to describe your techniques.  We already know what you do, but we don’t have the technical details.”
     “Well, I start by scanning the client in with a 3-D laser scanner.  That’s it over there,” I said, pointing to the scanner in the corner.  “It’s similar to what Hollywood special effects houses use to create digital doubles for actors.  Then, once I have a 3-D model of the person, I import the model into a CAD program.  I then pull up one of a number of pre-designed limb structures and rescale it to fit their proportions.  I design whatever other modifications they’d like at this point.  Once the prosthesis is complete, I send the design into the manufacturing room over there, where the parts are automatically cast in high-impact polycarbonate resin so they can travel through an airport x-ray machine.  The skin is molded in rubber, and everything is assembled automatically.  When the client comes in to have the prosthetic installed, I remove the existing limb using this blade.”  I extended my sheath and drew the sword for their inspection.  “I then coat the cut surface with a special cream that allows the client to control the limb telekinetically, just like they normally would.  Then I press a joint like this,” I took one from my desk, “into the cut surface and join the prosthetic to it using my own telekinesis.  Now, for something like a wing, I just apply the cream to their bare skin without having to sever anything.”
     “About these creams,” said Wade.  “How exactly do you acquire them?”
     “I learned how to make them from that book.  That’s how I made that blade, too.  I coated it with a cream that lets it divide a body without harm.”
     “See,” said Rose, “that’s the funny part.  We knew the book would enable you to do these things when Wade sent it to you, but the creams were a surprise.”
     “The best thing we can think of,” said Steve, “is that your magical heritage combined with the book caused you to be capable of more than you would have been with just the book.  You see, these are the sorts of things that have led people to believe that people are ready for magic to become more widely known.”
     “But you still haven’t told Brian what you want him to do for you,” said Tish.
     “We’d like you to work for us on a freelance basis,” said Rose.  “Every so often, we respond to an incident in which someone’s body is modified in such a way that we can’t directly reverse the process.  Like maybe their limbs are made to disappear, and sometimes we can’t bring them back.  Your prosthetics are an effective way around those problems.”
     “Yeah, sure,” I said.  “I’ve actually done work like that in the past for amputees and the like.”
     “Oh, right,” said Rose.  “I believe that was your first project, wasn’t it?”
     “Sure was,” I said as I patted my right upper arm.
     “So, do you think this is something you could do for us?” asked Wade.
     “Absolutely.  You find anyone with that kind of problem, you just send them over my way, and I’ll do the rest.”
     “Glad to hear it.”  Wade shook my hand.  “Welcome to the family business, cousin.”  He turned away and made some sort of gesture towards a wall.  
Steven handed me a cell phone.  “Keep that with you.  If we need you, we’ll ring.”  He went to join Wade and Rose, and they walked into the wall and vanished.
Tish and I stood motionless for a minute.  
     “Well, then,” I said, “is the party still going on upstairs?”
     “Yeah, but everyone’s wondering what happened to you.  I haven’t told them anything.”
     “Then let’s go back up and join the party.”  We headed back to the elevator, eager to tell our friends that we were moving up in the world, and life was about to get a lot more interesting.

To Be Continued…?