Natural Sorcery: Jordan Sanders, #2

By Marina Ermakova

Rome was supposed to be safe--or at least safer than 90% of the planet. That was before the local legends started using their magic to destroy the food supply.

Considered one of Rome's experts on legends, mostly because she keeps surviving their assassination attempts, Jordan finds herself racing to find the culprits before they strike again. But legends wield powers that aren't documented, understood, or predictable. And Jordan isn't even a soldier. She's just some scientist unlucky enough to stumble over the local political mess.

The chances of getting murdered by magic beyond her comprehension is disconcertingly high. But if this unknown legend goes unchecked, Rome won't survive the next few years…and Jordan doesn't have it in her to walk away from that.

Natural Sorcery is an urban fantasy adventure set in a post-apocalyptic Italy and the second book in the Jordan Sanders series, beginning withTerrestrial Magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marina Ermakova
• Release date: Apr 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393729884

Marina Ermakova

Adventure fantasy writer Marina Ermakova has degrees in genetics and history, and the heart of a lifelong geek. She loves writing about outsiders, loners, and thinkers.  Her young adult epic fantasy novel Chains Carried on Wings is about finding acceptance for who you are instead of who you're supposed to be, and her urban fantasy/post-apocalyptic novel Terrestrial Magic is about applying logic towards understanding the fantastical. (And about an awkward woman on the asexuality spectrum who doesn't know how to deal with a burgeoning relationship—especially not while dodging assassination attempts.)

Book preview

Chapter One

THE SUN BEAT DOWN OVER expansive, even fields that stretched out towards a background of rocky hills. Farmlands were not my thing, so I couldn’t identify the various crops that were laid out in rows before me. Not that I had any business doing so, or even being here. I should have been out in the uncultivated wilds, conducting my research far away from where the food production happened—the legendary animals (called legimals) that I was interested in weren’t exactly a welcome sight here.

Instead, I found myself in the passenger seat of a pick-up as Tony parked it past a gated entrance, in front of a couple of small buildings. The oppressively hot air greeted me when I climbed out of the car, a layer of sweat appearing over my skin almost instantaneously.

Ah, the joys of Mediterranean summers.

On a normal field mission, the possibility of discovering something new would at least serve as a consolation prize. But today...today, I wondered what I was even doing here.

When my advisor had called me into her office and told me a local farmstead wanted us to investigate a problem for them, I thought the flat look on my face would have deterred her from pushing for it. Apparently not. Because despite the fact that there were actual emergency services for dealing with whatever problem these people were experiencing—I personally guessed it was the usual encroachment from the local legendary animals—Dr. Berti wanted me to go check up on it personally.

Me. A scientist. How did that even make sense?

I dealt with long-term research problems where we tried to answer complete unknowns, taking years or even decades of work to get just that little bit more information about the world. Responding to the daily legimal problems was beyond the scope of what I could do.  

This was a major downside to my team’s recent run-in with a massively dangerous situation about a month back. The knowledge of what happened was public, which made people associate us with both legimals and legends—both the animals and people who went around flaunting inexplicable abilities.

Never mind that the two had nothing to do with each other. Legends had always existed, often in their own communities that had little to do with us humans. But legimal populations only resurged some thirty years back, causing havoc ever since for reasons we didn’t entirely understand yet.

Glancing at my partner for this ridiculous affair, I noted the scowl plastered across his tanned face as he exited from the driver’s side of the pick-up. Not that I could actually know whether Tony was as frustrated as I was, since this was his normal resting expression.

The creak of an opening door drew my attention to the nearest building, where a tall, bulky man rushed out to meet us. A piece of fabric was wrapped around his head, covering one eye. The other regarded us with a hint of unease.

Thank you for coming, he said. My name is Marco. We’re really...we didn’t know what to do.

What’s the problem and why do you think we’re the right people to deal with it? I asked.

It was only after I caught a side-eyed glance from Tony that I realized my straight-to-the-point response had probably been rude—not that I understood why. What was the problem with getting right to business, especially when it was urgent? Why did everyone want me to engage in pointless small talk instead?

Thankfully, the man didn’t even blink, because apparently at least one other person in the world understood how priorities worked. Come, this Marco guy beckoned, leading us around the warm-colored building he’d exited from.

Despite myself, my curiosity kindled. I found myself leaning forward, trying to glimpse whatever was hiding behind the house that blocked our view. Expecting something dramatic.

When the rows and rows of vines that stretched into the distance came into view, I kept looking past them, trying to get a glimpse of whatever the fuss was about. But the man came to a stop right in front of the vegetation, almost grazing the browning leaves. Which prompted me to finally took a closer look at the plants themselves—the saggy state of the vines, the few shriveled greenish lumps hanging from them. It took me a moment to realize those lumps were supposed to be tomatoes.

This is the problem, he told us.

Uh, okay? But he was the agricultural expert here, while I studied terrestrial legimals. He should’ve had a much better idea of what to do than I would. So why was he even talking to me? I shot him a blank look, hoping he would clue me in on what he wanted.

Next to me, Tony shook his head in exasperation.

They are dying, yes? the man said, frowning at me.

Obviously, I responded. What is it you think I can do about it? I was going to refrain from telling him to irrigate them better, because there was no way I knew better than he did.

No matter what we do, they keep dying. They dry out, unable to retain moisture.

I paused. Unable to retain moisture? Eyeing the shriveled fruit, I wondered what that even meant. So you’re saying that you don’t know why this is happening.

I am saying that we have ruled out the usual causes, and can only suspect magic.

An instinctive surge of denial had me tensing up. The legends around Rome didn’t interfere with human society like this. In all the decades since the Boom—the return of legendary animals to the world—had put us all in close proximity, it just wasn’t done.

But for a brief period of time last month, that had changed. I recoiled at the idea that it might have changed for good.

This explained why he’d contacted my lab, at least. I shouldn’t have been the best person to handle this. I was a scientist studying legimal behavior and its effect on population dynamics, not a diplomat, or a detective, or a soldier. But Rome wasn’t equipped to deal with hostility from the surrounding legend communities. It was something our society had never prepared for, which in retrospect, seemed like a strange oversight.

Maybe the world had changed so much, become filled with so many new threats in such a short timeframe, that we couldn’t bring ourselves to handle anymore. Maybe we put it off because our society was barely staying ahead of the dangers of the Boom, barely putting itself back together after that first messy decade. But it had left us unprepared for a very real danger.

By pure bad luck, my lab group had reaped the consequences. We’d gotten a bit of publicity for dealing with one recent fiasco, when we’d narrowly averted a war. It put us amongst the few to have actually dealt with legends, ever, as bad as our experiences had been.

And now this was happening. I had a sense of foreboding, like the events of the previous month had only been the beginning. Maybe we hadn’t averted that war after all. Maybe we’d only delayed it.

But it was too soon to suspect an attack, wasn’t it? All I knew so far was that a few fields of crops had mysteriously dried out. Maybe it wasn’t caused by legends at all. Maybe it was some kind of blight. My eyes trailed over the browning bits of plant, wondering if it was consistent with any plant diseases. Unfortunately, figuring that out required knowledge of agriculture and plant science, and mine was practically nonexistent.

Still, if legends were involved...

Then someone was targeting our food supply. What else could that be, other than an act of war?

Well, aside from monumentally foolhardy, considering that much of the world was on the verge of a food shortage.

Everyone suffered when famine hit. Doing something like this on purpose? I couldn’t even fathom that kind of ridiculousness. Even if they kept their own crops safe, it was still a terrible idea. Being the only person around with food was practically as bad as not having it at all.

But bad plan or not, it would still hurt us.

I turned my attention away from the crops—it wasn’t like I was gonna figure out what was wrong with them by staring—and back towards the man, the farmer. Marco. He stood tall and straight, but there was a hesitance in his posture. Enough to indicate he had some serious worries over this situation.

And when one of the people responsible for keeping my community fed was worried, I was worried. I seriously hoped I wasn’t his last resort.

Has anyone been here recently who wasn’t supposed to be? I asked.

Maybe this wasn’t a legend, but with no clear cause to a mysterious problem, I had to take the possibility seriously. I wasn’t an investigator, but I had dealt with legends before. That meant my team and I were the best Rome could do, at the moment...which was a cause for concern all by itself.

No one comes here unless they have a reason to, he responded, with a discouraged droop to his posture.

Which in turn discouraged me. Because I was supposed to get information out of this guy, not deal with his emotional distress. In fact, I was pretty sure I couldn’t deal with his emotional distress. Would probably just make it worse if I tried. And how was I going to get any answers then?

Damn it, actual investigators were probably trained to handle this. To manage their witnesses’ feelings in a way that would properly get them the best account they could get. And me—well, I had Tony, who did have experience interviewing legends for his anthropological interests. Glancing at him, I wondered if he’d be inclined to help me out here. Only to find him watching thoughtfully with his arms crossed, seemingly not inclined to participate.

Which reminded me that he had a reputation for annoying the subjects of his interviews. Making him a bad option for help anyway.

So what should I do? I had an emotionally discomfited farmer on my hands, no social skills to speak of, and Tony of all people as my backup. I needed Luca or Hayley for this.

But they weren’t here. It was just me.

Okay, confidence. If I acted like it was alright, he’d believe me, right? It worked on Tony, anyway. Some of the time.

I thought about the logical progression of questions to ask, looking for something he’d be able to answer. Something to make him feel less useless.

Settling for a question I wanted to have an answer for anyway, I asked, Do we have anyone trying to figure out how this is happening?

Because suspecting magic wasn’t the same as understanding what caused this, or figuring out a way to counter it. Not that it mattered in the short term. Solutions took time, and we’d definitely lose crops before the scientific process gave us any.

It wasn’t really fair how much easier it was to break something than to fix it.

With a more confident nod, the man said, A number of scientists have been out here already, multiple times. They took samples. Saying the words seemed to make him feel better, which was all I was really going for.

And what did they tell you?

His lips fell into a grim line. They don’t understand what this is, beyond that the crops have simply stopped retaining water.

And there it was again. The problem. The sudden inability of plants to take up water, stated so baldly. Like it was something that made sense.

But it didn’t. It was like us humans forgetting how to breathe.

Not to mention, human beings relied on water intake, too. If someone was capable of dehydrating an entire field of plants, why couldn’t they do something similar to a person? Or a city filled with people?

Obviously, what I saw in this field wasn’t instant desiccation or anything, but a gradual descent into perpetual dehydration could be plenty dangerous on its own.

So why not do that, instead of hitting the crops like this? Targeting our community directly would’ve reduced the chances of us realizing something was wrong until it was too late. And it would only affect us, not the food security of the whole region.

Was there a technical reason that I wasn’t aware of, why someone’s powers could affect plants this way but not mammals? Or had it just not occurred to them yet? Without knowing the mechanism for how this was happening, I couldn’t answer those questions. Couldn’t even guess at the potential limits of this power.

Suppressing a shiver at the implications, I shoved these thoughts deep into the recesses of my mind. So long as I saw no evidence of this power being used on people, there wasn’t a point in wondering why.

How many fields are being affected by this? I asked. Because we had to concentrate on the problem we did have, instead of the ones we didn’t.

Too many, the man said. If we lose the crops in all of them, things might get serious.

And that was enough to remind me that the problem we did have already had the potential for catastrophe. How serious, exactly?

I don’t know that anyone would actually starve to death, with very careful regulation of food distribution, he said. But it is possible.

Starvation. As a real possibility for something that might happen, in Rome. Yeah okay, that was pretty horrifying.

The man’s hand hovered over a nearby vine, and its browned leaves looked so fragile I wondered if they’d crumble at his touch. It will be worse if this happens another time. There’s nothing stopping them from doing this again, is there?

No, there wasn’t. Apparently he was smart enough to know that. But I didn’t want him to be smart enough to know that.

There is, I insisted. That’s why you called us, right?

Oh, I’d done it now. I hated making promises I wasn’t sure I could keep. And yet, my instincts told me to keep him—everyone—as calm as possible. Just the thought of what might happen if people thought they were out of food made me anxious.

Right, he confirmed, his tone too noncommittal for me to tell whether he believed in us or not.

I sure as hell didn’t.

TONY DROVE FASTER THAN was strictly necessary on the way back, but at least he wasn’t anywhere near ‘crash into something and die from the impact’ speed—something I’d learned to fear from him.  That gave me enough calm, for the moment, to turn our current problem over in my mind.

In theory, this could have been caused by any as-yet-undiscovered phenomenon. But the most glaring unknowns in close proximity—at least other than the Boom and why we were living in a freaking apocalypse—were the legend communities. And I couldn’t shake the growing certainty that this was them. That this was somehow related to the almost-war we’d averted.

A small part of me felt inquisitive towards the problem, felt the desire to uncover how something I’d never encountered before was possible. A larger part of me dreaded the prospect of another crime involving legends. I broke into a cold sweat just thinking about the last one—about my terror at being abducted, hanging hundreds of feet above the ground. About the man I’d killed, and the look on his son’s face.

Yet even that part of me was drowned out by the overwhelming enormity of what was happening. The big picture that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t lose sight of again. Because if this was the prelude to a war, if one happened in the middle of this worsening crisis...

Life could go back to the bad old days of the first decade post-Boom. We wouldn’t be able to look to the future beyond our immediate survival.

I couldn’t remember the worst of it—I’d been too young—but my parents’ generation had lived through that whole mess. There were times when I could see the remnants of those experiences in them. My mom’s hard edge, Berti’s paranoia. The way our nice elderly neighbors would startle at sudden noises inside their own apartment. Even my gentle dad sometimes had shadows behind his eyes that I couldn’t explain.

Maybe I couldn’t understand what it had really been like, but I knew enough to realize I didn’t want to. As hard as things were now, with us standing right on the edge of a crisis, we hadn’t fallen off that precipice yet. I couldn’t fathom the consequences if we ever did.

By the time we crossed the bridge into the safety zone, I’d thought myself into a pretty worried state. Which wouldn’t do. Tony was distracted, so he wasn’t picking up on it yet, but I had to keep a calm exterior for when we arrived at the lab.

Taking deep breaths, I tried to focus on the here and now. The rumble of the car’s engines. The way we bumped along through the tiny cobblestone streets of Trastevere, where sidewalks didn’t exist because the road went right up to the base of the buildings. Tony was practically forced to slow down, due to the otherwise high probability of mowing down pedestrians.

As we rolled into a small parking lot, I noted a familiar set of figures loitering outside of our lab building. Hayley, Carter, and Luca.

Hayley hurried over to me, even before I’d finished getting out of the car. About time you got here. The new security guy already checked our IDs twice.

Carter grinned. Only because, when he asked what we were doing here, you told him we were selling drugs, he told her.

Yeah, well, some people can’t take a joke.

My coworker, roommate, and best friend, Hayley was a tall Indian-American woman with a flair for the dramatic. She and Carter, a Korean-American photographer who moonlighted on my field expeditions, had been working with me for years. Longer than Tony, and far longer than Luca. I didn’t know if it was our shared experience of immigrating from the United States or what, but the three of us fell into an easy camaraderie from the start.

Their familiar banter gave me something to latch onto, a safe harbor from the tumult of my emotions. My friends were still here, still joking. The world hadn’t collapsed yet. I felt the set of my shoulders relaxing, and while a reasonable amount of anxiety remained, I wasn’t in danger of getting sucked into the worst of my fears.

On the other end of the spectrum, Luca—a recent addition to my field team who worked the video feed for us—was all business. When I’d first met him, I assumed he had Middle Eastern heritage, possibly from the refugees who’d migrated to Italy at the beginning of the century—or at least the pre-Boom part of the century. Little did I know that he hailed from a legendary House whose heritage spanned the Mediterranean—encompassing Rome, Troy, and Carthage.

What happened? he asked, dark eyes on me.

I shook my head. Inside.

The last thing I wanted to do was discuss an impending famine in public. That was just asking for all kinds of rumors to start.

Without any arguments from my teammates, we made our way up to the lab. Our five lab benches took up the majority of the space, each filled