Witch's Bell Book One

that?'
    'It's a smart question. You should try asking them sometime. Then, in the event that you meet someone smart, you might not sound so dumb.'
    One of Ebony's eyebrows rose like a puff of smoke. 'Really. Very nice.'
    'Seriously though, there has to be more to this Portal, and I'd like to know it,' his tone and his expression both returned to normal. He seemed capable of switching between sarcasm and efficiency in the blink of an eye.
    'Look,' she put her hands on her hips, and pressed her lips into a pout. 'Do I look like a walking dictionary? You seem capable of reading, so why don't you do that?'
    'I'd rather it comes directly from the witch's mouth, so to speak,' he flattened his tie again, something he seemed to do at every opportunity.
    Ebony sucked in her lips and turned away. Now wasn't that a saying. 'Listen,' she said eventually, picking her way past a banana-lounge drowned under books, 'obviously I can't tell you everything about magic and the Portal, because obviously, you simply wouldn't understand.'
    'Obviously,' he agreed with a slight huff.
    'But I can tell you this,' Ebony ducked around a pile of teetering boxes, her moves graceful and elegant, 'the Portal itself, while important, isn't what you should be concentrating on. You need to know about magic first,' Ebony sighed, hating this impromptu lecture more and more. She hadn't the faintest idea where to begin schooling this brat. 'Okay, we'll start with this.' She pointed very obviously to herself. 'I am a summoner witch,' she said slowly. 'Now, the first rule of summoning is to become.'
    'And how does this relate to the Portal? Not that it isn't fascinating,' he added drolly.
    'Oh for heaven's sake, listen to me. You are jumping ahead. Magic is where you need to start this story, Mr Detective. If you want to understand why the Portal is important to Vale, then you have to understand that it is not because of the Portal itself, but because of how it affects magic here. Magic is everywhere; in fact, it is as ubiquitous a force of nature as Death, Truth, Movement, and Light.'
    'None of which are forces of nature,' he pointed out, voice blank.
    She ignored him. 'Magic isn't zipping around on brooms, waving wands, and waking the dead. Magic is a part of reality. It's the part of reality, in fact, that makes the unlikely likely, the impossible real.'
    'You mean delusion?' he cleared his throat.
    'No, I mean chance. Look around you – notice anything? Books, shelves, maybe some dust. Nothing unusual, right?'
    'I don't know, I would hardly call you ordinary,' he offered a sarcastic grin.
    'It's a Labor of Hercules trying to teach you something, Detective. And if you interrupt once more, I shan't tell you a thing.'
    He put his hands up, as if in submission. 'Please, go on. Magic is chance,' he prompted her.
    'Not exactly. Magic is simply a type of Movement. It's one of the forces of reality that make things happen. Magic simply pertains to the unlikely, the impossible, and the apparent never-can-be's. If you manage to do the impossible once, we call it a miracle. If you manage to do the impossible every day, then you are magical.'
    He crossed his arms. 'So people who know magic are mini-gods then?' he looked at her carefully, obviously not believing his conclusion for a second.
    'If I could smite you right now, darling, I would. But it doesn't work like that. Sometimes if you know enough about reality – about the real reality, and not that nonsense they teach you in science class – you can affect a change. There are two truths, detective, and two paradoxes. We are told anything can happen, that anything can become, right? We are also told that whatever occurs is brought to be through laws and regularity. Chaos and Order. Now, magic sits between these two,' she took a sniff, suddenly feeling quite happy at her explanation.
    Nate's expression grew even less impressed. His eyes pressed together slightly, and he wore a tight frown. 'That tells me nothing. This doesn't make any sense. I ask you to explain the Portal, and you get sidetracked trying to explain the impossible-'
    Ebony gave a harrumph, and crossed her arms quickly. 'Teaching you is like teaching a stone.'
    'Perhaps you should try harder then. I don't need to know the inner workings of your world, believe me. What I do need to know, is all about the Portal. Now, are you going to tell me, or what?'
    Ebony had never, in her life of book-sales and police work, dealt with a man like this. To say