The Shatterproof Magician (The Inscrutable Paris Beaufont Book 4) Read online

  The Shatterproof Magician

  The Inscrutable Paris Beaufont™ Book 4

  Sarah Noffke

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2021 LMBPN Publishing

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  Version 1.00, June 2021

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64971-839-6

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-840-2

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Sarah’s Author Notes

  Michael’s Author Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Books By Sarah Noffke

  Check out Sarah Noffke’s YA Sci-fi Fantasy Series

  Connect with The Authors

  Books By Michael Anderle

  The Shatterproof Magician Team

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  Deb Mader

  Dave Hicks

  Diane L. Smith

  Micky Cocker

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  Dorothy Lloyd

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Zacc Pelter

  Debi Sateren

  If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  To Rob for being a fantastic supporter, good friend and pillar of strength.

  — Sarah

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  — Michael

  Chapter One

  Creating love in the modern world was going to involve destroying it first. That’s what Agent Ruby had concluded after watching the debacle that was happening worldwide.

  Matchmaking was a joke. Divorce was on the rise. Love simply didn’t last in the modern world.

  It was all the current Saint Valentine’s fault.

  The love meter had never been lower, and the reason was the avant-garde ways taking over. Traditions were lost. Men and women forgot etiquette. So much of it stemmed from technology, loss of gender roles, and of course, the fairy godmothers weren’t doing their job like they should—as they used to.

  Agent Ruby strode right by the security desk in the lobby of FriendNet. The guard jerked to a standing position and darted around the desk.

  “Sir, I’m going to need to see some ID.” The man’s hand went to the gun in his holster since Agent Ruby hadn’t made any attempt to slow as he trespassed into the corporation.

  Agent Ruby paused and sighed, realizing that he would have to use magic to bypass this gatekeeper, although he could show identification. However, it was best if no one knew that the director for Fairy Godmother Agency, also known as FGA, was there.

  He nodded as if he was complying, his eyes shaded by the black bowler hat he wore. Instead of pulling an ID from the inside pocket of his black suit, Agent Ruby withdrew a silver ballpoint pen that had a red heart-shaped gem on its end.

  The security guard tilted his head, obviously confused by the sight of the pen instead of identification.

  In a hypnotizing fashion, Agent Ruby slowly waved the pen back and forth. “You’re going to let me pass without a problem. Then you’re going to forget you saw me. Are we clear?” he said in a melodic voice.

  The guard’s eyes glazed over, a white sheen covering them briefly as he nodded robotically. Then his eyes cleared once more, and he pivoted and marched back to his station.

  Agent Ruby pursed his lips, keeping his pen—a wand of sorts—out in case he needed it again. Fairies often needed magical objects to direct or store their powers—a minor limitation for their superior skills in matchmaking.

  Brainwashing was Agent Ruby’s specialty, but few knew that. If they did, it wouldn’t be his secret weapon. Of course, it wasn’t foolproof and hadn’t worked when he tried to get Saint Valentine to do certain things.

  The current Saint Valentine—the highest position held at FGA—had recently changed the protocol for matchmaking, disregarding age-old customs. He started subscribing to the notion that practices should evolve for the modern world. It was absurd and would be the downfall for matchmaking, abolishing centuries of efforts.

  The current Saint Valentine started to allow fairy godmothers to rely on dating websites, social media, and other modern ways to create love. It wasn’t going to work. It was only a matter of time before all traditions passed down from Saint Valentines of the past would be gone forever, and the world would be full of trashy relationships.

  As Agent Ruby had suspected, these new approaches to matchmaking weren’t creating lasting love. It was all superficial. The modern world, with its desire for instant gratification, didn’t know how to stick around in relationships, staying when it got hard.

  The problem was widespread, but it started at Saint Valentine’s office, Matters of the Heart. It had spread to the governing agency for the fairy godmothers—FG
A. Soon it would demolish the curriculum at Happily Ever After College.

  Already, word had spread that Headmistress Willow Starr was reviewing the curriculum at the college and making changes. The course study for fairy godmothers was steeped in traditions that had worked for centuries—creating love and romance for those worthy of such things. Now, all that was changing.

  Agent Ruby couldn’t believe it when the rumor spread that the college was training a half-magician as a fairy godmother. These were precisely the types of things that were destroying tradition and the sanctity that once was true love. Soon all that remained would be superficial relationships created by fairy godmothers who had forgotten the mission.

  True love was a product of two disciplined people of poise and good stock coming together. It was about matching princesses to princes. It was about pairing royalty. The notion that Plain Janes could marry kings—that commoners should be matched and encouraged to breed, that love was for everyone— had defiled that.

  The current administration believed that love was about emotions and feelings. This Saint Valentine was wrong. Love had and would always be about practicality. That’s what made the strongest matches. That was what kept them together.

  People didn’t divorce a century ago as they did presently. That was because fairy godmothers weren’t pairing the right people anymore. The modern world said it was okay to abandon your vows. A high-speed world of instant gratification and social media that created constant dopamine hits was destroying the traditions of a family. Many decried arranged marriages as outdated practices…but that was wrong and Agent Ruby’s grandfather, the predecessor to the current Saint Valentine, knew that. These new practices were demolishing his work in this modern world.

  Agent Ruby used his ballpoint pen several more times as he cruised to the top story of FriendNet, ensuring that no one stopped him as he made his way to the person he’d come to see. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to use brainwashing to get this guy to help. When someone forced people to do something, the results weren’t always favorable with tasks of this complexity. Brainwashing tampered with the required skills.

  No, Agent Ruby simply had to convince this executive programmer—the highest in the social media company—to do what he needed. Persuasion was another one of Agent Ruby’s top-level skills though. It also didn’t hurt that he had deep pockets, having come from a family of old money.

  The skyscraper’s top floor lacked any class or elegant design. The exposed bricks and polished concrete floor gave it an industrial look. Agent Ruby grimaced as he strode across the open space that had large bean bags and pool tables. Several people he’d learned identified as hipsters were sitting on large inflated yoga balls, their shiny laptops on their legs as they worked—apparently against such practical things as desks.

  One particularly repugnant-looking guy with a handlebar mustache was typing on a typewriter.

  Agent Ruby snapped at him. “Where is the senior programmer for FriendNet?”

  The guy looked up, unrushed, sending the typewriter back to the reset point. “You mean Dash? Oh, we don’t go by titles here, man. Don’t let anyone hear you call Dash the senior. We call him our Yoda Programmer.”

  “Whatever, where is this…Dash?” He scowled at the awful name. What was this guy, a Dalmatian or a programmer?

  “He’s over there putting on some tunes for us.” The guy pointed over his shoulder toward a guy wearing jeans rolled up past his ankles, a bow tie, and a vest next to the far wall. Although Dash was probably only about thirty, he had a monocle.

  He held up a vinyl record and glanced over his shoulder. “How about some Gregory Alan Isakov?” The question made many of the hipsters stationed around the open space look up.

  A girl wearing a t-shirt that said, “You’ve gotta risk it to get the biscuit,” shook her head. “No, he exceeded half a million listeners on Spotify. He’s very popular.”

  Dash’s mouth popped open, his expression of offense evident even with his thick beard. “I had no idea he’d sold out to the man. I’ll find someone obscure for us to jam to.”

  Agent Ruby rolled his eyes and strode in Dash’s direction.

  The guy looked him over, mild distaste on his face as he took in Agent Ruby’s appearance. “Whoa, why do you look like you walked out of a Sherlock Holmes’ novel?”

  Agent Ruby arched an eyebrow at the guy with a monocle. “I work for a very powerful organization and need to enlist your help. Do you have someplace we can meet privately?”

  Dash held out his arms wide. “We’re all friends here.”

  Agent Ruby glanced over his shoulder at the hipsters playing chess or typing on their laptops and shook his head, turning back around. “Someplace private,” he insisted.

  “Yeah, I guess we can use my office, but I can’t stay confined in that space for too long. It inhibits my creativity.” Dash led the way to a set of offices on the far side of the large room. On the outside of the space that Dash led the agent into was a placard that read: “Yoda Programmer—raz8.dash.”

  Agent Ruby paused outside the office and pointed. “Is this your name?”

  “Yeah, but most call me by my last name, Dash,” the hipster explained. “Although I’d prefer it to be lowercase so I don’t insist upon my self-importance.”

  Agent Ruby let out a breath, willing his patience not to evaporate. This plan was bold and seemingly against everything he stood for, but if he was going to overthrow the current Saint Valentine, he had to take the risk. He had to ruin modern love and the only way to do that was to accelerate things already in motion.

  When all the technology and avant-garde ways brought the love meter to zero, the magical world would see the truth. They’d get rid of the current Saint Valentine. Agent Ruby would replace him. The world would return to what it was supposed to be—love only created for the rich and refined using traditional ways.

  The office was contemporary like the other spaces, but at least it had a desk and chairs. Without being invited, Agent Ruby took a seat, crossing his legs and folding his hands over his knee in a dignified manner.

  “I’m Agent Ruby, a director for the Fairy Godmother Agency. I’m enlisting your help to break up relationships worldwide.”

  Chapter Two

  “Why would someone who works for the Fairy Godmother Agency want to destroy relationships?” Dash stroked his dark brown beard.

  Agent Ruby sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  “I graduated valedictorian from MIT,” Dash countered. “Try me. I can do complicated.”

  It wasn’t that Agent Ruby had to explain his motives, but he knew that by doing so, he had a better chance of getting Dash to do what he wanted. The guy hadn’t dismissed the plan. He’d seemed interested. Now he wanted to know the “why,” which would hopefully seal the deal rather than take it off the table.

  “You see, technology is ruining relationships—”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Dash interrupted. “Less is more. I got rid of television a decade ago.”

  “Good for you,” Agent Ruby said dryly. “If I sit back and do nothing, the degradation of relationships would be gradual. By the time it was evident that technology and progressive ideas were the culprits, it would be too late. So instead, I propose we accelerate things linking the cause directly to social media, technology, and liberalism. Then the board of FGA will see the error of our ways, promote me to Saint Valentine, and I’ll be in a position to reinstate the values that we’ve abandoned and turn things back to how they used to be.”

  “I’ll be out of a job,” Dash argued.

  “I’m willing to make it worth your while,” Agent Ruby said plainly.

  Dash arched a bushy eyebrow at him with an expression that said, “Do tell.”

  “I’m willing to pay you handsomely to do this,” Agent Ruby continued. “How about your full year’s salary here at FriendNet to start? Then another year’s salary once we’ve been successful. Does that seem fair?”


  The guy’s face didn’t change. Instead, he simply nodded, unimpressed by the offer. “I’d do it anyway, but that will help to ensure I land on my feet after this.”

  “You would?” Agent Ruby was surprised.

  “I only took this job as a thought experiment,” Dash explained. “I was curious how social media algorithms could change and shape human behavior. I’ve played out the experiment. It turns out that we’re simply rats in a maze and any small high can direct behavior. Most have no idea that they’re simply puppets and companies like FriendNet control everything from their mood, shopping, and health. It really is sad, and I’m happy to demolish this system and allow you and love to benefit.”