Dead Man in a Ditch By Luke Arnold You ever suddenly, shockingly, find yourself in the present moment? Drop right into right now? And all it does is highlight the fact that you spend every other moment somewhere else? T he second installment of The Man for Hires story proved just as wonderful and non-magical as the first. With more hints that magic might come back, and enough evidence to almost convince the man who destroyed it himself, more and more parlor tricks come into the light. Fletch thought he'd really seen it all, but as magical threats and allegations come to light, it becomes clear to him how, despite the facade of a few people trying to crawl forwards, most people were trying to sprint back to how things had been. Doctors stole magic from the remains of those who didn't survive the coda, and surgeons reconstructed the youth that was stolen from hundreds of year old creatures who expected to live for centuries only 6 years before. Fletch knew to be spectacle