Some of the Characters from the Jack Magic Series

Above: Members of the Paranorm Bureau, from left to right: BLOPEX, Darcy Valentine, NCB (Nathaniel Curtis Buckroe), Dr. Allura Swisher, Kevin Hodges, Stevie Wallaby

Jack Magic

Although there seems to be some dispute over his real name, what is known about Jack Magic is that he is a very good stage magician. In addition to performing illusions, Jack is also an accomplished escape artist, quick change artist, ventriloquist, juggler, acrobat and pickpocket. He is also skilled in the martial arts of taekwondo and bojutsu. He sounds almost too good to be true, but he does appear to have at least one serious flaw: a difficulty maintaining long lasting relationships with his constantly changing roster of assistants. Or, as his ex-girlfriend/former assistant Alex describes him: "he's a self-centered jackass."
Jack was performing at an outdoor festival in Richmond Virginia when he was attacked by a rogue Power Being known as Megajolt. He was severely injured in the aftermath, but was miraculously healed in the hospital by a mysterious woman calling herself Mia the Whitetorch. Only one problem: nobody else saw any such person and there was no security footage of her, so the public at large believes that Jack healed his body using his own super powers because he's secretly a Power Being himself.
His friend and manager Bob Lopez was delighted to use the misconception for publicity, but now Jack not only has the attention of fans but also the government, as well as other real Power Beings and a mysterious organization of dangerous individuals known as The Outcast.
Something else came to light after Jack's accident and recovery: the magician secretly had a terminal condition that he shared with no one. He only had a short time left to live, but the Magic Sand that Mia the Whitetorch used to heal his physical injuries also eliminated the disease and put him in complete remission. Besides the Sand she also gifted Jack with a Magic Cane that was created out of something called The Artifact, declaring that Jack is now her Knight of Wands.

Alex

Short, pretty, feisty and fun, Alex was a former hairdresser who got her Approved Veterinary Assistant (AVA) certificate and changed careers to achieve her dream job of working with animals. At one time she had a romantic involvement with Jack Magic and was his magician's assistant, but they had a rather unpleasant break up and that ended their professional relationship. After receiving a phone tip one night from her girlfriends she went to the River City Fun Fest to confront Jack about a large sum of money he still owed her, yet somehow ended up being persuaded into helping him one more time with his act. The events that followed changed her life forever.
Mia the Whitetorch tells Alex that Alexandra is another name given to the goddess Hera by the ancient Greeks. To them it meant "One who comes to save warriors." And later Alex has an encounter with Dr. Cognizance, a Power Being who has cosmic awareness of the past, present and future. He refers to Alex as "Princess Alexandra," perhaps foreshadowing events to come.

Bob Lopez/Blopez/Bobcat Droidwait/BLOPEX

Bob Lopez is Jack Magic's manager and best friend. Jack nicknamed him Blopez when they met because he was wearing a work nametag that read B LOPEZ. It turns out it's a nickname that privately annoys him to no end.
He also has perhaps the worst luck of anyone in the series. In the first book Bob is kidnapped and returned to Jack and Alex inside a small box. No, he wasn't dead, a villain named Anima used a Warp Coil to separate his head from the rest of his body while still alive, threatening to turn off the coils if they did not do exactly what she wanted.
Jack managed to rescue Bob and free him from the warp coils. Unfortunately it turns out that the person rescued was not Bob, he was an exact android duplicate designed to take his place. Crazy, right? Even crazier is that neither Jack nor Alex nor anyone else knew he had been replaced for almost a year and a half. It wasn't until the Other Knights arrived that Woolf immediately knew there was something wrong with Jack's friend and Damocles used his sword to chop the android's head off. Somehow the artificial being still functioned after being decapitated, and a deal was struck with the Paranorm Bureau to allow it to be repaired in exchange for helping them find the whereabouts  of the real Bob Lopez. Too Far renamed the duplicate as  Bobcat Droidwait.
SPOILER ALERT: At the end of Other Knights Bobcat's android body is destroyed, but it is revealed that he had downloaded a recording of his brain to Darcy Valentine's computer RAID.  It's not a complete copy, it has all of Bob Lopez/Bobcat's memories but none of his emotional content. This new version of Bob rechristens itself as BLOPEX, and now exists as a holographic  image inside a portable module...ironically, a head in a box again!   

Damocles

Damocles is The Knight of Swords and the unofficial leader of The Other Knights. He suffers from amnesia, not remembering his true identity or any of the life he had prior to becoming a John Doe in the custody of the state. He has the mannerisms and discipline of a soldier, but no record of his previous existence can be found in any active international government or military database.
Like Jack's cane, Damocle's sword seems to also be constructed from part of The Artifact belonging to Mia the Whitetorch. The Other Knights have been tasked with protecting The Magic Child, although they have no idea who that person is or even its gender.
Damocles is an expert swordsman, loyal, brave and good with tools. He suffers from a great deal of stress which he tries to manage and hide from the others. Damocles takes it upon himself to protect Woolf and especially Too Far. Even though he finds her behavior quite exasperating, Damocles privately has a great deal of affection for her.

Too Far

Too Far is The Knight of Cups. Like her fellow Other Knights, poor Too Far has amnesia. She has a magic wooden cup also made from part of The Artifact. With this vessel she can create and throw any kind of liquid her mind can think of, from high-pressure water to volitile chemicals or acids.  Speaking of mind, Too Far is crazier than a screen door on a submarine, not playing with a full deck, the wheels are spinning but the hamster is unconscious. But Too Far is also a loving and vulnerable soul, desperate to be liked the way every class clown wants attention. She creates new nick names for everyone she meets in a subconscious attempt to even the playing field. She is covered in 213 ridiculous tattoos that she has no memory of ever getting as well as 213 different voices in her head. Coincidence? Nope. Milo Severance tells Jack in Other Knights Part One: “Your friends are enchanted. They are not what they appear to be.” Too Far's true identity, as well as those of the other two Other Knights, will be revealed in the series finale.

Woolf

Woolf is The Knight of Pentacles. He wears a magic ring carved from part of The Artifact that can generate star-shaped projections of energy. Like the rest of The Other Knights he suffers from amnesia, but unlike his companions he retained small bits of memories from his former life. These were mostly unpleasant callbacks to be taunted and teased about his size and eating habits. Woolf has an eating disorder where he is constantly hungry. He consumes a lot of food, sometimes unconsciously, but never gains any additional weight. Woolf is a lacto-ovo vegetarian, he can consume dairy and egg products but no meat.
Woolf is the least comfortable with the powers given to him by Mia the Whitetorch. The ability to throw energy stars feels unnatural to him, as if he were only a temporary stand-in for someone else to take his place. Privately he feels a great rage that he is afraid will one day explode out and consume not only himself but his friends as well.

Dr. Allura Swisher

Don’t bother telling her jokes about The X-Files and Men in Black, she’s heard them all and then some. Dr. Allura Swisher is a field operative for the Paranorm Bureau, and her job is investigating the unknown, the paranormal and the just plain weird, and no one has a better sense of humor about it than herself. Charming, attractive and inquisitive, she uses her quick wit and deductive powers to uncover more information than most agents can obtain with rubber hoses and automotive batteries. Just don’t mistake her easy-going manner for weakness. She can take out a man twice her size with just two of her fingers. Obsessed with unraveling the century-old mystery behind The Outcast, Dr. Swisher is not above “bending the rules,” especially if she can get a certain magician who may or may not be a Power Being to work on her side.
She has an adopted daughter, Spectra Swisher, who wants to be a magician like Jack Magic, who she refers to as Uncle Jack. Dr. Swisher also has a relative who is a higher ranking officer in the Paranorm Bureau, but they both play down the connection to avoid any accusations of favoritism. More recently, Dr. Swisher's own mother, known to friends as Mama Swish, has unofficially "adopted" Jack Magic, making Jack tease Allura that he is now her brother, much to her infuriation.

Mia the Whitetorch/Loki

A mysterious woman, much older than she appears, with many previous names and identities, including Violet Mary Firth, the discarded identity of occultist Dion Fortune in the early 20th century. Those who knew her best called her Loki, which is an abbreviation of her true name. She loves puzzles and word games and in recent years had taken to calling herself Mia the Whitetorch. She was an extremely powerful sorceress in her homeland and was the wife of the villainous Furcifer Fike, a choice of the heart that made her persona non-grata and resulted in her being erased from The Chronicles of Rhoo, their nation's history. Now she shares his exile from their home and can never return.
Mia the Whitetorch was in possession of an object called The Artifact, something greatly prized that Fike had been desperately trying to recover for over a century. Mia took the object and cut it apart to make a magic cane, sword, cup and ring for Jack Magic and the Other Knights. Discovering this enraged Fike to the point where he lashed out with his powers and mortally wounded her.
What Fike did not know at the time was that Loki had given birth to a Magical Child and charged the Other Knights with the responsibility of protecting it. It was she who used the Oblivionis Absolutio to give them their amnesia to prevent Scandra from being able to read their minds.

Furcifer Fike/Ananias Fike

Perhaps the most powerful sorcerer on Earth, certainly the most dangerous. In his homeland Furcifer Fike was known as The Prince of Lies, and he used his charm and guile to coerce, influence and seduce others into giving him their secrets of magic, witchcraft and wizardry, then discarding them when achieved what he needed. Somewhere along his path to power he married Loki, who truly loved him. She stood by him when one of his spurned lovers cast the Spell of Eternal Torment upon him. Loki was able to cure Fike but at a terrible cost: he was doomed for the rest of his existence to only speak the truth...and one of the first truths he spoke was admitting to Loki that he had only been using her and never loved her.
When there was a regime change in his homeland, Fike and his followers fled to first Europe then the United States. They banded together under the name of The Outcast, creating a secretive criminal empire with a single minded goal. Over the decades Fike learned how to deceive and manipulate people even while forced to tell only the truth, through parsing words, allowing people to make assumptions, withholding important information and the best way to lie of all: keeping your mouth shut.
Extremely long-lived, he has had many different identities over the past century including Dr. Mabuse and his current persona as Ananias Fike (Ananias being the name of a person from the Bible who lied to Peter and was struck dead by God). Fortunately for Fike it's easy to change your identity without lying as long as you legally change your name.
In the book series Fike pursues two new goals: to find the unknown Magical Child of his ex-wife to obtain its power and also secretly influencing and maneuvering Jack Magic, who Fike has chosen as his "Plan B."

Skyward Glance

The leader of The Eastern Syndicate, a faction of The Outcast located primarily in Asia and the Pacific Hemisphere. This world renowned entrepreneur and fashion icon has reinvented herself over and over again throughout the decades. She joking claims that she named herself Skyward Glance after her own mother: "It was the last thing she did before Dorothy dropped a house on her."
The truth is that Glance is indeed a powerful sorceress, and she has returned to America to unveil her new product The Other Shoe. She also served notice that she wants to rule The Outcast and has called a mandatory meeting of all their membership to New York City. There she claims that she was the person responsible for causing the events that resulted in The Penumbra and The Power Up (but not The Pandemics, she lays blame for those at the feet of the stupid human race).
Glance is in possession of what she claims to be fragments of The Second Artifact which she keeps in the tip of her magic staff to wield as a powerful weapon. Skyward Glance wants to rule The Outcast, not just out of ambition but for deeply personal reasons as well. Fike was her former lover and his betrayal so enraged her that she cast The Spell of Eternal Torment upon him, a terrible curse that leaves the victim in a state of unbearable physical agony, but also does the same thing to the person who casts it as well. Loki found a way to break the spell and cure Fike, and Glance acts now as if it was just a minor temper tantrum from a forgotten love affair. The truth is far more horrific.

Adam Shokwurk

The founder and CEO of Shokwurk Security Solutions, Adam Shokwurk uses the outbreak of The Power Up to provide the government with tools, weapons and security devices to deal with the rise of Power Beings. Unknown to the authorities, Shokwurk is a high ranking member of The Outcast. Ananias Fike tolerates Shokwurk's arrogance and high-profile public attention grabbing ego because the man is working on a new technology called Warp Coils that are at the heart of The Outcast's plans.
Adam Shokwurk has no super powers or any affinity with magic but his intelligence is beyond belief. Besides creating cutting edge robots for law enforcement he is working on a special project for recording and erasing human minds for sinister purposes.
Shokwurk is troubled because he himself is suffering memory lapses and he suspects that Fike's psychic enforcer Scandra is doing something to his brain. But is she responsible or could his afflicition be coming from a completely unexpected source from within his own company?

Eliza Webb

Adam Shokwurk's assistant and second-in-command at Shokwurk Security Solutions. Cool, aloof, calculating, stunningly beautiful yet intimidating, she also possesses superhuman strength, but is not a true  Power Being  nor a practitioner of magic like The Outcast. Eliza Webb is secretly a life-like android created by Shokwurk based on the physical appearance of one of his former employees.
Disguised as the Virtch commander named Anima of the Power Being Liberation Front, Eliza engages in an elaborate deception to create a major terrorist attack in Richmond Virginia that will take out the leadership of The Outcast and make Adam Shokwurk their new leader.
Eliza Webb is destroyed at the end of Jack Magic: Believe Your Eyes, but can something that was never alive truly die? Bobcat Droidwait says, “The best part about an android is that if you have the right material and software you can build as many copies as you like.