Enchanted Ever After

by Shanna Swendson

  Rod and Philip were under less suspicion, and they moved to take action, but Marcia stood in front of them. “No, let’s handle this a better way,” she said. “Gemma?”

  Gemma joined her. “Yeah, we’ve got this.” The two of them approached the scuffle. “Whoa, guys, what’s all this?” Gemma asked, tossing her hair over her shoulder and fluttering her eyelashes at the men.

  “Yeah, what are you guys doing?” Marcia added.

  The men turned to see a leggy brunette who could have been a model and an elegant blonde. In their current state of inebriation, the men didn’t seem able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and a man who’d tried to cut in line lost out to attractive women. “Huh?” one of the men said.

  The guy who’d tried to cut started to object, but apparently realized that he was getting what he wanted. The others had forgotten to object to him stealing a place in line. For a moment, I worried that he’d try to continue the fight. He bounced around on the balls of his feet, like a sparring boxer, and I felt the magic power building as he prepared to strike. I rushed to get in between him and my friends, since if he attacked using magic, it would do me no harm. I wasn’t sure what he did, but I certainly felt the blast of magic hit me. I forced myself not to react. I imagined he must be wondering what went wrong, since he probably had no idea I was magically immune.

  The other men in the line surely felt the magic, too, but since nothing had happened, they didn’t have anything to react to, and they were distracted by Gemma. She’d engaged them in conversation about the club, the band that was playing, and whether they were any good. I still noticed some camera flashes going off, but there wasn’t anything to take pictures of right now, just me standing still while a man faced me with his hands held in front of him.

  The line jumper grew hot under the collar about being more or less ignored. That told me he was in this to make a scene, not to get into the club sooner. Clenching his fists, he summoned more power, and I felt another wave of magic hit from behind, where Rod, Philip, and Owen seemed to have put up some kind of magical shield. I couldn’t see them doing it. They all looked like they were just standing there, glaring at the troublemaker, but if you knew magic, you knew they were doing something.

  The line began moving again, more smoothly now, and the guy had to decide if he wanted to get into the club or if he wanted to keep making a scene. He moved with the line, heading into the club. I made sure to get a good look at his face so I’d recognize him if I saw him again. He didn’t look at all familiar. He wasn’t someone I’d encountered at work or through any related magical activities. I wondered if any of the guys recognized him.

  Once all the parties involved were inside, I asked, “Do we need to go in and make sure nothing else happens?”

  “I figure it’s the club’s problem now,” Rod said.

  “Should we alert the magical authorities?” Philip asked.

  “Well, it was a public use of magic,” Owen said. “And we noticed it, so there could be trouble for us if we don’t report it.”

  “On the other hand, it was pretty petty as magic goes, and here comes our car,” Rod said.

  “Maybe we could call our security people, and they can take care of notifying the authorities,” I suggested as a compromise. I wasn’t taking any chances of Owen getting in trouble with the Council. Once we were in the limo, I called Sam and reported the situation and the location, along with a description of the magic user, in case Sam wanted to keep an eye on him. I figured that would satisfy the Council while keeping us from being entangled.

  But I cared a lot less whether some loser used magic to cut in line at a nightclub than I cared how far the story had spread. I hoped that the nonmagical intervention would keep it from becoming a big story. It was hardly worth sensationalizing. Then again, I had a feeling that the guy had wanted to start a magical fight and had only backed down because his agenda would have been obvious if he got what he wanted and still kept fighting. That, combined with the possibility that one of the anti-magic people was hanging out in a magical club, was highly suspicious. Maybe it wasn’t just that people were noticing magic. Maybe magical people were trying to get noticed.

  The next morning, I borrowed Marcia’s laptop and checked out the magic-watching blogs. The story was all over them. Most of the photos were blurry, and I was relieved to note that we didn’t show up in any of them. Nothing we’d done had been worth taking pictures of, at least not as proof that magic exists. One photo captured the moment the woman was pushed back. She looked like she was flying backward without anyone nearby seeming to have pushed her. It was rather iffy as proof of magic use went, but I could see where it might raise questions.

  Marcia leaned over my shoulder to peer at the screen. “There are really people out there looking for magic?” she asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  “If I didn’t know they were right, I’d say they were crazy.”

  “That’s what we’re counting on.”

  “And it’s really bad for magical people to do stuff that normal people can see as magic?”

  “Yeah. Their society is based on keeping magic a secret. Imagine what would happen if everyone knew magic worked, but only a certain group of people born with the power could use it.”

  “Probably lots of fear and hate. A lot of people would think having magic was an unfair advantage and would try to find a way to eliminate it, I guess. There might be some trying to bribe, blackmail, or coerce magical people into working for them. So, yeah, I can see the point.”

  “What I find interesting is that the people looking out for magic manage to report on every little incident.”

  She sat across from me at the kitchen table, where I was working. “I suppose that is odd. Are there that many people looking for magic?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering. Either there are so many people looking for magic and aware of where to report it that there’s always someone present when anything happens, no matter where or when it happens, or it’s all being staged.”

  “Either way, it sounds like a potentially bad situation.”

  “If there are that many people becoming aware of magic, we’ve got a big problem. But it’s also scary if it’s being staged, if the people using magic know where one of these reporters will be and make a point of doing magic in front of them.”

  “You think magical people are doing this on purpose?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. It’s just one possibility, but I feel like I have to consider it.”

  “But why would magic people want to expose magic? You just said that’s a big no-no.”

  “They might think they could take over the world once the secret is out, rather than being restricted. The current magical powers that be might lose some control.”

  “Oh,” she said with a wince. “So you think the Magical Liberation Front, or whatever they are, are in league with the magical watchdogs? Or maybe the magical watchdogs are a front for the Magical Liberation Front?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. I don’t know who any of these people are or what their agenda really is, and I don’t know what kind of threat they pose. Maybe they’re in league, or maybe they’re using each other without them knowing they’re being used.”

  She took a long sip from her coffee cup before saying, “You know, you may just be reading more into this than there really is. Given everything you’ve dealt with, it’s perfectly reasonable for you to see conspiracies everywhere, but it’s possible that the magic watchers happen to be at all these magical incidents because they’ve identified magical people who are prone to using magic in public, and they’re stalking those people.”

  I looked across the table at her over the top of the laptop screen. “That’s a good point. I mean, if you saw someone use what you were pretty sure was magic, you’d want to learn more about that person. You might start following them, which means you’d be there the next time they used magic. If there are only a few peo
ple slipping and using magic in ways that get noticed, whether or not it’s on purpose, it’s easy enough to keep track of them.”

  “See, probably a perfectly simple explanation, so you don’t have to get all worried about it when you need to be planning a wedding.”

  “What about planning a wedding?” said Gemma, who’d just come through the front door, a yoga mat under her arm.

  “When you say the word ‘wedding,’ it summons her,” I said to Marcia. To Gemma, I said, “Nothing, just making sure that these incidents aren’t going to distract me from my wedding planning. It’s probably nothing.” To emphasize the point, I closed the laptop.

  I really should have been able to let it go. Marcia’s explanation made perfect sense. There probably wasn’t any kind of conspiracy to expose magic coming from within the magical world. It was just a few jerks making trouble for everyone else and getting noticed by the kind of people who actually paid attention to what was going on around them. That artificially amplified the impression of magic run amok. Ninety-nine and probably about nine tenths percent of New Yorkers never saw anything that looked like magic. I’d merely focused on the tiny percentage who did.

  And I managed to get through the rest of the day without worrying about it, though I couldn’t help but check on the magic-watching blogs that night. The nightclub incident hadn’t struck me as being worth much notice. It hadn’t even been splashy magic. But still, the story had spread to all the sites, with more photos. It seemed to me that you had to be trying hard to believe to work up any excitement about this incident. Maybe that’s what the tabloid guys needed to do: set up boring magical incidents to publicize. I wondered if they had an online presence.

  After church Sunday, I stopped by a bodega to pick up a newspaper, but then I noticed the rack of tabloids. Were they reporting any of the magic incidents? Impulsively, I bought a copy of each one. I couldn’t help but wonder which was the paper produced by magical people. Would I be able to tell? When I got home, I spread them on the dining table to study. One was more celebrity-driven and didn’t have the “news of the weird” stuff. The others all had similar content, including pieces about the bus incident. I couldn’t tell which one was the story written using my interview. The MSI guys apparently knew their stuff. They must have written something indistinguishable from a real tabloid. Two of the papers had stories suggesting that there might be dragons in Central Park, so even that didn’t confirm which paper was a magical plant.

  “Ooh, mental junk food!” Nita exclaimed as she came in from her own shopping expedition with groceries. “Is there anything about who Leo’s with now?”

  I shoved the celebrity paper over to her. “Be my guest.”

  “I never had you pegged as being into this sort of thing,” she said as she leaned over to scan the headlines.

  “It’s sort of for a work project,” I said, glad that I hadn’t mentioned anything about not working in marketing anymore. “We’re considering a campaign with a ‘trashy news’ theme, so I’m getting ideas. And learning about the wide variety of strange beings spotted in American cities.”

  I might have spent the day in intense analysis of the tabloid press if Owen hadn’t shown up with a picnic basket and a suggestion to take advantage of a nice spring day in the park. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see the dragons for ourselves,” I quipped.

  “Dragons?” Owen asked.

  “Tabloid story,” I said.

  “Really? Which paper was it in?” Nita asked.

  I pointed out the pertinent ones. “We’d better sneak out before Gemma catches us and makes us work on the wedding plans.”

  He patted his picnic basket. “I have cake samples in here.”

  “What will we do with our lives when the wedding’s over and we don’t have to work planning into everything we do?”

  “I can’t wait to find out,” he said, so earnestly it was rather endearing. I had to agree with him.

  When we reached the park, we found a somewhat private spot under a tree and spread our blanket. Owen took a bakery box out of his basket and opened the lid to reveal a selection of cakes. “I got a mix of traditional and nontraditional types,” he said. “Remember, we can make just about anything look like a wedding cake, so we’re not stuck with the usual white cake and white icing.”

  “That can be good if you do it right, but I’m willing to consider other options,” I said as I picked up a fork.

  While I was contemplating the Italian cream cake as an option, I noticed a group of kids trooping through the park nearby, led by adults dressed as wizards. The fact that they were actually dressed as wizards, pointy hats and all, suggested that they weren’t our kind of wizards, but I still pointed them out to Owen. “What’s going on over there?” I asked.

  “Some kind of educational fun, I suppose,” he said, once he’d swallowed a bite of cake. “I’m not sure about the white chocolate.”

  “It doesn’t really taste like chocolate,” I said. Then I groaned. “Oh, no.”

  “What? I only put the carrot cake in as an option, but I agree that it’s not high on my list.”

  “No, carrot cake is okay, though probably not for a wedding. Look who’s following the kids.” A man carrying a television camera on his shoulder came after the line of children, a woman walking alongside him. “The way things have been going lately, this means something weird and magical is going to happen at any moment.”

  “There are probably news crews all over the city most of the time every day, and how many actual magical events have they captured?”

  “Are you talking over time, or in the last week or so?”

  “Okay, so we’ll keep our eyes open, and I won’t use magic.”

  Something ran across my foot, and I barely stifled a squeal as I jerked out of the way. I looked, expecting a rat, but I saw one of the little magical creatures who lived in the park. “Shoo, go away, this is a bad time,” I said. There had been a brief moment when they’d worshiped me because I’d held a magical brooch, and they apparently hadn’t forgotten that. If I went into the park, I usually found myself with company. The last thing we needed right now was footage of strange creatures hitting the news. They were usually veiled from ordinary people, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  It was hard to focus on tasting the cake while I worried what disaster was likely to happen next—and it takes some serious worry to distract me from cake. The kids stopped to do some kind of activity that had been staged for them, and the cameraman circled them as they worked. The reporter talked to one of the leaders, scribbling notes in a small notepad as the leader spoke. I couldn’t help but scan the area for any potential threats.

  There were several guys in hoodies nearby, but since it was a cool spring day, it seemed like half the people in the park were dressed the same way. It didn’t mean that the mysterious bus wizard was here and ready to cause trouble. A clump of bicycles came down the path that passed this section of lawn, and while packs of feral bikers were often a menace in the park, that wasn’t unusual enough to make the news. Everyone knew that you had to get out of their way or else you’d get spandex poisoning. You were usually safe from them as long as you stayed off the pavement.

  The moment that thought crossed my mind, the pack veered off the path and onto the grass, heading straight for the kids. They all moved as one, staying in formation behind their leader, but they moved at the same time as their leader rather than waiting for him to move and then following him. It was like they were all on the same wavelength. I was surprised they were able to keep going at any speed riding on the grass. “Owen,” I said softly.

  He was already standing. “I see them.”

  I tugged on his hand, trying to pull him back down to me. “Don’t! You could get in trouble.”

  “Only if I do anything they notice, and they’re heading for those kids.” His hand slipped out of my grasp as he hurried across the lawn, shouting and waving his arms.

  The adults with the kids
finally looked up and noticed the pack of bicycles bearing down on them. They tried to herd the kids out of the path, but the bikes veered to follow them. This was definitely magic, and I could feel it. But who was doing it?

  I got up and ran after Owen. He was pulling together a spell, which rendered my sense of magic useless. Feeling his magic right next to me made it impossible for me to detect any other sources of magic, so I ran across the lawn, as though heading for the kids, but all the while trying to detect the tingle of magic. I was pretty sure I felt something from one of the hoodie guys I’d noticed earlier, which somewhat vindicated me in my suspicions.

  The sense of magic grew stronger, like the spell had intensified. I glanced back toward the kids and saw that the cameraman was now shooting the approaching bikers, who relentlessly pursued the children. The front wheels of the bikes began to rise, but just then a couple of the bikers seemed to hit an obstacle in the grass, and they fell over, bringing down the bikes near them in a hopeless tangle. The adults with the kids took advantage of the opportunity to flee with their charges.

  I heard a muffled curse behind me and turned to see the hoodie guy running away. I thought about running after him, but I’m not exactly athletic, so I had no chance of catching him, and I wasn’t sure what I could do if I did. I’d seen enough of his face to be sure he was the same guy I saw at the club, and I was fairly sure I’d recognize him if I saw him again. Instead, I joined Owen, who’d headed for the bicycle pileup and was helping the fallen bikers. Much to my relief, the news crew had followed the kids instead of lingering to see what happened to the bikers. It would have only been news if they’d hit the kids, and a bike wreck wasn’t exactly the stuff that Pulitzers are made of.

  I helped one of the riders get to his feet and pick up his bike. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess.” He looked around, blinking. “How did we get off the path?”