Enchanted Ever After

by Shanna Swendson

  There was something familiar about her that gave me the nagging feeling I’d seen her before. I ran through my mental directory of people I knew. I was pretty sure she wasn’t someone I knew from work, either at MSI or at my previous job. She wasn’t a neighbor. Maybe she was just someone I saw frequently on the subway or in neighborhood restaurants and shops. She didn’t look in my direction, so I figured I was safe. I’d only be in trouble if she recognized me and I couldn’t come up with her name.

  The speaker seemed to have lost his train of thought at the woman’s arrival. He stopped speaking, cleared his throat, and started again. “Thank you all for coming tonight. I don’t know how many of you joined us because you’ve always felt like there was something going on and how many were just curious, but I want to state up front that magic is real. It’s all around us. Most people just don’t notice it because we see what we want to see, what our minds can handle.”

  I couldn’t help but remember the way I’d first heard that magic was real. I’d been given a similar speech, but it had been a little more convincing since I’d been in the conference room at MSI, which looked a lot like I imagined the chamber with the Round Table at Camelot would be, and it had been Merlin himself giving the speech, with visual aids provided by Owen. I wondered if we’d get a similar demonstration here.

  Instead of doing magic tricks, the speaker turned on an overhead projector—the old-fashioned kind with transparent slides. “Wow, they’re really kickin’ it old school,” Trish muttered under her breath.

  The evidence of magic looked even less convincing on overhead projector slides than on a blog. Come to think of it, if these people were behind a blog, I’d have thought they’d have managed at least some kind of computer presentation. I had to wonder, was this meeting really about convincing us of the existence of magic, or was it a clever disinformation campaign? If I were trying to make people not believe in magic, this was probably exactly what I would put together. If the people attending the meeting saw this and classed all the magic watchdogs in the same group, then the “magic is real” movement would die out rapidly.

  After a few more slides, the speaker said, “I know this doesn’t look like much evidence, but it’s really difficult to photograph magic in use.” That was the most credible thing he’d said this whole time. “The odds are slim that anyone will have a camera out and ready to take a picture when someone happens to use magic, and most magic happens in the blink of an eye. By the time you have the chance to react, it’s over. We also believe that magical people have a way to hide their magic from the world, so most magic will never be noticed by ordinary people.”

  If I hadn’t been in on the secret, I’d have thought that was a rather convenient way to excuse the lack of evidence. It was a common thread in conspiracy theories—the lack of evidence is proof of a cover-up. Since I didn’t know how much these people knew, I suspected in this case it was more of an excuse than an awareness of how magic worked.

  “Some people see more than others,” the speaker went on. “We don’t know if they just happen to be in the right place at the right time, keep their eyes open, and are willing to admit to what they see or if there’s something special about these people that allows them to see past whatever is done to hide magic.”

  Now he was getting close. Either they’d guessed pretty accurately, or someone in the know had set all this up. That was the thing about conspiracy theories. When dealing with them, you tended to find yourself thinking that way, too.

  “Have any of you seen things you believe are magic?” the speaker asked.

  Remembering the role I was playing, I tentatively raised my hand, barely lifting it above shoulder level. As I did so, I glanced around the room to see who else was raising a hand. The two homeless guys in the back looked at each other, shrugged, and raised their hands. None of the other attendees moved.

  The speaker blinked rapidly at our response, but I couldn’t tell if he was surprised by so few or so many. “Um, well, what have you seen?” he asked.

  “You know, the usual,” one of the homeless guys said with a shrug. “Gargoyles flying over the city, fairies walking to work. That sort of thing.” His friend nodded in agreement, as though verifying what he said.

  The speaker blinked even more rapidly. “Oh. Well. Um. Uh. That’s . . . interesting.” There were a few soft coughs of the sort meant to stifle laughter from the rest of the audience. The woman at the end of our aisle raised her eyebrows above the rims of her glasses. The speaker turned to me. “And you, miss? I believe you had your hand up.”

  I looked around, making sure he was speaking to me. “You know that weird fight that happened at the bridal sale a while ago? I was there,” I said. I decided not to let on that I might be immune to magic, not until I knew more about this group. “It was, well, weird. That was when I started looking into this magic stuff.”

  The woman on our row snapped her head around to stare at me so quickly I was afraid she’d give herself whiplash. She hadn’t given me a first look, let alone a second glance, before, but now she seemed to be sizing me up, like she was trying to figure out whether she knew me from somewhere. That brought back my sense that I knew her. Oh, great, now I was going to either have to fake remembering her and find a way to avoid introducing her to Trish after the meeting or pretend not to see her and duck out quickly.

  I’d almost forgotten about the speaker. “Okay, yes,” he said, and I turned back toward the front to see him nodding and grinning in what looked like relief that I hadn’t sounded as crazy as the homeless guy. “Our people have been looking into that event, and it’s been the center of a lot of discussion among the magic watchers. That’s the sort of thing we need all of you to be on the lookout for. The more of us who are out there looking for magic, the more likely it is that we’ll eventually get real proof. Keep your eyes and your mind open, and you’re sure to see more magic. Carry a camera with you at all times and be ready to take pictures or video. When we have enough evidence that there’s no way to deny it or explain it, then we can take action and demand that the government do something about the magical people living among us. Does anyone else have a magical experience they’d like to share?”

  He glanced around expectantly, but no one spoke. “Well, then, thank you for coming. Please stay in touch and let us know if you see magic. There are fliers on the table with information on how to submit reports. Feel free to hang around and enjoy the refreshments. Introduce yourselves to each other. We’re all in this together, fighting on the same team.”

  Most of the attendees beat a hasty retreat to the exit. The woman on my row didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave, but she made no move to approach me. Since that imagined crisis didn’t appear to be coming to pass, I lingered, hesitating. I was pretty sure the homeless guy who’d spoken and his friend were magical immunes, and if that was the case, we could help them. But I could hardly hand them a business card from MSI or even reassure them that the gargoyles were real here at this meeting without blowing my cover, and it was unlikely they had a way for me to contact them. The best I could do was go to the refreshment table under the guise of taking a cookie for the road while they loaded up on more and whisper, “You’re not the only ones who sees the gargoyles. They’re really there. You should speak to one sometime.”

  I then prepared to hurry out of the room and alert any security gargoyles to these guys so they could approach them, but I found my way blocked by the woman who’d been at the front of the room, the one who looked like one of the illustrations in the “dress for success” brochure they’d handed out to female students when I was in college.

  “Hi, I’m Lara,” she said with something I felt was intended to be a smile, but her smiling muscles didn’t get a lot of work, so it was a weak one.

  I didn’t want to give my name, but I worried that I’d get caught giving a fake one. “Kathleen,” I said, giving the full name that no one ever used. That way, it was the truth, but perhaps less likely to get
tracked back to me.

  “I was intrigued by what you said about the bridal sale event, since we did get a lot of reports from that incident. Maybe you could submit your own report.”

  “I guess I could,” I said, “but I don’t have too much to add. I saw that woman on the news, talking about magic, and it explained so much, so I looked her up and found her blog, and that led me to the other ones, so I think I’ve seen every account of that incident, and they saw more than I did.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman at the end of the row edge closer, like she was eavesdropping. At the same time, she hunched further into her sweatshirt. At the rate she was going, she’d soon be inside the hood without doing anything to raise it. I got the impression she wanted to hear everything without being seen or recognized.

  Wait a second; now I thought I knew who she was. Take off the glasses, take her hair down, put on a full makeup job, and dress her in professional clothes, and I was pretty sure she was a local television reporter—the one who’d interviewed Abigail Williams. She might also have been the one in the park, now that I thought about it. My stomach clenched. If a reporter was looking into this, we were in big trouble.

  “I’m sure you have something you could contribute,” Lara said, drawing my attention back to her. She attempted another smile, but the corners of her lips didn’t go much higher than before. “So, are you getting married? Or were you there with a friend who was shopping for a dress?”

  Again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell the truth, but I didn’t want to get caught lying. “Yeah, I’m getting married,” I said. “That’s probably why I didn’t see too much. I was so focused on finding a dress that they probably could have blown up the building around me without me noticing.”

  “Well, now that you’re aware of the magic around us, I’m sure you’ll be seeing much more. Or have you seen other things?”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a casual shrug. “I’m not originally from New York, so the whole city seems kind of strange and magical to me, you know?” I let my drawl deepen. “I see all kinds of crazy things, but I figure it’s just New York. No one else around me seems to see them. I guess I’m still just a hick.”

  “Maybe you’re seeing more than you realize. Keep your eyes open, and be sure to file reports,” she said, not even trying to smile anymore, before turning away. While we’d been talking, the reporter had edged around us and slunk out the door, avoiding conversation with anyone. Had she come to this meeting because of a story she was working on, or had it been for personal reasons? If she was here on a story, she hadn’t made any effort to get names or contact info, but she could have merely been doing background research.

  Now with two goals in mind, getting someone to contact the potentially immune homeless guys and finding out what the reporter’s deal was, I hurried out of the meeting room before anyone else could waylay me for conversation. Trish didn’t protest our rapid departure. “Well, wasn’t she just a perky ray of sunshine,” she muttered as we climbed the steps to the exit.

  “Who?” I asked, my thoughts still on the reporter.

  “Who else? Miss Dress-for-Success you were just talking to.”

  “Yeah, there was something odd about her.”

  “Who else did you think I meant?”

  We reached the exit, and I found myself breathing a little more freely once we were out on the sidewalk. “Did you notice that woman who came in late and sat on our row? Did you recognize her?”

  “I didn’t pay her much attention, though she did seem to be trying to go incognito. Why? Should I know her? Was she some actress?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, she’s the reporter who covered the bridal brawl, the one who interviewed Abigail Williams when she talked about magic.”

  “Oh. So I guess she didn’t write that woman off as a total nutjob.”

  “Or she’s doing an exposé on nutjobs like that.”

  “Well, if that’s what she wanted, she got plenty of material in that meeting. There was something odd about that whole situation, and ‘odd’ is putting it mildly. Though it sounds like those homeless guys must be immune. Poor guys, they probably think they’re imagining things.”

  “Which reminds me,” I said, getting out my phone and calling Sam. “I don’t know which of your guys is staking this place out,” I said into the phone, “but there were a couple of men who I’d guess are homeless at this meeting, and one of them said he saw gargoyles and fairies while his friend nodded. You might want to check them out as immunes. Learning that they’re right about magic might help them, and they might make good assets for us. They haven’t come outside yet.”

  “What? We said we weren’t going to have anyone there, just in case of immunes.”

  “Sam, really?” I didn’t believe for a minute he’d let me go unguarded. He was just being careful about hiding.

  He gave a soft sigh. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  That taken care of, I put away my phone and said to Trish, “Reporter aside, that meeting wasn’t quite what I was expecting.”

  “You too? If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was all a setup to make these magic watchers look like idiots.”

  “I was thinking the same thing, even considering setting up an event like that if we have to do something to shut all this down. I’m pretty sure it’s not the same group as the woman I met at the bridal sale.”

  “So there really are multiple factions out there?”

  “There are multiple blogs, so I guess so. But it seems like they all cross-pollinate. They report on the same events, but sometimes I think they’re just reporting what they saw on one of the other blogs.”

  “Then maybe it’s not so big a threat. It’ll all blow over soon enough.”

  “Let’s hope so.” But I didn’t feel entirely confident about that. These people didn’t seem the type to back down.

  “And what about the reporter? She may be the real danger.”

  “Well, unless she had a hidden camera on her, a TV reporter doesn’t have much if she doesn’t get footage, so I doubt she was reporting on the meeting.” I hoped she hadn’t been secretly recording the meeting. I didn’t want to end up on TV speaking up about having seen magic. “And either she dragged herself out of her sickbed to attend the meeting or she was trying to avoid being recognized.”

  “So maybe she’s researching a story. Or maybe she got curious after covering that story. Or, who knows, maybe she just happens to be into this sort of thing. She might also go on ghost tours and expeditions to hunt Bigfoot.”

  “Let’s hope so. Because if a reporter starts taking this at all seriously, we’re in real trouble.”

  “Or, if this meeting is the kind of thing she sees when she starts investigating, it entirely blows all their credibility, and this magic-watching movement will fizzle out.”

  “You’re so optimistic.”

  “Just call me Pollyanna.”

  “I hope you’re right.” But my experience was that things tended to get worse rather than miraculously getting better on their own.

  I was running late for work the next morning, and even though I doubted Sam was a stickler for punctuality, especially since I’d been on an assignment the night before, I still hated to be late. I suppose I’d never gotten over my ex-boss Mimi, who acted like I’d personally brought on Armageddon if I was two minutes late getting to my desk.

  I heard the roar and whoosh of a departing train as I rounded the corner to head down the stairs to my platform. Just my luck, I’d barely missed a train, so I’d have to wait for the next one. Since there was no point in running, I continued down the stairs to the platform at a more reasonable pace.

  When I was about halfway down the final flight of stairs, I heard a strange screeching sound and had to groan. If there was a mechanical problem somewhere on the line, there would be no hope of getting to work on time. Wouldn’t you know, this had to happen on the rare morning I wasn’t commuting with Owen, who could generally res
olve problems like this with a subtle wave of his hand.

  But when I reached the platform, I was surprised to see the train that had just left moving backwards up the track, back to the platform. Judging by the number of other people running down the stairs and toward the train, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Either something ahead was so badly broken that they’d had to back a train up, or someone was doing some serious public magic.

  8

  The train doors opened as though this was an ordinary stop. Nobody left the train, and there was no announcement telling people that this line had been closed and that all passengers must exit. It looked like we really had been given a second chance at a train. The commuters who couldn’t believe their stroke of luck surged forward to board. While I was grateful for the do-over that might get me to work on time, I also wanted to see who’d done the spell that had brought the train back, so I scanned the platform.

  There was a man who’d been ahead of me when I arrived, reaching the platform just as the train pulled out, but he hadn’t even tried to catch it, which was at least moderately suspicious, given the train’s abrupt return. When he headed to the train, I ran toward him, jumping into the same car. You’d think it would be hard to lose someone in a subway car, but the car had already been rush-hour full. Then there were all the people who’d boarded after the backup. He wore a suit and carried a backpack, so he blended in easily with the crowd heading downtown. I hadn’t seen enough of him to distinguish him other than by his clothes. Almost any man on the train could have been the one I’d followed. Not that I was certain he was a suspect. His lack of urgency might have been because he knew he could recall the train, but he might just not have been in a hurry to get to work.