“They want us to keep an eye on things. We’ll have a place to live, but we can stay out here as much as we want. We’re not big on the indoors and offices, and stuff,” he said.
It sounded like MSI Security, so I smiled and said, “You should definitely take it. That’s my department, though I mostly work in an office. Welcome to the team.”
“I see you’ve also joined the recruitment group,” Owen teased as we continued heading toward home.
“Well, immunes are rare, and I figured that knowing the truth might change that guy’s life, and his friend’s. Sam’s good to find a way to work with them that doesn’t scare them away. I can imagine it would be tough for them to adjust to an office job. I doubt all their problems will be solved overnight.”
“And having undercover agents on the streets, people no one will notice, could be a real asset to us,” Owen said, nodding. “Good thinking.”
“At least something good will have come of all this.”
We passed a corner store, and I said, “Mind if we pop in here for a second? I need to stock up on my weekly tabloids.”
“I don’t think we have much to worry about if a story comes out there,” he said. “And you already know that the most accurate stories probably come from our people.”
“Yeah, but I consider it the canary in the coal mine. If they start reporting it, it might eventually make its way into something people will actually believe. Besides, I want to know where Elvis has been lately.”
I loaded up on newspapers and hoped I didn’t run into anyone I knew the rest of the way home. I’d hate for anyone to think I actually read these things. Then again, almost everyone I knew would know why I was reading them. My mother must have been rubbing off on me, making me worry far too much about what people thought about me.
We passed through Union Square as we headed toward my apartment. There was a decent-sized crowd there, more than I would have expected on a weeknight. “I wonder what’s going on,” I said. “It doesn’t look like a concert or festival.”
“It looks like someone is speaking. Probably something political.” He kept walking, but I tugged on his arm.
“Maybe we should see what it is. I have a feeling.”
“I thought I was the one with a mild case of precognition.”
“Humor me.”
We paused at the rear of the crowd, and I barely stifled a low moan. The man who’d spoken at the magic watching meeting stood on a soapbox, shouting through a megaphone. “You can’t deny the evidence,” he was saying. “We’ve recorded too many incidents. Magic is real!”
A number of people in the crowd chuckled. This being New York, I suspected a lot of them thought this was some kind of performance art piece.
“Yes, magic is real, and it must be stopped!” the man shouted. “Magic is evil. Power corrupts, and there is no way anyone with that kind of power can remain uncorrupted. What are they doing while they keep the secret? Are they using their power to run the world? How high does this go in the government? We deserve answers!”
I watched the crowd, trying to gauge the reaction. It didn’t seem like anyone took him seriously. At least, no one shouted in agreement. When he started a “Stop magic now!” chant, no one joined in.
But then a pair of men dressed all in black stepped up, snatched his megaphone, grabbed his arms, pulled him off the soapbox, and hauled him away. He shouted, “You see what they’re doing! They’re trying to keep me silent! Don’t let them!” Without the megaphone, his voice was barely audible, and it faded as they dragged him off. I couldn’t see where they took him from where I stood. The crowd was in the way, and I wasn’t tall enough to see over all those heads.
“Do you see where they took him?” I asked Owen, though he wasn’t that much taller than I was.
He stood on tiptoes and craned his neck, then shook his head. “Sorry, no.”
It still seemed like the crowd was assuming it was a performance art piece. No one had rushed to the man’s rescue, so they must have thought the men were part of the act. And there was a distinct possibility that they were. It could all have been staged to make his message seem more credible.
I was about to turn and head for home when I noticed bright lights across the crowd. It looked like there was a television camera set up over there. They’d been filming the whole thing.
9
“We’ve got to get you away from here,” I said, already steering Owen down the sidewalk.
“What? Why?” he asked, but he didn’t resist.
“That reporter from the meeting is here with a camera crew.”
“But I thought she was covering a school bus crash.”
“That must not have been a live report. She can do more than one story a day.”
“You’ve got to wonder how she knew to be here. What did they do, put out a press release?”
“Maybe. I’ll look into it. I would tell you to make yourself invisible, but that won’t work if she’s immune, and it might just draw attention to you if you suddenly disappear.”
I wished I knew what Carmen was doing, but to find out, I’d have to look directly at her, and that would increase the risk of her seeing and recognizing me. Instead, I kept my head turned so she would be less likely to see my face. It was fairly dark, so she probably couldn’t see past the range of the TV lights, and the odds were slim that she’d think to look for people she recognized in the crowd.
“Did you know those guys in black?” I asked Owen. “They looked like Council enforcers.”
“I’ve never seen them before, and that’s not the way the Council operates. Black is the universal color for covert-type operations, cat burglars, ninjas, and other people who don’t want to be seen or identified. My bet is that it was a stunt to make it look like his message is being suppressed.”
“Do you think they know about the enforcers and what they look like?”
“If you want to look like a dangerous secret organization, you’re probably not going to wear pastels, so I don’t think the black attire means anything.”
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” a voice shouted. My instinct was to turn around, but I reminded myself that there were a lot of people here. The woman could have been shouting at anyone. “Kathleen!”
“Uh oh,” I muttered.
“Are you suddenly trying not to be Katie?” Owen asked.
“I did try that when I first moved to New York, but it didn’t stick. However, that was the name I gave at the meeting so it wouldn’t necessarily instantly track back to me, but it also wouldn’t be a lie. Now, go. Head home or to my place, just get away from here.” I released his arm and quickly turned away from him, heading toward the shouting voice and hoping the crowd filled in behind me to hide Owen.
Carmen left her cameraman behind to approach me, but I didn’t let my guard down. For all I knew, they had a night vision lens and long-range microphone. “Did you know about this?” she asked.
“No,” I said, trying to sound casual, like this was no big deal to me. “I was just on my way home from dinner and passed by.” Although that was the absolute truth, I was afraid it sounded shady. Then I realized I was still holding the stack of tabloids and tucked them under my arm, hoping the headlines didn’t show. I doubted a real journalist would be impressed by someone who read that stuff, and I couldn’t tell her why I was reading it. “I showed up toward the end, so I’m not even sure what was happening.”
“So they didn’t send out info to everyone in the group?”
“I don’t know that there really is a ‘group.’ I know I didn’t sign up for any mailing list. They wouldn’t have had a way to send me any information.”
I thought she relaxed a little. “You’re right. I didn’t sign up for anything. So maybe it was just a news release.”
“About what?”
“Something about a demonstration that would prove the existence of magic and that there was a conspiracy to cover it up.”
“Did it?”
; “Prove magic? Not that I could tell. That guy just shouted a lot, and then some people came and hauled him away. Maybe that was supposed to be the proof of the conspiracy to cover it up, that they didn’t want him talking about it.”
“If it was magic people trying to silence him, wouldn’t they have just made him disappear or turned him into a frog, or something like that?” I suggested, scrambling for an excuse.
“But that would prove that magic’s real, defeating the point of the conspiracy to keep it hidden.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, they could have made him lose his voice, made his megaphone quit working, called up a storm that would have dispersed the crowd, or maybe even made all of us forget what we saw. Dragging him away seems like a pretty mundane and ineffective way to silence his message.”
“Good point,” she said, nodding. “So maybe he’s just a crackpot conspiracy theorist pulling a publicity stunt.” She glanced around, moved closer to me, and dropped her voice. “But if you were at that bridal sale where those things happened, you know it’s not all hype. There’s something going on, and that’s not the first time I’ve seen strange things.”
“I don’t really know what I saw at that bridal sale. I didn’t even think much of it until I saw your story on the news.”
“So you did recognize me. I had a feeling at that meeting.”
“It took me awhile since you looked so different than you do on TV, but yeah. That story made me curious, and when I saw the flier, I thought I’d at least check things out.” All of those statements were true, though there were a lot of missing parts.
“Have you seen other weird stuff?”
That was a lot harder to answer without lying or without letting on more than I wanted to share. I laughed and shrugged. “It’s New York, of course I’ve seen weird stuff. Whether it’s magic or not, well . . .”
“The jury’s still out,” she concluded.
“What kind of stuff have you seen?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was probing or interrogating. I hoped I came across like I was mildly curious.
“I don’t know. There are things that disappear or reappear. Like, there’s a church that only sometimes has gargoyles on it, which isn’t supposed to be the way that works. Or maybe I only notice them sometimes.”
It took all my self-control to keep a mildly interested smile on my face while my stomach went into freefall. A magically immune reporter was a worst-case scenario. The only saving grace was that she wouldn’t be able to get proof of most of the things she saw. Magical veils work even in photographs and film, so photos of veiled magic wouldn’t work as evidence to convince a non-immune. But with people using magic openly, possibly for the purpose of exposing it, we had a real problem on our hands.
“That is weird,” I said, nodding. “But is it magic? If you had magic powers, surely you’d do more with it than make gargoyles appear and disappear. It just seems like magic would be so big it would be impossible to hide.”
“Unless they’re using magic to hide the magic.”
I forced myself not to react as violently as I wanted to. It was a little alarming that she’d figured that much out without knowing anything. “But why? Wouldn’t they be better off using it? Or do you think they’re secretly ruling the world?”
She gave a huge sigh. “I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s much of a story here. Maybe there’s something to a Union Square speaker getting hauled away by mysterious men in black, but I’d need a lot more proof of magic to be able to do a story about that without getting laughed out of town.” She handed me a business card. “If you do see something that I could document, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. The operative words there were “that I could document,” and there was nothing she could document, as far as I was concerned. “But I really doubt there’s anything to all this.”
My cell phone rang, and I fished it out of my purse, looked at the display, and said, “I really have to take this.” She waved a farewell, and I walked a few steps away before I accepted the call.
“Where are you?” Owen said.
“Still in the park, but I’m leaving now.”
“Are you okay?”
“That reporter recognized me from the meeting and wanted to talk. There wasn’t anything conclusive. Where are you?”
“I went home.”
“Okay, I’ll head over there because we need to talk.”
His house was a few blocks away. I had a key, so I let myself into the stairwell and ran up to his front door. He opened the door as I neared it. As soon as I’d entered and he’d shut the door behind me, I blurted, “She’s immune to magic. The reporter. At least, it sounds like it. She sees the gargoyles. It sounded a lot like what I saw before I learned what was going on.”
“Whoa, slow down,” he said, taking the stack of tabloids from under my arm and guiding me into the living room. His cat darted out from under the sofa as I sank onto it. He put the papers on the coffee table and sat beside me, holding both my hands. His touch made me feel a lot steadier. “So, you’re saying you think the reporter who covered the magical brawl at the bridal sale and went to that anti-magic meeting is immune to magic?”
“It sounds like it, from the way she described things. Oh, and I think she was also the one in the park when the bicycles attacked. I tried to dismiss what she thinks she saw, and I feel awful about doing that. I know what it was like, seeing things and not knowing what was going on.”
“And she’s investigating claims of magic to try to make sense of what she’s seen?”
“That seems to be the case.”
“Do you think she’s involved in any of these groups?”
I shrugged. “Hard to say. I don’t know if she knows about the websites, if she’s tracking down these reports. But she did get a news release from that group. She wasn’t sure if they recognized her at the meeting and targeted her for that, or if they saw her story on the bridal event. She’s still kind of skeptical, which is good, but I don’t know how long it will last.”
“But you managed to calm her down?”
“I don’t know.” It came out as a moan. “I didn’t lie to her, but I didn’t confirm her suspicions. Maybe we should tell her the truth.”
“We should wait and see the kind of person she is.”
“Sam’s having her watched by non-gargoyles. I’ll have to warn him that she’s probably immune. We were acting as though she is, to be on the safe side. She wants me to keep in touch, but I’d have to think of an excuse, something magic-related that’s not confirming magic.”
He patted me on the shoulder, then put his arm around me and pulled me close. I let myself melt against him, taking comfort in him. “See, we have a plan,” he said softly, murmuring into my ear. “It’ll be okay.”
When I got home a little later, Nita was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing her pajamas and eating cereal. “Overnight shift tonight?” I asked, setting the papers down on the table so I could take off my jacket.
She nodded. “The worst. It’s either insanely boring or ridiculously stressful. Just about anything that happens overnight is bad, and most people checking in or out during those hours are really grumpy. Mostly, it’s long hours of hanging out around the desk. Oooh, you brought me reading material.” She grabbed the top paper from the stack. “Hey, look at this—the Illuminati were apparently responsible for that car that floated out of a dealership window a while ago. It was mind control and telekinesis, and the CIA is experimenting on teaching people to do that. I wonder if they’re taking applications.”
While Nita finished her breakfast/dinner, we read headlines to each other, laughing at how outlandish they were. None of the stories, other than the one about the car, matched any magical events I was aware of. If even the tabloid reporters weren’t taking it seriously, and if they felt the need to embellish the one truly magical event to make it more interesting, then it seemed unlikely that a legitimate reporter from a real news organization
would be able to develop a story.
When it was time for the late news, I turned on the television, telling Nita I wanted to check the weather forecast. How would Carmen cover the event at Union Square, or would she? An apparent kidnapping in public was pretty shocking, but there was also the chance that it had been a publicity stunt.
It wasn’t the lead story. There was a lot of other stuff going on in the city, and the late news also recapped national and international headlines. The “kidnapping” didn’t come up before the first commercial break. When it hadn’t been mentioned before the weather report, I suspected it wouldn’t make the news tonight.
“Ugh, I’d better bring a jacket,” Nita said, just as my finger was about to twitch on the remote, and then I remembered that I’d supposedly turned on the news to see the weather forecast. “That’s one thing I miss about Texas: not having to wear a coat in April. Shouldn’t it be getting warmer?”
“It depends,” I said. “It goes back and forth at this time of year. But the same thing happens back home. I remember having snow flurries on Easter a few times. And here we can generally go outdoors in August without bursting into flames.”
“True.” She yawned and stretched. “Well, time to go get ready for a good night’s work. Catch you later.”
As I turned off the TV, I felt a lot better about the situation, but I couldn’t escape the nagging sense that disaster was looming.
When I got to work the next morning, I checked for signs of the “kidnapping” story, both in the legitimate media and in the various magic-watching blogs. The Abigail Williams blog didn’t have a mention of it, but one of the more virulent anti-magic sites had a huge report about one of their spokespeople being silenced. If I got nothing else out of this event, now at least I knew which site had sponsored that meeting at the church. I figured that the correlation of their spokesperson and the coverage of the event was a pretty good sign. I felt like I should put up one of those conspiracy boards, like on TV, with colored string to tie people and groups together as I found patterns.
Enchanted Ever After Page 12
