Much Ado About Magic

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “She does love you, Benedick. You have to believe that. ”

  “Do I? Maybe I should use a truth spell on her, just to be certain.” But of course, she was the one person I couldn’t use it on, not without changing the truth that I sought to find out.

  “We thought you just needed a push,” said Claudio apologetically. “You and she are always arguing. So many sparks in your conversation. Everyone could see that you were meant for each other except for you two. You’re so alike.”

  “Are we?” I said.

  “Ben, she loves you now. Does it matter how it happened?”

  “The sausage, eh? All the bits of gristle that go in to making it? Better off not knowing it, if you want to enjoy it. But once you know, how can you unknow?”

  “She loves you,” said Claudio again.

  “And what did he say about me?” I asked quietly, nodding in the direction of the room Dogberry had taken Pedro.

  “That you were better than me. Smarter. Savvier. Cooler. More popular. That you would be something in life and I never would be. You and Pedro both. I’m a tagalong.” The words were bitter in his mouth.

  “And did you believe him?”

  “Hard not to,” said Claudio. “When he spoke the truth.”

  “There is truth and there is truth,” I said. Who knew that better than a Paduan? I put a hand on Claudio’s shoulder. “Friends?” I asked him.

  “Friends,” he said. “But what about Beatrice?”

  “We will see what we will see,” I said. There was nothing else to do. I called Conrad to tell him he was in charge of the Paduan clan in town until I was cleared of all suspicion. It turned out my full clan head , Antonio, who was in charge of all Paduans in the state, had already called Conrad with the news. Antonio had fifteen demi-heads under him and he was directly under the head Paduan of the World Council. He made all the decisions about who was allowed into the clan on the rare occasions we let the clanless in, and he also decided who was kicked out of the clan when there was a disciplinary action related to the spell.

  Antonio had apparently warned Conrad that he was not to talk to me under pain of being kicked out of the clan himself, until I was cleared of all suspicion. Whenever that would be.

  I thought about what it would be like to be clanless, to never be allowed to use the truth spell again. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Hearing the truth, I had learned from Dogberry, was could hurt as much as any lie.

  Chapter 13: Bee

  Well, I wasn’t waiting around for Benedick to call that weekend. The news story continued to play round the clock, and it was all I could do to get away from it. I didn’t want to hear about more betrayal by Benedick. Apparently, he was the master of appearing to be one thing and actually being another—a classic Paduan trick. The only thing that gave me satisfaction was the thought that maybe this time he wouldn’t get away with it so easily.

  Sarah came over on Sunday afternoon and we went up to my room together to commiserate with each other. “Are you so sure that Ben and Claudio are guilty?” she asked. “What if they’ve been set up?”

  “Who would set them up? They’re the demi-heads. They’re the ones who have power,” I said. “And besides, we know what they did to us. They made us fall in love with them so it would be a distraction to Pedro at the dance. So they could steal his money spell.” The thought of so many people watching me be fooled still made me shiver.

  “But they spent all summer with Pedro,” said Sarah. “They must have had a hundred chances to hear him say the spell and record it. Why would they wait until now to use it?”

  I shook my head. “That’s probably what they were trying to do on that whole trip, but Pedro was too cautious. So they had to try something else, something more spectacular.” Like two opposites like me and Benedick falling in love at the same time that Claudio and Sarah, the classic introverts, did. That kind of a spectacularly improbable love fest would make anyone lose their train of thought, right?

  “I don’t know,” said Sarah. “It still doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “That’s because you wouldn’t ever do anything like that,” I said. “You’re too good-hearted to understand betrayal like this.”

  “But what about John, Pedro’s second?” said Sarah. “I’ve heard about him. Not good things. He’s jealous. Maybe he did this. To get rid of Pedro for irresponsibility. Once he’s gone,

  John’s bound to be confirmed as demi-head, and he’ll likely be promoted after high school and then on and on for the rest of his life. That’s a strong motive.”

  I didn’t have any reason to think particularly well of John, but he hadn’t been the one to set me and Sarah up. He might have been at the dance, but he hadn’t done anything to me personally. He hadn’t even stared at me rudely. For Sarah to accuse him seemed pretty desperate to me.

  “You don’t think that Claudio actually loves you, do you?” I asked. “After all the subterfuge, the way Claudio involved Pedro and Benedick in it, and the rest of us.” I shook my head.

  “But he is so good. And sweet. And kind.”

  I sighed. “Think what you will about him, Sarah. I won’t tell you to stop loving him. But when all of the truth comes out, I think you’ll wish you had stopped loving him sooner rather than later.”

  She played with her hands for a moment before she spoke again. “And you think Benedick is so bad? That he pretended to love you? Maybe that means he really likes you.”

  “Or it means that he thought I was a fool,” I said. And he hadn’t been wrong there.

  “But he got Pedro to help make you fall in love,” said Sarah. “And Leanata and Margaret and Ursula.”

  I waved a hand. “That just means they all wanted to see me look a fool.”

  “Pedro? After what happened last year?”

  “Maybe he didn’t get enough of my humiliation then,” I suggested.

  “Then why did I think that Claudio liked me for months before now?” said Sarah. “You can’t think he’s been setting this up for a whole year.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “He could have picked any girl,” said Sarah. “But he picked me. I thought we really connected.”

  I hated to be the one to burst her bubble. “Maybe he thought you were the most naïve of them all, the easiest to fool.”

  “But if he’s been watching me since last year?” asked Sarah.

  She was right. That was interesting, wasn’t it? Sarah was smarter than she looked. “Hmm,” I said.

  She smiled. “And if he really liked me, then maybe Benedick liked you, too, and the rest of this is a mistake.”

  “Or maybe they just decided to get two things they wanted at the same time,” I said.

  Sarah gave me a sour look. “Or maybe Claudio is innocent and it’s just Benedick who’s the evil mastermind. He’s the devious one with the twisty mind, isn’t he? That’s why he was able to outwit you and make you believe you were in love with him.”

  I was annoyed with that assessment. “He’s really not that smart,” I said.

  “I thought you liked him because you thought he was smart? I thought you believed he was a match for you?”

  I snorted at that. “Well, I guess he’s not.”

  “And are you sad about that?”

  “Not enough to try to defend his pathetic actions when he’s so obviously guilty,” I said.

  Sarah took in a sharp breath at that, and I realized I had hurt her without meaning to. My tongue gets me in trouble sometimes when I don’t control it.

  “Look, we can’t know who did which part exactly, but I think we can safely assume that they all had a part in it. And if Pedro let anyone record his spell like the news says, he doesn’t deserve to be demi-head of the Arragons here in town. I’m sure the World Council will figure out exactly what part Claudio and Benedick played. They’ll have another Paduan on hand for that.” I could imagine Benedick being forced to speak the truth. It wouldn’t be that different than it had been for me
. And a dark part of me wished I could be there to see him brought so low.

  “Is there nothing of love left in your heart for him, then?” asked Sarah.

  “Nothing. He has burned it all away.”

  “You sound angry,” said Sarah.

  “You think I shouldn’t be?”

  “It’s only that—you were angry at him before. And now you are angry at him again.”

  “You think that this is the same as then?”

  “Well, you thought him every bad thing for what he did, but then you forgave him. Wasn’t that because you saw that what he did was not so terrible, if seen in the right light?”

  I shook my head. “I was a fool for an hour. No one is perfect. But I hope that I am not so stupid as to be persuaded to forgive a guy like him a second time. He is a manipulator, someone who has no regard for the truth except when it suits him, and he could not say an honest thing if he were under a truth spell himself,” I got out in a rush, the words coming more quickly every moment until they were tripping over each other.

  “If I told you that he had called me to ask how you were, what would you say?” asked Sarah

  “I’d say you shouldn’t have answered. Or should have hung up as soon as you heard his voice.” What had she been thinking?

  “Claudio asked me to speak to him,” she said.

  “You talked to Claudio, too?” There were times when Sarah acted like she was a lot younger than a sophomore and this was one of them. No wonder Claudio had chosen her for this scheme.

  She lowered her eyes. “He begged me to forgive him, and to listen to him.”

  “Did he give a reasonable explanation?” I asked, not believing it for a moment.

  “He said that he was innocent. He swore it on his own life.”

  “But did he tell you what had happened with the money spell?” I asked.

  “He said that he would find out who it was, in time. He begged me to give him that time. If I loved him, he said that I could not so easily stop loving him.”

  I rolled my eyes at that.

  “He said that anyone who truly loved would hold that love in her heart forever. No matter what was done to her, she could not forget that feeling or it was never true to begin with.”

  “Sarah, you are frightening me. Have you never heard girls talk of boyfriends who hit them? They think they are in love, too.”

  “Well, he has never hit me,” said Sarah.

  Good for Claudio, considering they have been together for about thirty hours now. “Sarah, the difference between real love and manipulation isn’t how deeply you feel it. It’s how long it lasts, and the results of that love. If it brings good things, then it’s real. If it brings bad, then it’s not.” Maybe I am too practical, but I didn’t think that love was something that you held onto even if it killed you. I was definitely not into Romeo and Juliet as a romantic ideal.

  “I’m going to give Claudio some time to prove himself,” said Sarah.

  “Fine,” I said, giving up with her. “You do what you have to do and I’ll do what I have to do.” And what I was going to do was to make sure that Benedick regretted that he had ever tried to make me into a puppet in his little theater. The best revenge is—well, a horribly painful death involving loss of a man’s parts. But the second best revenge was making someone feel bad forever.

  “Watch this,” I said, and I murmured the beauty spell. I focused on making my face look more symmetrical, making my nose a little smaller. Then I worked on my chest area. I wasn’t flat to begin with, but there’s a difference between what I had and what I could have. I had been wearing a loose-fitting shirt before, but after the spell, well, it wasn’t so loose anymore.

  “What do you think?” I asked Sarah.

  “I don’t know,” she said, eyeing me critically, tilting her head this way and that.

  “Too much? Does it look like I’m trying too hard?” I didn’t want that. Guys know when a girl is desperate and they run as soon as they sniff that.

  “You look great, Bee. Really. But you looked great before. I don’t know if the beauty spell makes that much difference, in the end.”

  “Of course it makes a difference. Why would anyone have come up with it in the first place if it didn’t make a difference?” I said.

  “For actors and actresses, yeah. That’s all you see of them. And models. But for people you really know well, I think you forget how they look and see who they really are. Or that’s the way it’s supposed to be, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well good luck with that one,” I said. I wasn’t sure there was such a thing as who someone really was anymore. You certainly couldn’t trust it. So you might as well get what you want here and now.

  “Bee, you should talk to Benedick. Just listen to him. You’ll hear the pain in his voice.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I had my own pain to deal with. I had no patience for fake pain.

  “He said he was afraid to even call you. He wouldn’t have even talked to me except that Claudio made him.”

  “Well he has some intelligence, then,” I said. If he’d tried to call me or email me or text me or even send a carrier pigeon to me, I would have given him a couple of suggestions of what he could do with himself. And then I would have said something really nasty.

  “I think I should try a little more,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror. My face was still a little pale and my hair looked flat. I whispered the beauty spell again, and in a moment, my hair was bouncing with curls and my skin was as tanned as if I’d spent all day in a tanning booth. “Better?” I said to Sarah.

  “Great,” said Sarah. “But listen to me, Bee. You don’t have to do this. Claudio said that everything would be settled in a couple of days. Just give them some time.”

  “And what did Benedick say, eh?”

  Sarah’s face fell. “Benedick said that I should tell you he wished you well.”

  He said that? It really made me burn. Who did he think he was? Wishing me well was the same as telling me he was already on the prowl for someone else. Well, what had I expected from a guy like that?

  “I don’t care what Benedick said.”

  “But you obviously do, Bee. I can see you’re hurting.”

  “I’m done with hurting,” I said. “I’m going to make someone else hurt now.”

  Sarah shook her head. “So maybe you were tricked into loving him. Maybe I was tricked into helping him trick you. But, Bee, you did feel something for him, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know he’s not open like Claudio. He doesn’t have that freedom, as a Paduan. But you want someone who can stand up to you, don’t you? And Benedick could. He’s strong and he throws himself into anything that he cares about. All of himself. He’s like you that way, Bee. That’s why anyone who knows you two realizes you would make a good match.”

  “You want me to call him?” I said, suddenly tired of this.

  “Yes.” She put a fluttering hand to her chest. “Would you?”

  “Your phone. You dial the number.”

  She did it.

  “Is that him?” I asked.

  “Benedick?” said Sarah.

  I heard the voice on the other side. It was his. I felt a sudden weakness in my knees at the sound of his rich tenor, with that hint of twang in it. Even after everything.

  “She’s here,” said Sarah. “Yeah, right next to me. She asked me to call you.”

  There was silence on the other end. That made me smile a little, evilly.

  “Are you still there?” said Sarah.

  A murmur of sound that made a tingle run up my spine.

  “No, she isn’t going to hurt you,” said Sarah.

  Wasn’t I?

  She handed the phone to me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Beatrice,” he said.

  I resisted the urge to close my eyes when I heard him say my name. He had his tricks, and I had my defense against them. The past. “Benedick
,” I said evenly.

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” he said. “You’re way too calm.”

  I chewed on my lower lip. “How are you?” I asked.

  “Nervous. More about you than about the Arragons, actually. They can only kill me once, after all.” He laughed nervously.

  “I want you to do something for me, Benedick,” I said.

  “Anything,” he said. “Beatrice, we really need to talk. We need to figure out what the truth is in all of this—”

  “Shut up and listen,” I said, through gritted teeth.

  He laughed. “You can’t know how good it feels to hear you talk like that. It makes me believe you might still feel something for me.”

  Oh, I felt something for him all right. “Sarah thinks that someone set you three up. John Arragon, maybe.”

  “Does she? I’ll tell Pedro, thanks. That’s something for him to look into. But that can’t be what you wanted to say to me.”

  “No.” I took a deep breath. “I wanted to know if your truth spell works from long distance.”

  “What?”

  “Do you have to be with someone to use it? Or can you do it over the phone?”

  “You want me to use a truth spell on you? Or someone else? I don’t understand. I’ve never tried it over the phone. I don’t think it works.”

  “I see,” I said. The beauty spell might be the same, or it might not.

  “Is that all?” He sounded wistful.

  “That’s not all,” I said. And I put the phone to my chest and started saying the spell softly so he couldn’t hear it. I twisted it as it came out. It was like a rope, the connection to the clan magic. I’d never tried to use it on the phone, and I’d never tried to reverse it. But I had the incentive to experiment today.

  “Bee?” said Benedick, his voice hoarse. “I think I still love you.”

  “Yeah? Well, I must feel the same way,” I said back. “Because I wanted to give you a little present.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just look in the mirror,” I said, and I hung up the phone.

  Sarah looked at me. “What did you do to him?”