by Gina LaManna
“And Wicked,” Hettie said. “That’s what they call it. Used to be dark and dingy once upon a time, but now it’s the place to be. Very hipster.”
“You know where it is? And how to get there?”
“Boy howdy, do I! I know all the secret ways in and out. I once had a lover back there. Well, not so much as a lover, but when I was a wee little thing I went to Witch Camp, and I had the biggest crush on my counselor. Things didn’t work out. I was eleven and he was forty-seven.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Good thing it didn’t work out.”
“Anyway, I’m ready to make the trip if you are. Who are we visiting?”
X looked at me curiously. “Who are you visiting?”
I hesitated, realizing I’d forgotten this part of the retelling during my story the previous evening. “Have you heard of the Keeper?” I asked the question to both Hettie and X, but it was Hettie who nodded first. “Well, Frank received this address from the former Keeper. He said it was intended for me.”
Ranger X considered this. “If you got it from Frank, I think you should go.”
“Thank you, your highness,” I said dryly, “for your permission.”
“Take Hettie with you.” X pulled me close, kissed my forehead, and turned to leave. “I love you.”
I echoed the sentiment before turning back to Hettie. Her face was screwed up into an odd grimace, but she waited until X had gone and I’d locked the door before she spoke. Then she exploded.
“Congratulations!” Hettie burst, clapping her hands, dancing a little jig that showed off each and every sequin on her pants. “When can I have Mimsey start planning your wedding? Will you have a maid of honor? How will you choose between your cousins?”
I gaped at her. “How’d you know?”
“Grandmotherly instinct,” she said. “Come on, dear, we can talk about it on the way to Wicked. In fact, it’s the perfect day to get Wicked—I hear they have gorgeous bouquets. Maybe we can do a wee bit of shopping on the way back?”
“I have to get a potion started first,” I said. “There’s a new concept I’ve been gathering supplies to create, and it takes twenty-four hours to brew, I believe.”
“What are you working on?”
“I don’t have the name for it yet, and I’m not sharing what it’ll do—just in case it doesn’t work. Or it backfires. Or if it works too well, and I have to get rid of it,” I said, thinking of Long Isle. I paused, flipping the book Gus had given me open to cross check it against a few herbology books I’d gotten from the library. “I have to get it started now because I’ll need it sooner rather than later.”
“What can I do to help?”
“See those ferns?” I gestured to the baggie of Forgotten Ferns from Frank. “Any chance you feel like grinding them to bits?”
“Oh, honey, you just wait to see my grinding skills.” Hettie pushed back the curtain hanging in front of the shelves and found the mortar and pestle to mash it in. “I have grinding skills up the wazoo.”
Hettie did, in fact, have quite fantastic grinding skills, and with my grandmother’s help, and eventually Gus’s upon his arrival, we were done with the preparations before the hour mark.
“This is just the base,” I explained to Gus’s questioning stare. “I need to let this brew overnight. Tomorrow will be the tricky part.”
“I see you’ve got some treats for me.” Gus changed the subject, looking greedily over my shoulder at the stack of textbooks on the table. The only thing more exciting to Gus than a new potion was a new book about potions. “May I?”
“Have a blast.” I pushed the stack toward him. “While you’re busy with these, my grandmother and I are headed to Wicked. How do we get there, Hettie?”
She reached out a hand. “Hold on tight, missy.”
“What?”
“I said hold on tight.”
“Where are we going?”
“Wicked.”
“Are we going to fly?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly what you’d call it. Sympathy, maybe.”
“What do you mean sympathy?”
“There’s an easier route for us old folks to travel between The Isle and Wicked. The senior express.” Hettie peered at me. “Never heard of it? The Senior Slide?”
I shook my head.
“Then you’re in for a real treat.”
I wouldn’t call whatever Hettie had in store a treat, but she seemed to think it would work, which was what mattered to me.
After locking Gus into the bungalow with his books and sticking a Closed sign on the door of Magic & Mixology for the morning, I followed Hettie to a tiny little garden not far from the Lower Bridge. In the middle of it was a gleaming silver bench. I must have walked past it hundreds of times, but I’d never noticed it before.
“This is the easy access route for those scaredy cats who won’t go near The Forest,” Hettie explained. “Now, hold my hand.”
“What?”
“Hold my hand.”
“Hettie, what are you going to—”
“Grandchild of mine, I said hold my hand!” Hettie extended her arm and fingers toward me and waited a beat for me to grab her hand back. When I did, she squeezed tight and cackled. “Now, here we go!”
She plunked us down on the bench. My rear end barely touched metal before the world as I knew it was gone, and Hettie and I were floating. It felt like we’d entered a light, fluffy dream where clouds were made of cotton candy and everything around us was white and bright and clean. I looked over, surprised to see Hettie next to me, still holding my hand. Our bodies looked airy, almost ethereal. As if we didn’t quite exist any longer.
“Hettie, did you go and get us killed?” I asked, glancing around. “Where are we?”
She laughed again. “No, but I see how you might think that. Maybe they really are getting us seniors ready for the pearly gates.”
“How do we get...”
“Ah, here it is.”
Hettie pulled me close to her as we drifted along. I was surprised to find her strength at an all-time high; she had the strength of a much younger woman, though I wondered if it had something to do with the halfway transparent way our bodies hovered over the milky white clouds beneath our feet.
“Sixth Borough for two,” Hettie said as we reached a tiny, glistening pole in the middle of an otherwise untouched expanse of snowy white. “There we are—tickets are popping right up. Stay close, dear, you’re definitely going to want to hold on tight for this part. Also, you shouldn’t eat right beforehand.”
“Isn’t it a little late for the warning?”
It wasn’t only too late for Hettie’s food warning, but it was too late for me to finish my thought. As I watched, a fast-moving sidewalk appeared just to the right of the pole. It looked like a flat escalator on superfast speed, and it proceeded directly into a swirling mass of clouds and smoke, a little hole in the atmosphere that looked ready to suck us through.
And suck us up it did. Hettie had no sooner stepped onto the sidewalk and dragged me with her than my stomach lurched, swirled, and was gone. It was incredibly fortunate I hadn’t had a moment to eat breakfast because in the next seconds, I lost anything I had left in there. Including half my lungs and most of my stomach lining.
We twisted, twirled, and turned at the speed of light. Zipping forward, never slowing. Others passed by, blurs as we leapt across the nation, presumably, but nobody looked at us. It was like we’d entered into an invisible wind tunnel that was trying to murder us.
“What in the world was that?” I gasped as the ride came to a stop, and I tumbled to the ground. I was on my knees, dry-heaving as Hettie stepped gently from the air next to me. “I swear you’re going to kill me one of these days.”
“If us old folks can do it, you should be able to, too. Then again.” Hettie scratched her head. “It’s not really made for people your age. How do you feel?”
“Horrible! What was that?”
“Isn’t it nea
t? I just got my Senior Spellpass the other day. Helps us older folks who are weak and whatever—” Hettie paused to flex her muscles—“get places quicker. What if I had family living in the Sixth Borough? How else am I supposed to travel for special occasions?”
I rolled my eyes, making my way to shaky feet. My legs wobbled like jelly. I wasn’t ready to let this conversation go, until I turned and found something all the more distracting.
A pair of huge, intimidating wrought iron gates rose from the ground before me. The world around us was murky and dark, the air heavy with fog and dampness. We were on a narrow little path that led straight to the gates, a cobblestone thing that should have led to a quaint little cottage or a sweet gingerbread house in the woods.
Instead, there was only a set of gates larger than most giants. They were thick, sturdy, and sealed by magic so strong there was no unlocking them with a hex—I could tell from the crackle of protection sizzling on the black stakes.
“Where are we?”
“We came around the back entrance,” Hettie said. “I know it’s not much to look at, but just imagine a human arriving here. They’d turn their little tushies around and skedaddle back to the mainland.”
“I’m ready to skedaddle. Why did we need to take the back entrance?”
Hettie raised the slip of paper she’d tucked into her pocket with the address on it, then stepped forward, unafraid of the intimidating gates as she rested a hand on the outside spoke. “It’s closer to your friend.”
“What, did you apply for a Senior Spellpass for that, too?” I asked sardonically. “No waiting in line for your entrance?”
“Yeppers.”
I’d meant it sarcastically, but Hettie’d gotten us here after all, so I sat back and let her work her magic. As her fingers touched the gate, bolts of all shapes and sizes began to twist, unlock, and morph before our eyes. It took several minutes for everything to finish clanking and sliding into place, and when it did, a voice sounded from nowhere.
“What is your business?” The bodiless voice seemed directed at Hettie. It rolled low and deep, adding weight to the already intimidating landscape.
“I’m here with my granddaughter,” Hettie said with a chirp. “Looking for Gerbil Geraniums. My cat, Tiger, has a real thing for them. My last visit was seven months and three days back.” Hettie fluttered her eyelashes. “I had a date.”
The voice didn’t respond. However, he or she, or it, or whatever it was had apparently decided Hettie spoke the truth. Before our eyes, the path ahead lightened at once. Instead of a fog-filled road that led into an abyss of darkness and isolation, the sun peeked through the clouds and exposed an entirely new world before us.
Hettie gave me a moment to appreciate the sights and sounds. The road beneath our feet was paved with lightly shimmering gold stones, worn over the years into nothing more than a cobblestone path. Where the sidewalks ended, hundreds if not thousands of tiny stores lined each curb of the narrow path, many of them stacked haphazardly on top of one another, disappearing miles above us into the sky.
Not only did the busy road extend as far as the eye could see, but it extended upward, as well. Vendors hung from window sills and perched on clotheslines selling their wares. A whole new layer of traffic existed above us as witches and wizards on broomsticks haggled with store owners. The sheer volume of traffic reminded me of the photos I’d seen of Los Angeles or Tokyo or New York City.
“Excellent,” Hettie said, dragging me through the gates. “Welcome to the Sixth Borough, my dear.”
Chapter 18
I DIDN’T THINK MUCH could surprise me anymore.
After the shock of my life had hit just over a year ago with the discovery that I was a witch, I’d gone on to learn that I had a blood-intolerant vampire for a cousin, a Shiftling cousin, and a home on a magical island. I thought I’d seen it all.
I thought wrong.
The Sixth Borough was New York for magical folks. Crammed into a small, hidden city, an entire way of life existed here. Rich and fascinating, loud and dirty, bright and hopeful. Paranormal children breezed past our heads in dangerous games of tag. They hid behind chimneys, flying miles in the air as they ferreted one another out of impossible hiding spots.
Men and women wore clothes in all sorts of new fashions. Some wore robes of bright pink silks while others had feathers dangling from their ears to their shoulders. Others dressed in sharper velour suits, but most of it—all of it—was vibrant. This was a whole new world to me.
“Come dear, don’t linger. You can spend as much time here as you’d like later. Later,” Hettie chided as I stopped to listen to a vendor shouting broomstick prices at me. “Come on, now—if you give a second’s pause, these vendors will be on you like vultures. Ignore, dearie. Look straight ahead or they’ll strip you right solid of anything you have to barter.”
I managed to mostly avoid eye contact as we traveled, but I couldn’t do anything about the way my jaw hung open in amazement and wonder. Hettie didn’t seem to mind that part; she kept glancing over to watch me enjoy the show.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” she said with a bit of pride. “Glad I got to show my granddaughter something new.”
“Something new,” I echoed dumbly. “Hettie, this place! It’s terrifying. And wonderful, and busy, and fast, and...there’s so much of it.”
Hettie cackled. “Just when you think you’re beginning to learn everything, you turn around, and...voila. A whole new world opens before your eyes. Ah, here we are.”
“Where exactly are we?”
Hettie blinked, then laughed. “Your little friend’s place.”
When I stared blankly at her, she held up the slip of paper. That was enough to wipe the dazed grin off my face. “Oh! I see. How do we, uh, get inside?”
Hettie raised an eyebrow. “Um, knock?”
I surveyed the door before me. It made no sense to me whatsoever, and I stared quizzically at it hoping Hettie would help a sister out. She didn’t. “Where do I start?”
“Well, what does the address say?”
I peered closer at the paper. I’d realized it to be a unique sort of address, but I hadn’t spent much time studying it after Hettie told me she could get us here without directions.
“Uh, Senex Domus #364A, Wicked Way.”
“Yes, this is the Retired Residences building. Now knock on #364.” Hettie gestured around. “I forgot my glasses. Which door is that?”
Therein lay the problem. I studied the huge door, two times my size, and swallowed. Built into the door itself were hundreds of smaller doors the size of my palm.
“I won’t fit through any of these little doors,” I said, locating #364, which thankfully was near the bottom. “Even Glinda’s forest fairies couldn’t squeeze through there. What, ah—race—is the Keeper? He must be some sort of fairy.”
Hettie cackled. “Just knock already.”
I did, expecting something wild to happen. Maybe another bodiless voice or a mirage, or if nothing else, a crackle of magic. When none of that happened, I looked to Hettie.
She was focused on the palm-sized door where I’d knocked amongst a sea of other palm-sized doors. Suddenly, there was a pop, and the door seemed to hop right off its frame and bloom to a full-sized door like a flower opening before our eyes. It opened with the familiar squeak of rusty hinges, and Hettie smiled grimly at me. “Looks like someone was expecting you.”
I didn’t have time to wonder how a man I’d never met could expect a woman who didn’t know what she was doing, but I didn’t doubt Hettie. I’d had my quota of surprises today, and from here on out, I just planned to follow along.
So I followed my grandmother through the door, straight to a spiral staircase with steep steps that started moving on their own as we climbed them. They carried us upward toward the rooftops. “Where are we going?”
“The three hundred and sixty fourth floor,” Hettie said simply. “What else would the address mean?”
I zipped my
lips and waited until the staircase came to a stop outside a plain door. Black iron bars sat over the window, a show of defense in an otherwise friendly, residential-looking building. Before I could raise a hand to knock, it swung open.
“Do we go inside?” I asked Hettie. I cautiously peered through the door and found the room empty. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Of course,” Hettie said. “These old folks’ homes have the remote door openers so their inhabitants don’t gotta get up when visitors come knockin’.”
I wasn’t certain she was correct, but Hettie knew the ropes better than I did, so I followed her diligently into a clean little apartment that had a ritzy, very human-esque atmosphere to it—as if it’s owner had lived in the Roaring 20’s.
A velvet chaise lounge sat in one corner while a mahogany desk stood as a solid centerpiece to the dining room. Over it hung a quaint chandelier that glittered with hints of sunlight that cast dancing little sparkles across the room.
It was only when I turned to face the living room that I saw him. An older gentleman who looked something like a butler. He wore a suit like a second skin, fitting into it so comfortably I could tell he’d spent much time dressed just so. His hair had grayed, but his eyes remained a bright green, and I could feel the very second his sharp gaze landed on me.
“Lily Locke,” he said finally. “Welcome.”
“Thank you for having me,” I said. “And my grandmother.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” He cast a second, longer look at Hettie. “Please, take a seat, ladies.”
Hettie obligingly took a seat in a plush armchair, and I followed her, finding a place in the armchair’s matching cousin. The Keeper waited until we were both seated before he opened his arms, shifted his tie, and waited for us to begin.
“Thank you again for having us,” I said. “I’d tell you why I’m here, but I imagine you’re already quite clear on the subject. I’m looking for the Master of Magic.”
“You got my address from Frank Shaw?”
I nodded.
