Much Ado About Magic

by Shanna Swendson

  Marcia’s phone had a Bluetooth headset, and I hid the earpiece under my hair. While I looked for Owen’s cell number in my address book, Marcia pulled it up on the phone’s screen. “Why do you have my boyfriend on speed dial?” I asked her with a raised eyebrow.

  “It made it easier to nag him about remembering to eat and sleep while you were gone,” she said. “Rod deputized me.”

  “He was that bad?”

  “He was that bad. Not that it was all you. He’s also a workaholic.”

  “Tell me about it. He did say that when all of this is over, we’d go away somewhere. Of course, I’m not sure what ‘over’ means.” Then because I couldn’t resist, I blurted, “And he made an offhand reference to honeymoon plans. It may have just been a joke, and I don’t think he’s planning to propose any time soon, but still, guys don’t bring up the subject of honeymoons unless they’re thinking along those lines, do they?”

  Gemma adjusted the scarf she’d tied around her neck to accessorize her otherwise all-black “Really, I’m a local!” outfit. “Yeah, it’s generally a good sign if a man ever mentions anything to do with weddings or families. Most guys don’t even think about that stuff. So, are we ready?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Communications check?” Marcia said.

  I hit Owen’s cell number on Marcia’s phone. When he answered, I said, “We’re about to head out. Any last-minute advice?”

  “Be careful. Look out for anything that feels like magic. After that spell we did, they know we’re up to something, so there could be some danger.”

  “I was planning to be reckless. Putting my life on the line is fun!”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic about it.”

  “I know, it’s because you care. Anyway, I can hear you loud and clear. I’ll call you back when we get there.”

  Marcia made a tick mark on her list. “Okay, that’s a communications check. You’ve got the gizmo?”

  I patted my shoulder bag. “It’s in here. And it looks just like a transistor radio, so it shouldn’t raise any suspicions.”

  “Though people may wonder about anyone with a transistor radio held together with duct tape in an age when everyone else is using MP3 players,” Gemma said.

  “But can you listen to a baseball game live on an iPod?” I asked. “Though I think Ethan had it for weather emergencies. Or maybe alien invasions. With him, you never know.”

  “That’s a check on the gizmo. Other supplies?”

  “I’ve got the duct tape,” I said. “And I’m wearing the magic-detecting necklace. I’m good to go.”

  “I have my obnoxious tourist camera,” Marcia said, holding up a huge, practically antique thirty-five millimeter camera on a neck strap. “Plus, my map and guidebook.”

  “All right, let’s do this,” Gemma said, putting her hand out like we were a team in a huddle. Marcia put hers on top of Gemma’s, and with a sigh and a shrug, I joined them. “We’re like the Charlie’s Angels of magic. Let’s go kick some magical butt,” Gemma said. “Go, team!” Marcia and I echoed her.

  Gemma went into character as soon as we left the building, giving us a running commentary on life in Manhattan as though we were tourists who were new to the city. We took the subway to the station nearest the Empire State Building, then Gemma waved her borrowed pass and got us past the line of tourists. We went up in the elevator, then changed elevators to go up to the observation deck.

  The higher we went in the building, the more my necklace vibrated. I could also feel the device humming in my bag. Or maybe that was me. My legs were trembling, and I had to hang on to my purse strap to keep my hands from shaking visibly. My friends thought this was a lark, but I knew we could face real danger.

  We stepped out of the elevator at the observation level, and I called Owen, hoping that his magical enhancements worked and I would have a cell signal. He answered, and I sighed with relief that things were going according to plan so far. “We’re here,” I said, feeling better to have his voice in my ear. “Now what?”

  “Walk around. Let me know what you feel.”

  “The necklace is giving me fits.”

  “See if it’s stronger in any one direction.”

  The observation deck was crowded on a summer Sunday afternoon, so that was easier said than done. On the bright side, having to squirm my way through crowds meant that meandering all over the place wasn’t too terribly obvious. Gemma and Marcia joined me, and, giggling, they both leaned over and said into my earpiece, “Hello, Charlie.”

  I gave them what I hoped was a withering glare and hissed, “Knock it off, you two. This is serious.”

  “Who’s Charlie?” Owen asked.

  “My friends are getting delusions of grandeur about being on a secret mission.” Gemma stuck her tongue out at me, and Marcia took her picture.

  “That better not have film in it,” Gemma shrieked, lunging for Marcia’s camera. It was a shame I hadn’t yet found the magical transmitter because they were creating a nice diversion.

  “Are you getting anything?” Owen asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell much of a difference.”

  There was a tug on my sleeve and an older man said, “Excuse me, miss?”

  “Just a sec,” I whispered to Owen. “Yes?” I said to the man.

  He held a digital camera out to me and gestured toward his wife. “Could you take our picture?” He had a heavier Southern accent than I did.

  “Sure.” I framed them against the skyline and took the picture, then showed it to them on the camera’s LCD screen. “Is that good, or do you want another one?”

  “That’s fine, thank you.” As they walked away, I heard him say to his wife, “See, I told you New Yorkers could be friendly.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Owen. “Now, what do you need me to do?”

  “Get out the radio.”

  I pulled it out of my purse and almost dropped it, it was vibrating so heavily. “Oh, is the game on?” Gemma said a little too loudly, even though no one seemed to be paying any attention to us. At least, they wouldn’t be if Gemma didn’t keep drawing their attention.

  “It’s going nuts,” I told Owen.

  “Check the tuner dial. It should move to the right when you get closer to the transmitter.”

  I went back to my aimless wandering, holding the radio up to my ear like I was listening to it and checking the dial every so often. It was difficult to be sure I was covering the whole deck when I had to dodge families, proposing couples, and just about every youth choir in America, all of which seemed to feel obligated to perform “God Bless America” a capella on top of the Empire State Building.

  “Anything yet?” Owen asked, his voice edgy with impatience.

  “Sorry, things are crazy up here. Maybe we should have waited and gone at night.”

  “You’re there now, so let’s get this done. I want to go home. Now, look at the dial and tell me what it’s doing.”

  “It’s scrolling to the left.”

  “Then turn right.” I turned right and tried to look like I was ambling casually.

  Gemma and Marcia flanked me, Gemma saying loudly, “What’s the score?”

  Marcia glanced around nervously and added, “What inning is it?”

  “I thought you were supposed to be a foreign tourist,” Gemma whispered to Marcia. “A foreign tourist probably wouldn’t know about baseball.”

  “No one here knows or cares if I’m a foreign tourist,” Marcia hissed back. “That was all in your head.”

  I cleared my throat. “Um, guys, busy saving the world here.” Then I reported to Owen, “The dial’s moving to the right.”

  “Then keep going that way. Stop and change directions when it moves to the left.”

  I moved steadily toward the northwest corner of the deck, then I saw something attached to the wall there. “I think I’ve found it,” I told Owen.

  Marcia and Gemma came to a stop beside me. “What is
it? Where?” Marcia asked.

  “That metal box there in the corner,” I said, fighting the urge to point.

  “I don’t see anything,” Gemma said, and Marcia shook her head.

  “It must be veiled,” I reported to Owen. “Gemma and Marcia don’t see it.”

  “Then that’s probably it,” he said. “What does it look like?”

  “It’s a metal box attached to the wall.”

  “Can you get the cover open?”

  “There’s a minor problem with that.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s someone standing right in front of it.” A sad sack of a man in ill-fitting clothes and a haircut that looked like he’d done it himself at home in the dark without a mirror stood at that corner of the observation deck, holding a wilting red rose and a teddy bear with a red bow around its neck. He shifted his weight anxiously back and forth, from one foot to the other, while he craned his neck to study every woman who walked past. “I think we’ve got a Sleepless in Seattle situation here,” I told Owen.

  “A what?”

  “It’s a movie, probably not something you’d have seen. The important part is that the romantic happy ending involves two people meeting at the top of the Empire State Building. It seems like a lot of people who’ve met online think this is a good place to meet in person for the first time.”

  “It makes sense. It’s a very public place, and you have to go through a security screening to get up there.”

  I tried not to sigh. He could be so hopeless when it came to this sort of thing. “I think the idea is that it’s romantic, and it makes for a good story when people ask how you met.”

  “So, your situation is that one of these people is waiting for his cyber girlfriend to show up, right in front of the magical transmitter?” There was a strong note of skepticism in his voice.

  “Yeah, sounds fishy to me, too.”

  Gemma interrupted. “Did you find it?” she asked.

  “Maybe. I want to check it out. You two go to the gift shop. I may need you in reserve.”

  “Got it.” She grabbed Marcia by the arm and the two of them disappeared into the crowd.

  I ambled over to stand at the railing near Sleepless. He gave me a sidelong glance, then asked, “Are you Becky?”

  “Nope, sorry,” I said. My magic-detecting necklace hummed against my skin, but I couldn’t tell if that was from the transmitter or from him.

  “We were supposed to meet up here,” he continued. His voice had a pathetic, whiny quality, but his eyes were flinty.

  “That’s nice,” I replied, trying very hard to sound like I wasn’t at all interested in him or in anything he happened to be standing right in front of.

  “She’s late,” he continued.

  I shrugged. “The lines are pretty long.”

  With an exaggerated sigh, he went back to leaning against the transmitter. I turned my back to him and walked away, saying to Owen, “I’m pretty sure that’s our guard. I have to give them credit for coming up with a plausible reason for someone to stand around here all day. What do I do now?”

  “Get rid of him.”

  “They’ve got barriers to keep people from being pushed over the edge.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant. Think of something.”

  I found Gemma loudly explaining the American custom of the snow globe to an eyerolling Marcia. “That’s definitely the thing,” I said softly to them, “but they’ve got someone guarding it.” I led them to where we could see Sleepless standing there with his drooping rose.

  “That guy’s a guard?” Marcia asked, her tone dripping with disdain.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure, and he’s got a great cover, you have to admit.”

  “What we need is a diversion,” Gemma said, frowning in thought.

  “What I need is to get him away from there and keep him away long enough for me to get the job done. I’m worried that he already suspects me.”

  “Why would he suspect you?”

  “Because if he’s magical and any good he’d have sensed this gizmo I’m carrying around.”

  Gemma said, “Looks like it’s time for the reserves to step up.” She straightened her back, tossed her hair and said, “Leave him to me.”

  Marcia and I watched from behind a choir singing “God Bless America” as Gemma walked past Sleepless, glancing shyly in his direction and nervously biting her lower lip. Finally, with a deep, steadying breath, she approached him, gesturing to the scarf knotted around her neck as though it was something she expected him to recognize.

  “Oh, good call,” Marcia said with an approving nod. “No sane man would say he’s waiting for someone else after she claims to be his date, especially when he really isn’t waiting for someone else, and when it looks like the closest he comes to being near someone like her is when he sleeps with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue under his pillow.”

  Gemma and Sleepless had the kind of conversation full of nervous laughter that tends to happen at first meetings, then she took his hand as though to lead him away, but he shook his head and held his ground. “He’s definitely the guard,” I said.

  Just as the choir ended their song, Gemma’s voice rose above all the hubbub, screeching, “You pervert! You never said that was the kind of relationship you were looking for!” Every head on the observation deck turned to stare, and a security guard came over.

  “Miss, what seems to be the problem?” the guard asked.

  “This–this freak just exposed himself to me!” Gemma sputtered in righteous indignation.

  “Sir, we can’t have behavior like that up here. I’ll have to ask you to leave,” the guard said.

  Sleepless put up a protest, but that only made the guard more stern, and he grabbed the guy roughly by the upper arm to haul him away. Soon, the guard released him and backed off, rubbing his hand like he’d been zapped. I tried to think of something to do, then remembered that I had a wizard on hold. “Owen, our supposed cyber dater is using magic to keep the security guard from taking him away,” I whispered. “What do I do?”

  “Is the way clear to the transmitter?”

  “For a moment, yeah.”

  “Get over there. He can’t do anything to you while guards are around.”

  I moved as quickly as possible toward the transmitter while Marcia blocked me from view. The security guard had called for reinforcements, so Sleepless was busy for a moment. After another angry outburst, Gemma joined Marcia. “Okay, I’m there,” I said to Owen.

  “Now, see if you can open it,” he instructed.

  I got out my Swiss Army knife and pried open the cover, then as soon as I did, I gasped in pain and had to pull my necklace off and drop it in my purse. “There’s some serious magic coming off this thing,” I said.

  “Then that’s definitely what we’re looking for. Turn the tuner until it stays on five when it’s close to the box.” I did what he said, then he told me, “Now, turn the radio on and tape it to the inside of the door. Will it fit when you close it?”

  “It should.”

  “And what’s that sound? Is it singing? It’s terrible.”

  “Gemma and Marcia are singing ‘New York, New York.’ I think their theory is that it’s so embarrassing that no one will come over here. Sleepless can’t come back, either—even if he’s escaped from the guards.”

  “That’s actually pretty clever.”

  “I’ll tell them you said so.” I ripped off a strip of duct tape and secured the transistor radio to the inside of the metal box, then closed the lid and stood up. “Mission accomplished,” I reported to Owen.

  “Good work. Are they still singing?”

  “Yeah. And everyone on the observation deck is studiously ignoring them.”

  “Make them stop and then get out of there before that guy does something.”

  “I don’t see him.” Gemma and Marcia finished their song with a flourish and a couple of high kicks, then I asked, “Are you two quite finis
hed?”

  They turned around. “Are you?” Marcia asked.

  “Ages ago.” I walked past them toward the elevators. “Honestly, I can’t take you two anywhere.”

  Once we were out of the building and heading home, Gemma said with a groan, “I may never be able to show my face around that building again.”

  “You were brilliant,” I assured her.

  Gemma and Marcia were still rehashing their adventures when we got back to our building, so they didn’t notice the young Indian woman leaning against the wall beside the front steps. She jumped up when she saw us coming. “Surprise!” she said.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was my best friend from high school, Nita Patel, who had been working at her family’s motel in our hometown the last time I saw her. “Nita!” I blurted before my brain could think of anything more diplomatic to say. “What are you doing here?”

  “I got a job at a hotel here in New York! Isn’t that great?” she said.

  “Wow, yeah, that is great!” I said, fighting to sound enthusiastic as I stepped forward to hug her, even while I was inwardly groaning at the remarkably bad timing. I was glad to see my friend, but she wasn’t in on the magical secret and that could make things complicated. Then I remembered my manners. “You remember Gemma and Marcia, don’t you?”

  “Of course! Hi!”

  “Hi!” they chorused.

  Nita clapped her hands in glee. “I can’t believe I’m really here!”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I got in this afternoon. I guess I should have called you, but I wanted to surprise you. I said I was getting out of that town, and now I have!”

  “Why don’t we go inside to talk?” Gemma suggested.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, stepping up to unlock the front door. “Come on up.” I led the way up to our apartment and ushered Nita inside.

  I could see her trying to keep the dismay off her face. “Wow, it’s, well, um, cozy,” she managed.