“There most certainly is.”
“No, there wasn’t!”
Over on the Weavil side of the room, a similar argument was taking place.
“Everyone knows we only have two children,” Emo shouted, raising his voice above the crowd. “We brought in the girl to bridge the gap between our older and younger sons. Doesn’t she look pretty?”
“That’s not the point!” Bunny’s voice overpowered his with authority. “Tell me exactly when we agreed that you could defraud the public and not be disqualified from this election!”
“Well, I thought you would never ask,” Orlow said, coming over with a sheaf of paper in his hand. I broke away from the Weavil-Scuttils to see what he had. Carnelia and Wilmer followed me. “I have to admit, it sounded rather seedy to me, but I figured, you’re M.Y.T.H., Inc., you know what you’re doing.”
“Who are you calling seedy?” Bunny asked, rounding on Orlow.
“No offense intended, ma’am.”
He backed up a pace. She glared. He stretched out his arm as far as it would go and tendered the contract to her on tippy-toe. Bunny snatched it out of his fingers. He stayed at a safe distance and pointed.
“Page four, clause thirty-eight point three. I assure you, we went over everything very carefully.”
Bunny flipped over through pages and found the indicated paragraph. I read over her shoulder.
“. . . ‘Such substitution will not be construed to be fraud, in that it adds to the perceived status of the candidate.’ What?”
“Do you see?” Orlow asked. “We followed it to the letter.”
“Of your own interpretation,” Carnelia said, triumphantly, bringing out her own copy of the contract. “It does not say a single thing about adding to the number of your family members! Miss Bunny, I want you to declare this event a win for Wilmer.”
“It doesn’t say we can’t! My family is much cuter than his. I claim the victory!” Emo said.
Bunny scanned the paper. “We didn’t include these clauses. This is a forgery!”
“No, ma’am,” Orlow said. He flipped to the last page. “There are our signatures, in blood. These are the papers that we signed, all right.”
I ran a hand over the seal on the bottom. The bubble of magik that ensured its cohesion was intact. It was a Deveel tactic to ensure that the wording couldn’t be altered by either side after signing.
“He’s right,” I said.
“But that means that the contracts I brought to the conference were tainted while we were there,” Bunny said. “These are unbreakable contract forms. My uncle uses them all the time. Once you’ve made a deal, you can’t refuse to honor it. Something has gone wrong here. The original doesn’t contain any of these clauses!”
“I’d surely like to see that,” Orlow said. “We have planned out our whole campaign according to your rules, and now you are saying that we have been operating under false pretenses? That is not what we expected of you and M.Y.T.H., Inc.”
“I agree,” Carnelia said. “Are you trying to make fun of us? Changing things on us in the middle of a very tense time?”
Bunny was horrified at the inference. “No! I can prove that these have been altered. We have the original draft under lock and key at our headquarters.”
“Well, I for one want to see it!” Carnelia said. Orlow nodded vigorously.
“So do I! Emo is not used to being trifled with!”
“I’ll go back to the office and get our copy,” I offered. Bunny, her lips pressed tightly together, nodded.
I fired up the D-hopper and bounced back into Deva.
BAMF!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“It looked good on paper.”
—B. MADOFF
By the time I got back, the candidates’ families and fans had been pushed to the periphery of the big room. The candidates themselves were in the middle, shouting at one another and at Bunny. I hurried to her side.
“. . . How dare you make such an accusation!” Carnelia said furiously. Orlow looked self-righteous.
“Well, what else can I assume? M.Y.T.H., Inc., says it didn’t put in those clauses. So who did? It had to be you!”
Carnelia drew herself up. “What about you? You had the opportunity as well. We were all alone in that room. It certainly wasn’t one of my people.”
Orlow was equally outraged. He leaned toward Carnelia. “Well, it wasn’t one of mine! They’re loyal to Emo!”
“Wilmer’s workers would rather die than do something to jeopardize his campaign! He deserves to be governor!”
“Over Emo’s dead body!”
Carnelia narrowed her eyes. She opened her palm, and green light danced upon it. “That can be arranged.”
“Hold on there!” Emo said, opening his large eyes as wide as they would go. “I ask you to calm down, my friends. People are watching. Voters are watching.”
“Yes,” Wilmer said, waving to the people who were straining at the ropes holding them back and the reporters nearby who were listening with their tongues out and pencils flying. The two campaign managers backed away from one another. “Let us see what is in the draft that Mr. Skeeve here has brought for us. I am sure that will clear everything up. May we see it?”
“Sure,” I said. I handed the bound pages to Bunny with a flourish.
“This will clear everything up,” she said. “This hasn’t been out of our office since it was written.” She flipped over the first page.
Suddenly, a wind began swirling around our feet. It picked up Mrs. Weavil-Scuttil’s skirt and flapped Baby Weavil’s blankets.
“Stop that!” Wilmer said to Emo.
“I’m not doing it!”
“Well, one of your people is!”
“You just say that to cover up your people’s magikal pranks!”
“Page four,” Bunny said, pointing to the clause in question. “It says here very clearly that . . . Stop that contract!”
The wind yanked the paper out of her hands. She made a grab for it and missed.
With my longer reach, I jumped to get it. I tried to catch it by magik, but a force stronger than mine had it. I looked around, but I couldn’t tell who was causing it. I didn’t have time to think about that. I needed to get the contract back, then deal with the prankster.
“I’ll help you, Mr. Skeeve!” Riginald said. He lumbered forward as I leaped toward the paper. We collided. The contract skipped upward. Morton, Wilmer’s magician, jumped up. I stood up just as he threw a spell to capture it. I was dragged backward into his embrace. He let me go with intense embarrassment on his face.
“Oh, sorry, Mr. Skeeve!”
“No problem,” I assured him. I hurried out in front of him and flew after the contract.
The sheaf of paper reached a wall and rustled back and forth as if undecided which way to go. Gathering force, I pictured a hand closing in on it but barked up against a solid invisible wall. I sent a shock back through the spell to get whoever it was to let go. My fellow magicians leaped backward, shaking their hands in pain. They seemed to have had the same idea I had. In the confusion, the paper slipped away. I pushed Riginald and Morton aside. The only certain way to catch it was to get it in my own hands. I opened my stride and pursued it.
The contract danced ahead of me, daring me to get it. I chased it around the room. It nipped up and down, just out of my grasp. I leaped for it and landed belly first on the couch in the Weavil-Scuttil tableau. The contract swirled upward, as if it were laughing at me. Before I could pick myself up, it swooped up and out of the skylight.
“Don’t let it get away!” Bunny shouted.
I had no intention of letting that happen. I levitated upward and flew after it with every erg of magik I could gather. Several of the reporters took to the air on my heels, following me out of the propped glass panel.
I halted in midair above the roof of the little blue cottage, scanning the open sky for my quarry. I spotted a square of white on the chimney of the building next door
. The contract had settled there. I pushed off to retrieve it.
As if sensing my pursuit, the sheaf of papers picked itself up and whisked away. I followed it with grim determination. An updraft took it high into the air in a rapid series of spirals.
That wind had not been an accident. Someone in one of the camps had altered the wording of the copies Wilmer and Emo had in their possession, and they didn’t want the truth known. This paper was the only proof we had of that perfidy. The reporters joined in the chase, pushing me out of the way any chance they got. Any of them would consider it a scoop to get his or her hands on it first. I was determined not to let them take it. I put on a burst of speed and pulled ahead of the pack. A bird squawked as I leapfrogged its nest to stay on the trail of my quarry.
Then I thought for a moment. If the press got it, they would print the whole thing in the paper, and the true details of our agreement with the two parties would be known. No one could accuse us of hiding the truth. That wasn’t all bad. Instead of putting an elbow in the eye of the next reporter to sweep past me, a pale golden Tipp with a side parting in his head fur, I flew side by side with him. He gave me a wink.
The contract, or rather the magician controlling it, didn’t want either one of us to get it. It climbed high, swished around us just out of reach, then dove down through the skylight again.
Like hawks chasing a pigeon, we pursued it. I landed on the slick floor of the cottage, just in time to see the contract skip lightly over the tiles and land in the merry fire burning in the brass grate behind Emo Weavil’s family.
“No!” Bunny cried.
I reached out with magik to pull the papers out of the fire. I had them secure, and then the white sheets burst and crackled into black ash. I stopped just short of the hearth, aghast. Our original, destroyed! I used force to try to drag them toward me. The black fragments sifted out of the grasp of my spell.
I threw myself on my knees before the fireplace, trying to see if there was anything left to retrieve. Whoever had snared the document from me had left nothing to chance. The contract was crushed into powder. I glanced up at Bunny. She looked horrified. The room went completely silent.
Wilmer broke the hush by clearing his throat.
“Well, then,” he said, putting his thumbs behind his lapels. “That leaves only one question. Who won this contest today?”
“What?” Bunny asked. She turned to him with disbelief on her face. “How could you ask that now?”
“Well, ma’am,” Wilmer said, with a courtly bow, “since you say that was the only copy of the contract that said different from what we knew, we are bound by the documents that remain intact, such as that held by my lovely campaign manager here.” Carnelia held it up. “So, the question arises: Based upon the rules that we have been going by, who has the more photogenic family? I believe that since I followed more of the regulations than my distinguished colleague, you must declare me the winner.”
“Never,” Emo said, raising a forefinger to heaven. “My family is the more adorable. Why, look at them!”
Wilmer lifted his lip in a sneer.
“All of them? Including the extra daughter?”
“Of course! If you include the boy who isn’t your son, I am justified.”
“You went beyond the spirit of the rules. You shouldn’t be given any consideration by the judges.”
“Well, if you disqualify my family, I will withdraw from the voting at the end of the month,” Emo said, throwing up his hands. “I will await an apology before I consent to reschedule.”
“There’s no need for that,” Bunny said, taking his arm. She favored him with a beseeching look. Emo was not in a mood to be melted. He detached her hand and drew himself up.
“I have been brought into disrepute by false allegations by my opponent! I refuse to be made a fool.”
“Too late for that,” Wilmer said.
“And what about you?” Emo demanded, spinning and putting an accusing forefinger in his opponent’s face. “Just because your son is a lump of gristle is no reason to bring in a pinch sitter.”
Wilmer bowed gallantly to Bunny. He was enjoying being the cooler head. “To the best of my knowledge, it was within the wheelhouse of the rules. I defer to the judges of this contest and ask them to be fair.”
“We’ve been hoodwinked,” Bunny murmured to me. “There was no clause thirty-eight point three.”
“What do you want to do?” I whispered back. “I’ll back anything you decide.”
The entire crowd was watching our every move with anticipation. She shrugged. “We’ll have to allow it. In the end, I suppose it hardly matters.” She raised her voice and addressed the candidates. “All right, then. We go by the portraits?”
“That’s right,” Emo said.
The Shutterbugs flew forward with a great show of ceremony. Tipp helpers from both sides set high wooden stools in front of Bunny for each of them to land upon. One at a time they unfolded the tiny films from their underwings and displayed them to us.
“Ya gotta like that one, honey,” Leabawits said, pointing a tiny claw at a group shot showing Wilmer holding his grandson and beaming. “Look at the halo lighting. Makes the family look like they just came from heaven.”
“If you like representational art,” Anselmo said, with a tiny snort. “I prefer the symbolism in my work.”
I squinted at the little images from his collection. I was always impressed by the art of Shutterbuggery. On Klah, pictures were usually made by artists or unusually talented wizards. The bugs had captured such lifelike pictures that I almost expected them to speak. I looked from one set of images to another, trying to find anything that caught my eye more than the other. Bunny looked as perplexed as I felt.
“Well?” Orlow asked, peering over my shoulder. “Who wins this contest? I think it’s clear that Emo’s family is by far the most attractive and appealing. You can’t look at that wholesome group and not see the next governor!”
Carnelia stuck a finger in my face. “Well, you’ll forgive me for disagreeing. Wilmer has shepherded his family into the third generation! Can Emo boast a grandson?”
Orlow rocked on his heels with a jovial laugh. “Hope not, since his eldest son’s only eight!”
With Anselmo and Leabawits watching us closely, we scanned the tiny films, comparing them side by side by the light of a candle. I had to admit I couldn’t see any difference between the two family groups. Both of them looked wholesome and loving. None of the backbiting or double dealing came through in a still image.
I looked at Bunny and shook my head.
“Very well,” she said. “I declare this contest . . .”
The entire crowd held its breath in anticipation.
“. . . a draw.”
“Oooooh.” The mood of the room deflated.
“Miss Bunny, I most strenuously protest!” Wilmer said.
“So do I!” Emo added.
“Well, how can you?” Bunny said brightly. “Your families are so adorable that I can’t help but love both of them! Now, isn’t that nice?”
The reporters wrote it down. The candidates watched them out of the corner of their eyes and pasted on big smiles.
“Both of you are winners,” I said. “I’d settle for that. If you want us to go over the collections again . . . ?” I could tell neither side wanted that.
“Oh, all right,” Wilmer said. With a wary expression, he put out a hand. Emo took it as though he expected it to break his off. They shook. Wilmer broke away immediately. He raised both hands over his head and turned to the audience. “Thank you to all my friends who came here today! I am grateful to the judges for their intelligent conclusion!”
“I was about to say the same thing,” Emo said. “I am grateful to all of you for visiting my little family. Your pictures will be available at my campaign headquarters in the morning. And now, I will take questions from the press!”
“Mr. Weavil! Mr. Weavil!” “Mr. Weavil-Scuttil!”
&nb
sp; Bunny and I backed away as the reporters closed in. Once we were clear of the crowd, I swept us home to Deva.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“One little peek behind the curtain, and my cushy lifestyle is over.”
—OZ THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE
“Another draw,” Bunny said, kicking off her shoes and throwing herself onto her desk chair. “This election is going to go down to a tiebreaker, I can just tell. And then I will scream. Who stole the contract out of my hands? That took a lot of nerve.”
“I couldn’t tell,” I said. I had never felt so tired in my life, and the purple paint had caked hard on my clothes. I scattered flakes everywhere I walked. Gleep followed me, licking them up off the floor. “I tried to see who looked like they were concentrating on a spell, but everyone seemed to be watching us. Whoever it was had to be in the room so they could keep the paper away from me. And I lost it.”
“You did your best,” Bunny said. The assurance didn’t make me feel any better. I brushed at my clothes. The tunic was probably ruined, but I would give Sansabeld a crack at it. He ran the best laundry in the Bazaar.
Guido and Nunzio emerged from the corridor where they had a small suite of rooms.
“Hey, you look wrecked,” Guido said.
“You don’t have to rub it in,” I said, making a face. I felt like a bag of rags next to the Mob enforcers’ usual dapper attire.
“No offense, boss, and boss,” Guido said, with a nod to Bunny. He and Nunzio couldn’t seem to break the habit of giving me that title, even though I hadn’t had it for a while now. “But you guys look like you got run over by a parade. Wanna come out and get a drink? First round’s on me.”
“I can’t face any more people today,” Bunny said. She looked so pale and drawn that I wanted to hold her in my arms. Guido looked as if the same impulse had hit him, but the expression vanished in a twinkling. He never tried to buck the chain of command. If she wanted a hug, she wasn’t shy about asking for one.
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