“That’s what a second plate is for,” Poppy replied, continuing to stack the little sandwiches.
“They bring all this in from a very fancy place on Fifth Avenue,” I said. “Probably costs, oh, a hundred dollars a head. Give or take.”
“A hundred dollars?” Mom squeaked.
“Poppy’s membership dues at work,” I said.
“Eat up!” added Poppy, cheerfully.
Mom grabbed a plate and went for the desserts. First she chose candy robin’s eggs nestled in a shredded pastry nest, then several madeleines and a miniature parfait with bright red fruit puree, and finally some chocolate petits fours decorated with icing leaves in fall colors. “I’ll come back for sandwiches,” she said.
“Double the desserts and I’ll get sandwiches for both of us,” I said.
“Deal,” she said, sneaking one of the robin’s egg confections into her mouth.
We carried our goodies to a nearby table. The other Ladies Who Witch glanced at us curiously but mostly seemed content to load up on treats and gossip.
As we made wreckage of the fancy food, the exterior doors were closed and the curtains drawn. Several witches wearing sparkling autumn-colored robes began to make their way through the crowd, performing small acts of elemental magic. One juggled colorful maple leaves with air streams alone. Another rotated a miniature planetary system of water globes through the air while a fire witch created seasonal constellations from small pops of flame. The fourth witch carried a cornucopia of apples. The apples blushed, then rotted, then burst into tiny apple saplings from the remaining seeds, bearing small apple blossoms amid green leaves.
Everyone smiled and clapped, including my mother. “Did you see that?” she said, slapping me lightly on the arm.
I was about to reply when I heard another voice. A voice, seemingly coming from far away, deep and vibrational as if it traveled through the marble floor beneath my feet and up the bones of my legs, directly into my ribcage. Squeezing my heart instead of assaulting my ears.
Zelda.
I stopped breathing.
“Zelda?” Mom said. “Don’t you like it?”
I puppeteered my head up and down. Then I made my lips do that thing where they curve upward. “Excuse me for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
“Do you want me to come with you, honey?”
“I’m fine,” I said, quickly patting her on the shoulder before near-jogging to the hallway.
Where was it?
I looked left, then right. Upward, at the ceiling, with its elaborate crown moldings.
Zelda.
Again it vibrated up through my feet.
I looked down at the floor, which was covered by richly patterned carpet. What lay beneath the ground floor? Poppy had once taken me down a curving staircase to an art-filled chamber containing a magical dancing statue. I hurried in that direction, almost skidding on the landing before gripping the staircase railing and running down, the room twisting around me as I descended. I took the last two steps with a two-footed jump, then stumbled to the center of the room.
Colorful portraits of witches stretched the height of the room. The dancing statue, on its high, isolated perch, stood still.
“Where are you, you ghostly bastard?” I said.
Silence. Or almost silence—somewhere in the distance, water plinked like an antique piano. I hurried to a door on the other side of the room and pulled it open.
Another hallway. Unlike the hallways on the ground floor, this below-street-level hallway was dim. Stone-colored.
I stepped inside. No, not stone-colored. Actual stone. I touched the wall and condensation cooled my fingertips. “This is where you go back for help, Zelda,” I said. My voice shivered back to me, a distorted echo.
I followed the hallway straight ahead to a blind right turn. I made the turn without slowing down—and had to stop on a dime, because I was three steps away from walking straight into a swimming pool.
Golden light wavered through the water, illuminating a cave-like room with an arched stone ceiling. Geometric mosaics covered the walls and the ceiling in abstract patterns; the plink-plink I’d heard came from a shell-like fountain set in the far wall above the pool.
