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I turned to see a fairy hovering above the sidewalk. She wasn’t a street performer. She was the real deal, just going about her business. That sick feeling in my stomach came back in full force. My mother could see the fairy.
It would have been nice if the fairy had been someone I knew, someone I could get to play along with me. Unfortunately, she was a total stranger. Before I had a chance to react, Mom tried to hand her a dollar. “I don’t know how you do that, but I’m impressed,” Mom said. “Lovely costume, too.”
The fairy looked at her like she was crazy. “What the f—” she started to say.
“Mom!” I interrupted, dragging my mother away even as my head spun trying to think of what I could do for damage control. If she was magically immune, that would make things infinitely more complicated. Automatically, I scanned the area, looking for anything else magical I might have to explain, but Times Square was so full of oddities, it was impossible to spot the magical oddities in the midst of everything else.
“Kathleen Elizabeth Chandler, I did not raise you to be that rude,” Mom protested.
“Mom!” I hissed. “Hush and listen. That wasn’t a street performer. I think you insulted her.” I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure a pissed-off fairy wasn’t following us, but I didn’t see anything. It wasn’t until I was about to turn back to my mom that I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked back again, and there was the fairy, a shimmering haze around her so that she looked like she was blurring. I grabbed my parents and pushed them into the nearest doorway, in case she was putting together a spell to use against us. I’d be safe and apparently so would Mom, but I wasn’t so sure about Dad. What if she was one of Idris’s people? Worse, what if she’d actually been stalking us on purpose?
The doorway turned out to lead into a souvenir shop. “Look! Postcards! You’ll want to send one to each of the boys, right?” I said with forced enthusiasm. The huge rack of cheap postcards would distract my parents for a good five minutes while they argued over which ten to buy and which view of the skyline was nicer.
That gave me time to check out the situation and figure out what to do next. I ducked back out of the souvenir shop and looked up and down the sidewalk. It didn’t seem like the angry fairy lady was going to come after us, so maybe I’d been overly paranoid to assume she was working for Idris. I was sure I’d feel better if I could spot one of my MSI bodyguards and verify the situation, but I didn’t see anyone I recognized, human or otherwise. There was never a gargoyle around when you needed one.
That brought up my next problem: what should I do about Mom? My first instinct was to call the office and ask for advice. Rod knew all about immunes. He’d know what to do. Then I realized that would be a very bad idea. The company was desperate for immunes to help them guard against other magic users, and we were increasingly rare. I couldn’t let them try to recruit my mother. If she knew what I was mixed up in, she’d haul me back home, magical immunity or not. We were going to get through this visit, and then I’d put her back on a plane to Texas where she could live a blissfully unmagical existence. All I had to do was keep the secret for a few more days. Fortunately, my mom was primed to think New York was exceptionally weird. I’d lived here a year before I learned the truth. Surely I could get my mom through a few days.
I counted to ten to steady myself before going back into the store. Mom and Dad were still arguing over postcards. “This night view is a good one,” Mom said.
“But you can’t see anything other than lights,” Dad pointed out. “The sunset one’s nicer.”
“Get both,” I suggested. They turned to look at me, and I realized they hadn’t even noticed I’d been gone. They finally settled on ten cards, and I got them to the cash register before they could start discussing which card to send to which person.
As we left the store, Mom asked, “Now, Katie, what was that all about?”
Dad gave one of his long-suffering sighs. “Lois, you tried to give some girl on the street a dollar. I know she was funny looking, but if you tried to give a dollar to every funny-looking person you saw on the street in this town, you’d run out of money awful fast.” He put his hands in his pockets and walked ahead of us, like he was ashamed to be seen with us in public. I couldn’t entirely blame him. In fact, I wanted to join him.
“She wasn’t a street performer, Mom,” I said.
“But Katie, she had on wings. What kind of person wears wings, when it’s not even Halloween? And I could swear she was flying.”
I scrambled for an explanation and came up with something she wouldn’t dare question. “Mom, there are all kinds of alternative lifestyles, and they’re pretty open about them in this city. I don’t think you really want to get more into it than that, okay?”
She looked stunned, then frowned like she was trying to put together a mental image. Finally, she shook her head as if to clear it. “Okay,” she said at last in a small voice I could barely hear over the traffic.
“Let’s catch up with Dad,” I said, relieved that I’d managed to get away with telling a version of the truth. All I had to do to get through the rest of the week was think of the places in the city where we were least likely to run into magic. Oh yeah, piece of cake.
Unfortunately, I’d already promised to show them Central Park. There was maximum weirdness potential there, as I’d discovered soon after joining MSI. Any enchanted frogs should have been hibernating for the winter by Thanksgiving, so that wouldn’t be an issue. I’d hope there wouldn’t be any pranks like the one played on Marcia’s boyfriend, Jeff, when his friends cast an illusion that made him and everyone else think he’d been turned into a frog, so that he did things like crouch naked beside a pond in the park. I could probably explain any naked men squatting by ponds as deranged drunks. I was more worried about the number of male fairies—they called themselves “sprites” because they thought it sounded less gay—and gnomes who worked in the park. Sprites could be more “alternative lifestyle” people my mom wouldn’t want to talk about, but how could I explain living garden gnomes?
As I expected, my folks were charmed by the Plaza Hotel and the lineup of carriages they’d seen so often in movies. I led them to the Mall so they could look down the lane of elm trees. It wasn’t as spectacular as it was during the summer when there was a canopy of leaves, but I thought it was still an impressive sight. Dad studied it for a while, then asked, “About how many acres do you think this place is?”
“I have no idea, but it is a huge park. If you get into the middle of it, you can almost forget you’re in the city.”
He nodded. “Hmm. That’s good. You need something green around to keep you feeling alive.”
“Hey, what’s that?” We both turned when we heard Mom’s voice.
“What’s what, Lois?” Dad asked.
“That!” She was pointing at the base of a nearby statue, where a garden gnome was at work with a tiny shovel in the flower bed beneath the statue. I did a double take, for I was pretty sure I recognized that gnome, which was odd. I didn’t know too many magical people who didn’t work at MSI, and I definitely wasn’t acquainted with the park’s magical groundskeeping staff. The gnome’s look of sheer panic when he looked up at me was proof that this was someone I knew. After a moment, I realized who he was: Hertwick, a member of MSI’s sales force. But what was he doing in the park during business hours? Then I remembered that the more important question was how I’d find an explanation that would satisfy my mother without making my dad, who probably didn’t see anything at all, suspicious.
“I don’t see anything,” I said. Hertwick looked indignant, but then I caught his eye, inclined my head slightly toward my mother and frowned. He got the message and jumped behind the statue while my mom was glaring at my dad.
“It’s right there!” Mom protested, turning to point to the place where Hertwick had been. Then she frowned and looked puzzled. “Or it was. I could have sworn I saw something. It looked like one of those little statues in Louise Ellerbe’s front lawn—which I always thought were as tacky as plastic pink flamingos—only it was moving. It was like it was digging in the flower bed.”
This time it was my dad who took her arm and moved her away. “Maybe we’d better head back to the hotel,” he said. “You’re probably tired.”
She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “I am not tired. And don’t tell me my hormones are out of whack, either. I know what I saw.” She marched right over to the statue, then walked around it. Hertwick ran around the statue base, keeping it between him and her. When she’d made a full revolution around the statue, she returned to Dad and me, a frown wrinkling her forehead. “Huh,” she said, then looked up at Dad and wagged a finger in his face. “And don’t you dare say a word, Frank Chandler.” She headed off down the path without a backward glance, with Dad and me hurrying to keep up.
