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“The one who saw the flying bus incident?”
“Yes.”
He sat up, scooted his chair over so he could reach another chair nearby, knocked some books off that chair, and dragged it back to his desk. “Here, have a seat.” Swiveling around, he called out, “Hey, Larry, she’s here.”
The man at a nearby desk who’d been slumped over his keyboard sat up, blinking. “Here?”
“The bus girl.”
“I really didn’t have anything to do with that incident,” I said as I sat in the indicated chair.
“Doesn’t matter,” the first man said as Larry stood and stretched sleepily. Larry came over and sat on the edge of the first man’s desk. “We thought getting your perspective might add a little verisimilitude to our coverage.”
“Is this a newspaper?” I asked, frowning in confusion.
“Depends on how you define ‘newspaper.’” He waggled his eyebrows and grinned. “Powers.”
“I don’t have any,” I said. “I’m a magical immune.”
“No, Powers is my name.”
“Isn’t that a bit on the nose for a wizard?”
He rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it. But my middle name is even worse, and no, I’m not telling. Anyway, we need to make sure we get the facts straight in our story so they can’t discount it because we got something wrong.”
“I’m still not sure what this is all about,” I said, shaking my head.
“Let’s just say that we help muddy the waters about magical incidents,” Larry said. “We report them alongside stories about Elvis sightings and dragons in Central Park, which makes anyone else who reports these incidents look less credible.”
“I knew magical people have been doing that sort of thing for a long time, but I didn’t know you put out your own tabloid,” I said. “Which one is it?”
Powers smirked. “That’s a secret.” Turning his chair to face his desk and placing his fingers on the keyboard of his computer, he said, “Tell me what happened.”
I gave him a quick rundown, repeating what I’d told the Council inspector. “Sorry, not as exciting as you’d think a flying bus should be,” I concluded with a shrug. “It was only a second or two and not that dramatic. When you can take the bus to Staten Island, that would be a story.”
“We already did that one, about five years ago,” Larry said.
“Don’t you feel bad about misleading people?”
“Who’s misleading?” Powers asked with a shrug. “Our true stories are one hundred percent true. That’s why we wanted to interview you. We merely happen to surround those true stories with others that are maybe less true. It’s up to readers to decide which stories to believe, the same as with any other tabloid.”
“We actually probably have more factual content than most,” Larry said.
“And those are the least believable stories,” Powers added.
As I returned to my office, I reflected that the magical world had been working for centuries to keep their secret, so obviously they had mechanisms in place. It was just weird to keep finding out new things about this world after I’d been involved for more than a year. It would have been nice to know we had our own newspaper when I was responsible for marketing. Then again, a tabloid designed to convince nonmagical people that there was no magic wasn’t exactly a great venue for promoting a magical company to magical people.
Although it seemed like the magical world had things under control, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something shifty was going on, and that it might be bigger than they realized. I didn’t think it would be dangerous to look into the magic watchdogs. If I could find out who these people were and what their agenda was, we’d have a better sense of how it all fit together and whether it was anything to worry about. And it didn’t have to get in the way of my other work.
I didn’t even have to do anything so obvious as contact Abigail Williams. I suspected they’d be looking for witnesses who’d been on that bus by looking for regular commuters on that route. All I needed was to be on that bus when they did so. As undercover missions went, that should be a cakewalk.
4
My one worry about my scheme was that Owen would decide we needed to do more wedding planning or go out to dinner that evening. I definitely didn’t want to go looking for people who were on alert for magic with a wizard at my side. But my luck held and he made up for time lost from that interrogation by working late. I checked the route of the b
us and left work a little early to catch it several blocks away from the office. I hoped that way I would avoid any possibility of looking like I was connected to MSI.
As usually happened around rush hour, there was a long gap between buses, with a crowd forming at the bus stop, and then two arrived practically at the same time. I hesitated, unsure which bus I should try to board. The first one was packed, and the driver only let people off, motioning everyone waiting to the second bus. That settled that. I boarded the second bus and took a seat midway back, where I could eavesdrop on conversations throughout the bus. I pulled a paperback book out of my bag and held it up, pretending to read while I peered over and around it. Every so often, I turned a page.
