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This wedding was turning out to be so complicated.
With six of us, we couldn’t fit into one cab, but Rod had arranged for a limo. “We might as well impress them by arriving in style,” he said as he poured a glass of champagne once we were all in the limo. He looked quite suave, even to me. Rod isn’t naturally the most attractive guy, and he habitually uses an illusion to make himself handsome. That was one of the first things that proved my magical immunity. Every woman on the subway had drooled over him, while I found him extremely unattractive. Since then, he’s done better about taking care of himself, so while he’ll never be as stunningly handsome as Owen is, his charming personality combined with his unique features to make him really quite appealing.
I haven’t always had great experiences in limousines. There was the time that fairy godmother more or less kidnapped Owen and me and sent us off on a terrible fancy date in a limo, and then there was the way I had to be driven to and from work during my latest undercover assignment. It sounds like a perk, but it was all about controlling me and keeping me from knowing where the office actually was. As a result, instead of enjoying the luxury, I tensed up.
Rod handed me the glass of champagne he’d just poured. “Here, you look like you need this more than I do.”
Owen put his arm around me. “You can see out the windows in this one,” he said softly, revealing that he knew exactly what I’d been thinking. I leaned against him, and between the champagne and the warmth of his proximity, I felt almost relaxed by the time we reached the club.
The place just looked like a nightclub to me, but Gemma said, “Do they play concerts after hours at stationery stores?” as we approached the entrance.
“Trust me,” Rod said. He nodded to the man standing just inside the door as we entered.
“Oh, it’s a nightclub in disguise,” Gemma said once we were inside the club itself.
I didn’t know what to expect of a magical nightclub—maybe something like the cantina in Star Wars, with a band made up of alien creatures playing to a crowd of strange people drinking oddly colored drinks. I wasn’t too far off the mark, only instead of aliens, they were magical races—human wizards, along with fairies, elves, gnomes, and a few things I couldn’t identify. I leaned over to Gemma and whispered, “Does all this look weird to you?”
“Yeah. It’s like Halloween, except it’s not October.”
That meant the magical people weren’t veiling their appearance. I supposed that was the point of a magical nightclub. They could go there and be themselves without having to fit into the human world. I wondered what it must be like, having to change your appearance in public. They could do veiling spells that only worked on ordinary people, so they looked like themselves to magical folk or to people like me, but still, I wondered if it ever rankled. If anyone had a good reason to want magic to be more open, it might be those like elves and fairies. On the other hand, as Trix had said, there was also the chance that people would want to study them or treat them as something less than human. I made a mental note to talk to some of my fairy and elf friends about this.
But I wasn’t here to work. I was here to find a band to play at my wedding. Drinks magically appeared on our table, and there was a light show just below the ceiling to accompany the recorded music playing while we waited for the band.
When the music stopped and the lights dimmed, an expectant hush filled the bar. At first glance, the band that took the stage didn’t look any different from what you might see at your typical Greenwich Village jazz club. But then I noticed the ears. They were elves, which meant things could get very interesting.
Instead of guitars, they had harps of various sizes and shapes. There was a drum kit made out of different kinds of gourds, and the guy at the edge of th
e stage had a rack of several flutes, from the typical one like what I’d played in high-school band to something that looked like it had been swiped from Peter Pan.
The flautist played a note, and the others tuned their harps to it—that is, they plucked strings that were already perfectly in tune. They were just showing off. Elves made humans with perfect pitch look tone deaf. They could probably look at those harps and know whether or not they were in tune.
And then they started playing. I’m not sure what I’d call their music. It defied genre classification. The harps and flutes gave it a Celtic air, but at the same time, there was a definite groove going on. One of the harps was essentially a string bass with a more haunting sound, and the “drummer” kept a driving beat going on those gourds. Then there were the vocals. An elf singing could make people cry. The sound was crystal clear, and you felt as much as heard it. When they sang together in tight, complex harmonies, it was breathtaking.
After the first song, Marcia turned to me, tears in her eyes. “You have got to have them play for your wedding,” she said.
Gemma gripped my arm and whispered, “Please stop me before I throw my underwear on the stage.”
“It’s elfsong. It’s magic,” I explained. “I mean, it’s really, really good music, but the music does something to you.”
“They must not sell a lot of drinks here when these guys play, because who needs alcohol? This is like a drug.”
That made me wonder whether this was what we wanted for our wedding. I leaned over and whispered to Owen, “Aren’t there some risks involved with having an elf band?”
But the music was starting again, and he gestured for me to be quiet. It seemed that I was the only one in the bar who was immune to their music. I did like the sound, but the effect on me was like any other good music. It made me sigh a little, and I could imagine listening to a CD of this on repeat, but I wasn’t as blissed-out as everyone else here. The entire club seemed to be mesmerized.
As I looked around the room to see how the other patrons were acting, I did a double take when I thought I recognized the “puppy” from the bus. If he was with an anti-magic watchdog group, what was he doing in a magic club, grooving to elfsong? He was sitting next to another clean-cut young white guy. I’d never seen a good image of the bus wizard’s face, but this could have been him. Maybe. Then again, both of them were nondescript enough that I couldn’t be sure. Definitely not sure enough to confront them. I tried to memorize their features without staring for so long that they’d notice me. Then again, as wrapped up as they were in the music, I could probably have crawled into their laps without them paying any attention to me.
When I turned back to the stage, I found myself looking right at the lead singer. Apparently, he’d noticed that I wasn’t enraptured, and he was the kind of artist who’ll ignore hundreds of favorable reviews to fixate on the one “meh.” He began singing directly to me, making intense eye contact as he sang. Next to me, Gemma moaned and sank lower in her seat. I smiled at him and nodded as I sipped my drink and wondered how I’d ordered another. I hadn’t even thought about needing a fresh drink, and here one was.
By the end of the set, I was afraid I’d have to drag my friends and fiancé out of there. It would be like getting sailors past sirens. These elves could probably have made anyone in that room—other than me—do anything they wanted. I imagined they had more than the usual number of groupies. When they left the stage, sobs broke out among the audience.
“Yeah, no,” I said to Owen. “If they’ve got CDs for sale, I want one, but I’d rather not have my wedding guests turned into blissed-out zombies by the band. That music probably counts as a controlled substance. If you’ll notice, no one is dancing. We’re hiring a dance band, aren’t we?”
He shook his head like he was trying to clear it and picked up and drained the drink he’d forgotten about. “Maybe there’s a way to shield the audience a bit, let some of the effect slip through, but without anyone losing it completely.”
“Or we could listen to some more bands.”
Marcia leaned across the table and grabbed my hand. “No, you have to hire them. Please?”
