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“That’s what I’m wondering. Either there are so many people looking for magic and aware of where to report it that there’s always someone present when anything happens, no matter where or when it happens, or it’s all being staged.”
“Either way, it sounds like a potentially bad situation.”
“If there are that many people becoming aware of magic, we’ve got a big problem. But it’s also scary if it’s being staged, if the people using magic know where one of these reporters will be and make a point of doing magic in front of them.”
“You think magical people are doing this on purpose?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. It’s just one possibility, but I feel like I have to consider it.”
“But why would magic people want to expose magic? You just said that’s a big no-no.”
“They might think they could take over the world once the secret is out, rather than being restricted. The current magical powers that be might lose some control.”
“Oh,” she said with a wince. “So you think the Magical Liberation Front, or whatever they are, are in league with the magical watchdogs? Or maybe the magical watchdogs are a front for the Magical Liberation Front?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. I don’t know who any of these people are or what their agenda really is, and I don’t know what kind of threat they pose. Maybe they’re in league, or maybe they’re using each other without them knowing they’re being used.”
She took a long sip from her coffee cup before saying, “You know, you may just be reading more into this than there really is. Given everything you’ve dealt with, it’s perfectly reasonable for you to see conspiracies everywhere, but it’s possible that the magic watchers happen to be at all these magical incidents because they’ve identified magical people who are prone to using magic in public, and they’re stalking those people.”
I looked across the table at her over the top of the laptop screen. “That’s a good point. I mean, if you saw someone use what you were pretty sure was magic, you’d want to learn more about that person. You might start following them, which means you’d be there the next time they used magic. If there are only a few peo
ple slipping and using magic in ways that get noticed, whether or not it’s on purpose, it’s easy enough to keep track of them.”
“See, probably a perfectly simple explanation, so you don’t have to get all worried about it when you need to be planning a wedding.”
“What about planning a wedding?” said Gemma, who’d just come through the front door, a yoga mat under her arm.
“When you say the word ‘wedding,’ it summons her,” I said to Marcia. To Gemma, I said, “Nothing, just making sure that these incidents aren’t going to distract me from my wedding planning. It’s probably nothing.” To emphasize the point, I closed the laptop.
I really should have been able to let it go. Marcia’s explanation made perfect sense. There probably wasn’t any kind of conspiracy to expose magic coming from within the magical world. It was just a few jerks making trouble for everyone else and getting noticed by the kind of people who actually paid attention to what was going on around them. That artificially amplified the impression of magic run amok. Ninety-nine and probably about nine tenths percent of New Yorkers never saw anything that looked like magic. I’d merely focused on the tiny percentage who did.
And I managed to get through the rest of the day without worrying about it, though I couldn’t help but check on the magic-watching blogs that night. The nightclub incident hadn’t struck me as being worth much notice. It hadn’t even been splashy magic. But still, the story had spread to all the sites, with more photos. It seemed to me that you had to be trying hard to believe to work up any excitement about this incident. Maybe that’s what the tabloid guys needed to do: set up boring magical incidents to publicize. I wondered if they had an online presence.
After church Sunday, I stopped by a bodega to pick up a newspaper, but then I noticed the rack of tabloids. Were they reporting any of the magic incidents? Impulsively, I bought a copy of each one. I couldn’t help but wonder which was the paper produced by magical people. Would I be able to tell? When I got home, I spread them on the dining table to study. One was more celebrity-driven and didn’t have the “news of the weird” stuff. The others all had similar content, including pieces about the bus incident. I couldn’t tell which one was the story written using my interview. The MSI guys apparently knew their stuff. They must have written something indistinguishable from a real tabloid. Two of the papers had stories suggesting that there might be dragons in Central Park, so even that didn’t confirm which paper was a magical plant.
“Ooh, mental junk food!” Nita exclaimed as she came in from her own shopping expedition with groceries. “Is there anything about who Leo’s with now?”
I shoved the celebrity paper over to her. “Be my guest.”
“I never had you pegged as being into this sort of thing,” she said as she leaned over to scan the headlines.
“It’s sort of for a work project,” I said, glad that I hadn’t mentioned anything about not working in marketing anymore. “We’re considering a campaign with a ‘trashy news’ theme, so I’m getting ideas. And learning about the wide variety of strange beings spotted in American cities.”
I might have spent the day in intense analysis of the tabloid press if Owen hadn’t shown up with a picnic basket and a suggestion to take advantage of a nice spring day in the park. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see the dragons for ourselves,” I quipped.
“Dragons?” Owen asked.
“Tabloid story,” I said.
“Really? Which paper was it in?” Nita asked.
I pointed out the pertinent ones. “We’d better sneak out before Gemma catches us and makes us work on the wedding plans.”
He patted his picnic basket. “I have cake samples in here.”
“What will we do with our lives when the wedding’s over and we don’t have to work planning into everything we do?”
“I can’t wait to find out,” he said, so earnestly it was rather endearing. I had to agree with him.
