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This flier wasn’t a coupon for a free drink at a comedy club or an announcement of a designer shoe sale. It was from one of the anti-magic groups, not just giving a blog address, but announcing a public meeting.
I folded it carefully and put it in my purse, grinning to myself. This looked like my chance.
7
When I got to work, I stopped by Trish’s office and handed her the flier. “Are you free this evening?” I asked.
As she read the flier, her eyebrows rose. “Wow, meeting about this sort of thing in public. Even if we didn’t have an assignment to try to infiltrate them, I’d have to go to this, just to see what kind of people showed up.”
“Yeah, I’m guessing it’ll be an interesting crowd. Or not a crowd, judging by the number of these fliers that were littering the ground around the station.”
“Watch—it’ll be maybe five people, and all of them are magical people curious to know what dirt the organizers have. We should plan a strategy. Do we go together or go separately and pretend we don’t know each other?”
I pondered that. “On the one hand, if we go separately, we can let them think their fliers got a wider reach than they did. On the other hand, if we go together, we could play it like friends doing it on a lark or dare. Do we want them to think we’re serious about this magic stuff, or do we want them to have to convince us?”
“And do we let on about the magic immunity—not knowing what it is, of course, just having seen more than your average person?”
“Or we could split the difference—be friends, one of us dragging the other because one of us sees stuff and wants to convince her friend that it’s real.”
“Okay, that’s good,” she said, nodding. “So, who’s the skeptic and who’s the believer?”
“Flip a coin?”
We ended up deciding that since I’d received the flier, I would be the one who thought she saw things and had dragged her friend to the meeting. Trish would be the one going out of curiosity and fairly certain her own worldview would be validated by this meeting.
We clued Sam in on our plan so he could have backup ready in case we needed it, but I warned him not to have gargoyles nearby, in case we were right about the involvement of magical immunes. They wouldn’t be able to get a photo of a magically veiled gargoyle that anyone else could see, but we didn’t want a meeting full of magical immunes to be confronted with something obviously magical.
The meeting was in the basement of an old church that seemed to be dealing with declining membership by renting out its meeting rooms to all comers. The board outside the room mentioned meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, a genealogy society, a Parents without Partners group, and a folk dancing club. This meeting was listed as “Raising Community Awareness of Unusual and Unlikely Events.”
I didn’t have to fake being eager and a bit nervous to get into character. I really had no idea what I was getting into. We were several minutes early, and the room was just about empty, aside from the people at the front of the room who were apparently running the meeting. I didn’t recognize any of them. I’d thought maybe I’d see the woman from the bridal brawl or the puppy from the bus, but they weren’t there.
“Oh, hey, they have cookies,” Trish remarked as we entered. “So it’s not a total loss.”
One of the people at the front must have heard her, for his head snapped around when she spoke, and he came down the aisle between the rows of chairs to greet us. I’d have pegged his age at maybe somewhere in the midforties, but it was hard to tell. He seemed like one of those people who was born middle-aged. He probably didn’t look much younger than this in high school, and he’d still look about this age when he was in his seventies. He wore a sweater vest over a dress shirt, but avoided being a total cliché by wearing no tie at all rather than a bow tie. I couldn’t tell whether his hair was thinning or just thin, and it was parted very carefully and slicked down. “Hi, welcome,” he said. “Are you here for the meeting?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, not having to fake my voice shaking slightly. “I got a flier at the subway station this morning.” I took it out of my purse and showed it to him. “This is the right place, isn’t it?”
“Yes, this is the place. Have you seen things?”
I gave a shaky little laugh. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on,” Trish said around a mouthful of cookie. “You’re always telling me about things you’ve seen.”
“I just, well, I hoped if I talked to other people, I might know whether or not I was crazy,” I said with a shrug.
“We don’t think you’re crazy,” the man said. “Help yourself to some refreshments, and we’ll get started soon.”
He returned to the front of the room, and Trish and I went to the refreshment table. As we selected from an assortment of store-bought cookies, Trish whispered, “Is this what you thought it would be?”
“Yes and no.” It was exactly what I thought might happen if people who thought they saw things tried to start a support group, but not at all what I expected of a serious anti-magic organization. I put a few cookies on a paper napkin, took a paper cup of punch, and we found seats near the middle of the room, on the side nearest the door, in case we needed to make a quick exit or slip out.
While I nibbled on a cookie, I tried to get a good read on the people at the front of the room. The man we’d spoken to didn’t really fit in with the others. There was a tall, stern-looking woman in a no-nonsense business suit that made me think of the magical puritans we’d encountered the previous year and a scholarly looking man wearing black-rimmed glasses. I couldn’t tell if it was his eyesight or his personality that made him seem to be glaring at the world. If these were the people behind the movement, then I was fairly certain my theory about magical immunes tryin
g to make some sense out of the world was correct. They didn’t strike me as people with a serious crusade.
A few more people entered the room. I had a feeling at least two of them were homeless people looking for an indoor place to sit down and get free refreshments. On the other hand, there was a high correlation between homelessness and mental illness, and people who are immune to magic often think they’re crazy because of all the strange things they see that no one else sees, so there was a good chance that there were a number of perfectly sane magical immunes among the homeless population. I made a mental note to follow up on that. Maybe these guys weren’t just here for the refreshments. They might be seeking knowledge. They filled their pockets with cookies, grabbed more cookies, and sat in the back row. Only one new arrival sat near the front.
It was past time for the meeting to have started, but the people in front were still talking among themselves, apparently going over a presentation. I suspected they were hoping more people would show up, but were running late or stuck in traffic. “I’m going for more cookies and a punch refill,” Trish said as she stood. “Want anything?”
