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“Let’s hope so. Because if a reporter starts taking this at all seriously, we’re in real trouble.”
“Or, if this meeting is the kind of thing she sees when she starts investigating, it entirely blows all their credibility, and this magic-watching movement will fizzle out.”
“You’re so optimistic.”
“Just call me Pollyanna.”
“I hope you’re right.” But my experience was that things tended to get worse rather than miraculously getting better on their own.
I was running late for work the next morning, and even though I doubted Sam was a stickler for punctuality, especially since I’d been on an assignment the night before, I still hated to be late. I suppose I’d never gotten over my ex-boss Mimi, who acted like I’d personally brought on Armageddon if I was two minutes late getting to my desk.
I heard the roar and whoosh of a departing train as I rounded the corner to head down the stairs to my platform. Just my luck, I’d barely missed a train, so I’d have to wait for the next one. Since there was no point in running, I continued down the stairs to the platform at a more reasonable pace.
When I was about halfway down the final flight of stairs, I heard a strange screeching sound and had to groan. If there was a mechanical problem somewhere on the line, there would be no hope of getting to work on time. Wouldn’t you know, this had to happen on the rare morning I wasn’t commuting with Owen, who could generally res
olve problems like this with a subtle wave of his hand.
But when I reached the platform, I was surprised to see the train that had just left moving backwards up the track, back to the platform. Judging by the number of other people running down the stairs and toward the train, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Either something ahead was so badly broken that they’d had to back a train up, or someone was doing some serious public magic.
8
The train doors opened as though this was an ordinary stop. Nobody left the train, and there was no announcement telling people that this line had been closed and that all passengers must exit. It looked like we really had been given a second chance at a train. The commuters who couldn’t believe their stroke of luck surged forward to board. While I was grateful for the do-over that might get me to work on time, I also wanted to see who’d done the spell that had brought the train back, so I scanned the platform.
There was a man who’d been ahead of me when I arrived, reaching the platform just as the train pulled out, but he hadn’t even tried to catch it, which was at least moderately suspicious, given the train’s abrupt return. When he headed to the train, I ran toward him, jumping into the same car. You’d think it would be hard to lose someone in a subway car, but the car had already been rush-hour full. Then there were all the people who’d boarded after the backup. He wore a suit and carried a backpack, so he blended in easily with the crowd heading downtown. I hadn’t seen enough of him to distinguish him other than by his clothes. Almost any man on the train could have been the one I’d followed. Not that I was certain he was a suspect. His lack of urgency might have been because he knew he could recall the train, but he might just not have been in a hurry to get to work.
At any rate, I had enough to worry about trying to stay on my feet when I could barely reach a pole to hold on to. The train seemed to be making up for the lost time from backing up by going faster. I wasn’t sure if that was the engineer’s doing or the wizard’s. I couldn’t help but wonder how the MTA would spin this incident. Was it the sort of thing people would think was magic, or would most people assume it was a train malfunction?
Although I was alarmed by the event, it did help me get to work on time. Once I’d checked my e-mail and filed a formal report of the incident, I headed to Trish’s office. “You’re never going to believe what happened on my way to work this morning,” I said from her doorway.
“All traffic came to a sudden and complete stop, against the light in the middle of the block, leaving an open path for you and the people around you to walk across? It was like Moses parting the Red Sea, only it was a sea of taxis and delivery vans.”
“Really?”
“You work here, and that surprises you?”
“I’m not surprised that something like that might happen. I’m just a little surprised that it happened around you on the same morning when a subway train left the platform, then suddenly stopped and backed up so the people who’d just missed it had a chance to catch it.”
“I guess it’s Be Kind to Commuters Day in the magical world.”
“How often do you see that sort of thing happening?” I asked.
“To be honest, never. Even when the cops try to stop traffic, they don’t get that kind of perfect compliance.”
“I’ve seen Owen summon a train, but it’s pretty subtle. Nothing so dramatic as backing up. And now there are two incidents on the same morning?”
“The morning after both of us attended a meeting about spotting magical incidents. Interesting. Is that how they’re getting pictures of magical stuff, figuring out the people who are looking for magic and making sure that magical things happen in front of them?”
“Maybe. Or it could have nothing to do with the meeting. We need to see how widespread this is or if it’s just us.”
I went back to my office and contacted Rod to get him to send a company-wide memo asking for reports of nonveiled magic-related incidents anyone might have seen that morning. While I waited for those results, I checked the magic-watching blogs. You’d think something like that would have lit them up, but the only report I saw of the subway incident, on the Abigail Williams blog, was so detailed and extensive that it couldn’t possibly have been written that morning. It didn’t read at all like what someone who’d seen something truly odd would have rushed to the office and written. It contained details I hadn’t noticed—and that I’m pretty sure hadn’t actually happened in that way—and was surprisingly free of typos. I’m a good typist, and I’m not sure I could have dashed off something that long in the time since I got to the office without it being riddled with errors.
Whoever wrote that post had known what would happen and had prepared a report ahead of time, so it had the things that must have been planned right, but missed some of the details of the way it had actually happened. That proved to me that magical people were involved somewhere in all of this. It wasn’t just about people who noticed weird things and wanted to be validated. The question was, how were the magical people involved? Were they using the magic watchers, or were they in cahoots?
I had lunch with Owen in his office and told him about the meeting the night before. He was as worried as I’d felt about the reporter’s presence. “If she’s working on a story, we may have to intervene,” he said. “I know you have qualms about that, but we can’t let her publicly expose magic to a broad audience. We’ll have to discredit her or otherwise do something to ruin the story.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, trying to swallow a lump in my throat. “I had the same thought. But maybe she’s just interested personally. She definitely wasn’t there in the role of famous television personality. She didn’t want to be recognized.”
“Have you had Sam get someone to keep an eye on her?”
