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“Oh, yeah. Well, they could have made him lose his voice, made his megaphone quit working, called up a storm that would have dispersed the crowd, or maybe even made all of us forget what we saw. Dragging him away seems like a pretty mundane and ineffective way to silence his message.”
“Good point,” she said, nodding. “So maybe he’s just a crackpot conspiracy theorist pulling a publicity stunt.” She glanced around, moved closer to me, and dropped her voice. “But if you were at that bridal sale where those things happened, you know it’s not all hype. There’s something going on, and that’s not the first time I’ve seen strange things.”
“I don’t really know what I saw at that bridal sale. I didn’t even think much of it until I saw your story on the news.”
“So you did recognize me. I had a feeling at that meeting.”
“It took me awhile since you looked so different than you do on TV, but yeah. That story made me curious, and when I saw the flier, I thought I’d at least check things out.” All of those statements were true, though there were a lot of missing parts.
“Have you seen other weird stuff?”
That was a lot harder to answer without lying or without letting on more than I wanted to share. I laughed and shrugged. “It’s New York, of course I’ve seen weird stuff. Whether it’s magic or not, well . . .”
“The jury’s still out,” she concluded.
“What kind of stuff have you seen?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was probing or interrogating. I hoped I came across like I was mildly curious.
“I don’t know. There are things that disappear or reappear. Like, there’s a church that only sometimes has gargoyles on it, which isn’t supposed to be the way that works. Or maybe I only notice them sometimes.”
It took all my self-control to keep a mildly interested smile on my face while my stomach went into freefall. A magically immune reporter was a worst-case scenario. The only saving grace was that she wouldn’t be able to get proof of most of the things she saw. Magical veils work even in photographs and film, so photos of veiled magic wouldn’t work as evidence to convince a non-immune. But with people using magic openly, possibly for the purpose of exposing it, we had a real problem on our hands.
“That is weird,” I said, nodding. “But is it magic? If you had magic powers, surely you’d do more with it than make gargoyles appear and disappear. It just seems like magic would be so big it would be impossible to hide.”
“Unless they’re using magic to hide the magic.”
I forced myself not to react as violently as I wanted to. It was a little alarming that she’d figured that much out without knowing anything. “But why? Wouldn’t they be better off using it? Or do you think they’re secretly ruling the world?”
She gave a huge sigh. “I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s much of a story here. Maybe there’s something to a Union Square speaker getting hauled away by mysterious men in black, but I’d need a lot more proof of magic to be able to do a story about that without getting laughed out of town.” She handed me a business card. “If you do see something that I could document, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. The operative words there were “that I could document,” and there was nothing she could document, as far as I was concerned. “But I really doubt there’s anything to all this.”
My cell phone rang, and I fished it out of my purse, looked at the display, and said, “I really have to take this.” She waved a farewell, and I walked a few steps away before I accepted the call.
“Where are you?” Owen said.
“Still in the park, but I’m leaving now.”
“Are you okay?”
“That reporter recognized me from the meeting and wanted to talk. There wasn’t anything conclusive. Where are you?”
“I went home.”
“Okay, I’ll head over there because we need to talk.”
His house was a few blocks away. I had a key, so I let myself into the stairwell and ran up to his front door. He opened the door as I neared it. As soon as I’d entered and he’d shut the door behind me, I blurted, “She’s immune to magic. The reporter. At least, it sounds like it. She sees the gargoyles. It sounded a lot like what I saw before I learned what was going on.”
“Whoa, slow down,” he said, taking the stack of tabloids from under my arm and guiding me into the living room. His cat darted out from under the sofa as I sank onto it. He put the papers on the coffee table and sat beside me, holding both my hands. His touch made me feel a lot steadier. “So, you’re saying you think the reporter who covered the magical brawl at the bridal sale and went to that anti-magic meeting is immune to magic?”
“It sounds like it, from the way she described things. Oh, and I think she was also the one in the park when the bicycles attacked. I tried to dismiss what she thinks she saw, and I feel awful about doing that. I know what it was like, seeing things and not knowing what was going on.”
“And she’s investigating claims of magic to try to make sense of what she’s seen?”
“That seems to be the case.”
“Do you think she’s involved in any of these groups?”
I shrugged. “Hard to say. I don’t know if she knows about the websites, if she’s tracking down these reports. But she did get a news release from that group. She wasn’t sure if they recognized her at the meeting and targeted her for that, or if they saw her story on the bridal event. She’s still kind of skeptical, which is good, but I don’t know how long it will last.”
