Magic and the Modern Girl (30 page)

“Or what?” I muttered as I stepped down from the step stool. “Will you come help me with this?” I said to Melissa.

She followed me down the hallway to my childhood bedroom. Nuri had been staying there, but I still found the light switch on the wall with a reflexive pass of my palm. I barely managed to get the door closed before Melissa burst into laughter. “What is so funny?” I grumbled.

“I’m just looking at these walls and that dress. If I don’t laugh, I might cry.” The bedroom hadn’t been repainted since my high-school days, and the Barbie-pink was even more intense than I remembered. It did absolutely nothing to tame the wedding orange.

“Just help me get this thing off,” I said. Thankfully, Melissa obliged without further commentary. I settled the horrible gown across the foot of my old bed and shuddered. I couldn’t pull my slacks on quickly enough, even as I fumbled for the side zip with nervous fingers. It was as if I believed the dress could control me with hideous powers of its own, as if it could sail through the air and attack me, guaranteeing that I would wear it forever and ever and ever. Hans Christian Andersen’s red shoes would be a preferable form of torture. I glared at the sartorial disaster and quoted bitterly, “Belike you mean to make a puppet of me.”

“Taming of the Shrew,”
Melissa responded immediately. “Just remember what happened to fair Katharina. She wore her gown gladly in the end.”

“She was an idiot,” I said, but I was cut off from further Shakespearean discourse by the ringing of my cell phone. “That’ll be Will. I told him we could meet for a late dinner when I was through here.”

I snapped open my phone, but it wasn’t Will calling after all. It was David.

“Lincoln Memorial. Now.”

“What?” It may have been the mojitos, or the hellish swirl of orange and pink before my eyes, but my warder’s snapped order made no sense.

“Ariel. She’s at the Lincoln Memorial.”

“What is she doing?” I waved at Melissa to hand me my shoes.

“She’s got banners stretched across the entire monument. And posters that denounce the administration as a culture-hating horde of congressional groupies.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

“Does this sound like a joke?”

I could picture the pulse beating in his throat, the hard line of his jaw as he bit off his words. David definitely wasn’t joking.

“Where are you now?” I asked.

“In my car. Fifteen minutes away from the memorial. This is on the radio. There’s going to be press.”

“I’ve got Neko with me. We’ll meet you there.”

“Hurry.”

And then he hung up, just like some action hero in the movies—no goodbye, no sign off. I had never thought that ordinary human beings would gain anything by sparing themselves a couple of simple syllables. I had never thought that I’d be trying to stop an activist anima from taking a federal landmark by storm, either.

“It’s Ariel on the loose,” I said to Melissa. “I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said immediately. “Maybe I can help.”

“Seriously? If you want to help, stay here with Gran. It’ll take forever to explain to her why I’m in such a hurry.” I gave my best friend a sideways glance. “Besides, you can backtrack on that whole marzipan thing. Steer her back to something sane. Something white. Something normal. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Jane, let her be happy. This is the biggest party she’s thrown in her life. She’s never going to do anything like this ever again.”

I glared one last time at the dress. “We can only hope so, anyway.”

I grabbed my purse and hurried down the hallway. “Come on, Neko. We’ve got to go.” I’d interrupted him midstory; his hands were still fluttering around his face as he told Gran about some amusing exploit. She was laughing and clutching a mojito glass that was far too empty for a woman of her weight. Amazingly, though, Neko heard the urgency in my voice and responded by crossing immediately to the front door. I rushed to join him. “Gran, I’m sorry to be fitted and run, but I’ve got to get downtown.”

“What?” Nuri squawked, as if she were upset by all the commotion.

Gran protested. “I thought we’d have a chance to work on wedding plans a bit more! I want to talk to you about balloon sculptures. George and I were thinking about having the triumphal arch from
Aida
.”

“Melissa’s much better at that sort of thing than I am,” I said truthfully. Of course, anyone in the entire metropolitan area would be better than I was. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Gran.” I saw her start to formulate her usual request. “I promise. Neko!”

Miraculously, I hailed the first cab that drove by. As we climbed into the backseat, I fished out my cell phone again. My familiar was clearly bursting with questions; I could see them popping from his smirking lips, but I held up a finger for a moment of private conversation.

One ring. Two. Three. Four. Damn, I was getting voice mail. I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice as light and steady as possible. “Will, hey there. Look, I hope you get this before you get to the restaurant. An emergency has come up, something about—” I glanced at the back of the cab driver’s head “—something about the stuff in my basement and that woman we saw at the Capitol. I have to go to the Lincoln Memorial. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on. Bye!”

“Stuff in your basement,” Neko repeated guardedly as I flipped my phone closed.

“Hush,” I said, nodding toward the driver. “David didn’t give me any details. I don’t know what he wants us to do.”

I thought it would be easy to find him at the memorial. It was almost eight o’clock on a late September evening, when the tourists were long dispersed back to their hometowns.

I hadn’t counted on Ariel’s ability to generate her own publicity.

Three camera trucks were lined up along Constitution Avenue, their satellite aerials pointing toward the sky. A flock of reporters roosted on the memorial steps, weighed down with shoulder-held cameras and microphones and endless coils of cable. As I stumbled out of the cab, I tossed a twenty to the driver. “Keep the change,” I said, unwilling to wait for whatever I was supposed to get back.

Neko shook his head as he took in the crowd. “David is not going to be happy.”

That was the understatement of the year.

Ariel stood at the top of the historic steps. A velvet rope was draped across stanchions, blocking off a long rectangle of space, as if she had all the right in the world to be there. She had somehow managed to string a banner across the four columns at the center of the memorial. I knew from the lecture that I had attended with Will that those columns were reminiscent of the trees that had once served as the centerpiece of Greek worship, the forest that had been the ancestral home of religion. And I knew from my prior experience with my anima that the columns were now a backdrop for a powerful statement, for a political declaration that was likely to be broadcast on the front page of the Saturday
Washington Post
.

Empower The Arts! roared the banner. Lincoln Freed The Slaves! We Must Free The Arts!

She had a way with rhetoric, my anima. If only she would use her powers for good, instead of for evil.

Well, it wasn’t evil to get funding for the arts. But I had never, ever intended for her to take on that mission. I had only meant to get a little help rebuilding my own astral strength. I had only wanted an anima to help out around the house. I was still stunned at how far my little magical experiment had gone astray.

Even as I gaped at the banners, I wondered how she had gotten them up there. Why hadn’t the police stopped her? Why hadn’t anyone prohibited her from turning the entire Lincoln Memorial into her personal stage?

“How did she—” I breathed.

Neko answered exasperatedly. “Magic.”

Well, duh. After all, I had poured all of my power into Ariel when I made her. I had created her with the last remnants of my ability. I had given her all of my spells and charms, trusted her with every ounce of witchcraft that had still been at my disposal.

She hadn’t returned the favor, but she’d sure invested the capital wisely.

Now that I squinted at the banners, I could see that they weren’t real. They were figments of the collective imagination, strung across the columns on a hope and a dream. The letters wavered in the memorial’s floodlights, flickering like a movie projection. I remembered similar spells that I had woven, magic that I had worked where I had stolen the heat of the Potomac River, the glint of silver moonlight.

My anima was a damned good hand at magic.

And now, with the unbroken attention of several hundred people, she began to plead her case. She was dancing again, weaving the same ballet that had captivated the crowd outside of the Capitol. This time, she spread her arms wide, conjuring up signs from the darkness. People gasped as they worked out the words, but no one seemed to realize that she was crafting her posters out of nothingness.

Empower The Arts, said the first one, her old standby.

All Our Life Is Drama, said another.

Museums Are Not Dead, said a third.

Each sign raised a scatter of applause. She pirouetted with her handiwork, swirling in the floodlights. Dance Is Life. She ran from one end of the vast memorial platform to the other, raising cheers with her words.

“We’ve got to do something. Now.” I felt David’s words against my back more than heard him. He grasped my arm and pulled me closer, relying on Neko to follow with a familiar’s ingrained bond.

“What?” I said, reluctant to turn away from Ariel’s spectacle. “I can’t control her. I can’t even feel her. Not with magic. Not now.”

“Do you see what she’s doing with the signs?” We were jostled by the crowd behind us. Everyone was pushing closer, forcing us up against the velvet rope.

“They’re not real, are they?” I squinted to make out the precise magic, to understand what she’d done to weave her arcane messages.

“No.” I knew David well enough to comprehend that his anger was boosted by his inability to control what was happening.

The crowd behind us started to chant. “A-ven-ger! A-ven-ger! A-ven-ger!” I felt as if I was at a pep rally for the emo crowd.

Ariel kicked her dance into high gear. She was moving faster now, more smoothly. I felt Neko twitch beside me, almost as if he was going to pounce on her. The posterboard messages changed faster, flashing forward with a speed fed by magic. Each one transformed, until they all said the same thing: Empower The Arts.

The crowd behind was enraptured, spun into my anima’s production like audience members at a hypnotist’s stage show. Everyone was eager to reach Ariel, desperate for her attention. Someone planted a hand between my shoulder blades and shoved me hard so that he could get closer to the magical creature on the limestone stage.

Even as David grabbed at my arm to steady me, I staggered forward, my head breaking the plane of the velvet rope. I blinked, and everything changed.

Ariel was still there. She was still dancing. But her frantic energy was absent. Her terrible power was gone. She raised her hands above her head, and they were empty. Her arms were spread, without any poster, without any words.

The velvet rope held back her power. It delineated the force that mesmerized the crowd. If I could get past the rope, I could get to her. I would have a chance at regaining control over my anima, at taking back the magic that was rightfully mine.

David pulled me back to safety so abruptly that my teeth rattled. I tugged at his arm. “The rope! We have to take down the rope!” I had to shout to make myself heard above the crowd.

Somehow, he understood me. Somehow, he knew what had to be done. He bellowed at Neko, ordered him to stand ready to catch Ariel. He put his hands on the nearest stanchion, spread his fingers around the polished brass.

One, I could hear him count. Two. Three.

He tugged with the strength of a man who spent his afternoons splitting wood. The velvet swayed wildly, and three of the stanchions tumbled down the steps. The crowd went wild, leaping forward, frantic to breach the barrier, desperate to get to Ariel, to her magic, to her message.

Neko and I, blessed with a split-second warning, were the first people to hit the top step. I scrambled up to my anima, skidded to a stop in front of her, Neko slipping to my side.

Come
, I thought, holding out my hand.

Witch
. Her voice was as flat as it had been in my basement. Her eyes were dull. But a single drop of power fell onto the parched landscape of my mind.

I order you to return to me,
I thought.
Come home. Now.

She raised a hand, as if she were intent on cutting me off. There was a brutal barrier between us. I knew that Neko felt it, too; he was forced to step back, shoved away by the tremendous power she projected. I felt heavy, smothered by a force, a gravity that I had never known before.

And suddenly I understood just how much my initial spell had failed. Not only had I freed my anima. Not only had I released her upon the city. Not only had I invested her with a bizarre mission, a freakish obsession based on a single wayward thought. But I had somehow blocked the natural channel between us. I had somehow locked up all of the power that she was generating, all of the magic that spun out of her own spellcraft, all of the strength that should have flowed back to me. It was there, growing, pulsing, generating more and more pure arcane ability.

But I could not reach it. I could not free it. I could not take back what should have been mine.

“Jane!” David’s bellow cut through my revelation.

I turned in reflex. The crowd had caught up with Neko and me. They were no longer held back by the velvet rope; they weren’t restrained by any sense of justice or rightness or reserve.

Without another thought, Ariel turned and ran, darting around the side of the building. Neko scampered after her, leading the pack that clamored for more information, for more dancing, for more, more, more.

I fell to my knees at the top of the suddenly desolate steps.

David’s hand on my arm was demanding, irresistible. “Are you hurt?” His voice was so harsh I almost failed to recognize it.