The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (23 page)

“Bergdorf!” Tiffany spat the word out like a curse. “Some freaking friend she is.”

Airboy shrugged. “Well, she did save your life.”

“Big whoop. Anything else? Because if there isn’t, I want to go back and catch the rest of Mortal Coil’s set.”

There weren’t enough numbers in New York Between to calm me down enough to deal with Tiffany. I’d barely started counting when Airboy went into his gremlins-in-a-sack act.

Tiffany sneered. “Your boyfriend’s got cooties.”

I stopped myself from telling her Airboy wasn’t my boyfriend.

Airboy’s hands reemerged from the sweater. He was holding a blue jar. “Beauty cream. Very highest quality, from one of the best glamourists in the Garment District. Guaranteed to clear the complexion, brighten the skin, and smooth superficial scars.”

Tiffany’s visible eye widened, then narrowed. “These scars aren’t superficial.”

Airboy shrugged. “So you’ll have small scars instead of big ones.”

Tiffany reached for the jar.

“Hold on,” I said. “What’s to keep you from taking the cream and then refusing to talk, or even just making up some lie?”

“Same thing that’s keeping you from sticking me with a jar of Harbor mud.” She hesitated. “You’re not, are you?”

“No,” said Airboy. He put the jar in her hand, and she stashed it in the pocket of her coat.

“The mirror,” I said.

She hesitated, then went through her pockets. She seemed to have an awful lot of them—in the jacket she wore under the coat, in her shirt, even in the legs of her baggy pants. She didn’t look in her sleek leather Designer Bag, though. She didn’t have one.

“What happened to your magic bag?” I asked.

“My ex-fairy godmother took it away,” she said, still patting and groping. “Changelings without a Neighborhood don’t have them.”

“Then how do you—?”

Tiffany fixed me with her one blue eye, wild and angry as a were-cat’s. “You want the Mermaid’s mirror, Wild Child, or the story of my life?”

She had the mirror. She actually had the mirror. I couldn’t believe it. And she was going to give it to me, just like that.

There had to be a catch.

“Ta-da!” She produced a thick wad of cloth and laid it on the desk. “Check it out.”

Gingerly, I picked it up and unwrapped about a million layers of grimy cloth. At the final layer, I hesitated.

“Scared, Wild Child?” Tiffany grinned. “Old Scratchy’s in there, all right, but she can’t get out unless you call her.”

“I’m not scared.”

The mirror I uncovered was the same size as the Mermaid’s mirror I remembered, and had the same plain silver rim. The mirror itself was cloudy and dark, with a storm of red and black lurking in its depths. I held it in the special way Changeling had taught me and felt for the special grooves.

Tiffany snatched at the mirror. “Stop, you moron! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Checking it out.”

“I meant look at it, not turn it on.” She said some words I’d never heard before. “You don’t want Old Scratchy loose in the Bowery, do you?”

“Is that what would happen?”

“Do you really want to find out?”

I rewrapped the mirror and laid it on the desk.

“So,” said Tiffany, all casual. “You still want it?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m going to give it back to the Mermaid Queen.”

“No!” Airboy burst out, horrified. “We can’t. It’s . . .
infested
.”

“So what? She’s the Genius of New York Harbor. She can un-infest it.”

He shook his head. “Bad things would happen. Worse than salt water in the Park. You have to believe me.”

I did. Airboy wasn’t a liar. “Well, we’ll just have to exorcise it ourselves.”

“She’ll eat you alive,” Tiffany said.

“I didn’t say me. I said us.”

Tiffany laughed. “
Us?
A fish boy and a country girl who hasn’t been in school for two minutes, and a Neighborhoodless monster? What do you think this is, a fairy tale? You’re out of your freaking mind.”

Airboy nodded. “What she said.”

“No, not just
us
.” I had no idea what I was about to say, but I suspected it was going to be brilliant. “
All
of us: Fortran and Espresso and Stonewall and Mukuti and Danskin. And Bergdorf, because she was the one who did the binding in the first place.”

Tiffany snorted. “That collection of goody two-shoes would fall over dead if you even suggested they come to the Bowery.”

“Not the Bowery,” I said. “Miss Van Loon’s, tomorrow night.”

There was a long silence, and then Tiffany burst out laughing. “You’re even crazier than I am. All right. I’ll be there.” She stuffed the mirror back in her pocket. “Looks like we’ll have our little Hallowe’en challenge, after all.”

 

 

I
t was Hallowe’en night at Miss Van Loon’s. The stairwell was dark as we groped up the steps. Stonewall went first, with Danskin. Fortran was next, followed by Bergdorf, Espresso, Mukuti, Airboy, and Tiffany. I brought up the rear.

The sounds of the Hallowe’en Revels filtered up from below, shrieks of laughter and fake fear bouncing up the stairwell from the group of little kids playing Ghost Brother with an old sheet in the front hall. The assembly room was full of pretend goblins, fake were-animals, and carefully researched demons of many lands bobbing for apples, telling ghost stories, grilling pounded rice
dango
and popping corn over the Magic Tech’s bunsen burner. In the Questing Room, the bigger kids were braving the Haunted House’s peeled grape eyeballs and cold spaghetti entrails and hollow voices rising out of cardboard coffins.

There weren’t any Haunted Mirrors, though.

The day had started back home in Central Park, getting into my troll maiden outfit with Astris fussing over the hang of my rope tail and Pepperkaka telling me exactly what she’d do to me if I messed up her embroidered apron and her red felt hat from Finland. If I hadn’t been thinking about how I was going to be facing Bloody Mary’s iron claws in a few hours, it might have made me nervous.

The celebration began at Assembly. Everybody wore their costumes to school, so instead of silent mortal kids in star-spangled gray sweaters, we were a colorful selection of goblins and demons and ghosts and bogeymen and ghouls from seven continents, all breaking the no-talking rule into bite-sized pieces.

After the School Song, the Schooljuffrouw—dressed as a wicked witch, complete with warts, pointy hat, and cackle—led us in a group scream. She didn’t read from the
Big Book of Rules
.

There were no lessons, but we all had to pitch in and decorate the school, following the plan the Art Tutor and the Magic Tech had been working on. As we hammered, pinned, draped, and painted, Miss Van Loon’s began to look less like a school for changelings and more like a playground for nightmares.

Lunch was even more chaotic than usual, as if the Wild Hunt had taken over Miss Van Loon’s. Demons screamed, goblins threw food, and bogles ran from table to table, begging for treats. In the middle of it all, my friends and I sat around a table disguised as a poisonous toadstool and admired one another’s costumes.

Espresso made a truly terrifying flower child in huge bellbottoms and beads and a vest with fringes down to her knees. Fortran, who’d changed his mind again, was a mad scientist in a white lab coat, heavy black glasses, and wild white wig like a dandelion clock. Mukuti was a rather shy rusalka in a flowing white dress, crocheted green hair, a wooden comb, and a totally un-Russian breastplate of protective charms. Stonewall had opted for the classic vampire look: pointy teeth, black tail-suit, and red-lined cape. He’d even dyed his hair black, which made him look weirdly normal.

We all agreed, though, that Danskin’s costume was the best. In direct defiance of Rules 305 (Students must not wear glamours or alter their appearance magically) and 306 (Students must not carry or use magic talismans without written permission from their Neighborhood Genius), he’d stolen a feather cloak from Lincoln Center and turned himself into an actual swan, with a long snaky neck and snowy feathers. Or most of one, anyway: his broken arm hadn’t transformed.

To my total astonishment, Airboy was sitting between Espresso and Mukuti, wearing the
alte-zachin hendler
’s fuzzy blue sweater, a blue wig, and big, ducklike feet. When Mukuti asked what he was, he shot me a hunted look.

“A Blue Meanie,” I improvised. “They don’t speak, you know.”

“Oh,” said Mukuti. “Right. Um, Neef? Do you know where we’re supposed to meet Tiffany?”

I shrugged and ate my bread and cheese. Today was a day for comfort food. I didn’t even want coffee.

“She’ll show when she shows,” Danskin said.

“With any luck,” Fortran muttered, “she won’t show at all.”

“She’s got the mirror,” I reminded him.

Espresso looked up from her tabouli and wheatberry salad. “Do you have an actual playlist for this gig, Neef?”

I shrugged. “I thought we’d play it by ear.”

“No way.” Stonewall was firm. “The Angry One is
dangerous
, people. We need a
plan
.”

An apple whizzed by my head and splatted against the wall. “We can’t talk here.”

“Library?” Mukuti suggested.

Stonewall stood up. “It’s worth a try. Come on, Danny. I’ll carry you up the stairs.”

In the library, we found the quiet we were looking for. We also found Tiffany, cross-legged on the checkout desk with the library cat draped over her knees.

She dumped the cat and stood up. I watched everyone who hadn’t yet caught her Bowery act take in the torn fishnet stockings, short black skirt, coat with silver buttons, and the black bandage covering half her face.

Fortran whistled. “Wizard costume! Who are you supposed to be?”

“The punk pirate queen,” Tiffany growled. “You got a problem with that?”

Nobody did.

Mukuti disappeared among the shelves. A moment later, we heard a cry of triumph. “Look what I found!” she crowed, reappearing with a book in her arms. “
101 Easy Exorcisms
. And the Angry One’s in the index.”

“Groovy,” Espresso said.

Mukuti sat on the floor, propped the book open on her knees, and flicked over a few pages. “‘Urban legend, wild power, iron claws, yadda yadda.’ Here it is: ‘Avoiding and Escaping: While she is killing her victim, run away as fast as you can, avoiding all mirrors in the future.’”

Fortran laughed. “You’re making that up.”

“I am not.” Mukuti showed him the book. “See? Right there, between ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Brownie.’”

“That’s no help,” Tiffany said. “She’d still be bound to the mirror.”

“And one of us would be dead,” Fortran pointed out. “Probably you.”

Tiffany shrugged. “That’s probably going to happen anyway.”

“Don’t be such a drama queen,” Stonewall said. “She’s bound to the mirror. She can’t hurt us as long as her mistress is there.”

Nobody seemed to remember that I was still in Basic Talismans. “Her mistress?”

Danskin preened his wing. “The one who bound her, of course—Bergdorf.”

“Who isn’t here,” Stonewall said, and sighed. “I knew I’d forgotten something.”

I don’t know how he got Bergdorf to come to the library. I do know he didn’t tell her about Tiffany, because when Bergdorf saw her, she screamed.

Fortran giggled. Espresso kicked him. Tiffany jumped off the desk, grabbed Bergdorf, and shook her. “Shut up, you moron!”

Bergdorf choked. “Oh, Tiff. I thought you were dead.”

“
Tiffany
is dead,” Tiffany said. “I’m Woolworth of the Bowery, and I don’t give a fart in a high wind what you think. Once this mirror thing’s settled, I’m blowing this pop stand.
Capisce
?”

Bergdorf opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, then nodded. “Okay.
Woolworth
. What do you want me to do?”

“You bound her,” Tiffany said. “You have to banish her.”

Bergdorf swallowed. “By myself?”

“We’ll help you,” Mukuti said soothingly.

“How?”

We all looked at one another. “We’re working on a plan,” Stonewall said loftily.

Bergdorf rolled her eyes. “How typical is that? I bet you haven’t even thought about the iron claws issue.”

“The rule with genies is, they can’t hurt the person who summons them,” Mukuti said.

“Hello? The Angry One’s not a genie? Who knows what her rules are? You dorks can do what you want, but I’m not going in there without a mask—preferably one made out of something sturdier than construction paper. Why are you all looking at me like that? Do you think I’m, like,
stupid
?”

Stonewall cranked his jaw shut. “Masks. Of course.
I
should have thought of that.”