The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (24 page)

“What Stoney means,” said Danskin, “is, ‘That’s brilliant, Bergdorf!’ ”

Tiffany snorted. “Let’s not go overboard. She’s just not as dumb as she looks.”

“I like masks,” Mukuti said. “Where do we get the stuff to make them?”

Airboy smiled slyly. “Art Tutor. Magic Tech.”

“Now we’re cooking!” Espresso high-fived him. “Groovy.”

“And,” I added, not wanting to be left out, “if anybody wants to know what we want it for, we’ll just sing out, ‘Decorations!’ ”

It worked like a charm. Before long we were back in the library with a roll of strong, flexible wire mesh and papier-mâché to make the masks and some paint and ribbon and glitter to decorate them with.

Much to my surprise, I enjoyed putting my mask together, even if the final product was kind of lame. I was a troll maiden, after all, not a beautiful princess. It didn’t matter if my eyeholes were even.

While we snipped, molded, glued, and tied, Mukuti and I got a crash course on genie management.

Once a genie was summoned, it had to grant the summoner’s wishes, with a preference for doing exactly what you asked rather than what you really wanted. If you wished for a genie to be free, it was usually grateful to you for life.

Except, as Bergdorf had pointed out, Bloody Mary wasn’t really a genie. She was just bound like one.

“She’s
wild
,” Stonewall said. “She’s got her own rules. We can’t be sure the binding will keep her from attacking us when we summon her.”

Mukuti offered to share her protective charms. Fortran said they were a load of junk. Tiffany suggested we break into the talisman closet and steal some real heavy-duty protection. Stonewall suggested we make a protective circle before we did the summoning.

We added a protective circle to our plan.

“So we just wish her into the bathroom mirror, right?” Bergdorf asked.

“That don’t play,” Espresso said. “We gotta cut her loose from the Mermaid’s mirror before she can hit another one.”

“And if we cut her loose,” Mukuti said, “she can hit anything she wants. Like us.”

“Plus,” Bergdorf said, “if she’s free, she’ll be totally all over Miss Van Loon’s.”

Fortran raised a finger. “Except, she needs to be in a mirror, and the bathroom mirror is the only one in the school. And we’ll be protected by the circle.”

“We hope,” Bergdorf said gloomily.

Tiffany laughed. “Total suicide. Sounds like a plan.”

“It’s the beginning of one, anyway,” said Stonewall.

We talked a lot more, but basically, that was it. That afternoon, in the brightly lit library, it sounded totally doable.

That night, in the dark stairwell, I wasn’t so sure.

The third-floor swinging doors squealed when they opened, like a tortured mouse. Bergdorf gasped. Someone—Fortran, probably—snorted. Laughter fizzed up in my throat.

“Shut up!” Tiffany hissed.

“Welcome to Spookville,” Espresso murmured. “Population, uncertain.” Which set us all off. Snorting and giggling, we groped our way along the wall to the girls’ bathroom.

I heard a click as someone turned the knob and a creak as the door opened. Nobody moved.

“I can’t go in there,” Fortran said.

“It’s all right,” Stonewall said kindly. “We’re all nervous.”

“I’m not
nervous
.” Fortran sounded indignant. “It’s just . . . it’s the
girls’ bathroom
!”

Tiffany treated us to one of her new vocabulary words. “You dorks coming?” she added. “Or am I doing this all by myself?”

We trooped into the bathroom, leaving Danskin outside so he could run (or fly) for help if things got really out of hand.

The door creaked shut, leaving us, if possible, more in the dark than ever. “Now we make a circle,” Mukuti reminded us nervously. We shuffled around. There was a certain amount of stepping on feet and bumping our hips on sinks and our elbows on stall doors. When we’d all found places to stand and each other’s hands, I had the edge of a sink digging into my butt.

I wished I was with the kids downstairs, pretending to be frightened.

Our plan called for Bergdorf and Tiffany to set up the summoning. A match flared, illuminating a white mask with red circles on the cheeks and huge red lips—Wicked Stepsister Bergdorf. Pirate Tiffany lit two red candles at the trembling flame and stuck them on the shelf under the bathroom mirror.

I looked around the circle. Reflected candlelight glinted off Fortran’s big black-framed glasses, Stonewall’s vampire teeth, and the sequins Espresso had glued to the flowers covering her mask. Airboy had fur over his whole face except where his eyes glittered through two narrow slits. Tiffany’s mask was nothing but a blank white oval scored down one side with parallel red lines.

I took a steadying breath. “Ready, Tiffany?”

“Woolworth,”
she corrected angrily, and pulled the bundled mirror out of her pocket.

Layer by layer she unwrapped it, stuffing the rags back into her pocket as she went. When the silver disk of the Mermaid Queen’s Magic Mirror lay naked in her hand, she put it on the floor. Then she stepped into the circle between Bergdorf and Stonewall and reluctantly took their hands. She was shaking so hard I could see the shadow of her coat trembling.

“One, two, three,” Fortran counted.

“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.”
We chanted it three times, and then kept on chanting, not keeping count because you forget to count when you’re staring at a mirror as hard as you can, hoping and dreading to see something appear.

The chant was interrupted by a wail that would have made a banshee wet its pants. I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but that would break the circle.

I gritted my teeth and hung on.

The wail swelled. A pale mist appeared above the mirror, a sickly glow that grew and shifted—now bruise-green, now rot-yellow, now the scarlet of fresh blood. Louder and louder grew the wailing, then cut off abruptly with a deep, painful gurgle that made me think of slit throats.

Bloody Mary floated above the Mermaid’s mirror, swept our pathetic circle with mad, red-rimmed eyes, opened her terrible mouth, and cackled like a cageful of hyenas.

We couldn’t agree, later, on what she’d looked like. Espresso saw a girl with blood-stiff black hair and a gashed throat. Stonewall saw a blood-drenched woman holding a horribly smeared knife. Mukuti saw a child veiled with blood. Fortran saw a woman with knife-tipped fingers and more teeth than any mouth should hold. She was bloody, too.

Tiffany and Bergdorf wouldn’t tell us what they saw.

The Bloody Mary I saw reminded me of the Bowery. She wore layers of filthy, ragged clothes, and her wild white hair escaped from a shapeless man’s cap, jammed down over a face that sank away from her knife-blade nose and the blood-smeared cliffs of her cheekbones.

Near me, someone whimpered. My ears were full of hoarse, shallow panting. When I realized it was mine, I dragged a lungful of air into my chest. It didn’t make me less terrified, but the effort made me think of something besides how much those long, iron nails would hurt when she dug them into my face.

Then Bloody Mary raised her hard, gray claws and lashed out at Bergdorf.

Bergdorf screamed, ducked, and kept on screaming, even when the nails raked through the air a good two inches from her face. Fortran whooped, which was a mistake. Bloody Mary came after him next, with the same non-bloody results. By the time she got to me, I was pretty sure she couldn’t touch me. I still jerked back and maybe even screamed, just a little. Her nails were extremely thick and pointy. I thought I could see the dried blood on them.

And then she was going for Stonewall and I was wishing I could wipe my sweaty hands.

Airboy laced his fingers in mine so our hands wouldn’t slip. I did the same with Espresso.

The wailing rose to a scream of frustration. Bloody Mary began to hurl herself randomly against the invisible barrier. At one point, her face was an inch from mine, her bottomless eyes staring, her thin lips stretching painfully away from her broken, yellowed teeth. Her breath stank of rotting meat.

I coughed and gagged and held on.

She spun, rags trailing, matted hair flying, to scrabble at the air in front of Tiffany.

Maybe if Stonewall and Bergdorf had been expecting it, they might have held her, but I doubt it. One moment, our circle was complete. The next, Tiffany had shaken herself free, snatched a large and glittering knife from her coat, and was attacking Bloody Mary with it.

I watched, terrified, as they struggled knife against claw, fury against fury, both of them shrieking so loud I was sure the whole school would come running. Mary’s shrieks took on a triumphant note. Tiffany staggered.

And what did the big hero and champion of Central Park do?

I could have grabbed a candle and set fire to Mary’s rags or kicked the Mermaid’s mirror under the radiator or something, but I didn’t. I just stood there screaming something lame like “No, no, no!” while Stonewall and Fortran knocked the knife out of Tiffany’s hand, grabbed her wrists, and dragged her back into the circle, struggling and swearing.

I sobbed in a breath and let it out slowly.

Bloody Mary’s wail sank into a horrible moaning. I heard fear in it, and a horrible, hopeless sadness. It made me feel like life was nothing but betrayal and terror, that I’d never be happy or safe or full or warm, that it would be like this forever and ever and nothing I could do would ever change it.

I looked around the circle. Everyone was standing like they’d been frozen as stiff as Airboy in a panic. All except one not-very-scary rusalka, who was kneeling on the floor with her knitted green hair falling over her mask, sobbing as only a mortal can.

Then Bergdorf broke down, whooping and sniffling in a way that should have been funny, but wasn’t. I saw Espresso’s shoulders start to heave, and Stonewall bow his head. Fortran gulped and roared like a little kid. Beside me, Airboy began to moan softly.

I didn’t get it. If they were trying to make Bloody Mary laugh and disappear, it wasn’t working. In fact, she sounded sadder than ever, sadder than a banshee, sadder than anything I’d ever imagined. As I listened, my throat began to tighten and my eyes stung. I realized, to my horror, that I was about to cry. I tried to suppress it, but I couldn’t. Soon, I was crying almost as hard as Bergdorf.

Airboy squeezed my hand. Looking up, I saw Tiffany half crouched between Stonewall and Fortran. Her head was down and her shoulders shaking. Tiffany the ice queen, Tiffany the most Folk-like student at Miss Van Loon’s. Tiffany was crying.

Alone in the middle of the circle, Bloody Mary floated. She wasn’t trying to kill us anymore, but she wasn’t offering to grant our wishes, either. If we were even in any shape to make one. The furious grief pouring off her made it impossible to think, let alone come up with a clever idea. Maybe she couldn’t reach us, but we couldn’t reach her, either.

Stalemate.

Suddenly, Espresso started to speak.

Bloody Mary screamed. The blood froze in my veins, but Espresso kept speaking. She didn’t scream to compete, she didn’t even shout, but I could hear every word. Her voice was more like singing than talking, and the way the words sounded was part of what they meant.

Bloody Mary stopped moaning and quivered. Tiffany rolled her eyes at Espresso, who grimaced. And I saw for the first time the thick scarlet rope of the genie spell binding Bloody Mary to the Mermaid’s mirror.

I had an idea.

I took a step forward, tugging at Airboy and Espresso. They hesitated, then shuffled forward beside me, pulling Fortran and Mukuti, who pulled Bergdorf and Tiffany and Stonewall, closing the circle tighter around the bound bogeywoman.

Another two steps, and we were all squished together like a human wall. Bloody Mary had gone all thin and shadowy, her hands down by her sides, her head thrown back, her black eyes white-rimmed with panic.

I dropped Airboy’s and Espresso’s hands, quickly grabbed Fortran’s and Mukuti’s. The circle tightened.

Tiffany shot me a hard smile, shoved Stonewall behind her, and grabbed Bergdorf’s hand.

We squeezed closer.

Bloody Mary oozed toward the ceiling and hovered there uncomfortably, the scarlet spell-rope stretched tight and thin. Behind me, everyone took hands to make a second circle.

Bergdorf dropped back, then Mukuti. The spell’s rope was a string now.

Then Fortran dropped my hand and it was just Tiffany and me, our hands joined around a pulsing scarlet thread. Bloody Mary was a thunderous mist above us, the mirror a bright disk between our feet. I focused on where I thought Tiffany’s eye was.

Tiffany shrugged and pulled me into her arms and hugged me.

The thread snapped.

Bloody Mary gathered herself in a reddish swirl and arrowed straight into the bathroom mirror. She hung there for a moment, a vision of reflected horror that filled the mirror from edge to edge. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, she shrank and dimmed until finally there was nothing in the mirror but the reflections of two guttering candle flames and our own masked faces floating above the sinks like ghosts.