by Mindy Klasky
“I don’t think we’re getting Ariel back on Mabon,” I said. “And you don’t have to be so noble and subtle. I know that you’re telling me we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this, if I’d just been more responsible in the first place. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Actually,” he said, and his voice was so even that I actually hated him for a moment. “You don’t.”
I stared at him. I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. I wanted to tell him that I knew every thought that had ever crossed his mind, that I could tell him exactly what he’d meant to say. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t lie to him outright. Unbidden, tears pricked at the back of my eyes. A sob caught in my throat.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I started to count out the answers. I was going to be dressed in hideous orange and silver at my grandmother’s wedding. The mother I’d only found two years before was getting ready to abandon me, again. My job was going nowhere in a hurry. I wasn’t sure where my boyfriend was, or even if I could call him a boyfriend. The ridiculously self-named Artistic Avenger was still at large, while I was not a single step closer to raising enough power to bring her in, to salvaging a spell that I had screwed up because I’d been thinking about my warder, thinking about a relationship that was obviously never, ever going to happen. Mabon was eight days away.
David sat on the far side of my living-room couch, holding every muscle still, as if I had miraculously worked some spell to cast him in stone.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, tucking my fingers into the sleeves of my turtleneck sweater. “I don’t know,” I said, and my voice was very small.
“Start at the beginning,” David said reasonably.
I only shook my head. I wasn’t even sure where the beginning was anymore.
“You’re tired, Jane.” There was no judgment in the words, only a statement. “You need some sleep.”
I swiped at my eyes and nodded. “It’s been a long day,” I said, but that only made me want to laugh crazily. I sniffed, instead.
Another night, David would have walked me to my bedroom. (The room that Will had entered for the first time Friday night.) He would have tucked me into my bed. (The bed that Will had pounced on Friday night.) He would have lain beside me, head on my extra pillow. (The pillow that Will had slept on Friday night.)
He would have left before dawn.
I clambered to my feet and crossed to the front door. “Good night,” I said.
David was no fool. He knew when he was being dismissed. He’d done the dismissing well enough in his own right. “Good night,” he said, matching my even tone perfectly. “Lock the door behind me.”
“Of course,” I said, not even bothering to roll my eyes.
And I did.
I locked the door so that I was safe in my living room. Alone. And I went into my bedroom. Alone. And I climbed into my bed. Alone. And I fell asleep.
Alone.
15
I was trapped on a kitchen step stool, penned in by a madman with a pincushion and a measuring tape.
“Girlfriend, if you’re not going to stand up straight, I can’t be responsible for how you look at the wedding.” Neko clicked his tongue in exasperation.
I sighed and leaned toward the counter, snagging another one of Melissa’s Honey Moons, specially baked for my fitting. Nuri had already eaten half a dozen, retreating to a chair in the corner of Gran’s small kitchen after seizing each golden cookie. Deciding not to press the shy redheaded woman into doing my dirty work, I begged Melissa, “Please, please, please will you give me one of those mojitos?”
Mojito therapy had taken over Gran’s kitchen—lime, mint, rum and seltzer were arrayed across the counter. So far, our strategy was a success, even if my dress was still hideous.
Gran lifted her own glass, where mint leaves floated amid the light-green alcohol-infused soda. “These are really quite good, dear. You should have told me about them a long time ago. We should serve them at the reception.”
“Absolutely, Gran,” I grumbled, scarcely managing to banish leftover teenaged angst from my reply. Mojitos at my grandmother’s reception. What would she come up with next? Why didn’t we just invite Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and any other unemployed starlets who happened to be free on Halloween, to guarantee that we had the jet-set party of the century? What had happened to my grandmother, to the totally normal woman who had raised me, to her endless reams of common sense and good taste?
I looked down at the orange-and-silver taffeta of my dress, thinking that I’d be willing to let common sense go forever, if I could only get back a hint of good taste.
“Stand straight!” Neko hissed.
Melissa passed a glass to me as I attempted to oblige. I could just catch a glimpse of myself in the foyer mirror. The dress sagged across my front, clearly cut for a woman with more cleavage than I had to brag about. The waist nipped in dangerously, gathered together with an attached sash that sparkled in silver lamé. As Neko muttered through his mouthful of straight pins, I took miniature steps in a circle, turning on the step stool so that he could perfect the hem. I winced when I glimpsed the back of the dress over my shoulder. Its halter neckline left a huge expanse of flesh bare, a stretch of skin that was only broadened by the gigantic silver bow that emphasized what the designer would certainly have called my “derriere.”
I could not believe that any designer had ever made such a horrific creation, much less that my grandmother had seen it in a magazine. It was just my luck that Neko’s Jacques knew someone in the design house, someone who’d been able to finagle an orange one on such short notice.
Orange. Gran had not been kidding. The dress rivaled Gatorade in its coloring. I sighed. I only drank Gatorade when I was suffering from a deadly flu.
I swallowed half of my mojito in a single swig.
“There,” Melissa said, clearly smothering a laugh. “It looks much better, with those darts taken in.”
“Much better,” Neko agreed. He was getting his revenge for all the arcane study I’d forced him to complete in the past two years, for all the times I’d awakened him to help me with a spell. “You’re lucky I can handle the sewing.”
Gran beamed.
Well, that was really the most important thing, wasn’t it? That Gran was beaming? I might think that she had turned into a monster planning this wedding. I might think that I was caught in the midst of a campy sitcom from hell. I might think that Gran had gone wholly and completely around the bend. But my grandmother—the woman who had raised me, the woman who had nurtured me through my own tempestuous teens—was happy.
“What do you think, Neko dear? The shoes will be dyed to match the dress, of course, but maybe we could attach some silver bows to them? You know, to pull it all together?”
“Absolutely, Gran,” my traitorous familiar said. “Silver bows for the shoes would be perfect.”
I hated both of them.
Melissa lifted the mojito pitcher even before I asked for a refill. Then she turned back to my grandmother. “So, Mrs. Smythe? What have you decided about the cake?” Melissa had brought along a dozen samples.
“I can’t make up my mind. White cake seems so…plain, even though yours tastes divine, dear. But we really don’t want to step too far away from tradition, do we?”
I almost choked as Melissa rotated her serving plate. Orange and silver was hardly the headline color combination in Letitia Baldrige’s Guide to Weddings. Melissa merely said, “Why don’t you try the lemon again? We could do it in three layers, with a coat of marzipan over everything. That way, we could color the outside orange. And decorate it with silver dragées.”
If looks could kill, Cake Walk’s doors would never open again. I was surprised to realize that even Neko’s considerably distant limits had been reached. “Buttercream would be better,” he insisted, intent enough on conveying his message that he extracted the pins from his mouth.
“I’m just not sure,” Gran fretted.
“Now, dear, you’ve never liked almond. It’s all a matter of taste.”
I stared down at my hideous dress and bit back a reply.
I liked almonds just fine—Melissa’s Almond Lust and Lust After Dark were two of my favorite confections. But marzipan was disgusting.
Melissa laughed and said, “We have a little time left. I’ll leave these samples here. You can try them again in the morning, when you’re drinking a cup of coffee. They’ll seem different, with the bitter, instead of with mojito.”
“Thank you, dear. I don’t mind if I do have a bit more of that drink. Jane, why haven’t you made these for me before?”
As Melissa topped off my grandmother’s glass I just shook my head. She was going to be totally plastered by the time we were done. I glared at Neko. “Aren’t you through yet?”
“Temper, temper,” he said, placing one last pin. “There. Now go take it off and be very careful that you don’t jostle the pins.”
“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 p
owerful 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.