The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen - Delia Sherman [40]
“What’s with all the metal, Mukuti?”
Mukuti rushed up to me, amulets clashing like cymbals. “You don’t know? Drat. That means I can’t tell you.”
I remembered the note. “I know the witch is gone, if that’s what you’re talking about. I don’t think it counts as spreading rumors if you just fill in details.”
“I guess.” Mukuti lowered her voice to an almost inaudible whisper. “Tiffany’s disappeared.”
“Tiffany’s what?”
Mukuti winced. “Shh! My fairy godmother heard it on the Grapevine.” She glanced down at her magical breastplate. “She made me wear these, just in case there’s a sudden wave of magical kidnappings.”
“Don’t the East Siders know what happened?”
Mukuti’s shrug set her amulets jingling. “East Siders don’t talk about stuff that happens at home, even to each other. It’s like a geas or something. I think Bergdorf knows though. She looks like the ghost of a ghost.”
By this time, we’d reached the Talisman Room. The Magic Tech took one look at Mukuti’s amulets and made her take them off. Then he lectured us on how too many charms cancel one another out.
“Most of these are junk,” he said. “If they weren’t, the humming would drown out the jingling. Enchanted things hum. You just need to learn to listen.”
We spent the rest of the lesson listening to each one of Mukuti’s amulets and throwing out the duds. By lunch, Mukuti was down to three working amulets and every changeling at Miss Van Loon’s knew that Tiffany had disappeared. The lunchroom buzzed with conversations that bent Rule 600, but didn’t break it. The East Siders sat in a silent island of gray wool, hunched over their identical quilted leather Shoulder Bags and Briefcases, pretending to eat their salads.
Bergdorf, who was staring into space with a frozen look, didn’t even pretend.
I sat down by Espresso and got out my lunch. Bread and dry cheese and water. Satchel was still mad at me.
Fortran cantered up and started talking before he even sat down. “You guys hear what happened to Fish-Face yesterday?”
Stonewall lifted his eyebrows. He’d recently dyed them golden, to match his new hairdo. He looked like a gilded cherub at the Metropolitan Museum—if cherubs were into spiked hair and gray sweaters. “Airboy, too? Miss Van Loon’s hasn’t seen so much excitement since Tony of the West Side got thrown out for turning magical.”
Fortran stopped rummaging in Backpack. “That really happened? Wizard!”
“I don’t think he enjoyed it,” Stonewall said. “He was bitten by a werewolf.”
Espresso punched Fortran on the arm. “What’s up with Airboy?”
“Oh, right. Fish-Face threw up on the Betweenways on the way back from the field trip. All over some ogre’s feet and everything. It was unbelievably gross—the Historian had a real fairy fit. I can’t believe he didn’t notice Fish-Face was sick before we left the Museum. He was all kind of droopy and green around the gills.” He laughed. “Get it? Fish-Face? Green gills? Hey, maybe he was land-sick !”
Everyone groaned. I tore off a piece of bread. It was stale.
“Fortran,” Espresso said, “you are the living end.”
“Thanks,” he said. “So, what’s up with Tiffany?”
After much discussion, we boiled down our theories about Tiffany’s disappearance to three:
1. She’d been banished from Miss Van Loon’s because she’d finally broken so many rules that the Tutors couldn’t ignore it anymore.
2. She was locked in a tower polishing cockroaches for breaking some rule of the Dowager’s—refusing to kiss a frog, maybe, or getting a pimple or eating some actual food.
3. She’d spontaneously turned into the wicked witch she was so obviously destined to be and was learning to make poison apples.
Number 3 was Espresso’s idea—and my personal favorite—but I thought number 1 was most likely.
The next day the Schooljuffrouw announced in Assembly that the Hallowe’en Revels were less than a moon away. Anyone interested in helping run the Haunted House should report to the Magic Tech, and the library would be open for people researching their costumes. “The Librarian has been notified, and will make the relevant books freely accessible to all.