The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen - Delia Sherman [61]
Bergdorf glared at me. I smiled as warmly as I could and offered her my seat. While I was getting another chair, I reminded myself of the Diplomat’s handy hints for negotiators. Listen more than you talk. Smile a lot. Let someone else ask the questions.
Everybody else must have been remembering, too, because the silence went on for a long time. Finally, Bergdorf said, “I promised Tiffany I wouldn’t tell. But I so can’t deal anymore, and Stonewall said you might be able to help.”
Mukuti the Kindhearted gave her a sympathetic smile. “We’ll do our best.”
“When we’ve got the skinny,” Espresso added practically.
“So tell us everything,” said Fortran.
“Okay,” said Bergdorf. “So Tiff and I go to Madame Elizabeth Factor for makeovers. She’s got all these magic mirrors, and they show what’s wrong with you, and then she fixes it? So we do the makeovers, and it’s horrible but totally worth it, and then Madame Factor asks Tiff if she’ll do her a gigantic favor, and Tiffany’s like, Duh, of course. Then Madame Factor gives Tiff this package and says it’s a mirror with a curse on it and Tiff has to get rid of it for her. And then we go to her house and unwrap it, and, OMG, it’s the Magic Magnifying Mirror of the Mermaid Queen!”
“So she recognized it right away?” Fortran asked.
Bergdorf looked insulted. “Hello? Gold star in Talismans? Tiff was like, Great Talisman, I can know everything in the world, I can even control the Dragon of Wall Street, gigantic power, I’ll show everybody, blah, blah, blah. I was like, do you even know how to use it? And she was like, I’m so smart I’ll figure it out.”
We exchanged glances. Espresso spoke for all of us. “So did she?”
“Not so much. But she wouldn’t quit trying. I got all bored and started looking through her closet to see if there was anything I wanted to borrow. And then I heard her saying it.” Bergdorf stopped short.
“Saying what?” Fortran asked eagerly.
“You know. The thing you say to mirrors.”
“‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’?” Mukuti asked, puzzled.
Bergdorf’s face was as white as her untouched milk. “No! The other thing. The incantation that summons her.”
“Her?” I asked.
Espresso suddenly looked sick. “She means the one she challenged you to summon at Hallowe’en, Neef.”
Mukuti gasped. “The Angry One?”
There was a moment of horrified silence. Then Danskin said what I was thinking. “That wasn’t too bright, was it?”
Bergdorf glared at him. “Well, she paid for it.” Her voice teetered, and she bit her bottom lip. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t have to,” Stonewall said gently.
“Yes, she does,” Fortran objected. “I want to hear. Did Old Five-Inch Nails rip her into strips? Ow, Espresso. That hurt.”
Bergdorf’s chin came up. “I saved her, as it happens. I said the genie spell.”
Everyone looked even more shocked than they had before. I didn’t know what she was talking about. “What?”
“The genie spell,” Bergdorf said, sounding defiant. “The thing that puts genies in bottles or lamps or whatever and keeps them there. They teach it in Advanced Talismans, for emergencies. This was an emergency, so I said it. And it worked: the Angry One disappeared.”
There was a long silence, broken by Stonewall. “So what you’re saying is, you bound a wild urban power, who doesn’t belong to any Neighborhood or accept any authority, in one of the Great Talismans of New York Between?”
Bergdorf’s eyes widened. “Yeah. I guess I did.”
“Whoa,” Fortran said.
The kobold appeared with a fresh pitcher of milk. He traded it for the old one and stomped off again.
“Okay,” Stonewall said to Bergdorf. “What else didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged. “You wanted to know about Tiffany.”
“So, what about Tiffany?” I asked.
Tiffany had been a gigantic mess. Her face was all bloody and she was moaning and there was blood on the white wall-to-wall carpet and her new designer sweater was totally ruined.
“I was this close to a meltdown,” Bergdorf said, “and then I hear her fairy godmother knocking, and she’s like, Is everything all right, girls? And I’m all, Everything’s fine, Mother