The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen - Delia Sherman [73]
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.
Fortran broke the silence. “We sure kicked her butt.”
Tiffany snorted. “You think? I didn’t see much butt-kicking. Just a lot of snot-nosed mortals, crying like babies.”
Stonewall whipped a white handkerchief out of the pocket of his classic vampire tail-coat and handed it to her with a flourish. “For your snot nose, Mademoiselle Pirate Queen.”
“Oh, go bite yourself.”
Mukuti threw herself at me and clung like a spider-web. She was still shaking. Feeling a little strange, I put my arms around her. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s over. She’s gone. You helped.”
“I cried.” Her voice was thick with tears.
“Yeah. Fast thinking,” I said. “Um. You want to wash your face?”
Airboy had already peeled off his furry blue mask, turned on the tap, and dunked his face and hands into the sink. As soon as Mukuti let go of me, I did the same. The water felt wonderful. I scrubbed my face hard, then stood up, dripping.
“The mirror?” Airboy asked.
I wiped water from my eyes. “It’s in my pocket. Airboy? We did it, right? She’s really gone?”
He looked up from the sink into the bathroom mirror. “I guess so,” he said.
Espresso’s unmasked face appeared over my shoulder, grinning in the fading candlelight like a jack-o’-lantern. She gave me a quick, awkward hug. “Way to go, Neefer-bear!”
“You, too,” I said, and returned the hug. I felt like I might be getting the hang of it. “Your poem was far out.”
“You think? It just came to me. I thought the last lines were kind of lame.”
“No. It was”—I thought for a moment—“outta sight and in the groove.”
Espresso’s cheeks turned pink. “You were the one who got rid of Miss Scratchy. You and the Tiffster, grooving to the beautiful music of love and harmony!”
“Oh, spare me!” Tiffany’s voice came out of the gloom, more East Side than Bowery. I heard the door creak open. “All this Hallmark cheer is making me sick. Let’s boogie.”
Nobody was in the mood for pretending to be grossed out by a bowl of peeled grapes or talking to anybody who’d been bobbing for apples all night. So we went back to the library. We were totally starving.
Over a cooperative feast of sushi, bean sprouts, hamburger, cheese, bread, apples, sparkling water, chocolate, and lattes, we relived our triumph for Danskin. There was a lot of giggling and toasts with sparkling water to the Lady Poetess and the Banshee Twins (that would be Tiffany and me), the Grand High Weeper of Crysville (Mukuti) and the Queen of the Masks (Bergdorf), and (last but not least) the Grand Vizier Count Stoneywall and his magical swan, Danster.
Through all this, Tiffany sat cross-legged on the checkout desk, swigging from a bottle of green energy drink from Fortran’s Backpack, and scowling like a gargoyle.
“Lighten up, Tiff,” Bergdorf said. “Have some chocolate. It’s over? Bloody Mary’s gone. Maybe your face isn’t so bad, and you can come home and it’ll all be okay.”
“Woolworth,” Tiffany said through gritted teeth. “I’m Woolworth, remember? And nothing’s okay. Even if my face weren’t totally trashed, I wouldn’t go back. The Upper East Side is garbage. Mother Carey is garbage. I’m Woolworth of the Bowery now. Whatever that means.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, and then Mukuti asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
While Tiffany—or Woolworth, I guess—was telling her just exactly why that was the most stupid idea in the universe, Airboy got up and walked off. I scrambled up and joined him on the window seat where Bergdorf had talked to Stonewall.
“I want to see the mirror,” he said.
I pulled it out of my apron pocket. It had lost its gold