The Magic Touch (23 page)

Ray looked at the papers in their hands. “They know, or were they just being nice?” he asked. He flipped his collar to get the water out of it, and Jeff held the umbrella over all of them.

The droplets of rain on Rose’s rain hat twinkled in the station lights.

“Yours was just being nice,” she said. “Mine knew. That was Sheila. She doesn’t get to too many meetings, so I’m not surprised you don’t know her. Jeff’s was a good Samaritan, too. You see? You need, and our little bit of luck prompted two people, all unknowing, to give you what you needed. Thank heavens, and let’s go!”

A train roared into the station, spraying them all with rainwater. Ray just wiped his face again and followed her into the train.

O O O

The invisible wall now contained more than fifty fairy godparents. Froister had stopped counting. He had too much else on his mind in coordinating their capture. The apprentice djinni were enjoying themselves almost too much. Armed with only a list of names, they were using resources they probably had not bothered with in all their lives, such as libraries, post offices, telephone books, to track down the membership of the FGU. Speed Guthrie would have been worth a fortune to any general as a reconnaissance man. When this was all over, Froister was going to recommend that he should go and hire himself out to mercenaries in South America, or someplace where they would be shooting at him.

“I didn’t have an idea that there were this many fairy godmothers in all of the city,” McClaherty said, standing next to Froister as the two of them peered into the warehouse from the showroom door.

“Nor did I,” Froister admitted. “When I saw the list I was amazed. If I had realized, I might have let Gurgin enlist more of our young friends to help us.”

“They’re enough,” McClaherty said grimly, his ruddy face set. “Why aren’t you keeping them here in between assignments, Albert? They’re trying to ruin the whole city.”

“They are serving their purpose,” Froister said. To tell himself the truth, that he was overwhelmed by the gang members, and wanted as little sustained contact with them as possible, would be to admit that he was failing at his dream of unrestrained power. If it hadn’t been for the absolute control of the lamps, he’d have been unable to cope with their personalities. He was also having to keep a careful rota of which senior member had rubbed which lamp, so as not to run beyond three wishes per wisher. He couldn’t afford a magical backlash on top of the buildup already occurring in his guest corral. The FGU was already enough of a headache. But it meant that all seven of the senior djinn were having to stay around his shop day and night to put each apprentice under control as needed. That was making
them
short-tempered as well. He had had the young members blink up luxurious accommodations in the back of the warehouse area for the seven of them, but they were beginning to feel as much a captive force as the Fairy Godmothers Union.

Its members had so far shown no signs of capitulating. The young thugs wanted to use physical force on them to make them give up the precious brownie points. Froister could not do that.
What was wrong with today’s parents that they raised their young without scruples?
he asked himself. Violence was abhorrent to him. Let psychological torture do the work. If this worked, he would be rid of the damned lamp, and the damned guild. Wasn’t that all that mattered?

By the way that each new addition reacted to his request for brownie points, he had come to the conclusion that it would take more than the combined total of the Local 3-26 resources to break his oath. The chairwoman refused to acknowledge it, but each of them unwittingly confirmed it to him. Well, logic dictated that if one fairy godmother could “borrow” from another’s spare magic, then one federation could borrow from another. All it would take for him to get what he wanted was one fairy godmother who was willing to act as a conduit. So far he had no takers. They were showing damnable solidarity. All he could do was raise the level of emotional tension, something the young thugs were doing already.

A couple of youths who belonged to the Backyard Wolves suddenly flew in through the walls. Between them, they were carrying an old woman. They came in twenty feet above the ground, running down a slope of air like a jet coming in for a landing, and dumped the crone into the arms of a few of the men and women already there. They helped to dust her off and calm her down. Shaking his head, Froister straight-armed the door and went after his apprentice djinni.

“Carmichael, Gallega!” he shouted, and pointed to the ground. The two, who had flown up into the rafters with the others to smoke and laugh, stiffened. They couldn’t not obey, but they appeared before him wearing sullen expressions.

“I want them in a mood to cooperate,” he hissed angrily, “not ready for a cardiac crash cart. Do you understand?” The youths raised their eyebrows, which maddened him, but he would not let the ire show. And yet, the woman was not hurt, and a few of the fairy godmothers huddled in the corners of the enclosure were looking more wary as the two apologized and floated back up to join their friends.

He turned to survey his unwilling guests. The apprentices had brought nearly all of the membership here within the space of only forty-eight hours. Some looked frightened; others, angry. None of them came forward to offer assistance. He wanted to get them out of his nice, clean warehouse. His watchman was on vacation, so he had a week before anyone else came through here, and he wanted the FGU gone before then. That was very little time. Since it was impossible to coerce them physically, he had to rely upon psychology.

The room was large and brightly lit, and spotlessly clean, as befitted a successful upscale establishment, as well as complying with the fire laws. He looked around for an apprentice djinn.

“Barton!” he called. The chubby-cheeked youth dropped to the floor before him.

“Yes, sir?” he asked.

“The second wish: make this room less inviting for our guests, please. Use your imagination.”

The youth folded his arms and blinked. Suddenly, the lights dimmed. All the men and women looked up as gigantic spiderwebs formed over the skylights and drifted down to brush their faces with dust. A chill, dank wind flowed through, swirling bits of paper. The very walls appeared to turn decrepit and unstable. The rattle of bones or chains echoed from corner to corner, and a mysterious laugh welled up from the very bowels of the earth. The membership of the FGU fell silent. They looked solemn and wide-eyed.

“How
impossibly
tacky!” announced a woman’s voice. The youth making the spell looked disappointed.

Froister waved a hand angrily. “Take it away!” he commanded. The young man blinked, and the warehouse returned to normal. Froister was in a temper. Two wishes wasted!

“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to scare us,” said George Aldeanueva.

“Then I will,” Froister said. He turned to his magical facilitator and explained what it was he wanted. The boy nodded, and closed his eyes to concentrate. The power of the wish rose again. Instead of turning the room into a haunted slum, he made it even more austere. Suddenly the chamber appeared cold, remote, and barren.

That worked much better. Now women hugged themselves involuntarily, and men turned a wary eye on their juvenile guards. Hollywood stage props didn’t impress them, but the uninviting walls of the prison did. He might get cooperation from them soon.

“Get the rest,” Froister said. “Crowd them in together. The longer they’re away from their families, the more inclined they will be to cooperate. When they see that they simply cannot escape, they will have to give in, or be here forever. It’s that simple,” he said, turning to his guests. “Give up the brownie points and leave. You can make more. Or keep them and stay. Your choice. You are your own jailers.”

“You stink,” said a tall black man who had just been brought in.

“So you have all been telling me,” Froister said. He was keenly aware of the growing odor as his djinni committed sin after sin. He was hardly able to stand himself anymore. No amount of cologne seemed to cover the stink of inappropriate behavior. But it would be worth it if he could fulfill his dream to gain control of his own magic.

“You’ll yield the brownie points to me, drawing on the national, and even the international federation to get enough for our purposes, to release even one of us,” Froister said, trying to sound threatening. “That’s the price of your freedom.”

“You’re through when we get out of here,” George Aldeanueva said through clenched teeth.

“That’s assuming you leave,” Froister pointed out, as he turned to go. “I’ve spent two hundred years in a museum display case. I have more patience than anyone you’ll ever meet.”

Chapter 22

The rain stopped, but it hadn’t been troublesome to a genie who could turn into smoke and slip between the raindrops. What was really bothering Hakeem was his conscience. Innocent people were being snatched off the street and stuffed into a warehouse in pursuit of something that sounded impossible. If it was possible to have the magic without bracelets, someone would have had it long before now. The novelty had long ago worn off for Hakeem. He’d tried dematerializing his wrists to leave the metal bands behind, but it was as if they were part of his skin. When he turned to air, they turned to air. When he made himself solid, they were solid. Nothing but magic would set him free.

He sailed over rooftops, heading for the street where Ray lived. He had to hurry before he was missed. He and Zeon had a job to do. Froister got really nasty if they took too long, or if they failed, but Hakeem just had to talk to Ray. He knew he’d been stupid to let himself get sucked into the gang by the tough talk and the drugs. He laughed, too, when the guys ripped booze or smokes out of stores right through the walls, but he didn’t want to be involved with kidnapping, extortion, and assault! The guildmaster wanted them to go kidnap an innocent lady nurse. Hakeem had been naive. If he didn’t get a prison sentence for these crimes, Froister would probably just shut him up in his lamp for all eternity.

He knew he would probably be leading a dangerous life if he joined the Jackals, but he was afraid not to say yes when they asked. For the longest time he thought Ray was stupid to keep saying no to the gangs, because they got violent with people who refused them. Hakeem never thought what would happen to him after he finally said yes. The peril and humiliation of gang life were multiplied a dozen times over with the djinn. He had certainly never pictured eternal servitude to household appliances.

“I’ve got to talk to Ray,” he kept saying over and over again to himself like a comforting mantra. “He’s the smart one. We can figure a way out of this situation together.” At the very least Ray could go into the lamp shop to rub his lamp and wish him free.

At first it had sounded like fun, being able to grant three wishes for anything, but it was much more hassle. The distrust the gangs felt for each other made it impossible for anyone to let anybody have any fun. He wasn’t at liberty to do anything on his own anymore. It would be no trouble to leave the magic behind if he could just get out. He felt a pang at the thought of not being able to turn to vapor. Maybe he’d show Ray just once before Ray got him out, but oh, man, Ray had to help him!

He made his feet solidify as he dropped to the pavement in front of the Crandall house so he wouldn’t sink straight through the ground. As the rest of him was still taking shape, his feet were running up the concrete steps. Keeping an eye out for Zeon and the other Jackals, he knocked on the door.

No one answered. Impatiently, he hammered with his fist. Throwing his scruples aside in his desperation, he smoked out and passed under the door and into the house. He ran up the stairs to Ray’s room. It was empty. He checked all the other rooms, listening for voices. Sunday was family dinner day at the Crandalls’. Where was everyone?

He became aware of a discordant thread of rock music drifting up from the backyard. From the kitchen window he saw a stout, bronze-haired figure in a housedress sitting on a folding chair on the wet grass, tapping her fingers on her knee and nodding her head in time with the music. Grandma Eustatia was listening to Bobby’s garage band wailing away. The Voice Dancers sounded middling good; they must have been practicing a lot. Mostly the adjective that applied to them was
loud.
Hakeem let himself out through the back wall of the house, and went to talk to Grandma Eustatia.

She seemed to know Hakeem was behind her before she turned toward him. As he got closer, she pulled the cotton out of one ear and smiled at him.

“They’re improving a ton, aren’t they, honey?” she said. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Uh, no, ma’am,” Hakeem said respectfully. “Is Ray home?”

“No, honey, but he should be back soon for dinner. Why?” She stood up, approached him in that smooth gliding walk of hers, put a gentle hand on his, and squeezed. “You look worried. Are you in some kind of trouble, dearest?”

Hakeem took a deep breath to tell her, then felt all the blood in his body turn cold as something new and unexpected struck him.

“Um, no, ma’am,” he said, shocked. “I’ve gotta go. I’d better go. Sorry!” He shook loose from her hand, backed away and ran out of the yard, even forgetting to turn into smoke. He had to get away from there before Zeon found him. She watched him go, with a puzzled look on her face.

Not Grandma Eustatia!
Hakeem thought desperately, running down the street until he started to fly. He spread himself out on the air, heading as far away from the Crandall house as he could. He couldn’t believe it, but the fresh air scent was unmistakable. Grandma Eustatia was a fairy godmother, just like all the other people he and the gang had been rounding up for two weeks. He was horrified. Here was a woman he had respected, and occasionally feared, all of his life, his own best friend’s grandmother. Any minute he could be expected to kidnap her, too.

As a djinn, he ought to report her location to Froister, but no matter what consequences he faced, he would not do that. Hakeem had seen the list of names the guildmaster had of all the members of the Fairy Godmothers Union, but no addresses. Thank heavens none of the other Jackals knew that Ray’s Grandma Eustatia was Mrs. E. Green. Even he hadn’t associated the name with her when he had seen it, not until now. So no one else knew there was a fairy godmother in the neighborhood. He was going to make sure it stayed that way. He’d fallen pretty far from grace in the last weeks, but he wasn’t going to go all the way down if he could help it. Loyalty ran deeper in him than fear. He must not let any of the Jackals know who she was.

Why stay in at all? Why couldn’t he just quit the DDEG? If he had the guts, he would resign, bracelets and all, but would they let him?
Oh, God
, he thought, flying over the park where they used to hang out in more innocent days,
where was Ray?

“Hey!” There was an explosion like a returning crack of thunder, and Zeon appeared next to him, lying on the air like Superman. “Hey, man, the Big Bulb wants you.” That was the gangbangers’ name for the guildmaster. “You shouldn’t’a split. He’s bummed.”

“Sorry, man,” Hakeem said. “I had to take care of a family thing.”

“Well, you better come now,” Zeon said, looking at him sidelong under his lashes, an expression that meant trouble. “We got things to do.” He turned flat on the air toward the north, beckoning Hakeem to fall in behind him.

With a final, regretful look at the park, Hakeem followed.

O O O

“You don’t have to try so hard,” Rose said, following Ray out of a home in the neighborhood east of theirs. Jeff Doyle tactfully trailed several yards behind them. He waved happily to the child, now looking out the window at them. Ray scowled.

“I was doing what he wanted, wasn’t I?” he demanded. “You don’t have to nag me.”

“I’m not nagging you,” Rose said. “You were getting the job done, of course, but you can take your time. You’ll get the same results, anyway, and,” she added with a smile, “the same brownie points.”

“Yeah. So you and the other bigwigs can rip me off one fine day, when you think I’m not looking?”

Rose looked stunned at the sudden outburst. “What?”

“Yeah,” Ray said, all of his rage boiling out of him. “You old-timers make us young fools do all the work, and then you take our rewards. And there’s nothing I can do to stop you, so why don’t you just take them now?”

“Hold the phone!” Rose said, catching his arm. He tried to throw her off, but she held on. “Where on earth did that come from?”

“From Mr. Guthrie,” Ray admitted at last. From the surprised expression on her face he wasn’t so sure all of a sudden that his informant was right. “He said you’d just soften me up, let me think I was in control, then, one day, bam!”

She shook her head sadly. “You’ve been carrying that around with you for how long?”

“Since yesterday’s meeting,” Jeff said, coming up. “I saw Mr. Guthrie take him aside. That’s what he was saying to you. Wow. He’s an even bigger jerk than I thought.”

Rose laid a hand against Ray’s cheek. “Oh, my poor dear. Don’t you have any more faith in us than that? Or if not us, how about your own judgment? Do you think, knowing what you do in here”—she tapped his heart—“that we could ever undermine your self-esteem like that? How long do you think we could exist as a benevolent organization if we were always ripping one another off?”

“Not long, I guess,” Ray mumbled. “I’m sorry. I feel dumb.”

“I suppose it’s only natural,” Rose said, including Jeff in the conversation. “My mother always said, if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. But not always,” she said. “We do have access. But we trust one another to keep hands off. Of course,” she said, “there’s always emergencies. In that case, feel free to draw on me.”

“Or on me,” Jeff said. “Distance is not a factor, as far as I can tell.”

“Thanks,” Ray said, staring at the ground between his feet. “Now I feel like I don’t deserve it.”

“Of course you do!” Rose said encouragingly. “Now come on. It’s getting late, and you’ve got to get home for Sunday dinner. One more stop, and then we’ll go.”

O O O

Rose looked down at the young Hispanic girl sitting on the concrete stoop and put her hands on her hips so that the gleaming star on a stick bobbed against her shoulder.

“You don’t really need a fairy godmother to have a baby,” Rose said, trying to sound reasonable. “There’s the usual method, of course. But I’d absolutely forbid it for you. What are you, Honoria, eleven?”

“Ten,” the child said, hunkering her shoulders down closer to her knobby knees and tilting her head to look at them. Her face was half in shadow and half painted yellow by the bulb from the enclosed porch. “You don’t understand.”

“All right,” Rose said, sitting down beside her and putting her wand across her knees. Ray remained standing in front of them, watching warily for anyone coming out of the house. “Make me understand why you want to do something unnatural and unhealthy at your age.”

“My sister’s pregnant,” Honoria burst out unhappily. “But she’s not very strong. If she has this baby, it’ll kill her. The doctor said so. But she wants it so bad, and it means everything to my brother-in-law. It’s going to be a boy, and that’s all Paulie wants in the world. A son,” she said bitterly, and turned to appeal to each of them in turn. “You said I can have a miracle. Put the baby in me, so my sister won’t die. She’s my only sister.”

Ray watched Rose’s face change up and back among outrage, astonishment, and admiration. He felt taken aback, too. Of all the visions he’d had since the first night of granting wishes to kids, he’d never have dreamed up anything like this. He knew where Honoria got the idea. Surrogate maternity had made the news dozens of times.

“Yes, well,” Rose said at last. “Honoria, this is not your miracle.” The girl cried out wordlessly. “No, this’ll be
his
miracle, your unnamed baby nephew.” Rose raised her wand and felt around her as if she was testing the wind. “Here’s my interpretation of your wish, that he is to be born alive without harming his mother.” Ray felt the backwash of good feeling as the pale pink light poured out of the wand and swept backward over their heads, going into the house. That must be where the sister was.

Honoria watched the magic light with shining eyes. Rose flicked the wand in a tight circle, and the veil faded.

“There,” she said. “All done. Your sister will know better after this, maybe have her tubes tied. Once they have a son—who thought up this nonsense about primogeniture anyway?—they won’t feel the need to have any more. They can adopt. As for you”—she turned to the girl—“you’re a generous young woman. You have the right name, Honoria. We’ll have something really special happen for you one day. I’ll be watching for you. The day your wish is supposed to come true, I’ll be back with bells on.” Rose stood up and patted the girl on the shoulder.

“Me, too,” Ray said hoarsely, too overwhelmed to come up with anything snappy to say.

“I’ll come whenever they call me,” Jeff added.

“Yes,” Rose said, enthusiastically. “We’ll make it a real princess’s coming-out.”

Honoria looked at all of them with her mouth open. “Why would you do this for me?”

“Because you’re so unselfish,” Rose said. “I don’t know how many kids have begged me for a Teenage Morphin Whatzit Turtle doll, but not many want to do something really heroic for someone else.”

Honoria bounded to her feet, her eyes bright in the porch light. “
Dios mio!
You are so kind. Maybe one day I’ll be a fairy godmother, too.”

Rose tilted her head to look up at Ray and slowly closed one eye in a wink. “Maybe you will, sweetheart.”

O O O

“I could never have made a call like that in a million years,” Ray said, as they walked down the path to the sidewalk.

“Me, either,” Jeff said, behind him.

“Nonsense,” Rose said, bringing up the rear. “All it takes is experience.”

“It’s more than that,” Ray said, stopping lightly on the pavement. “It’s so natural with you. You’ve got the magic touch.” The imp got into him as he remembered one of the old standards Grandma liked to sing. He struck a pose, spotlighting her.

“You-oo-oo’ve got—the Ma-aagic Touch.”

And Jeff chimed in with “Oh-oooh.”

“Oh, go on!” Rose said, blushing.

“—You ma-ake me ga-low so-oh much. You cast a spell, your magic’s swell, the ma-gic tou-ouch!”

Rose laughed and applauded. “Bravo!” she cried. “You’ve got quite a musical talent, too.”

“Naw,” Ray said, falling into step next to her as she headed toward the bus stop. “My sister and Grandma Eustatia are the ones with talent.”

Rose tucked her hand into his arm, and he held it close against his side. “You have absolutely unplumbed depths, honey. You’re amazing.” Ray just shook his head, enjoying walking in the warm summer night with good friends. If anyone came up at that moment to make fun of him or his companions, he’d punch them in the nose.