Much Ado About Magic
Page 15

“What happened?”
Instead of answering, she inspected a bloody patch on her elbow. “Do we have a first-aid kit?”
I got off the couch and ran to the bathroom for the kit, then waved off her hands when she tried to take it from me. “You can’t see your own elbow properly, no matter how much yoga you do,” I said, grabbing her arm to hold it steady so I could dab the wound with antiseptic. “What happened to you?”
“Oh, just some jerk running out of the subway station. He slammed me against the wall.” Then she must have noticed my cuts and bruises. “What happened to you?”
“Something along those lines. I got caught in a subway fight this morning.” Out of sheer habit, I left out the reason for the fight. I wasn’t yet used to my roommates being in on the magical secret.
“So, tell me, Katie, is all this stuff a magical thing?”
“I think so,” I said, putting a bandage across her elbow. “We’re working on it, but be careful, and if you notice something weird, get out of the way.”
The door opened again and Marcia, my other roommate, came in. She, at least, didn’t seem to be damaged or disgruntled. As soon as she saw me, she grinned and said, “So, how’d it go?”
“How did what go?” I asked.
With an exasperated sigh, she threw down her briefcase. “Your job? You know, the one you were going to beg for today.”
“Oh, yeah, that.” So much had happened that I’d almost forgotten I’d started the day unemployed. “The bad news is, I didn’t get my old job back. The good news is I got a promotion, and I’m already busy with a big project.”
“Congratulations!” Marcia said. “I don’t suppose that promotion came with a raise?”
“It did. A nice one.”
Marcia and Gemma exchanged glances, then Marcia’s grin got even bigger. “Great! That’ll work out great.”
Gemma jumped off the sofa. “You mean we got it?”
“We got it!” The two of them jumped up and down like cheerleaders after a touchdown.
“What did we get?” I asked warily.
“Katie, honey, don’t bother to unpack, because we’re moving,” Marcia said.
“Moving?” I asked. “Where?”
“One floor down and to the back,” Gemma said. “The people in one of the two-bedroom, two-bathroom units downstairs are about to move, and as soon as we knew you were coming back, we went after it. The rent’s higher, but if you got a raise, that shouldn’t be a huge problem. We could always find a fourth, if we need to. We’d still be less crowded than the three of us are in here.”
“I’ll pay more to have my own room,” Marcia said. “One of the bedrooms is a little smaller and doesn’t have a connected bathroom.”
“Just think,” Gemma said with a wistful sigh, her face glowing, “two whole closets. Two bathrooms.”
“What do you say, Katie?” Marcia asked.
The lack of space was one of the downsides to life in New York. “When do we move?” I asked.
“We should be able to move two weekends from now, if we can hire some movers,” Marcia said. “That shouldn’t be too hard, since they wouldn’t need a truck. We just need someone who can carry things down stairs.”
“We do all have boyfriends,” I reminded her.
“Oh, right. I guess they could do a lot. The sofa bed can be pretty heavy, though.”
“We have boyfriends who have magical powers.”
Gemma and Marcia looked at each other, then both of them laughed. “I keep forgetting about that,” Gemma said. Gemma and Marcia had only learned about magic at the beginning of the year, when they got drawn into all the complications associated with my life. Gemma hadn’t known that the guy she’d been dating was actually a wizard, and as far as I knew, she still didn’t know he’d spent nearly a century as a frog under an enchantment. Marcia had met Rod before she knew about magic.
“I guess the guys could levitate things down the stairs, huh?” Marcia said.
“Or they could snap their fingers, and everything in our apartment would disappear and reappear in the other apartment,” I suggested.
“They can do that?” Gemma asked.
“I’m pretty sure Owen can.”
“That is so cool,” Marcia said with a grin.
*
Owen was waiting on the sidewalk in front of my building the next morning. He smiled at me, but didn’t quite meet my eyes as he fell into step alongside me to walk to the subway station. “Sorry about yesterday,” he said, his cheeks flaming as he stared straight ahead.