Page 26 of No Charm Done
“—they do things.”
“What kind of things?”
The twins looked at each other, having an entire discussion without saying a word.
“It’s hard to explain—” Hector started.
“—there are boys who dress like girls—”
“—and girls who dress like boys.”
“One time we saw this lady—” Diego added.
“—who made flowers appear out of nowhere—”
“—except they wilted really fast and turned black.”
“And everyone was arguing about something,” Hector continued.
“—but we couldn’t understand what they were saying.”
Luna grabbed his arm without thinking, and Elias was surprised by how natural it felt. “Did you hear that? Conjured flowers?”
“I heard,” he said grimly. “Maybe a sign?”
“That’s—”
“Weird,” Diego finished helpfully. “Like I said.”
Elias could see Luna’s mind racing. “How far is the Waverly from here?”
“Not far—” Hector said.
“—if you take the subway,” Diego added. “But the subway’s not running.”
“So you’d have to walk—”
“—over to 6th Avenue and Third.”
“In the dark,” Hector added ominously.
Luna looked at Elias, clearly weighing their options. “A long walk through a blackout to maybe find some practitioners who might be able to help us? Or might just be more people with broken magic who can’t do anything useful? Or . . .” she sighed. “You know, it’s probably nothing at all. Probably it’s a bunch of Greenwich Village hipsters who just look weird if you happen to be eight years old.”
But he found himself thinking about the twins’ determined repetition of the word weird. Something about it nagged at him. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “weird has another meaning. An older meaning.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Shakespeare, doll. You know Macbeth? There are a trio of witches, referred to as the Weird Sisters.” He looked at the twins, who were listening with the kind of intense focus children reserved for things they didn’t quite understand. “Back then, weird didn’t just mean strange. It meant magical. Supernatural. Having to do with fate and prophecy.”
“So when Hector and Diego say weird people . . .”
“Maybe they mean our kind of people.”
“Or . . . maybe they’re just a couple of eight-year-old boys struggling to describe drag queens.”
Elias shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
The twins looked back and forth between them with identical expressions of confusion and interest.
