The gates swung slowly behind me, and once they were closed, I knew there was no going back. I heard a clunk as they locked. I felt like I was in a trance. Please Gaia, let this be a dream, I thought. Please let me wake up.
But it was no dream, and I was awake. All around me, the city buzzed, with business going on as usual. I felt strangely disorientated, but this time knew it was the power of the enchantments that protected the Abbey; those same enchantments that made sure no one was looking its way when the gates opened to let the Tilneys in or out.
I tried to focus, but it was hard to think straight. Henry was just a short distance away from me now but might as well have been on the other side of the moon. I lingered for a minute, but my head was spinning with anxiety and confusion. In the end, I had no choice. I had to move on.
I was vaguely aware of the direction I was going. I really didn’t know New York that well, and since I had no money with me, I could hardly hail a cab to take me back to Sylvia’s apartment. For a little while, it was all I could do to put one foot in front of another, let alone navigate to the Village. Thankfully, the farther I got away from the cemetery, the less foggy my mind became.
At the street corner, I stopped and waited for the Don’t Walk sign to switch to Walk. Just as I was calculating how long it would take to get back to Greenwich on foot, a car horn honked, and a Magic Cab pulled up right in front of me. I recognized Wally at once—not by his face, but by the fact he was so huge, he blocked the view through the window so I couldn’t see the other side of the street.
“Where to, pretty lady?”
I smiled sadly at his kind face. “Not today, Wally. I don’t have any money with me. Thank you, though.”
“Oh.” In that moment, Wally looked sadder than I did. But then his face lit up like he’d been struck happy by a sunbeam. “Doesn’t matter. Wally take pretty lady wherever she want to go. She pay another day.”
Perhaps I should have said no, but I was so grateful I just slid into the back of the Magic Cab and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where to?”
“Back to Greenwich village,” I said.
“No boyfriend today?” Wally asked, as he steered slowly away from the curb, almost slamming into another car.
“Are you out of your mind or something?” the other driver shrieked. Wally’s smile didn’t falter, as if he hadn’t heard the man yell at him at all, which was nigh impossible. The entire Upper East Side must have heard him.
This time there was no need to contradict him about Henry’s boyfriend status, but my heart sank. I remembered how happy I was the last time I rode in this cab. “No,” I replied. “No boyfriend today.”
“Too bad. I like him.”
Too bad, indeed. “Yes. So do I.” I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to think and get my head straight. I stared out of the window, my mind not registering a thing I saw through it.
Now that I was calmer, I thought about what the General must have said to Henry after so rudely tossing me from his home. I imagined Henry would be livid, and was probably already on his way downtown, and might even be at the apartment before me. I hoped he’d remember to bring me my phone and bag at least.
But then a darker thought seized me. Would he come for me? As rational as my first thoughts had seemed, a degree of doubt kept niggling at the back of my brain. What if Henry accepted the General’s view of things and thought I’d deliberately summoned his mother’s spirit from the dead? How would he feel about that, since I knew how he felt about letting spirits rest in peace? And this was his own mother. What if he shared the General’s ire? What if he hated me now?
My gaze fell on the back of Wally’s seat. There was a small screen there, rotating through a series of ads aimed at the paranormal market. Right now, it played an ad showing a young couple on top of the Empire State Building. Hand in hand, the two were visiting during the summer solstice. The young witch sighed and affectionately rested her head on her partner’s shoulder. Together they looked out over the colorful streams of ley lines, which lit up New York’s nightlife like the aurora borealis. Blissfully content, the girl glanced up, and the wizard looked down and he kissed her.
I burst into tears.
All at once, the Magic Cab came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the street. The traffic was reasonably light, but Wally had parked across two center lanes without a second thought. He squeezed out from behind the steering wheel and a moment later was sitting in the back of the Magic Cab with me. Sitting beside me like this, he was simply enormous, even for a dwarf troll. I could have been crushed to death, pressed up against the cab door as I was, but instead, he wrapped a pair of gigantic arms about me and pulled me tight into his chest.
“Someone need a hug,” he cooed and began rocking me back and forth like an upset baby. He smelled of damp earth and mortar, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
I didn’t resist him because he was right—I could use the hug. All around us, drivers were leaning on their horns, but Wally didn’t give a hoot about them. The big softy had a friend to comfort, and nothing was going to distract him from taking care of that.
“That it, pretty lady, you cry all you want,” he said. “Get it out. I told Ethel about you and your nice man. She like you too. She like to meet you.”
“Thank you,” I said and pushed away, though only because he was squeezing the life out of me, and I needed to breathe. I wiped away my tears. “Tell her I like her too.”
“Better now?” he asked.
“Yes, all better now, thank you.”
Wally smiled, and I was glad he was my friend because that enormous mouth of his could probably swallow me whole.
Outside, the horns were becoming more and more irate. And then there was a tap on the window, and an angry banshee in a purple-and-green pizza uniform began shouting through the glass and banging her heavily ringed knuckles against the pane.
“What the heck are you playing at?” Rap, rap, rap. “Do you realize it’s rush hour? People have jobs to do, you know.” Rap, rap, rap. “Oh, come on! Are you some kind of moron?” Her voice was escalating to a critical point, and the more Wally remained oblivious, the higher her pitch became.
“Um, Wally, you better get a move on before she goes full-on wail, which could be any moment now.”
“You sure you okay, friend?” he asked, taking the liberty of wiping a tear from my cheek. He had chubby fingers.
“Yes, I’ll be fine. Come on. We’d better get going.”
Wally shuffled awkwardly to the opposite door and slowly squeezed out of the Magic Cab. The irate banshee still hovered, no doubt to make sure Wally really meant to leave. She waved her arms in the air and pulled insanely on her tangle of hair, but she didn’t go into a full wail, and thank Gaia, too, as that would have stopped traffic dead. And cracked more than a few windows too.
Back in the driver’s seat, Wally glanced one more time into the rearview mirror to check on me, and then slowly—and thankfully—we were on our way again. The banshee was still crying behind us, her wretched screech carrying over the noise of city traffic for several blocks until, at last, I couldn’t hear her anymore.
I sat back in the solitude of the passenger seat and longed to return home in Pennsylvania.