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“Just park her anywhere there’s room,” Micky insisted as he twisted around in his seat.
Davy fiddled with his sleeve cuff, trying to make sure his wand wasn’t in danger of falling out. “Easy, Micky,” he chided. “I don’t think our dementor is going to come looking for us here, in broad daylight.”
“I sure hope not,” Mike grumbled as he eased the Monkeemobile into a narrow space near the corner. They drove into L.A. often enough for him to be familiar with the major streets, but this neighborhood was way off of his usual routes; the shops along the street were a mixture of secondhand stores, dusty antique shops, a couple of import stores with signs in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, and what appeared to be a vegetarian restaurant overflowing with college kids in love beads and sandals. The cars he was parking among were old, beat-up, and in several cases painted with sunsets and flowers.
Peter grinned. “I like this block,” he commented as Mike yanked on the parking brake and shut off the growling engine.
“You would,” Davy replied, rolling his eyes. “Where to, Micky?”
“Hold on a moment,” Micky said, rummaging in the back seat. He tugged a whirl of paisley and gold braid from his stick bag and yanked it over his head.
Mike groaned as he undid his seat belt and climbed from the car. “Really, Mick,” he asked, “you’re gonna wear the poncho?”
Micky waved at the crowd at the vegetarian place. “It’ll blend in better where we’re going than your jeans will,” he said. One hand brushed his back pocket. “Also, it lets me carry the wand where I can get at it,” he added, shooting a glance at Davy’s left sleeve.
Mike sighed. “Fair enough,” he rumbled. “So where are we going? The squash grill over there?”
“Nah,” Micky said, shaking his head. “It’s MacGillicuddy and Shine’s.” He pointed at one of the knick-knack antique stores; its window was thick with dust, and the sign hanging over the door was badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. “But we could stop there on the way back,” Micky added. “Their pasta primavera is actually pretty good, if you like whole-wheat linguini.”
Peter was practically bouncing on his toes. “Oh, can we, Mike?” he squeaked. “It smells so good from here!”
Mike and Davy exchanged a glance. Mike was not a huge fan of vegetarian fare, and he knew Davy was on the meat-and-potatoes side as well. They typically left that to the Californian and the hippie, or at least hippie-sympathizer, of the group. On the other hand, Peter was right about it smelling okay; the scent wafting over reminded him of ears of sweet corn scrubbed and wrapped back in their shucks to be barbecued on the grill.
“Let’s see how we’re doing when we get back,” Mike answered as he dug in his pocket for change to feed the parking meter.
Micky clucked his tongue at him. “Wait a minute, Mike,” he said, scurrying around the car. He had something golden in his hand that looked the wrong size to be either a nickel or a quarter, which he plunked into the slot of the machine as he turned the knob. The meter clicked, then spun to show three hours of parking time left.
Mike’s eyebrows jumped. “What was that?” he asked, eyeing Micky suspiciously.
“Wizard money,” Micky explained. “The meter will read three hours until we leave, then count down. Don’t worry,” he continued as Davy’s face clouded over, “the witch equivalent of a meter maid will come around to collect it before the LAPD will.”
Mike wasn’t sure if that was quite kosher or not, but what he ended up saying was, “Does that work in all the parking meters?”
“Nah, only the ones near an entrance,” Micky said, snickering. “Man, I wish they did!” He sobered quickly, and gestured for the others to follow him. “Just act like you know what you’re doing,” he instructed his bandmates.
“That might be hard,” Peter admitted as Micky reached for the doorknob of the knick-knack shop.
The bell that rang as Micky pushed the door open sounded old and dull. Mike glanced around as he entered; the interior was dim, with only a few bare bulbs to supplement the sun filtering through the dust-caked windows. The shop’s aisles were wide, with tall shelves stacked with mismatched picture frames, porcelain figurines of every description, hand-carved wooden toys, and beaded jewelry hanging from racks. Only the last category was free of the thick layers of the same dust that hung on the windows; Mike figured the hippies at the vegetarian cafe were keeping this place in business on the love beads alone.
“Feel free to take a look around,” croaked a voice from behind the counter. Mike peered around the end of a shelf; perched on a stool behind an ancient-looking cash register was a dude with a sandy-colored beard that reached halfway down his chest, hair of a slightly lighter hue the same length down his back, and smoked-glass granny glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He was clearly older than them, but Mike would have been hard-pressed to guess an exact age.
“Hey, Tim,” Micky sang out across the shop. “Is Terry around?”
“He’s upstairs,” Tim answered, his froglike voice a bit more animated. Mike edged around the shelf and glanced down at Tim’s clothes; he was wearing a t-shirt that had once been brightly tie-dyed but had faded to pastels through many washings. Tim returned the look, and smiled crookedly; Mike was suddenly aware of how square he might look, with his bobble hat and button-up shirt.
“Micky!” crowed a voice from above them. “How’ve you been, my boy?”
Mike turned towards the rickety wooden stairs at the back of the shop, and caught himself before he goggled at the figure climbing down them.
He was short, although Davy had him beat in that department, and if you counted the huge, flaring purple top hat, he’d have rivaled Mike’s height. A frock coat in the same color, with lapels in a gold-and-teal paisley print, draped its tails nearly to the floor; the shirt beneath was an eye-searing lime, with an ascot in the same fabric. His pants were hot pink and of a loose, baggy style that had gone out with the zoot suit; below them were a pair of boots in some sort of lizard skin, in an olive-green that didn’t match the shirt, with toes more pointed than Mike’s cowboy boots. The ensemble was completed by a cummerbund in burgundy silk, with a wand of very dark wood thrust between it and the pants.
“Terry!” Micky dodged around a display of laughing porcelain Buddhas and met the apparition at the base of the stairs, hugging him like an old friend. “I’ll tell you, man,” Micky said, leaning back so he wasn’t speaking to the hat, “It’s gotten a little weird lately.”
“Whoo, tell me about it!” Terry whipped a newspaper out from the inside pocket of the frock coat. “Look at this! ‘Dementor Sighted In Malibu!’ Why, it’s getting so a wizard can’t take a casual stroll along the beach!” He tapped the paper with the back of his hand. “Says here it scared the crud out of four poor young wizards.”
Micky rubbed at his chin awkwardly. “Yeah, that would be us,” he explained.
Peter nudged Mike with his elbow. “Mike,” he whispered, “is the picture on the paper - moving?”
Mike squinted. Sure enough, while it was hard to tell while Terry was gesturing with it, it certainly looked like the policewizard in the photo was waving his arms around. It was the same fellow they’d talked to yesterday. “I guess so,” Mike answered quietly, glancing at Micky.
“You?” Terry squeaked. “You fought off a dementor by yourself, Dolenz? You’re braver than I thought!”
“Not by myself,” Micky protested. “Me and my friends here.”
All at once, Terry seemed to become aware that he and Micky weren’t alone in the shop. “Oh, I see,” he murmured, sweeping off the hat to reveal a head of wild but thinning red hair and bowing nearly to the floor. “Are you new to the area?” he asked as he straightened up. “I don’t remember seeing you around here before.”
“Yeah,” Davy said quickly, “I’m from England, Mike here is from Texas, and Peter is from Connecticut.”
“We’ve been here a while,” Mike said carefully, “but we haven’t checked in on the wizarding scene.”
Peter looked like he was about to say something, then shut his mouth again and nodded.
Terry giggled into his sleeve. “Let me guess,” he crooned, “making a go of a mundane life, like little Micky here and his mother before him?” He glanced across all of their faces; Davy and Mike nodded while Peter and Micky looked at the floor. “Well,” he continued, “Destiny makes fools of us all. I suppose you’re on a trip for supplies, then?”
“Right in one,” Micky admitted. “I’m fresh out of everything; I used up the last of my stuff to put counterhexes around the house.”
Terry returned his hat to its precarious perch atop his head and glanced at Davy and Mike, as if he were sizing them up. “Well, you know where the entrance is,” he said. “Feel free to show your friends the key.”
“Sure thing,” Micky replied, digging in his back pocket for his wand. “Uh, anything changed that I should know about?”
“Well, Gajinga’s Potion Supplies was bought out by some outfit from New Orleans, Laveau’s or something like that,” Terry replied with a handwave. “And the bank management turned over, but it was for goblin political reasons I don’t even pretend to understand.” He turned towards the bearded cashier. “Tim, anything I’m forgetting?”
“The pet store,” prompted Tim.
“Oh, of course.” Terry’s nose wrinkled, as if he smelled something foul. “Meridoc’s Familiar Emporium was raided last year for house-elf trafficking.”
“No!” Micky gasped, bringing both hands to his mouth. Davy looked nearly as confused at Mike felt.
“Nasty business all around,” Terry growled. “They were caught with four on-site, naked as jaybirds - wouldn’t even give them the dignity of a washcloth.”
“What did they do with them?” Micky asked, cringing a little.
“What could they do?” Terry sighed. “They gave them the option of working for the State Department of Magical Affairs, or - clothes. All four of them took the first option, but honestly, you never can tell if it’s really what they want, or the conditioning.”
Micky shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he murmured. “I got my first cat at Meridoc’s. I’d have never guessed they’d do something like that.”
“It shocked everyone,” Terry agreed. “Darn shame, especially since that must mean there’s a demand in the community; he wouldn’t be selling if no one were buying.”
“Man, that’s a stone drag,” Micky sighed, and Tim nodded in agreement.
Terry bounced past Micky and Davy and slid behind the counter. “That’s one of the reasons it saddens me so to see the young witches and wizards marching off to join the Mundane counterculture,” he said, hopping up on a stool to join Tim behind the register. “I think we lose something important when the younger voices aren’t heard. There’s certainly something to be said for wisdom and experience, but the older heads tend to ossify if they’re not jostled occasionally.” He clucked his tongue. “Anyway, off you go, young Dolenz! If I’m not here on your way out, give your mother my love.”
“I’ll let her know the next time I see her,” Micky promised, and gestured for his bandmates to follow him as he turned down a row of rickety shelves and pushed open a low door with white, flaking paint.
“Micky,” Mike noted as the four of them crowded into it, “this is a broom closet.”
“It sure is,” Micky answered, grinning madly. He flourished his wand, sending up a tuft of sparks. “Stand back, okay?”
“There’s not much more back we can stand, Micky,” Peter said mildly.
Micky seemingly ignored him, facing the back wall of the broom closet and tapping it three times with the tip of his wand. With a flash, it seemed to ripple, and what had been a blank wall now was covered with a tumble of letters - all the letters of the alphabet, along with the ten digits, cascading like autumn leaves down the wall and disappearing at the baseboards.
“The password is ‘Pythagoras 5-12-13,’” Micky stated as his wand darted across the wall, tapping each tumbling letter and number in turn. Sure enough, as he found the last “3,” the cascade of symbols reversed direction, flittering towards the ceiling and seemingly carrying the wall itself with them as it slid upwards. Micky led them through the opening into an alleyway lined in sturdy brick on both sides.
“Hold your questions until we get back,” Micky warned them, “and just try to look like you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” Peter whimpered.
“Just stick with me and don’t talk,” Mike reassured him. “Let Micky and Davy do all the talking, got it?”
Peter nodded and made a mouth-zipping motion.
Davy glared up at Micky. “Can I ask questions, then?” he asked, his lip curling slightly.
“Sure, as long as they won’t get us in trouble,” Micky said blandly. “Culture-shock stuff, yeah, that should be fine.” He turned and stepped from the alley into the street ahead, and the others followed him.
Mike blinked, hard, twice. The buildings that lined the street on either side leaned crazily over them, as if they were ready to jump into the middle of the boulevard. Half of them were vaguely Tudor in construction, and the other half were an offbeat combination of adobe brick, Spanish tile, and stucco. The signs that dangled over the sidewalks were animated, and advertised a dazzling number of shops - everything from magical impotence remedies to family-sized broomsticks was on sale.
The people scurrying about their business were dressed in a crazy variety of styles. The largest group were middle-aged and tended to wear a loose, flowing robe over what might have been normal street wear back in the teens and ‘20s. There were lots of waistcoats on the men, starched ruffles on the women, and high, stiff collars on both sexes. The second largest group were older people in much more tailored robes that buttoned down the front, or overlapped and tied like a kimono; Mike couldn’t tell what they were wearing underneath, although here and there a ruffled sleeve peeked out. The remainder wore either wild, mismatched outfits similar in style to Terry’s, or colorful hippie garb. Micky’s poncho was completely unremarkable in this crowd, as was Davy’s paisley Nehru jacket; Peter’s loose Aran sweater, tight corduroy pants, and moccasins looked downright conservative.
His own button-down shirt, faded jeans, and cowboy boots suddenly made Mike feel distinctly underdressed. He swallowed and followed after Micky.
“- to the bank first?” Davy was saying as Mike and Peter caught up.
“Yeah,” Micky said, “I don’t have much wizarding money on me, and if you have any you’ll need to exchange it.”
“I haven’t got much either,” Davy admitted. “What’s the exchange rate like?”
“Between us and Britain?” Micky shrugged. “Never had any reason to ask before.” He paused. “Here we go,” he said, as a broad building made of black granite loomed into view. He pushed one brass-plated door open and strode in.
Peter made a short, sharp noise and gripped Mike’s arm. “Mike?” he whimpered.
“Cool it, Pete,” Mike whispered back, although he was entirely sympathetic to Peter’s shock.
For one thing, the room they were in was no wider than the building they’d come in, but struck Mike as impossibly long; the counters on either side seemed to stretch off to infinity. For another, the beings behind the counters were clearly not human; their noses were long, their ears wide and pointed, their stature short enough that the tallest of them still had to look up at Davy, and their skins slightly greenish.
Micky pointed at a counter with an array of flags hung over it. “That’s the exchange desk,” he said to Davy. “I’m going to hit up the regular tellers for a withdrawal; I think I should still be on Mom’s account.”
“You think?” Davy asked skeptically.
“I never opened one of my own,” Micky said sheepishly, “but the whole family was listed, at least back when I ever used it.”
Davy huffed and headed towards the exchange desk. Mike decided to stick close to Micky; it seemed safer.
Fortunately, other than their height and unusually sharp features, the tellers acted more or less like bank tellers anywhere, and Micky’s mother hadn’t removed him from the family account. Micky ended up with a short stack of paper money and a small purse-full of coins. Mike glanced at the bills before Micky shoved them in his pocket; the pictures of politicians were grinning and, occasionally, waving.
Davy’s errand took a little longer. When he came back, he was turning one of the bills over in his hand. “So you’ve modernized enough over here to have paper money?” he asked Micky as he trotted up.
“Since about the turn of the century,” Micky replied. “Before that it was all precious metal coinage, but the relative values kept fluctuating, and there are so many other magical uses for silver - it seemed like keeping it tied up in the currency wasn’t the best use for it.”
Davy shrugged and tucked a thin sheaf of bills into his wallet. “Back home, it’s all still coins,” he stated. “It was one of the ways I kept everything straight; I’m going to have to be more careful here.”
“That didn’t look like very much at all,” Peter blurted.
Davy sighed, “It isn’t.” He glanced up at Micky, who grimaced slightly and then gave him a sympathetic look. Davy continued, “Since my folks weren’t wizards themselves, and we never had a lot of money, even before Mum took ill, all I ever had was my own earnings from mucking stables over summer, converted to wizard money. I just exchanged what I had left.” He glared at the beings behind the counters. “I’m pretty sure I took a bath on the exchange rates both ways - English Muggle to English wizarding, and English wizarding to American wizarding.”
“Probably so,” Micky agreed. “I wish I could do something about that.”
“Not without changing how goblins work,” Davy grumbled. “Do they dig the great long tunnels here, too?”
“Not here,” Micky said with a shudder. “Imagine what would happen in an earthquake.”
“Ooo, good point,” Davy replied.
Mike interrupted, “Where to next?”
“Well,” Micky said, “I need to pick up some potion ingredients -”
“Is this going to turn out like the chemistry set?” Mike demanded.
“No,” Micky sniffed, “because if I get the right ingredients, I’ll actually have everything I need for the effect I want this time.” He wrinkled his nose at Mike and went on, “Like I was saying, I need to stop at the potions shop, but there’s no need to take you guys there. I was thinking we’d go by the wand store first.”
Davy blinked. “Micky, you and I both have perfectly good wands already,” he pointed out.
“True,” Micky agreed, “but Mr. Milagro has the best eye for peculiar magical talents I know of. I’m thinking that if Peter is even part wizard, he might be able to find a wand he can actually use.”
“Really?” Peter asked, his eyes widening.
“Yeah, but that’s likely to take some searching,” Micky explained to Peter. “Even for a normal wizard kid just starting out, it can take trying a few dozen wands until you find one that clicks. So don’t be discouraged if it takes a while.” He turned back to Davy. “So I figured I could take you guys there and then hit up the new potions shop myself. You’ve been through it once, too, so you know as much about choosing a wand as I do.”
“You’re in an awful hurry,” Mike noted. “You think it’s not safe here?”
“Here, in the bank, is probably safe,” Micky allowed. “The goblins have all kinds of wards and amulets on this place. But outside?” He paused, and his fingers flexed slightly. “Let’s just say that there’s no reason I can think of why the dementor wouldn’t follow us here, if it was brave enough to attack us on a public beach.”
“The wizard police wouldn’t stop it?” Peter asked as they headed towards the exit.
“They’d get to it faster,” Micky agreed, “and they’d certainly try, but I’d rather we have as little chance for bystanders to get in the way as possible.”
Mike chuckled as they pushed the double doors open and stepped back into the smoggy sunlight. “You’re starting to sound like me, Mick,” he noted.
“Well,” Micky sighed, “I figured I need to show a little leadership, since I’m the only one who really has a clue here. You’re all suffering from culture shock of one kind or another.” He shaded his eyes with one hand. “Okay, Milagro’s is this way.”
Milagro’s Magical Implements turned out to be a shop even narrower than the bank but three stories tall, with the upper floors leaning out precariously over the street. The caricature of a wizard on the sign over the door waved at them and gestured as if inviting them in, but the windows were shuttered. Micky pushed the door open with one hand and peered inside. “Are you open?”
“Who’s there?” replied a voice from deep inside the shop. “Do you need repairs?”
“Not exactly,” Micky answered, stepping over the threshold and squinting. “We need a new wand.”
A bead curtain at the back of the narrow room swept aside, and a dark-mustached man in a conservative navy-blue Edwardian suit stepped through. He regarded Micky with darkly twinkling eyes for a moment. “Ah,” he cried, his eyebrows leaping with enlightenment, “Dolenz, hickory with nokken-hair core, fourteen and a half inches!” He vaulted over the counter and clasped Micky’s hand in both of his. “Don’t tell me you’ve lost it!” he chided.
“No, no, I’ve got it right here,” Micky protested, fumbling with his free left hand in his right back pocket and producing his wand. “I’m good. It’s my friends here -”
Mr. Milagro turned his attentions to Davy as he squeezed through the door. “This one doesn’t need one either,” he noted; “but why are you carrying it in your sleeve, my boy?”
Davy grinned sheepishly. “Just used to keeping it under wraps, I guess,” he said, shaking his arm and letting the wand drop into his hand.
The shopkeeper raised a monocle to one eye and peered through it. “An Ollivander!” he proclaimed. “I’d know one anywhere!”
“Or you could have guessed from the accent,” Micky pointed out as Mike and Peter eased through the door and shut it behind them.
“There’s more than one wand-maker in Britain,” Davy said, “but yeah, everyone knows Ollivander’s the best.”
Mr. Milagro slipped a finger under Davy’s wand and raised it to his eye level without taking it out of Davy’s hand. “Mmm, yes, excellent workmanship,” he agreed, “blackthorn with unicorn’s hair, ten inches even, sturdy construction but not stiff.” He lowered it again, releasing it smoothly back to Davy’s control. “An excellent dueler’s wand.”
“Really?” Davy raised an eyebrow. “No one ever told me that. I thought unicorn wands were for charms.”
“Good for charms, yes,” Mr. Milagro agreed, “but the blackthorn, my boy! A fighter’s wood if ever I saw one. And a precise cut, too; the branch this came from must have been positively bristling.” He smiled. “A wand for a noble warrior, that one. And I think it must have found its rightful home.”
With a whirl of coat-tails, he pivoted on one heel back to Micky. “So, if you’ve got yours, and he’s got his, then - what can I do for you?” Mr. Milagro spread is hands wide, as if to encompass his whole shop.
Micky gestured at Peter. “Try the Witchfinder charm on my friend here, and tell me what you find out?” he asked.
Mr. Milagro paused, his lip pouting slightly. “Why?” he asked.
“I’m hoping if you do it you’ll find out why, and be able to explain it to me,” Micky said.
Mike took a step back as Milagro plucked his own wand from a jeweled leather holster at his hip and made the now-familiar series of swooping, dipping motions. The curl of smoke at the tip blinked, then popped into the bright blue question mark with the slide-whistle noise.
Milagro straightened up. “That’s not supposed to happen,” he stated flatly.
“It did it for both me and the cop who almost picked us up yesterday,” Micky said. “What does it mean?”
“Not a wizard proper, not a Mundane, not a Squib, not a magical creature or being in the general catalog,” Milagro said, rummaging under the counter and removing a flat sheet of what looked like parchment. “In short, not something that’s supposed to happen.”
Peter cringed. “Am I illegal?” he whimpered.
“No, people can’t be illegal,” Milagro assured him, “but I have no idea what you might be.” He looked down, frowned, and shook his wand out. “Accio quill!”
Micky and Davy both ducked; Mike almost didn’t in time, and the sharpened crow’s feather that shot past him nearly got him in the nose. Mike glared at Micky, then asked, “Whatcha writing?”
“I’m asking my father to drop by,” Mr. Milagro answered, scratching at the parchment with sharp, squat letters. “He’s got far more experience with the wilder deviations of magical ability and their manifestations than I have.” He snapped his fingers, and a barn owl dropped out of the rafters.
“I’m a deviant?” Peter cried, looking more miserable by the second. He sank down into the room’s sole chair and buried his face in his hands.
“We’ll have to see,” Mr Milagro said as he folded the parchment and stamped it with what appeared to be a self-waxing seal, “but don’t fret about it, my boy - we’ll get you sorted out.” He handed the letter to the owl, who took it in its beak and flapped silently out of the window. Fixing Mike with a stare, he asked, “And this one?”
“Well, he shows up as a Mundane when I do the Witchfinder,” Micky explained, “but, um, well -”
“I could see the dementor when it showed up at our place,” Mike said bluntly. “Which Davy says Mundanes aren’t supposed to do.” He took a couple of steps towards Mr. Milagro and plunked his elbows down on the counter. “Then when it showed up on the beach yesterday, I couldn’t see it until it was right on top of me, but then I could again.”
Realization dawned across Milagro’s face. “The attack last night,” he breathed, “that was you boys? You fought off a dementor with only two wands?”
Davy shrugged. “What can I say,” he chuckled, “it’s a fighter’s wand, right?”
“Very much so,” Milagro agreed; he looked impressed. He repeated the swooping, dipping gestures again, and pointed his wand at Mike. The curl of smoke blinked for nearly a minute before snapping into the red X-shape, and the buzzing sound lacked enthusiasm.
“A Mundane,” Milagro mused, “but one that’s confusing the charm somehow. Not a Squib, though, which is what I would have guessed from the description.”
“As far as I know, I don’t have any witches or wizards in the family,” Mike said.
Micky leaned across the counter. “It looks like we’ll have to wait for your dad, anyway,” he stated. “I needed to stop by the potions shop - could you see if maybe any of your wands work for Peter? I realize it’s a long shot, but -”
“Not at all,” Milagro interrupted him. “If he’s got enough magic in him, we ought to find one in the collection somewhere.” He turned to Peter. “Let me see - ash blond, medium height - let’s start him on the standard school rack, but I suspect he’ll need something longer.” He hurried through the bead curtain, leaving it rattling in his wake.
Davy leaned down. “Okay, Peter,” he explained, “we’re going to hand you a series of wands. We’ll need you to give each of them a good shake, okay?”
“What’ll it look like if we find the right one?” Mike asked, as Micky waved and ducked back out the narrow door.
“Oh, we’ll know it when we see it,” sang out Milagro from the back room.
---
Nearly an hour later, Mike had nearly checked out of the proceedings. A dozen racks of wands, give or take, were stacked along the back wall of the room, each one holding about thirty individual sticks. They’d developed a rhythm for testing them: Mr. Milagro removed one from the rack and handed it to Davy, who presented it to Peter, who waved it once and then handed it to Mike, who took it back to Mr. Milagro, who handed Davy the next one and then replaced the one Mike was holding on the rack. They were working their way down the next-to-last set that Mr. Milagro had in stock; these were all long, slender wands in light-colored woods, and Mike got the impression that they’d been recently crafted.
Peter wiggled one that had to be nearly two feet long, to no effect, and handed it off to Mike. “It’s no use,” he sighed; “whatever it is that’s confusing the charm, I don’t think it’ll let me do what Micky wants.”
“Don’t do this for young Dolenz, my dear Master Tork,” clucked Milagro, handing a shorter wand in a wood that was almost white to Davy and replacing the long one into its slot. “If you’ve got a dementor chasing you, you’ll want a means of defending yourself, for yourself.”
“He’s got a point,” Davy said, handing the wand off to Peter. “I mean, so far we’ve been lucky and the dementor hasn’t gone after Micky at all. If it went after him first and managed to take him down, I’m not sure I could hold it off on my own, even now that I’ve gotten fair warning.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, either, Master Jones,” Milagro scolded, as Peter whipped the wand back and forth and then frowned at it. “After all,” the wandmaker continued, “you’re important enough for someone to send a dementor all the way across an ocean for you.”
“I still can’t imagine why,” Davy grumbled.
“I’d like to help,” Peter admitted, rolling the wand between his fingers. “I really would, but I just don’t think this is the way I can do it.” He turned the wand so that the handle faced Mike and heaved a huge sigh.
“Well, we just gotta do our best, shotgun,” Mike said, hoping he sounded reassuring. He plucked the wand from Peter’s hand and turned back towards the counter -
And a shower of brilliant green sparks shot from the end, scorching the countertop.
Mike yelped and dropped the wand. Mr. Milagro’s shout, Davy’s hoot of surprise, and Peter’s tiny scream came a second later, as the slender rod of white wood rolled a few inches along the counter and came to rest directly in front of Mike.
Davy was the first to speak. “You must be joking,” he gulped.
Peter’s eyes were huge. “Mike,” he breathed, “do that again.”
“I can’t!” Mike clutched at the brim of his hat. “I’m the one who’s not magic at all, remember?”
Davy and Mr. Milagro locked eyes, then turned to face Mike. Davy’s hand closed on Mike’s and guided his fingers back to the wand’s grip. “Try it again,” Davy urged, and Milagro nodded vigorously.
Mike lifted the wand tentatively, then waved it in a short, sharp gesture. This time, the green sparks leaped out in a fan that lingered in the air before drifting towards the floor like incense smoke.
The door swung open. “Hey, guys!” Micky sang out, a pair of what appeared to be burlap shopping bags swinging from his left arm. “How’s the wand search going?”
“Peculiarly,” Peter said.
Micky’s eyes focused on the last of the glittering green sparks, then on the wand in Mike’s hand. His eyebrows jumped. “Are you serious?” he squeaked.
“So it would appear,” Mr. Milagro said, tapping his chin with a finger. “Most peculiar, indeed.” He glanced at the wand. “Live oak wood, fifteen inches, stiff but with a flexible tip. Thunderbird feather core,” he noted.
“But the only one who ever got anything other than the Mundane mark for Mike was the cop,” Micky said, “and I figured he was doing it wrong.”
At that moment, there was a phoomph noise from behind the beaded curtain. Mr. Milagro looked relieved. “Ah, I believe Father’s here,” he announced.
Davy shot Micky a glance. “Floo network?” he asked, and Micky nodded.
“What?” Peter asked, looking back and forth between the two of them so fast Mike worried his head was going to unscrew itself from his shoulders.
Davy patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll explain later,” he assured him, as Mr. Milagro held aside the bead curtain and a wiry fellow with a steel-grey beard shuffled into the room.
The elder Mr. Milagro stared at each Monkee for a split-second, his dark eyes twinkling in a face like well-weathered boot leather. “Well,” he croaked, “which one’s the question mark?”
Peter raised his hand. “I’m the question mark all the time,” he said as he stumbled to his feet, “and Mike here’s the question mark a little of the time.”
“Does that make us the Mysterians?” Micky asked; Davy shushed him.
The old man wrinkled his nose and whipped out a wand of reddish wood. This time, Mike noticed, the complex pattern of dips was shortened to a single dip-and-twist, and the wisp of smoke snapped into the bright blue question mark for both him and Peter. “Curious,” grumbled the elder Milagro. “Very curious. Come, come.” He snapped his fingers and disappeared behind the curtain again.
Micky aimed an unspoken question at the younger Mr. Milagro with his eyes; the shopkeeper shrugged and followed his father, and the Monkees trailed after them.
The old man headed down a short staircase into a basement that would have looked like a college chemistry lab except for the two cleaned and upturned cauldrons sitting on the frontmost bench. Micky’s eyes brightened, but he didn’t say anything as they passed through the room and into a second one, smaller and darker.
“Lumos!” the younger Milagro announced, and the tip of his want lit up like a flashlight. He touched it to a small sconce on the wall that held a small globe of what looked like glass; the light transferred to the globe. He and his father marched around the room lighting a ring of ten spheres as the four young men looked around.
It was a low-ceilinged, circular room, and it was full of stuff, but Mike wasn’t sure what any of the equipment in the room was. There were several pieces, ranging from one that looked vaguely like a pair of binoculars had mated with the inside of a grandfather clock and sat on a short stand to one that looked vaguely like the three-dimensional gimbals they trained the Gemini astronauts with, large enough for him to stand in and not worry about having his hat knocked off. Whatever the gadgets were, Micky was clearly thrilled with them; the drummer was bouncing on his toes and barely managing not to touch things.
The old man set his wand on the plinth next to the binocular-gear-thing and straightened the lapels on his robe. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, puffing his chest out slightly. “I’m Probario Milagro, and this is, properly speaking, my shop. I retired from wand-making once my boy Manuel here got old enough and good enough to maintain the family reputation, but I keep my own workshop down here for academic research purposes.” He brushed a bit of dust from the stand. “My health has not been great, so I’ve not been in for a while,” he admitted.
“By which he means his gout has been acting up,” Manuel announced in a stage whisper.
Probario grimaced. “Just you wait until it catches up with you, boy,” he growled. He shifted to face Mike and Peter. “At any rate, I believe we can use one of my experimental devices to determine what, exactly, the Witchfinder Charm is trying to tell us.” He paused to pick up his wand again. “And hopefully, that will let us know what, if anything, you can do about it.”
He pointed his wand at the large machine with the thee free-spinning brass rings, each easily large enough to hold a person. The three rings slowly rotated until they were all upright and more or less aligned concentrically; an electrical spark jumped from the top gimbal to the iron frame that held the outside ring in place.
Micky couldn’t contain himself. “Is that a magical resonance imager?” he blurted. “I didn’t realize anyone had actually built one!”
“It is, indeed,” Probario chuckled. “And for that educated guess, you get to be my control subject for today. Would you step onto the platform? But please leave your wand here.”
Micky handed his wand to Davy, bounded across the floor, and stepped onto the wooden block just below the iron armature. Probario mumbled something rapidly under his breath and flicked his wand; the wooden block rose up slightly, just enough that all three rings could turn underneath it, and the rings began to spin with a metallic creak. The air around Micky began to crackle and glow gently blue as the rings spun faster and faster; as the creaking subsided into whirring and the rings blurred into invisibility, the block disappeared from view, too, leaving Micky seemingly suspended half a foot off the floor.
There was a sharp click, and then Micky and his clothes seemed to turn transparent, as if he were molded out of lightly tinted glass. Just beneath the glazed surface of his skin, a network of veinlike channels ran, carrying a shimmering greenish-white light to his extremities and back. At the heart of the network, a sphere of brilliant light pulsed in time with Micky’s breathing; it was located just below where Micky’s flesh-and-blood heart would be, and it reminded Mike of a star.
“Here you see the magical system of a normal, healthy young mage,” Probario announced. “It consists of two primary pieces. Just above his solar plexus, you can see the visual manifestation of his connection to the source of all magic.”
“Which is?” Mike asked, and then swallowed; he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“No one actually knows,” Probario admitted. “There are a great many theories, none of them proven.”
Micky spoke up over the whirring of the rings. “The current front-runner is that the Earth has a magical field, like its magnetic field, and that some people can tap into the magical currents and some can’t.”
“But that is, as yet, merely one theory among many,” Probario reiterated. “The other component is effectively a manifestation system; it filters the magic through bodily experience into a form that we can shape using our wills and our wands. Untrained wizards sometimes manifest spell-like effects without wands, when a sufficient amount of magic builds up in their systems.”
“The weird stuff,” Mike realized aloud.
Probario gave Mike a sidelong glance, then shrugged. He flicked his wand again, and the rings slowed back down; Micky became a solid creature again instead of a being of glass and light, and he stepped down from the floating block without being told.
Miguel leaned towards his father. “Shall we test the British wizard next?” he asked, as Micky careened off of two walls and bounced back to their end of the room.
Probario shrugged. “I don’t think we really need two controls, but there’s no harm in a second test of the system.” He nodded at Davy.
Davy handed both Micky’s wand and his own back to the drummer and approached the apparatus with much more caution than Micky had. “Is this thing going to bombard me with some sort of radiation?” he asked as he climbed onto the wooden platform.
“Yes,” Probario said with a smirk, “but it’s called light. Relax; it’s really a quite simple spell - the trick of the mechanism is to apply it in three dimensions at once.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do me if I get a sunburn from it,” Davy grumbled, but he stayed on the platform as the rings began to spin and thrum again.
The rings spun up to speed much more quickly this time; when the glowing blue field reached sufficient brightness and Davy went transparent, two differences were immediately obvious. One was that the light had a pinkish-orange tint instead of greenish, and the other was that much less light was flowing through his network, despite the light in his chest being nearly as bright as Micky’s.
“You didn’t finish your schooling, did you?” Probario asked.
“Left after year five,” Davy agreed, looking down at his arms. “Makes that big a difference, does it?”
“It can,” Manuel agreed, “although it could be argued that it’s more a matter of practice than training as such.”
Davy nodded wistfully. “I’d done almost no magic for two years until about a month ago.”
“Neither had I,” Micky objected. “I mean, I maybe did two or three spells between when we formed the band and when the dementor showed up.”
“You’re probably a more talented wizard to begin with,” Probario said as Micky blushed and Davy looked chagrined, “but even that small amount of practice can keep the rust off.” He slowed the machine back down, and a re-solidified Davy extracted himself from it.
“The tall one next,” Probario ordered, and Mike ambled across the lab to step up onto the wooden block. It lurched unpleasantly under his boots as it levitated, and he fought down a sudden wave of claustrophobia as the rings swung around him in increasingly faster circles. The glowing blue field around him prickled his skin, but it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, exactly, just strange.
Then there was the click, and Mike’s skin changed to glass. No pearlescent light poured through him, of course; he wasn’t a wizard after all, no matter how that silly wand had behaved. But as he held his hands up, he could see traces of those same veins that Micky and Davy had, running between where skin and bone should be. He just didn’t have a star in his chest.
“Now, this specimen is not a wizard,” Probario announced.
“He’s not a specimen!” the other three Monkees chorused; Peter’s solo voice continued, “He’s Michael.”
Probario looked taken aback for a moment, then grinned. “All right, then. Michael is not a wizard, but you’ll note that he has a fully formed and functional manifestation system, which is highly unusual for a Mundane,” he stated. “Perhaps this is a side effect of some other sort of manifestation?” He looked at Mike with the question in his eyes.
“Maybe,” Mike said slowly. “The church Mama bought me up in believes in the manifestation of health through prayer. Maybe I got some practice that way.”
Micky shook his head. “Nah, man, it’s gotta be the music,” he protested. “That’s you bringing something into the world right from your heart and soul, you know?”
“Could be both,” Davy suggested. “Different things, but strengthening it without magic.”
“Perhaps,” Probario agreed. “At any rate, without a connection to the source, he would be unable to cast spells of any sort, but I can see how passive magic effects might still work. The dementor’s lack-of-energy could still affect the background magic in his system, for instance, allowing him to see it when it got close enough.”
Something about that didn’t quite seem right to Mike, but it was the best suggestion they’d had so far. He waited as the rings slowed down for his skin to reappear; being transparent made him feel exposed, even though he knew no one could see anything.
“Your turn, Peter,” Micky murmured, steering Peter towards the machine by his shoulders. Peter climbed reluctantly onto the block and shut his eyes as the rings once again spun up to speed.
At the click, Probario winced, Manuel crossed himself, Micky gasped, Davy growled, and Mike dropped an epithet his mother would have slapped him for.
In the middle of Peter’s chest glowed a star of blue-white light that outshone Micky’s. Leading from it in all directions, down each limb and up his neck, was a puckered spiderweb of irregular milky strands. Peter opened his eyes and stared down at himself, mouth open.
Davy said it first. “Scar tissue.”
Probario swallowed loudly. “Yes,” he agreed. “Poorly healed scar tissue, at that.”
Micky’s free hand balled into a fist. “That’s not natural,” he snarled.
Mike’s eyes were wide. “What would it take to - to do that to a wizard?” he asked, sure he wouldn’t like the answer.
“In terms of time,” Probario answered, “the same as it would for a Mundane surgeon to remove every vein and artery in your body.”
Micky drifted towards Peter, shaking with helpless anger. “Hours, you mean,” he growled. “With a wand instead of a scalpel. Whoever did that to him, they must have tortured him for hours.”
Davy shuddered. “How would you even survive that?” he asked. “I mean, the channels with no power, sure, Mike, that’s a drag, but that’s not going to hurt you. But the power with nowhere for it to go?”
Manuel shook his head. “You must be very strong,” he said to Peter. “To hold all that within, and not burn from it.”
“I didn’t even know it was there,” Peter protested.
“And now I’m sure someone Memory Charmed you,” Micky snarled from just below and in front of the apparatus. “Someone tore your wizardry out of your body, and then blanked it out so you wouldn’t remember ever having had it.”
“That may have been a kindness,” Manuel murmured. Peter looked like he was about to cry.
Mike jogged across the floor. “C’mon, Micky,” he whispered over the whirr of the rings. “You’re scaring him.”
“Mike, look at him!” Micky shouted. “Can you see that and not get angry?” He pointed with his wand at Peter’s arm and the meandering bands of cloudy webbing just under the skin. Some of the field must have been leaking out; faint traces of the green-white light shone through his skin, solid though it was.
“Don’t do that,” Mike chided, reaching for Micky’s arm. As his hand closed on Micky’s wrist, similar traces of pure starlight white raced down his own arm, from knuckles to elbow and back.
Mike stopped and gawked at his arm. Micky’s mouth fell open. “Both of them,” he shrieked, leaping into the air and punching at nothing, “put both of them in the field together!”
Probario stopped the machine, and Micky pushed Mike in to join Peter on the wooden block. Peter clung to Mike as if he were afraid he were about to fall off; Mike wrapped one arm around Peter’s waist and held on as the rings spun up for a fifth time.
When the click happened, this time Mike was prepared. Sure enough, the flow through his magical veins was sluggish and slow, but it was there, bright white with the tiniest hint of blue.
Micky hovered just outside of the whirling rings. “That’s why it hasn’t burned Pete up from the inside,” Micky realized aloud. “He’s broadcasting it! He can’t use the power, so he’s pouring it into the environment!”
“And Mike’s got an open system just waiting for it,” Davy finished, “so when they’re close together, Mike reacts like a wizard would.”
“You mean,” Peter said slowly, “that Mike and I together make one wizard.”
“Looks like it, ol’ buddy,” Mike agreed.
There was silence between them for a few moments as Probario spun the machine down. Mike and Peter stared at each other; Mike found himself wanting desperately to apologize, but he wasn’t quite sure what for.
Finally Peter broke the silence. “If someone had to have my magic,” he said quietly, “I’m glad it’s you, Mike.” He swallowed noisily. “I trust you with it.”
Mike didn’t know what to say; “I don’t want it” wasn’t going to cut it, and “It’d look better on you” sounded too much like a joke. He turned away, eyes dropping to the floor, and mumbled, “Thanks.”
Micky turned back to Manuel. “We’ll take the wand,” he announced.
---
As they piled out of MacGillicuddy and Shine’s Antiques And Oddments, Davy glanced across the street. “Did we want to stop for lunch?” he asked. “Or are we in a hurry to get home?”
Peter didn’t bother opening the door of the Monkeemobile; he ducked down and crawled into the back seat through the window. “I’m not hungry,” he said in a small, flat voice.
“I can’t say I’m exactly up for a hearty meal, either,” Mike admitted. He reached between his waistband and his skin, slipping out the slender rod of off-white wood and tucking it underneath the driver’s seat; it had been too long to hide up his sleeve. He was tempted to try to rig up some sort of holster for it under his shirt, if Micky really was going to make him carry it everywhere for a while.
Micky stowed his bags underneath his chair, dropped into the front passenger’s seat, and turned around. “Pete, I’m really sorry,” he started, and for once he truly did sound apologetic. “But you can’t sit back there; you need to be behind Mike.”
“Leave him alone, Mick,” Davy chided; “Mike can’t cast any spells yet, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Micky breathed. “Sorry, man.” He leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head just enough to shimmy both his curls and the fringe of his poncho. “I just - this is getting really weird.”
“Weird for us?” Mike asked, as Davy slid into the seat next to Peter. Mike reached for the gear shifter and started the engine.
“Weird for wizards, Mike,” Micky answered. “I mean, seriously ungroovy stuff here. There’s a dark wizard out there who’s got Davy on his hit list, and now we find out someone literally ripped the magic out of Peter and then memory-wiped him.”
“Probably wasn’t very hard,” Peter mumbled from the back seat. He’d rolled up his sleeves, Mike noticed as he glanced at the rear-view mirror; Mike wondered if he was remembering the tracery of scar tissue that had covered both arms.
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Micky stated. “Mike, watch out, a couple of the guys from the restaurant are trying to cross the street and they’re not watching where they’re going.”
“I see them,” Mike answered, and changed the angle at which he was pulling out of the parking space.
“What do you mean?” asked Peter, his voice still small.
Micky twisted around in his seat. “I think you have memory problems because someone did such a major mindwipe on you back then,” he explained. “Memory Charming someone multiple times, or doing one huge one on them, can swiss-cheese your memory permanently.”
Mike’s ears perked up. “Can you fix that?” he asked, then realized even giving Peter his memory back wouldn’t repair his magic. He glanced in the rear-view mirror again; those two hippies from the restaurant were still in the street, looking like they didn’t know where they were going. Great.
“I don’t know,” Micky started; then his eyes went wide. “Watch out!” he shouted, ducking and reaching for his back pocket.
The two guys in the street had both whipped out wands from under their tunics; one of them had swept off a wig at the same time and dropped it in the middle of the street. A pair of bolts shot from their wands towards the Monkeemobile.
Micky got off a counterhex in time for one of them, but Davy was still fumbling with his sleeve. Mike jammed the gear shift from reverse to drive and hit the accelerator as the second hex impacted the car right over the back driver-side wheel.
“Dangit, dangit, dangit!” Micky roared over the engine. “They better not have scratched the paint!” He flicked his wand twice and hollered, “Fumum nimbus!” A cloud of smoke, or maybe dust, streamed from the tip of the wand and rapidly obscured the view behind them, and Mike made a quick right, hoping their pursuers were still on foot.
Davy had his wand out now. “I’ll keep an eye out,” he yelled at Micky. “You see what it was they did.”
Mike eased off of the accelerator and headed down the street the freeway. Behind him, he could hear Micky scramble over the back of the seat; his curly hair appeared in the side mirror as he leaned out to take a look. “I don’t see anything,” he shouted back. “Maybe it fizzled when it hit the metal?”
“Maybe,” Davy called back, “but I don’t think they were aiming for us. Could they have put a tracker on the car?”
Micky growled and mumbled something under his breath; the tip of his wand began to glow as he pointed it at various parts of the car. “If they did, I can’t find it,” he admitted.
Davy crouched and peered out of the back window of the ragtop. “Doesn’t look like they’re following us,” he reported.
The light ahead of them turned red; Mike hit the brakes. The Monkeemobile shuddered, then fishtailed as Mike wrestled with the steering wheel. “What in the heck?” he yelped.
“Greasing Jinx!” Micky realized aloud and flopped half-over the door.
Davy pressed himself down in his seat as Mike steered out of the skid and blew through the red light. “On the wheel, or on the brakes?” he asked.
“Not the wheel; looks like it might be the brake drum,” Micky shrieked. “And I don’t think I can fix it while we’re moving.”
Mike glanced back at Micky. “Get back in the car,” he ordered. “Can you fix it if we stop?”
“I think so,” Micky replied, dropping back into the seat behind Mike. “But how are you going to stop without spinning out?”
In Texas it wouldn’t have been a problem, Mike reflected. Finding a long enough straightaway to just let off the accelerator, get out of gear, and let the car coast to a stop was going to be more of a problem here. Fortunately, a supermarket was coming up on the right; Mike took his foot off of the accelerator and made the turn on momentum alone. Unfortunately, the Monkeemobile had a lot of momentum; he was still going fast enough he was going to cruise right through the parking lot and out the other side.
Something bumped into his bootheel. That darned wand was rolling around down there. He spared a glance at it; the tip was pointing at the center console. Right at the emergency brake.
Mike grabbed the lever and yanked. Something squealed underneath the car, but the Monkeemobile rolled to a stop.
“Hot diggity!” Micky shouted, flinging open the door and leaping out. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to the wheelwell. “Oh, yeah, ugh,” he grumbled. “Mike, this is going to take a moment, or else I’ll take off the grease that’s supposed to be there and it’ll overheat.”
“Take your time,” Mike said, reaching down and picking up the wand. He had no idea what he was going to do with it, but at least he was armed.
“Bad guy at two o’clock,” Davy said quietly.
Mike turned around; sure enough, there was a broomstick headed for them with a faux-hippie perched on top of it. Mike only saw the one; maybe they’d split up to look for them. “Aren’t they going to get in trouble for that?” he asked.
“If the wizard cops get to them before they split, yeah,” Davy agreed. “If we do anything showy, though, we’ll be in just as much trouble.” His wand wavered slightly in his hand.
“Just keep him off of Micky,” Mike ordered.
Davy grimaced. “I haven’t got a lot that no one’s going to notice,” he admitted.
Peter flattened himself against the floorboards and whimpered. The sound poked Mike right in the chest. A crazy thought leaped unbidden into his head; Mike flung out his wand hand and shouted, “Save the Texas prairie chicken!”
As one, all the pigeons in the parking lot - which turned out to be a rather large flock - rose into the air and flew in the direction Mike was pointing. Suddenly, the airspace around their pursuer was filled with flapping wings; he swung at them, then veered off, losing altitude rapidly.
Micky bounced to his feet. “I think I got it,” he announced, wiping the tip of his wand on his pants leg. “Mike, get us out of here before he recovers. I’ll take a closer look at it when we get home.”
“What if they follow us there?” Peter asked, popping his head up over the back of the bench seat.
An ugly smile crept across Micky’s face. “Then they get to deal with me when I’m prepared for them,” he said, smirking slightly.
Mike and Peter exchanged a glance and shuddered. Everyone climbed back into the car, and Mike turned back towards the freeway again. The tires squealed on the pavement as they pulled out of the parking lot.
Davy and Micky kept watch all the way back to Malibu, wands clutched just below the windows, but the rest of the drive was uneventful. The brakes seemed to work just fine, and no broomsticks appeared over the concrete bricks or canyon walls. Their neighborhood bustled with activity, and for once Mike was glad for all the pedestrian traffic; he wasn’t sure their pursuers would pause because of witnesses, but at least they’d have a few.
Micky hustled them into the Pad, his bags draped over one arm and his wand clutched openly in the other one. Mike realized that Micky could probably get away with that, since his looked so much like a drumstick. He was going to have to figure something else out.
“Okay,” Micky ordered, “We’ve got double trouble now. I don’t know who those guys at the restaurant were, but I’m not going to assume they’re in cahoots with the dementor. From now on, no one leaves alone, and no one leaves without a wand, got it?”
“Got it,” the other three echoed. Peter sank into a chair, and added, “And that means I never leave without Mike, right?”
“Until we get Mike trained,” Micky answered, “I don’t think either one of you should leave without either me or Davy.”
“And how long is that gonna take?” Mike asked, flopping down on the chaise and tugging the new wand from his jeans again.
“Praesidio!”” Micky cried, spinning away from them and tapping his wand firmly against the wall. The entire Pad shook, and a shimmer of purple and green shot across all the windows.
Micky turned back towards his friends, a grim look on his face. “However long it takes,” he said, and Mike’s heart sank. He’d never seen Micky so completely serious before.