20. The Girl Who Brings the Weather
The Girl Who Brings the Weather
She wasn’t disappointed.
Luna stepped through the portal first and turned to watch his face as he joined her. Shaw cycled through confusion, shock, and something approaching existential horror in seconds.
“Jesus Jumping Christ,” he breathed.
They were surrounded on all sides by massive LED screens, all the buildings transformed into animated billboards fifty stories tall.
Wild, incomprehensible images flashed before him, but Shaw’s eyes were drawn to one screen in particular, which appeared to be an advertisement for a new Broadway show.
An actress twirled across a vast digital stage, her movements as captivating as any Ziegfeld girl from his time.
Meanwhile, a cartoon duck danced across another building, text scrolling below it.
The plaza teemed with tourists, fixated on screens or snapping photos. Street performers vied for attention: a silver-painted man frozen on a box, an electric violinist, and a breakdancing group nearby.
Shaw turned in a slow circle, trying to process it all.
His hand went instinctively to straighten his tie—a nervous gesture Luna was beginning to recognize.
She watched him take in the food carts lining the plaza, the vendors hawking INY T-shirts and knock-off designer bags, the absolute sensory overload of humanity and commerce and technology all crammed into a few blocks.
“I’m sorry, is this . . .” His voice was faint, his eyes darting from the skyscrapers to the staggering crowds. “Are we still in New York? Is it still 1977? The last thing I remember, we were in 1977 . . . Weren’t we? How is any of this here?”
“Yes, but then we went to Oak Haven. Which you don’t remember because of my town’s forgetting spell, but that’s okay, I’ll catch you up as we go. Currently, we’re in 2026, in Times Square.”
“As in . . . you mean, the Times Square? With . . . you know, Broadway? And all the lobster palaces?”
“Lobster palaces?!” Luna laughed. “I have never heard of lobster palaces, but I am now officially desperate to see one.”
Before Shaw could respond, something large and red moved into his peripheral vision. Startled, he whirled around and found himself staring up at a seven-foot furry red monster.
“PHOTO! PHOTO WITH ELMO!” the person inside the costume shouted, gesturing enthusiastically at Shaw. “FIVE DOLLARS! VERY GOOD PHOTO!”
Shaw took a step back, his expression suggesting he was reconsidering every life choice that had led him here. “What in the hell—”
“It’s just Elmo. From Sesame Street.”
“I don’t recognize any of those words, Melrose.”
“PHOTO!” Elmo insisted, moving closer.
“No, thank you,” Shaw said, backing away. “I’m quite all right without—”
“MINNIE MOUSE!” someone shouted from nearby. “PHOTO WITH MINNIE!”
“Come on.” Luna grabbed Shaw’s elbow. “We don’t have time for this.”
They dodged around a family taking selfies and nearly collided with a vendor selling cell phone cases.
Shaw kept craning his neck to look at the screens above them, mouth slightly open as he tried to reconcile what he saw with his memories of New York.
The buildings dwarfed anything from his era.
“How is this . . .” He gestured vaguely at everything.
“How is any of this even possible? The electricity alone—”
A double-decker tour bus crawled past, its sides wrapped in a screaming-yellow advertisement for The Lion King. Shaw glared like it had personally offended him. “What is that monstrosity?”
“It’s a bus, Shaw. Surely you had buses in 1926.”
“That’s no bus. Buses are—” He made a gesture indicating something much smaller and less aggressive.
“Welcome to 2026, sweetheart.” Luna picked up the pace, pulling him along. “Come on, we need to get to Grand Central.”
“The train station? But why? Why am I even here?” A man on an electric scooter zipped past, narrowly missing a woman in a Statue of Liberty costume who was handing out flyers for discount electronics. “I don’t like it here.”
“Nobody does. It’s midtown.” Luna continued tugging him east, steering him through the crowd with the ease of someone who’d navigated this chaos many times.
“Why are there so many lights?” Shaw was still craning his neck to look at the screens. “Why does everyone need to know about—” he squinted at a particularly aggressive advertisement “—cryptocurrency? What even is cryptocurrency?”
“Let’s not. Move.” Luna dodged a stationary family, mid-selfie. “We don’t have much time; there’s a lot you need to know.”
“Right. Yes. Obviously.” Shaw made a visible effort to stop gawking and focus on her. “Start with, um . . . start wherever.”
“Okay, so. There’s a tech company that’s launching an app—”
“A who that’s what-ing a which?”
“Oy. An application. It’s a thing on phones that—you know what, think of it like a vending machine for magic spells.”
“A vending machine. On a telephone.”
Luna sighed, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. “Ohh, boy. This’ll be harder than I thought.”
* * *
They continued eastward, and Luna kept on explaining the situation as best she could. By the time Grand Central loomed overhead, Shaw was mostly up-to-date.
“Let me understand . . . Someone’s invented a way to put magic in everyone’s pocket, and we’re trying to stop them by . . . borrowing some coins?”
“Tokens, not coins. But yes, essentially. Think of them as batteries of urban longing, charged with psychic energy from millions of New York commuters. Assuming the coven will allow us to borrow the tokens, we can use that stored energy to influence the CastR investors, provoking them to overfund the company so aggressively that it collapses under its own weight.”
“That’s—” Shaw paused. “Actually, that’s fairly elegant.”
“I know, right? Except the coven might not lend them because they think Oak Haven witches are a bunch of clueless country mice.”
Shaw went silent, his brain clearly working overtime to sort through the implications. Around them, the city hummed with cars and voices and the ever-present electronic pulse of a world that had left 1926 so far behind it might as well be another planet.
“In other words,” he mused, “we need to convince a coven of skeptical big-city witches to trust us with their most powerful magical objects so we can commit securities fraud for the greater good.”
Luna nodded, hoping he understood the gravity of their mission. If they failed, if Vex’s spells were released unchecked into the public, it would be chaos. Spells gone wild, wreaking havoc among country and city mice alike.
She steered him toward the chaotic station entrance. “Just follow my lead and try to look trustworthy.”
“I’m a confidence man, Melrose. Appearing trustworthy is the most important part of my job.”
* * *
The curved ceiling of Track 61 gleamed like the inside of a nautilus shell, each Guastavino tile catching the light from the enchanted sconces that lined the walls.
Luna had forgotten how beautiful this place was.
The tiles created that distinctive herringbone pattern, making you feel like you were standing inside some benevolent creature’s ribcage.
Above them, commuters rushed through Grand Central Terminal, completely unaware that directly beneath their feet sat one of New York’s most powerful covens.
The coven had commandeered a 1904 subway car, one of the original Composite cars with mahogany paneling and rattan seats, and transformed it into something between a drawing room and a war council.
The car sat on a section of abandoned track, and its exterior still bore the old Interborough Rapid Transit logo.
But the interior had been lovingly modified.
Hard bench seats had been swapped for deep leather cushions in jewel tones.
Over each bench, brass reading lamps arched up and over like attentive servants.
A Turkish rug ran down the center aisle, muffling footsteps and adding a touch of absurd elegance to the repurposed transit car.
The windows—originally designed to show passing tunnel walls—had been enchanted to display constantly changing scenes: sometimes the 1904 inaugural run, sometimes views of the city above, sometimes just swirling patterns of light that reflected the coven’s collective mood.
Luna and Elias were wedged together on one of the bench seats about halfway down the car, their shoulders pressed against each other in the narrow space.
Across from them sat three coven members whose names Luna was desperately trying to remember.
Hector and Diego occupied the conductor’s area at the front, where someone had installed a pair of high-backed chairs that looked like they’d been liberated from one of Andrew Carnegie’s mansions.
“—and that’s why we believe the subway tokens are our best option,” Luna tried to project confidence she didn’t entirely feel.
“Please, everyone. I understand how precious the tokens are, and how uncomfortable it must be to consider lending them out. But it’s so important that you understand the stakes.
Magic isn’t meant to be democratized any more than nuclear fission or brain surgery. Some things require expertise.”
Diego and Hector perched on their thrones, silver hair gleaming in the warm light.
It was a little mind-bending to realize that, just days ago, Luna and Elias had spoken with their childhood selves.
The twins had grown into their power the way other people grew into their faces.
They no longer finished each other’s sentences aloud, but she could see the constant flicker of communication passing between them, quick as a card shuffle.
“The girl who brings the weather,” Hector said with a slight smile. “That’s what we started calling you after the token chase. Remember, Diego?”
“How could I forget?” Diego’s tone was dry. “Four continents in six hours. I’d never realized portal hangovers were real until I jumped that many times in one day.”