Fantastic Hearts and When to Trust Them (2)

An Excess of Wizardry

"Look at that smile," a green-eyed Irishwoman said the next noon when their class started, winding her apron strings around her back then tying them over her stomach. "There's a lass with a lad who wants to know what you did last night."

Celia could take three different meanings from that statement, and decided not to go with any one of them. "Madhavi, you gonna have to say it right out if you got a question for me, 'cause I can hardly understand you with that accent to begin with."

"My accent!" Madhavi scoffed, putting a delicate hand to her bosom. "As if you didn't grow up with American hens and we all know it. Isn't only my accent getting in your way, honey."

Celia laughed. "I met some old friends last night, if you insist on needlin'."

"Here?"

"Yes, here," Celia chortled, putting the hot pad she'd borrowed back in the drawer and signing the day's date on the check-out list. "I ran into them by accident last year at home, and this time they ran into me."

Madhavi snorted. "The likelihood! My my."

"My my indeed," Celia mused, double-checking that her work station was clean.

The instructor arrived with a sheen of sweat from the industrial ovens still gleaming on his face. He frowned. "Where's Leon?"

Celia looked over her shoulder with Madhavi, but saw no sign of him the instructor might have missed. She shrugged.

Their instructor shook his head, disappointed. "All right, grab your mixing bowls."

When she left at five-thirty, the secretary at the front of the school called Celia's name—Celia's was the first name she'd learned, as a colored woman stood out like a clove on a spread of flour—and Celia diverted over to her desk, balancing another baking dish on her left hand.

"A young woman came in and dropped this off for you," the matronly secretary said, lips pursed in disapproval at having been used as messenger.

Celia thanked her quickly and hurried off, shaking the folds out of the note with one hand.

Dinner with us at Newt's apartment tonight? About 6?

~ Queenie

Celia rolled her eyes. No one could claim the Wizards weren't holding up their end of this friendship. Celia paused outside the school's stone walls to write on the back, I'll be there, and waited with the message in her open palm to see if it would fly away like the last one had. It didn't, so she deemed it an ordinary scrap of paper and stuffed it in her jacket pocket.

At five-fifty Celia knocked on Newt's apartment door and waited. She counted to thirty and heard no evidence of anyone being home, and was about to anxiously leave when she remembered the magical nature of his case. If she were Queenie and Tina, she wouldn't want to ever leave the case either—but could anyone hear her knocking on this door when they were two doors and however-much magic away?

Tentatively, she tried the darkened brass doorknob into his apartment, and it turned easily, though the mechanisms needed oil. Queenie's rose coat hanging on the coatrack behind the door evidenced her presence, at least, and she soon spotted Newt's blue coat over the back of a chair, and smiled.

But she'd still entered a white man's house uninvited, so Celia gently shut the door and laid her dish on the table, coat on the rack beside Queenie's, then crouched beside Newt's case, which was shut and locked. Hand trembling only once, she knocked on the stiff lid of the case.