Chapter #33Where on Earth is Morgana Hollis by: imaj   “Another coffee,” asks the bored looking waitress. She puts just enough stress on the ‘another’ to make her meaning clear.
“Why thank you,” you smile back, returning her sarcasm with interest.
“You’ve been here, what, three hours now,” she continues. “You gonna keep ordering coffees all day?”
“Until my friend gets here,” you explain.
You’ve chosen this coffee house not for the quality of its coffee, and certainly not for the quality of the service, but for its location. Across the road, tucked into a corner, is a fortune teller’s shop. It sells a wide range of new age and semi mystical knick knacks and nonsense too, but it’s the fortune teller that interests you and you’ve chosen a seat with a good view.
It’s probably the most unlikely stakeout you could imagine, but Morgana’s Facebook page has led you here. She mentioned the shop by name, she mentioned how interested she was in it and she mentioned how she was looking forward to having the time to visit again at the weekend. For a brief moment you wonder how the previous owners of the book were able to ever replace people without the help of the Internet.
You’re just deciding on how to be rude to the waitress again, when you spot a figure in black entering the shop.
“You know,” you say sweetly. “You’re probably right, all that coffee isn’t good for me. I’ll just be on my way.”
You throw a couple of notes onto the tabletop and leave quickly, before the waitress has a chance to reply.
*****
A set of wind chimes jingles as you enter Madam Andrassy’s, the name is painted in careful gold lettering on the windows. The front of the shop is given over to displays for various odds and ends. Most of them, you know from your time studying in Blackwell’s library, are actually mystically inert. A small proportion are genuinely useful for magic. Interestingly, they tend to be hidden below or beside the more colourful displays. A group of lit scented candles give the shop a distinct, but not unpleasant, odour.
“Morgana,” you say, leaning round one of the displays. “Morgana?”
The black clad girl freezes for a moment. She turns round, looking shocked to see you
“I thought that was you,” you say before smiling widely. “So this is what you get up to at the weekends. Looks kinda cool.”
“Kim,” she says cautiously. Morgana’s demeanour seems uncertain, as if she can’t decide whether to slink away embarrassed or come out fighting.
“I mean it,” you add in Kim’s sincere voice. “I didn’t know this place existed.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, it’s pretty neat,” says Morgana, opening up a little. “Madam Andrassy knows some cool stuff.”
“Magic is not, how you say, ‘cool’,” says a voice from behind the counter in a thick eastern European accent. “It is a matter most serious and grave. As I’ve told you many times Sandra”
Morgana flinches at the use of her given name. Madam Andrassy, you presume, emerges from behind a curtain to stand at the counter. She looks to be in her mid thirties and is still, in a way, quite pretty. Her clothes are colourful and covered in intricately embroidered patterns. Lustrous black curls spill out from under a headscarf.
“Sorry Madam,” says Morgana quietly.
“Is this a friend,” asks Madam Andrassy.
“No, yes, sort of,” replies Morgana quickly and nervously. “Madam, this is Kim Walsh. She’s sort of friends with everyone in the school.”
“Good to meet you, young lady,” says Madam Andrassy, turning her attention on you. You meet her gaze steadily.
“Hey,” interrupts Morgana. “Maybe you could read Kim’s fortune too.”
“Oh I’m not so sure…” you begin to say, but Madam Andrassy interrupts you.
“An excellent idea,” she says, her clothes swirling as she turns to draw back the curtain she entered by. “Come this way girls. Come.”
You both follow her through the curtain to a small, poorly lit room. Candles flicker on the richly varnished round table at the rooms centre. Heavy drapes have been drawn across the window to prevent light entering from outside. The walls are bare except for a tall, narrow bookcase. You run your eyes over the titles as Madam Andrassy sits herself at the far side of the table.
“Over here,” whispers Morgana as she tugs you away from the books. “She doesn’t like people looking at the books.”
You let Morgana pull you over to a pair of seats at the table, making a mental note of the book titles so you can ask the Blackwell golem about them later.
“Let me see your hands girl,” says Madam Andrassy patiently.
Morgana places her hands, palms facing up, on the table. Madam Andrassy leans over and looks at them closely, she then straightens up and sits very still for a moment. When she speaks, it seems as if she is looking straight through you, at something in the distance.
“I see a mirror,” she says hollowly. “A perfect mirror, but it cracks and falls apart. It’s not the reflection that cracks, it is the original.”
“That’s a bit of a riddle,” you whisper in Morgana’s ear. She shushes you and continues to listen, rapt.
“Beware of the man without a face,” finishes Madam Andrassy. She relaxes, and for a moment looks very tired. She smiles wearily as she turns to face you. “And you, put your hands on the table.”
Reluctantly, you place your hands on the table so Madam Andrassy can inspect them. Again, she leans over, again she stiffens straight and again she stares into space. As you look into her eyes, you realise that whatever she’s seeing right now, it terrifies her.
“Ah, you’ll meet someone new honey,” she says hurriedly. Her eastern European accent has vanished entirely, replaced by a mid-western twang. “And have a long happy life.”
After that, she cannot usher the pair of you out of her shop quickly enough.
*****
“That was odd,” says Morgana on the sidewalk outside.
“Understatement of the year,” you reply sarcastically. In reality, what just happened in the shop has worried you.
“No, I mean, that was different,” explains Morgana patiently. “What Madam Andrassy sees is cryptic, but…”
“But?”
“What she told you wasn’t. I don’t think she wanted to tell us what she saw,” says Morganna. She looks at you, and you can almost sense her trying to spot something wrong or out of place.
“Look,” you begin, holding up your hands. “Why don’t we go and get a coffee or something? We can talk all about it then. There’s a great place just over the road.”
“OK,” replies Morgana unsurely.
“Great,” you smile. “And I’ve got something I need to show you…”
*****
“I need your help,” you say boldly as you enter the library.
“Such a charming master,” says the Blackwell golem as it puts down the mask it was polishing. “So thoughtful and considerate and polite.”
“You’ll do it for me though,” you reply, batting your eyelashes.
“As though I have a choice in the matter. What is it you need this time? More masks to polish? Your homework done?”
“No,” you explain. “Something magical. Fortune telling, tell me what you know.”
“Utter bunk,” splutters the golem. “Certainly any of the usual clichés are. Palm reading, tea leaves, crystal balls: All complete nonsense.”
You breathe a sigh of relief.
“The very notion of being able to see into the future is ridiculous. There are any number of paradoxes and problems with the idea. At best a skilled practitioner might come away with a jumble of confusing images and metaphors. But that would be as a result of meditation, not any of the phoney methods I just mentioned. The whole concept was thoroughly explored and debunked in a 19th century treatise entitled The Trials of…”
“A Modern Cassandra,” you say finishing off the golem’s sentence for it. It stares at you in surprise.
“You know of it?”
“I saw it in a bookcase at the apparently phoney fortune teller I visited today,” you say glumly.
“Fascinating,” says the golem, rubbing at its chin. “And did this fortune teller give you any predictions?”
“A bit of a riddle for one,” you explain. “Confusing images and metaphors, I guess. She tried to read me too but got spooked.”
“This is quite the find,” says the golem excitedly. “I wonder what else she has in that book case. Perhaps you could, shall we say, ‘acquire’ it for me. For us.”
The golem makes an interesting case. You had intended to swap Keith into Morgana this evening, and had already place an anima band on Morgana to help with this. However, if you can manage to get Keith behind Madam Andrassy’s face, then you could have him make up whatever nonsense you wanted. That is, if you can persuade Morgana to take Jessica to Madam Andrassy.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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