section7mfu | [picfic challenge]

New York was full of magick. Park Slope had its exclusive covens made up of witches and wizards who could trace their lineage back to the mages who had come over on the Beltane and Belladonna before America was even a country, descendants of the settlers of Salem who still dug out the bell, book, and candle in their stone high-rises and tony underground clubs. Harlem had its share of voodoo queens and Santerios, and in Brooklyn the Baba Yagas formed traffic jams of flying mortars and pestles as the brujerias next door lit candles to fairies disguised as gods disguised as saints. In Greenwich Village feathered shamans peddling ayahuasca for the trip of a lifetime rubbed elbows and shared espresso with too-cool black-clad Thelemites and Chaotes drawing sigils with chalk on every available surface. Even the housewives of Long Island, it was rumored, shared their goddess circles and feminine empowerment affirmations during the full moon.

Yes, the Big Apple was the magickal capital of the world these days, and Napoleon Solo felt utterly out of place in it. The streets were said to glow with energy, the bums warmed their hands at hotspots of chi that he could neither see nor feel. The lines of influence, the sigils and signs and symbols, the portents and meaning that held up the city meant absolutely nothing to him. A ghost manifested in his apartment building and he was the only one who slept through it. Advertisements did not rearrange themselves to send him messages from his dead grandmother, nor did any pennies he picked up on the ground mysteriously jump from pocket to pocket in his clothes.

He had been at UNCLE for just a few weeks before he plucked up the nerve to approach Mr. Waverly about this state of events. The UNCLE was steeped in occultism, the underground compound carefully arranged to reflect the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the Divination department humming 24 hours a day as young men and women peered into scrying pools and balls, flipped over tarot cards, and took the dictation of the possessed in order to monitor the world's activity of dark magick. Each door and doorway was larded with wards and charms meant to filter out enemies and bad energy.

Mr. Waverly's door was a dark and forbidding object, some kind of sacred wood studded with iron nails to keep fairies out. A gigantic set of keys hung next to it. Nobody touched the keys; rumor was that they were booby-trapped, and if you tried to unlock the door horrible things would happen to you. But the door swung open as Napoleon entered, and he made his way in without hesitation.

The sage-scented smoke from Mr. Waverly's pipe caressed the stuffed alligator which spun in lazy circles, suspended from the ceiling. Napoleon ignored the occult paraphenalia scattered around the room and concentrated on the comfortingly mundane image in front of him--a battered wooden desk, a chipped china plate and mug, a letter opener, and a fountain pen (an altar, he thought, with a pentacle, a chalice, a sword, and a wand). Mr. Waverly eschewed the traditional robes of the master magician, preferring brown tweed. That, too, was comforting.

"Mr. Solo!" Waverly shook out the match he'd been lighting his pipe with. "Just the man I wanted to see. I'm quite glad you're with us, young man--you're going to be a great asset to UNCLE."

Napoleon shook his head. "I don't see how. I'm not used to this kind of fieldwork. The senior agents are all natural clairvoyants or accomplished spellcasters, and I can't even sense an aura or use a grounding crystal. Sir...with all due respect, do you think you've made a mistake?"

Mr. Waverly shook his head. "It's difficult having sensitives on a field team," he said. "It's time UNCLE got used to the fact that we can't fight fire with fire." He pointed at the door. "Did you have any trouble getting through?"

Napoleon glanced at the door. It was still slightly ajar. "Should I have?"

"Not technically. Anyone should be able to stroll through, but anyone remotely sensitive would have a very difficult time trying to pluck up the courage to go in. It's got some very specific wards on it. You didn't even knock. And I hear you've been listening at doors."

"Nothing is soundproofed!"

"It shouldn't have to be; there are dampening spells everywhere. But they don't have any effect on you at all." Mr. Waverly pointed the stem of his pipe at Napoleon. "I know I've had some of the agents putting you through tests you think you've failed, but the ones you passed with flying colors are all the ones you don't know about. We could drop an astral house on your head and you wouldn't blink. We literally have," he added, "and you did not blink."

"So," said Napoleon slowly, "the fact that I have the psychic ability of a turnip is an asset to you. It's not a liability."

Mr. Waverly beamed proudly. "It's a bit of an experiment. Imagine what'll happen when you go charging into a THRUSH coven and their hexes don't do a thing."

Somehow, this was not reassuring.