The polling stations opened promptlyat six the next morning. Bradley’s advisory council rose with the birds to shuffle off to various stations across the city, eager to watch The People exercise their right to vote.
The People, in their teeming throngs, stayed in bed. The novelty factor of participating in a democratic election had worn off after the first attempt. They hadn’t even been paid for voting the last time, which The People, in their huddled masses, thought was absolutely typical: Trustthe governmentto ask you to do all of the work of making important decisions for them and then not even pay you for it.
A few wild-eyed local eccentrics duly showed up to cast their ballots, mostly while mumbling to themselves about things likemunicipal rezoning. Gretsella felt almost comfortable around them, not because they were anything like witches—the dynamism of the average witch’s disdain for local regulations could be used to power an entire broomstick manufacturing plant in an area strictly zoned for single-family housing—but because they were very much like a type of creature that a witch might summon from some dark plane to rain terror and despair upon her enemies. Woe betide any man who crossed a witch, as he might find that he ever after would have his every attempt to better his lot in life beset with forms that must be submitted to receive a permit to apply for a license, and peppered with bright-orange stop-work orders owing to his having neglected to pay for the other permit that would have allowed him to receive the form with which he could submit his semiannual license renewal fees.
Gretsella and Janet stood side by side, watching the anemic crowd of civically minded freaks trickling its way into the public library as the morning sun grappled valiantly with the capital’s morning smog. Janet was frowning. “Grandmother,where do you think we went wrong? The People don’t seem excited at all about participating in the democratic process.”
“Of course they don’t,” Gretsella said. “They’renormal. Normal people don’t care aboutprocesses, especially not at six in the morning. They care about what they’re having for breakfast. If you really want them to care about something they can’t eat, you have to give them prizes for doing it.” She was attempting to direct only her usual amount of nastiness toward Janet so that the girl wouldn’t notice something amiss and realize Gretsella had uncovered her wicked scheme.
“Prizes?” Janet asked, as if she was taking the notion seriously. “Like what?”
“Anything,” Gretsella said, a little annoyed that Janet wasn’t taking her criticisms of both The People and the concept of democracy with the extremely ill spirit with which they had been intended. “The People are dense as flattened toads. You could hand them a cheap button and tell them it was a prize and they’d sew it onto their shirts and show it off to everyone in town.”
“Buttons,” Janet said, with clear and unnerving enthusiasm. “What a wonderful idea, Grandmother! Big, brightly colored ones, maybe, that sayI Participated in the Democratic Process Today! Everyone will want one!”
“Nerdsmight,” Gretsella said with all the scornful superiority of a woman who read books about the history of cauldrons for fun. “And those would have to be some enormous buttons to fit all those words. Couldn’t you come up with something snappier?”
Janet got a look on her face that reminded Gretsella of Bradley back when he was a fat, jolly baby who occasionally went cross-eyed in the course of trying to aim his own foot into his mouth. Then she shouted, “I’ve got it!” and darted abruptly off. Gretsella, who didn’t actually give a banker’s socks about witnessing the democratic process in action, decided to take this as an opportunity to stomp off in search of some breakfast. She found a nearby coffee shop, where the proprietor annoyed her by attempting to tease her about the slice of cake she’d ordered to go with her coffee. “Cake for breakfast, eh? Man trouble?”
Gretsella drew herself up and narrowed her eyes. “I trouble men,” she said. “They donottrouble me. As for my choice to eat cake for breakfast, I notice that you sell muffins, sir. A muffin is a cake for women who apologize too often and men who lack the courage of their convictions. A muffin is a cake that feels ashamed of its own nature. I am awitch, sir. I fear nothing, I make no apologies, I feel no shame, and I would like whipped cream on top.If you would be so kind, sir.” This last sentence she pronounced as,If you value your life, you insolent grub.
The baker blanched like an almond. Then he served her a plate of cake covered in such a thick layer of whipped cream that it took her several minutes of determined excavation work to hit the chocolatey bedrock at the bottom.
Thus fortified, she returned to the polling place, just in case Janet had returned and done something interesting in her absence. As it turned out, she had. The polling place had been turned into a sort of workshop: Energetic youngapprentice jesters were cutting the wordsI Votedout of massive sheets of paper, pasting the words onto buttons, and pasting the buttons onto pins, which they then pinned, still sticky, onto the beaming local weirdos who’d shown up to vote.
Except, Gretsella realized, it wasn’t just the most ghoulish and unwholesome local-ordinance-reading public-meeting attenders proudly receiving their sticky buttons. They looked, in fact, like ordinary citizens of Evermore. They were, if not upstanding, at least upsitting, or not obviously downlying. You could tell that they were ordinary and at least moderately respectable by their clothes, which were neat and clean, and by their faces, which were all beaming with delight over getting a special button of their very own to show off to all of their friends. There was actually alinebeginning to form. This was, of course, only to be expected: If there is any motivating force in the greater universe stronger than the prospect of receiving a special button, it’s realizing that other people are waiting in a long line to receive a special button too. Even the staunchest button detester might waver in the face of such a display. “Idiots!” Gretsella said scornfully. Then she started inching toward the table full of buttons. True, she hadn’t actually voted. But it would probably look bad if she, in her position as Bradley’s chief adviser, hadvisiblynot bothered to vote. If she just snuck a button from the pile—
“Diabolical!” Gretsella said aloud, catching herself and shoving her treacherous hand into her pocket. She cast a glance toward Janet, then eyed the buttons. “You won’t catchme, my fiendish friend,” she said. Then, a few feet away fromthe line of voters, Gretsella pretended to pause to tie her bootlace and tossed a subtle little spell in the voters’ direction.
The hours passed, and the voters carried on voting. The demand for buttons quickly outstripped the supply, and Janet was forced to conscript some ladies and young boys from the neighborhood to paste buttons together as piecework—five buttons for a penny. By late afternoon, they had to move their operations from the library to the meeting hall of the Brotherhood of the Golden Ankles, thereby disturbing several elderly men who had been peacefully engaged in sewing some bright-yellow tassels onto their ceremonial robes. Gretsella beat a hasty retreat. If anything was a certainty in life, it was that the sort of old man whose evenings regularly involved ceremonial robeswithoutany tassels would immediately corner the nearest available woman and tell her stories about his college football days until even a witch as powerful as Gretsella would be forced to beg for mercy. As for men in robeswithtassels, they simply didn’t bear thinking about. Gretsella suspected that any unfortunate female who fell victim to the tassels would hear all about the tassel bearer’s long and successful career in sales and marketing, a fate that, if not worse than death, was certainly worse than most other things that could happen to you while attending a beloved uncle’s retirement party.
It was now almost dinnertime, and Gretsella decided to have food sent to her room before taking a nice long nap. She would take a shorter one, but she knew that the part where they had to count all the votes was coming up next, and as shedidn’t plan on making herself even the slightest bit useful, she thought it a good idea to be asleep when the work commenced. Not that she ever felt the need to provide excuses for her refusal to help with unpleasant tasks, but other people generally expected that some sort of excuse or apology would be forthcoming, and Gretsella would be forced to waste valuable time that could have been spent sleeping or staring blankly at her interlocutor until they got nervous and started apologizing to her instead.
When Gretsella finally woke up, it was, conveniently, just before the time that Janet had hoped to have Bradley announce the results of the election to the excited throng of citizens below his balcony. Gretsella put on her robe and slippers and shuffled down the long hall to Bradley’s chambers, hoping there would be snacks set up for the vote counters that she could tuck into. Gretsella loved a good late-night snack, and she appreciated the generosity of spirit that led people to so often provide easily accessible buffet tables for hard-working employees, volunteers, and brazen witches who just happened to be wandering through at the time. Sometimes they had fruit platters.
There were no snacks this evening. There was, instead, a small gathering of Gretsella’s associates, who were sitting around a table looking extremely nervous and uncomfortable.
They had, it seemed, just learned about the fruits of Gretsella’s most recentefforts.
Chapter 10.5
At Long Last, the Big Reveal
“What is it?” Gretsella asked. “What went wrong? Did Bradley win again?”
“No,” Sir George said after a long moment. “Bradley didn’t win.”
“So Herman won, then,” Gretsella said. “Wasn’t that the plan?”
They all exchanged glances. Bradley came wandering into the room at that moment, resplendent in a new dressing gown that was even more luxurious than the one Gretsella had shrunk. “So what’s the news?” he said with an incredible degree of cheerfulness. Gretsella glared at his various advisers. “Spit it out!” she said. “And where the heaven is Janet?”
“Could she be busy getting ready to give her acceptance speech?” Bradley asked. “I know she probably already has something written, but she likes to do those vocal warm-upexercises, and they’re awfully embarrassing to do in front of other people.”
Everyone turned to look at him. “I beg your pardon?” Sir George asked.
“If I didn’t win andHermandidn’t win, I think that Janet is the most likely candidate,” Bradley said. “It just makes sense. The people know her and like her,sheknows and understands the people, and she’s been awfully enthusiastic about democracy right from the start. She’s also a very ambitious woman with an interest in a leadership role; you can tell from the way she lights up when she gets handed responsibility over some terrible boring project that no one else wants to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was running a write-in campaign the whole time she was supposed to be propagandizing about Herman. Good for her! I think she’ll make a good king. She understands how things work around here, so she’ll be able to hit the ground running, and she’sawfullysmart, so she’ll be able to figure out the rest. Plus, she haspassionfor the job, so she’ll never have to work a day in her life.”
There was another long pause. This time it was full of astonishment.
