Any Witch Way She Can (5 page)

At first, Randy laughed, but when Michael and Adele didn't join in, just sat there watching her with intense expressions, she fell silent. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded slow and uncertain, even to her. “You're serious. That pompous twit?”

“Absolutely.” He nodded. “It's why I came to this meeting tonight.”

Damn it
, Randy thought, this sucked. It was one thing for her to plot the old woman's humiliation, but she'd be damned if she'd put up with anyone else doing it. This wave of protectiveness she felt toward her grandmother was unprecedented and unsettling. She wasn't at all sure she liked it, or liked Michael for setting it in motion.

“I asked Michael to help me,” Adele said, “just as I planned to ask your cousin and her husband. We may think we know who is causing all of this trouble, but we can hardly stop him without evidence.”

Randy looked at Michael. “And what's your plan? What do you get out of this? The guy you suspect of being behind this is your uncle. Are you going to try to intervene before anyone else finds out so that you can hush everything up and spare your family from the rest of the community knowing your uncle is a power-hungry sleazeball?”

“Miranda, that was uncalled for!”

Michael shook his head. “No. You might find this hard to believe, Randy, but I
like
your grandmother, and I have a lot of respect for her. I don't think she deserves what Harold has been doing to her.”

“‘
Has been doing
' to her? This has been going on for a while?”

“Nearly six months, we think. It was a while before anyone recognized the pattern of what was happening, and another two months before we were able to narrow it down to a manageable list of suspects. So we've only had three weeks or so to figure out what's been going on.”

When Michael stopped and just looked at her with those killer blue eyes gone all patient and expectant, Randy sighed. Damn it, he was going to try to make her be the bigger person here, wasn't he? “Fine,” she broke down, “I don't suppose you'd care to explain it all to me?”

At least he had the grace not to allow his expression of satisfaction to linger. “As you said before, Adele takes her position on the Council of Others very seriously. It's something that's quite important to her.”

No one needed to tell Randy that. From what she could tell, the Council had always been more important to Adele than most of her own family.

“I feel very strongly that I have a responsibility not only to uphold the legacy of our family, of all the other Foxwomen in our lineage who have served the same role, but also to make a contribution to the way the Others are adjusting to their new place in society,” Adele said. She sounded more plausible than most presidents Randy had ever heard. “I'm sure you know what a pivotal point in history we're currently going through.”

Of course she did. Randy wasn't an idiot. She might be human, but she was related to people who weren't, and she'd be damned if she'd stand at the door and wave when the species police came to take them away. She'd followed the Unveiling and the subsequent treaties negotiated between the human and Other delegations more closely than she'd ever followed anything in her life. Except for the year when Missy Rubino had been running against her for Homecoming Queen, and there had been extenuating circumstances back then. No way had she been willing to let the slut who stole her boyfriend get that crown, not if she had to rip it off Missy's skanky blond head.

“Yeah, I get that,” Randy nodded. “I might not pay a whole lot of attention to the everyday crap the Council fixates on, but I do own a TV and I have read a newspaper once or twice. I've heard all the scare tactics. I know about leash ordinances and Jim WereCrow laws.”

“Then it won't surprise you that some of us are very concerned about ensuring that the Others don't become the next great victims of discrimination. It also should not surprise you that there are quite a few people in the Other community who see the current situation as a way to gain power, potentially by discrediting those of us who already possess it.”

“And Harold is one of those people?”

He nodded, his expression grim. “We believe he planted some sort of surveillance system here in your grandmother's house. At this point, we're reasonably sure it's confined to the first floor.”

“A surveillance system?” she repeated, nonplussed. “As in bugs in the telephone receivers? What, is my grandmother the new Godfather all of a sudden? Is your uncle gathering evidence for a racketeering charge?”

“Of course not. Don't be ridiculous,” Adele said. “This isn't some silly human crime investigation. Harold Devon is a witch, just like Michael is. We believe he's set up some kind of spell in this house that lets him listen in on my private meetings.”

Michael stepped in before Randy could react to the ‘silly human crime investigation' remark. “Adele is a very important woman in the Other community, and at the moment, that makes her an important woman in politics in general. The leaders of our communities are spending their time these days with international heads of state, negotiating treaties and making laws that affect every sentient being in this world. Your grandmother has the power to call the President of the United States, the Chancellor of Germany, and the Prime Minister of Japan, and make them take her calls. That's the kind of power some people would be willing to do anything to get for themselves.”

Randy's head spun. She got what he was saying. For the first time in her life, she really got it. For a split second, Adele ceased to be just her grandmother, and Randy's mind allowed her to see that having Adele as a mostly estranged grandmother was a little like having Queen Elizabeth as a great aunt—Randy was far enough removed from royalty to not be interesting to anybody, but close enough to resent how much everybody wanted a piece of her relative.

The realization tilted her whole world on its axis, made Randy feel almost petty. She didn't like it at all.

“This is serious business, Randy,” Michael prompted when her silence stretched on.

She dragged her gaze back to his face and glared at him. “I got that part, Michael. What I'm trying to figure out is how spying on Adele going on about her daily life gets your uncle any closer to landing a spot on the Prime Minister of Japan's bowling team.”

“It's not that much of a stretch, Miranda,” Adele said, sounding almost non-condescending. “All someone has to do is find out what strategic suggestions I'm planning to make to the Council of Others—who in turn will make them to the Commission on Equal Rights—and preempt them. Then the eavesdropper gets the credit for the suggestions, and I and the Others I've been working with are cut out of the process. Not only that, but if we try to protest, we either look like sore losers, or like leaders who can't manage their own security well enough to prevent our ideas from leaking out before we're ready. Either way, we lose and Harold wins.”

“But wouldn't the Council get a little suspicious?” Randy asked. “I mean, if Harold is a non-entity for years and then all of a sudden he becomes one of the great political minds of the century, wouldn't that raise a few flags?”

Michael shook his head. “Harold is not a member of the Council of Others. He's on the Witches' Council, which has only been working with the Others for about five years now. And not only that, Harold's term just started nine months ago. Our council representatives are elected every five years. This was our election year.”

When he fell silent, Randy took a very deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, shit,” she said mildly, shaking her head. “What are you guys planning to do about all this?”

When, oh when, would Randy learn to keep her damned mouth shut? Whenever it was, it would be too late to keep her from skulking around her grandmother's house in the middle of the night like an inept cat burglar. At least cat burglars knew what they were looking for. All Randy had to go on was Michael's vague description of what to look for that might be serving as an anchor for the spying spell and his and Adele's insistence that it must be found tonight.

You'll know it when you see it
, he had assured her.
Remember what you felt when you performed the last part of that love spell you cast, that weird, shaky, light-headed feeling? That was from the magical energy. If you felt it then, that means you're sensitive to it, so you should feel the same thing if you come into contact with the anchor. Then just let me know, and I'll take care of it
.

When she'd asked what “you guys” were going to do about this situation, she had not been using the term euphemistically. She'd really meant what
they
were going to do about it, not what she was going to do to help. Randy had always thought of herself as more of a moral support kind of girl.

She thought that even more when she stubbed her toe on one of the legs of an Edwardian settee.

“Shit!”

She hadn't been in this room in years, and now she was paying for her unfamiliarity with the layout.

“Shh,” Michael hissed. “What's the matter?”

“I stubbed my toe because someone wouldn't let me turn on the friggin' lights,” she snapped, which wasn't nearly as satisfying when she had to do it in a whisper. “What was the reason we couldn't do that again?”

“The meeting is still going on right down the hall and the rest of the house is supposed to be empty.” That time his voice came from right beside her ear, and Randy jumped. She hadn't heard him approach. “We don't want anyone to know we're searching in here, especially since Adele went back and told them we already left with me escorting you home.”

“And the reason we had to do this tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow when everyone is gone and we can, you know, see what we're looking for?”

She felt him sigh impatiently against her ear. “Because once we find the evidence, we'll need to act fast. The only way to put an end to his ambitions is to publicly discredit him. If we find his spell tonight and confront him with it in front of all of the people he's been lying to, his dreams of political power will go up in flames.”

Randy grumbled something and went back to squinting into the darkness and keeping a weather eye out for that buzzing sound in her head she'd heard at Cassidy's.

“Besides,” Michael murmured as he slipped past her, his hand finding her bottom unerringly in the darkness and giving it an affectionate squeeze, “the faster we get this out of the way, the faster we can get on with what we were doing upstairs before your grandmother interrupted us.”

The man could have a second career as a motivational speaker.

After a few more minutes of enthusiastic but futile searching, Randy was beginning to feel grumpy. “You know, it would help out a lot if you could give me
some
kind of a physical description here. I mean, is it bigger than a breadbox?”

She could almost see that look of his, the one that said he wasn't amused. “It's magic, Randy. It doesn't have a physical description. It's like electricity that way, all right?”

“You don't have to get all grumpy.”

“Well, pardon me, but—”

Whatever he'd been planning to say, he stopped and went suddenly silent. Randy turned toward the direction from where he'd last spoken and opened her mouth to issue another quip when she felt it. The sudden thickening of the air in the room, the weight of something heavy abruptly making its presence known. And then she heard the buzzing.

“You found it.”

“Here. On the desk. It's attached to a small sculpture or something.”

If he said more, she couldn't hear it. For a few seconds, she couldn't hear anything, but at least her eyes had begun adjusting to the dark. She could just make out a dark silhouette near the bookcase on the inner rear wall of the study. She moved cautiously toward it, giving the settee a wide berth.

She didn't notice until she got five or six feet from it that it was the wrong shape to be Michael, too squat and too wide, but by then it was too late. She was already within reach.

The buzzing in her ears ceased abruptly the second the man laid hands on her. In its place, she heard nothing, or an eerie sort of silence that should have sounded like nothing, but was too noisy for that. She knew even in the darkness that this was Harold, not because she remembered his face, but because the anger and hatred rolled off him in clouds of poison gas.

If Randy could have held her breath, she would have, but she was much too busy shouting for that. “
Michael!
”

“Shut up, you little bitch.” Harold shifted and the back of his hand made violent contact with Randy's mouth. She cried out involuntarily this time and tasted the sweet coppery tang of blood.

It wasn't just the unexpected blow that made Randy's head spin, it was the thick, oily stench of magic that surrounded him. The magic she'd felt in casting her love spell had been dense, but not…icky. Harold's power had a definite ick factor. It made her feel dirty where his skin had touched hers. Damn, but she wanted a shower.

First though, she wanted to demonstrate to this jerk what happened to men who hit Randy Berry.

Everything seemed to happen simultaneously. Even before the blow registered, she heard Michael's roar of fury and sensed him launching himself at her attacker through the darkness. As impressive a speed as he clocked, though, he wasn't nearly as fast as Randy's knee. It came up with the swiftness of reflex and the power of righteous anger, and it made solid, vengeful contact with Harold's gonads.

He uttered a strangled screech, but instead of releasing her, the hand that had grabbed her upper arm clenched tight, the fingers digging into her skin like vice grips.

“God, you
suck
!” She tried to ram her elbow into his solar plexus, but since he'd bent double from the force of her knee, that target was nowhere in sight. Instead, she threw herself off balance and nearly toppled ass-over-elbows across his back.

“Randy! Move!”

Michael issued the order in a barely intelligible growl, but it didn't matter. “I
can't
! He's got my arm!”

She heard Michael swear and felt the impact when he charged into Harold from seemingly out of nowhere.

The darkness was driving her crazy. She hated the vulnerability of not knowing exactly where everyone was, of not being able to plan effectively for each person's movements so she could either get out of the way or give some assistance. All she could see were vague shapes and shadows, mostly just differing shades of black. She would have given her eyeteeth for a Maglite.

She heard a thud and a grunt and felt herself yanked abruptly to the left.

“Damn it, Randy, stay still!” Michael barked.

She decided to ignore that, since it was an idiotic order, given the fact that she wasn't precisely moving under her own steam here. Instead, she decided the best she could do was to upset Harold's balance. In one swift motion, she stopped struggling to pull herself away and leaned hard into his grip while at the same time letting her knees buckle under her to send her to the floor.

She heard curses—some from Harold and some from Michael—and felt her attacker's hold momentarily loosen. Desperately, she yanked again at her arm and felt his hand slide away.

“Damn you!” Harold roared.

Randy could have given a rat's ass. “I'm loose!” she shouted. Crawling to safety seemed ridiculously slow, so she dropped to her stomach and rolled several feet away across the carpet. The front panel of Adele's desk brought her to an abrupt stop when it made solid contact with the side of her head.

Damn it, at the rate this was going, she could spend a week in an Epsom salt bath and she was still going to look and feel like the loser in a ten-round heavyweight title match.

Michael didn't bother to answer her, but she could forgive him for that. It sounded like he had his hands full. From the other side of the room, she could hear grunts and curses and the solid thud of fists of flesh. It sounded like a schoolyard rumble. Weren't witches supposed to duke it out in a more civilized manner? Magic wands at twenty paces?

Deciding she'd had more than enough of this bastardized game of Marco Polo, Randy reached out and grasped the edge of the desk. She hauled herself up carefully and traced the smooth surface of the wood toward the corner until she felt the cool metal of her grandmother's banker's lamp.

“Yes,” she muttered, and being very careful not to tip it over, she traced the curve of the neck up to the base of the lightbulb and found the switch with trembling fingers.

She flicked it on.

For an instant, even the dim, shaded light of the desk lamp blinded her, and Randy blinked against the reflexive tears that welled in her eyes. More curses echoed behind her and she spun around just in time to see Harold yank himself out of Michael's weakened grip.

The older man stumbled into the bookshelves lining the wall behind him and struggled to catch his breath. His previously immaculate navy suit looked like he'd just stripped it off the body of a bum, wrinkled and askew with buttons missing and hems torn. His tie had disappeared completely, one shoe lay in the center of the floor where he and Michael had recently struggled, and his hair resembled that of Albert Einstein after a close encounter with an electric socket. His sneering face looked flushed, and Randy could see where he'd be sporting a hell of a black eye in a few more hours.

Michael looked a bit disheveled himself, Randy decided, but on him, it was sexy.

“I always knew better than to trust you, Michael,” Harold panted, his lip curled into an expression that made him look like a disgruntled jackass, which Randy supposed was pretty much what he was. “You're so much like your self-righteous father. Neither of you ever understood what it takes to get ahead in this world.”

“That's a hell of a statement from someone who's spent most of his life trying to take what his own brother built through work, talent, and integrity. Even after he died, he was still a better man than you,” Michael said. Randy could see his hands clenching into fists at his sides, but he kept his cool no matter how much it was costing him. “What you should have realized was that I'd never let you get away with cheating your way to the top any more than he would have.”

Harold laughed, the kind of braying, slightly manic laugh the villain always gave just before he made his last, desperate bid for freedom. Randy couldn't decide whether or not that counted as a good sign.

“You're a good deal too late,” he crowed, sneering at his nephew. “I've had months to advance my plan. The votes have already swung my way. All I need is one more triumph over that Berry bitch, and I'll have both Councils eating out of my hand.”

“But you're not going to get one more triumph, Uncle Harold. It's over.”

The older man's face clouded with rage. “It will be over when I've left you both dead!”

Some instinct made Randy drop behind the apron of sturdy old oak in the same instant that Harold raised his hands and shouted a word she didn't understand. She had no trouble, though, understanding the impact of something powerful hitting the wall above her head, just about where she would have been if she'd remained standing. She also understood the acrid tang of the smoke that told her anything standing where she had been would now be raining down on her like ashes from Mount St. Helens.

The disadvantage of having good reflexes, though, meant that the desk now effectively blocked Randy's view of the rest of the room. She couldn't see what Michael was doing or whether he needed her help. All she could do was listen and pray that he had ducked as quickly as she had.

“Randy!” His voice made her scramble to her knees and peer cautiously around the side of her barricade. The coffee table and a couple of armchairs obscured her view, but she could still make out that Michael remained in one piece and that Harold appeared to be gearing up for another attempt to change that. “Smash the bug!”

The bug?
She was afraid for his life, and he wanted her to swat flies? Had he sustained some kind of a head wound?

“No!”

It was Harold's cry of protest that jogged her memory. In a rush of motion, she stood and lunged for the small, abstract glass sculpture beside Adele's phone. Even before she touched it, she felt the energy that pulsed off of it, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Harold turn abruptly and throw himself at her with a screech of protest.

Her hands closed over the cool glass and lifted high above her head. Later, she would think it would have been much more satisfying if she'd planned it this way, but what happened was frankly a total accident.

She intended to hurl the sculpture to the bare wooden floor beside the desk and let it shatter into a million pieces, but Harold's thick skull just got in the way. Instead of throwing the sculpture to the floor, she bashed it hard against the man's skull and felt it come apart in her hand. Harold's cry died in mid-utterance, and he collapsed into a heap at the side of the desk.

Michael actually stepped on him in his haste to get to Randy.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“I think—” She looked down at her hand and broke off. “Oh, shit.”

Her hand looked like it had gone through a paper shredder. She had blood and bits of glass everywhere and even as she looked at it, the hand began to tremble.

Michael's curse was much pithier.

The door flew open and banged into the wall behind it. A crowd of onlookers gathered in the entryway.