No Quest for the Wicked (18 page)

“Not now, Earl,” Sylvester hissed through clenched teeth without taking his eyes off Mimi. Behind him, Earl gave a “Well, I tried” shrug.

Sylvester’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he said. I felt a slight tingle as the sense of magic in the room built, but nothing happened. Sylvester frowned and brought his hands up in front of his face. “What?” he growled.

“I tried to warn you, my lord,” Earl said. It was a sign of how stunned Sylvester was that he allowed Earl to speak more than two words. “It’s the Knot. It—”

“Shut up, Earl,” Sylvester said, returning to his senses.

“A magical attack wouldn’t work any better than a physical one on someone in possession of the Knot,” Owen said softly to me.

“So we’ve got the advantage here, since we can physically attack her,” I said.

“If we can get past her minions.” He grabbed another tablecloth and added it to the pile on the floor.

Mimi hadn’t noticed the magical attack, but she did notice that the “band” hadn’t gone anywhere. She whirled on Sylvester, her eyes taking on the mad wildness that I used to think of as “Evil Mimi” and that had made working for someone who literally turned into an ogre every so often seem not all that scary in comparison. “I thought I told you to set up,” she snapped. “We don’t have much time, and I don’t want you doing sound checks after the guests start arriving. You will begin playing five minutes before the doors open. Is that understood?”

The elves took a step backward, and then they all turned as if to go. A second later, Sylvester shook his head and snapped out of it, turning back to face Mimi while catching Lyle by his collar again. The Elf Lord pulled himself to his full height—which seemed to grow a little—and loomed over Mimi. “Do you know who I am?” he thundered. “Who are you to give me orders, little woman?”

Mimi put one hand on her hip and gave him the full Evil Mimi glare. “I know exactly who you are,” she said in a voice that could have preserved the ice sculpture in a kiln. “You’re a soon-to-be-unemployed musician. Do you know how many talented musicians there are out of work at any given time in this city? With one phone call I could have dozens here competing to take your job.” She turned to her undercover puritan minion and said, “Start making calls.”

“You are no one to dismiss me,” Sylvester said.

She put her hand in her pocket, drawing power from the Eye. I could hear that power in the tone of her voice. “Let’s see, I’m the fiancée of a museum trustee, I’m on the board of the foundation benefiting from this event, and I’m the chairwoman of this gala. I am
definitely
someone to dismiss you.”

Sylvester’s fingers twitched, and then he seemed to remember that wouldn’t work, and his hands formed into fists at his side. “You are in possession of my property,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t even bring in your gear, so don’t expect to get paid.”

With an animal-like snarl, he leapt forward, aiming for the pocket where the brooch apparently was. The puritan minion moved to intercept him, but Sylvester’s magic worked on him, knocking him aside. Unfortunately, Sylvester was foiled by his own brooch because he was unable to even touch Mimi’s clothes.

“That’s good to know,” Owen commented to me from behind the chair cover he’d just removed. “We really may be the only ones who can get it off her. It should be safe from the elves.”

“I don’t think he’s going to stop trying, and we can use that to our advantage,” I said. “Let’s get into position for the next time he knocks aside Minion Number One.”

The courtyard was now so full of staff setting up the event that it was easy to blend in with all the people moving back and forth. We simply found something that needed to be carried from point A to point B, with point B being near where Mimi and Sylvester stood arguing.

Sylvester made another go at the brooch, this time neutralizing the puritan minion before starting. Owen reached for Mimi’s pocket under the cover of Sylvester’s attack, but someone else got there first.

With a bloodthirsty battle cry, Thor, who must have freed himself from his napkin bonds, rushed at Mimi from behind, swinging his axe at her knees. Instead of touching her, the axe hit the air about half an inch away from her, but he responded as though he’d swung his axe with all his strength at a steel beam. His whole body vibrated along with the axe, his vibrations moving him away from Mimi.

Owen reached down, grabbed his jacket, and slung him under the nearest table. Meanwhile, Mimi shrieked at Sylvester, “This is the second time you’ve attacked me. What is your problem?” She raised her voice and shouted, “Security! Is security here? Get over here, this instant!”

Several men in uniform rushed forward. Sylvester raised a hand, stopping them in their tracks. The guards wavered, caught between the compulsion to obey the owner of the Eye and Sylvester’s spell holding them motionless. It didn’t help when Mimi shouted again, “Well? I
said
get over here. Deal with these men. They’re trespassing.” I worried that the guards would spontaneously combust from trying to simultaneously obey two mutually exclusive compulsions.

Owen used this latest outburst as an opportunity to make another attempt. He had the fake brooch in his hand, ready to slip it into Mimi’s pocket, but the puritan minion came to his senses at the worst possible moment and turned just in time to notice Owen. He caught Owen by the arm, grabbing him hard enough to make him wince.

I looked around for help. Thor was still vibrating under a table, Earl was pretending to be Sylvester’s loyal servant, Rod was on the other side of the huge room and visibly fighting off the desire to go after the Eye, and I couldn’t see Granny anywhere. That had me almost as worried as the fact that Owen had been caught. Owen was pretty good at taking care of himself, with or without magic, but I wasn’t sure what Granny might be up to or how the Eye was affecting her. I didn’t want to find myself in a situation where I’d have to take down my own grandmother to save the world from her tyranny.

Sylvester inadvertently came to Owen’s rescue. He’d apparently decided that going with the fiction of being the band for the event was his best chance of staying near the brooch, as he got up in Mimi’s face and said, “You wouldn’t dare fire us. You wouldn’t be able to replace us. How many of the unemployed musicians you have on call can do this?” Then he opened his mouth and sang.

I’d thought Earl’s singing was sublime, but this was beyond that. Earl’s voice still existed in the mortal realm. It was beautiful, but there were human singers who could do almost as well. Sylvester sounded like I’d always imagined angels must sound. The security guards quit struggling, Owen’s captor released him, and everyone in the room stopped what they were doing so they wouldn’t risk missing a note.

Once he realized he had the room in the palm of his hand, Sylvester signaled to his flunkies, and they joined in, creating an otherworldly harmony that soon had everyone in the room in tears. The magic of it didn’t affect me, but I still found it breathtaking. My brain didn’t seem to want to work anymore. It just wanted to listen to this lovely sound.

“That was close,” Owen said, rejoining me after escaping the minion’s grip and propelling me behind a sculpture.

“Hush,” I told him. “This is gorgeous.”

He frowned in concern. “The elfsong shouldn’t affect you.”

“Elfsong or not, it’s good music. Oh, wow, but Sylvester can sing.”

“Huh. Tenors get all the girls.”

“Baritones are nice, too, and you’ve got a good voice. But you’re not an elf.”

The question was, how did this affect Mimi? The music was getting to me in spite of my magical immunity, so even if the brooch shielded her from the magical effects, it shouldn’t have kept her from being stirred. Then again, I wasn’t sure Mimi had a soul or that whatever shriveled, dark thing she had in place of a soul was capable of being affected by such pure beauty.

She listened for a moment, then said, “That’s not at all what was on the demo you sent. You were supposed to be a jazz combo, not an
a cappella
vocal ensemble.”

My jaw dropped. Seriously, that was all she could say about this? I’d actually been joking about her having no soul, but maybe I was right. I turned to see that Owen looked equally astonished. “I thought you were exaggerating about her,” he murmured. “I owe you an apology.”

Then Mimi sighed heavily. “But I suppose you’ll do. It’ll certainly be different. Everyone does jazz combos and string quartets, and if I have to hear another harpist I’ll take a knife to the strings. People will definitely be talking.”

When they aren’t crying
, I thought. I wasn’t so sure that elfsong made the best dinner music, but I doubted Sylvester and the elves—which would make a great band name if they ever decided to perform—would stick around that long.

Which reminded me, we were there to get the brooch. I shook my head to clear the last strands of elfsong-induced cobwebs. “What are we up to, Plan C?” I asked Owen.

“Just Plan B, I think. We made two attempts with plan A, unless you count the one Thor interrupted. I won’t be able to make another go, though, since they already know I’m after it.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got the skills,” I said. “Maybe we could get Rod to change your illusion.”

“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you didn’t learn to slip stuff into or out of your brothers’ pockets,” he teased.

“No, not really. I just got to be pretty good at knowing when they were trying to slip something into mine. It helped that most of the things they tried to slip into my pockets tended to slither.”

“All you have to do is wait for her to take her hand out of her pocket, then when she’s distracted, bump or brush up against her. Grab the real brooch, drop in the fake one, then get away quickly. There will still be something in her pocket, so she won’t immediately assume she’s been robbed.”

“That is, until she doesn’t get whatever power surge that thing’s giving her.”

“She doesn’t know where the power’s coming from. She’ll feel a loss, certainly, but she wouldn’t know it’s the brooch, since she doesn’t know about magic—that is, unless she’s learned something since you quit working for her.”

“You’ll take care of the diversion?”

“Trust me. Now go look busy. Do something that takes you back and forth by Mimi a few times before you move in, so they’ll be used to you being in that area.” He handed me the duplicate brooch, then pulled me close for a quick kiss on my temple before sending me off with a playful swat on my behind that I was glad my grandmother wasn’t there to see. Where was she, anyway?

I kept an eye out for her while I looked for a job to do that would help me blend in. The new linens had arrived, so I joined the group picking up stacks of tablecloths and napkins to distribute to the tables. I had to agree with the people who’d been talking earlier—there was no discernable difference between these and the ones we’d removed. It was typical Mimi, only magically amplified.

Taking the linens to the tables gave me the opportunity to walk past Mimi several times. She didn’t seem to notice my existence, which was also typical Mimi. I was more concerned about her minions. They’d recovered from the elfsong, and the one reeking of expensive cologne had gone on full alert. Even if whatever illusion the elves used to mask their true natures worked on the puritan, he still had to know that something magical was afoot. I couldn’t tell if the other minion was part of the scheme. He mostly focused on his clipboard, jotting down every request Mimi made. If he was smart, he’d be recording everything she said because when she changed her mind, she thought the new thing was what she’d always wanted, and written evidence wasn’t good enough proof for her.

I definitely didn’t miss that job, even if my current job was boring most of the time and dangerous the rest of the time.

I’d made several trips past Mimi and her minions—which would also make a great band name—and I figured it was almost game time. I’d noticed both Rod and Owen on their phones, so I supposed they were concocting something. I just wished I knew where Granny was. I didn’t like wild cards—like, say, Thor and his battleaxe. Granny was an even bigger wild card than Thor, both literally and figuratively.

I spotted her on the far side of the room, where pastry chefs were putting the finishing touches on a giant cake shaped like a wheelchair. I wasn’t sure that was in good taste for a charity focusing on helping people with spinal cord injuries, but it was certainly visual and memorable. Granny was supervising the placement of flowers around the cake wheelchair’s spokes. That meant we might be safe from interference for a while. Granny didn’t need a gem to make her bossy, and this opportunity to be bossy held even more allure for her than any magical brooch.

I gave Owen a nod to signal that I was ready to move in for my mission, then headed to get one last armload of linens to carry to the table nearest where Mimi currently stood. Then, as though she was picking up on my brainwaves and doing exactly what I least wanted her to do, Mimi headed over to inspect the cake, bringing her within range of Granny.

My initial plan thwarted, I changed course to go to the table nearest the cake. I thought it would be best if I were in position to intervene in case Granny did something strange. Well, stranger than normal. Even before she’d been open with me about her magic, I’d thought she was extremely eccentric.

“What is this supposed to be?” Mimi demanded when she reached the cake.

The cake decorators cringed and cowered, looking like dogs being scolded for making a mess on the carpet. That left Granny to face Mimi. She looked up at Mimi and snapped, “It’s a wheelchair made out of cake. Any fool can see that. What did you think it was?”

Mimi was struck speechless. I wished I had a video camera because that wasn’t something that happened often. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing came out. She coughed, then sputtered, “I meant, why isn’t it the way I ordered it?”

“And how did you order it?” Granny asked, her hands tightening on the top of her cane and her voice taking on an edge I recognized all too well. When her voice got that tone to it, even my mother quit arguing with her—and my mother’s main hobby, aside from trying to make me wear more makeup, was arguing with her mother.