No Quest for the Wicked (27 page)

“Well, nice try, but I’m not falling for it.”

He cried out a warning and shoved me aside. At first, I thought it was another ruse, but then I heard the bang of a gunshot and something whizzed past my ear as he knocked me to the ground.

“They’re shooting!” I gasped. “They’re really shooting at us.”

“On the bright side, they’re not very good shots,” Rod said as he shielded me with his body. I started to shove him aside and get up, but I heard another gunshot and ducked again.

Then I felt something on my side and said, “Rod, do you want to keep that hand?”

“Huh? Yeah. Why?”

“Then get it away from my pocket.”

“Oh, sorry!”

We crawled to a nearby tree to take cover. I searched for Owen in the mob of puritans and gargoyles. As if reading my mind, Rod said, “I’ll go get him.”

I was worried. Maybe the second gunshot hadn’t been aimed at me, and maybe it had hit its target. Owen didn’t have magic, was hurt, and wasn’t his usual agile self. I couldn’t see him, but he was shorter than most of the puritans, so I prayed that he was simply hidden among the fighters.

Granny’s voice rose over the din of the scuffle, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. And then I realized that she wasn’t speaking English. I didn’t know she spoke any other language, and this wasn’t one I recognized. It sounded wild and ancient.

Soon, a soft glow appeared in the nearby hedges. The creatures Granny called the wee ones had returned, but they’d come at her command this time. I knew she’d claimed to commune with these kinds of creatures back home, but I hadn’t realized she spoke their language. They swarmed up the legs of the puritans, hampering their movements and making them easy prey for the gargoyles attacking from above.

Out of this tangle of people, creatures, and plants came Rod, supporting Owen. Rushing to meet them, I let out a little sob of relief at seeing Owen without any bullet holes. I draped Owen’s arm around my shoulder to support him.

“You two should get out of here while we’ve got them distracted,” Rod said. He called over one of the gargoyles to escort us, and we hurried toward the edge of the park, away from the fighting. We didn’t get very far, though, because even in the middle of a magical battle, our enemies sensed the departure of the Eye and came after us.

“Persistent, aren’t they?” Owen remarked. He sounded beyond his usual crisis cool, and I wondered if maybe he was growing giddy from pain and loss of blood.

“Well, they are fanatics. They’re not known for giving up easily,” I replied.

MSI gargoyles swooped in to shield us, and we dove for cover as bullets ricocheted off stone. I hoped the gunshots didn’t hurt the gargoyles. If bullets chipped them, did the wounds heal?

Granny and Rod joined us, Granny still directing plants and magical creatures to do what they could against the puritans. “I hate to say this, sweetie,” she said to me, “but I’m not sure you’re up to this.”

“What do you mean?” I asked indignantly.

“You’re helpless against these people, with no magic to protect you. You may not be the best bearer of the brooch.”

I placed a protective hand in my pocket, feeling the reassuring presence of the knotted gold with the smooth stone in the middle. “But I can’t do anything with it other than keep it safe. I can’t say the same about you.”

“It’s not talking to me,” she said, her voice sharp with exasperation. “I wouldn’t use it. I’d just be able to protect it because there’d be nothing they could do to me to take it. You’d be able to get it back when you needed to.”

I shook my head. “Granny, no. A magical immune needs to keep it because we’re the only ones who can be trusted with it.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust your own grandmother?”

“I’m saying I don’t trust
anyone
where this thing is involved.”

“It sounds to me like it’s working on you,” she said, frowning in concern at me. “Why are you so reluctant to hand it over to me, even though that would save your life and keep it out of the hands of the enemy?”

“It
can’t
work on me,” I protested. “It’s telling you to say these things, isn’t it?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s not affecting me.” But her eyes glittered with desire as she approached me, and I knew she’d succumbed, too.

She was so focused on the stone that she wasn’t fighting the puritans. Two of them slipped past her and headed toward me. Rod and Owen scuffled with them, but one of the puritans grabbed me.

I struggled against him, but he must have had a younger sister because he knew all my tricks. Then an ice-cold voice said, “Let her go.”

I looked up and found myself looking down the barrel of a gun, but the gun was pointed just above my head at my captor, and it was held by Owen, who must have won his scuffle and come out with a prize.

He held the gun steadily, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Even when he’d been an extraordinarily powerful wizard, Owen had been one of the most gentle people I’d ever known. He was the kind of guy who took in stray kittens, for crying out loud. I wasn’t sure I could imagine him pulling the trigger, but if I didn’t know him and if I’d seen that look in his eyes, I’d have taken him seriously.

My captor did. He released me, and I hurried to Owen’s side. “Now, back away,” Owen ordered. The man hesitated, and Owen’s voice sharpened. “I said, move!”

“He might have made a good hostage,” I whispered as the man backed away, but Owen shook his head.

“No, it’s all about the cause. They’d probably shoot their own guys if they had to.”

“Could you shoot?”

He didn’t answer, and his gun didn’t waver as we slowly backed away from the puritans. “Sam, take their weapons,” he ordered. The gargoyles stopped dive-bombing and instead snatched the guns out of the hands of our enemies.

“Do you know what you’re doing, son?” the mad professor asked, friendly again. Sam confiscated his weapon and brought it to me. I hefted its unfamiliar weight in my hands. I’d fired air rifles and even a small shotgun, but I wasn’t sure about aiming a handgun at a human being, no matter how threatening or deranged he was. I braced the gun in both hands, glaring down the barrel at our enemies.

“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Owen said. “I’m foiling your evil scheme.”

The man laughed that patronizing laugh again. “Evil?
You
accuse
me
of evil? That’s rich.”

“I never knew my parents, so you can’t blame me for their actions, and I’m not trying to stir up strife to further my cause.”

“But blood does run true, doesn’t it? Don’t tell me you’ve never been tempted to use power, even if your power has been corrupted. All of this is your fault, you know.”

Owen’s cool faltered and his voice cracked as he blurted, “
My
fault?”

“Merlin was our great hope, the one who could have restored us to the true ways. When he returned, we knew he would purify the magical world. But you were the one who brought him back. You made him a modern wizard. You influenced him to put the past behind him.”

“You obviously don’t know Merlin,” Owen said with a harsh laugh. “He’s a scholar, so he set out to learn what he’d missed, and he chose to adapt to the modern world. I may have taught him to use the Internet, but he was the one who decided to put the past behind him—where it belongs.”

If that revelation disconcerted the puritan, he didn’t show it. Then again, that type seldom let the truth get in the way of their beliefs. Instead, he gave Owen a cold smile and said, “You may be right about one thing.”

“Just one?”

“You may not be evil. You’re certainly too weak to be effective even if you are evil. Otherwise, you’d have fired that gun by now. But you’re reluctant to take a life, aren’t you?”

I aimed high and to the right of him, where I was sure I wouldn’t hit anything, braced myself for the recoil, and pulled the trigger, just for the pleasure of watching him scramble backward. “
I’ll
shoot,” I said. “Next one is aimed better.”

“You were high and to the right,” Granny criticized.

“It was a warning shot,” I argued, exasperated. “I wasn’t
trying
to hit anything.”

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and heard a loud bang, but before I could react, the world went still. I looked down to see Rod kneeling, his hand on the ground. Then I looked up to see a bullet hovering in mid-air a few feet away from me. I wouldn’t have had time to duck if Rod hadn’t intervened.

“I’m not as good at this as Owen is, so get out of here, now,” Rod said through clenched teeth. “Granny and I will keep them here.”

Owen’s shirttail had come untucked long ago, and he stuck his pistol in the back of his waistband, letting his shirt cover it. I put mine in my purse. There were laws about carrying concealed firearms in this city, and both of us were disheveled enough to look suspicious, but I didn’t want to face whatever might be out there without a weapon.

I took Owen’s arm, and the two of us ran for the park exit. He wasn’t limping as badly now, but he had a hop-skip gait that favored the wounded leg. As we came out onto Fifth Avenue, I said, “Maybe we could get a cab. We’d be mostly alone and more or less protected for a while, at least until the cabbie is driven mad with a lust for power, and I think we’re safest if we stay on the move.”

“Good plan,” he said, stepping forward to hail a cab. Several in-service cabs passed us by. A good look at him in the bright city lights showed why. Yeah, he was still ridiculously good-looking, but he also looked like a wild man, with his hair disheveled, his clothes torn and dirty, and blood everywhere. I probably looked just as bad.

“We’ll never get a cab. Let’s walk,” I suggested. “We need to get away from here before they catch up, and Sylvester could be waking up any minute now.”

He put his arm around my shoulders again, leaning on me while acting protective. “I should call the office and see if that box is ready.” He got out his phone, hit the speed dial button, then waited what seemed like forever for a response. At last he said, “We’re hanging on, but this is getting dicey. How much longer?” He listened, then said, “Okay, but please hurry.” He put the phone back in his pocket and said, “He’s putting the finishing touches on it now.”

“Finishing touches means what, exactly? Like, a few minutes, or half an hour?”

“Magic isn’t an exact science. But soon, I’m sure.”

“And then it has to be delivered to us. I vote we start heading in that direction.”

“We’re already heading in that direction.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. I’m really tired.”

He gave me a squeeze. “I know. But you’re doing great. I’m not sure I could have pulled the trigger the way you did.”

“I didn’t hit anything.”

“But I couldn’t do that much.”

He stopped abruptly, his arm tightening around my shoulders to force me to stop, as well. I started to ask him what was wrong, but then I heard the rustling sound in the plants on the other side of the park wall. We were close to a park entry, and the rustling was heading toward the wall’s opening. Moving as one, Owen and I slowly backed away. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I figured that since all the magical and nonmagical wild things in the park had been drawn to the gemstone in my pocket, I wasn’t being paranoid or egotistical to think that rustling was coming after me.

The rustling grew louder as it drew closer. It sounded like a herd of wild rhinoceroses was heading my way. I was on the verge of turning and running when a figure shambled out of the park. At first, I wasn’t sure it was even human. It was covered in leaves and other debris and looked like it had risen from the floor of an ancient forest. Then I saw something shimmery beneath the leaves and wondered if it was some magical creature of the park. And then I realized it was a woman in an evening gown.

It was Mimi. She looked like she’d cut straight through the park to reach me, not bothering with footpaths and climbing up, through, and down any trees that got in her way instead of going around them. “There you are,” she said when she saw me, sounding remarkably friendly. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Now, what have you done with my brooch?”

Chapter Seventeen

Mimi didn’t have the level of extreme crazy I would have expected of her in this situation. She seemed almost reasonable, more reasonable than her usual self, actually. I knew from many a staff meeting that the reason wouldn’t last long. Things would get ugly soon.

Our best hope was to maintain the calm as long as possible. “Mimi, you’re wearing your brooch,” I said. “See, there it is on your dress, just under that leaf.”

She glanced down and brushed the leaf away, then frowned and looked up at me as she gestured at the brooch she wore. “
This
isn’t my brooch.”

“It looks just like the one you had back at the museum. I saw you take it out of your jacket pocket and put it on.”

“Someone switched it—and it could only have been you.” She jabbed an accusing finger at me.

I forced myself not to react defensively, remembering her talent for sensing fear or weakness. “What do you think is different about it?”

She hesitated, then said with a shrug, “It’s just different. The real one made me feel strong. People obeyed me. This is nothing more than a piece of jewelry. It doesn’t do anything for me.”

“Maybe you’re tired. You can’t feel powerful all day.” I kept my voice kind, calm, and soothing, the way I had after the gargoyle attack in the museum. “You’ve been through a lot. That would sap anyone’s strength. Did everyone stop doing what you told them to do?”

She frowned. “No, not really. But they had to do what I said because I was in charge.” She actually seemed to be listening to me. She certainly didn’t have the crazy gleam in her eye that everyone else got around the brooch. “You could be right,” she added with a sigh.

“I am right. You should go back to the museum before you miss the rest of your party. You’re having a big gala tonight, aren’t you? You put in so much work. You deserve to take credit for it. Drink some champagne, dance a little, enjoy yourself.”