Witches in Flight (34 page)

Elsie hadn’t even noticed Jennie lurking in the shadows.
 
Her anger ratcheted up a notch.
 
“I’m an adult.
 
I know you all think I’m a
not-quite-competent one, but if I want to go drinking and dancing and hell, go
home and have wild, passionate sex with a Frenchman, I have that right.”

Lizard’s eyes blazed.
 
“He’s not French.
 
And if
you’d gone home with him, he’d have drugged you and put pictures of you naked
all over the Internet and worse.”

The words felt like hot fire raining on her skin.
 
Elsie gasped for air, clinging to the
last vestiges of her dream, the man with the strong arms and the patient eyes.

The man who put a vial of something in her drink.

“He’s fooled girls way more street smart than you.”
 
Lizard grabbed Elsie’s arm and started
dragging her down the street.
 
“He’s slime, but he passes for decent most of the time.
 
I hear he’s got the tall, dark, and
sexy routine totally down.”

Drugs.
 
Pictures.
 
On the Internet.

Oh, God.
 
What had
she done?
 
Elsie felt her feet
slowing, Velcroed to the sidewalk.
 
“He asked me to go home with him tonight.”

“Yeah, I got that.”
 
Lizard kept pulling on her arm, dragging Elsie down the street, Velcro
feet and all.
 
“I guess you said
no, huh?”

She had.
 
A small,
dingy ray of hope crept into Elsie’s soul—and then crashed against the
hard wall of reality.
 
“Only
because I saw him putting something in my drink.
 
I might have gone, otherwise—I was trying to work up
to it.”
 
She’d had visions of Paris
garrets and Italian vineyards spinning in her head.

Idiot.

They were right.
 
She wasn’t a competent adult.

“Hold up, you two.”
 
Jennie’s voice held command—and a hint of breathlessness.
 
“I can’t text and walk at the same
time.
 
What were you drinking,
Elsie—what did Anton dose with the drugs?”

“A raspberry Cosmopolitan.”
 
High on her list of things never to touch again.

“Girlie drink.”
 
Lizard snickered—and then grabbed Jennie’s arm.
 
“Wait—you can’t take him
down.
 
He knows how to hide
things.
 
The drink will be long
gone.
 
The cops have been trying to
catch his ass for years.”

When Jennie looked up from her phone, her eyes were granite
hard.
 
“These cops will have some
witch backup.”

She was a witch.
 
Elsie reached for Jennie’s shoulder, fury beginning to ride in her
veins.
 
“I’ll help.
 
I need to help.”

Lizard had seen killing rages before.
 
She’d just never seen them in four-inch red heels and a
yellow sundress.

And damn, could Elsie move in those shoes.
 
“Wait up.”
 
Lizard grabbed her roommate’s arm.
 
“You can’t just go plowing in there and punch him in the
chin.”
 
Especially when you’d never
even been in a decent sandbox fight.

“I’m not defenseless.”
 
Her roommate spun, sparks flying out of her fingertips.
 
“I’m not a wimp, no matter what you
think.”

Nobody in their right mind would think Elsie was a wimp.
 
She looked like an avenging
superhero—and that scared Lizard silly.
 
She knew exactly what guys like Anton thought about the
price of some woman’s life.
 
“He’s
a really bad guy, Elsie.
 
Bullet-in-your-head kind of bad.”

Elsie’s eyes blazed.
 
“He needs to be stopped.”

Not over dead bodies, he didn’t.
 
Lizard double-timed down the street after her racing
roommate.
 
“Leave him for the
cops.”

“He plays them.
 
You
said so yourself.”
 
Something scary
clicked into place in Elsie’s mind.
 
“He’s not going to play me.
 
Not again.”

Frack.
 
Grammie,
help.
 
“Then play him.”

Elsie slid to a stop just in time to save Lizard from trying a
football tackle.
 
“What do you
mean, play him?”

“When you’re not the biggest, you have to fight smart.”
 
Lizard gasped for air.
 
“What does he want?”

“He wants me drugged and naked in his bed.”
 
Elsie’s eyes streaked jagged lightning.

“So give it to him.”
 
Lizard ducked as sparks exploded out of a lot more than fingers.
 
“Turn off the firecrackers,
dammit!
 
Don’t really give it to
him—make him believe.
 
Make
him think he can get what he wants.”
 
She grabbed Elsie’s shoulders.
 
“The cops need evidence.
 
The cold, hard kind that some shark lawyer can’t talk his way out
of.
 
They need drugs in another
glass.”

Elsie’s eyes were as big as the moon.
 
“You want me to get him to drug me again?”

It had to be a better plan than the whole rampaging-fire-goddess
thing.
 
“Yeah.
 
I’ll help.
 
I can push on his mind, make him believe.”

“No way.”
 
Now the
mean eyes were back.
 
“You can’t go
in there.”

“Hell I can’t.”

~ ~ ~

“You guys done with the whole Lone Ranger thing yet?”
 
Jamie took his life into his own hands
and stepped within arms’ length of two furious witches.
 
He’d had to port to catch up with them.

Elsie grabbed his arm.
 
“Tell her she can’t go in there.
 
He’s dangerous.”

His first instinct was to duct tape them both to a tree.
 
“Nobody’s storming in there without a
plan.”

“We have a plan.”
 
Lizard’s chin stuck out halfway to China.
 
“Elsie’s going to fake him out.
 
I’m going to make sure he falls for it.”

“No.
 
No mind
control.”
 
There were lines, and
witches who crossed them paid an incredibly high price.
 

“Not control.”
 
Lizard glared at her roommate, the light of a dare in her eyes.
 
“Elsie’s a better actress than
that.
 
I’m just going to give him a
little nudge.”
 
Her mindvoice was
quiet steel.
 
I know the
lines.
 
And I know how to ride the
edges of them and survive.

Holy hell.
 
“The
witch brigade is on its way.
 
Let’s
wait a few minutes, let the cops get here.”
 

“We can’t wait,” said Elsie, her voice soft ice.
 
“That’s him at the door.”

Jamie looked down the street at a doorway filled with blue haze
and a man with very hard eyes.
 
No
way.
 
No chance.

He reached for Elsie’s arm—and caught thin air.
 
And a thought.
 
She did this for the girls.
 
All the girls.

Lizard’s fingers curled in his shirt and yanked him close.
 
“I’m going in—they won’t notice
me.
 
Can you link with me?
 
Port in if she’s in trouble?”

He didn’t have that kind of mindlinking range.
 
Not on a crowded Saturday night.

Lizard read his mind—and then yanked on his shirt one more
time.
 
“You know someone who
does.
 
Get Lauren here.”

And she was gone, part of the shadows, sliding in the door of
the bar even as Elsie leaned invitingly into Anton.

Holy hell.
 
Show on
the road whether he wanted it or not.
 
Time to rid the world of a slimebucket.
 

~ ~ ~

Elsie leaned into Anton’s broad chest, trying to calm the fire
in her fingers.
 
If she singed his
chest hairs, she wanted it to be on purpose.

Shut down the fire in your eyes,
said Lizard’s voice in her
head.
 
You look like you’re
going to eat him alive.

It was amazingly hard to act like a terrified little bunny when
you felt like an avenging warrior.
 
So Elsie tried for slinky instead.
 
She leaned a little further into Anton and ran a finger down the open
collar of his shirt.
 
“I’m back,
sexy—did you miss me?”

Hard hands closed over her arms, a match for the cold ugliness
in his eyes.
 
“Where’d you go?”

She swallowed hard—the terrified bunny act wasn’t quite so
hard to channel now.
 
Her heart
beat in her throat high enough to chatter against her teeth.
 
What would he believe?
 
And then a waiter walked by with
something blue in a martini glass, and she knew.
 
“I stopped somewhere up the street.
 
Had a drink.”

The suspicion in his eyes softened.
 
“Needed some liquid courage, did you?”
 
He ran his thumb over her cheek.
 
“Am I that scary, pretty Elsie?”

That scary and more—but Elsie wasn’t supposed to know
that.
 
And since slinky clearly
wasn’t something she could pull off, she needed something else.
 
Something she was actually good
at.
 
Slinky wouldn’t have worked
anyhow.
 
A woman drugged and
vulnerable wasn’t about sex.
 
It
was about control.

Elsie froze as the voice inside her head suddenly started making
sense.
 
The voice with a decade of
practice.
 
And then she took a huge
breath and prayed that taking psychology to a gunfight wasn’t the biggest
mistake of her life.
 

She ran her hands nervously down her arms, letting the fear she
felt leak out.
 
“I’m not very good
at this.
 
I haven’t had very much
practice.”
 

His chuckle sounded… carnivorous.
 
“I can see that.”

How had she not seen him for the predator he was?
 
Elsie raised pleading eyes.
 
“I was hoping a drink would help, but I
guess it really didn’t.
 
I’m still
not very good at this.
 
I’m sorry I
ran.”

His arm slid around her shoulders, a smooth move that would have
had her swooning only a few short hours ago.
 
“Shall we listen to the music a while, then?
 
That usually relaxes you.”

They’re ready outside.
 
Lizard’s mindvoice
was a quiet whisper in her head.
 
Y
ou’ve
got him hooked—now reel him in.
 
I’ve got your back.

Elsie looked down at her hands, touched—and
determined.
 
This wasn’t Lizard’s
to do.
 
She centered—like
she’d learned from Nat.
 
Tapped her
passion—like she’d learned from Vero.
 
And looked up at Anton, a scared little bunny with desire in
her eyes.
 
“It’s not only music I
want tonight.
 
I’m just not sure if
I can.”