“You are a sassy wench, aren’t you?” The hint of an old, ineffectively hidden accent emerged. British? Something European, but I wasn’t sure. I knew who I was dealing with. This guy must be the torture king.
I almost asked him for a glass of water. Almost. But he’d probably get a bucket and douse me with it, just to prove he was the one in charge. Little dick syndrome. I hated men who had to go to such violent lengths to prove their point.
I blinked and opened my eyes wide. I waited, expecting nothing less than a backhand across the face. Nothing. Hadn’t he read my mind? I sucked in a breath, slowly this time. Didn’t want to tempt fate again.
Where was Sam? Where was Quentin? Winzey? Anyone out there?
Silence. Except for the hollow metallic footsteps as my captor paced on the catwalks beside me.
“Where am I?” I asked. What’s the worst he could do, tell me it was none of my business?
“This is one of the vast properties owned by Bergestein.”
“Ah.” I really didn’t get an answer, now did I? I knew that much already.
“Are you going to kill me?” I squeaked out.
The man was of average height, but had shoulders wider than any linebacker I’d seen. And I had a feeling the man before me wasn’t wearing any padding. His neck was about the size of my waist. His ears stuck out like handles on my soup kettle.
“I will kill you if you keep thinking like that.”
“Oops.”
“Oops?” He laughed at me. “You insult me and then say oops? I could kill you right now.”
“You could whether or not I insulted you and whether or not I said oops.” I squeezed my bladder muscles tight. I would not lose control of my bodily functions. There was no compromise of power in this body.
“Do you think I could use the bathroom?” I was still sitting up. My hands were tied together, but at least not bound above my head. I glanced down. Open grates with just darkness below. “I’d hate to pee on something important down there.”
He smiled, his lips displaying rows of perfect teeth that were totally wrong for the unkempt look of his beard and hair. “I think something can be arranged.”
Suddenly I was a sack of potatoes thrown over this guy’s shoulder. The pressure on my bladder wasn’t real nice, but I figured relieving myself right now wasn’t the best of ideas.
He deposited me in front of a stall in a public style bathroom. “Go.”
I held up my hands. “Uh, could you? It makes getting the pants down a little easier.”
With a sigh reminiscent of my own impatience he slid out a pocket knife that looked a lot like its owner. Thick, rough and sharp.
He pushed open the stall and gave me a shove. I took my time. I hated to think, knowing he could delve into my head and snatch any plans I had. I was going to have to trust Sam on this one. He’d come after me. I just had to stay alive.
There was a quarter on the floor. Wish I could call someone who cared. But there wasn’t a soul out there who could rescue me from this who was also accessible by phone.
I stared at it and held out my hand. It floated and landed heads up in my palm. Well, I’ll be. Magic.
Maybe it was the fact my eyeballs weren’t swimming in yellow stuff anymore. Maybe it was the adrenaline kicking in. The realization that I was a helpless female stuck in some political, magical fight between good and evil. Whatever it was, I still had power.
The guard stopped in front of the stall. “I know you’re done. Let’s go.”
I stared at his shoe laces, untying them and retying them together. “There’s no paper in here. Could you get me a paper towel or something?”
“Damn!” he muttered and took a step back. A stream of much worse curses streamed from his mouth. His feet must have both flown up in the air, because I could see nothing from my vantage point.
When he finally crashed back to earth, I peeked through the space on the side of the door. He lay motionless on the floor.
Wouldn’t Quentin be proud of me now? I jumped over him and stood at the doorway. I wish I knew if he had a weapon. Wait. He did.
I took a careful step toward him. The knife was clipped to his belt.
Was that a flicker of his eyelashes? Was he really out cold? The glint of the overhead fluorescents caught on the gems at his neck. They were much smaller than mine had been and not nearly as lustrous. They looked like smoky beads. Glass. But there was power there, perhaps a weaker version, but I had nothing. Nothing but fear and an intense desire to get away from this place.
I took a deep breath and exhaled it quickly. Like an athlete preparing for the Olympics I shook my hands, stretched my neck and focused on my goal.
I eyed the snap on the leather that covered the knife but reached for the necklace. I’d walk away with one or the other. That was the plan.
The snap came loose. It sounded like a cannon in the empty room. I watched his face. No twitches, no flickering of his eyelashes. A good actor or still unconscious. I was wasting time.
My fingers slid along the cold tiled floor toward his neck. I concentrated on lifting the cover and making the knife peek out over the cheap leather sheath. Just like a snake charmer.
But sometimes the snake charmers get bit.
His hand reached out and snagged mine. I screamed and jerked.
My hand slid free. Invisible, I commanded myself. I turned toward the mirror. It worked!
“Bitch! I’ll find you. Where did you go?”
I glanced toward the door. I had a clean exit, but had the sinking feeling it’d be easy to be caught there. My heart was thundering so loud I just knew the noise of it would give me away.
If I got caught would I be any worse off than if I had never tried? They were going to kill me, right? No matter what? Spurred on by the realization this might just be my only chance, I dropped to the ground and kicked back with my foot. It connected with the door, shoving it open enough. Then I scrambled back to the dark, mildew infested space under the row of sinks.
He grunted, patted his side and half-jogged out of the room. I sighed. I was free. Why did I know it wouldn’t last for long?
So now what was the plan? I had no weapon, and I’d failed to get close to the gems. I rolled out of my hiding place. The mirror told me the truth. Invisibility was gone. Apparently it’d walked out the door with the mean guy.
Now wasn’t that just ducky.
“Sam!” I shouted mentally. “Sam, where are you?”
I figured this was about as effective as dressing like a clown and riding around on a tricycle with a red flashing light. But it wasn’t going to be any worse than walking out into something I didn’t know.
“Invisible,” I said out loud.
I faded.
Oh, damn. Oh, shit! I wasn’t alone.
Dare I crawl back under the sink? What if I walked out and the person didn’t follow me? I’d certainly fade back into full blooming color and get nabbed in a heartbeat.
Decisions, decisions.
Something tickled the back of my neck. Cold sweat dripped down my sides and between my breasts. My heart flipped over. Breathing was no longer automatic.
I closed my eyes and took a shaky step forward. I expected a hand to close on my hair and jerk me back, in the least.
Nothing.
Had he moved with me? The blood pounding through my ears was a runaway steam train. I wouldn’t have heard a footstep if I’d listened for it.
I dropped into a crouched position.
There was a bit of change in the pressure on my neck, a slight pull, a bit of weight. Added though. Not lifted.
I stood back up. It was much too vulnerable to stay on the ground.
“Yeow.” Reflex jerked my hand up to the pull at the back of my neck. If I’d had to think about it, I would have just run away.
But there was nothing touching my hair. It was full of tangles, but no hand had it bunched like the reins of a horse.
A shiver coursed through me. A cockroach?
A spider? I glanced back under the sinks and followed up the first one with an even more spastic willy nilly shake. I started slapping my hair, my shoulders, my neck, my face-
“Ouch!” something squeaked.
I stopped. Only my eyes moved as I glanced around. “Who said that?”
A giggle.
My eyes shot open wider than I thought physically possible. I whispered, “Winzey?”
Another giggle.
God, I hope this wasn’t a trap. I slid my skeptical fingers along my neck toward the source of the pressure. I just knew any second they’d be bitten off and some hideous monster would jump out and proceed to kill me.
Hey! It could happen.
I found her. At least it felt like her. She was invisible, too.
“How’d you—”
“Shh. Hide!”
Hot damn.
She must be magic. She could take the place of the gems. “Can I go through walls?” I asked quickly in a hushed voice.
“Yessssss.”
“Did you hear something, Frank?” I backed against the wall next to the paper towel rack. Two men walked in. It was like Abbott and Costello, but they were not funny. Good thing I’d just emptied my bladder.
The man named Frank started banging open all the stall doors. The tall one peered over the top of the stalls. “She still has one gem. She might have enough power to be invisible. But she’ll be weak.”
He walked straight for me. His neck was bare. I couldn’t see Frank. Did they have power?
Winzey, what do we do? I tried to ask her mentally. She didn’t respond.
I smelled the stale cigarettes and coffee of the tall one’s breath. He was leaning against the last sink, effectively pinning me between the towels and him.
I felt a tug.
What?
I heard a toilet flush. Another tug on my hair.
Both men had gone running toward the far stall. “Back,” Winzey’s voice in my ear was like a gust of wind. I stepped backward. Sand through the colander.
The cold breeze whipped around me. Where was I?
“Climb,” Winzey’s tiny fingers clung to my ear lobe. I opened the neck of my shirt. The last thing I needed was for my little friend to get blown away.
I felt the fairy duck under the collar and sit with my bra strap across her lap like a seatbelt. Her tiny wings tickled, but at least I knew she’d be safer there.
We were back on the grates. Below me I could see an endless spiral of stairs. Above, it continued and above it, the gray light of a dismal day.
My legs felt like spaghetti. I remembered the last time they felt like that. Quentin. My pulse raced in answer to the memories of his kiss.
“Bad,” Winzey said. Her voice wasn’t sing-song as it usually was, even in warning.
“Bad? Where?” I looked all around, trying to see if someone was watching us.
“Quentin is bad.”
My heart stopped, my throat sealed closed and I sat on the step. “How bad?”
“Climb.”
Winzey had become incredibly short on conversation. Then again, I suppose she needed to keep me invisible, and that would take some serious energy. And while I was tired, the wall wasn’t nearly the obstacle I had expected.
The steps, of open gray framework, whistled and rattled on their own. I did my best to remain quiet and tread lightly. Thank goodness for the heavy winds. They disguised the chatter caused by my shaking hands.
“Be air,” Winzey commanded.
I didn’t know what she meant, but didn’t dare question when I felt her pinching my ear. I pressed myself back into the corner of the landing, closed my eyes and followed her mental cue—imagining what it would feel like to fly.
I imagined myself streamlined, dancing circles around the flagpole at the top of the stairway, playing hide and seek with the flag. Then I dove down the side of the building, following the stone that was only a shade darker than the dreary sky, swooping up like a bird at the last moment to rustle some leaves that lay dormant at the base of an old gnarled tree.
I circled the tree, diving in and out of branches the way a slalom skier avoids the flags.
“Careful.” Winzey’s momentum slowed me and I delicately tickled a clinging leaf until it shuddered and fell. At this speed I could see the courtyard. It was a square within the confines of the building. Castle, actually. The gray stone walls were several stories high, with decorative columns and lookouts. I imagined an invisible guard at every one of those stations.
“Be a light breeze.” It was a command, not a request. I became wind again, swooping down along the base of the courtyard. As I passed each window I glanced inside. All seemed empty. Seemed being the operative word. There was no doubt this was the land of invisibility. And I knew there was a way for them to find me.
“Quit thinking.” Her sing-song voice didn’t go with the death grip on my ear. I was starting to wonder if she’d shoved a forearm through my piercing and just tugged to get my attention.
Air. I am air.
Air just hit a brick wall. And it wasn’t the castle.
Quentin stood in a doorway, looking upwards.
“Air, wind, breeze!” Winzey was tugging and screaming at me.
I was crash landing and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Quentin was here.
In the house of Bergestein. And he wasn’t a captive.
He was bad.
Chapter Twelve
“…don’t know what happened. They said she just fell out of the sky.”
“There’s something fishy going on at that place. I always thought so.”
“I had a call there once, a ride along with the local paramedics. I could swear I felt I was being watched, no matter where I went or what I did. It was downright creepy.”
I kept my eyes closed. These weren’t Mr. B’s men. From the sharp ammonia smell, to the pull of the needle at my arm, I suspected a hospital or clinic.
“Crap!” I sat up, eyes wide. Winzey? What if they found her?
“Whoa, honey,” the soothing deep voice accompanied a push against my shoulder. My vision was filled with white flashes. Perfectly coinciding with the white hot pain behind them.
“That was a wake up if I ever saw one.” The comment came from whoever was standing behind me.
I felt a hand on my head, then my neck. I almost jerked away. He was just checking me, doctor-like.
“What happened?” I moaned. And I didn’t even have to act that one out.
“You were brought in by one of the groundskeepers up at the training facility. At least that’s what he’s calling it. Anyway, he said you fell right out of the sky.” Both men laughed. It was obvious they knew nothing of magic or being air. And if I told them? The psych ward for me.
I mulled my options. I chose to lie. “Close. I was pushed from the second story window.”
The doctor closest to me sat up abruptly. His chair slid on the floor like fingernails on a chalk board. “Pushed?”
They exchanged a glance. “You involved in that cult?”
I couldn’t strain my head back to the man behind me. Cult? How fitting of a description. “No, they sort of…drafted me. I was trying to escape. One of the goons lunged at me, tripped and the momentum shoved me through the window.”
Doctor picked up my arm and examined it for cuts. “It’s amazing you didn’t bleed to death from the glass.”
“It was a screen.” I frowned. “It tore. Probably still hanging from the window.”
“Ah,” they said in unison.
I wondered if my original thought was way off. Maybe this was just another set of goons. The room looked authentic enough, but creating atmosphere would be a piece of cake to do with control of the most powerful magic in the world.
Regardless, I didn’t see reason to fear them any more than anyone else I’d met.
“Now what? Am I hurt? Is anything broken?”
He shook his head. “I’ll go get your boyfriend and he can
take you home.” I laid back and stared at the ceiling, wondering why I’d had to go get Jess that darn gypsy stuff at the antique shop.
Both men walked past and left the room.
Boyfriend? Damn. There was little place to hide in here. “Winzey? Are you around here anywhere?” The little fairy was probably really ticked off at me right now.
I closed my eyes and tried to be invisible. I got up and looked for my reflection in the glass of the cabinet door. I was gone.
So there was magic in this room, in this building. But no windows. Only one door.
The footsteps echoed down the hall. I felt the tell-tale brush against my ear and didn’t know whether to panic or cry with relief. Winzey was here. But what if they discovered her? What if Quentin discovered her?
“It’s Quentin, isn’t it?” I quizzed the figure that clung to my hair like a nasty thistle.
“Bad man. Bad man.”
There was no time for this nonsense. I took a deep breath. Then another. No magical doors opened. Walking through the wall wasn’t going to save me.
“Can I jump?” I asked Winzey. “Can you help me hop somewhere else?”
“No. Bad men will come.”
The door slammed open and I covered my face with my arms. If I hadn’t been leaning on the far wall, I might have sunk to the floor and begged for mercy.
Hard soled shoes slapped the tiled floor. I peeked out beneath my hand. A brown coat nearly skimmed the floor.
He took my hand. I gasped a cry of protest. I just knew this was the end for me. Instead, he dropped a marble into my open palm and closed my fingers over it.
“Hide it well.” It was the voice from behind me when I had come to. The face I hadn’t seen.
I jerked my head up. But the features meant nothing. The eyes sparkled, a brown so dark they were nearly black. They seemed rather young for the wrinkled face with heavy jowls. And I had pictured a tall skinny guy. I was way off.
Believe the Magic Page 15
