Don't Hex with Texas

by Shanna Swendson

  “There he is! Get him!” Idris shouted, pointing at Owen. “None of you will ever be real wizards unless you can capture him and bring him to me.”

  Owen bent his head to whisper to me, “What’s going on?”

  “I guess he hasn’t dropped the veil,” I said. “They’re all gawking at you, and Idris is saying they should go get you.”

  “Ah, thank you.” Then he spoke to Idris. “Are you afraid I’ll beat you again?” I nudged him to turn a few degrees so he’d actually be facing the person he was addressing. If Idris hadn’t been such a jerk, he might have let Owen see what was going on.

  “I think I came out ahead last time,” Idris said.

  I relayed the message to Owen, who replied, “You escaped. I’m not sure I’d call that ‘coming out ahead.’ Scurrying away like a sewer rat isn’t my idea of a victory.”

  “I like my odds now, since you’re more than a bit outnumbered here.” I counted eighteen student wizards, not including Dean, plus Idris, which probably meant the odds were in our favor when you considered who the people on our side were. But I wasn’t going to tell Idris that. That was part of the surprise.

  Idris turned again to his people. “Well, what are you waiting for? The person you’re supposed to be catching is right there in front of you. Do I have to draw you a map?”

  Moving almost as one, they rose and headed in our direction. At first, it was a few tentative steps forward, but then they gathered momentum and surged toward us. I didn’t feel I needed to relay Idris’s instruction to Owen. Instead, I tugged on Owen’s hand and yelled, “Run.” I wasn’t sure whether he was able to see the wizards coming at us, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  The student wizards ran through the Magic 101 spell book, throwing one thing after another at Owen as we fled. There was enough magic in the air to give me goose bumps. They must have dropped their veil because Owen deflected their spells easily without pointers from me. It helped that they had to say the spells clearly and out loud, sounding like first-graders reading from a primer. That gave Owen plenty of time to have his own counterspell ready in an instant. He’d probably had to practice fending off this kind of attack in the magical equivalent of Cub Scouts.

  The wizards behind us shouted in triumph as we ran from the square toward the park. They were sure they had their quarry on the run. I heard Dean’s voice cry out, “Follow him!” They didn’t need much urging. They were already convinced they were moments away from earning the designation of real wizard for their achievement in capturing their mentor’s archenemy. I almost felt sorry for them.

  They knew no more about what they were messing with than Dean had before we set him straight.

  We ran straight for the creek and down the path leading to the shore. When the first of the wizards reached the creek bank path all hell broke loose. The lead naiad rose from the middle of the creek and gave that creepy dolphin call. At her signal, several naiads popped out of the water near the creek bank to grab student wizards by their ankles and pull them into the water, where they sputtered for breath as the naiads dunked them repeatedly. The rest of the students were so freaked out by the naiads that they didn’t notice the dryads in the trees above them. Dryads dropped from the trees onto the student wizards below with unearthly howls. Others pelted the wizards with twigs.

  The students behind the first group saw what was happening and tried to turn and run back up the path to the park, but they were blocked on the narrow path by the students who brought up the rear. A big traffic jam formed, which made them easy prey for the pixies, who popped out of the bushes to poke at their ankles and calves with sharp sticks as they giggled in delight.

  “I guess we’d better go see how the rest of the fight is going,” Owen said.

  “Do we have to? This part is pretty fun.”

  “I want to catch Idris this time, and this is probably my best chance.”

  “If he even shows up. I didn’t see him in the group chasing us.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be able to make himself stay away. He’s not stupid enough to think that this bunch will really do much good. He’ll let them tire me out, and then he’ll face me himself.”

  Since the path was still jammed, Owen and I climbed the creek bank, finding handholds on trees and roots as we made our way upward. We emerged into the park to see a magical battle in full force. The students who’d been blocked from going down the path to the creek had been caught by Rod, Merlin, and Sam, who’d all emerged from their hiding places with Teddy and Granny and were blocking the park’s one unwarded exit so that no one who wanted to run from naiads, dryads, and pixies could get away. The panicked would-be wizards who no longer wanted any part of this added to the chaos, getting in the way of those who were still gung-ho enough to want to catch Owen.

  Judging by the guys running in circles, their eyes wild with terror, and the grin on Rod’s face as he stood waving his hands in languid gestures, I got the impression that Rod was sending horrific illusions after them. Those guys were probably facing things out of their worst nightmares. Merlin stood calmly by the exit, with Granny at his side, waving a hand every so often to deflect a spell or to block someone from getting away. Merlin’s attention seemed to be more on Owen than on the fight itself. I got the feeling this was some huge test that would determine Owen’s future with the company after his crazy AWOL stunt.

  At the moment, though, Idris wasn’t there, and the pixies were keeping the fight away from Owen, which I hoped would help him save his strength for when it would really be needed. So far, the battle was going our way, with us having the advantage on land and in the water. We even had our own air force. Sam swooped down from the sky to buzz the battling wizards. He had a laughing pixie riding his back. The pixie blasted the students’ backsides with magical sparks, making them leap into the air as each blast of sparks hit them. Meanwhile, more pixies swarmed the ground, getting underfoot and tripping people left and right. Anyone who fell down was in big trouble. He might find his shoelaces tied together or his jeans unbuttoned so that when he tried to stand, his pants would fall down and then he’d fall over so the pixies could get him for more mischief.

  Then one of the students saw Owen and yelled, “Hey, there he is!” Soon, we had all the students who weren’t currently entangled with a magical creature, running from an illusion, or in Sam’s strafing path after us. Owen sent a fireball into the crowd, dispersing them like a bunch of bowling pins hit by a well-placed ball. “Did you novices really think you could take me on?” he shouted. He sounded awfully intimidating, unless you knew he was a total sweetheart who was almost meek about doing magic, like he didn’t want to be noticed.

  One of the student wizards sent his own fireball flying back at Owen. This ball was much smaller and dimmer than Owen’s had been, and it flickered in and out. Owen reached up and snagged it like he was catching a pop fly, then he held it hovering above his hand. As he held it, it grew bigger and brighter. Then with a flick of his wrist, he tossed it back at the wizard who’d formed it. “Nice try,”

  Owen said as the fireball hit its target and the student fell over. When he hit the ground, a trio of pixies gleefully pounced.

  While Owen fought, I looked around for any sign of Idris. I could imagine him being coward enough to make other people fight his battles, but I couldn’t imagine him not being there for the fight at all.

  Then again, this was Idris we were talking about. He had the attention span of a gnat and could very well have been sidetracked by something shiny on the way from the courthouse square to the park. If a pretty girl had walked by, we might not see him for hours, so long as she wasn’t repelled by his body spray or by his personality. For all I knew, he was off at the Dairy Queen having a banana split and wouldn’t remember that there was a fight going on until he finished.

  I felt a surge of magic coming toward me and whirled to see what it was just as Owen neatly deflected it. He was tiring now, breathing hard, with sweat-dampened hair c
linging to his forehead. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  He nodded as he raised his hand and muttered something that sent a student wizard staggering away.

  “I’m fine. I don’t think I’m tiring as much as these guys are.”

  “Maybe you should have kept one of the necklaces.”

  “No!” I was surprised at the vehemence of his response. “Dabbling in that level of darkness isn’t worth it.”

  “You gave one to Dean. You weren’t going to risk letting him go over to the dark side, were you?”

  “Dean isn’t me.” He pulled me out of the way of an oncoming attacker and then sent that attacker flying to land on his back, where the pixies immediately swarmed him. “The more power you have and the more power you’re able to tap into, the more dangerous dark magic is. It’s practically harmless for Dean. For me, it’s a line I don’t dare cross.”

  Owen was quite possibly one of the nicest guys in the known universe, and he wasn’t particularly ambitious about power, so I had a hard time picturing him turning into the magical equivalent of Darth Vader. I had a feeling his foster parents had instilled a healthy fear into him as a preventative measure. Bad magic was dangerous enough that you didn’t want to rely on someone’s discernment, not when that someone was as powerful as Owen was.

  Owen tugged at my sleeve. “I want you to walk through the middle of the fight. It’s all magic, so they can’t hurt you. I don’t think they know about immunes, so they won’t understand why they can’t affect you. Play it up. See if you can get Ted to do the same thing. They’ll think you’re the most powerful wizards ever. I want them to feel so outclassed that they’re afraid to come near magic again.”

  Although I knew intellectually that all those flying fireballs and influence spells would have no effect on me, that didn’t mean walking out into them was my idea of fun. I took a deep breath, put on a serene expression, and headed into the middle of the action. It took a lot of self-control not to flinch at the things that came flying my way. Instead, I bestowed beatific smiles on the student wizards who waved their hands in my general direction. The expressions on their faces as spells passed harmlessly around me were priceless. I couldn’t remember anyone ever looking at me with that kind of awe.

  That gave me the confidence to really play it up. Every so often I held out my own hand, as though I was deliberately deflecting something instead of just being unaffected. Once I even stopped and laid my hand on top of the head of a student who seemed to be throwing everything but the kitchen sink at me, to no avail. “Give it up,” I said sweetly to him. “Your pitiful magic can’t harm the likes of me.”

  He went pale and fell to his knees.

  Finally I reached Teddy, who stood near Granny. “What’s with the Our Lady of Perpetual Smugness routine?” he asked me.

  “They don’t seem to know about people who are immune to magic, so Owen thought it would freak them out if they couldn’t affect me.”

  “It seems to have worked.”

  “Want to play?”

  “I might as well. I don’t seem to be doing much otherwise. I’ve warned Merlin and Rod about a couple of things, but they’re way ahead of me. Hey, do you think anyone will write stories and songs one day about this epic fight of good against evil?”

  “Not unless you feel like doing it. And it’s more like good against annoying, which is less epic.”

  I hung out beside Granny while he stepped into the melee, and I soon saw how I must have looked.

  He didn’t have quite the experience with magical immunity that I did, so it took him a while to stop flinching when it looked like something might hit him. Soon, though, he caught on to how protected he was, and then he started showing off with theatrical motions to supposedly deflect the magic. All those years as dungeon master had finally paid off for him. I would have bet he wished Dean hadn’t swiped his old Jedi cloak.

  Rod and Granny continued to guard the exit. The terrified reactions of student wizards running back to the battle gave me the impression that Rod had cooked up some impressive illusions. Granny mostly swung her cane and shouted, and I was rather glad I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying. I was sure they were curses of some kind, but whether they were the magical variety wasn’t quite clear in the chaos.

  As absolute proof that Idris had left out a few crucial facts about magic, some of the students swarmed around Merlin. Compared to Owen’s spectacular showboating, Merlin didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. If you didn’t know he was the Merlin, you might have mistaken him for an ordinary old man and very likely our side’s weakest link. It would have been one of the dumbest mistakes you ever made.

  Four of the student wizards closed in on us. “Hey, Grandpa,” one of them said. “Aren’t you going to join the fight, or are you just gonna stay here with Grandma and watch?”

  “You really don’t want him to join in,” I muttered, too low for them to hear.

  “I’m quite enjoying it as a spectator,” Merlin said cheerfully. “This is some of the best entertainment I’ve had in months, even better than the last movie I saw about that young Harry Potter.”

  “I guess magic is one of those things that you lose with age, huh, Pops?” another one of the guys said.

  I shook my head sadly. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I thought. They were such jerks that they didn’t deserve a proper warning. Merlin waved a careless hand and the whole group immediately turned into little white rabbits. Their noses twitched furiously in what had to be a panic. Granny didn’t help matters by saying, “My gran had an excellent recipe for rabbit stew. I haven’t had it in years.” She hefted her cane as if to club a couple of rabbits. The rabbits hopped away from the scary woman with the big stick, only to run into Owen’s wards, which sent them hopping back to cower and shiver in a circle.

  Merlin then turned them back into humans, but they stayed right where they were, nearly catatonic with fright. After that, the rest of the student wizards stayed well away from Merlin, which allowed him to resume watching Owen.

  I made my way back across the battlefield to Owen’s side. This time I had to pay more attention to where I stepped than to what was flying through the air. A number of the student wizards were on the ground, either utterly exhausted and magically spent or so bombarded by pixies that they couldn’t move. The attrition in their forces meant Owen wasn’t quite so beleaguered. Now he only had to fight off three guys at a time.

  That appeared to be enough, though. It wasn’t my imagination; he really was moving more slowly now. It was completely dark, with only moon and starlight illuminating the park, along with the occasional burst of magical light, but I was sure he looked pale. Even his vast resources had to run out after a half hour or so of this kind of activity.

  He sent the three attackers flying away from him with an impatient wave of his hand and paused to wipe his forehead with his sleeve as the pixies pounced. Moments later, a few more students joined the fight. These were the more determined ones who hadn’t yet been scared off or defeated. I hated that Owen had to face them now, when he was tired. Then again, I supposed they were tired, too.

  I took his hand as the students surrounded us. He gave me a nod of thanks, and then our palms grew warm where they met. The extra power allowed him to dispatch those guys easily. He was no longer trying to put on a show. He was merely getting them out of his way as quickly as possible. These guys slumped to the ground, sound asleep. They didn’t even stir when the pixies picked through their pockets.

  Owen released my hand. “Thanks. That helped.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m tired, but I don’t feel like I’m in any danger.”

  There was a burst of light and sound from the other side of the park, where Merlin, Rod, and Granny were. It looked like the fighting had intensified over there, but I couldn’t see any of the students.

  Almost all of them were out of the fight by now. Next to me, Owen tensed and took a step back toward the trees. “Wh
at is it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.” He threw a fireball in the air, and it exploded like a firework, lighting the whole park. “What do you see?” he asked.

  A figure was walking through the park. Merlin, Granny, and Rod didn’t seem to see it at all. I could, though. It looked like Idris had finally finished his banana split and shown up. “It’s Idris,” I said.

  He walked straight toward us, a smug grin on his face. “You either need to find better students, or they need better teachers,” Owen said when I nudged him to let him know that Idris was near.

  “Still leaning on the girlfriend, huh, Owen?” Idris said.

  “Better than tricking flunkies into doing what I can’t,” Owen replied. I took his response to mean that Idris had unveiled himself to Owen. “Give it up, why don’t you? Your army is out of it, and the power lines here aren’t strong enough for you to do much against me.”

  “Under normal circumstances, maybe. But who said these are normal circumstances?” Idris tugged on a leather thong around his neck and pulled out the necklace Nita had noticed in her photograph. At our look of surprise, he said, “What? You thought I hadn’t already made one for myself?”

  I should have anticipated he’d do something like that. Of course Idris would have made one for himself first and kept it on, but I wasn’t sure what we could have done about it, short of having Teddy strip him of anything that looked suspicious while Ramesh covered him with his shotgun and Nita held her baseball bat over his head. I hadn’t even known that there were magical magnifiers back when I first saw that photo of Idris, though that did explain how he’d been able to teleport. I supposed we could have had a contingency plan in place, but that was all twenty-twenty hindsight when a fresh Idris faced us, wearing that necklace, and Owen was so visibly exhausted.

  I grabbed Owen’s hand and nodded to him. It was just in time as Idris sent a wave of power at us that gave me goose bumps. Our joined hands went white-hot as Owen deflected it, and while Idris had to react to his own spell coming back to him, Owen took a step back, even closer to the trees around the creek bed. I had a feeling he was either getting closer to our allies, or he was getting closer to one of those necklaces.