Don't Hex with Texas

by Shanna Swendson

  A wall of magical fire rushed at us, and Owen doused it. Having him draw power from me had been pleasant—even kind of sexy—before, but this bordered on painful, the difference between a nice, hot bath and a tub of scalding water. I also felt the drain of energy. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

  “Are you still relying on your girlfriend to get you out of tight spots?” Idris asked with a sneer. Owen didn’t waste his breath replying. Instead, he waved his hand and the earth under Idris’s feet shook, forcing him to jump backward.

  While they fought, I looked frantically around for our allies. You’d think that the size of the battle they were fighting would have drawn some attention. We should have had spectators by now, but in the fading light of Owen’s fireball, I saw the others still clustered around the entrance, watching the student wizards, who were lined up like prisoners. They didn’t seem to realize what was going on.

  That figured. Idris must have veiled us from the others. That was the only way he’d have been willing to take Owen on. It also explained how he’d reached us in spite of walking right past Rod and Merlin.

  Teddy might have seen everything, but he didn’t know Idris and wouldn’t know that Owen might be in trouble.

  I was about to yell for help when someone else called out, “Yoo hoo! There you are!” It was an all-too-familiar voice. I cringed reflexively when I turned to see a fairy godmother hovering nearby and shaking her wand at Idris. “You didn’t think you could escape from me, did you?” she scolded. It was Ethelinda, who’d nearly driven me batty while she tried to be my fairy godmother. Now she was working on behalf of Idris’s sometime girlfriend, but it didn’t look like she’d changed much since I’d last seen her. She’d made an attempt at Western wear, with a Dale Evans outfit on top of layers of other mismatched clothes and a tattered cowboy hat on her head with her tarnished tiara clinging precariously to it.

  Idris reacted more violently to seeing her than he had to any magic Owen had thrown at him. “You!

  What are you doing here?” he shouted, backing away from her with a look of panic in his eyes.

  She tittered at him. “Why, keeping an eye on you, of course. A business trip is no excuse for being unfaithful to your one true love.”

  “I wasn’t being unfaithful! I was just talking.” His voice went up in pitch, practically whining.

  She shook her head sadly. “That’s how it usually starts. Just talking.” Then she noticed me. “Katie!

  And Owen, too. It’s good to see you’re still together. That was one of my better triumphs.” She waved her wand in the general direction of our joined hands.

  She’d actually done us some good by coming on the scene, for a change. Idris might have been veiling us from our reinforcements, but he wasn’t able to hide her, and Merlin, Granny, and Teddy all joined us to see what was going on. Rod stayed by the park entrance, watching the prisoners. The conquered students who’d managed to pick themselves up from the ground but who hadn’t yet been officially captured also came toward us, staggering and reeling from exhaustion even as they were drawn by curiosity. Dean was among them, looking a little fresher but acting as tired as the others.

  The ground swarmed with pixies, who came to check Ethelinda out and stayed to torment Idris. They untied his shoes and stuffed pebbles in them, then tugged down his socks and stretched out the elastic so they sagged around his ankles. He danced frantically, trying to get rid of them. Acorns and twigs came flying from the trees behind us, hitting Idris with frightening accuracy. Owen released my hand and nudged me away, freeing both hands to get back into the fight while Idris was distracted.

  Our human allies reached us then. Teddy couldn’t do much, and Granny just waved her cane and her sprite jar, but Merlin knew what he was doing. Idris did a fairly impressive imitation of a whirling dervish as he spun and leapt, trying to counter spells coming at him from both Owen and Merlin at once, along with all the little threats from the pixies at his feet. His necklace may have amplified his power, but it didn’t give him the ability to handle multiple threats at the same time.

  I was engrossed in watching the fight when someone grabbed me. “Oh, come on,” I started to protest before my captor put a hand over my mouth. I tried biting, but couldn’t catch anything other than my own lip with my teeth. Then I tried stepping on his feet, but that wasn’t very effective when I was wearing sneakers.

  “Back down, or she gets it!” my captor called out. I couldn’t see who it was, but guessed it had to be one of Idris’s students, and probably one of the honor-roll members at that, since he seemed to have figured out that magic didn’t work on me. Instead, he used brute force. The feeling of something cold and sharp against my neck told me he was using normal weapons, too. I quit struggling so I didn’t accidentally slit my own throat.

  The fight came to a screeching halt. The look of devastation on Owen’s face when he saw my predicament brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t believe I’d put him in this position again.

  Ethelinda was the first person to react audibly. “Oh my! I can’t bear to look!” she cried out before vanishing. Gee, thanks a lot, I thought. Some good she was.

  Idris laughed, sounding almost hysterical. “Wow, you’re in a spot, aren’t you?” he taunted Owen. “If you want to catch me, it means watching your girlfriend die a horrible death at the hands of…who are you, again?” he asked the student holding me.

  “McCreary, sir,” my captor said.

  “McCreary. Good man. You pass.” Idris returned his attention to Owen. “If you make any kind of move toward capturing me, the girl gets it—” he mimed a slice across the throat “—from McCreary here. But if you save your girlfriend, you have to let me go, and you’ll know you’ve lost again.”

  I might have been able to think my way out of a more elaborate trap, but there was absolutely nothing I could do now. It didn’t look like anyone else had any better ideas, either. Even the pixies were still, looking to Owen for guidance.

  Merlin was the one who stepped forward and addressed Idris solemnly. “Your inability to care about others is more dangerous than any spell you’ve tried to develop. If that is the way you see the world, all the magic you do will be stained with darkness.”

  Idris laughed at him. “Nice one, Pops. Since this magic thing doesn’t seem to be working out so well for you in this millennium, maybe you could go into writing greeting cards. Now, since no one seems to be willing to shed this little lady’s blood, I’m going to walk out of here, and you’re going to let me.” As he walked past me, he paused and said, “Nothing personal. You just made a really bad choice in boyfriends. Too bad, because you’d be kind of cute if you wore more makeup.”

  If I hadn’t had a knife to my throat, those would have been fighting words. I had to settle for glaring at him. I wasn’t the only one glaring. Merlin fixed Owen with a stern stare that clearly told him he would be the one to have to deal with this. If we got through this okay, I had a feeling Owen would never, ever rebel against his boss again. The price was way too high. Then Owen met my eyes with a long gaze that took my breath away and almost made me forget someone was holding a knife to my throat. He looked like he was the one in mortal peril, the anguish was so great. This seemed to be good-bye. I felt like I should say something meaningful. What was that bit from the end of A Tale ofTwo Cities, something about this being a far better thing to do? Or maybe the classic “We’ll always have Paris.” That would be meaningful between us because we’d talked about Casablanca being his favorite movie.

  Instead, though, the words that came out of my mouth were, “Say hi to the dragons for me.” Those weren’t what I’d have normally chosen to be my last words, but the glint that went into his eyes made me suspect they wouldn’t be my final words, after all.

  Owen said something softly and sternly, and I immediately felt the knife drop away from my throat.

  And then I felt a pair of arms go around me, not in a threatening hold, but rather in a big hug. “Aww, yo
u’re so soft and cuddly,” McCreary said in a voice that sounded like he was soon going to be petting me, squeezing me, and calling me George. If the dragons Owen had magically tamed could talk, I imagined this would be what they’d sound like. The moment the knife left my throat, Owen went after Idris.

  Something hit me then, a sense of magic that had no effect on me other than to make me shiver, but it made my captor relax his hold on me. I turned away from watching Owen to see Dean readying a fireball. “Get your hands off my sister, you creep,” he said. He didn’t have to ask twice. I stumbled as the guy released me, but Dean stepped forward to catch me. “Are you okay?” he asked. I nodded, and he said, “I’m glad Owen gave me that necklace. I’ve never been able to do anything like that before.”

  Owen and Idris were back locked in combat. Merlin stood nearby, but his attention wasn’t on the fight. Instead, he held his hands out, chanting. One by one, the remaining student wizards, including the prisoners, stopped in their tracks, wherever they were, and then slumped to the ground. It looked like he was eliminating the risk of anyone else jumping into the fray with magic or any other assistance. I was totally in favor of that. I moved toward the fight, but Dean held me back, sheltering me in his arms. “Don’t risk putting him in that kind of spot again,” he said. I knew he was right, but I didn’t have to like it. I vowed to find the meanest, sneakiest martial art around and become a master at it. Even if I couldn’t do magic, I’d make the next person who tried to use me as a hostage regret it.

  The fight wasn’t going as well as I would have hoped. With the magical magnifier, Idris was a lot fresher than Owen, which made up for Owen’s usual advantages of strength and skill. Owen looked flat-out exhausted, but determined not to give up. “He can’t keep going like that,” Dean muttered. He released his grasp on me and pulled his necklace off. “Owen, catch!” he yelled.

  The necklace sailed through the air, and Owen caught it easily with one hand. He stared at it for a moment, and then I noticed Merlin staring at him. I remembered what Owen had said about the dangers of using magic like that. But didn’t desperate circumstances call for desperate measures?

  Apparently not. Owen shook his head and tossed the necklace aside. “No, not that way,” he said softly, but so clearly that his voice carried across the park. Merlin looked pleased as he continued dealing with students. Owen had apparently passed the test, but he hadn’t yet won the fight. A laughing Idris came after him with renewed vigor. Owen retreated, running back toward the creek where he had hope of more help from the nature spirits, but he was too exhausted to run very far or very fast, and when he tripped and fell, he hit the ground and didn’t make it up again. Merlin finished dealing with the students and turned to aid Owen, but he was moving slowly and looked exhausted.

  Merlin was powerful, but he was also very, very old. He raised his hands to fight Idris, but the spell he threw at Idris wasn’t enough to be more than an irritant.

  I couldn’t bear to watch, but I couldn’t tear myself away. I looked around for anything that could help Owen and realized that Granny, with her bottle full of sprite, was the only other magical person still standing. “Granny, your sprite!” I called out, hoping this was one of the things she was right about instead of being crazy. She stepped toward Idris, threw her bottle in the air, and swatted it with her cane like she was hitting a baseball for fielding practice. The bottle shattered in midair, the shards falling around Idris. Owen stayed on the ground, scrambling out of the way. I pulled away from Dean and ran to Owen, hauling him to his feet. He wrapped his arm tightly around my waist, almost cutting off my breathing, but I was so glad that both of us were still alive that I didn’t mind. With our arms around each other, I helped him back to where Dean stood.

  Idris ignored his escaping quarry, he was so busy brushing himself off. At first I thought he might be brushing glass away, but then I realized that the bottle hadn’t been empty. Something had been in there, and that something was now free. It was hard to tell what that something was, it was moving so fast, like the cartoon Tasmanian devil, a whirlwind of destruction uttering incoherent snarls of rage and madness. Blood flew, along with bits and pieces of what I assumed were Idris’s clothes.

  Granny came over to join Owen, Dean, and me. “They don’t like being captured, and they take it out on anyone they can as soon as they’re free,” she said with grim satisfaction. “Besides, being cooped up in a bottle like that is enough to drive anyone crazy. I forgot how long ago it was I caught that thing.”

  Idris fell to his knees. “I give! Stop it! I surrender!” Merlin said something sharp in a foreign language and snapped his fingers, and the sprite’s mayhem ceased as the sprite vanished. Idris was left bloodied, his clothing shredded. He whimpered a little in relief once he realized the sprite was gone. Then he did something I never would have expected: He broke into sobs. “Oh please, you’ve got to help me. I need your protection. I throw myself on your mercy.”

  Merlin stepped out of the way before Idris could grab onto his pants leg and cry on his shoes. Then he said sternly to Idris, “So, you surrender yourself to us? You place yourself under our power so that your power becomes our own and cannot be used against us?” There was something about his tone and the precise formality of his words that told me this was a ritual of some sort, possibly even a binding one.

  Idris pulled off his necklace and handed it to Merlin, then he clasped his hands together and said, “I surrender myself to you. I place myself under your power so that my power becomes your own and cannot be used against you and yours.”

  Merlin nodded. “Very well. Now, what is it that you need our protection against?”

  “These people I’ve been working for. I want out. It’s going too far. I was having fun before, doing my own thing, you know, but they’re serious. I don’t know, it’s like they really want to take over the world, or something, and they were using me to get it started. And guess who’d have taken the blame if they got caught or if something went wrong. But I didn’t know how to get out. These people would track me down and come after me if I tried to get away. They were like the Firm, you know, only with magic. No one leaves, and all that. I’m in huge trouble for failing. They might even kill me for not raising a proper army. You’re the only one who might be able to protect me.”

  Owen and I came over to stand beside Merlin. “You’ll tell us everything you know?” Owen asked.

  Idris scooted around on his knees to face Owen. “I don’t know much. I only met the moneybags lady in person. I think she’s got a boss beyond that, and that’s the person calling the shots, but I don’t know who that is. I do know I’m scared of him.”

  “We will protect you in return for whatever assistance you can provide us.” Merlin gestured Rod to come join us. “Mr. Gwaltney, will you see to him?”

  Rod did something complicated with his fingers, and soon a thread of liquid light twined around Idris’s wrists. Then he pulled Idris to his feet and walked him over to where the other prisoners were.

  Merlin faced the gathered prisoners, revived them with a snap of his fingers, and said firmly, “It is over. This ends now.” His voice had the weight of a millennium of authority, and it seemed to resonate with the prisoners even if they didn’t know who he really was.

  Owen released his hold on me and stepped forward. “I hope you realize now that what you were playing with is dangerous and not to be used lightly. There’s so much you don’t know, and that lack of knowledge could have gotten you killed.”

  One of the prisoners spoke up. “Could you teach us the stuff we really need to know?”

  Owen turned to Merlin, a questioning eyebrow raised.

  “Why not?” Rod asked. “I doubt we’ve interrupted their entire magical training scheme. We might as well do our own training and do it right so we’ll have our own allies to call on if we need them.”

  “We may be able to train you,” Owen said, turning his attention back to the prisoners. “But you should know that yo
u won’t have much power to do anything in this town. Finding sources of power will probably be a part of your revised curriculum.”

  “You are now free to go, so long as you vow never to use your magic to do harm or to influence others for your personal gain,” Merlin said. “If you swear this, it is binding. If you will not swear this, you will join Mr. Idris in our custody.”

  They all raised their hands and swore. “Now, before you leave, I’ll need to get your contact info if you want to continue training,” Rod said. He stood near the exit with his Palm Pilot, entering data.

  Most of them stopped to give him the information, but several just ran. I had a feeling they were going to pretend they’d never discovered magic.

  When all was done, we trooped back to the creek bank to thank our friends. “Do I need to bring my flute?” I asked Owen.

  “I don’t think so. Those necklaces were more than enough payment for their aid.”

  “Good, because I didn’t want to play the school fight song again.”

  “But it would have been appropriate tonight,” he joked, already sounding stronger.

  The head naiad met us at the water’s edge. “You won a great victory tonight—with our help, of course. My people actually had a lot of fun. Give us a shout next time you’re in town.” She winked at me and added, “I’m sure your lady would agree to helping you summon us. We will make good use of the tools you gave us. We are now even, with neither side owing any debt.” With that, she disappeared beneath the surface of the water, and the few remaining pinpricks of light along the sides of the creek followed her.

  Then we all turned and headed back toward our respective vehicles. “We will return to New York tomorrow,” Merlin told Owen as we walked. “I won’t expect you back in the office until Monday.