No Quest for the Wicked

by Shanna Swendson

  “She’s got ultimate power, and she’s using it to boss around waitresses and college kids,” I said, shaking my head.

  The waitress brought our coffee, and Owen took a long sip. I couldn’t tell if it was the fluorescent lighting in the cafe, but he looked awful, his face a sick, greenish pale color. “What would you do if you had that kind of power?” he asked.

  I sipped my own coffee while I considered his question. “I don’t know. It must tap into your basic personality rather than your plans. I doubt she’d have thought she’d be so petty with it. She would have wanted to rule the city social set, to be the Mrs. Astor of the twenty-first century. With me, it would probably be something pathetic like getting people to give me their seat on the subway and hold doors for me.”

  “That’s not pathetic. It’s nice that you’d only use that kind of power for making people treat you with common courtesy.”

  “But it means I’ll never rule the world,” I said with a melodramatic sigh.

  “Ruling the world is overrated. It would really cut into your leisure time.”

  I laughed. “Do you even know what leisure time is?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “I once translated the definition from an ancient dictionary in an arcane tongue.”

  The waitress brought our pie, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to inhale it. “What about you?” I asked after a few bites, mostly to pace myself.

  “I’d probably use the power to make people leave me alone.”

  The sound of coughing made me turn slightly in my chair. The cougher at the next table looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. It was probably just one of those Central Casting regulars who seem to be required by law to inhabit every coffee shop. I waved over our waitress to ask her to bring him some water to help ease that cough.

  When I returned my attention to Mimi, she was up and heading toward the door. As annoying as Mimi might have been to the staff and other patrons, things would likely get much worse if she got back out into the city.

  Under my breath, I said to Owen, “We’ve got to keep her here. Follow my lead, and don’t overreact.”

  He’d just started to ask, “Overreact?” when Mimi reached our table and then walked past without even noticing me.

  Although it went against all the survival skills I’d developed while working for her to draw her attention to me, I called out, “Oh, hi, Mimi!” She stopped and turned to glare at me. Her cluster of sycophants moved to surround our table, looming threateningly over us. I fought off an instinctive shudder and forced my voice to remain bright and cheery. “Imagine seeing you here. This isn’t your usual sort of joint. I never thought I’d see you in a place that doesn’t take reservations.”

  “You’re following me!” she accused.

  “Yeah! Following her! You shouldn’t do that!” her groupies chorused.

  “I’m eating pie,” I countered, pointing to the evidence with my fork. “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “I’m getting tired of your games. I fired you. Now stay away from me.”

  “You’ve never fired me. I quit because I got a better job. And I wasn’t working for you tonight.”

  “You were stealing my brooch. That’s what you were doing, and I won’t let you do it again.” She executed a sharp turn that would have delighted my high school band director, gestured for her court of admirers to follow, and headed for the exit.

  Motioning for Owen to stay in his seat, I jumped up and ran to block the doorway. “I’m not done with you,” I said, barely suppressing a giddy giggle from living out the kind of scenario I used to dream about in staff meetings.

  Mimi and I stood nose-to-nose as her groupies clustered behind her. She arched an eyebrow. “What could you want with me? You were just some underqualified secretary who dragged me down.”

  Although I’d been trying to antagonize her, I felt my cheeks blaze. “Dragged you down?” I sputtered. I was only buying time, I reminded myself. Nothing she said really mattered. “I kept that department afloat. I bet you had to find yourself a rich fiancé after I quit because you no longer had anyone around to clean up your mistakes and make you look good. You had a résumé that impressed your boss, but you were lousy at your job and cruel to your staff. Somebody would have eventually seen you for what you were.” The surge of adrenaline from finally saying these things to her face made me shaky, and I braced myself against the door so the shaking wouldn’t be quite so obvious.

  Now Mimi’s face was turning red. “How dare you speak to me like that?” she demanded. “Don’t you know who I am?” Her groupies closed in, echoing Mimi. I felt like the nerd being cornered on the playground by the school mean girl and her friends.

  “Yes, I know who you are,” I said, forcing myself not to show fear even though I was deliberately poking a snake with a sharp stick. “You’re the worst boss I’ve ever had—and that includes the one who turned into a literal ogre when he was angry. At least he couldn’t help it.”

  She gave me a venomous smile, and I braced myself for what would come next. I’d seen that look before. “What would you know, you little hick? You thought your insignificant state school business degree and your ‘experience’”—she made air quotes—“working in some small-town store qualified you in any way to work in the big leagues? You were lucky to get a job at all.”

  I had to bite the inside of my lip to keep tears from welling in my eyes. I had been lucky to get a job, and if the MSI opportunity hadn’t fallen into my lap, I might have still been working for Mimi because I hadn’t had any luck finding anything else. Most of the Manhattan employers had seen my qualifications the same way she did. “I got a better job quickly enough,” I shot back in a voice that was shakier than I liked. Never mind that the job had nothing to do with my résumé and everything to do with a genetic quirk.

  “And yet you were working as a caterer and stealing jewelry,” she said with a smirk. Then she waved to her groupies. “I’ve had enough of this. Come on, I want to get home. You can escort me and keep the rabble at bay.”

  Her followers shoved me aside, and Mimi and her entourage swept out the door. As soon as I caught my balance, I went after her, running to get in front of her before she went very far. “I’m still not done with you,” I said, panting. I noticed that Owen and some of the other patrons, including the cougher, had also left the coffee shop. I gave Owen a nod to say, “I’m okay,” then returned my attention to Mimi. I needed to buy time, but how much time did I need? Where was that box?

  “Write me a letter,” Mimi said, stepping around me.

  I rushed at her, grabbing her arm. “I said I wasn’t done.” But then her groupies surrounded me, dragging me away from her.

  Owen stepped in, and I was glad he didn’t have magical powers anymore or else the lot of them might have been turned into something worse than frogs, judging by the look in his eyes. “Get your hands off her,” he snapped. Even without magic, his voice and glare were enough to make them back away.

  “This is harassment and assault, and you’ve already stolen my brooch,” Mimi shouted. She turned to her nearest groupie. “Call the police!” she ordered. The groupie obediently got out a cell phone and dialed.

  “I think she’s outlived her usefulness as a brooch mule,” Owen muttered.

  I didn’t disagree, but I wasn’t sure how to get it from her when she was surrounded by fawning admirers. Worse, it seemed like everyone who came down the sidewalk ended up joining her entourage. The only saving grace was that none of them were trying to get the stone for themselves. They were only falling under Mimi’s sway.

  It sounded like the groupie was having a hard time convincing the 911 operator that this was a real emergency. With any luck, the operator would assume it was just a drunken spat. The last thing we needed was the police getting involved. Mimi glared over her shoulder at the groupie, who was inarticulately trying to explain why the situation was so urgent, and then she stepped forward and shoved me. “Yo
u’d better go now if you know what’s good for you.”

  I drew myself to my full height, which was several inches shorter than Mimi, and said, “Why should I? I have every right to be on this sidewalk.”

  The groupies closed in, surrounding Owen, Mimi, and me, and I doubted we’d get out of there alive as long as Mimi had the brooch and was able to boss them around. One of the groupies imitated Mimi in shoving me, and Owen intervened. Mimi then grabbed his arm and jerked him away. “Hey, if anyone’s assaulting and harassing anyone, it’s you doing it to us,” I protested.

  “She’s a thief! She has to be stopped!” Mimi shouted to her followers.

  I had one last bit of ammunition, a secret I’d kept during my stint as Mimi’s assistant because I’d thought sharing it would only make me look like an office gossip and probably wouldn’t hurt Mimi at all. But the fate of the world was at stake, and I needed to get her off-balance. “Does your fiancé know that you got and kept your job because you were sleeping with your boss—while you were engaged to someone else? That’s why you were in a job you couldn’t really do and needed your flunkies to cover for you. The current fiancé seems like a nice man. Maybe someone should tell him.”

  Off-balance was what I wanted, and off-balance was what I got. Mimi went into the worst case of “evil Mimi” I’d ever seen. I almost wondered if maybe she’d drunk the ogre potion and really was going to turn green and grow fangs. As it was, her eyes turned red and bulged out of her face, and I could have sworn her head spun all the way around. “I have had enough of you!” she shrieked. Moving so quickly that I barely noticed her upraised hand, she slapped me hard across the face. I always thought it was a figure of speech when people said they saw stars, but I saw stars and my ears rang. I instinctively raised my right hand to retaliate as the stars were replaced by a haze of red—something else I’d thought was a figure of speech. Mimi caught my wrist, but I instinctively formed a fist with my free hand, drew back my arm, and hit her square in the jaw with all my might. She toppled over, taking me with her, and we hit the ground.

  The brooch was there for the taking. But which brooch? I couldn’t feel the difference between the real one and the fake one, so I grabbed both of them, tearing them off Mimi’s shredded evening gown. I shoved them into my undamaged pocket before wrenching my wrist from Mimi’s grasp.

  Owen reached through the scrum of groupies piling onto the fight and pulled me to my feet. “We’d better get out of here,” he said. I wasn’t about to argue. With the brooch out of Mimi’s possession, the groupies lost their focus, so they didn’t try to stop us. I hadn’t knocked Mimi out, merely dazed her a bit, and she was already sitting up. As we ran away, I heard her scream of rage.

  “The subway!” I said, pointing out an “M” sign on the next block. “Mimi’ll never look for us in there. I’m not sure she knows how to use the subway. She may not even know where those stairs lead.”

  “But it’s full of people,” Owen cautioned.

  “Right now, I don’t care. I just want to get away from her, and that’s the fastest way.”

  Since we didn’t have a magic user with us to get us through the turnstiles, we had to scramble in purse and pocket for MetroCards. A downtown train was just pulling into the station when we reached the platform, and we jumped on board the nearest car. As the doors closed, I let myself breathe a sigh of relief.

  But then a hand stuck between the closing doors, forcing them back open, and Mimi entered the packed car. She didn’t see us at first. As the train started moving, we scooted to the far end of the car and mingled with a cluster of people waiting at the door. Mimi spotted us just as the train pulled into the next station. As soon as the doors opened, we jumped out and ran down the platform to another car, waiting until the last second to duck inside.

  The people there stared at us with suspicion and alarm. I glanced up to find that we were standing directly under the “If you see something, say something” sign, and we certainly looked like the kind of something people were supposed to say something about. “Whew, that’s the last time we cater a party for those people,” I said loudly as I sank wearily onto a nearby seat. “Things got way out of control.”

  Owen raised an eyebrow as he joined me on the seat. So far, so good. No signs of power lust. Anyone riding the subway at this time of night was probably too tired to want power.

  “Do you think there’s a chance we could get all the way to the office?” I asked Owen in a whisper.

  “Do you think she’ll give up?” he whispered in response.

  “Of course not.”

  When there was no sign of her at the next station, I thought we had it made. I should have known better.

  The first hint of trouble was a muffled yapping as a tiny dog being carried in an oversized purse got excited. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, I knew, but then a small child who’d been dozing against his mother’s shoulder woke and stared at me with an all-too-familiar look in his eyes. He wormed his way out of his mother’s arms and crossed the car to stand in front of me. “Gimme!” he demanded.

  “Jacob!” his mother scolded. “Get back over here and leave the lady alone.”

  “It’s mine,” Jacob protested, reaching small, grubby hands toward me. I shrank away and was grateful when his mother came out of her seat to take him by the arm and pull him back with her. He continued to whimper and squirm in her grasp.

  I glanced around the car to gauge other potential threats. A trio of young men in hooded sweatshirts gave off menacing vibes, but they weren’t even looking in my direction. The dog owner was too busy grooving to music coming through her earbuds to notice her dog’s yapping. A couple of teenagers were making out at the other end of the car, oblivious to anyone but each other.

  I tensed when I noticed a cop sitting across the aisle on the far end of the car. Normally, a cop’s presence would have made the subway feel safer, but I worried what might happen to an armed person in a position of authority if he came under the Eye’s influence. Not to mention the illegal weapon in my purse. So far, he didn’t seem to be reacting, though. He looked nearly as tired as I was, so maybe at the end of a shift he didn’t care about power.

  The last person on the train I expected to be a problem was the elderly lady sitting on our side of the car. She was a frail little thing, the type Granny sometimes pretended to be when she thought it would give her an advantage. This woman sat dozing, her string shopping bag resting on the floor between her feet and her support hose sagging around her ankles. An equally elderly man whose white hair stuck out in sparse tufts around his ears sat beside her.

  And then she woke with a start. At first I thought she’d realized she’d missed her stop, but then she turned to look at me with cold, glittering eyes. She leveraged herself to her feet, leaning heavily on her metal cane, and made her way to me. Without warning, she lifted the cane and whacked me across the shoulder with it.

  “Ow!” I cried in protest. Owen moved to intervene, but I pushed him back. The last thing we needed was for him to be seen fighting an elderly woman.

  The woman pulled back the cane for another try, but one of the hoodie crew rushed over and grabbed it. “Yo, lady, that’s not cool,” he said. Then he turned to the old man. “Can’t you make your woman stop this?”

  The woman struggled with him over the cane, and Owen and I slid the length of the bench to avoid the scuffle. The woman was now yelling at the top of her lungs.

  The cop stirred himself to get up, head our way, and ask, “What’s the problem here?”

  “This lady went crazy and started hitting that girl over there,” the young man said, pointing at me. I rubbed my sore shoulder as the cop turned to look, and then I groaned when that familiar gleam came into his eyes. He advanced toward me, his hand going to his weapon. I clutched Owen’s hand, unsure what I could do. I doubted that claiming the cop was under supernatural influence would help if I got arrested for attacking a police officer.

  The train slowed
as it approached a station, and the cop swayed to keep his balance. As soon as the train stopped, Owen jumped up, pulling me with him, and we bolted through the still-opening doors and onto the platform. While he steered us through the station, I looked back for followers. I didn’t see the cop, and I wasn’t worried about the old lady keeping up with us.

  “I think we’re clear,” I told Owen. “Where are we?”

  “Grand Central. Keep moving. We aren’t clear as long as we’re around people.”

  “We’re in Manhattan! We can’t get away from people.”

  “I have a plan.”

  “Yeah?” I asked with some trepidation. He was leading us to the subway exit into the main railway terminal, and I was afraid of what his plan might be.

  “Who knows the tunnels around here better than I do?”

  “The people who work in them?”

  “Possibly, but I may even know a few they don’t, and I’ve got a few tricks.”

  I came to a stop, bracing myself to force him to stop, too. “I can see where this is going, and I don’t think it’s such a great idea. There are dragons there!”

  “Not anymore. Remember, we sent them all to a sanctuary. Those tunnels make a great hiding place. We can hide out until that box gets to us.”

  “Are you certain about the dragons?” I asked. “Do you know for sure that you got every last one?”

  “I can’t guarantee it, but all the ones I knew were accounted for.”

  “That’s what makes me nervous. If there were any you didn’t know, then they would be wild, and you don’t have the power to tame them anymore.”

  A voice rang out behind me, shouting, “Give me my brooch!”

  With a sick dread of what I was sure I’d see, I turned to see Mimi plowing through the sparse late-night crowds in the station. Her eyes were wild, like a creature beyond reason. “I think I’ve seen this horror movie,” I muttered as Owen gave my arm a tug and started us running for the turnstiles at the station exit. I gave up resisting. A dragon that might or might not be there was preferable to having my power-crazed former boss hot on our heels.