No Quest for the Wicked

by Shanna Swendson

  While they debated, Owen bent to whisper in my ear, “When you get a chance, go into the tunnels and hide. You know which ones are safe.”

  “I’m not leaving you here with these lunatics,” I said.

  “You agreed earlier that the important thing is keeping the brooch safe.”

  “It doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger,” I said, not budging from my position.

  “We don’t want these people getting their hands on the Eye,” Owen said. “So, go. It won’t be long until we have help.”

  “The puritans would just chase me, leaving you alone with the guy who hates you,” I said. “I’m not seeing an upside to leaving you, for either of us.”

  “Katie, go!” His voice was sharp with urgency.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ll get through this together, and if we’re lucky, they’ll take each other out.”

  During this whole debate, another one of the puritans had edged his way around the platform, and he made a lunge at me. I jumped out of the way, protesting loudly. That got Raphael’s attention. He hit the attacker with a burst of magic, then held his hands over his head and said something in a foreign language. “He’s setting wards,” Owen whispered to me.

  “Well, maybe he’s not so bad, aside from hating you,” I said.

  But it was too much to hope that we’d be safe for a moment. Raphael glanced over his shoulder at us, and then his eyes changed. He already had the mad gaze of the fanatic, but then he took on a look I knew all too well after the events of the day. The Eye had its hooks into him. It really seemed to love a fanatic. This would have been a great time for that protective box to show up, I thought.

  But because we were apparently not allowed to do anything the easy way, the box didn’t magically appear. Raphael turned and came at us. “I could use the Eye to bring about justice,” he said softly, his eyes boring into me.

  Owen and I backed away from him. “Okay, maybe I should have run,” I said. “Now what?”

  Owen didn’t get a chance to answer because Raphael was on me, moving so quickly I couldn’t jump out of the way. I lashed out with my feet and elbows, but it didn’t help. He got his hand into my pocket and came out with a brooch, then raised it over his head in triumph.

  “Oh no, not again,” I moaned.

  “This time, I don’t think it’s such a good idea to let someone else have it,” Owen muttered.

  Then Raphael lowered his hands to peer suspiciously at the brooch. He must not have got the real one, and while he was still figuring that out, we made a run for it.

  Raphael didn’t notice us escaping, but the puritans did. They came after us, and Raphael was too distracted by trying to channel the brooch to maintain his wards. We were soon surrounded.

  “Katie, give me the brooch and get out of here,” Owen urged.

  “Are you insane?” I protested. “For one thing, they’d kill you, and for another, that would be playing into that psycho’s hands. You’d prove him right if he thinks you’re taking the Eye.”

  Raphael gave a cry of agony. At first I thought it was because he’d realized that he had a fake brooch, but then he grasped his head with his hands, like he was in pain. “No!” he cried. “I have evil in me! I should have resisted temptation.” He threw the fake brooch on the ground. Most of the puritans dove after it, scuffling with each other as they fought to get to it first. The mad professor and a few others weren’t fooled. They kept my arms pinned. Owen and I struggled, but we were both hurt and exhausted and they were crazed with power lust.

  Suddenly, my arms were free, though I kept swinging them for a few more seconds before it dawned on me that I’d been released. Raphael stood behind the puritans, holding his arms out and chanting something that seemed to have frozen our assailants.

  “Thanks!” I panted.

  “I will resist!” he said. I wasn’t sure whom he was addressing. Probably himself, I thought. His hair was damp with sweat, and his face showed the strain he was under.

  But his eyes had that odd gleam in them. He blinked it away a few times, but the lure of the Eye was too strong. He lowered his arms and approached me. Owen took my arm, and together we backed away, down the platform. The spell broken, the puritans were moving in on us, as well.

  We were almost at the end of the platform, and I could have sworn I heard a distant shrill voice from somewhere down the tunnel shouting, “Where’s my brooch?”

  And then they were all on us. “Go! Into the tunnels!” Owen shouted as the puritans swarmed him. I didn’t make it to the platform edge before the puritans, sensing the brooch’s departure, left him to go after me.

  “Wait a second! I know what to do!” Owen shouted. “Katie, toss me the brooch.”

  Squirming in the grasp of one of the puritans, I yelled, “I thought we discussed this.”

  “I think I can destroy it.” I followed his glance and saw the “high voltage” sign near the tracks. I suddenly knew what he had planned. They hadn’t had high-voltage electricity back in Merlin’s day, so it might do the trick to destroy the Eye.

  But the puritans had my arms pinned, so I couldn’t throw it. One reached a hand into my pocket. Then there was a loud popping sound, the puritans literally fell away from me, and I was free. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I didn’t wait to find out. I grabbed the brooch from my pocket, rushed to the edge of the platform, then threw the brooch as hard as I could, aiming to slide it under the third rail. Thanks to having to play pitcher for my brothers’ batting practice, my aim was true.

  A second before it landed, Owen shouted, “Get out of the way!”

  The brooch was sparking ominously under the edge of the rail. With no puritans hampering me, I spun away from the platform’s edge, but Raphael stood poised there, like someone working up the courage to jump off the high dive. His face was a mask of agony, twisted into revulsion. “I am wicked. I have failed,” he said, his voice flat with resignation.

  I realized what he was about to do, and Owen must have come to the same conclusion, for both of us lunged toward him at once, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him back from the edge.

  A second later, an explosion rocked the platform. The blast knocked me off my feet and up into the air. I hung suspended in space for what felt like forever. When I hit the ground, it was with a force that knocked the breath out of me.

  As I lay on the platform, fighting to breathe, something landed on the ground beside me. I was barely able to focus my eyes enough to see that it was a small wooden box lined in velvet.

  Then everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty

  I woke gradually and reluctantly, at first aware only of being terribly uncomfortable, but too tired to do anything about it. Every bone, muscle, and joint in my body ached so badly that lying on a warm cloud probably would have hurt, but I was lying on something cold and hard. I thought I’d feel better if I could move to a more comfortable place, but the signals wouldn’t travel from my brain to my body. The most I could manage was a twitch or two. Maybe if I rested awhile longer, I could get up, I thought. Or, if I was really lucky, someone might come along and move me. At the moment, I didn’t much care who it was, so long as they moved me somewhere soft and warm and didn’t expect me to do anything for a long, long time.

  At the same time, I felt an odd tingling resonating throughout my body. It was like I was lying next to the speaker towers at a rock concert, but I didn’t hear any noise. There was only a faint background buzz that might have been voices, or it could have been a really loud fluorescent light fixture.

  Gradually, the buzz modulated until it made sense. It sounded like a name—my name. “Katie! Can you hear me?” the buzz said.

  “Go away. It’s too early to get up,” I mumbled, trying to roll over and curl up into a ball.

  Something stopped me, gripping my shoulder to keep me in place. It felt as cold and hard as the surface beneath me, not like any human hand. That was wei
rd, I thought, weird enough that I needed to see what was going on.

  Opening my eyes required more energy than I had, so I tried opening one eye and made it about halfway. Everything was blurry at first, but then my vision cleared and I saw a strange face looming over me. The strange face was familiar, and then my brain scrolled through a lot of events very rapidly, like it was fast-forwarding through a video, and I recognized the strange-yet-familiar face. “Sam?” I asked.

  “Whew, I was starting to wonder if you’d come back to us, dollface,” the gargoyle said. He got an arm and a wing under my shoulders to help me sit up.

  I saw then that I was on a railway platform. My brain finished fast-forwarding the recap of the past day, and I knew I was at Grand Central. “What happened?” I asked.

  “I got here just after it happened, but it looks like you two destroyed the Eye. There seem to have been some aftereffects.”

  I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the splitting headache. “I threw the brooch under the third rail,” I said. “There must have been an explosion.”

  “Yeah, looks like there was a massive magical shock wave. Everyone on the platform was out cold.”

  Everyone, he’d said. “Owen!” I blurted, frantically looking around. I saw a motionless form not too far from me and willed my aching body to crawl over to him.

  “He’s okay, just knocked out like you were,” the gargoyle reassured me.

  I searched for a pulse, unwilling to take his word for it. In this lighting, Owen looked really awful, his skin a sickly pale color where it wasn’t bruised, bloody, or covered in ten-o’clock shadow. His pulse was strong and steady, and his eyelids were already fluttering. “Owen!” I said, gripping one of his limp hands. “Come on, honey, wake up.”

  Without opening his eyes, he asked, “Did we do it?”

  “Sam says we did.”

  “There’s a melted blob of gold with a cracked stone in it lying on the tracks,” Sam confirmed. “And it doesn’t have a trace of magic in it.”

  “Good. It was just a crazy theory, but I’m glad it worked.” Owen struggled to sit up. I slid my arm around him, and we leaned against each other, both of us too tired to do more than that. I wondered if it would be too much to ask someone to send wheelchairs to take us to a car for the ride home. I wasn’t sure I could walk more than about three steps.

  I closed my eyes and enjoyed not having anyone attacking me. Owen’s voice stopped me from falling asleep. “What’s that?” he asked.

  I opened my eyes and noticed the small box that had been lying between us. “I think I remember seeing it fall right before I blacked out,” I said. “It must be that box we were waiting for.”

  “Yeah, our people got here about a split second too late,” Sam confirmed. “But looks like you didn’t need it, after all.”

  “Oh, thank God!” A harsh voice caught our attention, and I looked up to see a frightfully bedraggled Mimi climbing onto the end of the platform. “I thought I’d never get out of those tunnels.” She was limping, wearing one high-heeled shoe, the other nowhere in sight. Her skin was smudged with soot, her dress was torn into rags, and her hair looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket on a really windy day. “Now, where’s my brooch? It should be somewhere around here. I found my way out of the tunnels by aiming for it, but now I don’t seem to feel it anymore.”

  “How did you get out?” I asked.

  “I just told you, Katie, I aimed for my brooch.” Even in her exhausted state, she sounded condescending.

  “What about the dragon?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Katie, there’s no such thing as dragons. Now, about my brooch? It was a birthday gift from my fiancé, and I’d like it back. Don’t make me call the police.”

  I spotted the fake brooch lying nearby on the platform. “There it is,” I said. “Take it. I promise I’ll leave you alone now.”

  She limped over to it, bent to pick it up, then pinned it on her tattered dress and took a few long, deep breaths. Then she frowned in disappointment. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t feel the power.”

  “The power was in you all along,” I said, feeling like I was reenacting the end of The Wizard of Oz. “You don’t need a gem to be a bit—I mean, to be in charge. You need to find your own power.”

  She scrunched up her face, like she didn’t quite believe that, then she shrugged and limped away toward the concourse. Owen and I turned to watch her go, then Owen said, “I hope the dragon’s okay.”

  “You’d probably better send someone with magical powers to check on it,” I said. “I know I’m not going back in there.” Then my brain finally caught up to the current situation. With Mimi gone, that accounted for one of our nemeses, but what about all the puritans and Raphael who’d been on the platform with us when the Eye was destroyed? Sam had said everyone was knocked unconscious.

  I glanced behind us and saw all the puritans just starting to stir. They were surrounded by MSI gargoyles. “What will happen to them?” I asked Sam.

  “The boss figures that attempting to start a magical war puts them in Enforcer territory. He’s staying out of it, on account of the Eye being his creation in the first place. The Council’s not happy about having to take action, but it’ll do them good to have to take a stand on something.”

  “What about him?” Owen asked, gesturing toward where Raphael lay, still motionless.

  “I dunno. Who is he?”

  “He seemed to have had some issue with my birth parents. He should probably be taken to the infirmary and kept under watch. I think he was suicidal. We barely pulled him back from jumping onto the tracks before the brooch exploded.”

  “Okay, I’ll have our people deal with him,” Sam said.

  There were some popping sounds as the magical Enforcers materialized on the platform. I’d spent too much time evading them during the summer to be entirely comfortable with their presence, even though they were supposedly on our side this time. Their leader came over to us. “There was a report of an insurrection movement?” he said with a suspicious glance at Owen.

  “Over there,” Sam gestured with a wing. “Those guys could have destroyed us all if these kids hadn’t stopped ’em.”

  The Enforcer signaled to his men, who bound the barely stirring puritans with silver chains, then disappeared with their prisoners. I gave a big sigh of relief when they were gone. If I never saw the puritans again, it would be too soon. I just hoped they didn’t come up with any more crazy schemes for purifying the magical world.

  The lead Enforcer stayed with us. “Is there anything else we need to know?” he asked, his attention on Owen.

  “Merlin can tell the Council everything,” Owen said. “And, no, I wasn’t part of it, I wasn’t a target. I never touched the Eye, and I wasn’t the one who destroyed it. You can also tell your people to take the next few days off from following me because I’ll probably be sleeping.”

  The Enforcer raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing before he disappeared. “Should we have mentioned Raphael?” I asked.

  “He didn’t really do anything,” Owen said. “In fact, he helped protect us. I’d like to see if we can help him rather than turn him over to the Council. He needs the infirmary, not Council detention.”

  “Speaking of the infirmary, we’d better get you two to the office,” Sam said. “Or maybe to a hospital, since magical healers won’t be of much use to you.”

  “That gash on your leg will need medical attention,” I said to Owen before he could protest.

  There was a commotion at the entrance to the platform, and in came Granny, followed by Earl, Thor, and someone else who looked vaguely familiar but whom I didn’t immediately recognize. Granny came right up to me. “Young lady, I told you that you needed me with you, and you just ran off.” Her voice was sharp, and she punctuated each phrase with a poke of her cane.

  “You were trying to take the brooch,” I said. “I had to leave you. And I’m okay. Well, I will be w
hen I’ve had a hot bath, an aspirin, and some sleep.”

  “The brooch must be safe. I don’t feel it anymore,” Granny said.

  “It’s destroyed,” Owen said. “It shouldn’t be a problem ever again. But just in case …” He tried to get to his feet, and I forced myself to stand to give him a hand up. The guy with Granny stepped forward to help. Owen looked at him, frowning. He must have had the same familiar/unfamiliar sense from him that I had. “Rod,” he said, “I thought you were going to drop that illusion.”

  A second later, what little color he had left drained entirely from his face as the implication of that caught up with him. It took me a second longer to realize that I, too, was seeing Rod’s illusion that he wore to make himself appear more handsome. But illusions didn’t work on me, and they hadn’t worked on Owen since he’d lost his powers last summer.

  “Owen?” Rod whispered.

  Owen didn’t seem to hear him. He held his hand out in front of him, and soon a soft glow formed in his palm. “The blast when the Eye was destroyed, it must have done something,” he said, his voice shaking.

  “Yeah, I think a good blast of magic like that could be enough to reboot the system,” Sam said.

  I was afraid to ask what might have happened to me. If I saw Rod’s illusion, then I’d lost my magical immunity. The blast must have turned me ordinary—normal ordinary, neither magical nor immune to magic. It looked like I’d be stuck in the marketing department, after all, in a job where my magical status didn’t matter. I was glad I was too tired to cry because that kept me from embarrassing myself by bursting into tears.

  I’d learned the hard way that when something odd was going on with me, I needed to say something instead of trying to hide it, even if I didn’t want to face the truth of it. I waited until Owen seemed to have grasped the impact of having his magical powers back before clearing my throat and saying, “I see Rod’s illusion, too.”

  Owen immediately stopped what he was doing and rushed to my side, taking my hands. “Are you sure?” he asked.