Movement outside the cage caught my eye. Maurice and his crew. It did my heart good to see them evidently unharmed from their experience with Petra at my house. I wished I could call to them and ask for help, though I wasn’t sure what help they could be.
A lot, as it turned out.
They rushed forward and swarmed over Petra, crawling up her pant legs like a horde of army ants. She yelled and batted at them with her hands. The rats that were knocked off shook a little as if to clear their heads and ran right back up her legs. More rats emerged from the strip of greenery at the edge of the parking lot, running toward Petra. Even the marid seemed mesmerized by the sight.
I could never beat a wizard as powerful as her, spellcraft against spellcraft. She was distracted now though. It was my moment. I cast a freezing spell.
Petra froze. Her eyes were wide, her mouth drawn into a sneer, her body contorted in her efforts to brush off the rats. It wasn’t a nice look ever but was especially unpleasant now that she was stuck that way.
Which just left overcoming the marid. And dissolving the invisible cage. Neither of which were going to be easy.
Maurice and a couple other rats seemed to have sunk their teeth into the cage bars and were gnawing away at them. I wasn’t sure how they could see where they were, but animals, especially magical animals like Maurice, perceived the world differently than humans. Not that their gnawing was doing any good that I could tell.
I’d thought the marid might be grateful or glad I’d frozen his master. I’d thought wrong. He roared and ran toward me, gathered me in his arms, lifted me off my feet and threw me against the invisible bars. It hurt—like smacking against iron goalie posts. I hit the ground, stunned. I hauled myself back to my feet, plenty pissed. Pain could do that to me—turn up the volume on my anger and determination.
I threw the same freezing spell I’d used on Petra at the marid. It slowed him some, but he wasn’t distracted the way she’d been, and my magic wasn’t potent enough to stop him. He looked puzzled a moment, and then laughed.
“Is that the best you can do, Little Psychic Girl?”
Without a voice to cast a stronger spell or any way to concoct a potion to up my power while in the cage, it was, yeah. Using The Slippery Eel had dehydrated me, and I didn’t think I had enough moisture left to make that work again. I wasn’t giving in though.
A trio of women in their fifties came from the back of one of the buildings. They were chattering together, talking about something that had happened that day, or their plans for the evening, or a new grandchild—who knew what? Whatever the subject matter, they weren’t paying any attention to the marid and me. Maybe we looked like two people simply standing together in the parking lot. You’d think they notice the rats or the statue-like Petra.
I ran at the marid, jumping sideways at his body, hitting him with my shoulder, hoping to knock him down. That would get the women’s attention, I hoped. And if I could get their attention, maybe I could unfreeze Petra and she’d take down the cage rather than rile the women and send them running for help. It was a baroque plan, dependent on a lot of things going right, but it was the only plan I had.
My shoulder smacked against the marid’s chest. He wobbled and took a step back to regain his balance but didn’t go down. I did a quick quarter turn to face him and beat his chest with the sides of my fists. Surely the women would notice that and come running.
Or maybe not. Maybe it looked like a lovers’ quarrel—the sort of thing people turned away from. I wished I could scream. Since I couldn’t, I needed to make him scream. I stomped the heel of my hiking boot down on the top of his foot. He wore running shoes. They were no match for my hard boot heel. He grunted but didn’t cry out.
I glanced over my shoulder to the women. They walked across the parking lot, still chatting, as if they were completely alone. Stupid me. Petra was no novice. She’d have cast invisibility over the cage. And herself, too, I guessed, since the women didn’t seem to notice the grimacing Petra statue. Or the rats, who I saw still gnawing away on what I could only think were the cage bars. I could see her, so evidently the invisibility spell only worked on ordins. Smart of her. Bad for me.
In the second I took to look over my shoulder, the marid clamped his arms around my body, pinning my arms to my sides. He leaned back and lifted me into the air, squeezing the air out of my lungs with his hold. I twisted and turned as best I could, but it didn’t help. I kicked and hit his leg, but his hold didn’t loosen. I bit his shoulder, which burned my mouth like biting fire, but all the marid did was squeeze me tighter.
Things grew dim and I felt woozy. All I could think was this was a stupid way and a stupid place to die. Maurice sat up and whistled. I was going to die, and it seemed even the rats were about to abandon me.
The automatic sprinklers turned on. I heard the cha cha cha of the pulsing water.
Turn the sprinklers, I thought as hard as I could in Maurice’s direction, hoping to hell that the rat was sensitive to my psychic calling. Face the water this way. I need to be soaked.
Maurice’s tail twitched. I hoped he’d heard me and would do what I asked, even if it seemed crazy.
Hurry, Maurice. Hurry!
A hard spray of cold water hit my back. I swung my legs out to the side so more of the water would hit the marid.
The marid’s hold loosened and I fell, hitting the asphalt with a thud that jarred my spine all the way up to my head. I didn’t care. Getting oxygen back to my brain felt wonderful. I lay on the ground and breathed in deep gulps of air.
Without me to block part of his body, the water hit the marid full on.
Steam rose from his shoulders. His flesh sizzled. He screamed Petra’s name, but his master was useless to him now. She could no more save him than she could unfreeze herself.
The water kept pumping out. My clothes were soaked, and my drenched hair plastered to my skull. The marid, looking very human now that his flames had been watered, lay near me, completely still. Unconscious. Dead. I couldn’t tell. At least he wasn’t coming after me anymore.
The water shut off as abruptly as it had come on—the city was big on water conservation. I was lucky they hadn’t yet gone to a drip system. I leaned against the invisible bars of the cage and watched the marid carefully. He didn’t move.
Now that I had a moment to think, I saw I still had two problems. I had to get out of the invisible cage. I had to deal with Petra somehow. I couldn’t just leave her frozen in the parking lot, even if no could see her. I couldn’t let her keep hunting for Mich either. I’d seen into Petra’s mind. She was definitely the ‘If I can’t have her, no one will’ kind. Mich didn’t seem like a very nice person herself, but morally I had to protect her from Petra until the mad wizard was stopped from her crazed pursuit.
First, I had to get out of the cage.
“Crap,” I muttered.
I sucked in a breath, surprised that my voice was back.
I didn’t have time to reflect on how that had happened though.
There were all sorts of magic and all sorts of spells—long lasting, fast acting, temporary, permanent. The faster acting and longer lasting the spell, the more energy it took to cast. If Petra had thought the marid would make short work of me, she might not have used much energy to construct the cage. If the cage had been hastily thrown up and not much magical energy was in it, I could maybe bring it down.
If I could remember the dissolving spell.
I ran the words through my head until I was pretty sure I had them right, sucked in a deep breath and said the words with all the confidence and will I could muster
My false bravado fell away with the last word. I tentatively pushed where I knew the cage wall was. My hand hit what felt like iron.
Which meant Petra was going to have to take the cage down. And I was going to have to figure a way to make her do that without getting hurt or killed first myself. Petra still wanted to know where Mich was, so likely she wouldn’t kill me, but I was sur
e she had plenty of unpleasantries to offer instead. I was going to have to be fast.
One more glance at the marid told me he was still not moving. I had one thing I could try. I had no idea if it would work. When the broom and dustpan had flown from the kitchen to where I stood on the porch, I’d been stunned. Telekinesis wasn’t among my talents. It hadn’t worked at all when I tried it in the alley. I hoped to hell it would now.
I focused on Petra and concentrated. She swayed a little, the way a statue in a rolling earthquake might.
I tried to remember exactly how I’d felt and how focused I was on the porch that night. I put myself in as close to the same state as I could and tried again.
Petra jerked off her feet and into the air, hovering maybe three feet above the asphalt. Her eyes, the only part of her left that could move, showed her surprise. My eyes likely showed my surprise too. Now I had to make her feel fear.
My hands balled into fists, I concentrated as hard as I could on what I wanted to happen. Slowly Petra, standing upright, began moving sideways in the air. Her eyes opened even wider. I felt her fear and anger. She couldn’t move anything except her eyes but was aware of everything happening.
I drew my arms into the side of my body, focusing everything I had on her. She flew higher into the air, six or seven feet above the ground. I could hardly breathe, terrified that at any moment this new power would fail me. I focused hard and visualized what I wanted, sending a blast of will along with my desire. Petra began circling the outside of the cage as if she rode an invisible conveyer belt.
I sent another blast of power and will toward her and spun her around like a top while also spinning her faster and faster around the outside of the cage.
This had to end. One way or another, I had to make Petra take down the cage. There was only one way I could think of to make that happen—she had to fear for her life.
I sent my psychic senses out, needing to know her state of mind. She was reining in her shock, gaining back control of herself and planning a slew of horrible things she’d do to me once my freezing spell was off.
Great.
The moment to remove the spell was absolutely now. And I had to be faster than she was or risk her getting the opportunity to implement all those horrible plans. I said the unfreezing words and shoved Petra away from the cage, sending her twenty or so feet out. She drew in a deep breath—preparing to send a spell my way, I was pretty damn sure. I tilted her body so that her head pointed toward the cage and yanked straight forward with all the speed I could muster. The dark wizard was either going to take the cage down or crash headfirst into the invisible bars. Her choice.
I wouldn’t have thought I had enough moisture in my body to sweat but sweat glazed my skin as I watched Petra zinging toward the cage. I sucked in a breath and held it.
Closer and closer she came, making no attempt to change her course. Her eyes were focused on me. Her mouth was set in a tight, grim line, uttering no spell words. If I didn’t do something, impact was inevitable. I cringed and closed my eyes.
The cage shook with the impact of her body. Petra screamed as she hit. She fell to the ground and lay still.
I stepped forward, moving toward her, expecting the bars to stop me. They were gone. The spell dissolved when she knocked herself unconscious I supposed.
Blood poured from a wound where he head had hit the cage. I hoped she was only unconscious. God, why hadn’t I changed the trajectory? How could I let her slam her head into the bars like that? What manner of person was I?
21
I stood staring at the two bodies, Petra’s and the marid’s. Petra was alive, her pulse slow but there. Maurice walked over and stood next to me.
“You need to do something with these two,” he said. “Get them out of here.”
I looked down at the rat, hardly comprehending his words.
“Why didn’t she take down the cage before she hit?” I said.
Maurice twitched his tail. “Because she’s fucking crazy.”
I nodded. He wasn’t wrong.
“Best call the Magic Police to come get them,” the rat said. “You got your phone with you?”
I shook my head. “It’s at home.” I glanced toward the Hermosa Beach Historical Society. “Maybe I can use their phone.”
I walked toward the building thinking through the number Dee had used to call Jack on my phone and which I’d half memorized for no particular reason other than thinking it might come in useful at some point. I hadn’t thought it would be useful so soon.
A sweet older woman at the Historical Society listened to my tale of woe about my car breaking down and my cell phone forgotten at home and let me use their landline to make a call.
“Jack,” I said when he answered, “It’s Oona. Diego’s friend. I’ve run into a bit of a problem only you can solve. Could you and some of your friends, the ones who like to wear white, come meet me in the parking lot behind the community center?”
Jack, bless him, didn’t ask questions. He said they would be there in a few minutes.
When they arrived, I explained all that had happened and that I was pretty sure Petra/Heather had ordered Sudie killed. Even if she hadn’t, she’d forced her way into my house, threatened me, followed me here, and threatened me further. That alone was enough for the MPs to take Petra and the marid, who was still alive despite his soaking, into custody. I was glad the marid had survived. I didn’t want to be responsible for his death.
Magic Court, it turned out, was a lot like normal court except an innocence speaker listened to the testimony and pronounced what was truth and what was lies, and instead of a single judge, the defendant is brought before three members of the Magic Council who made the final decisions.
I gave the court a complete recitation of all that had happened with Petra and all that she’d confessed or bragged to me about the killings. I told them about my vision of John Broadhurst being held in the in-between by Petra, dead but unable to move on. I told them how she’d killed Sudie simply to stop the threat of gossip. I mentioned the scent of rosemary I’d caught in Broadhurst’s condo and had smelled again when Petra threw a spell on me, how the scents were identical and could only have come from her. The innocence speaker declared everything I’d said to be true.
I even spoke up a little for the marid, saying Petra had him in servitude. But I said, too, that in my vision of Broadhurst’s killing he’d enjoyed following her commands. That the state of Sudie’s body showed a savagery that couldn’t be justified. I wanted to be truthful, but I didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for the marid and I wasn’t going to weep if he wound up with a harsh sentence of his own.
Petra had sat stone-faced through my testimony, her eyes narrowed. The hatred she sent my way was as thick as sludge. I thought of Sudie and John Broadhurst and rang my testimony like a bell.
Dee had been a witness against her as well. Even the marid testified against her, knowing that his testimony against her wasn’t going to help him much.
It took the council less than two hours to find Petra and the marid guilty of double murder. All that was left now was to hear the judgments the council would hand down today.
Dee walked out of the bathroom, toweling his hair dry. I sat at the end of his bed, fiddling with the laces to my high-tops.
“You’re not going to the sentencing today?” he said.
“I’m going,” I said firmly. “I need to hear what the council pronounces as punishment for Petra. I need to hear that Sudie and John Broadhurst are avenged.”
He let me brood on that a while in silence while he dressed.
While he knotted his tie, he glanced over his shoulder at me. “Do you want to go home and change or is that what you’re wearing to the council?”
I glanced down at my clean shirt, clean pants, new shoes, and found nothing wrong with what I was wearing.
“Do you want to tell me why your sister didn’t get married?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Feel
ing a wee bit testy today, are we?”
I shrugged. “Maybe a little. I would like to know about your sister, if you don’t mind.”
He finished with his tie and turned to face me. “Okay. The short version. I told you, my family isn’t your standard two point three children in the suburbs sort.”
I nodded. “Magical commune and all that.”
“And all that,” he said. “I have two sisters. Valentina, the younger one, never felt comfortable in the magic world. She left as soon as she could to live an ordin
life. She met Scott and they fell in love. He didn’t meet our family until the rehearsal dinner the night before. Mom kept the magic thing under wraps, but Dad thought it only right that Scott should know. Freaked Scott out, of course. By the next day, the wedding was off.”
I blew out a breath. “That’s horrible. I feel bad for your sister.”
“For the best probably,” he said. “Magic is hereditary, as you know. Better he finds out now than after they had kids who started manifesting strange abilities.”
I could see that. “We are what we are, no matter what we wish we were instead.”
He gave me a level gaze. “That sounded heartfelt. Something you want to tell me?”
I wasn’t completely sure I did, but I told him anyway.
“I’d never thought I was a vengeful person, Dee. I get angry, furious even, but I’m not the sort to sit around plotting revenge. More the ‘stomp around a bit and then shrug it off’ type. But with Petra, I want more than to simply see her locked away. I want to see her suffer. I don’t like that desire—that need—in me.”
He sat on the bed but didn’t speak for a long moment.
“You’re a good person,” he said finally. “Whatever you’re thinking, feeling, wanting—it’s probably pretty close to normal.”
“Probably pretty close?”
There was a glint in his eye and a bit of smile on his mouth. “Completely normal isn’t really in your wheelhouse.”
I laughed under my breath. He was being factious, but he was also right. Petra had taken advantage of me. Used and abused me. Killed someone I knew. It was natural that I’d want to see her punished for it. Normal.
Barbed Wire Heart Page 14
