The moment stretched, with only the distant noise of honking cars and faint music from the hotel courtyard breaking the tense silence. As the seconds trickled by, Cary’s expression shuttered, his earlier defiance replaced with grim resignation. He took a deep, shaky breath, no doubt bracing himself for the shot.
It could not come to this. Ty would not let it happen; he would not just let Cary die. There was so much still ahead of Cary, so much he could still accomplish, so much he could still become. There was so much Ty still had to say to him. And now all this potential, all this incredible life that bubbled inside Cary, would be gone in a puff of smoke.
Ty moved before he could think about what he was doing, leaping onto the raised concrete outer wall that ran along the edge of the roof. Before anyone had the chance to react, he took the amulet from his pocket, holding it in his hand above the 475-foot drop to the courtyard below.
“You want it? Come and get it,” he echoed Cary’s previous taunt to Tony.
Tony clutched Cary’s shoulder to keep him in place and pointed his weapon at Ty, but hesitated. The impact of the bullet could push Ty over the edge, taking the amulet with him. For a split second, everyone froze in a mute tableau on the verge of violence.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ty saw Leticia throwing out her hand in his direction. The air thrummed with the force of released energy, but instead of hitting him, it exploded into a thousand tiny blazing fragments, like a storm wave hitting a rock. Ty ducked, shielding his eyes with his other hand, but not before he could glimpse Bas and Leticia locked in battle, both of them surrounded by an almost blinding glow, the energy surging between their outstretched hands like bolts of electricity. The air crackled around them with the promise of a thunderstorm.
They were pretty evenly matched. For a second there Ty wasn’t sure who would emerge on top, but then Sebastian staggered and took a step back. Seeing her opponent crack under the pressure, Leticia stepped forward, and the glow around her intensified as she gathered force for a deadly blow.
Ty clutched the amulet tighter in his hand and whipped out the gun from its holster. The shot rang out across the roof, but the bullet had missed its target by a wide arc, its trajectory distorted by the force fields that engulfed the two sorcerers. He knew it wouldn’t do any real damage. His intention was to distract rather than kill, to give Bas that much-needed moment to rally, but it would hardly matter to the would-be victim.
Leticia spun around to face him—a furious goddess of ancient times, her dark hair blowing in the wind, and her eyes smoldering with fiery rage. Ty didn’t even have time to draw a last breath. The blast that had been intended for Bas hit him with the force of an avalanche. Suddenly, there was nothing beneath his feet, and he was falling, Cary’s shrill “No!” ringing in his ears.
Chapter Fifteen
A BUMP IN the road jolted him awake. Cary jerked instinctively, hitting the side of his head painfully in the confines of the car trunk.
They’ve been driving for hours and hours, and eventually he’d dozed off in a fitful sleep, lulled by the motion of the car. At first, he’d tried to memorize the twists and turns of road, but soon gave up on that. All he could gather was that at some point the car had taken the highway, going straight and fast, but the direction was anyone’s guess.
He’d tried to make as much noise as he could after Giordano’s men had stuffed him into the trunk, but with his hands bound with a zip tie and his mouth taped shut, there was only so much he could do. His head and muscles throbbed dully, probably due to the awkward pose and the shortage of oxygen.
But Cary barely registered the discomfort. A deeper ache had settled somewhere beneath his breastbone, an ache that had little to do with his physical state. He felt hollow. The scene from the Venetian played over and over in his mind, and Cary kept seeing Ty’s startled expression the second before he’d tumbled from the roof.
Shocked into numbness, he’d stared into the empty air as the afterglow of the magic dissipated. He saw Sebastian running toward the edge and peering down into the void, his hands outstretched almost comically in that “Superman swoops to rescue Lois midair” pose. But his movements had been far too slow to make any difference. There was no swooping down from that rooftop.
Somewhere in the distance far below, the police sirens had wailed, spurring his captors into action. Rossi had thrown open the roof exit door and ushered everyone to the stairs. Even Leticia abandoned her angry fury routine and hurried inside without further comment.
“Get him down,” Tony had ordered brusquely, and Cary was hoisted, none too gently, by Rossi and one of the bodyguards, after a piece of duct tape was slapped over his mouth. Their little party made its way down the stairs and pressed on right past all the people on the main floor, but no one tried to stop them, not even the security guards that swarmed around like angered bumblebees. That must have been Leticia’s magic at work again—something that didn’t make them quite invisible, but difficult to notice. Ty had mentioned something like that was possible, hadn’t he?
Cary didn’t remember if he tried to struggle. He’d been so utterly dazed that chunks of time seemed to have passed without leaving an imprint on his brain. But he must have, because at one point he was shoved into the trunk of a car in an underground garage, with his hands still bound. He thought Giordano and his sister might have been in the same car, but he wasn’t sure. All he could think about was that terrible moment, suspended in time.
Ty was dead. No one could survive such a fall—except by miraculously hanging on to a balcony railing or landing in a pool. But that shit only happened in movies, and Ty wasn’t Batman. He was dead, and the amulet was gone with him, and Cary had done nothing to prevent it. It was his fault for being careless and stupid enough to have been caught in the first place, for being so fucking paralyzed by fear and helplessness that he couldn’t prevent the man he’d come to care for from falling to his death.
A sob threatened to wrack him, and he blinked rapidly, holding back the angry tears. Cary didn’t know for what purpose Giordano was dragging him along now, but it couldn’t be anything good. Well, whatever these people wanted from him, they weren’t about to get it easily. He was neither a sorcerer nor a fighter, but he’d do whatever he could to make them pay for what they’d done. For everything they’d taken from him.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the loss of the amulet he was regretting the most.
Cary sniffed and attempted to wiggle his hands out of the zip tie. His granddad hadn’t been a proper escape artist, but he’d briefly dabbled in escapology sometime in the early ’80s, and he’d taught Cary everything he knew about various knots and how to extricate himself from many types of bindings. After taking on his act, Cary had researched ways to escape more modern and pertinent types of restraints, such as paracord and zip ties. You could learn a lot of weird stuff online, if you knew how to look. But he hadn’t had the chance to incorporate any of those into his performance. He was sorely out of practice, and his movements were limited by the confines of the trunk. Still, he kept trying right until the car took a sharp turn and entered what sounded like a gravel road. He bumped his shoulder painfully and groaned as he lost his grip on the plastic.
At length the car stopped, the engine going off. There came the sounds of doors being opened and shut and feet shuffling on gravel. The hood of the trunk popped open, making Cary squirm and squint at the morning light like some creature found under an overturned rock.
“Get up.” A strong hand hauled him up. Cary tried to kick with his legs, but his limbs were too cramped for it to have any impact. Two large men grabbed him like a sack of potatoes between them and dragged him up the path to a large wooden house. They were surrounded by thick forest, and he glimpsed the brilliant blue surface of a lake glimmering between the trees before he was carried inside.
The house looked opulent, more like an alpine lodge than a cabin. It also appeared dishearteningly secluded. A quick look around showed no other rooftops pee
king through the trees, and no sounds of either traffic or human voices reached the serene spot. He didn’t have a chance to inspect the surroundings further, though, because he was taken to a side door that opened onto a dim flight of stairs leading down, no doubt to the basement. His captors didn’t bother taking him all the way, and instead, shoved him unceremoniously down the last few steps into the gloom before retreating and slamming the door behind them.
Cary hit his knees on the concrete floor—again—and grunted in pain. He was once more plunged in darkness, but a little light filtered through a narrow sliver beneath the basement door. After letting his eyes adjust, he looked around.
The basement, if indeed it was one, was small and narrow and smelled of damp, though the concrete floor was dry. He was completely alone. There was nothing in the space, not even shelving. There were, however, faded stains on the floor and walls, the origin of which he refused to consider.
If not for the tape, Cary would have tried screaming and calling for help, though what good that would have done, he had no idea. Must be nice having your own lake house with water access and private security, he thought bitterly. One could get away with a lot of shit when one had a convenient spot to dispose of bodies, and people willing to look the other way.
Well, Cary would not be easily disposed of. They’d made a mistake in not blindfolding him. There was still a chance, a possibility of escape. There was no time to grieve or to make sense of the tangle of painful emotions that gripped his heart. He had to act fast, before Giordano and his buddies were done assigning blame and decided to take it out on him.
He rolled over and sat up, propping his back against the cold concrete wall. There was no telling how much time he had, so he’d have to act fast. His hands were bruised where he’d scraped them against the plastic ties while inside the trunk, and he flexed his fingers to get the blood flowing. The ties proved too tight to wiggle out of, but the tighter they were, the easier it was to actually break them. There was a trick to doing just that. All he had to do was stand, lift his bound hands up, and bring them down sharply while flaring out his elbows. It wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded, but if he could just position the locking mechanism right between his wrists—
The basement door opened, flooding the space with unexpected light. Cary froze in place, absently thinking he must look like trussed game thrown into a cellar to cool. Apparently, the caucusing hadn’t taken long. And why should it have, when it was painfully clear who the scapegoat was in this story.
Tony and Leticia descended into the basement, closely followed by Angelo Rossi. Leticia didn’t look the least bit affected by a sleepless, action-filled night. Not a smudge of mascara marred her cheeks, not a crease ruined the perfection of her white blazer. Of course, this level of neatness was more easily achieved when one hadn’t spent the night crammed into a car trunk.
On the other hand, Tony looked like shit. His eyes were sunken, his smooth skin almost gray and lackluster, and the sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. Cary guessed these to be symptoms of the draining effect of the magical energy from when Tony had used the amulet. Cary would have gloated if he had the leisure to focus on anything other than his imminent death.
Rossi came up to Cary and tore the duct tape off his mouth in one swift movement. Cary wisely bit back the expletives and merely licked his lips to ease the burn.
“Now, Mr. Mars,” Tony said from where he stood at the bottom of the stairs. Despite the drawl and the slightly mocking tone, there was no mistaking he was seriously pissed. “We’re gonna have a little chat.”
Rossi kicked Cary in the stomach, the pain sharp and vicious, as he doubled over and wheezed. Rossi then crouched by his side and ripped open Cary’s shirt. With complete disregard for Cary’s snarl of outrage, he tore off the now useless mic wire taped to his chest. Cary winced at the burn.
“Where are your associates?” Tony asked.
“How the hell should I know?”
Angering Giordano any further was a bad idea, but Cary’s inherent obstinacy reared its ugly head in the face of the pointlessness of the questioning. His granddad had always said he was stubborn as a mule and just as stupid. He might as well live up to that. For as long as he had left to live, anyway.
Rossi rose and kicked him again, harder this time, aiming for his kidneys. Cary moaned and shrank away, nausea rising in his throat.
“Cut it out! I don’t know anything. I only met them a week ago. I just wanted to get my family heirloom back.”
“This Monroe—the sorcerer. Where can we find him?”
“I don’t know,” Cary said. He hoped he sounded sincere enough, because he didn’t want to find out what being tortured for information felt like. He certainly sounded panicked to his own ears. “We met him in Vegas. I have no idea where he is.”
This earned him another blow. But it occurred to him through the pain that this insistence must mean that Giordano believed Monroe, who’d also had to haul ass from the rooftop, was still on the loose and somehow in possession of the amulet. Perhaps, with the police arriving and the commotion that would surround a man falling off the hotel roof, there’d been no time to search for the amulet, or worry about what Sebastian was up to.
Whatever Giordano’s assumptions were and whatever he was trying to accomplish, one thing was clear. Cary was absolutely and completely screwed. He had to buy himself some more time, at least.
“Please,” he begged, trying to sound as pitiful as possible. Frankly, it was no stretch at all. “Please, I don’t know anything. I’m sorry I stole from you. Just let me go. I promise I’ll keep quiet.”
For a second, he thought Rossi was going to kick him in the guts again. But then, surprisingly, Leticia stepped closer and crouched beside him. Cary tried to move away, but she grabbed his jaw in a viselike grip, surprisingly strong for such a petite woman. A shiver ran down Cary’s spine that had nothing to do with the coolness of the basement. Her fingers felt hot on his skin, almost burning, and he stilled, looking into her dark eyes, his fear spiking.
She could do anything to him. Granted, any of Tony’s henchmen could beat the shit out of him and then shoot him in the head, but for some reason, the dark promise in this woman’s eyes was much more terrifying. And he had nothing to defend against that kind of power. Ty had thrown some obscure hint just before all hell had broken loose, something to do with Cary’s magic, but right now he felt about as magical as a gutted fish.
“Ah. I see it in you now. A touch of magic.” Leticia chuckled, almost good-naturedly, as if in answer to his unspoken thoughts. “But it’s not going to help you now. You poor little thing.” Her grip tightened to the point of pain. “You shouldn’t have let your friends get you into all this trouble. Now look at you. They got away, and you’re left alone to deal with the consequences. Not much of a friendship, is it?”
Cary tried shaking his head, but she held him fast. Her eyes, glinting like fiery jewels in the faint light, seemed to bore into his mind.
“Perhaps not a friendship after all? This other fellow…Ty, is it? He seemed awfully concerned about your safety. Was willing to follow whom he believed to be you, no questions asked. Do you think he’d be willing to trade the amulet for your life? Or will he abandon you for a chance to make a quick buck?”
It he hadn’t been lying on solid ground, Cary would have thought he was falling. His stomach lurched and his heart seemed to slow. She couldn’t possibly mean what he thought she meant. Could she?
“He’s dead,” he managed through stressed teeth, afraid his voice would crack.
“Dead?” Leticia’s musical laugh echoed in the tiny space. “Oh, no. He’s very much alive, as it pains me to say it. He and his pet sorcerer, Monroe.”
It’s some kind of a trick, Cary told himself firmly. He saw Ty fall off that roof. There was no way anyone could have survived that unless they were some kind of superhero.
Or a magician, a voice whispered tauntingly in his head.
But
Cary shook it off. He knew Ty was no magician. Leticia was simply toying with him, trying to elicit some sort of response, make him more vulnerable.
And yet, that part of his soul he forbade himself to look at too closely—the one that was gaping open like a jagged wound, leaking hope—trembled. If Ty was truly alive…maybe he could let himself breathe again without feeling like there was an iron band around his chest.
“Maybe he wants you to think he’s dead,” Leticia said, watching him closely. He couldn’t fool himself into believing she hadn’t picked up on his churning emotions, but right now, he couldn’t help it. “But don’t worry, sweetie. We’ll find him for you.”
Cary shuddered at her tone.
“If that bastard Ty has the amulet, I know how to make sure he gets the message,” Tony said, addressing his sister. “Do you think he’ll really be willing to negotiate for this pup?”
Leticia shrugged and got up gracefully, finally releasing him and wiping her fingers on her pants. Cary slumped back to the floor in relief.
“It’s worth a try, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The boy’s cute, but I’m betting he didn’t go to all this ridiculous trouble to get a bauble back for his boyfriend. Someone else must have paid him to retrieve it.”
“Come on, then.” Tony extended his hand to help her up the narrow stairs.
“Want me to rough him up, boss?” Rossi asked, eying Cary dispassionately.
“I believe he’s earned it. Just remember we need him recognizable.” With that, Tony and Leticia were gone, leaving Cary—as Leticia had so aptly put it—to deal with the consequences.
Chapter Sixteen
TY RUBBED HIS aching shoulders awkwardly and flexed his back. Hitting a wall of suddenly solidified air a second after tumbling off a roof was infinitely preferable to hitting the ground from thirty-six stories up, but it still hurt like a bitch.
A Touch of Magic Page 13
