Don't Hex with Texas

by Shanna Swendson

  “No, not really. What kind of disguise were you thinking of?”

  “This is probably someone without much experience with magic and an image of magic formed from seeing too many movies. He’s been wearing a hooded robe to do his own work. We should probably go with that—dress in hooded robes of our own and act as though we’re superior wizards to put a good scare in him.”

  “Act?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  He ignored me. “Any spell he tries to do to fight us off won’t affect you, and I’ll be able to deflect it from me. If we show him how inferior he is and exactly what he’s playing with, we may be able to scare him into stopping and then cooperating with us. I guess our problem is how we’ll come up with wizard-looking robes between now and tonight.”

  “Not a problem.” I got off the bed and went to the chest of drawers that had been Teddy’s. “Teddy probably still has some of his Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons costumes in here. He’s the nerd of the family, and the reason I can quote from anything with the word ‘star’ in the title.” I dug around in the bottom drawer and came out with a black hooded cloak with stars and moons on it. “I could have sworn his old Jedi outfit was still in here, but the wizard should work just as well, as long as you don’t mind glowing in the dark.” I tossed it to him.

  “Of course, real wizards wear Armani,” he said with a grin and a raised eyebrow as he wrapped the cloak around himself, “but it’ll do. It looks very, um, magical. Now, what about you?”

  “I should have a cloak that matches that one. Teddy made me go with him to a costume party and we dressed as a team.”

  He took off his robe and I hung it in the closet so the wrinkles could fall out of it. “And now, I believe it’s naptime,” I said, “since we aren’t going to get any sleep again tonight. Do you need a book? My dad has a pretty extensive collection of spy and mystery novels.”

  “I’ll probably be asleep before you’re back in your room,” he said with a yawn. “Bang on my door if I’m not stirring when everyone else is up and around.”

  I knew I’d do no such thing. He looked like he’d been operating on a sleep deficit coming into this, and then he’d had sleepless nights on top of heavy magic use. I wanted him fully charged before we had to go out and trap our wizard.

  The old wizard cloak was still in the bottom drawer of my bureau where I’d shoved it about ten years ago. I shook it out, tried it on, then hung it at the back of my closet. Who knew that some of Teddy’s nerdy oddities would turn out to be so useful?

  I was surprised by how easily I fell asleep, even though I was still agitated from the disastrous lunch.

  My windows were on the eastern side of the house, so my room was in shadow when I woke up.

  Owen’s door was still closed, so I tiptoed down the stairs, which made their usual squeak of protest. I could understand my parents keeping it when they had teenagers in the house, but with all of us grown, it would have been nice if they’d finally had that fixed. Never mind that I was sneaking out far more often these days than I had when I’d been a teenager.

  Owen came downstairs not five minutes later, wearing his wire-rimmed glasses, faded jeans, and a Tshirt that almost perfectly matched his eye color. I could have sworn my mother drooled just the least bit. Goodness knows I was practically swooning. “Did you have a good nap?” I asked him.

  “Very good, and you know, I could go right back to sleep now. I must have been tired.”

  “Country air is good for you,” Mom said. “It gives you more restful sleep.” Then she proceeded to load the kitchen table with food for a “light” Sunday supper.

  When we excused ourselves to go to bed ridiculously early, both of us tried to make it very obvious that we were going to separate rooms, lest we give the impression of being impatient honeymooners.

  Though, come to think of it, we’d barely given any indication that we were anything more than just friends. While my old-fashioned parents would probably be relieved to know that we weren’t sleeping together outside of wedlock, shouldn’t they have been concerned that we barely touched each other and didn’t act at all romantic? Our relationship confused me, and I was inside it. Anyone else should have been truly baffled if they were paying attention.

  I dressed in black and coiled my hair at the nape of my neck before crawling into bed to get what sleep I could before we had to head off and play wizard. It seemed like I’d barely closed my eyes before Owen crawled through my window, his robe balled up under his arm. We got out his case, and he again got his pack full of supplies, to which he added both wizard robes. Then we were off, climbing off the porch roof, down the tree, and onto the ground.

  This time, Owen parked behind the library on the other side of the bank, a place that was more sheltered than the Dairy Queen and on a different major road. Sam stood guard in front of the bank.

  “No sign of ’im yet, boss,” he reported.

  “How are you for energy?” Owen asked.

  “They’ve been having church services of some kind or another in this town from shortly after dawn until nearly sunset, and I’ve been basking on rooftops all day, so I’m fully charged.” He looked up at me and added, “Gargoyles get extra power when the church is having a service. All that worship really jolts up the juice. I could get to like it here, plenty of sunshine, lots of churches. Hey, boss, too bad you don’t got something you can plug into to recharge, other than tapping into the little lady here.” And then he gulped audibly and said, “I didn’t mean it that way. Sorry.”

  “We’ll be hiding over there at the next building,” Owen said evenly, ignoring Sam’s last comment.

  “Signal us when you see something.”

  Sam perched on the roof over the bank’s doorway, and Owen and I took refuge in the doorway of the chamber of commerce building next door to the bank. There, we couldn’t help but be close to each other because it was hard to crowd into a doorway recess with another person without touching. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted our rogue wizard to hurry and get there or to take his sweet time. The proximity was practically intoxicating, I was so acutely aware of Owen’s nearness. I was on the verge of suggesting that I wait in another doorway so I wouldn’t be tempted to do anything that might disrupt the fragile balance we had going between us when Sam called out, “I think he’s coming.”

  The wizard I’d seen before rounded the corner from the square. He wore the same homemade-looking robes he’d been wearing the day I saw him, and I couldn’t spot anything that might identify him to me. The hood draped so low that his face was hidden in shadows, the sleeves covered his hands, and the robe dragged on the ground, completely covering his shoes. He carried a satchel that didn’t have any distinguishing characteristics—no recognizable marks, no logos, and definitely no monogrammed initials, which would have been really helpful.

  The wizard hid in the doorway of the building directly across the street from the bank, took some things out of his satchel and spread them around, then took a small booklet out and flipped through it.

  Referring to the book every so often, he arranged the items in front of him. He lit a couple of candles, using matches instead of the wave of a hand the way Owen might have, and then I felt the tingle of magic building.

  He repacked his bag, looked both ways up and down the street, darted across the street, and stood in front of the bank doorway. Raising his arms over his head, he chanted some words in hesitant Latin, and now I was sure it was a he because that was definitely a male voice. Then he stepped forward, and just as he was about to hit the wards, I felt another surge of magic from very close by. The wards flared up in bright light, and the wizard bounced off them, falling on his back on the sidewalk. I knew that wards were usually invisible, so Owen must have added the light show for effect. It would have been nice if we could have seen the junior wizard’s face to enjoy his reaction, but the hood hid him completely.

  We’d just started to step off the doorstep to confront him when Sam gave another signal
, this one silent. Headlights appeared, and a police car came slowly down the street. Owen immediately made the wards quit glowing, but it looked like the unusual light had attracted some attention, for the police car came to a stop in front of the bank. Our wizard crawled through the shadows to the side of the building, then took off running between buildings. I would have chased after him, but Owen gripped my arm.

  “I can’t keep us hidden if we move very far,” he whispered.

  We both held our breath as the police officer got out, swinging his flashlight back and forth. I couldn’t stop myself from wincing when the beam swept across us, but the cop didn’t seem to notice us. He leaned back into the car and got on the radio. “I thought I saw someone in front of the bank who ran off when I got here. I’m gonna check it out,” he said. The radio squawked, he paused to listen, then said, “Nah, I don’t think I need backup. Probably just some kid, but you never know, could be our mystery burglar.” He put the radio away, put his hand on his gun, and went in between the buildings, following the wizard’s path, but came back a moment later, empty-handed. He checked around the bank doorway, unaffected by the wards, then returned to his car.

  He got back on the radio. “Didn’t see anything. It could have been just a dog, or else my eyes playing tricks on me. I’ll make one more circuit around town, then that’ll be the end of my shift. See you back at the barn.”

  As soon as the car was gone, I turned to Owen. “We had him. Why didn’t we go after him? People walk around with veils and illusions all the time, so I don’t get why you couldn’t keep us hidden if we chased him.”

  “Complete invisibility against someone who’s really looking takes a lot of power. Most so-called invisibility isn’t complete. It’s more of a spell to make people not notice something they weren’t paying attention to in the first place. It’s much harder to really be invisible to someone who’s intently looking for you. I know I couldn’t have kept the two of us invisible and silent while chasing our suspect. If we’d gone after him, we’d have been the ones who were caught.”

  “And that would have ruined everything,” I admitted. “You couldn’t have done that time-freezing thing again, I guess?”

  Instead of answering me, he knelt and put his hands on the ground. Then I felt the magic through the soles of my feet. “Not a good thing to do with someone around who’s linked to the world outside the spell,” he then said. “What if dispatch tried reaching the police officer here while he was frozen?

  Now, let’s see how far our guy got.”

  I had to pull up the hem of my robe to run after him down the alley where the wizard had disappeared. It would have been nice to get rid of the robes before we had to go running and searching, but I guessed if we found the guy, we wouldn’t want to be recognized. The air was as still as it had been the other night, but the only frozen living beings we saw in the alley were cats and rats.

  I had no idea we had that many rats in this town. It gave me the creeps.

  We searched the entire downtown area, weaving between buildings and looking under anything that might have offered shelter from Sam. The gargoyle returned just as we made it back to the bank.

  “Sorry, boss, I lost him,” he said. “He went low, which is where I’m not as good. Scrambled between buildings and then got up under something. That’s where I lost him. I checked the area over, but if he got inside somewhere and went building to building and then ditched the robes, well, I’m good, but I’m not that good. You’d have needed a rat to track this guy, and I’m not yet on friendly terms with any of the locals.”

  Owen looked at me. “Are there any good hiding places here, places where someone might know to hide out?”

  “The upstairs rooms in most of these buildings on the square are vacant. You can get into some of them using the fire escapes. Kids sometimes hang out there. But there’s also a pretty good chance he got out of range before you had a chance to freeze him.”

  Sam hopped up onto the trunk of the car so he could look Owen in the eye. “You did it again? I thought things seemed quiet. How long has it been?”

  I compared my watch to the courthouse clock tower, factoring in the five minutes from the other night. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Drop it now,” Sam said. “People’ll notice, and it can’t be good for you or for the space-time continuum.”

  “We can catch him!” Owen insisted. “What if he’s hiding in one of those buildings?”

  “He was headin’ away from the square when I lost him. He was probably out of range. And if he’s gone to ground, he’ll stay for a while. I can go look in the buildings, but you’ve got to stop playing with the big stuff like that.”

  With a sigh, Owen knelt again, and soon it was a lot easier to breathe. Sam took off to peek through windows, and we got into the car. I directed Owen down back roads that led away from town before going the long way back around to my parents’ house.

  “He’ll be back tomorrow night, if Sam doesn’t catch him tonight,” he said after a while, sounding almost like he was trying to boost his own spirits.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Up to this point, he’s thought he was invincible because he could do magic. The wards really threw him. Now he has to suspect there’s another wizard around who’s stronger than he is. He’ll spend the day reading his spell book, maybe checking in with his correspondence course teacher. If we’re lucky, he might even try casing the bank in daylight to see what the problem is.”

  “He won’t be able to get in, even in daylight, will he?”

  “No. Which might even mean we could figure out our culprit that way and not have to stay up all night tomorrow. Is there anything you need to do tomorrow?”

  “I should probably put in some time at work so I don’t get too far behind. You could come with me and see the joys of the family business. That would keep you away from Mom. I can take off pretty early, though.”

  “I think I’ll help Sam stake out the bank. I’d really like to get this wrapped up.”

  Sherri showed up on time for work the next morning, which was one of the signs of the impending apocalypse, and she came bearing a gift, which was definitely an omen of the end times. She brought a cake in a foil pan back to the office. “Is Owen here?” she asked. That explained the earliness and the cake, I thought.

  “No, he had some things to do today. Why?”

  “I wanted to apologize again for what a jerk Dean was to him yesterday. I made him this cake, since you didn’t get to have dessert at my house.” Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, and I actually felt sorry for her.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” I said, taking the cake from her and putting it on my desk.

  “Dean was the one who was a jerk.”

  “I don’t know what to do about Dean,” she blurted with a sob. “I think he’s got himself mixed up in something bad.”

  I took her arm and helped her over to the sofa in the back of the office. “What is it?” I asked, sitting next to her and holding her hand.

  “I think he’s involved with something illegal to make money. You know how he is, this is always going to be the thing that makes him rich, and it just puts us deeper in the hole, but at least all of those have been honest. Sort of. Now, though, he’s buying me way too much stuff, and I know I shouldn’t complain, but we don’t have that kind of money. He’s out at all hours, coming and going without telling me, and I think he’s meeting with shady people. I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes to jail.”

  Then she broke down in sobs.

  Dean drove me crazy at times, but if she was worried enough to question gifts, I couldn’t help but worry about him, even if he had brought his troubles on himself. I just didn’t have time to deal with it at the moment, not until we took care of this wizard. Why couldn’t my family wait to have a major crisis? Then again, if he was dealing with the wizard, Sherri might be a useful source of information.

  “Keep an eye on him, and let me know if you not
ice anything else suspicious, okay?” I said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “It might help if we knew who he was dealing with and where he got all that stuff. But we will take care of it, I promise.”

  She collapsed, sobbing, on my shoulder, and I patted her back until she pulled herself together.

  “Thanks, Katie,” she said with a sniffle and an attempt at a smile. “Well, I’d better go fix my face, then get to the register.”

  I got through the rest of the morning without any additional scenes. By noon, I was able to wrap things up in the office. I took the morning’s receipts in a deposit bag and headed to the bank. It really was an errand I’d have to do anyway, but it was the perfect excuse to check in on Owen and Sam.

  The bank was busy at noon on a Monday, so I had to park a block away and walk. Owen was across the street from the bank, leaning against a wall with a cup of coffee in his hand. I wasn’t sure whether I should speak to him, or if he was invisible to everyone but me. He spoke first. “An errand at the bank?” he asked.

  “Yeah, would you believe, I have to make a deposit?”

  “Need some company?”

  “Sure, if you’re that desperate for something to do.”

  “I want to get a look at the inside of the bank, just in case.”

  “I take it you haven’t seen any customers being forcefully repelled.”

  “Not a one.”

  As we approached the bank, I saw Dean heading toward the front steps. I wanted to talk to him some more about what I’d noticed and about Sherri’s concerns, but he was the last person I wanted to see right now. Next to me, Owen stiffened. He obviously wasn’t too thrilled to see Dean, either. Both of us slowed our pace, holding back so that Dean turned to go into the bank before he noticed us. I sighed in relief that at least one awkward encounter had been avoided when he reached the bank entrance without seeing us. Then he bounced off something invisible and landed on his back on the sidewalk.

  It was impossible. I never in a million years would have believed it if I hadn’t seen him bounce off the wards with my own eyes. My brother was the local wizard. The lying, thieving, con-artist local wizard. I rushed over, Owen right behind me. “Dean? It was you?” I couldn’t help but blurt as my brother stared up at me in shock.