To Seize a Wayward Spirit

by R. L. Naquin

  I wasn’t entirely wrong, but at least no one cared that I used my magic.

  Buzz scrutinized my outfit. “What the hell are you wearing? We’re having Mexican food, not a pig roast.”

  I pulled one of my bangles from my wrist and changed it into a pair of sunglasses, which I shoved on my face. “I’m dressed for vacation. This is what I eat on vacation. This is what I wear on vacation.” I picked up my fork and made a stab at my salad. Unfortunately, the uppity effect I was going for was ruined when I missed because I was wearing sunglasses inside in low light.

  I moved the glasses to the top of my head.

  Buzz bit into a taco and scattered shell everywhere. “I see. Well, okay then.”

  Nessa took a sip of a pink, frothy concoction with an umbrella in it. “I think it’s lovely.”

  “Thank you.” I stabbed at my salad-like dinner and was successful this time.

  Eliza sipped a margarita. “Buzz is just jealous.”

  Her sister nodded. “He wishes he could change one thing into another, don’t you, dear heart?” She winked at him.

  He grunted and shoved a bite of refried beans into his maw, barely chewing before he swallowed. “I’m sure I could make a mint changing cheap jewelry into cheap sunglasses and selling them to tourists at a roadside stand.” He shot me a sour look and scooped a chip into the salsa dish in the middle of the table.

  I shouldn’t have let him get to me like that. He was right about both the bracelet and the glasses being cheap. The number of bracelets required to adequately cover the jewels in my wrist meant I could only afford a few nice ones and a whole lot of crap. I wasn’t about to transform an expensive solid gold bracelet into sunglasses for comedy affect. That didn’t mean I couldn’t make something crappy into something nice.

  The sunglasses might have cost five bucks at a gas station. The bracelet it had been came in a six pack of similar bracelets for ten dollars. Already, I’d increased its value. I kept eye contact with the leprechaun while removing the glasses from my head and holding them in the air between two fingers. I narrowed my eyes and shook the glasses with all the flair of a Vegas magician. The glasses unfolded into a line, turned gold and transformed into a glittering diamond tennis bracelet.

  “Whoa.” Doug sat at the other end of the table with bits of tortilla chips caught in his beard. “Those aren’t real, are they?”

  “Of course they are.” I fastened the bracelet around my left wrist instead of with its brothers and continued eating.

  The diamonds absolutely were real, and high quality, too. Any jeweler would have rated them exceptional. What I didn’t mention was that it took more magic to make something rare, like diamonds, than it did something cheap and plentiful, like plastic. I also didn’t mention that it wouldn’t last. By tomorrow, the bracelet would be back to its original form. The glasses would have remained glasses for quite some time. A quality jump as big as plastic to diamonds was highly volatile.

  Finn hadn’t said much about the exchange with Buzz and my expensive magic trick. He sat on my left eating quietly and watching. I found this to be far more suspicious than Buzz’s blustering. Ash had managed to seat herself next to Buzz, so we’d split the leprechauns between us in an effort to keep close watch on them.

  Once everyone had filled their bellies from the buffet, Miss Angelica rolled in dessert. She’d made a flan big enough to feed twice as many guests, which was the most custard I’d ever seen in one place. It jiggled as she rolled it in, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to eat something that looked like it might be sentient.

  While everyone was distracted by Miss Angelica’s almost ceremonial cutting of the monster-size flan, I dropped my hands in my lap and undid the clasp on my shiny new bracelet. I kept it closed, but not latched, so it would fall off naturally. Sure enough, three bites into dessert, I felt it slide off onto the table. I looked the other way and didn’t react.

  A few minutes later, our hostess rolled in a cart full of cups and several carafes of coffee. There was a shuffle as we made room for it on the table. Nessa and Buzz bumped into each other, and her water glass tipped. Eliza, Finn and I all reached for it, got in each other’s way, and the glass spilled all over the table. Miss Angelica was there in seconds, sopping it up with a towel.

  Nessa covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes wide. “I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly, sweetheart.” Miss Angelica straightened the cream and sugar. “Good as new. No harm done.”

  We all settled back into our seats and passed around the coffee. I checked the area on the left side of my plate and smiled.

  The diamond bracelet was gone.

  This confirmed we had a thief in the boarding house. I couldn’t prove who’d taken it in all the confusion, but I was fairly certain it was obvious.

  Leprechauns always hustled people. It was who they were. But I wasn’t ready to blow the whistle quite yet. There was more going on than petty theft. I was sure of it.

  I might not be able to find a serial killer, but I sure as hell could stop a couple of leprechauns from running a scam on the nice people at Harpy House.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After dinner, Ash and I stuck to the leprechauns like flypaper. We followed them into the library and bought everyone a round of drinks. To be fair, everyone meant us, the leprechauns, the elf sisters, Doug the dwarf and Matt the brownie. Tahm still hadn’t come down, and the sprite, pixie and dryad weren’t particularly social.

  While everyone else was talking, I approached Doug at the bar, speaking softly under the clink of ice in glasses and the rumbling of meaningless party conversation. “Can you make mine a little...less?”

  He raised his bushy brows. “Cheaper, you mean?”

  “Oh, no. I mean, you know, less with the fancy and more with the fruity.”

  “You want it to be weaker?”

  I nodded. “Right. But not obviously so.”

  He looked past me at the rest of the crowd, then lowered his voice to match mine. “If you like, I can make it virgin and pretend I actually put extra shots in it. Would that help?”

  I grinned. “You’d do that for me?”

  He drew closer and spoke so quietly it was almost a whisper. “Are you trying to catch whoever stole my jade pocket knife? Because I’ll help all you want if it takes down the son of a bitch who took it.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Glad to know it wasn’t just us losing stuff. And yes. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

  “I’ve got your back, sweetheart. Leave it to me.” He whipped me up a fancy drink with a pineapple juice base, coconut milk and several fake shots of rum that apparently was soda. It tasted tropical, smelled like it had coconut rum in it, but didn’t have a drop of alcohol in it.

  “Perfect. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. I’ll keep them coming.”

  We joined the rest of the party, and I took a seat in an overstuffed leather chair next to Ash.

  Matt was in the middle of a story about getting trapped in an elevator for three hours with a Pee Wee Herman impersonator. “There were six of us stuck in there, and the first thing this guy tells us is the secret word is help, and we’re supposed to yell every time we hear it.”

  “Oh, no.” Nessa’s hand fluttered against her collarbone. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  He laughed. “That was the crazy part. Nobody did it at first. But the word kept coming up again and again—as you might expect. The guy on the emergency intercom told us he was getting us some help. He checked in with us every fifteen minutes or so to tell us help was on the way, or that the fire department was there to help. People called their loved ones on their phones and told them help was coming.”

  “The Pee Wee impersonator yelled every time, I bet.” Doug took a seat on the enormous hearth in front of the fire.

  “Of course he did. But
the more we heard the word, the more we joined in. It was crazy. Like brainwashing or a Pavlovian response. When the doors finally opened above us, a fireman poked his head inside and yelled down to us that he was there to help.”

  “Uh-oh.” I sucked my drink through a bright yellow bendy straw.

  Matt nodded. “Exactly. By that time, we were so hyped up, we screamed like crazy. Scared the crap out of the poor guy. He thought one of us was hurt or dead.”

  “That’s terrible,” Eliza said. “That poor man.”

  Miss Angelica entered the room with a swish of gauzy fabrics. “The card table is ready whenever you’d like to begin.”

  The guests automatically rose and followed her into the dining room. Ash and I went with them, sipping our drinks as we went. Ash started to tell me something, but she was interrupted.

  “Will you be joining us this time, ladies?” Nessa grinned and waved us over. “It would be nice to have more females at the table tonight for once.”

  “I’m not much of a gambler. Is it really a two-hundred-dollar buy-in?”

  Buzz brushed past me and took a seat. “What’s it to you? You can make diamonds hail from the sky.”

  “I can put it on your tab if you like.” Miss Angelica smiled brightly.

  I hadn’t intended to play. My plan had been to sit quietly and watch to see if someone was cheating. But chances were good that nobody was going to cheat if they felt like I was watching them. I might be able to get away with Ash sitting it out, but both of us might be a hard sell. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to play a few hands.”

  Finn grinned in a predatory way that made my skin crawl. Leprechauns, man. They were the worst.

  We took our seats around the table in front of piles of chips, and Ash sat in a chair against the wall.

  “You’re not playing, honey?” Eliza made a droopy-mouthed sad face.

  Ash shook her head. “I don’t have that kind of money. Is it okay if I watch?”

  Eliza glanced around the table and everyone nodded. “That’s fine, honey. You can keep time during the lightning round.”

  “Lightning round?” I frowned. “I thought we were playing poker.”

  Miss Angelica stood at the head of the table and shuffled the cards. “Tonight we’re playing Unopoly Flash Bang. Yellow is wild, railroads belong to the church and dares are limited to first floor, indoor only. Does anyone need a fresh drink? We’ll begin in five minutes.” She turned the knob on a kitchen timer. The ticking was sharp and piercing in the brief silence before chairs scraped to run for another drink.

  What the hell kind of game was this? My stomach clenched. I’d just blown two hundred dollars of government money Art was certain to demand I pay back.

  “I’m here. Don’t start without me.” Tahm ran down the stairs, two at a time, breathless. His hair was tousled from sleep, and his eyes were heavy-lidded. He must have overslept. He stopped at the base of the stairs and froze when he saw me. “Kam. What are you doing? You hate gambling.”

  I tried to make my tone sound breezy, despite the fact that I was a bundle of nerves even before he’d come down. “It sounded fun. You know how much I like to try new things.”

  Tahm kept his eye on me as he moved past me and into the library to get a drink. He appeared unhappy. I struggled to maintain my cheery smile. A twinge of sadness hurt my heart. In his not-quite-awake-yet state, Tahm hadn’t even attempted to disguise his disappointment in seeing me there.

  As painful as it was to see how he really felt about me, at least I knew I’d been right to refuse to marry him. That kind of heartache wasn’t something I wanted on a daily basis.

  I sank into my chair and took a long pull on my drink, forgetting for a moment there was no booze in it. I drained it and made rude noises on the bottom with my straw.

  Boys were dumb.

  As I started to push my chair away from the table to get another drink, Doug slid a fresh one in front of me. “I’ll keep them coming, sweetheart. No worries.” He winked and took a seat next to me.

  “You’re my hero.” I winked back.

  Once everyone was seated, things moved fast. I was lost before my first play, and I never found my way. If the others hadn’t acted so composed, I’d have suspected the whole thing was made up on the spot.

  Miss Angelica dealt us each nine cards. We chose three and passed them to the player to our right, chose three more and passed those to the player on the left. The dealer rolled the dice and the total came up six. Everybody picked up their assigned piece—I had the thimble—and went around the Monopoly board, either forward or backward according to whether we were seated in an odd or even chair. I was even and moved backward, landing on Pennsylvania.

  Everybody drew an Uno card from the deck and kept it hidden, then drew a random playing card from the hand of their neighbor to the right. The numeric value of the card drawn was how many chips we had to toss into the pot.

  Everyone then stood and moved three seats to the left—taking their drinks with them, of course—and the game was ready to begin.

  I was horrified. How in the hells was I supposed to catch someone scamming the system when the system didn’t make any damn sense?

  When my first turn came, I placed my queen of hearts on top of Doug’s nine of diamonds and became the pack leader. I rolled a five and moved my thimble forward five spaces plus four more for being the alpha. I landed on Baltic Avenue and purchased it with chips. Now, if someone landed on my property, they could either pay rent or take a dare.

  I was so glad I wasn’t drinking.

  The next half hour or so was a blur in which Doug ended up in his underwear, singing a sea shanty after landing on Eliza’s Park Place space, Buzz got stuck in jail and had to take a shot of Fireball whiskey, Matt and Tahm arm-wrestled for an extra Uno card, which was ridiculous, considering how tiny Matt was, and Nessa was made High Priestess of the Rail Yard.

  As I was beginning to think I understood the game, Miss Angelica yelled, “Uno!” and everyone flipped over the Uno cards they’d accumulated.

  Tahm had high card with a red Skip, but I flipped over a yellow two and won the entire thing because, as Miss Angelica had said at the beginning, yellows were wild.

  I won over four hundred dollars.

  I stared at the pile of chips in front me. “That was...insane.” I was pleased to have won, though I still wasn’t quite sure why I’d won. “And I think that’s all for me tonight, folks.”

  “What?” Nessa stuck her lower lip out and pouted at me. “You’ve only played one hand. We’ve barely gotten started.”

  Tahm watched me gather my chips together, his expression distant.

  “I’m sorry. I have a long day ahead of me and need to get some sleep.” I stood and faced the dealer. “Is it okay if I hand these over to Tahm to play with? That way people still have a chance to win it back.” I made eye contact with Tahm, and he gave me a slight nod.

  “Of course you can.” Miss Angelica beamed. “The only rules around here are my rules. And I say yes.”

  I thanked everyone for letting me play and ducked out of the room with Ash following. We clunked up the stairs and closed ourselves into my room and dropped to the squeaky bed.

  I flopped on my back and covered my face with my hands. “Did you catch any of that? Did it make any sense to you?”

  Her face was serious. “Doug has surprisingly little chest hair for a dwarf.”

  We both erupted in giggles, then shushed each other. “If anybody was cheating or scamming the others, I couldn’t possibly figure it out. Did you see anything suspicious?”

  “I couldn’t see a damn thing that made sense. I’m glad you won, because we didn’t get any information out of the experience.”

  “Dinner was a little more successful. He took the bracelet.”

  She shook her head. “That’s where you’re
wrong. I tried to tell you in the library, but we got interrupted.”

  “No, really. I saw where the bracelet dropped on the table. Then it disappeared when we all reached for the water glass that spilled.”

  “I didn’t reach for it. I was watching the bracelet.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “You saw who took it?”

  “It wasn’t the leprechauns.” Her lips curled up in a satisfied smile.

  “You’re kidding me. Who did then?”

  “Nessa knocked the glass over on purpose. Eliza took your bracelet. They were working together.”

  * * *

  The elves shared a single room one flight up. We had to be careful, since Kelli’s room was across from theirs, and she hadn’t joined the festivities downstairs. Ash stood in the bathroom doorway, looking out at the rooms circled around the stairs, while I popped the lock and tiptoed into the sisters’ room.

  Their double beds were made up with lacy spreads and pillowcases. One dresser stood next to the doorway, and the beds shared one nightstand between them. Apparently, my chair was a bonus not everyone had.

  I closed the door, leaving it open a tiny crack to let in some light and so I could hear if anyone came up the stairs. The top drawer of the first dresser slid open without a sound. Lacy underwear and bras filled it, and I found nothing hiding underneath. The second drawer yielded toiletries, a hair dryer and nightgowns I would only wear if it were my honeymoon.

  The bottom drawer was stuffed with jeans and tee shirts—items I’d never seen either elf wear—and a large box shoved at the back. I got excited and pulled too hard. The drawer made a loud clunking sound, and I froze with the box in my hand.

  After a slow count of ten with no movement outside the door, I picked up the drawer and slid it into the dresser, leaving it half open so I could return the box when I was finished.

  The box was a dark wood and had some substantial weight to it. It was smooth and plain, except for a metal keyhole in the front. I shivered. I didn’t care for boxes. The Master had kept me in a box.

  I popped the lock with the tiniest bit of magic and lifted the lid. The magicked diamond bracelet hadn’t been added to the box, since the elves hadn’t come up to their room yet. Ash’s necklace was right on top. My gold hairpins rested underneath, along with the silver earrings I wasn’t sure I’d lost. A credit card with Tahm’s name on it—Tom Fargo, not his actual djinn name, which nobody was supposed to know—was on a stack of six other cards with other people’s names on them, including Buzz and Kelli. At the bottom, I found a wad of cash, which probably belonged to all of us. There was no telling how much each of us had lost.