No Quest for the Wicked

by Shanna Swendson

“The needs of the company keep changing.” I felt his shoulder shrug where my head rested on it. We were both quiet for a moment, listening to make sure our enemies hadn’t found us. Then he said, “I have to say I’m relieved. I thought you were unhappy that we weren’t spending enough time together. I know I can get obsessive when I’m working on a project.”

  I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him. “Yes, I know you can get obsessive, which is why I try to find ways of working around it, like sneaking in early in the morning to bring you breakfast. If you weren’t obsessive, you wouldn’t be you, and I happen to like you a lot.”

  “We will take that vacation, I swear,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” But I was smiling when he kissed me. A tunnel under a Central Park bridge late in the evening wasn’t a bad place for a makeout session—that is, if there weren’t multiple factions out to get us. As if to remind us that we probably ought to be a little more focused on our surroundings, Owen’s phone rang before things could get too heated.

  It was Rod. “Are you two okay?” he asked.

  “For now,” Owen replied. “What happened back there?”

  “I wish I could have found a way to record it because Katie would’ve enjoyed seeing it.”

  I stood on my tiptoes to speak into Owen’s phone. “Oh, do tell!”

  “Mimi made a huge fuss about her missing brooch, so they eventually brought in one of the NYPD officers working event security to take her statement. They couldn’t take her too seriously when she was griping about missing a brooch that she was still wearing. She insisted that it was a different brooch, and the way she could tell the difference was that the real one made her feel better. Once the officer heard about her earlier meltdown, there was talk about calling Bellevue, but one of the museum trustees was there and talked them into just letting her lie down for a while. They may have given her a little something to help her relax.”

  “So we won’t have to worry about Mimi coming after us for a while,” I concluded with some relief. “What about the others?”

  “Thor and Granny are with me. Sylvester finally woke up, and he and his group, including Earl, just left. I’m not sure how much time you have before they reach you. Sam’s tailing them and we’re trying to stay in range so we can help if you need us.”

  “Thanks for the warning. We should be on the move.”

  “I hope you’ve got a plan because you’re eventually going to have a lot of people after you.”

  “The boss is working on a new protective case, and when he gets it to us, we should be okay. We just have to hold out until then.”

  “Maybe instead of following the elves, we should meet up with you.”

  “No, sorry, I’d rather not tell you where we are. It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

  “It’s that you don’t trust us around the Eye. Don’t worry, I get it, but I’m not sure Katie’s grandmother does. She’s not happy.”

  “I’ll deal with her later,” I said.

  “Are you sure you don’t need help? I don’t like the idea of you two out there alone, defenseless, with who knows what coming after you.”

  “Who’s defenseless?” Owen said indignantly.

  “Magic can’t hurt you, but I can think of a lot of other things that could.”

  “Still, the fewer people who might be affected around me, the fewer I’ll have to deal with. Or do you want me to have to hit you?”

  “Okay, then,” Rod said, “I’m here if you need me. We’ll try to keep everyone else off your backs—from as far away as possible.”

  Owen ended the call and said, “We should probably move on.”

  “Yeah. It would be too easy to trap us in here—just close in on either side.”

  However, neither of us moved. It was comfortable standing huddled together, and I felt safe in the enclosed environment, even if it did make a perfect trap. Outside, the world was a scary place, full of people who were out to get us—and this time, that wasn’t paranoia talking.

  “So, maybe we should check to see which side is safest for leaving,” Owen said after a while.

  “If you insist,” I said, forcing myself to pull away from him, and then instantly missing his warmth.

  “You check that end, I’ll check this end.” He grinned. “Maybe you could consider all this part of your security job audition for Sam.”

  I reluctantly headed to the opposite end of the tunnel from Owen. I didn’t like splitting up like that, even if I thought it was probably a good idea. I flattened myself against the tunnel’s wall and peered out from behind the bridge’s decorative edging. All I saw was a dim darkness. It wasn’t pitch black, thanks to the lights from the city around us and the lampposts that lined the footpath, more of a dark twilight. I thought I heard faint footsteps on the road above, and I held my breath to listen, but they grew fainter until I could no longer hear them. I didn’t hear anything else, other than distant city sounds, and I didn’t detect any motion, either on the ground or in the air.

  I turned back to look at Owen’s end of the tunnel. He was doing the same thing I’d done, hovering at the edge of the tunnel to watch and listen. I could only see him in silhouette, but I thought he turned back to look at me. I gave him a thumbs-up sign, holding my arm away from my body so he might be able to see it. I waited for a similar signal from him. Instead, he jumped, and then I heard his footfalls echoing through the tunnel as he ran toward me.

  Apparently, the coast wasn’t clear on that side.

  Obeying his directive to focus first on protecting the brooch, I ran out of the tunnel. He was faster than I was, so I figured he’d catch up soon enough, and I didn’t want to risk being trapped.

  After all our earlier running around, I didn’t know where I was in the park or where I should go, so I stuck to the path for the time being. Owen caught up with me pretty quickly, and I reached out to catch his hand. “The elves,” he panted. “They must have sensed the Knot and found us.”

  I risked a glance over my shoulder, but didn’t see anything coming up behind us. I also didn’t hear footsteps. That made it hard for me to force myself to run all-out, since I was still winded from the last footrace. The next time I looked behind us, I recognized Lyle’s upturned collar as he raced toward us. He ran like a gazelle, and I wasn’t sure his feet even touched the earth. No wonder I hadn’t heard footsteps.

  That gave me plenty of incentive to put on a burst of speed, although I suspected it would be fruitless. Owen had been holding back to keep pace with me, so he matched my speed. We were so busy running from Lyle that we nearly ran head-on into Sylvester, who seemed to come out of nowhere to block the path. We probably left skid marks as we stopped abruptly and turned to the side. The sides were also blocked, with Earl standing on one side of the path and another elf blocking the other way. Lyle then came up behind us, blocking our retreat in that direction. We were surrounded.

  “You have my brooch,” Sylvester said. “Hand it over!”

  Owen regarded Sylvester calmly, acting as though he’d just run into him while out in the park and completely ignoring the fact that we were surrounded by elves. “But, see, your brooch got all mixed up with our stone,” he responded. “So we’re just going to get our stone out of the brooch, and then you can have your brooch. That is, if it survives.”

  “Don’t get insolent with me, boy,” Sylvester snarled. “I haven’t forgiven you for knocking me out earlier.”

  “I wasn’t trying to knock you out. You got in my way, and even if I hadn’t knocked you out, you wouldn’t have been able to take the brooch. Don’t you know how the Knot works?”

  “Hand over the brooch!” Sylvester sputtered. He was deeply under the influence of the Eye, and I doubted he’d listen to reason. Even in the darkness, I could see his eyes glittering with need.

  I instinctively flinched, but Owen stood firm. “If you want it, come and take it,” he said. “I don’t recall that you were very successful in your previous at
tempts.”

  I wasn’t sure what Owen thought would happen when Sylvester called his bluff. The Knot wouldn’t protect me the way it had protected Mimi. I turned to Earl, who stood his ground while fidgeting uncomfortably. I gave him my best pleading look, but I didn’t expect much, even if he really was on our side. If he helped us, he’d blow his cover.

  So far, Owen’s bluff was working. Sylvester held back, watching us, unable to tell which of us had the brooch. His eyes shifted back and forth between us as he tried to decide who would be the most likely keeper of the brooch. Owen oh-so-casually put his hand in his pocket, as if to protect something valuable, and then Sylvester made his move.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sylvester rushed at Owen, who stepped forward to meet his attack, catching him off-guard and grabbing his arm to use Sylvester’s own momentum against him. The Elf Lord went flying, landing face-first on the path. The other elves hesitated, torn between keeping their positions and moving to help their leader. We darted through the opening Sylvester left.

  Sylvester shouted, “Get them! Get the brooch!” and soon the other elves were after us. I didn’t see how we’d avoid capture for very long. They could outrun us, they had magic, and they had us outnumbered.

  The elves had reached us and one even had a grip on my arm when a noise in the bushes beside the path startled me. I thought at first it was just some animal, but then something sprang out of the bushes onto the path with a bloodcurdling war cry. When it went on to shout, “Sneaky, greedy, cheap elves!” I knew it had to be Thor. I wasn’t sure, though, if he was attacking the elves or coming after the brooch. I jumped out of the way, just in case, and he ran past me into the group of elves. He swung his tiny battleaxe with a vengeance, but it didn’t seem like he actually hit anything. The elves jumped nimbly out of the way before he could hit them, and then it took him a while to recover after the momentum from each blow swung him around in a circle.

  Something dark came out of the sky, and I dove for the nearest bush. After so many attacks by the antique zombie gargoyles, I wasn’t taking any chances. This one must have been one of ours, though, because it went for the elves. In the darkness, it was difficult to follow the fight. All I could see was a swarm of shadows. After taking down Sylvester, Owen guarded me, but at the moment, everyone was more focused on fighting each other than on going after the brooch. In fact, I wasn’t sure they’d yet figured out which one of us actually had the brooch, only that it was in the vicinity.

  The sound of heavy breathing nearby jolted me out of my hiding place. “It’s here, it’s here, it’s here,” Sylvester muttered, sounding more and more unhinged. He pounced on the spot where I’d been just a second earlier. At that sound, Owen whirled away from watching the fight to pull me to my feet and away from the bush. Sylvester still came after me, his hands stretched out ahead of him and his fingers bent into claws. “It’s mine,” he rasped.

  “Back off, buddy!” I ordered, on the off chance that I could use the Eye on other people even if it didn’t affect me. It didn’t work, or else Sylvester was too far gone under the power of the Eye itself to fall under the sway of the Eye’s holder. He kept advancing, and when Owen and I fled from him, we nearly bumped into Lyle.

  There was a loud popping sound, and I felt magic nearby as Sylvester suddenly swayed, then collapsed. Rod stood behind him. “Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “I was trying to remember a spell that might work on an elf. Now, come on, we need to get out of here.”

  We evaded Lyle, only to find ourselves facing Earl. Rod flexed his wrists, preparing to fight, but then Earl grinned and joined us, shouting over his shoulder, “Help! I’m being kidnapped!”

  “Are you trying to make them come after us?” I asked him.

  “Do you really think they’d come to rescue me?” he replied without breaking stride. “I was just coming up with an excuse to leave.”

  We followed Rod into a rough, rocky, hilly area that felt like it was in the middle of the wilderness. I could still see the city skyline, so I knew we hadn’t somehow teleported out of the park without me noticing. We stopped in a secluded area surrounded by trees. There were some large rocks, just the right size to sit on, and I availed myself of one of them because I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me up any longer.

  “I thought I said we didn’t need help,” Owen said, facing Rod.

  “Yeah, but what I saw was you two with a bunch of elves on your tails. Admit it, you need us. You won’t last another five minutes without magical support, let alone an hour or more.”

  “But who’s going to help us against all of you?” Owen asked, his voice soft and solemn.

  “Thor’s having too much fun fighting elves to remember to come after the brooch, Earl just wants to keep it away from Sylvester, and you can tranquilize me if you have to. Remember, I came on this jaunt with that understanding.”

  We went on the alert when we heard a slight crunching sound, like footsteps on the rocky ground. “I’ve set some wards that may confuse them for a moment,” Granny’s voice said as she entered our hideout.

  “Good thinking,” Rod said.

  Then I yelped as the end of her cane poked into my shoulder. “And as for you, young lady, I told you I wasn’t letting you out of my sight, and there you went, rushing off on your own and getting yourself into trouble.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I protested. “As soon as I got the brooch, I had to get out of there. If I’d gone back to get you I’d have been in even worse trouble.”

  “And obviously you avoided all trouble by leaving on your own,” she said, and I could hear the smirk in her voice even if I couldn’t see it in the darkness.

  Owen sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “The guests were already arriving, and we had a close call with a couple of them,” he said. “I’m not sure what we’d have done if we’d had to face the guests, the puritans, the gargoyles, the elves, Thor, and Mimi, all at the same time. You held back some of them, so you were helping even if you weren’t with us.”

  That mollified her somewhat. She still made a loud “Hmmmph” sound, but she dropped the argument and quit poking me with her cane.

  After a few minutes of rest, I asked, “Will Thor be okay? It’s just him against all those elves.”

  “And Sam,” Rod reminded me. “Sam won’t let him do anything too stupid, and we need Thor to keep the elves off us. They and the puritans are our biggest dangers. The power-broker types will only be strangely compelled. They won’t actively seek it.”

  “How are you holding up?” Owen asked him. “Will I need the dart anytime soon?”

  “I won’t lie to you and say that I don’t want that thing, but I can fight it. I’m getting some pretty vivid mental images of what I could do if I had it, and I think it might be whispering to me.”

  “Ew!” I said with a wince, then asked, “What’s it saying?”

  “It’s hard to describe. Picture that little cartoon devil that sits on your shoulder. It’s like that, not so much words as ideas, playing to all my deepest desires.”

  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t share any details,” Owen said, and I felt him shudder. “I heard way too much about your deepest desires when we were in high school.”

  “Not those deepest desires. Well, okay, maybe a few, but only because power does tend to draw beautiful women. I have to admit, it paints a really pretty mental picture.”

  “It whispers to me, too, but I am choosing not to listen.” Earl said. “I am focused on my aim to keep Sylvester from having it.”

  “And I already told you I don’t care much for that kind of power,” Granny said. “I’ve got a mission of my own.”

  “Do you think this is the danger you predicted?” I asked. “Me in possession of this horrible thing that draws people to it and makes them thirst for power, but not getting the magical protection it gives other people?”

  “No, don’t think so.”

  “There’s something worse
than this?” I turned to Owen. “How much longer should we have to wait?”

  Owen checked the luminous dial of his watch. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it hasn’t been that long. We still have almost an hour, and that was only an estimate.”

  “Then how long do you think we can hole up here before someone finds us?”

  “That’ll depend …” Rod started to say before a soft rustling sound in the grass distracted him. The sound grew louder, and soon a faint glow spread out on the ground around the rock where Owen and I sat. I pulled my legs up and then climbed to stand on the rock. Owen joined me, his arm securely around me as we watched the glow build. Rod and Earl jumped onto nearby rocks, but Granny stood her ground. Oddly, the glow kept a safe distance from her.

  “What kind of spell is this?” I asked frantically as the glow surrounded our rock.

  “I don’t know!” Owen said. “I don’t recognize it.”

  “A seeking spell, maybe?” Rod asked. “Was there anything like it in your medieval book?”

  “No, nothing like this. I don’t think it’s the puritans trying to find the brooch.”

  “It’s not a spell,” Granny said.

  Now I could see that the glow wasn’t an unbroken mass. It was made up of lots of tiny little lights, and each of those little lights was a creature. I’d seen beings like this, back home, when we’d enlisted the local magical folk to help us fight the bad guys. They were the nature spirits, what my grandmother called the wee folk, but I hadn’t realized there were any in New York. Yet, here they were.

  And they were all kneeling at the base of my rock.

  A whispering sound rose into the air, like the sound a soft breeze makes when it blows through pine trees. After listening for a while, I was able to discern words. “Hail to thee, our queen!” they said over and over again as they bowed.

  “You’ve got a fan club,” Rod quipped.

  “They must have been drawn by the Eye,” Owen said, more seriously. “It seems to be an instinctive response. Small creatures like this can’t help but respond to power.”