No Quest for the Wicked

by Shanna Swendson

  “Will they try to take it away from me?” I asked, my flesh crawling as I imagined these things swarming over me to get to the brooch in my pocket. I thought that might be even more unpleasant than being tackled by Mimi.

  “I don’t think so,” Owen said. “They’re probably just basking in the proximity of the great power.”

  “It’s still freaky,” I said. “You’re sure they’re not dangerous?”

  “Well, there is the possibility that they may draw the attention of other magical things,” Owen said. “They’ve pretty much created a big, glowing ‘Hey, over here!’ sign that’s visible from the air.”

  I instinctively looked up for signs of the zombie gargoyles. “Would it be rude to make them go away?”

  “Try it. They think you’re their queen.”

  “But the brooch doesn’t work for me,” I protested.

  “Still, try it.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Rod added. “I’m torn between trying to take the brooch away from you and worshiping you, myself.”

  I whirled to him, waving my fist. I would have lost my balance on the rock if Owen hadn’t steadied me. “Don’t even think about it!”

  “And now I no longer want to worship you. See, it works! Now, try it on them.”

  “Okay, then,” I muttered as I thought of what to say. I’d never been good at speeches. “Um, thank you all for coming,” I said. “It’s very kind of you. But you don’t need to worship me. You can run along now.”

  Nothing happened. They just kept up that whispering and glowing. I never thought I’d be irritated with being worshipped.

  “You don’t have to be nice to them,” Owen said. “They think you’re their queen. Queens aren’t nice. Pretend you’re Mimi.”

  “If I do that, they’ll shoot me with their tiny bows and arrows.”

  “No, they won’t. Remember, you’re their queen. You have power over them.”

  “Okay, then. Your homage is noted,” I said as pompously as I could while keeping a straight face. “Now, be gone! Leave me!” That wasn’t any more effective. I turned to Owen. “Maybe I should give you the brooch and let you try.”

  He flinched. “I don’t want to touch that thing.”

  “It can’t be any more dangerous for you than it is for me.” I studied him for a moment, trying to read what I could see of his face in the eerie glow of all the little magical creatures on the ground. “Or are you feeling something from it? I know you want your powers back, but this would be really bad timing.”

  “No, but if I ever even act like I want the Eye, with or without powers, there will be plenty of people who think I’m trying to take over the world.”

  I gestured around us. “There’s nobody here but us!”

  “That we know of. I’m pretty sure I’m being watched, all the time, by officials and by other people, and the moment I show any sign of doing anything even remotely suspicious, they’ll probably just shoot me without asking questions.”

  “You’re being paranoid.”

  “Not really,” Rod said. “He is being watched.”

  “Then if they won’t listen to me, what do we do? If anyone’s searching for us by air, they’ll have found us by now.”

  Granny banged her cane on the ground and shouted, “Oh, get out of here! Shoo!” The glow receded rapidly, flowing away from us until there was no sign it had ever been there. When the rest of us turned to look at Granny, she shrugged and said, “It’s all in the tone of voice. I deal with these folk all the time, though yours aren’t as sophisticated as the ones we’ve got back home. Ours would have argued with me for a while or demanded a gift instead of just leaving.”

  I laughed. “You know, that may be the first time someone called something from a small Texas town more sophisticated—” I broke off as something came at me out of the sky, knocking me off the rock. I hit the ground hard, landing on the brooch, and that caused such a sharp pain that I cried out. The fall had knocked the wind out of me, though, so my cry came out as a mere gasp.

  I was so dazed that I only got a vague sense of the others running around and shouting. I felt the ground shake slightly and heard a loud thud as something hit the ground hard, as though from a great height, nearby.

  Then someone took me by the shoulders and shouted my name. I started to fight off my assailant, then realized it was Owen. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I landed on the brooch,” I said, wincing and shifting my weight so the brooch wasn’t pressed against my hip. “I have a feeling I’ll have a very interesting bruise in the morning.”

  He chuckled and started to help me to my feet, but then Rod shouted, “Incoming! They didn’t just send the one.”

  “I hate these things,” I muttered into Owen’s shoulder as he pressed me back into the ground, sheltering me from the attacking zombie gargoyles.

  “You two find cover,” Rod ordered. “We’ll deal with them.”

  We moved in a crouch toward a cluster of trees, weaving our way across the clearing like we were crossing a battlefield. I had the strangest feeling that we were being followed. When I turned to look, I saw that Rod was right behind us.

  “Rod!” I shouted. “You’re supposed to be fighting them, not following us!”

  He froze, then shook his head. “Sorry! Fighting, yeah, that’s it.” Without another word, he turned and ran back to where Granny and Earl were fending off the attacking gargoyles.

  “That’s not a good sign,” Owen said softly before leading me to an entirely different group of trees.

  “Maybe we should take this chance to go off on our own again,” I suggested.

  It was a while before he answered, so I knew he was thinking about it. “No,” he said eventually. “We’d be sitting ducks without their help. We shouldn’t get rid of them until we know they’re a danger.”

  “Rod was just breathing down our necks and reaching for the brooch,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but he snapped out of it as soon as you said something. It’s when he doesn’t snap out of it that I’ll be worried. Do you still have the dart?”

  I reached for my purse and then had a moment of panic when I didn’t find it. “I think my purse is back at the rocks.”

  “Then that settles it, we can’t just sneak away. We’ll have to trust Rod. I don’t think your grandmother will let him harm you.”

  The others were winning the battle against the zombie gargoyles, turning them back into stone—again. Soon, several more “boulders” decorated the landscape. When nothing else came out of the sky, Owen and I rejoined the others.

  I kicked one of the de-animated gargoyles and said, “I wonder if smashing them thoroughly would keep them from being brought back to life yet again.”

  “Unfortunately, I left my sledgehammer in my office,” Rod said.

  “And the gnome is still gone,” Earl added.

  “I don’t think his tiny battleaxe would do much for breaking rocks,” I said.

  “I was thinking about his head. I’ve heard gnomes’ heads are made of rocks.”

  “Earl, be nice,” Granny scolded. Then she pointed her cane at one of the fallen gargoyles, blue flame shot out of it, and the gargoyle shattered into mossy little bits. “Who needs a sledgehammer?” she asked. “And you call yourselves wizards. Hmph.”

  “I call myself an elf,” Earl said, “but point taken.”

  Rod blasted a gargoyle, but before they could get to another one, I called out, “Hey, wait a second—if those wee ones were like an arrow saying ‘Magic Brooch Here!’ then what do you think all these pyrotechnics are?”

  Rod said, “We’ll finish them off, then hurry out of here.”

  While they blew apart the remaining gargoyle corpses—with enough glee that I suspected they were working off all the pent-up urges brought on by proximity to the brooch—I found my purse and made sure the tranquilizer dart was still there. Then we headed deeper into the Ramble part of Central Park.

  I could get lost in the Ram
ble on a sunny day. The paths twisted around themselves enough that you didn’t know where in the park you’d eventually come out. At night, in the dark, it was even easier to get lost. Fortunately, that was what we wanted. If even we didn’t know where we were, we’d probably be harder to find. I wasn’t sure how Granny managed, since some of the hills got pretty steep and the footing wasn’t always solid. There were a couple of times I’d have fallen if Owen hadn’t steadied me. When I looked back to see how Granny was faring, I saw that Rod and Earl were practically carrying her between them.

  We moved briskly at first until we were well away from our previous hideout, then we slowed our pace. It wouldn’t do to wear ourselves out. We finally found another relatively sheltered spot and stopped to rest.

  “I wonder how long we’ll be able to hold out here,” I said, leaning my head on Owen’s shoulder.

  There was a noise like a herd of elephants tromping up the hill toward us, and Owen said, “Not much longer, I’d guess.” He was already up and pulling me to my feet.

  But it was only Thor, his battleaxe gleaming in the moonlight. I was relieved to see that it wasn’t coated with blood—and then I wondered what that meant about the outcome of his battle. “Where are the elves?” Owen asked him as I sat down again.

  “I have subdued them,” Thor said proudly. “They shouldn’t bother you again for a while.” He patted his jacket pocket, which jingled. “And I have secured payment for our work. I had to go through all their pockets to get enough, and I may have to go back for another payment later if their watches don’t appraise for what I expect, but for now, the elves’ debt to us is cleared.” He gave a formal little bow to Earl. “And you, good sir, are no longer my opponent.”

  “I wasn’t the one who owed you money,” Earl said. He hesitated, then added, “Sylvester didn’t suspect anything about me, did he?”

  “I don’t think he noticed you were gone.”

  “What about Sam?” Owen asked.

  “The gargoyle said he would keep an eye on things from the air and alert you to any potential problems.”

  “He didn’t warn us about the zombie gargoyle attack,” I said as a sick feeling developed in my stomach. “Do you think he’s okay?”

  Owen got out his phone and hit the speed dial key, then gave an audible sigh of relief when Sam answered. He updated Sam, put his phone back in his pocket, then reported, “There’s a commotion at the museum. He thinks he saw Mimi running away. He tried to follow, but lost her in the park.”

  I jumped to my feet. “Mimi’s on the loose? Then we’d better go. I’ve seen what this thing does to people who’ve had it only a little while. She was carrying it around all evening. She’ll kill me if she catches me.”

  But she’d have had to get in line. Suddenly it seemed as though the entire forest around us had come to life, and this time it wasn’t tiny little people. These were full-size, and they were closing in on us.

  I knew there were regular fairies who hung out in the park, as well as gnomes and other magical creatures. There was even the occasional enchanted prince turned into a frog—Gemma was currently dating one of them. I just hadn’t ever run into so many of them, all at once, or with such a sense of hostility about them.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Earl said softly, and then he started singing. There was answering elfsong from within the circle, and the sense of hostility faded.

  “Don’t you work for the Elf Lord?” a voice asked.

  “I work for the free elves, but that work takes me into the Elf Lord’s court,” Earl replied.

  “You have the Knot in your possession,” another voice from the circle said. “As well as something more.”

  “We are guardians of the Knot and must keep it safe,” Earl said. More softly, he said to our little group, “We’d better get out of the park as soon as possible because these people know what the brooch is and what they could do with it.”

  “But Mimi’s coming!” I hissed.

  “Mimi doesn’t have magical powers.” Raising his voice again, he said, “Now we must take our leave.” He began walking forward, motioning us to go with him. The whole way, he hummed under his breath. There were answering hums as the circle parted to allow us to leave. They didn’t try to stop us, but they did fall into step behind us, drawn inexorably to the brooch.

  “They’re still there, Earl,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, and that’s why I said we have to get out of the park. I don’t think they’ll follow us into the city.”

  “But the power-hungry people are in the city!” I protested.

  “They don’t have magic. Trust me, you don’t want these people coming after you.”

  “I’m immune to magic.”

  “But they may be able to channel the brooch just from being near you, the way Granny did.”

  “I bet I could get rid of them,” Granny muttered.

  “Please don’t, Granny,” Earl said, a pleading tone in his voice. “Even as powerful as you are, you couldn’t take on all of them at once.”

  We finally came out of the lower end of the Ramble, onto Bow Bridge. As I recalled, it was cast iron. “Isn’t iron supposed to be bad for fairies?” I asked.

  “That’s just folklore, stories people tell to make themselves feel safe,” Earl said. He walked easily across the bridge, and so did the weird procession following us. We were heading into a more civilized part of the park, but I didn’t know how civilized things would have to get before we lost our entourage.

  Once we were across the bridge, we followed the path as it skirted the edge of the lake. It came out at Bethesda Terrace, and then we climbed the stairs to the street. We’d lost a few of our followers, but there were still enough to make the back of my neck twitch. Even though I couldn’t draw power from it the way Mimi had, I put my hand in my pocket to make sure the brooch was still secure.

  I was so worried about what was behind us that it took me by complete surprise when something jumped out in front of us, shouting, “I want it now!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  At first I thought it was yet another one of the park’s wild inhabitants. The figure that jumped out at us was dirty and disheveled, wearing ragged clothes covered in leaves, and it waved a small tree branch over its head. In fact, it looked wilder than any of the beings who’d followed me through the park. Then I realized it was Sylvester.

  His expensive suit hung in rags and his formerly perfectly coiffed hair stuck out in every direction, with twigs and leaves tangled in it. If he’d been shorter and wearing green, he’d have looked like some of the less-sanitized drawings I’d seen of Peter Pan.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Earl slipping into the throng of park denizens, probably so his supposed boss didn’t catch him hanging out with the enemy. I didn’t think he was in too much trouble, though, because Sylvester was too far gone to notice anything but the brooch and anything that stood between him and the brooch.

  The closer he came to us, the madder he looked. He was breathing heavily, sounding like a bull gearing up to charge. “Mine! It’s mine! And you’ve got it!” he snarled. He advanced slowly, but then, all of a sudden, he ran at us, waving his tree branch like a club. Rod stepped out in front of him and hit him with a spell that left the air feeling charged with magic, but it didn’t slow Sylvester down at all.

  Owen caught my arm and we jumped out of the way, but no matter how we dodged, Sylvester kept up with us. The whole time, he made a musical keening sound in the back of his throat. It was part rage, part yearning, part mourning, and entirely creepy. I’d heard music that I thought ought to be classified as a weapon, but the elves really had music in their arsenal. The noise grew even worse as some of the park denizens took up his cry and added their keening to his.

  Then there was a thud and a cry of pain, and I looked back to see Sylvester lying full-length on the ground and Granny standing nearby, twirling her cane like a victorious gunfighter twirling his six-shooter. Rod rushed over and ki
cked Sylvester’s branch out of reach, then Granny gave Sylvester a good whack on the back of the head with her cane.

  Only when it appeared that the Elf Lord was completely unconscious did Earl emerge from his hiding place among the park denizens. “He’s really taking this seriously, huh?” he said, kicking his boss’s leg.

  “He must have been around the Eye for a while between the time he found it and the time he sent it to the gnomes to be merged with the Knot,” Owen said. “It’s infected him. I’m not sure he’ll ever be truly happy again without it.”

  “I wonder if he’s got some residual protection from having owned the Knot,” Rod said. “That spell should have dropped him. It did drop him when I used it on him earlier, but this time it didn’t even slow him down.”

  “We’d better split before he wakes up,” I said. We headed out, our strange retinue following us. They kept a respectful distance from me, but I still worried that one of them would pull a Sylvester and go mad trying to get the brooch.

  As a result, I probably overreacted when I felt someone reaching for my right pocket. I kicked out while throwing an elbow, then cringed when I recognized Rod’s voice, sounding strained with pain, saying, “Sorry! Don’t know what came over me.”

  “Yes, you do,” Owen said mildly.

  “It told me to take it,” Rod said. “It kept yelling at me in my head, until I had to do it.”

  Owen moved around me to protect my right side. “Now you’ll have to get through me,” he warned his friend.

  “That may not stop me,” Rod admitted.

  “Then I’ll try not to break any bones.”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  “But try to pull yourself together, okay? We need your help, but we don’t need another liability.”

  To emphasize Owen’s point, Granny gave Rod a light whack across the legs with her cane. “You can focus better than that,” she scolded. “Ignore the brooch. You don’t strike me as the kind of young man who’d take orders from jewelry. Show some backbone!” She punctuated her pep talk with yet another tap from her cane.