“Here!” I shouted back to him. “I’m here, Donovan!”
Just then I heard a door slam somewhere ahead of me. I swallowed a groan of despair. Foster was familiar with this place and I wasn’t. I knew he must have made it to another door, one that might lead outside.
I felt my way along a stygian corridor. Gray light loomed ahead of me. I reached a corner and saw a narrow door standing open at the end of the hallway. As a car engine roared, I ran to it and found that it opened into a small parking lot at the back of the club. Foster was back in his station wagon and had it surging out of the parking lot onto a side street.
I knew there was no time to sing a spell. I stuck out my hand and tried to stop the station wagon by visualizing a giant hand dragging it to a halt.
The station wagon never slowed down as it rocketed around a corner. I didn’t know if my effort had proven ineffective or just missed somehow.
Either way, Foster – and the talisman – were gone again.
Two sets of swift footsteps came up behind me. I turned and in the pale glow from a distant streetlight saw Donovan and Malcolm.
“I’m s-sorry,” I told them. “He got away.”
Donovan turned to Malcolm and asked, “Do you have any idea where he’d go this time?”
Grimly, Malcolm shook his head. “No, not unless he goes back to the Shamrock. He might think it’s safe to barricade himself in the penthouse or something crazy like that.”
“Should we go b-back there?” I asked.
“I don’t know what else we can do,” Malcolm said. “Let’s go around the building. I don’t want to have to fight our way through those old geezers again.” As we started hurrying through the parking lot, he asked me, “Why in the world did you make them drunk, anyway?”
“I d-didn’t mean to,” I said. “I just wanted them to stop casting that spell. And it w-worked.”
“Yeah, but do any of your spells ever work the way you intend for them to?”
It made me mad when he asked that, but I couldn’t deny that my spells usually took on some unexpected wrinkle, especially when I cast them quickly when I was under stress. I had to remind myself that I had been a practicing witch for only a few weeks. Surely I would get better at it as time passed.
Surely.
Malcolm didn’t wait for an answer to what I considered a rather snide question. Instead he just led the way back around the building to the Jeep. By the time we reached it, we heard another car leaving from the lot behind the building.
Donovan said, “You realize we just unleashed a dozen drunk drivers on Las Vegas.”
That made me wince. I wished there had been time to reverse the effects of that spell. If those old warlocks hurt themselves or anybody else because they’d gotten behind the wheel that way, I knew I would never forgive myself.
Another worry occurred to me. Unless I got them together and reversed the spell, would it ever wear off? Or were they doomed to go through the rest of their lives snockered? I didn’t know who any of them were. I couldn’t hope to find them and fix things one by one.
Foster knew who they all were, I reminded myself. They were friends of his. Find Foster first, talk some sense into him, and then he could help me put things right.
Those thoughts were going through my head as I got into the Jeep along with Donovan and Malcolm. Malcolm drove even faster and more recklessly as he headed back to the Shamrock.
“If he’s not going there, do you know anywhere else he m-might be?” I asked over him the roar of the engine and the wind blowing through the open Jeep.
“Maybe the old mine up in the hills,” he said. “But I’ll bet he’s heading for the hotel.”
I hoped Malcolm was right. The sooner we caught up to Foster, the better.
I hadn’t forgotten about how Malcolm had kissed me, or how Donovan had reacted to seeing that, or the way Donovan had thrown a punch when Malcolm called me a tramp. All of those things were lurking in the back of my head as Malcolm drove toward the Shamrock as fast as he could. I remembered the connection I had felt with Eamon, and that same connection was there with Malcolm. But was it just because the two of them looked so much alike? Was it magic – Eamon’s magic – that had drawn us together? Could I trust that attraction any more than the one I still felt toward Donovan, whether I wanted to admit it or not?
Was anything real when it came to romance, or was it all just magic and not to be trusted?
Those thoughts sailed through my head. Stubbornly, I thrust them aside. No matter how attracted I was to Malcolm Flynn, I wasn’t in love with him. I had only known him for a few hours. And I didn’t want to be in love with Donovan Cole.
To hell with both of them, I told myself. The only thing that mattered now was getting that talisman and saving my father from the bleak fate to which I had doomed him.
I was relieved when the Shamrock came into view ahead of us. Now I could concentrate on that and it would be easier to forget my troubling feelings for Donovan and Malcolm.
As we approached the hotel and casino, you couldn’t tell by looking that there had been any trouble there earlier tonight, except for the fact that only a few of the neon tubes on the front of the building were lit up. Malcolm frowned, leaned forward to look up, and muttered, “What the hell happened to the signs? Must’ve been Arkady again!”
I could have told him that the Russian mobster hadn’t had anything to do with that damage. It was another example of one of my spells not doing exactly what I’d intended.
And it reminded me of the man who had tried twice today to kill me, too. That was another unsolved mystery, but with everything that had happened in the past couple of hours I just hadn’t had much time to think about it.
I didn’t say anything to Malcolm about the destroyed lights. I could explain all that to him later, once we’d settled the business about the falcon. Maybe he would have some idea what I needed to do about the mysterious assassin. He ought to be used to dealing with things like that, since he operated a casino in Las Vegas.
Malcolm pulled the Jeep into the parking lot and brought it to a stop in front of the entrance. One of the valets hurried out to take care of it.
When he saw me, he said, “Hey, it’s the lady who almost got run over!” Just my luck, he was one of the attendants who had been on duty earlier.
Malcolm turned to me and asked, “What’s he talking about?”
“I’ll explain it to you later,” I told him. “It doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re after.” I hoped that was true, but I didn’t know that for sure.
He looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, “A lot of things happen while you’re around, don’t they?”
“I promise you, up until a few weeks ago that wasn’t even remotely true!”
But since then, I thought, with the exceptions of a few lulls, my life had been more hectic than it had ever been. Crazier, too. I couldn’t explain that, unless fate had just been saving up all the lunacy during those long, dull years to dump on me at once.
Malcolm turned back to the attendant to ask, “Have you seen my uncle? Has he come in in the past few minutes?”
“No, sir, not as far as I know. That old woody of his is pretty distinctive, too. He could’ve gone on into the garage without me seeing him, though.”
Malcolm started to say something else, but just then a van roared into the parking lot, sideswiped a light pole, and skidded to a tire-smoking stop. The doors flew open, and old men began to pile out of it. I recognized them from the magic club.
The members of Foster’s coven, apparently still drunk, had followed us to the Shamrock and now charged toward us. I don’t know if they thought we had the talisman or that we had hurt Foster or what their motivation was, but from the looks of it we were about to be trampled by a horde of pickled geezer warlocks.
Chapter 21
I guess I’d just had enough. It was after midnight by this time, but to me it still felt like the same day that had started with the wo
uld-be killer showing up at my apartment. So much had happened since then I’d barely had time to stop and take a breath – physically, mentally, or emotionally – and I was tired of it.
I stepped forward, ignoring the hand Donovan raised to stop me. He must have thought I was going to cast another spell, and as we all knew, whenever I did that there was a chance it wouldn’t work out all that well.
But instead I stood my ground in front of the drunken warlocks and yelled, “Stop right there!”
They stumbled to a halt, their own angry shouts dying away.
“I’ve had it with you people,” I went on. “If you want the falcon, you can have it, but only after I’m through with it! I have to rescue my father, can’t you understand that?”
Well, of course they couldn’t, the small, rational part of my brain reminded me, because they didn’t know anything about it, and they were drunk, to boot. But at the moment I didn’t care.
“Aren, get down!”
I was so upset it took a fraction of a second for that shouted warning from Malcolm to penetrate my brain. When it did, I started to turn, but I was only halfway around when Malcolm tackled me and drove me off my feet. I heard a sharp crack and realized it was a gunshot.
So now somebody was shooting at me. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. Scared, yes, but not surprised.
It knocked the breath out of me when I hit the ground. The fact that Malcolm was on top of me made the impact even worse. Then I realized he was trying to shield me with his own body. I twisted my head around, trying to see who was shooting at me and looking for Donovan as well, to make sure he wasn’t hurt.
Not only was he not hurt, he was dealing out some punishment of his own. A beam of purple force lanced from his hand and crashed into a man who was trying to duck between cars along the front edge of the parking lot. That beam sent the man flying through the air. He landed in the cactus garden that bordered the parking lot along the street. He started screeching in pain, but he couldn’t move without hundreds of the sharp needles jabbing into him, so after yelling and thrashing for a few seconds he began whimpering and lay there trying not to move any more than he had to.
Malcolm said, “Aren, are you all right?”
“I…I will be,” I said, “if you’ll get off of me so I can breathe!”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I told him as he helped me up. “You s-saved my life.”
“I spotted that guy with the gun. Guess I just reacted instinctively.”
The valet attendant’s eyes were so wide he looked like a cartoon character. He struggled to say something and finally managed to ask, “Should I call the cops, boss?”
“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “The guy in the cactus is going to need some medical attention before they cart him off to jail, too.”
I was grateful to him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Donovan. I had seen the fury on his face when he lashed out at the assassin. I saw the fear in his eyes when he turned and came toward me. He gripped my upper arms and said, “Aren…?”
“I’m all right,” I told him. “I’m f-fine.”
He pulled me into his embrace, enfolding me in his arms and holding me tight against him. “Thank God,” he said in a husky whisper. “Thank God.”
The way he was hugging me felt so good I could have just stayed there like that for a long time. Donovan’s reaction, not just now but every time I had been in danger, told me that his feelings for me were genuine. It had taken a while for that to penetrate the anger I’d felt for him. Maybe the beginning of our relationship hadn’t been completely honest, I thought…
But that didn’t mean it couldn’t turn into something real.
Once again, other worries intruded on my brain and forced me to push those thoughts away. I stepped back a little and looked up at Donovan.
“We still have to find Foster and Cearul,” I said.
“I know.” He looked over at Malcolm. “We need to get up to your penthouse.”
He had his cell phone out. I assumed he’d been calling the police. He closed it now and nodded.
“Keep an eye on that guy until the cops get here,” he told the attendant. “It should only be a few minutes. I don’t think he’s going to try crawling out of that cactus, but if he does, stop him. But be careful, Arkady’s men are pros.”
“He’s not working for Arkady,” I said. “This is the third time today he’s tried to k-kill me, and Arkady’s never even heard of me.”
Malcolm stared at me for a moment, then shook his head.
“And to think that when I first saw you, I thought you were just a pretty little tourist I’d like to get to know better,” he said.
“You can forget about that,” Donovan said.
Malcolm shrugged as if to say we’d see about that.
The three of us turned toward the entrance, but the attendant stopped us by saying, “Boss, what about them?”
We looked back to see him pointing at the group of drunken warlocks. They were still standing there, some of them swaying slightly and looking confused.
Malcolm said, “Aren, can you do something about that? We can’t have them just standing around in the way.”
I nodded, thought for a second, and sang, “Put things right with these men I charmed, let them be sober and so unharmed.”
The confused expressions on their faces got even more pronounced then as they stood up straighter and looked around like they didn’t know how they had gotten here. They had been so drunk they probably didn’t.
Malcolm looked at the attendant, who was the only one out here besides the three of us, the group of warlocks, and the whimpering assassin in the cactus. All the guests on the parking lot had scattered as soon as the shot rang out.
“You didn’t see anything unusual the last few minutes, right?” Malcolm said to the young man.
The attendant swallowed and said, “Boss, I don’t know what I saw, but you can count on one thing…I’m going to be doing my best to forget it!”
“Good man,” Malcolm said as he clapped a hand on the attendant’s shoulder for a second. Then he looked at Donovan and me and added, “Let’s go find Foster.”
o0o
When we came into the penthouse, Malcolm called, “Foster? Foster, are you here?”
It didn’t take long to determine that he wasn’t. The penthouse was big, but we were able to search it quickly.
Besides, I didn’t feel any magic up here. As powerful as the mystical energy emanating from the talisman had been earlier at the magic club, I was sure I’d be able to sense it if it was anywhere in the vicinity.
My heart sank as I said, “He didn’t come b-back here after all.”
Donovan said, “Then he’s gone somewhere else, and wherever he is, we’ll find him.” He turned to Malcolm. “You said something about an old mine?”
“The Emerald Strike,” Malcolm said with a nod. “My great-grandfather’s mine. It’s in the hills west of here.”
“Do you think your uncle would have g-gone there?” I asked.
“I don’t know where else he would go if he wanted to hide out.”
Donovan said, “Do you know where it is?”
“Of course. I’ve been up there plenty of times. My father wanted to make sure I understood the family heritage.”
“Well, then, what are we waiting for?”
Malcolm nodded and said, “All right. One thing first, though.”
He went into his bedroom, and when he came out again a few minutes later, he had a gun in his hand. I didn’t know what kind it was, only that it was big and ugly.
Donovan knew more than I did about such things. He said, “Colt .45 automatic. That’s a gun with some stopping power.”
Malcolm nodded as he put the gun in a holster under his arm that I hadn’t seen until now because of his jacket. “Model 1911. My grandfather carried it in World War II. He served with Patton.”
I asked, “Why are you t-taking a gun with you? You’re not going to
shoot Foster.”
“Of course not. But those hills and mountains are pretty rugged. There are snakes and mountain lions and other varmints. It’s not good to go up there without some sort of protection.” He paused, then added dryly, “And not all of us can shoot lightning bolts out of our fingertips.”
“They’re not l-lightning bolts,” I said. “They’re – “
He held up a hand to stop me. “Let’s save the Witchcraft 101 lecture for some other time. Even if we leave now, it’s going to be dawn by the time we get there.”
“Then let’s get going,” Donovan said.
There was no question that we would take Malcolm’s Jeep. It would handle the rugged terrain much better than our rental car would. When we reached the parking lot, the warlocks were gone, along with the van they had come in. The police were there, though, and I saw the man who had taken a shot at me huddled in the back seat of one of the cruisers. The red and blue flashing lights gave him a garish look. He glanced over at me, and I saw pure hatred on his face. That emotion hadn’t been there when he broke into my apartment and I saw him for the first time. Then he had looked like a man who was just doing a job. But he had failed three times in his assignment, and now what he felt toward me was personal. That made me nervous, but there was nothing I could do about it at the moment.
Malcolm tried to steer us over to his Jeep without the police noticing us, but that didn’t work. One of the cops spotted us and called, “Mr. Flynn, wait a minute!”
It made sense that the police here in Las Vegas would know who he was. They were probably called here to the hotel and casino fairly often. As the officer came over to us, Malcolm said quietly to Donovan and me, “Let me handle this.”
That was exactly what I had every intention of doing.
The policeman said, “Mr. Flynn, we’re going to need a statement from you and the guests who were with you when the shooting took place.” He glanced at us. “Would this happen to be them?”
“Yes, but they had nothing to do with this,” Malcolm said. “Just a case of wrong place, wrong time. They happened to be talking to me when Arkady’s man took a shot at me.”
Misadventures of a Tongue-Tied Witch: Boxed Set Humorous Witch Series Page 29