Trefoil

by M.C. Moore

  Chapter 20…

  They got everyone into their appropriate cars with no problems. New Yorkers were good at ignoring what was going on around them, so no one actually asked about the passed out girl Jeff and Bowen were carrying.

  Meckenzie, Isabel and Bowen hopped into their limo and headed toward the Thai restaurant where Meckenzie had left Ty. Isabel and Bowen sat staring at each other in silence. Meckenzie could only imagine what had happened in the past to cause this reaction in Isabel. Isabel always so calm and collected seemed to be in a state of panic around Bowen.

  No one said a word in the few minutes it had taken them to get to the restaurant. Once the car stopped, Meckenzie jumped out and headed inside the restaurant. To her disappointment, Ty was not seated at the table they had occupied.

  Meckenzie asked the hostess if she had remembered him leaving. The hostess said Ty had seemed drunk so they had called him a cab. The problem had been that he didn’t know where he was supposed to go so he sent the cab away. Ty had walked off. Meckenzie asked the hostess if she remembered in what direction Ty had gone. She pointed down the street back towards Meckenzie’s house.

  Meckenzie got back in the limo. She gave the limo driver directions to head back down west 72nd street and then to make a left onto Central Park West. Meckenzie asked him to take it slow so that they could look for missing member of their party.

  Meckenzie positioned herself on one side of the car, while Isabel took the other and looked for Ty. He was nowhere to be seen on 72nd street. They had traveled several blocks before Meckenzie spotted Ty walking next to the park. He was talking to himself and looked extremely agitated.

  “Ty.” Meckenzie shouted from the car. The driver pulled over and Meckenzie jumped out of the car. Bowen was close behind her and stepped between her and Ty to protect her if Ty decided to strike out.

  “Ty, we can help you. Get in the car.” Meckenzie pointed to the limo idling on the curb.

  “You did this to me.” Ty said as he took two very aggressive steps towards Meckenzie. “I can’t think straight. I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be doing but I do know that you are not here to help me.”

  “Isabel reverse the spell. He is never going to go with us if we don’t take away the confusion.”

  Isabel stepped out of the limo. Ty stepped back, preparing to make a run for it, when she quickly uttered the reversal spell.

  Ty stopped in his tracks. He shook his head trying to remove the fog. His hands dropped to his sides and his mood changed from defensive to aggressive. The anger that flashed in his eyes made Meckenzie take a step back. She couldn’t believe she was about to ask him to get into a car with her. Ty would probably rather kill her right on the sidewalk of Central Park then bargain with her. Meckenzie took in all the courage she could muster.

  “Ty get in the car. We need to discuss your brother and sister. We have a proposal for you.”

  Ty stood thinking about his next move. A hundred thoughts flashed through his eyes. He didn’t like not having the upper hand. He was trying to figure out how to reverse their roles.

  “Did they succeed in taking your brother and sister? We will never give them back. They may already be dead.” Ty said with a smile.

  “I told you we should have killed them in the park.” Bowen said with a hint of I told you so.

  “They don’t have Taggart and Kellan. Actually it is just the opposite.” Meckenzie pulled out her phone. Thankfully she had made the decision to take a picture of the snoozing pair in the back of the limo before they seperated. Kellan had volunteered to be in the photo, she wanted to make sure that Ty knew that she had not been bested by his siblings.

  “Here, take a look.” She held the phone out for Ty to see.

  His smile faltered for a moment, then it was back, bigger and scarier.

  “What do you want?” He said.

  “Get in the car. We aren’t going to hurt you. We just want to talk about how this is going to end.”

  “It will end when you are all dead.” Ty was not going to make this easy on Meckenzie. “They would never want me to bargain for their lives.”

  “Fine.” Meckenzie pulled her phone back and punched Taggart’s name on her contact list. She held the phone up to her ear and waited for the phone to ring. Meckenzie turned to Isabel while she waited for Taggart to answer.

  “You might as well confuse him again, or paralyze him. I don’t care.” When she said the last part, Taggart answered.

  “Who’s getting paralyzed?”

  “Ty is not cooperating. Activate plan b.” Meckenzie had not actually made a plan b. She thought this would be enough to get Ty to get into the car. It worked, because the moment she said it, he spoke up.

  “I’ll go with you.” Ty said.

  “Cancel plan b.” Meckenzie said into the phone.

  “That’s good, because I don’t know what plan b is.” Taggart was laughing. Meckenzie heard Kellan say “Plan B?” in the background.

  “I’ll call you back when we have come to a decision.” Meckenzie hung up the phone and followed Isabel and Ty into the car. Bowen walked up to the driver’s window and gave him some instructions.

  The car pulled off into the night again. Meckenzie knew that she would have to approach this conversation with arrogance. Ty was arrogant and would not agree to a deal if he didn’t think he was at least matched by Meckenzie.

  “We obviously have your brother and sister. It was among the suggestions that we kill them now and be done with it, but I don’t believe that will get us anywhere. I don’t know enough about our history to know why it is that you think we should be dead, or why Bowen here thinks you should be dead, but I do know that doing this here in the human world will be anything but messy. So I propose a truce until we graduate. Then we will be going to Aquanis and we can pick up this pointless battle.”

  “Why would I agree to that?” Ty snarled.

  “Because we beat you. We have your siblings and mine are still alive. If you try again, we will beat you again. I can’t promise the second time around that there will not be casualties involved. You have a much better chance in Aquanis of achieving whatever it is you wish to achieve, here we will outnumber you. Unless you are planning on marching an army through the portal and up to our front door and I’m not sure you want to mess with New York’s finest. They are still pretty jumpy after 9/11 and it wouldn’t take much to convince them that you are terrorists.”

  Meckenzie paused letting all the information sink in. She reached over to the mini fridge that was provided by the limo company and pulled out a bottle of water. Meckenzie offered drinks to the others. She decided she would sit back and let him stew for a few minutes. Meckenzie would let Ty come up with a counter offer.

  Ty sat staring at Meckenzie trying to figure out if she were bluffing. She took a particular interest in her finger nails and the wonderful color of polish that she had picked out to match her dress. Ty finally cleared his throat to speak.

  “We will leave. I cannot promise anything else. We have spies all over the city and it will take weeks maybe even months to disperse the information that you are off limits till graduation.”

  “Fine, but if someone attacks our home, I will not hesitate to let Bowen here kill them.” Meckenzie decided that was as good an offer as she could expect, so she picked up the phone and called Taggart again.

  He answered on the first ring, with a bit of anxiousness in his voice.

  “It’s about time.” He said. “We were just about to track you by your cell phone again.”

  “Meet us at Columbus Circle. We will exchange them there.” Meckenzie didn’t really want to discuss anything further so she hung up after she relayed the meeting point.

  When they met up at the Circle, everyone piled out of both limos. Meckenzie indicated to Ty to look inside the other limo and he would find his siblings.

&nbs
p; “Someone going to reverse the spell?” He asked as he stuck his head inside the car.

  “Isabel will reverse the spell after we are all in the car. You can use the car to take yourselves home. And don’t return to school. There is no reason for you to be there now.”

  Meckenzie and her siblings got into their waiting limo with Jeff. Bowen and Isabel waited till they were safely seated, then Isabel walked over to the other car to reverse the spell. Bowen was never more than a step behind her. When her work was done, they returned to the limo. Bowen gave the driver instructions again and slid into the seat beside Isabel.

  Meckenzie was happy they were headed home. Her father would be worried sick if they didn’t get there soon. She knew there was more business to discuss. They had to make a plan for training and they would have to figure out a way to convince their dad that they need to quit school to keep themselves safe. They were also going to need a few more people around the house for protection. Ty’s threat about the other spies coming after them, now that their identities were compromised, had her worried about her dad’s safety as well.

  “Bowen,” Meckenzie had an idea. “How would you like to come to work for us? We need protection and training. It seems you have some gifts and knowledge that would be helpful to us if we are going to make it through this.”

  Isabel appeared to almost fall out of her seat. She started to object, but Meckenzie held up her hand indicating it wasn’t up for discussion.

  Bowen laughed, “She really is just like her mother.”