Hexed in Show, page 25
But they fled. Each of the dozen goblins looked at me, recoiled, and climbed or jumped up the chain-link fence to hide under the leaves of the towering sunflower—even the one who had spoken to me earlier.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, holding the bag up. “This is for you. Won’t you talk to me again?”
They scrambled farther away. One by one, they moved behind leaves or flowers or jogged along the top of the fence. A few of them started to climb away into my garden on the other side, but something seemed to block them. They turned back, quivering like trapped animals, watching me with shining green eyes.
I looked at the bag. It was a duplicate of the trail mix I’d brought the first time. That wasn’t the problem.
I was the problem. Me or my magic.
Or… something or someone I’d encountered since then. Demon’s balls. In Elwin, it would be impossible to isolate the variables. I’d had breakfast at the restaurant, eating food that had been handled by several people. There had been the check, the table, the cutlery, the mug, the glass, the plates.
After, I’d taken the necklace from Clem, but I’d isolated it in a protective bag and stored it at the motel.
Where I’d met Lacoste… and had touched the broom he’d been using.
I just didn’t know which of those interactions had left me contaminated by something that terrified the goblins.
With a sigh, I turned and headed back to the parking lot. Because of the additional attendees, it took me a little longer to reach my garden plot than it had before. More witches were dressed up today. There were lots of fancy dresses, suits, costumes, makeup, and, of course, jewelry. Some were elegant, some were Goth, most were just eccentric.
When I got to my garden, Rupert jumped off his folding chair and shouted my name. “Where have you been?”
He still looked as if he hadn’t slept and was relying on external stimuli. Even his white nose hairs were standing to attention.
“Opening day is tomorrow,” I said. “I didn’t realize today would be important.”
“It’s previews! This is the true judging day. The judges make a show of looking at it as per the schedule, but this—this—is the real day. This is the real, real, real day.” His eyes stared unblinkingly at me.
Chapter
Forty-Nine
I was genuinely concerned for his health. “Rupert, I think you should sit down.” I gestured at the chair.
“No, that’s for you. Don’t worry about the civilians. They’re just here because admission is free today. Focus on the judges. You need to chat up the judges.” He looked at his watch, an old analog with a leather strap. “At least you got here for our official window. It starts at eleven. Goes until four. Then they let us rest until the opening tomorrow at nine.”
I hadn’t realized I’d be stuck in place all day. “I’m not sure I can stay the entire—”
“You must. That’s your chair,” he said again. “Mine is over there.” He pointed at another chair near the cooler and a table loaded with sliced fruit, cookies, bottled water, and cut flowers. There was a clipboard and pen for the curious to join a mailing list.
I hoped he didn’t think I was going to start a garden newsletter. It was hard enough for me to promote my bead jewelry.
He continued to insist I take the chair, so I sat. Most visitors were clustered in the metal gardens, but a few people had wandered over and were now looking with curiosity at the well.
One was a witch in her thirties carrying a baby in a sling. “Is that… wellspring water in there?” she asked me.
The possession of wellspring water was technically illegal, so I said, “It would spoil the enchantment to explain its mysteries.” The baby, finding me more interesting than the plants, stared at me with eyes almost as unblinking as Rupert’s.
“It’s cool,” the mom said, somewhat grudgingly. Both her ears were studded with stainless-steel piercings, and her nose and eyebrow held gold.
“Thanks. My designer, Rupert—”
She’d already moved on.
The next person to talk to me was a young man wearing a judge’s pin. His was a flat, donut-shaped piece of aluminum about palm-width. I’d learned that aluminum indicated his vote during the final tallies and counted for one point. A copper judge got two; a zinc judge got three; a gold, four; and platinum, five.
“Remarkable,” he said, stepping into the garden and wandering around for several minutes.
I got up and followed him. “Rupert Ray—see him over there?—he’s the designer.”
The judge glanced at him, nodded. “It’s remarkable.” He jotted a note on his tablet and wandered away.
Rupert was flushed and beaming but said nothing.
Two more judges visited; a copper and a gold. These were older witches, both women in their fifties. They expressed concern about the costs entailed in digging such a well but were clearly impressed. I tried to get Rupert involved in the conversation to explain the enchantments and accept his accolades, but he stayed back and just drank it in silently. I decided he was just too nervous to talk to anyone until the gold he coveted had been given to him.
As the hours went by, I began to feel as if I was failing the investigation by lounging under a warm sun, surrounded by flowers and friendly witches who offered a steady stream of compliments I didn’t deserve. Darius reassured me in a text that they preferred me to stay out of it. They had their story—Nerissa had tortured children, killed Percy to hide her crime, then committed suicide to escape justice—and there was no reason to complicate it with weird gnome anecdotes.
Around two, I overcame Rupert’s protests—it wouldn’t kill him to talk to the judges by himself for a while—and left to find a toilet. Then I went to the food truck for lunch.
It ended up taking almost an hour because the line was so long, but the first bite of my hot dog—witches were generally carnivorous—really hit the spot. I ate it while I walked and explored a few of the metal witch gardens. A crowd had formed ahead of me, blocking the path, so I suddenly turned around to walk the other direction.
Lacoste was ten steps behind me. A moment too late for me not to see him, he turned around and ducked into the crowd.
I finished the last bite of my hot dog, shaking my head. If he really was a secret agent with the Protectorate, they hadn’t trained him very well.
My phone vibrated. It was a text from Rupert, anxious to know where I was.
I’ll be there in five minutes, I replied.
Lacoste had been following me. Why else would a man who hated plants and fairies come to a flower show?
I hurried after him, using a stealth and tracking spell that he obviously hadn’t been taught. Within three minutes, I was trailing Lacoste as he walked past an “Energizing Fountain” made from vehicle parts. Twenty feet high, it contained reclaimed metals from cars, trucks, bicycles, and a single San Francisco municipal subway car standing on its tail. Water poured out of its windows and squirted from its sky-pointing headlights.
Perhaps thinking he could hide in the crowd that had stopped to gawk at it, Lacoste stopped and watched as well. Water sprites, drawn by the magical fountain, were swarming the heads of the gathered witches, not that they noticed.
Except for one. When a cloud of thumb-sized sprites encircled Lacoste’s head, he reached up a big hand and tried to swat them away. Like gnats, they weren’t deterred, and he finally ducked and hurried away.
I’d been right. Lacoste was demon marked. When Rupert texted me three more times in quick succession, begging me to return, I took pity and went back to my garden. I didn’t know Lacoste’s complete story, but he didn’t scare me anymore.
When I got to my plot, I took out my phone and texted Darius. I asked him to reach out to Holly and see if Lacoste really was working with her or if my guess was off base.
“There you are,” Rupert exclaimed, flushed and wild-eyed. “Two judges came by while you were gone. One was platinum. Platinum.”
I took the chair he held out for me. “Did they like it?”
“Of course they liked it. They loved it. They’d never seen such a thing. A subterranean installation at Elwin? Totally new. They were speechless.”
“There must be some old friends of yours here, right?” I looked at the men and women walking past; many looked about his age. “Have you had fun catching up? What do they think of it?”
He waved my words aside. “All that matters is what the judges think.” He looked at his watch. “Final two hours. This is make-or-break. Please don’t leave again.”
I sank into my chair with a sigh. The small talk was exhausting to me, and I felt like the real work, the important investigation, was elsewhere.
I managed to resist the urge to take out my phone and play a game or two. It had been four hours already of smiling and nodding, talking about back borders and water features, prehistoric redwood powers.
If my garden didn’t win a gold, I didn’t know if Rupert would ever recover. I’d never seen a witch so invested in a competition, and I’d gone to the top boarding schools on the West Coast. There had literally been murders done to get the top score on a test.
Maybe I was cynical, but I didn’t think what we said would make any difference. I expected the judges to give the top awards to their friends. It was that kind of community. That’s why I’d expected Rupert to mingle more, lean on his old connections.
More judges came by. More locals. More tourists. All were witches. Prompted by Rupert’s begging, I kept my phone in my pocket and talked, gestured, and evangelized about the wonders of earth magic until my throat hurt.
Finally, it was over. At four o’clock, I collapsed in my chair and vowed to never participate in the show again, no matter which ex-Protectorate agent associate of mine drove off a cliff.
I saw I’d received a text from Seth about an hour earlier.
Boarding the plane. Home tonight. Have a surprise for you, demon darling.
I stared at it, thrilled but frustrated. I tapped his number to talk to him, but he didn’t pick up.
Home tonight? Maybe I would be too if the Protectorate insisted on wrapping things up. Rupert could enjoy the show without me. It was his achievement, not mine.
Too many witches were nearby, so I didn’t leave Seth a voice message.
Tonight. He had a surprise—which, knowing him, was probably edible.
I couldn’t wait to hold him and be held. Tell him my stories and listen to his.
I sighed, realizing I was terribly thirsty and had been for a while. I looked over at the table, but all the snacks and bottled waters had been consumed. About an hour earlier, I’d heard from disgruntled attendees that the food truck had run out of everything and driven away.
I glanced under the table at Rupert’s cooler. He’d been pounding energy drinks all afternoon. Something like that, even if he’d spiked it with extra magical stimulants, was suddenly very appealing.
I watched Rupert nod silently to another judge, an old man in his seventies who was wearing the same style of cargo pants.
Something about Rupert wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just his unhealthy obsession with garden design. I realized I hadn’t seen him go near the cooler all day.
So why did he always have it around? Just what did he have in there?
“Rupert, do you have an extra one of those?” I pointed at the can in his hand and made a move toward the cooler.
He jumped up. “It’s empty. I’ll go get you something.”
“But the food truck has run out—”
Rupert strode away before I’d finished my sentence. The bounce in his step was that of a man fifty years younger.
My suspicion grew. It had been bothering me all afternoon that he hadn’t seemed to connect socially with any of the judges. He’d withdrawn to a chair in the back and left it to me. His nerves had only gotten worse as the hours went by.
What was his secret?
I got out of my chair and squatted down next to the cooler. It was just an ordinary, old-fashioned blue-and-white plastic cooler with a broken handle. With a magical metal locking mechanism, but I had enough power to break that.
Running my left thumb across my necklace, I reached out and touched the latch.
And all Shadow broke loose.
Chapter
Fifty
I was quite sure I hadn’t opened the cooler, but something burst out of it and caught me in a sphere of white, burning steam.
I was flung into the air like a pinwheel, my limbs flung out helplessly as I spun and spun.
Spinning too fast to see, I closed my eyes and tried not to vomit.
What had I triggered?
Who had I triggered?
I reached for my power, but there was nothing but steam, hot steam. Breathing became my only thought. Air in. Air out. Air in, please, give me air.
My feet were pulled downward, and then I was being spun like a top with my legs together and arms flying helplessly outward. I tried opening my eyes to see my assailant, gauge what I was up against, but the vertigo was too overwhelming. Everything was a sickening blur.
And then my clothes disappeared. Now the steam was burning my entire body. But worse was what was taken next.
My jewelry. All my bracelets, my rings, my strongest redwood-bead necklace. Even the tiny gold studs from my childhood that I still wore in my earlobes—I felt them pop out and fly away.
No! I tried to shout, but steam filled my mouth. I pulled my arms in to protect myself. There was magic inside me, the well of power I was born with, but it took calm and focus to access. I had neither at the moment.
The spinning slowed. I was falling. Feet first, arms overhead, like a child jumping off a diving board.
As I descended, the white steam became black. It was getting darker. I opened my eyes and looked up at the retreating circle of light.
My feet touched something cold and soft. It swallowed me to the knees.
Liquid. Water.
My body came to a stop, but my mind and stomach were still spinning, sickened by the journey.
I reached out to stop myself from falling over and felt damp, slimy bricks. I was in the bottom of the well.
I cursed. Cursed again. I wanted to cry. I’d been so easily fooled, so deftly deceived. And I didn’t even know by what or by whom.
I gazed up at the distant circle of light.
Something moved to block part of the light. Rupert’s voice trickled down.
“Hi, Alma,” he said, his words reaching me too clearly to be natural. “I’m really sorry about this, but you’ll be able to get out of there soon. You just have to do one thing.”
It was an absurd impulse, but I wrapped my arms over my chest for privacy. As if he could see me over a hundred feet down in the darkness. As if I’d care if the Shadowed stain of demon spit could.
I said nothing, however. Let him do all the talking. I wasn’t going to make it easier for him.
“Watch out,” he called. “I’m dropping something down to you now. Get ready. I don’t want it to hit you on the head.”
How considerate of him. I flattened my back against the slimy bricks and let the object ricochet off the walls and splash into the water.
I didn’t reach for it. It bobbed toward me and bumped against my shins.
Whatever it was, it seemed to have been surrounded in bubble wrap.
“Don’t worry, it’s not hexed,” Rupert said. “Nobody wants to hurt you. You just need to do one thing and then you can go.”
I still didn’t answer.
“I know you’re alive. I can hear you breathing. I’m attuned to the enchantment that made the well, so there’s no point in you trying to hide or play dead. I know you’re listening.”
Fine, so he knew. I kept my mouth clamped shut, but gingerly poked the floating package. It was about the size of a large baked potato.
“It’s a phone,” Rupert said. “You just have to make one phone call.”
My mind raced through the reasons Rupert might want me to make a phone call. To the judges? To Zoe Thornton, the billionaire’s widow?
“What do you want?” To test the enchantment, I didn’t bother to raise my voice.
“Great!” he exclaimed. “I’m glad you’re going to be reasonable. All you have to do is call a friend of yours. The number’s already plugged in. It’s the only one, actually. You can only call one number. That took a little mixing nonmag and real magic, but it works.”
I knew instantly there wasn’t any friend I would pull into whatever mess I’d literally fallen into. But I needed to understand what was happening.
“Which friend?” I asked. “Why?”
“I can’t explain why. Just call the Director. In San Francisco.”
“You want me to call Raynor?”
I could hear his soft chuckle. “You are friends with him.” His tone suggested he hadn’t completely believed it until now.
“What am I supposed to say to him?”
“Just tell him where you are,” Rupert said. “Tell him how you got there.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, you have to explain that he has to come personally to help get you out. That’s the only way. And he has to come before midnight.”
I pushed the floating phone away from me. “Why?”
“Otherwise, you die. I’m sorry about that, I really am. You seem very nice. But it’s the only way.”
The man was insane. As far as I knew, the package contained an empty tube of mascara. “Just how will I die? I want to make sure I understand.”
“The enchantment will end. Everything in the garden will disappear. The plants, the stones, the well itself. Everything. If you’re down there… I’m honestly not sure what will happen. You could be stuck in a magic limbo until your body gives out, or you could be crushed instantly—not sure.”
He wasn’t sure? “Isn’t this your enchantment?” I asked.
“Of course. Yes.” He sounded irritated. “Every stone, every plant, every drop of water was my idea.”
