A Witch's Halloween, page 11
I slid my hand across the table. “Can you help me find it? Because I don’t see where we fit.”
“You have my word.” He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to the center of my palm.
I blushed.
“Flowers.” Elron winked. “We are getting our rhododendron and sunflowers, right?”
“That much is settled. Everything else is still being debated.” His mom was still making comments about spider silk, which was never going to happen. My skin crawled just thinking about it.
We sat there and talked about what we wanted. It wasn’t perfect, but it helped. Elron took notes to give to Dorthea. He said it was time he was more active in the decisions. After weeks of arguing, I wasn’t going to say no to some help.
“Now,” Elron said. “What would we like to do for us?”
It had to be unique to the two of us. I didn’t share his passion for plants, especially not when they were prone to biting. He didn’t share my magical abilities. “What if we made a new magical plant? I’m sure I can get approval.”
He thought for a moment. “Could you get permission to release it into the wild?”
“Maybe. It depends on what we do and how it will affect the ecosystem.”
New magical flora was frowned upon. Which stopped only the ethical people. To be fair, there were good reasons. A while back, someone had made a tree whose pollen could sedate people even at very low quantities. The victims then slept for months.
Fey, elves, and witches had worked to eradicate the tree in the wild. Last I’d heard, the remaining samples were in a lab being studied to see if the tree could produce less potent pollen.
“The American Chestnut. It was the most common tree in this part of the country until it was devastated by a magic-infused fungus. Between the two of us, we could make a variant immune to the magic fungus.”
“Maybe. That’s been tried, and it didn’t work. The fungus adapted. That is the problem when magic gets involved like that.” I hated to ruin his idea. “We could try. You could experiment with it at work.”
He sighed. “I had not realized.”
“We’ll think of something.” I lifted one of his hands off the table and pressed a kiss to his knuckles.
The waiter chose that moment to show up with the check.
We paid and left. Elron wanted to get the plants into pots. I wanted them out of my car.
Besides, we weren’t going to solve the wedding problems in one day. Not with the way they seemed to breed when I wasn’t looking.
Maybe it was a family problem. Mom’s wedding hadn’t gone smoothly either.
“What about day lilies? Or hyacinthia?” Elron kept going. “Or even sunflowers?”
My phone rang, saving me from the monster of my own creation. “Oaks Consulting, Michelle speaking.”
“Hey,” Rodriguez said. “I hate to bother you, but I’m still dealing with the Boxoween, and I got a call about a plant attacking a kid nearby. Can you take a look?”
“Sure.”
I pulled over, got the address, explained the situation to Elron, and turned us around. We ended up in a neighborhood only a quarter of a mile from the Boxoween street. Rodriguez hadn’t been sure of the house number, so I slowed, giving each house a good look.
A few families had gone all out on their decorations. Most houses had kept it simple, a carved pumpkin by the door and token skeleton in the yard. None of them felt at all magical, which was a relief. I’d seen enough magical decorations to last a lifetime.
“Park,” Elron said. “I can feel the plant.”
I parked along the curb and followed him down the street. As I jogged, I summoned my wand and lowered my shields, letting my power fan out. Elron paused in front of a house with a skeletal unicorn in the yard. Someone had painted the horn bright pink.
My magic snagged on something. I probed it, but it slid away. Whatever it was, which might not be magical at all, was on the far side of the house. A six-foot-high fence blocked access to the back of the house.
“Around back.” Elron sprinted for the gate to the backyard.
A yowl cut through the quiet night, followed by a sharp scream.
I took off after Elron. That sounded like a child.
Elron jumped over the fence.
Not being an elf, I opened the gate and went through like a normal person.
A single light shone above the door on the back patio. A man lay on the ground, vines holding his arms to his body and his feet together. To the side, between a stone planter and a decorative bush, a little girl in a pink nightgown hid behind a black cat. She’d curled into a tight ball, her face hidden in her hands. The cat hissed and clawed at a green monster with dozens of vines extended from the compact green core. The plant jerked a vine back, only to reach for the child with another.
The cat lunged forward, claws ripping into the center knot of the plant. The monster plant lurched back, curling its vines protectively around its body.
“Sowil.” A shield encapsulated the child.
Elron grabbed the plant. It wrapped vines around his arm while others reached for his neck. “No.”
The vine froze.
The cat spun in my direction, looked at me with orange eyes, and nodded. It turned away and sprinted into the night.
A woman ran over, phone in her hand. “They’re here.” She dropped the phone and went to scoop up the child. Her hand glanced off the shield.
“Ma’am,” I said, approaching her cautiously. “I shielded the child to protect her. I’ll take the shield down, but talk to her. She’s been frightened.”
The woman nodded and started talking to the girl in a ragged but steady voice. “These nice people are going to take off the shield, and I’ll scoop you up. They’ll take care of Daddy, and then we can go inside.”
I removed the shield.
The little girl peeked through her arms. For a moment, she didn’t move, then she hurled herself at her mother.
With that situation in hand, I turned to the man. The vines unwound from him without any encouragement from me. It was nice to have an elf around.
“Sir, your wife has your daughter.” I helped him sit up.
He hardly looked at me. “What was that thing?”
“A plant that encountered some magic. My partner is an elf. We’ll remove it and ensure no others are on the property.” I glanced at Elron.
The plant had calmed and now draped itself across his shoulder, the long vines flowing down like a cloak. “I’ll check, but I do not feel anything.”
It took a few minutes to get the family settled. They said they weren’t injured, only frightened. Elron showed the family the plant in the light. The little girl even petted a leaf. Hopefully that was enough to prevent nightmares. Creeping Jenny plants were a popular ground cover, and usually no more harmful than an ordinary blade of grass. She didn’t need to go through life fearing them.
Elron was too pleased to have a new specimen for his greenhouse and said as much while settling the Creeping Jenny in the back with the rest of the plants. Elron drove us home so I could talk to Rodriguez. I warned him other plants could’ve walked away. We both hoped this was the only vine set on exploration.
At the Lodge, I escaped to my apartment. It could’ve been Elron or Landa or the Lodge, or even a mix of the three, but I enjoyed a quiet evening with my paperwork. With all the magic involved, I’d been worried the reports would take a long time, but I finished them in less than two hours and treated myself to a shower and bed.
It was perfect.
Until the clock struck midnight and my phone rang.
It took three tries for dispatch to get anything coherent out of me, but in my defense, I’d had two hours of sleep. Which was what I told them when they got testy. Apparently, it had taken four calls from people trapped in Halloween Essence, two police officers who couldn’t get into the shop, and two doors burning anyone who touched them to get the department to rouse me. Dispatch wasn’t happy that it would take me at least thirty minutes to get there.
I said that, but I was bouncing down the road ten minutes after the call. A light fog mitigated the benefit from the lack of traffic. Even so, I arrived well ahead of schedule. The address was in a previously trendy shopping area. A banner with Halloween Essence in spooky letters stretched above unit 113. A small cluster of cars sat in front of the shop, with two police cars at the curb. Their blue lights reflected off the windows and hung in the fog, casting an icy tone over the area.
I parked with the other cars and walked over to the building. The two officers were near the door, one watching it and the other facing the parking lot. I held up my ID and smiled politely. “Michelle Oaks, here to help with whatever magic is keeping you out of the building.”
The officer by the door turned around. The corners of his large eyes crinkled. “Michelle, good to see you.”
“Good to see you too, Kent. Wish it was under better circumstances.” I’d worked with the dark elf before. He was solid in an emergency and the perfect person to have my back at night. I recognized his partner too, though he had been less helpful last time our paths had crossed. “Officer Montoya.”
“Ms. Oaks.” He tipped his head.
“Dispatch was unclear about the problem.” I wanted this to be a quick case so I could get home and get to sleep.
Kent tipped his head toward the door. “At first, we could hear occasional screams. We tried both the front and back doors, but both of them are burning us. We haven’t heard a scream in twenty minutes.” He held out his hand with blisters across his fingers.
“I’ve got healing charms in the car.”
He nodded. “We had several calls from people trapped inside. They’re saying the store has come alive. It’s unclear if a person or spells are behind what’s going on. All phone communication went out for a few minutes. That’s when you were called. We’ve gotten on the phone with them one more time. They said they were safe, and the call ended.
“We have confirmed five people in the building. They have minor injuries: cuts, bruises, a sprained ankle. They don’t know of another person in the building. I think it feels like magic, but I can’t be sure. The department put Rodriguez on a no-call for the night after he worked thirty hours in two days.”
Lucky Rodriguez. He would be rested in the morning.
If this was simple, I might be able to finish it and get back to bed before my alarm. “Let me check for magic and get you a healing charm.”
I cracked open my shields. The shop lit up like a beacon. There was magic in there, all right. Thick swirls of opalescent black coated the building.
“Narzel.”
“What?” Officer Montoya asked.
Rather than answer, I extended a strand of magic and gently probed the building. It shoved my probe back, chasing it with a blast of anger and loss. “Blast.”
Kent grabbed Montoya’s arm and squeezed.
I ignored the two of them and went back to my car. I pocketed several healing charms of different strengths, including two minor ones for the officers. Before I walked back, I had to know what to say, and right now, I didn’t. The problem wasn’t magic.
Sure, the building was coated in magic, which I could fight, but it wouldn’t matter. It would keep regenerating itself, and this time, there wasn’t a core spell I could defuse. Not the way I had with the Boxoween.
I marched back over to the officers and handed them the charms. “It’s a curse.”
Kent’s eyes went wide.
Montoya just blinked.
“Maybe the store, maybe something inside the store, but there’s a curse.”
“Okay.” Montoya’s eyes darted between the store and me. “Can’t you remove the spells?”
“No.” I stared at the blackened windows. “To end the curse, I have to fix the shattered magic.”
Chapter Fourteen
There were three rules to fixing curses:
1. Don’t feed the magic.
2. Fix the broken spell.
3. Don’t become part of the curse.
* * *
Should be simple, right? Clear, easy to follow instructions, no risk of death or any other pesky problems.
“Fix the shattered magic? I don’t follow,” Montoya said.
“All curses are bound to a physical object. That object was under the influence of magic before the magic went wrong.” There were a lot of way for curses to form, which didn’t matter for Montoya but could make a big difference in a few minutes. “To fix the curse, I need to put the magic back to the way it was.”
My main worry was the type of curse. Some simply needed to be returned to a location or person, some needed a specific ritual to remove the magic, but others were more complex. Complex could mean anything from needing a multi-stage ritual with seven or thirteen witches to the broken magic literally stretching back in time.
“Sounds tricky,” Montoya said. “What are we going to be doing?”
I gave him my best polite but blank face. “Getting the hostages out, of course. I will manage the curse.”
He shifted his weight away from the building.
Kent’s hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. “We will do our part.”
“Great.” I summoned my wand, wrapped my hand in two layers of shields, and grabbed the door. The handle buzzed faintly but didn’t hurt me. I tugged the door open.
Bright florescent light poured out. The glass door hadn’t been dark from the curse but from black paper.
The store was quiet. Only swirls of magic moved. Every surface was covered with Halloween-themed items, from masks and costumes, to inflatable zombies, to cobweb-wrapped candelabras. One of the registers was covered in black cloth, and fake spiders hung from the ceiling.
Kent took the door from me as I stepped inside. Montoya followed me, with Kent bringing up the rear. If that’s what it took to get Montoya in the building, I’d rather have left him outside.
The door swung shut with an audible click.
The magic brightened until I had to raise my shields to block it out. When I could see again, a full-sized skeletal horse was trotting toward us. A herd of smaller skeletal horses and unicorns flanked it.
Mixing magic with a curse wasn’t the best idea, but I didn’t have a better one. I cast a shield wall in front of me and hoped it would hold.
A thump had me glancing back.
“It won’t open!” Montoya yanked at the front door and yanked again.
Kent kept his eyes focused on the horses.
“Not the current problem.” I turned back in time to see the full-sized skeleton horse slide to a stop, its nose only inches from the barrier.
It nudged the barrier, and the magic flexed. The horse backed up, pivoted, and kicked out with its hind legs. The wall absorbed the blow, but the magic weakened.
“Stop!” I didn’t want to pit my power against an unknown curse. “We mean you no harm! I will help you.”
The horse swung around, head high and skeptical.
“You can trample me later if I’m lying.” I held my breath, hoping it would accept the offer. I didn’t have a better one.
The horse reared, came down on all four hooves, bobbed its head and galloped back the way it had come. The herd of ankle- and knee-high unicorn and horse skeletons followed it.
Following an element of the curse wasn’t the best idea. It could lead us to the hostages, or it could be a trap. Given the choice, I’d leave all the curse aspects alone until everyone else was out of the building.
“What in Narzel’s name do you think you’re doing?” Montoya loomed over me. “Offering our lives to that thing? This is how you solve magical problems?”
Kent yanked him back. “Stand down!”
Montoya shook him off. “How dare you treat us as if we’re expendable. Because we’re not witches, we don’t matter? I’ll report you.”
“Shut up,” I snarled. “To get everyone out, I had to give the curse something. It wasn’t going to let us in if we weren’t of use to it, and—”
“I’m not dying for you,” Montoya yelled.
I stared up at him and saw fear. Me, the curse, magic in general, it didn’t matter. He was afraid. “I would never ask that.”
Montoya opened his mouth.
Kent talked over him. “That’s enough.”
Montoya clamped his mouth shut and glared at both of us.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.” I locked eyes with Montoya, hoping he would see the truth in my words. He didn’t know what I would sacrifice to keep a promise. “I have every intention of doing everything in my power to fix this.”
He jerked his head in a nod.
I smiled sharply. “Great. To recap the plan. Find the people in here. Get them out. Get both of you out. I deal with the curse. Got it?”
He nodded again.
“Delightful.” I looked past him through the shop. It was packed to the gills with stuff, but that wouldn’t stop the sound of traveling. “We were loud enough to be heard through most of the store. So why haven’t we heard a hostage?”
The curse could be blocking the sound from going between us and them, or the hostages couldn’t hear us for some reason. Both options scared me. If the curse was blocking sounds, it would be harder to find people and negotiate for their freedom. If they couldn’t answer, carrying unconscious people out wasn’t easy either.
Kent cleared his throat. “We split up, search the store.”
At least he said it, not me. I added, “Keep talking as you go. If we don’t hear from each other for a few seconds, we can go help.”
Montoya’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he nodded.
“I’ll take the four aisles on the left.” That put me the furthest from the door. Even if the door wouldn’t open, Montoya could have the comfort of being near it.
“Middle,” Kent said.
“That leaves me with the left.” He gave the door a hard look. “What do we do if we find hostages?”
I blinked. That was the question?
“Get them to the door,” Kent said before walking off.
