Time to Your Elf, page 21
Orri nodded. He put his hand on her arm. It didn’t give her a buzz like when Corvin touched her, but it did feel very comforting. The elves had helped to heal Starlight when he had been sick, and maybe it was just her remembrance of that event that made her feel warm and comforted to have him touching her. Or maybe it was because of magic and healing in his touch. It soothed away the knotted muscles and nauseated stomach, so that she could feel calm and focused. Like a new person.
She saw the lights start to glow around Orri and around her. They seemed to be flying away from her, as if both she and Orri were dissolving into fireflies. Like a lit sparkler. She saw Corvin watching, eyes wide. And then he was gone.
For a long time, Reg felt as though she was suspended in space. In a nowhere place, where time did not pass, where she did not exist and neither did anything else. She couldn’t sit and wait there, because there was nowhere to sit and nothing to wait for. Eventually, she started feeling her body. She could again see the fireflies and other brightly lit bugs swarming around her and Orri. They gathered in until they were all gone, and it was just her and Orri standing in the garden outside Reg’s cabin.
Corvin coughed and cleared his throat. Reg looked around Orri and saw him.
“It worked!” she told him the obvious. “Why could you get me out of there when I couldn’t jump myself out?” she asked Orri.
His raised his brows. “Because you were attempting to move through space.”
“You moved us through space.”
Orri shook his head. “I moved you through time and space.” He looked back at the cottage, with the door standing open. “Janus did not prevent you from moving through time.”
“Well, the joke’s on him, I guess. Francesca says it’s JAY-nus, by the way. Not Janice.”
Orri shrugged. “Human pronunciation.”
“Well, maybe I would have figured it out faster if you used human pronunciations. Or maybe if you didn’t talk like a fortune cookie at all and just gave warnings straight out in normal human language. You could do that, couldn’t you?”
“The rules are very exact.”
“And you have to talk that way? You’re not allowed to just give me a warning in plain language?”
“Your people and mine do not speak the same way,” Orri told her slowly, obviously picking his words with great care. “Human language is very… blunt.”
“Yeah. And that’s the way we like it.” Reg moved to the side so that she could see both Corvin and Orri. “So… I’m out. What should I do? Jump to the dwarf mountain?”
“Harrison isn’t there. Your friend said that he had already left,” Corvin pointed out.
“But he could go back. He didn’t come back here. He didn’t go to Francesca’s. I don’t think he would go back to Egypt; he already brought Horace back. It would help if he had actually told us what he was doing! Maybe we could help him, if it isn’t something that wouldn’t enable the Witch Doctor to re-form. I’d at least be able to predict where he might be.”
“Do you know where he is?” Reg asked Orri. “Janus?”
“He has been here,” Orri said. “And will be here soon. He will come back here.”
Reg swore. She wanted to know what he was doing, but she didn’t want him returning and finding her free again. What was the point in Orri releasing her if she was just going to be locked up again?
“We need to get out of here then.”
There was a noise from the other side of the fence, the front yard of the big house. Reg thought at first that it was a caterwaul, it sounded so weird and otherworldly. Not like the noise that anything human would make. All three of them turned toward the noise, curious.
“What the heck is that?” Reg asked.
“Your other friend,” Orri said, giving her a bow. “The other of the ancients.”
“The other… who? Weston?”
“I do not know the human names.”
Reg walked the path to the front gate. The back yard was protected from intruders by wards Sarah had set. There were beings who could get past it, obviously, Orri and Harrison, to name two. She wasn’t sure why Weston could not get through it and Harrison could. Weston had been able to appear to her in the cabin before. But maybe he had approached the wrong way. Maybe he had to appear to her inside the cottage, not to approach it from outside. Or maybe he was prevented because of whatever Harrison had done to keep her there. Some kind of sealing power.
But the figure she saw outside the front gate was not Weston. Nor was it Harrison.
It was Kareem.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“What are you doing here?” Reg demanded. “How did you know…?”
“You invited me to contact you,” Kareem reminded her. “If I knew anything about Hassam and your friend.”
“Yes…”
“You gave me your card.”
But Reg’s address was not on her card. Her address was not published anywhere. She did give it out to clients when they made contact and wanted to set up a seance or reading, but she kept it off public records.
“How did you find me here?” Reg demanded again. “You didn’t get my address from my card. And you didn’t fly here on an airplane.”
Orri had referred to him as another ancient. Was Kareem one of the immortals? If he was, then why hadn’t Harrison explained that part to Reg?
“So… is that why Harrison took Horace away?” she asked aloud, following the series of thoughts. “Because he knew you were an immortal and you could take the part of the Witch Doctor from Horace?”
“You are a fool,” Kareem sneered. “You still have no idea what it is going on. Even after activating the rings, you have no clue.”
“I… haven’t had much time,” Reg explained. It was a lame excuse even in her ears. She was creative. She could come up with a lot better than that.
Corvin was thinking more quickly on his feet. He hadn’t had to expend energy in maintaining a psychic shield and jumping halfway around the world and back. Of course he figured it out before Reg.
“Harrison went to see all the kattakyns, but the only one he took was yours. The only one that had been unbound.”
Kareem rolled his eyes. He was an ugly man. An ugly man with an ugly attitude. Reg could tell him why it was he didn’t have any friends. “You think I would not recognize the essence of an immortal when it was right in front of me? Rubbing against me every day?”
Reg pressed her fingertips to her temples. “You were the one who released the piece of the Witch Doctor from Horace? Why would you do that?”
“Why would I ignore that kind of power? I have lived many lifetimes longer than you, and this was my chance to increase my power. And now I know there are others. I only need to find them.”
His eyes glittered and Reg followed his sight line to Starlight, who had apparently come out of the house when the door was left open. She tried to step between the two of them.
“Starlight does not have any of the pieces of the Witch Doctor. He’s just a regular cat.”
“A regular cat,” Kareem scoffed. “There is no such thing as a regular cat. And he certainly is not one. Do you think I don’t have vision?”
Sarah had shown Reg how to see the light around powerful objects, and Reg had been startled by the brightness around Starlight. She shouldn’t have been, of course; more than one person had told her that he was powerful. But it was hard to understand sometimes that her cat was something other than a fuzzy little foot warmer who demanded fish.
She knew some of Starlight’s history now. Maybe Kareem was hoping to take his power too.
“He is not one of the kattakyns,” she told Kareem firmly. “The kattakyns are all pure black—”
Corvin nudged Reg. She scowled at him, turning to rebuke him for bothering her when she was trying to take control of the situation. He met her eyes, his consciousness burrowing into her brain, communicating with her as clearly as he could.
You are saying too much.
Reg opened her mouth to argue that she hadn’t told Kareem anything he didn’t already know. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was only guessing about the other kattakyns. Or maybe he knew that the Witch Doctor had gone out into several objects, but didn’t know that they were all kattakyns. Maybe he didn’t even know they were kattakyns, and had thought that they were just regular cats.
Except he said there was no such thing as a regular cat.
Instead of keeping her mouth shut, Reg had told him that there were others and had given him a basic description.
How do we get him out of here? Reg asked Corvin in her mind.
He shrugged with one shoulder.
Reg turned her attention back to Kareem. The wards that were set against intruders would not last forever. Especially if Kareem was stronger than Sarah. And if he were as old as he said he was and had acquired part of the Witch Doctor’s power from Horace, then she needed to act while she was still able instead of waiting until he could break through the barriers and take them down one at a time.
“Why don’t you go back to Egypt?” Reg told him. “There isn’t anything for you here. I only have Starlight and Horace, and you already took Horace’s power. So you might as well just go back to where you came from.”
“You think yourself powerful. But you do not have the strength to fight me. Even in Egypt, still wearing the rings, you were barely able to hold me off. Now you have removed the rings…” He shook his head. “Why would you take them off instead of wielding their power?”
Reg looked sideways at Corvin. It was at his suggestion that she had taken them off. Now they were put away in the cottage. It didn’t exactly make sense for her to run back into the house, dig under her bed for the chest, open it, and recover the rings from the plastic bag that held all the jewels from Egypt. It would take too much time and she would look foolish in front of Kareem. She needed to look as though she knew what she was doing, that she had a reason for everything she did, not that she was ignorant of the fact that she should have kept the rings on.
“I don’t need the power of the rings,” she told him confidently. “Not in my own country. I will save them for the day that I require them. There is no point in wasting their power.” She lifted her chin so that she was looking down her nose at Kareem. Not saying no point in wasting their power on you, even though that was what she intended to convey.
“You witch!” Kareem yelled. He kicked the fence and he held up his hands in front of the open gate, working on the wards that kept him from entering there. “You unschooled, incompetent witch! You don’t have what it takes to fight someone like me! Not even with the rings!”
Reg could feel the power of his magic against the wards. She and Sarah had worked on them together, since the yard was their joint domain and Reg needed to be trained in the most basic of crafts. It felt as if someone were pushing her in the chest, forcing her back.
Reg hated being bullied. Hated the feeling of being overpowered. She had been in that position too many times as she grew up. Surrounded by people with greater physical strength, more authority, more experience, and more violence inside them. She’d been pushed around and abused enough times as a child and had sworn that it would never happen to her as an adult.
And here she was, taking it. Waiting for Kareem to break down her wards and invade her space. She wouldn’t be able to stop him from hurting her, from trying to take Starlight’s power. She would stand there, helpless, while he took everything that mattered to her.
“No,” she said firmly. Her face was as tight and frozen as a mask. “You cannot enter here. You cannot do any harm here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“How do you think you’re going to stop me?” Kareem challenged. “What do you think you’re going to do, little girl?”
Reg’s anger flared. She was having trouble focusing her thoughts and keeping herself under control. That was how the Witch Doctor had addressed her. He remembered her from when she was small and she could do nothing to stop him from torturing and killing her mother.
And now he remembered her and the others challenging him in the warehouse, taking the immortal and his draugar minions on with their tiny force.
Little girl.
Reg hated to be called a little girl.
She wasn’t that four-year-old child anymore. She had learned of her power and had been training and developing it. She had helped to defeat the Witch Doctor once already. She had also challenged Weston openly, and she and Corvin and her younger self had overcome him and forced him to leave Norma Jean and her child alone. She had overcome others who thought that she was a weak child or woman.
Being underestimated was one of her gifts. Like a mother bird pretending to be injured to lead a predator away, and then flying up in his face and leaving him far behind. She could use it to her advantage. Appearing to be weak wasn’t the same as being weak.
Reg closed her eyes. They were swimming with tears, but not tears of distress or fear. Tears of anger. There was so much rage bubbling up inside her over the injustices she had suffered as a child and now faced again that she could not contain it. It had to get out somehow.
Kareem laughed.
“You are a child. Picking up rings of power as if they were baubles. Playing dress-up in vestments that are too powerful for you to even understand. You will fall here.”
Reg opened her eyes. He had transformed. She was aware that it was only a trick of her mind, that he hadn’t actually physically transformed, but she could see the Witch Doctor in front of her now, mocking and challenging, ignoring the fact that she had helped to overcome him once before. She could see the immortal’s face superimposed over Kareem’s features. Her mouth twisted into a grimace of pain and fury both at once.
“Stop! I am not weak. I’m stronger than you ever were, in all the centuries you have lived.” She spat the words out, her inner convictions taking over. Her brain was still trying to sort and correlate all her scattered thoughts and impressions. “You cannot enter. You cannot find any more of the kattakyns. You have overestimated your own powers and have expended more than you should have.”
She fought back against him, pushing back against the force on her chest. The fire inside her was raging to get out. Unable to contain it any longer, Reg released it. The Egyptian’s cloak was in flames. He angrily shook his head and tried to pat out the fire.
“You think I’m afraid of a little party trick?” he demanded. “You don’t have anything on me!”
“I do!” Reg argued, her voice strained as she tried to keep herself under control. “You are the one who doesn’t know what he is dealing with.”
“You think I can’t fight a little girl?” Kareem’s eyes went over the others. “And her little kitty cat? You think that this fallen warlock and bumbling harbinger can help you? They can’t do anything. And neither can you.”
“You’ve already lost. We’ve already beaten you once before. In fact,” Reg looked at Orri, “we’ve already beaten you today, haven’t we?”
Orri put on his dark glasses as if he would be able to see Kareem better with them on. He looked at his wrist, where he didn’t wear a wristwatch, but a wide brass bracelet sparkled in the sun, nearly dazzling Reg.
“Yes,” Orri agreed. “The child will prevail.”
“No, she won’t!” Kareem screamed. “You are nothing to me! My power is beyond anything you have ever encountered!”
“Isn’t it the same thing I have encountered before?” Reg argued, “just one-ninth of the power?”
“No!” Kareem insisted “You cannot do anything to me! You have no idea of my power!”
Reg faced him, determined. He couldn’t extinguish the flaming cloak, and eventually tore it away from himself and threw it down.
“Watch out,” Corvin intoned. “She’ll have your jacket next.”
“Tricks,” Kareem insisted. “You think that a few sparklers are going to scare me?”
“Sparklers?” Reg looked at the cloak on the ground, nearly consumed, and made it flare up, forcing the warlock to step back despite himself. Reg wanted to burn everything around him, but it was Sarah’s yard, and she would not be very happy if Reg burned her trees, bushes, and fence to the ground just to prove a point.
She stepped toward the open gate. Corvin put his hand on her arm to stop her. “Regina…”
“You really think this guy can stop me? He can’t even get past the wards.”
Reg stepped through the barrier that prevented Kareem from entering the yard, feeling herself pass through it as if it were water or thickened air. She hadn’t felt the full brunt of Kareem’s attack until then. And Corvin was right, she should have exercised more caution. She wasn’t prepared to face the full force of Kareem’s power.
His magic seemed dark and sticky. Like something she didn’t want to touch. The tacky floor in a public restroom. She would have to battle Kareem face on, but wanted to turn away from him in distaste.
Reg didn’t put up a shield this time. She was tired of using shields, of passively trying to avoid or fend off attacks. People needed to know that she was dangerous in her own right. That she was strong and confident and would not be cowed by witches or warlocks who thought they were something special. Or even wizards or pieces of immortals.
She put up both hands and pushed Kareem back. He didn’t like it. He resisted and stepped forward to gain the upper hand.
“No,” Reg insisted. “You are not welcome here. You’re not bugging me or my cat or any of my friends. You can go back to where you came from.”
She wasn’t sure whether she was telling Kareem to go back to Egypt, or the Witch Doctor to go back into hiding or to attach himself once more to Horace. But she didn’t want him there.
“I don’t take orders from little girls.”
“You should!”
Reg held him, preventing him from moving. He couldn’t attack her. He couldn’t retreat or transport himself. All he could do was stand there, his eyes wide and angry, trying to overcome her by effort of will.
