Halfway Hexed (19 page)

“I always up for Tammy Jo adventure,” he said, pumping his small fist. “What I need to wear for this? Probably not Lycra stretch. What I going to be doing?”

“I thought you could present the witch, Gwen, with a complimentary spa treatment. Get her out of the room and to the salon. She might not go for it, but I have reason to believe that these out-of-town witches are trying to dig their heels in here in Duvall, so she might. I want you to say that the gift certificate’s a present from Crane Realty.”

“Okay then. I definitely need outfit change. Form of: Johnny Nguyen, exclusive salon owner. Shape of: God of Hair,” he mumbled as he hurried down the hall to his bedroom.

I laughed softly. Ever since Johnny had started dating Rollie, he’d been incorporating some real interesting turns of phrase into his life.

When Johnny came out from changing clothes, he wore black trousers, a black smock shirt, shiny patent leather slipper shoes, and blue mousse in his hair. He looked like a punk ninja.

Armed with a salon gift certificate and a Color Me Badd key chain, Johnny bounced down to his BMW and followed me across town to the motel. He parked in the lot while I went around the corner to leave my car where the witch-spies wouldn’t spot it.

Johnny went to the office and found out Gwen’s room number and texted it to me:
She is in Finch room—Room 5.

I glanced at the hotel. A couple years earlier, it had been pretty run-down, but new siding and paint had brightened it up. Now it wasn’t exactly cheerful or pretty, but at least it didn’t look like it would fall down during the next hard rain.

I walked to the tall grass at the edge of the property. Gwen was in a ground-floor room. If the plan went perfectly, Johnny would draw Gwen out of the hotel to the salon. If it went okay but not perfectly, he would make an appointment for her to come to the salon, leaving her room unguarded at some point in the future that I’d know about. If it didn’t work at all, she’d tell him to forget it. Then I’d have to stake the place out until she left, never knowing when she’d be back.

I waited patiently to get one of the three preprogrammed texts that Johnny had ready. When my phone vibrated, I flipped it open and pressed the button to open the message. Then I smiled.

We going. Do that thing!

That sweet-talking black-and-blue-haired charmer! Johnny might not have been from Duvall, but he could pour on the sugar with the best of them.

I counted one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, all the way up to one-hundred-one-thousand to give them time to clear the parking lot.

I crept to the back windows. I’d brought my tire-iron from the trunk, and I’d wrapped it in my jacket, hoping to muffle the sound when I used it. But that didn’t turn out to be a problem. She’d left the back window unlocked. I shook my head. Some superspy.

I crawled in and looked around. The brown-and-white striped wallpaper was covered with finches. It was a weird combination, but I’d seen pictures of the insides of English castles and when it comes to busy patterns, we’ve got nothing on them, so blue-blood Gwen probably felt right at home.

There were locked file boxes on the floor. They were kind of heavy, but I thought that I might be able to carry them back to my car one at a time. Then I’d really find out what WAM and the Conclave were up to. I found a jewelry pouch, and dumped the contents out onto the bedside table. All delicate little chains and tiny charms. No stolen brooch.

The longer I searched, the more worried I got. Did she have it with her? So unfair after getting my hopes up with the open window. I’d just finished looking under the mattress when I felt a sharp pinch in my thigh and pain spread out, flash-fire style.

I crumpled to my knees, turning my head just in time to see the gun in Gwen’s hand. I arched back, but not fast enough. The butt of the gun cracked my skull, and everything went black before my head hit the carpet.

Chapter 20

My ears felt like someone had filled them with cotton, but I still heard her voice when I woke up.

“. . . him getting involved with a well-controlled, politically savvy low-level witch with potential, I could see. Or even a human being with exceptional intellect and magical leanings. But you?” she scoffed.

My wrists ached from being pinned under me. I was lying on the grass, and Miss Spy-Perfect Wardrobe had taken off her tailored jacket and rolled up her silk sleeves, so she wouldn’t get dirty while she shoveled.

Shoveled? Uh-oh!

She dumped new dirt on the pile next to me and some of it rolled down the mound onto my legs.

“Why are you digging?” I asked, rolling from side to side, trying to get into a sitting position.

She glanced at me with an ice-water look. “If you try to get to your feet to run, I’ll decapitate you with this shovel,” she said calmly.

I froze. Decapitate? No matter what else happened, I was determined to keep my head and my body together. Even if I was going to die. I had come into the world in one piece and that’s how I planned to leave it.

When I was sitting up, I spotted Mercutio’s body lying next to mine. I let out a cry of fury and half-rolled, half-crawled to him. I was rewarded with a sharp whack across my shoulder blades, which knocked me face-first to the ground. The good news was that, lying across Merc, I could feel that he was still warm and breathing. Something sharp was jabbing me in the belly and I moved slowly to get off it.

I realized it was a tranquilizer dart stuck in Mercutio’s side. Had that been what she’d shot me with, too? A tranquilizer dart? Just like Scarface? Were they working together?

“Can I sit up?” I asked. “I won’t try to stand.”

“Yes, you may sit, if you like.”

I positioned myself so that Mercutio’s body was behind mine.

“So how come you’re going to kill me? Isn’t that kind of a stiff penalty for breaking into your room?”

I used my cuffed hands to pull the dart out of Merc.

She flung dirt onto the mound. “It’s nothing personal.”

She tossed the shovel on the ground and marched over to me. She grabbed Mercutio by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from me, then stabbed him with the dart again.

I spewed a string of curses that would’ve made a sailor blush.

She smiled at me. “Look at you,” she said with a sniff. “You tripped the wards on my motel room and then hung around waiting for me to show up and find you. Pathetic. Couldn’t even recognize simple protective wards.”

Wards. Of course. A witch’s magical security system. Except I couldn’t feel magic, so I hadn’t felt a thing when I’d crossed them.

“Where’s Johnny?”

“Nursing a headache. He’ll never even remember coming to the hotel.”

At least he was okay.

“Isn’t killing me kind of extreme? John Barrett offered me like a scholarship to go to school in London. Weren’t you supposed to wait for me to say ‘no’ before you killed me?”

She waved off the suggestion, like killing me was no worse than shoplifting a pack of gum. “Do you know what Bryn said when we spoke about you?” she asked, hopping down into the hole and dragging the shovel in.

“If I had to guess, I’d put my money on something other than ‘Kill Tammy Jo.’ ”

“You know . . . never mind what he said,” she murmured. “Suffice to say that you have to die.”

“He probably said that he likes me because I would never sit around and let my boss put a needle necklace on him.”

She smiled. “Actually, that is fairly close to what he said.” Dirt flew out of the hole.

I wriggled hard to get the chain connecting my wrists under my backside. I had to get my arms in front of me.

“He thinks you’re incorruptible,” she continued. The shovel paused as she laughed. “As if such a thing were possible. Everyone is corruptible. Sometimes it’s necessary to dabble in darkness. Look at Bryn. He finally tapped into the black magic cache he got from outsmarting a demon. For years, he resisted using that power, which was free for the taking. His by rights. Until recently. He seems to be running a bit wild now that you’ve come into his life.”

“His by rights?”

“Usually, when one taps into black magic, one has to pay a price. But Bryn has a source of black magic that he earned with his wits a long time ago. So far as I know, he’s never used it before now. Maybe he thinks you’re such sweetness and light that you’ll ward off any dark powers that might take an interest.”

“Why do you care what Bryn thinks or does? You guys broke up.” I bent my knees to my chest and inched the chain under my feet. I could barely breathe while I did it, but I got my bound wrists in front of me.

“We didn’t really break up. We took a break. Temporarily. He left to spend some time with his father. I never expected him to actually stay in this ridiculous town. Our lives were perfect when we lived together. When you’re out of the way, I’ll have him again. And it’s for his own good. Someone has to get him out of here before evidence of his connection to the Underground is uncovered.”

I kept my eyes on the hole as I knee-walked to Mercutio. I pulled the dart out of him and tossed it into the grass, then looked around for a weapon. Where was her gun?

With a whoosh of air, she was out of the hole and advancing on us. I jumped to my feet and crashed into her. We flew across the dirt and tumbled into the hole. The landing jarred me, but I didn’t let it stop me. We fought like our lives depended on it, which in my case it did, of course.

I slammed my palm into her nose, and her blood sprayed all over us. The noise she made was half-scream, half-banshee wail. I got the shovel away from her, but she was fast and before I could crack her in the head with it, I felt a sharp slice along my side. She’d gotten her gun out and shot me again! I was only grazed by the dart, but I could feel that it had broken the skin.

Damn her!

My bloody hands slid along the handle of the shovel. I tried to knock her out, hoping I might wake up first, but my hands got wobbly too soon. The last thing I remember was her big swollen nose in my face while her hands choked my throat.

I woke with the weight of the world pressing down on me. It felt heavy and kind of soft actually—at least the part on my face, which I realized a moment later was Mercutio. I inhaled kitty fur and fought the urge to sneeze.

I was groggy and suffocating, maybe hallucinating, but being cocooned in the earth with my blood seeping into the dirt wasn’t nearly as scary as it should have been.

I tried to move my arms, but couldn’t. I needed to reach into a pocket of power with my mind, not my hands.

H’llo Earth, it’sssme. Tammel. Tammy Jo
, I said in my head, as I fought the urge to take a deep breath. I needed air. The more alert I became, the more I needed it. I tried to concentrate on a spell.
Any spell
, I thought frantically. My heart throbbed in my chest, and I choked on dirt and Merc’s fur.

I know I’m a mess, and I don’t have much clout.
But I’d really appreciate it, if you’d just spit me out.

I felt the ground move. I clamped my fists until they cramped.

Don’t have much clout.
Please, spit me out!
Don’t have much clout.
PLEASE! Spit! Me! OUT!

There was a horrible wrenching, like my arms and legs were being pulled from their sockets. Then the ground exploded and flung me out of the hole.

I landed on the ground with a rib-cracking thud. I sobbed out a groan and grabbed my side. Every breath hurt.

I tasted dirt in the back of my throat and coughed, sending spikes of pain through me.

“Uh,” I moaned, trying to stabilize the pieces of my ribs that were grinding against each other.

“Mer?” It was as much as I could manage. As I forced myself to roll onto my uninjured side, tears trickled from my eyes. I kept my arm pinned to my left side, trying to keep it as still as possible, but every centimeter of movement was a knife, every breath like a shard of glass shoved into my flesh. I saw Merc lying in the dirt.

The sound I made was barely human. I moved faster than I could stand and shrieked in pain. By the time I leaned over him, I was crying outright.