Dangerous Women (21 page)

The Fomor crossed to the shell, touched it with one hand, and murmured a word. Instantly, light blossomed all across its surface, curling and twisting in patterns or maybe letters which I had never seen before. The Fomor stood over it for a time, one hand outstretched, bulbous eyes narrowed, saying something in a hissing, bubbling tongue.

I didn’t know what he was doing, but he was moving a lot of energy around, whatever it was. I could feel it filling the air of the chamber, making it seem tighter and somehow harder to breathe.

“My lord?” asked Listen abruptly. “What are you doing?”

“Making a present for our new allies, of course,” the Fomor said. “I can hardly annihilate the svartalves along with everyone else. Not yet.”

“This is not according to the plans of the Empress.”

“The Empress,” spat the Fomor, “told me that I ought not harm our new allies. She said nothing of the puling scum attending their festivities.”

“The svartalves value their honor dearly,” Listen said. “You will shame them if their guests come to harm whilst under their hospitality, my lord. It could defeat the point of the alliance.”

The Fomor spat. A glob of yellowy, mucus-like substance splattered the floor near Listen’s feet. It hissed and crackled against the marble floor. “Once the treaty is signed, it is done. My gift will be given to them in the moments after: I will spare their miserable lives. And if the rest of the scum turn against the svartalves, they will have no choice but to turn to
us
for our strength.” He smirked. “Fear not, Listen. I am not so foolish as to destroy one of the Empress’ special pets, even in an accident. You and your fellows will survive.”

I suddenly recognized the tenor of energy building up in the giant shell on the floor and my heart just about stopped.

Holy crap.

Lord Froggy had himself a
bomb
.

Like, right
there
.

“My life belongs to my masters, to spend as they will, my lord,” Listen said. “Have you any other instruction?”

“Seize whatever treasure you might from the dead before we depart.”

Listen bowed his head. “How efficacious do you anticipate your gift to be?”

“The one I made for the Red Court in the Congo was deadly enough,” Lord Froggy said, a smug tone in his voice.

My heart pounded even harder. During its war with the White Council, the Red Court had used some kind of nerve gas on a hospital tending wounded wizards. The weapon had killed tens of thousands of people in a city far smaller and less crowded than Chicago.

My bare feet felt tiny and cold.

Lord Froggy grunted and fluttered his fingers, and the bomb-shell vanished, hidden by a veil as good as anything I could do. The Fomor lord abruptly lowered his hand, smiling. “Bring my robes.”

The turtlenecks hurriedly dressed Lord Froggy in what might have been the tackiest robe in the history of robekind. Multiple colors wavered over it in patterns like the ripples on water, but seemed random, clashing with one another. It was beaded with pearls, some of them the size of big supermarket gumballs. They put a crown-like circlet on his head after that, and then Lord Froggy and company headed out the door.

I crouched as far to the side as I could, almost under the minibar, with Andi huddling right beside me, holding my veil in tight. Lord Froggy blew right by me, with the turtlenecks walking in two columns behind him, their movements precise and uniform—until one of the last pair stopped, his hand holding the door open.

It was Listen.

His eyes swept the room slowly, and he frowned.

“What is it?” asked the other turtleneck.

“Do you smell something?” Listen asked.

“Like what?”

“Perfume.”

Oh, crap.

I closed my eyes and focused on my suggestion frantically, adding threads of anxiety to it, trying to keep it too fine for Listen to pick up on.

After a moment, the other turtleneck said, “I’ve never really liked perfume. We should not be so far from the lord.”

Listen hesitated a moment more before he nodded and began to leave.

“Molly!” said Justine’s voice quite clearly from the crystal tucked into my dress. “Miss Gard freaked out about two minutes ago and all but carried Marcone out of here. Security is mobilizing.”

Sometimes I think my life is all about bad timing.

Listen whirled around toward us at once, but Andi was faster. She bounded from the floor into a ten-foot leap and slammed against the doorway, hammering it closed with the full weight of her body. In a flickering instant, she was a naked human girl again, straining against the door as she reached up and manually snapped its locks closed.

I fished the crystal out of my dress and said, “There’s a bomb on the premises, down in the guest wing. I repeat, a
bomb
in the guest wing, in the Fomor Ambassador’s quarters. Find Etri or one of the other svartalves and tell them that the Fomor is planning to murder the svartalves’ guests.”

“Oh my God,” Justine said.

“Holy crap!” chimed in Butters.

Something heavy and moving fast slammed into the door from the other side, and it jumped in its frame. Andi was actually knocked back off of it a few inches, and she reset herself, pressing her shoulder against it to reinforce it. “Molly!”

This was another one of those situations in which panic can get you killed. So while I wanted to scream and run around in circles, what I did was close my eyes for a moment as I released the veil and take a slow, deep breath, ordering my thoughts.

First: if Froggy and the turtlenecks managed to get back into the room, they’d kill us. There were already at least four dead bodies in the suite. Why not add two more? And, all things considered, they’d probably be able to do it. So, priority one was to keep them out of the room, at least until the svartalves sorted things out.

Second: the bomb. If that thing went off, and it was some kind of nerve agent like the Red Court used in Africa, the casualties could be in the hundreds of thousands, and would include Andi and Thomas and Justine—plus Butters and Marci, waiting outside in the car. The bomb had to be disarmed or moved to somewhere safe. Oh, and it would probably need to be not invisible for either of those things to happen.

And three: rescue Thomas. Can’t forget the mission, regardless of how complicated things got.

The door boomed again.

“Molly!” Andi screamed, her fear making her voice vibrant, piercing.

“Dammit,” I growled. “What would Harry do?”

If Harry was here, he would just hold the stupid door shut. His magic talents had been, like, superhero strong when it came to being able to deliver massive amounts of energy. I’m fairly sure he could have stopped a speeding locomotive. Or at least a speeding semitrailer. But my talents just didn’t run to the physical.

Harry had once told me that when you had one problem, you had a problem—but when you had several problems, you might also have several solutions.

I stood up and dropped my wands into my hands, gripping them hard. I faced the doorway and said, “Get ready.”

Andi flashed me a glance. “For what?”

“To open the door,” I said. “Then shut it behind me.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes. Go on three,” I said, and bent my knees slightly. “One!”

The door rattled again.

“Two!”

“Are you insane?” Andi demanded.

“Three!” I screamed, and sprinted for the door, lifting both wands.

Andi squeezed her eyes shut and swung the door open, and I deployed the One Woman Rave.

Channeling the strength of my will, light and sound burst from the ends of the two wands. Not light like from a flashlight—more like the light of a small nuclear explosion. The sound wasn’t loud like a scream, or a small explosion, or even the howl of a passing train. It was like standing on the deck of one of those old World War II battleships when they fired their big guns—a force that could stun a full-grown man and knock him on his ass.

I charged ahead with a wall of sound and furious light leading the way, and burst into the hall among the scattered forms of the startled, dazed turtlenecks.

And then I started playing nasty.

A few seconds later, the scattered turtlenecks were all on their feet again, though they looked a little disoriented and were blinking their eyes. Down the hallway, one of the turtlenecks was helping Lord Froggy to his feet, his lank hair disheveled, his robes in disarray. His ugly face was contorted in fury. “What is happening here, Listen?” he demanded. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. I doubt his ears were working very well.

“My lord,” Listen said, “I believe this is more of the work of the Ragged Lady.”

“What!? Speak up, fool!”

Listen’s cheek twitched once. Then he repeated himself in a shout.

Froggy made a hissing sound. “Meddling bitch,” he snarled. “Break down that door and bring me her
heart
.”

“Yes, my lord,” Listen said, and the turtlenecks grouped up around the door to room 8 again.

They didn’t use any tools. They didn’t need any. They just started kicking the door, three of them at a time, working in unison, driving the heels of their shoes at the wood. In three kicks, cracks began to form and the door groaned. In five, it broke and swung in loosely on its hinges.

“Kill her!” snarled Lord Froggy, pacing closer to the broken door. “
Kill
her!”

All but two of the turtlenecks poured into the room.

From behind my renewed veil, I figured the timing was about right to discontinue my illusion just as the door bounced back after they’d rushed through it. The silver numeral 8 hanging on the door blurred and melted back into a silver numeral 6.

Lord Froggy’s eyes widened in sudden, startled realization.

One of the turtlenecks flew back out the door to room 6 and smashed into the wall on the far side. He hit like a rag doll and flopped off it to the ground. There was a body-shaped outline in cracked marble and flecks of fresh blood left on the wall behind him.

And from the other side of the broken door, Thomas Raith, vampire, said, “It’s Listen, right? Wow. Did you clowns ever pick the wrong room.”

“We made a mistake,” Listen said.

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

And things started going crunch and thump in the room beyond.

Lord Froggy hissed and swiveled his bulgy head around on his gangly neck. “Ragged bitch,” he hissed. “I know you are here.”

This time, I knew exactly what Harry would do. I lifted my sonic wand and sent my voice down to the far end of the hall, behind him. “Hi there, Froggy. Is it as hard as it looks, holding up villain clichés, or does it come naturally to you?”

“You
dare
mock
me
?” the Fomor snarled. He threw a spiraling corkscrew of deep green energy down the hall, and it hissed and left burn marks upon everything it touched, ending at the doors. When it hit
them,
there was a snarling, crackling sound, and the green light spread across their surface in the pattern of a fisherman’s net.

“Hard to do anything else to a guy with a face like yours,” I said, this time from directly beside him. “Did you kill those girls, or did they volunteer once they saw you with your shirt off?”

The Fomor snarled and swatted at the air beside him. Then his eyes narrowed, and he started muttering and weaving his spatulate fingers in complicated patterns. I could feel the energy coming off of him at once, and knew exactly what he was trying to do—unravel my veil. But I’d been playing that game with Auntie Lea for months.

Lord Froggy hadn’t.

As his questing threads of magic spread out, I sent out whispers of my own power to barely brush them, guiding them one by one out and around the area covered by my veil. I couldn’t afford to let him find me. Not like that, anyway. He wasn’t thinking, and if I didn’t get him to, it was entirely possible that he’d be too stupid to fool.

I couldn’t have him giving up and leaving, either, so when I was sure I’d compromised his seeking spell I used the sonic wand again, this time directly above his head. “This kind of thing really isn’t for amateurs. Are you sure you shouldn’t sit this one out and let Listen give it a shot?”

Lord Froggy tilted his head up and then narrowed his eyes. He lifted a hand, spat a hissing word, and fire leapt up from his fingers to engulf the ceiling above him.

It took about two seconds for the fire alarm to go off, and another two before the sprinkler system kicked in. But I was back at the door to room 8 when the falling water began to dissolve my veil. Magic is a kind of energy, and follows its own laws. One of those laws is that water tends to ground out active magical constructs, and my veil started melting away like it was made of cotton candy.

“Hah!” spat the Fomor, spotting me. I saw him send a bolt of viridian light at me. I threw myself facedown to the floor and it passed over me, splashing against the door. I whipped over onto my back, just in time to raise a shield against a second bolt and a third. My physical shields aren’t great, but the Fomor’s spell was pure energy, and that made it easier for me to handle. I deflected the bolts left and right, and they blasted chunks of marble the size of bricks out of the walls when they struck.

Lord Froggy’s eyes flared even larger and more furious that he’d missed. “Mortal cow!”

Okay, now. That stung. I mean, maybe it’s a little shallow, and maybe it’s a little petty, and maybe it shows a lack of character of some kind that Froggy’s insult to my appearance got under my skin more effectively than attempted murder.

“Cow?”
I snarled as water from the sprinkler system started soaking me. “I
rock
this dress!”

I dropped one of my wands and thrust my palm out at him, sending out an invisible bolt of pure memory, narrowed and focused with magic, like light passing through a magnifying glass. Sometimes you don’t really remember traumatic injuries, and my memory of getting shot in the leg was pretty blurry. It hadn’t hurt so much when I actually got shot and I’d had a few things occupying my attention. Mostly, I’d just felt surprised and then numb—but when they were tending the wound in the helicopter, later, now
that
was pain. They’d dug the bullet out with forceps, cleaned the site with something that burned like Hell itself, and when they’d put the pressure bandage on it and tightened the straps, it hurt so bad that I’d thought I was going to die.