Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.) (33 page)

Brad led the group in one more song, as though to ensure that the effect would hold. When the song ended, he let the last note linger until it faded into nothingness. Then Earl took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak.

But before any sound left Earl’s throat, another voice rang throughout the warehouse. I glanced around for the source and saw Sylvester standing on the opposite side of the balcony, near the stairwell where I’d escaped and reentered.

“My fellow elves,” Sylvester boomed as I glanced back to see a scowling Earl, who hadn’t had a chance to get a word in edgewise. All the elves below turned their attention to the Elf Lord, who continued once he knew he had the crowd’s attention. “We have all been victims of a cruel scheme. Those of you from the elven realms have been brought here against your will as an invasion force. We sealed off the barriers between worlds ages ago to prevent such a thing, but now those from the other world have broken those barriers, and it seems that anyone who discovered this portal was captured and silenced. But thanks to our friends in the wizard world, we’ve stopped this invasion and freed our fellow elves from their enchantment.”

“We?”
I muttered to myself. That was rich.

“Now that we’ve remembered that we are all elves, no matter where we live, I propose that our foreign friends return home and return their captives to us. Then we will seal this portal, and I vow that our forces will be extra-vigilant against this threat in the future.”

There were cheers from below, and while I was glad about the cessation of hostilities, there was something terribly wrong about how this was working out. The bad guy was supposed to be stopped and punished, not hailed as a hero and savior.

I ran down the stairs and found Owen. “What do we do?” I asked, grabbing his arm. “We’ve got to stop him.”

“Stop what?” Owen asked, giving me a perplexed look.

“He’s using the failure of his plan to carry out his plan. Now the elves are going to see the elves from the other realm as a threat, and they’ll feel like they have to support him against the common enemy. We can’t let him do that.”

“But what can we do? We didn’t find any hard evidence that Sylvester was behind it.”

“We know he was!” I argued.

“Yeah, but what do you think will happen if you say that? You’ll just give him a reason to make MSI the enemy. At least this way he has to make nice with us and pretend we’re all on the same team. That should slow him down and give us a chance to stop his next scheme before it starts.”

I wasn’t satisfied with that. The Elf Lord had ripped us out of our lives, messed with our memories, and made me date a real loser. He was
not
going to get away with this, not if I had anything to say about it.

“Florence!” I said suddenly.

“What about Florence?”

“Maybe she has some proof. She was one of the guards. Or she’d know someone who took direct orders from Sylvester and isn’t willing to take the fall for him.” He looked doubtful, so I squeezed his arm and said, “Please? I’m not ready to give up.”

With a sigh, he said, “Okay. I have to admit I’d rather stop him now.”

We wove our way through the rapt elves still listening to Sylvester’s campaign speech and found a scowling Florence. “That isn’t the truth, is it?” I asked her.

She quirked an eyebrow and smirked. “Seriously? You have to ask?”

“Do you have any proof? Or do you know anyone who does?”

“He came to give us a pep talk before we were sent over there to set up the prison—and before we found out that we were just as trapped as our prisoners were. But do you think me standing up there and saying that would do any good?”

“What if there’s more than one of you?” Owen asked. “Do you think any of the other guards would be willing to talk?”

She glanced around. “Give me a few minutes.” She headed off into the crowd.

While she was gone, Owen looked at me and said, “Now what? What do you have planned?”

“I don’t know. Maybe have them speak out? Even raising doubts may help keep this from being a big success for Sylvester.”

Florence returned, dragging a few other elves with her. “This is the best I could do,” she said.

“Okay, this is good,” I said, rubbing my hands together as I thought of what I could do with this. “We control the sound system. Let’s use that.”

We hurried over to where the little gargoyle still sat on the stereo. I took the enchanted iPod out of my pocket and said, “First, a tiny bit of mind control might help. When they were under the spell, all they wanted to do was dance and have fun. That might distract them from Sylvester.” I swapped out the players, then scrolled through the menu to find a song sure to get the elves’ attention.

I went with something tried and true that I’d already seen them react to. After the first few words of the enchanted extended dance mix of “I Will Survive,” most of the elves on the dance floor were singing along. When the tempo picked up, they started dancing, oblivious to anything going on around them.

Up on the balcony, Sylvester hadn’t noticed that he’d entirely lost his audience. I saw it dawn on him. He tried shouting louder, but the little gargoyle adjusted the volume, making the music even louder. Florence and her friends fell into the dancing like everyone else, and Owen took my hand and spun me around.

“You’re not under the spell, are you?” I asked him.

“No, I think it’s elf-specific. But we might as well enjoy ourselves a little.”

When the song ended, I swapped out players and put on “How Deep Is Your Love?” The elves might not have been under a literal spell, but they all swayed and sang along, creating harmonies that the Bee Gees only dreamed of. Even Sylvester seemed to get caught up in the moment.

During the song, I searched around the table and found a microphone connected to the stereo, then I figured out how to switch over to that input. I let the song fade out when it ended, turned on the microphone, and handed it to Florence. “Give it your best shot,” I whispered to her.

“All of this is a lie!” she shouted, her voice echoing throughout the warehouse. “The only invasion here was to support the Elf Lord. He was the one to open the portal. He was the one who created the prison in the elven realms. I was a guard there, and he was the one who gave us our assignments. He was the one having people kidnapped and sent there if they had any inkling of the plan. He was the one who stranded his own people there so no word would leak out, and he was the one kidnapping elves from the other realm and bringing them here as an army.”

She handed the microphone over to one of her colleagues, who backed up her story with an additional tale of Sylvester being present when a prisoner was sent through the portal. Soon, there was a line forming for the microphone, each elf with a story to tell.

We’d broken Sylvester’s spell on the crowd. Enough elves were listening to the testimony that I didn’t think his innocent victim act would survive. However, Sylvester wasn’t about to roll over and play dead, even as angry elves headed up the stairs toward him.

He turned to run, right toward the staircase that led to the roof.

Chapter Twenty-One

“He’s getting away!” I shouted, then realized that didn’t do any good because no one could hear me. I dialed Sam on my phone. “Stop Sylvester! He’s headed to the roof!” I said when he answered.

“Got it, doll,” he replied, and I saw him already flying toward the balcony.

“When did you get that?” Owen asked.

“A lot has happened since the last time you saw me,” I said mysteriously as I slid the phone back into my pocket.

We moved through the crowd toward the stairs. “It has? How much time has gone by?” Owen asked as we ran.

He looked so alarmed that I didn’t have the heart to keep teasing him. “Only a couple of hours. Merlin gave me the phone. I guess when we went missing they decided it would be a good thing for people to be able to reach me, and I’ll admit it’s come in handy tonight.”

Sam could only hamper Sylvester’s escape, since Sylvester fought back with magic. I got out my phone again and called Merlin. “Are you here yet?” I asked.

“Almost.”

“The roof!” I shouted, forgetting the fact that I was giving orders to my boss. I didn’t think he’d mind my tone under the circumstances.

Owen and I reached the balcony and rushed for the stairwell door where Sylvester had just disappeared. Earl and Brad were right behind us, and when they saw us running, Mac and McClusky joined the chase. Rod came after them. All those people running up the stairs sounded like a herd of stampeding elephants as our footsteps echoed around the stairwell.

We made it out onto the roof just as Merlin stepped nimbly off a flying carpet hovering a couple of feet off the ground. He then turned to help Granny down. When Sylvester saw Merlin, he stopped so abruptly that he skidded a few inches. The rest of us fanned out to surround him.

“Why, Sylvester, imagine seeing you here,” Merlin said, sounding like he was paying a social call. “I was just at your office, looking for you.”

Sylvester started to run for the stairs, but Owen and I blocked the way. The Elf Lord did a double take when he saw us. “You? But how did …” His voice trailed off as his expression clouded.

“How did we get caught in your trap and taken prisoner in your freaky other world?” I finished his sentence for him. “Well, there was an unintended consequence to your last little scheme, so when we stumbled upon your portal, we got zapped.”

“If that’s the case, then out of my way!” he shouted, raising his arms to do a spell.

I stepped in front of Owen and felt the magic hit me, but it had no effect. “Sorry, I’m back to normal,” I said with a shrug.

“And so am I,” Owen said coolly. He raised his hands, as though preparing to do a spell, but then he froze. I followed his gaze to see that he was looking across the circle at the two Council men, who were staring at him. McClusky looked smug, like he’d been vindicated, and Mac’s forehead was creased with concern. Owen lowered his hands.

Sylvester didn’t get the opportunity to take advantage of that, though, because Merlin and Granny were on him. They worked surprisingly well as a team—disturbingly well, really. Sylvester whirled to face them, and it appeared that Granny was blocking his spells while Merlin focused on attack.

Merlin was able to hold Sylvester. The Elf Lord was still doing enough magic to keep the rest of us at bay, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Brad moved in as close as he dared and said, “You thought you could silence us, but now your treachery will be even more widely known.” He smiled and added, “But perhaps there’s a nice place you could start over, a whole city where you can rule to your heart’s content.”

“You wouldn’t!” Sylvester snarled.

“Why not? You did,” Earl said.

“Quick, pick your favorite fantasy, and maybe they can give it to you,” I said. “But I don’t recommend the romantic comedy one.”

“There is a bookstore that needs someone to run it,” Owen put in. “Do you like books?”

“Oh, no, he’s not getting away that easily,” Mac said. “He has to answer for multiple counts of kidnapping.”

“This isn’t Council jurisdiction,” Merlin said mildly. “This is an elf matter. We wizards are merely lending our support.”

“The leaders of the elven lands should decide his fate,” Brad said. “More elves were taken from their realm than wizards were taken from this world.”

“I will accept the authority of the Council,” Sylvester shouted. I wasn’t so sure he was making the right choice, but I figured it was his funeral. Just so long as he couldn’t interfere in my life again, I’d be happy.

Mac and his partner looked awfully pleased with themselves as they stepped forward to take Sylvester into custody. When they reached him, he suddenly grabbed their wrists, and their faces went strangely blank, as though they’d forgotten who they were. Then they went blanker than that, like they were losing consciousness. He wasn’t just giving them the same identity-erasing whammy he’d given us. He was killing them, and they were too dazed to do anything about it. Owen shouted a warning. When they didn’t respond, he jumped forward to break Sylvester’s grasp on them. But when he touched Sylvester, the Elf Lord’s touch had the same effect on him as it had on them, and he fell to his knees. Mac and McClusky staggered, still too stunned to help, so I ran over and brought the point of my elbow down hard on Sylvester’s wrist, forcing him to release Owen.

As the others teamed up to stop the Elf Lord, I leaned over Owen. He was conscious and breathing, but he seemed a little unsteady. “Do I need to remind you who you are?” I asked him without taking my eyes off the Elf Lord.

“I’m good,” he said, pushing himself back to his feet.

Mac and McClusky, now recovered, came over to Owen. “Thanks, man,” McClusky said, extending his hand to Owen. Owen looked at it skeptically for a moment before shaking it. Mac clapped him on the shoulder and gave him an approving nod.

“So, you’ll be giving a good report to the Council, right?” I prompted. “After all, he may have just saved your lives, at risk to himself.”

“I think we can put in a good word,” Mac said. He glanced at McClusky, who gave a reluctant nod.

By this time, more elves had come up the stairs and joined us on the roof. Brad went over to one of them, and they had a brief conversation, then Brad returned to Merlin. “They’ll take him through the portal and lock him in the containment area,” Brad reported. “That should keep him from being a problem here. A few of the elves want to stay, at least for a while, but the rest will return home, and they’ll find and return any remaining prisoners there.”

“That does appear to be the best solution,” Merlin said. “Thank you for your assistance.”

Brad shot me a smile. “Actually, it was Katie who saved us all. She was our resistance leader.”

Merlin turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “You neglected to mention that in your report.”

“I skipped the trivial details,” I said with a shrug.

“Now that her immunity’s back, maybe she should talk to Sam,” Owen suggested. “He could probably use her in Security. She has a knack for covert operations.”