No Quest for the Wicked (33 page)

Opening my eyes required more energy than I had, so I tried opening one eye and made it about halfway. Everything was blurry at first, but then my vision cleared and I saw a strange face looming over me. The strange face was familiar, and then my brain scrolled through a lot of events very rapidly, like it was fast-forwarding through a video, and I recognized the strange-yet-familiar face. “Sam?” I asked.

“Whew, I was starting to wonder if you’d come back to us, dollface,” the gargoyle said. He got an arm and a wing under my shoulders to help me sit up.

I saw then that I was on a railway platform. My brain finished fast-forwarding the recap of the past day, and I knew I was at Grand Central. “What happened?” I asked.

“I got here just after it happened, but it looks like you two destroyed the Eye. There seem to have been some aftereffects.”

I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the splitting headache. “I threw the brooch under the third rail,” I said. “There must have been an explosion.”

“Yeah, looks like there was a massive magical shock wave. Everyone on the platform was out cold.”

Everyone, he’d said. “Owen!” I blurted, frantically looking around. I saw a motionless form not too far from me and willed my aching body to crawl over to him.

“He’s okay, just knocked out like you were,” the gargoyle reassured me.

I searched for a pulse, unwilling to take his word for it. In this lighting, Owen looked really awful, his skin a sickly pale color where it wasn’t bruised, bloody, or covered in ten-o’clock shadow. His pulse was strong and steady, and his eyelids were already fluttering. “Owen!” I said, gripping one of his limp hands. “Come on, honey, wake up.”

Without opening his eyes, he asked, “Did we do it?”

“Sam says we did.”

“There’s a melted blob of gold with a cracked stone in it lying on the tracks,” Sam confirmed. “And it doesn’t have a trace of magic in it.”

“Good. It was just a crazy theory, but I’m glad it worked.” Owen struggled to sit up. I slid my arm around him, and we leaned against each other, both of us too tired to do more than that. I wondered if it would be too much to ask someone to send wheelchairs to take us to a car for the ride home. I wasn’t sure I could walk more than about three steps.

I closed my eyes and enjoyed not having anyone attacking me. Owen’s voice stopped me from falling asleep. “What’s that?” he asked.

I opened my eyes and noticed the small box that had been lying between us. “I think I remember seeing it fall right before I blacked out,” I said. “It must be that box we were waiting for.”

“Yeah, our people got here about a split second too late,” Sam confirmed. “But looks like you didn’t need it, after all.”

“Oh, thank God!” A harsh voice caught our attention, and I looked up to see a frightfully bedraggled Mimi climbing onto the end of the platform. “I thought I’d never get out of those tunnels.” She was limping, wearing one high-heeled shoe, the other nowhere in sight. Her skin was smudged with soot, her dress was torn into rags, and her hair looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket on a really windy day. “Now, where’s my brooch? It should be somewhere around here. I found my way out of the tunnels by aiming for it, but now I don’t seem to feel it anymore.”

“How did you get out?” I asked.

“I just told you, Katie, I aimed for my brooch.” Even in her exhausted state, she sounded condescending.

“What about the dragon?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Katie, there’s no such thing as dragons. Now, about my brooch? It was a birthday gift from my fiancé, and I’d like it back. Don’t make me call the police.”

I spotted the fake brooch lying nearby on the platform. “There it is,” I said. “Take it. I promise I’ll leave you alone now.”

She limped over to it, bent to pick it up, then pinned it on her tattered dress and took a few long, deep breaths. Then she frowned in disappointment. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t feel the power.”

“The power was in you all along,” I said, feeling like I was reenacting the end of
The Wizard of Oz
. “You don’t need a gem to be a bit—I mean, to be in charge. You need to find your own power.”

She scrunched up her face, like she didn’t quite believe that, then she shrugged and limped away toward the concourse. Owen and I turned to watch her go, then Owen said, “I hope the dragon’s okay.”

“You’d probably better send someone with magical powers to check on it,” I said. “I know I’m not going back in there.” Then my brain finally caught up to the current situation. With Mimi gone, that accounted for one of our nemeses, but what about all the puritans and Raphael who’d been on the platform with us when the Eye was destroyed? Sam had said everyone was knocked unconscious.

I glanced behind us and saw all the puritans just starting to stir. They were surrounded by MSI gargoyles. “What will happen to them?” I asked Sam.

“The boss figures that attempting to start a magical war puts them in Enforcer territory. He’s staying out of it, on account of the Eye being his creation in the first place. The Council’s not happy about having to take action, but it’ll do them good to have to take a stand on something.”

“What about him?” Owen asked, gesturing toward where Raphael lay, still motionless.

“I dunno. Who is he?”

“He seemed to have had some issue with my birth parents. He should probably be taken to the infirmary and kept under watch. I think he was suicidal. We barely pulled him back from jumping onto the tracks before the brooch exploded.”

“Okay, I’ll have our people deal with him,” Sam said.

There were some popping sounds as the magical Enforcers materialized on the platform. I’d spent too much time evading them during the summer to be entirely comfortable with their presence, even though they were supposedly on our side this time. Their leader came over to us. “There was a report of an insurrection movement?” he said with a suspicious glance at Owen.

“Over there,” Sam gestured with a wing. “Those guys could have destroyed us all if these kids hadn’t stopped ’em.”

The Enforcer signaled to his men, who bound the barely stirring puritans with silver chains, then disappeared with their prisoners. I gave a big sigh of relief when they were gone. If I never saw the puritans again, it would be too soon. I just hoped they didn’t come up with any more crazy schemes for purifying the magical world.

The lead Enforcer stayed with us. “Is there anything else we need to know?” he asked, his attention on Owen.

“Merlin can tell the Council everything,” Owen said. “And, no, I wasn’t part of it, I wasn’t a target. I never touched the Eye, and I wasn’t the one who destroyed it. You can also tell your people to take the next few days off from following me because I’ll probably be sleeping.”

The Enforcer raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing before he disappeared. “Should we have mentioned Raphael?” I asked.

“He didn’t really do anything,” Owen said. “In fact, he helped protect us. I’d like to see if we can help him rather than turn him over to the Council. He needs the infirmary, not Council detention.”

“Speaking of the infirmary, we’d better get you two to the office,” Sam said. “Or maybe to a hospital, since magical healers won’t be of much use to you.”

“That gash on your leg will need medical attention,” I said to Owen before he could protest.

There was a commotion at the entrance to the platform, and in came Granny, followed by Earl, Thor, and someone else who looked vaguely familiar but whom I didn’t immediately recognize. Granny came right up to me. “Young lady, I told you that you needed me with you, and you just ran off.” Her voice was sharp, and she punctuated each phrase with a poke of her cane.

“You were trying to take the brooch,” I said. “I
had
to leave you. And I’m okay. Well, I will be when I’ve had a hot bath, an aspirin, and some sleep.”

“The brooch must be safe. I don’t feel it anymore,” Granny said.

“It’s destroyed,” Owen said. “It shouldn’t be a problem ever again. But just in case …” He tried to get to his feet, and I forced myself to stand to give him a hand up. The guy with Granny stepped forward to help. Owen looked at him, frowning. He must have had the same familiar/unfamiliar sense from him that I had. “Rod,” he said, “I thought you were going to drop that illusion.”

A second later, what little color he had left drained entirely from his face as the implication of that caught up with him. It took me a second longer to realize that I, too, was seeing Rod’s illusion that he wore to make himself appear more handsome. But illusions didn’t work on me, and they hadn’t worked on Owen since he’d lost his powers last summer.

“Owen?” Rod whispered.

Owen didn’t seem to hear him. He held his hand out in front of him, and soon a soft glow formed in his palm. “The blast when the Eye was destroyed, it must have done something,” he said, his voice shaking.

“Yeah, I think a good blast of magic like that could be enough to reboot the system,” Sam said.

I was afraid to ask what might have happened to me. If I saw Rod’s illusion, then I’d lost my magical immunity. The blast must have turned me ordinary—normal ordinary, neither magical nor immune to magic. It looked like I’d be stuck in the marketing department, after all, in a job where my magical status didn’t matter. I was glad I was too tired to cry because that kept me from embarrassing myself by bursting into tears.

I’d learned the hard way that when something odd was going on with me, I needed to say something instead of trying to hide it, even if I didn’t want to face the truth of it. I waited until Owen seemed to have grasped the impact of having his magical powers back before clearing my throat and saying, “I see Rod’s illusion, too.”

Owen immediately stopped what he was doing and rushed to my side, taking my hands. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing my voice to sound firm and brave. “It’s just like that time when the potion took away my immunity.” I managed a casual little shrug and a wry grin. “I guess I’ll have to give up that idea of working in security. A ‘normal’ person won’t be much use there.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Owen said. “The line between powers and immunity is a fine one. If the explosion restored my powers …” His voice trailed off, and he squeezed my hands. “Okay, I need you to concentrate. Hold your hands out like so—” He turned my palms upward. “Now, imagine your hands growing warm, so warm that they’re glowing.” I closed my eyes and did as he directed. That weird buzzing tingle that had been running through my body since I woke up intensified. “Good,” Owen’s voice said softly. “Now let the glow lift into the air.” I tried doing that, then opened my eyes to see what was happening.

Small, faint balls of light hung in the air in front of my face. “Did I do that?” I squeaked.

Owen squeezed my hands. “You did that.”

“Yep, that’s why I had to come,” Granny said with a knowing nod. “You’ll need me here to help you adjust. I don’t want you to turn out like your brother. If I’d guided him as he learned to use his powers, maybe he wouldn’t have been such an idiot about it.”

“You mean, I have magic powers now?” I asked.

“Looks like it,” Owen said.

“For good?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to do some research.” For Owen, that was like saying he’d have to eat chocolate cake. His eyes were already sparkling.

Still holding my hand, he walked with me to the edge of the platform, then gestured with his fingers. The ruined remains of the brooch flew into his hand. He swayed slightly as it touched him. “It still has a little juice in it, but it’s limited to direct contact,” he said. “To be on the safe side, could someone please hand me that box.”

Rod brought over the box, and Owen placed the ruined brooch inside, then closed the lid and sealed it. He waved his hand over it, and the whole box glowed briefly before the light dimmed and it became just another wooden box.

“But you had no magic!” a voice cried in protest. Raphael was awake and staring in horror at Owen.

“I didn’t then, but it looks like you were right about the Eye restoring power,” Owen said. “I assure you, that was entirely unintentional.”

“Wow, this is like something out of a Shakespearian tragedy,” I said with a grin. “The thing you did to stop something you feared would happen turned out to cause the thing you feared. If you’d left Owen alone, he might have just put the brooch in the box and never learned that it could restore his powers. Not to mention the fact that we were so near the blast because we were saving your life.”

If I’d expected undying gratitude or an apology, I’d have been sorely disappointed. “You should have let me die,” Raphael said morosely, hanging his head. “I turned out to be as weak as anyone. I, too, fell under the sway of the Eye and lusted for power.”

I went over to him and patted him on the shoulder. “Hey, nobody’s perfect. It was the Eye. I’m not sure anyone could have resisted it. Even my own grandmother tried to take it away from me.”

“And I’m no weakling,” Granny said. “Come on,” she added, nudging him with her cane. “Everything will look better after you’ve had a good meal.”

“We’d all better get back to the office so we can let the healers at you two,” Sam said. “I sent for a car. It ought to be here by now.”

“This is where we part ways,” Thor said with a bow. “I got payment for our work and saw to it that the brooch didn’t fall into the wrong hands, so my work is done.” All of us glanced at each other with some amusement, since he’d had very little to do with protecting the brooch and had even injured Owen while trying to get it for himself. But it seemed rude to quibble at a time like this. Thor took Granny’s hand and added, “It has been an honor fighting at your side, good lady.” Then he headed off into the concourse.

Rod took charge of Raphael, and we all started to leave the platform, but someone behind us cleared his throat. We turned to see Earl standing there, looking sheepish. “I don’t suppose you’re hiring,” he said. “I probably don’t have a job after attacking my boss, and I think I blew my cover as a spy in his court. I may even need to hide for a while if he figures out I tied him up before he woke up.”