Under a Spell (11 page)

Will looked surprised. “On a bombardment mission?”

I rolled my eyes. “Her mother knows we’re coming. I called her between classes and got her address.” I produced the scrap piece of paper I had written the Ledwiths’ address on. “There was no answer at Alyssa’s, so we’ll have to search her place another time.”

Will left on a sigh.

My phone chirped just as I exited the classroom.

“Hey, Neens, what’s up?”

“I have great news,” she said, breathless.

“Really? Awesome. I could use some good news right now.”

“Well, first things first, I dumped
UDA: The Musical
.”

A little starburst of joy shot across my heart.

“Aw,” I said in my best that’s-too-bad-voice. “What made you decide that?”

“I suck at writing music. And you know what rhymes with Underworld Detection Agency? Nothing.”

“So . . .”

“So I have a new plan. And this one is legitimate. I am going to be writing, casting, and directing
UDA: The Documentary
.”

“Do you cast a documentary?”

“Sampson was muttering something about our need to drum up more business, so I thought what better way to do that than to advertise? And what better way to advertise than to make a commercial?”

I bit my thumbnail. “And the documentary comes in where?”

“See, that’s the great thing. I’ll have the camera people following me while I make the commercial. Isn’t that going to be incredible?”

I knew better then to remind Nina of all the enormous loopholes in her new project—she couldn’t be seen on film; the clients, and existence, of the Underworld were supposed to be kept under non-major-media wraps—so I just gave her my most enthusiastic, “That sounds amazing!”

She paused for a beat, and I knew that she was biting her lip on the other side of the phone line. “Just one totally little teensy thing.”

My hackles were going up and my tolerance was going down. “What?”

“I just may need to use the apartment for some non-apartment-related things.”

I was imagining hobgoblin slobber soaking the carpet and blood spattering every wall—Nina was nothing if not incredibly theatrical and the documentary would be that times a thousand. “Like what?”

“Writing, storyboarding, meeting with the crew, casting.”

A whoosh of relief went through me. “As long as I don’t walk in on you on the casting couch with some hot little actor, that’s totally fine with me.”

“You’re the best, Soph.”

I clicked my phone off and put a little hop in my step. Things would work out. We were going to find Alyssa and solve this case and my alma mater would be no worse for the wear. High school was terrifying enough without adding a cache of teen witches—and Mercy didn’t have any, anyway. I smiled to myself. By this time tomorrow I could be peeing in the comfort of the Underworld Detection Agency, right next to the tiny pixie stall, with Nina giving me advice from her perch on the sink where she stared at her non-reflection.

I was disgusted—yet slightly comforted—to see that the girls’ room in the Junior Hall hadn’t changed since my years of hiding from my tormenters there. The tile was still that same horrid, milky pink with once-white grout that had endured years of pens and fingernails being driven into it. I tried not to breathe in, lest the stench of canned potpourri and industrial-strength cleanser stick in my lungs.

I flushed, and was mentally picking out tomorrow’s outfit when the overhead light started humming. It crackled, and my heart stopped beating while the light did one of those horror-movie flashes before going back to normal. I laughed at myself and yanked on the stall door, and nothing happened.

I jiggled the handle. I jiggled the lock. I yanked. I pushed. I pulled.

“Hello?” I called in the universal come-kill-me-now fashion.

The lights buzzed and flashed again, and heat zipped up the back of my neck. I started to panic, clawing at the cold metal door, kicking it, throwing my full weight against the chintzy lock. It gave at the same moment the lights went out. I stumbled over my own feet and barrel rolled onto the cold tile floor, gagging at the thought of bathroom floor touching skin and whimpering at the all-encompassing darkness. The room was pitch black and deadly silent, the only sound the heavy beating of my heart and my own open-mouthed panting.

And then came the sound. A bristling howl—primitive, inhuman—and deafening. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to press the brain-numbing sound out, but it only got louder. I hunched down into myself as each stall door barreled open on its own accord, the metal slabs clanking against each other. The toilets were next—one, two, three—exploding pistols of water straight up toward the ceiling. A chilling blue light swirled with the water and I pushed myself up, steadying against a sink as water swirled around my ankles.

I gaped. The mirror was smeared with angry slashes of red, the words G
ET
O
UT
scrawled across the mirror, hacking through my reflection. I was screaming and crying, tears and snot rolling over my chin, throwing my weight against the bathroom door when a heavy force pushed against me. My legs were matchsticks and I crumpled back to the horrible pebbled tile and Will looked down at me.

“Soph?”

In an instant the bathroom was bright and dry. The mirrors reflected the unscathed Pepto-pink stall doors and the only sound was the slight hum of the overhead lights and my own thrumming heart.

I could see that Will was geared to say something smart, but the second he saw me, he crouched down at my feet and pulled me to him, one hand on my shoulder, the other cradling my cheek. He thumbed a tear from the end of my nose. “What happened?”

I looked over both shoulders, expecting singing birds or a giant neon sign blaring
CRAZY
PANTS
with an arrow pointing to me.

“There was, and then—” I sniffled. “Something happened in here, Will!”

Will stepped around me, poking his head in each stall, doing a quick check. He turned to me and shrugged, his expression surprisingly sympathetic.

“I—I don’t know what to say,” Will said.

I pushed myself up and used the heel of my hand to wipe away the tears, then scanned the room myself from the safety of the doorway.

“Lights were blinking, and then they went out and there was—” I paused while Will studied me. I couldn’t tell if he was listening hard or considering whether or not my family history of nuttiness and pure evil had seeped into my brain. “There!” I pointed to the ceiling, cocking my head. “There, you hear that, right?”

The ominous squeak-squeak-squeak sounded again. I grabbed Will by both lapels. “Tell me you hear that!”

Will slid his arms around my waist and carefully led me into the hall. His eyes were intense. “Yes, I heard that, too.”

Part of me felt like collapsing in relief in his arms. The other part of me wanted to climb the length of his body and bury myself in his neck while we ran from imminent danger.

“What is it?” I whispered.

The triple squeak stopped, but my heart continued to hammer.

“Wait,” Will hissed. “Listen.”

Something heavy hit something hard. I could hear goo, something—blood?—sloshing and I started to heave. “That’s a body. That’s a body hitting the ground if I ever heard it.”

Will took his hands off me and turned carefully. “Go back into your classroom and lock the door. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”

I clung to his back, wrapping my arms around him and burying my forehead in the cleft between his shoulder blades. “No. No, no, no, no, no. I can’t lose you, too. I won’t sit by and watch you die.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

“There it is again!” I gripped fistfuls of Will’s shirt and moved with him, my eyes clenched shut.

“This would go a lot more smoothly if you would let go of me.”

“I can’t.” My muscles had seized up, my full body molded into the shape of ardent terror. “If I survive, I’m going to be in this position forever.”

“Lucky me. Would you just—” He wedged his hand between my front and his back and I was forced to move a quarter inch. “I thought you were supposed to be some great crime-fighting asset. Weren’t you learning to be tough or something?”

That’s right!
“That’s right!” Adrenaline shot through my entire body and I imagined myself giving whatever terror awaited us the ass-kicking of a lifetime. I’d stake a vamp with the number-two pencil in Will’s shirt pocket. I would stop a zombie with a head-removing scissor kick.

Squeak-squeak-squeak.

My bladder felt heavy, but I was ready.

Finally, I felt Will’s body loosen slightly. He pulled my hands from his shirt. “This one’s yours.”

He stepped aside and I imagined myself jumping into my most Buffy-esque fighting stance before doing some sort of dive roll into a helicopter kick that would disable my attacker.

In actuality, I was crunched myself into a chair pose and held my fisted hands close to my sides, protecting my breasts. The smell of fear, adrenaline and fate hung in the air.

And it smelled like bleu cheese.

“Steve?”

Steve, the Underworld Detection Agency’s resident troll and three-foot-tall stalker, grinned at me, baring all three of his snaggled yellow teeth.

“What the hell are you doing here? You almost got your ass kicked!”

“By him?” Steve motioned toward Will, who was doubled over, holding his gut, doing that silent, tears-down-the-face kind of laugh.

I wanted to slap him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sophie needs Steve. Sophie is in danger, and Steve would never leave his Sophie in danger.” He looked disdainfully at Will. “A true gentleman would never leave his woman in danger.”

“I’m not your woman. And why do you have a bucket? Why—” Knowing—sickening, overwhelming knowing—crashed over me. “You’re wearing a uniform. A janitor’s uniform.”

“Steve is undercover. Steve knows that’s the best way to protect his woman.”

Will stopped laughing and gasping for air long enough to say, “Does he always refer to himself in the third?”

“Steve does,” said Steve.

“Okay, okay, wait. Both of you—wait. Steve?”

“Steve is filling in for the janitor on vacation.” He looked at his bucket and frowned. “Steve doesn’t like his job very much.” He flapped nonexistent eyelashes. “But anything for my Sophie.”

“Did you just start today?”

Steve nodded.

“So when you said Soph—I—was in danger, it was just general. You don’t have any pertinent information, do you?”

A slip of Steve’s forked black tongue washed across his bottom lip. “Steve always has pertinent information.”

Will straightened. “Share it, mate.”

Steve shot him a blood-curdling glare. “Steve only shares with his woman.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping that would stop my new, suddenly pounding headache and the fact that my left eye was starting that twitching thing again. “Okay, Steve, what information do you have?”

He grabbed the wooden handle of the mop he had been slapping across the linoleum and pointed to the second floor with it. “Toilet’s clogged.”

I gaped. My eye twitched. “That’s your pertinent information?”

“Steve fixed the clog.”

Will blew out an annoyed sigh. “Fabulous. You’ve exorcised the crap out of the toilet.” He clapped. “Brilliant job, mate.”

“Steve, we don’t have time for this. Will and I need to—”

“Doesn’t Sophie want to know what clogged the toilet?”

I felt myself blanch. “Not especially.”

He poked his mop into his bucket and laboriously fished out a sopping wet sweater. “Not even if it was this?”

I took a step closer. “Is that a sweater?”

Will took a step closer. “From here?”

Steve flicked the sweater end of the mop in Will’s direction. “For Sophie’s eyes only.”

“Fine, Steve. It is a Mercy sweater,” I told Will over my shoulder. “Where did you get this?”

“Steve feels like he’s sharing a lot of information.”

“Of course. What do you want, Steve?”

Steve puckered up. “Little kiss?”

“Not if you pulled Jesus himself out of the toilet.”

Steve narrowed his eyes and started to sink the sweater again.

“Wait! Wait! I’ve got something even better. A kiss is so fast. It just comes and goes—”

“Not when Steve kisses.”

I let that roll off me and kept going. “This is way better.” I fished a tube of lip balm out of my pocket and held it in the palm of my hand. Steve poked his head forward, then tentatively came around his bucket, pulling my hand just under his nose.

“Lipstick?”

“Better.” I uncapped the balm and spread it across my lips. “Lip balm. I use it everyday. All the time. If you take this, it’s like your lips will be touching my lips all the time.”

Steve cocked his head.

“That’s awfully sexy. If the little man here doesn’t want it—” Will went to reach for my hand, but Steve rolled up on his tiptoes, yanked the balm from my hand, and squirreled backward with it tucked against his chest. He glared at Will. “Steve’s woman.” He uncapped the lip balm, rubbed it across his lips. I looked away as his eyes rolled backward and a little moan of pleasure emanated from his thin black lips.

“Where’d you get the sweater, Steve?”

“Someone tried to flush it down the toilet in the bathroom upstairs.” He rolled the balm over his bottom lip and closed his eyes. “Sweet kisses.”

“The upstairs bathroom? When?”

“Sweet, sweet, Sophie kisses.”

“When, Steve?”

He cracked open one eye. “After lunch. Took Steve a while to get it out. Not because Steve is weak.” His eyes flashed open, panicked. “Because water is strong.”

“Which toilet?”

“Huh?” Will asked.

“Which toilet was that stuffed in?”

Another swipe of the lip balm. Another ecstatic roll of his eyes. “Second from the wall. Next to the handicap.”

I dug through my purse and yanked out a travel bag, covering my hand, plucking out the sweater and dropping the sodden thing into it. “Thanks, Steve. You’re the best! Let’s go, Will.”