Sorceress, Interrupted Page 4

  It was scary, but the list of people old or powerful enough to do such a spell was small, and I highly doubted any of them were wandering around sucking the power out of striplings. I certainly wouldn’t.

  “It’s probably a binding spell,” I suggested. “Someone’s going around using one, barring others’ access to their powers. Happens all the time. Some yahoo gets in a fight, someone slaps a binding spell on him and he can’t do anything for a while. Then someone else goes and makes the story sound more impressive than it is.”

  Joseph nodded. “ ’Tis true. Happens all the time.”

  Was it my imagination, or did he sound like he was trying to reassure himself? Joseph normally laughed at this kind of gossip, and he was the one who’d brought it to me. I’d definitely have to investigate this further if it had one of the mercenary Brothers of Power nervous.

  I glanced at the quartet. “Like I said, it’s worthless information until you have proof that this is more than just a crazy rumor. Come back when you’ve got something better. Now, if you all will excuse me”—I could see one of my bodyguards beckon from the back of the room—“I believe my next appointment is here.” I blew Joseph a kiss. “Give my love to your brothers.”

  He winked. “Not a chance of that, me darlin’.”

  “Like you haven’t already,” London mumbled, but the barb was halfhearted. If she only knew how truthful her statement was . . .

  Something definitely had her on edge. All of them were a bit strung out, now that I looked. It was nice to know that when the chips are down, I’m the one people come to. And while half-baked rumors are annoying, annoyance is a hell of a lot better than boredom.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The service industry sucks. No matter where you are, be it a cheap restaurant or an expensive bar that also sells magical favors, people sometimes get the mistaken impression that The Customer is Always Right is a law written on a stone tablet somewhere and not a clever maxim of some profit-pushing corporate shill. Or maybe what kills me is customers who discover they get to be right all the time and use that as an excuse to act like entitled asses. Being an entitled ass is my turf, damn it.

  Let’s face it, I’m also not a good businesswoman. I didn’t get into this business to serve customers. I was tuning out the enraged neophyte sorceress from the moment she stormed in, with her perfectly done hair and fancy manicure, designer clothes and handbag and all the other trappings that screamed she was trying to be important, and started blabbing on about how I hadn’t done what she wanted. A good businesswoman would at least pretend to care about her problem. All I did during her tirade was mentally lament the fact that the new generation of magic-users no longer fear and respect their elders. Back one hundred years ago—hell, back fifty years ago—there was no way anyone would have dared talk to me like this, and this kind of disrespect was getting more and more frequent.

  There were a few exceptions to the rule. London, for example, was one of the youngsters still respectful in an old-school way: while she was insulting and abrasive, she knew when to back off. Older magic-users like Howard, or even Joseph and his brothers, would kid me, annoy me, or even romance me during one of my weaker moments, but they also knew that when all was said and done I’m not someone you want angry with you. Frankly, respect is a two-way street, and those people pay the toll on my boulevard.

  The woman in front of me, however, acted like she was the queen of the universe and I was a peasant. The attitude reminded me of the woman from my birthday night dream, and it completely infuriated me.

  She started to jab her finger and one of the bodyguards stepped over, but I shooed him away with a dismissive glance. That should have been the woman’s first clue to back off, but she didn’t and instead took a step closer. From my casual sitting position I faced her down, the bored expression falling off my face as I felt my jaw clench and my eyes narrow. In a cold voice, I said, “Silenzio.”

  The woman was instantly silenced, and her eyes widened in fear. I could tell from her look of horror that she was still trying to talk and was unable to understand why she couldn’t make her lips move.

  “Siediti,” I said, pointing to the chair behind her. She instantly planted herself on it, against her will. I could see her trying to squirm but unable to control her limbs.

  “Now,” I said, leaning back on my couch with the air of bored royalty. “Let me make sure that I understand the situation clearly. You came here a few nights ago and wanted your boyfriend sent out of town because he’s cheating on you with a coworker at your shared office. Boy, that’s the same old story, the boyfriend and the best friend. Really, it is. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it. So is the interoffice relationship thing. Anyway, you’d been casting some low-level annoyance spells—rashes, impotence spells, what have you—but that wasn’t satisfying your need for revenge. So you wanted him far away where you never had to see him again, and where she couldn’t see him either. So nobody gets him and nobody’s happy. Correct?”

  Silence. I looked up and noticed her eyes were screaming, trying to communicate.

  “Sorry. Parla.”

  “Yes, but—”

  I cut her off. “No buts. All this, so I used my powers to magically send him away from you and her—in this case, to a remote cabin in Montana, with pretty much what amounts to a memory wipe so he won’t just call the girlfriend and have her send him a ticket out of there. He’s now out of town, and you will no longer have to see him every single day of your dreary office existence. Correct?” I nodded for her to speak.

  “Yes! But then—”

  I cut her off again. “In return for me using my power to do as you requested, you owe me a favor. You ask a favor of me, I get to ask a favor of you. This is the standard agreement I make with all of my clients, unless you have information I need, which you don’t. So you owe me one.” I fixed her with my darkest stare. “I’m certainly failing to see the problem that has you in here screaming at me.”

  She was either oblivious or didn’t care about my intense disapproval, because she started talking again as soon as I allowed it. “I just wanted to teach him a lesson! I wanted him stranded in the middle of nowhere for a while until he came to his senses!”

  I shrugged. “So call him. I told you if you ever wanted to undo it, just call and talk to him. It won’t work if the girlfriend calls him, only if you do.”

  “I did, but we got into another fight!”

  “Look, if you want me to reset the spell, that’s going to cost you.”

  “No!” She looked like she wanted to hit me. I mentally dared her to. “While I was here the other night, he called me and left messages on my machine begging forgiveness and asking me to take him back. He was crying over the phone, saying he loved me, that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, and that the fling with Chelsea was a terrible mistake.”

  I took the glass one of my djinns held out for me, bringing the glowing pink drink to my lips. “So you taught him a lesson, he came to his senses, and you got what you wanted. I’m afraid I’m failing to see how this has anything to do with me.”

  She shot daggers at me with her eyes. “You sent him to Montana!”

  “You asked me to,” I replied with equal venom. “It’s not my problem that you changed your mind and broke the spell almost immediately. If you want him back here, send him a plane ticket. Problem solved.”

  “That’s just it!” Her eyes glittered and she looked a little insane. “I finally got hold of him on his cell phone to say that I forgive him and to come back home. But now he doesn’t want to! He thinks the fling with Chelsea was part of a midlife crisis because he was feeling trapped in his job. He wants to stay out there in Montana and live off of the godforsaken land or rustle cattle or something like that. He thinks it was a God-given miracle he was sent there.” She reached into her designer handbag and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with shaking hands.

  I smirked. “I’ve been called many things, but ‘God’
is definitely a first.”

  She glared at me over her cigarette. “He’s living some stupid cowboy childhood fantasy.”

  “So, go out there to be with him if you love him so much. That’s where he’s happy,” I suggested. “Maybe it is just a stupid childhood fantasy, or maybe it’s a wake-up call for him to figure out what he really wants in his life. Either way, you can go out there and be with him and try to work it out.”

  “Me? Live out in some cabin in the middle of nowhere? Like hell.”

  Now she was really pissing me off. There was a time in my life that I would have loved for someone to wave their magic wand and do something magically for my relationship that I couldn’t. Sending her cheating investment banker boyfriend away to Montana with a fuzzy memory seemed to have helped: at least he wanted to work it out with her, if in a new locale. How hard was it for her to go to Montana for this guy she was supposedly so in love with?

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’ve ruined everything. I had a great relationship before all of this mess. You were supposed to be making my life better, not worse.”

  Was she kidding me? Her relationship was great while her boyfriend was a cheating investment banker? “Look, the bottom line is you wanted him gone, he’s gone.” I shrugged. “You had an escape clause to get out if you wanted; you used it. Now, because things didn’t work out the exact way you wanted, you don’t want to pay. That’s like going out to dinner and ordering the steak, eating it, and then telling the waiter that you changed your mind and wanted the salad instead, and that you’re not paying for the steak you just ate.”

  She stared as if I were speaking a foreign language. “What are you talking about?”

  All niceness faded and I slammed my glass down on the tray held out before me. “A lot of things in life don’t work out the way you want, and you have to live with the consequences. You ate the steak and now you’re going to pay for it.”

  “Like hell I am,” the woman shrieked.

  “That’s it.” I was on my feet. “You need to leave.” And with a few quick words in Italian and a wave of my hand, she was gone. “And I thought I was a spoiled brat,” I said.

  I’d thought I was alone, apart from my djinns. I was wrong. A presence loomed behind me and I heard, “Where did you send her?”

  “To a cabin in the hills of rural Tennessee. Not with her boyfriend, and not anywhere near a major city. And nowhere near Daddy and his money.”

  “You’re getting soft in your old age.”

  I sighed. “I’ll admit it’s not exactly what I wanted to do to her. Throwing her into an active volcano would have been better, but I think I can get some satisfaction out of her being lost in the mountains and eaten alive by mosquitoes instead of dining on room service at the Four Seasons.” I turned to face the speaker and said, “The Old One and his friends would probably frown on dumping semi-innocent people into molten lava. Did they let you out for good behavior?”

  Cyrus grinned. “When have I ever been good, Fantazia?”

  “Since you started shacking up with the EHJ. Or is that some sort of clever ruse?”

  He shook his head. “Not a ruse. I’ve just turned my talents to the other side—still for monetary gain.”

  “They can’t be paying you more than someone would pay for insight into their dirty little secrets.”

  Cyrus shrugged. “Maybe I just don’t like looking over my shoulder for the law anymore. I’m basically a lazy person. You know that. Keeping your guard up all the time gets tiring.”

  “Poor baby. So what are you doing slumming with me?” I rose and walked over to him. “Get tired of being around all the goody-goody girls? Felt the need to be around a bad one?” I patted him on the cheek.

  He removed my hand. “You’re the baddest one of all,” he agreed. “That’s why it astounds me to report that they need you to watch Emily. One of the take-over-the-world types broke out of jail, and all hands are needed.”

  I laughed. “Good God. Is that their rallying cry now—‘All hands’? What a pun.”

  Cyrus grinned. “No, it’s not, but it is pretty good. Maybe I should suggest it to Paul.”

  “Please do.” Just thinking of the stuffy coleader of the Elite Hands of Justice and his reaction to such a proposition was worth a chuckle. “So . . . if ‘all hands’ are needed, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you out there in the trenches, saving the world in spandex?”

  He made a face. “I don’t have the body to pull that look off.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  He shot me the finger. “And I am doing something—I’m fetching you. I told you, sweetheart, I’m basically a lazy person. Once I get you over there to watch the kid, I’m going back to watching the game.”

  “The game? You get that out of the Handbook of Generic Male Excuses or something?”

  He gave me a dark look. “Fine. I’m going back to watching professional wrestling. There’s a steel-cage match between the Hillbilly and the Dark Reaper I want to see. Happy?”

  “Ecstatic.”

  “So, come on. The world’s ending and only you can save the Elite Hands of Justice from the horrors of babysitting duty.”

  I was secretly happy that I’d get to hang out with Emily again but didn’t want to seem too eager. “I don’t know. I have duties here.”

  He glanced around. “Like lounging around? No one’s here, Fantazia, no one but you and your creepy waitstaff. Come on, either you babysit Emily or I will, and I know which the EHJ prefers. Though, with the choice between me and a never-aging tease willing to use her beauty to get whatever she wants, I don’t understand it. You certainly wouldn’t be my first pick. Not as caretaker to a potentially scary little girl.”

  Tease? While it might be somewhat true, I didn’t like that this seemed to be all he saw when he looked at me. And I also didn’t like that I was starting to care what he thought. “I may have done a lot of questionable things in my long life, Cyrus, but I’ve never gone to jail for any of them. You, my friend, have.”

  “And no one wants a convicted felon watching their kid. I know.” He glared at me. “Are you coming to headquarters or not?”

  I pretended bored acquiescence. “Fine. When you sing my praises like that, I guess I have no choice.”

  He shook his head. “I’d love to know what the Old One has on the reclusive Fantazia to make her get up off of her lazy ass to go and take care of his kid. And to make him trust you,” he added.

  How Cyrus went this long around the EHJ without hearing that I’m the Reincarnist’s daughter, I’ll never know. But since I always like having the upper hand, information-wise, I just smiled and said, “That’s for me to know and you to never find out.”

  He smiled, a wicked grin that hinted at more than a little mischief. A girly side buried deep inside of me wanted to giggle nervously in reaction. I smothered it. “You’d better hope I never do. Because having any dirt on you, Fantazia, is the sweetest jackpot of all. As I already know.” Was it my imagination, or was there a little bit of heat burning in those dark blue eyes?

  I dropped my gaze from that dark, hot look and bit my lip.

  Oh yeah. The birthday thing was going to come back to haunt me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Good, you’re here.”

  I was greeted by a frazzled-looking Mindy. She held a sobbing Emily in her arms.

  “I leave you alone for five minutes and look what happens,” Cyrus joked.

  Mindy shot him a dark look. “She’s just upset because Lainey left. She’s still not used to her mom being one of the ones to go off on missions.”

  “Mommy!” Emily was sobbing. “I want Mommy!”

  “Shhhh,” Mindy said.

  “Shouldn’t that maternal instinct be kicking in for you?” Cyrus asked.

  “Shouldn’t self-preservation be kicking in for you?” Mindy shot back. “Or do you have a death wish, saying stuff like that to a pregnant woman?”

  “Whoever said self-pr
eservation was my strong suit?” Cyrus shot me a wink.

  Mindy just shook her head. In a brighter voice she said, “Look who’s here to play with you, Emily!”

  The child swung her head in my direction. “Fay.” She seemed a bit happier, but still wasn’t over her mother’s departure.

  “Fay’s come to play with you while Aunt Mindy does monitor duty for Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Paul and Aunt Selena and Uncle Toby.”

  “I wondered if you’d be staying off the battlefield,” I said. “I didn’t think a pregnant woman should be out on the front lines.”

  She made a face. “Now you sound like my husband. No, I’m staying here and helping Paul coordinate teams over the headset. But I can’t exactly do that with a crying kid on my lap, so . . .”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I finished, scooping Emily out of her arms. “Come on, kiddo, let’s go to your room.”

  As I started to leave the room, I turned back. “So, who are they fighting?”

  “Edgar Ragde,” Cyrus said. He was headed for the other room, probably to watch professional wrestling like he’d claimed. Men in tights beating each other up? That’s like a normal Monday night for heroes and villains. Didn’t quite see how that was pleasurable or escapism. Maybe it was because the ending was predetermined.

  “Mr. Paranoia?”

  “He’s finally gone from paranoid to just plain psychotic,” Cyrus added. “He escaped from jail and is using his magic to attack anything that moves.”

  “It was a short trip for him,” I mused. Edgar was a magic-user who believed he had more power than he actually had, and that everyone was out to get him because of it. Everyone was out to get him, but mostly because he was superannoying. Still, he took paranoia to new heights, going after civilians and such. That’s why he’d gone to jail in the first place: insisting some guy on the bus was threatening him. Magicked him up good.