Much Ado About Magic

Page 26

Mack gave a world-weary sigh. “Some idiot decided it would be fun to knock over a jewelry store by getting an innocent delivery guy with a hand cart to crash through the glass door, bust open a display case, and grab the ice. Only problem was, that glass is pretty damn hard to break. It went into shards, injuring the delivery guy, who’s still inside. When the perp’s victim couldn’t pull off the crime, the wizard panicked and blocked the whole place magically so no one can get in or out. The cops think it’s a hostage situation.”
“Which is the part you’re having trouble with?”
“That damned blocking spell. We can’t get past it, either.”
“Is the wizard inside or out?” I asked.
“We think he’s inside. That spell isn’t coming from anywhere out here.”
I turned to look at Owen, and he immediately shook his head. “No. No way. No how.”
“What?” Mack asked, watching us with narrowed eyes.
“I’m a magical immune,” I said. “I could get in there.”
“Oh, now this gets interesting,” Mack said, scratching his chin as a smile twitched his lips. “Very, very interesting.”
“What good would it do for you to go in there?” Owen asked.
“For one thing, I could get a first-aid kit in to that injured deliveryman. And for another, doesn’t generating a magical field like that require constant effort and attention if he hasn’t laid all the groundwork for a continuous ward?”
“You’ve spent way too much time with me,” Owen said, pride and dismay warring on his face.
“Think about it, Owen. I could distract him, which gives you a chance to break his spell, and we could end this thing.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Mack said with an expansive shrug. “You got anything better?”
Owen ran his hands through his hair and glared at the scene for a while before turning to me. “You’ll be careful?”
“No, I’m planning to recklessly endanger myself just to annoy you.”
That almost made him smile, and he had to fight to keep looking stern. “Okay, then. How do you plan to explain your ability to get in?”
“The nonmagical people will think I’m a medic, and the wizard should be baffled, which is what we want, right? Then when it’s all over with, I can slip out with the other hostages and you can make me disappear. You’ll be cleaning all this up anyway, won’t you?”
“Oh, yeah, we’ll be cleaning up,” Mack said. He waved his hands and an EMT jacket and hat appeared in them. He helped me with the jacket, then waved his hands again. A medical bag materialized. “You know what to do with this?”
“I know basic first aid—Dad made us all take a course at the store, since we work with sharp objects and poisons. The main thing is to stop or slow the bleeding—I mean, aside from coming up with a way to distract our wizard, which is my primary objective.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Owen asked. He still looked intensely unhappy about the whole situation.
“I’ll have to improvise,” I said with a shrug that I hoped looked more casual than it felt. In spite of my show of bravado, I was going shaky with the realization of what I was about to do. “It all depends on the wizard himself.”
Mack took my arm and said, “Let’s get this done,” but before he could lead me away, Owen stepped forward and kissed me fiercely. As Mack led me toward the besieged jewelry store, I glanced over my shoulder at Owen, who looked like he was contemplating sending me back to Texas, and then I was standing in front of the shop.
I had to clear my throat a couple of times before I could get enough sound to my voice to call out. Not that I really needed to say anything. I felt like my heart was pounding loud enough that they could hear me inside. “Medic!” I shouted through the broken glass of the door. “I’m here to see the injured man. I’m not armed. I’m just here to help.” When there wasn’t a response, I took a few deep breaths, and then with a trembling hand, I reached out and opened the door.
It was a tiny store, but with the merchandise they sold, they didn’t need a lot of space. Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw that there were four people inside: an older man in a perfectly tailored suit, an equally well-dressed young woman kneeling on the floor next to a uniformed delivery man who was lying still, and a wild-eyed young man wearing a hooded sweatshirt.
I figured the agitated young guy had to be our wizard. He backed away from me as I made my way into the shop, one of his hands crooked in an odd position—maybe as part of doing his spell. “How–how did you get in here?” he stammered. That verified my assumption—only the wizard would know that it should have been impossible for anyone to get inside.