No Quest For The Wicked

Page 12

“We’ll let Rod deal with her while we go after the Eye,” Owen said.
“Wouldn’t this be faster in a car?” I asked as we ducked down an alley to cut between two streets. “Or at least the subway?”
“We’re doin’ ya one better, doll,” Sam said. “By the time we get back to the office, there’ll be a carpet waitin’ for you guys.”
A flying carpet might have been fast, but it wasn’t my favorite way to travel. When I flew, I preferred to have something solid like an airplane around me. Flying carpets were severely lacking in safety features like seatbelts. I was surprised, though, when Owen came to a complete halt and dug in his heels stubbornly. “No. Uh uh. No way on earth.”
Rod stopped and turned around. “What?”
“I know how you drive, and I’m not getting on one of those things when you’re in control.”
“You’re welcome to drive if you can find a way to do it without magic,” Rod snarled defensively.
“It won’t do us much good if we don’t get there alive,” Owen shot back.
Owen’s anxiety was unsettling. I didn’t want to do something that scared him this much. He didn’t scare easily.
“I’ll be careful,” Rod said. “Yeah, I may have had a few mishaps, but I’ve grown up since then.”
“Since last year?”
Sam flew back to us. “Boys!” he shouted. “We’ve got a quest to finish. And neither of you’s drivin’. I got one of my people on the job.”
That didn’t make me feel much better. I’d seen the way gargoyles drove cars. I could imagine how they’d handle something that flew. Fortunately, the driver waiting for us wasn’t a gargoyle. He was a small, pixie-like creature whose face was mostly obscured by a pair of plastic goggles. He’d tied two bits of the carpet’s fringe around his body in a makeshift seatbelt, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign. It might have meant he was safety-conscious, but it could also have meant that he was planning for a wild ride.
Owen helped me onto the hovering carpet, then sat beside me with one arm securely around my waist. I held on to the carpet pile with both hands as Rod climbed up behind the driver. Then the carpet took to the sky and I clamped my lips together so I wouldn’t scream.
The driver proved to be very professional. He didn’t show off or take unnecessary risks, unless you consider going ridiculously fast to be an unnecessary risk. Buildings sped by in a blur, making it difficult to tell where we were. It was probably the quickest trip uptown I’d ever taken, and we slowed to a stop within minutes. I slid gratefully off the carpet and was surprised to hear Owen’s deep sigh of relief when his feet touched solid ground. That made me feel like less of a wimp for wanting to kneel and kiss the sidewalk.
Sam had flown ahead and was meeting with a cluster of gargoyles on a nearby railing. “Bad news, gang,” he said as we approached. “The elves are already here.”
“What about Martin and his fiancée—and the brooch?” Owen asked.
“It’s kinda hard to tell,” one of the other gargoyles said in a deep, gravelly voice. I couldn’t determine if he was making a horrified face or if that was just the way he’d been carved, but his expression didn’t inspire confidence.
“How is it hard to tell?” Rod asked. “It’s either here or it isn’t.”
“It’s hard to tell because we can’t get inside,” the gargoyle said, looking even more horrified. “Somethin’s keepin’ us out. Magically, I mean. We can’t even get close enough to put a rock through a window. But it don’t sound good in there.”
“That probably means it’s here,” I said, then tried to swallow the nervous lump in my throat. If the gargoyles were being magically blocked, then that left Owen and me to go into the restaurant, with no magic to protect us.
“I’m not feeling drawn to power,” Rod said. “Though it’s possible that the wards are blocking its effects, or it could be back in the box.”
“I can try to get in,” Owen said. “I can get past the wards, and then I can find out what’s happening.”
“You mean ‘we,’” I reminded him.
All of us headed for the restaurant entrance. The row of jockey figures overlooking us made me feel like I was being watched even though I knew they were a famous element of the place and had nothing to do with magic. The carpet driver took a tiny magazine out of his jacket pocket and settled down to read.