It was still dark when we pulled into a parking lot near the boardwalk. "Looks like we made good time," Ethan noted. "But if we'd left later, something surely would have come up."
"I made cinnamon rolls, if anyone wants breakfast," I said.
"You aren't an angel, you're a goddess," Ethan said. I passed rolls forward for him and for Merlin. Ethan took a bite, then said, "You made these, yourself? Look out, Sara Lee."
"You cooked for us?" I jumped when I heard Owen's voice, then turned to see that he was awake, blinking sleep out of his eyes.
"Yeah, would you like some coffee and a cinnamon roll?"
"Yes, please. I take it we're here?"
"With plenty of time to spare," Ethan said as I handed Owen a mug and a roll.
"After we refresh ourselves, we can get the lay of the land," Merlin said.
I got a roll and some coffee for myself. The nearly sleepless night was already catching up with me, in spite of a bad case of nerves. "These are wonderful, Katie,"
Owen said, his voice sounding very close to me in the darkness of the backseat.
"You're a good cook."
"Everyone needs a hobby," I said, glad he couldn't see me blushing.
After we finished our breakfast, we got out of the car and walked toward the boardwalk. The sky was just starting to turn gray on the eastern horizon, and a light fog forming near the ground gave the deserted boardwalk a ghostly quality. Merlin unlocked the public rest-rooms so we could all recover from the long drive. I touched up my lipstick before heading back out to join the men. A girl just couldn't face a magical battle without her lipstick.
We walked together toward the amusement park. If this had been a movie, it would have been one of those slow-motion power shots, our coats swirling around us as we strode purposely through the fog toward our destiny. As it was, we all felt a little cold and damp, so we clustered together tighter than we normally would. I noticed that the men had closed ranks around me, and I wasn't enough of a feminist to mind all that much. If they wanted to protect me from the scary bad guys, I was totally on board with that plan. Never mind the fact that I was probably safer than Merlin and Owen were from whatever was likely to happen.
A gate sealed off the amusement park's pier, but one touch from Owen and it opened soundlessly. In the pale early morning light and the fog, the amusement park looked like something out of a Scooby Doo cartoon, very eerie and haunted. I halfway expected to find the evil caretaker wearing a rubber zombie mask. Only bits and pieces of the giant roller coaster broke through the fog, looking like sections of a railroad to nowhere.
"Do you think he's here yet?" Owen whispered.
"I'm not sensing anything," Merlin replied. "You two"—he indicated Ethan and me—"keep your eyes open for anything unusual, anything you don't think should be there."
My heart pounding in my throat, I scanned the empty amusement park, then did a double take when I saw a darker shadow up in the rigging that supported the roller coaster track. "There's someone up in the coaster," I said.
"I see it, too," Ethan said.
"I don't see it," Owen said, frowning. "And I suppose that answers my question.
He's here."
"How, exactly, do you define sunrise, anyway?" I asked. "It's getting light, but the sun isn't up."
"For our purposes, it's sunrise when the sun is clear of the horizon," Merlin explained. I looked to the east and saw that only the topmost part of the sun was showing. We had some time to go. "But if they attack, we fight back, no matter what time it is."
I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. "Look out for the guy on the coaster,"
I warned.
Owen barely lifted a hand, and the man up in the coaster flew back against the iron bars, seemingly held there by invisible cords. "I don't think he'll be a problem," he said mildly. "Let me know if you see anything else."
"How did you know where to hit?"
"If I know something's supposed to be there, I can feel it. Invisibility's no good once you know someone's there."
That was good to know, and it explained how Owen had snagged that intruder, back when all this had started for me. "I don't see anything else," I said as I strained my eyes for anything odd. There was more light now, and the sun was halfway above the horizon.
"Something's in motion, nine o'clock," Ethan said mildly. He was really getting into this. I forced myself to turn calmly in that direction and noticed a man high up on another ride.