No Quest For The Wicked

“Destroy it.”

“And the Knot?”

“Take that up with Merlin.”

“How can we trust you?” Lyle asked.

“We could ask the same of you. The dangerous part of the brooch is ours, and we can’t risk it falling into the wrong hands.”

“You think ours are the wrong hands?”

“I think any hands are wrong.”

“Other than yours, apparently.”

“Like I said, no magic. I’m immune. It wouldn’t affect me.”

“How can we believe that?”

Owen shook his hands in frustration, looking like he was barely restraining himself from strangling the elf. “You saw all the power that the wizards threw at me and that you threw at me, and nothing happened. Not to mention the fact that I got past your wards. I can’t use the Eye. I might even be able to separate it from the Knot, if it can be done physically.”

“I will consider your offer and suggest it to the Elf Lord,” Lyle said stiffly.

“Great. Now, drop the wards and let these people go.”

“Do you think that is a wise idea?”

All of us looked around at the fighting or sobbing patrons. I imagined them being turned loose on the city to hunt down the gem. “Well, probably not,” I said. “Maybe you could give them the Sleeping Beauty treatment, like you did to the people in front and to these wizards. You could throw in a little memory adjustment, while you’re at it.”

The elf gave me a surprised glance, then nodded. “Yes, we could do that.” He waved his arms, and everyone in the room, aside from the elves, Owen, the waiter, and me, settled down into sleep. I was surprised that the stern-looking couple also fell asleep. I’d been so sure that they were immune. Maybe they just had a lot of self-control. “Now, we will return this place to its normal appearance. We know where to find you if we decide to accept your offer.”

“Thank you,” Owen said, then he took my arm and led me out of the club. I shivered as I looked at the people who’d fallen asleep in mid-squabble. If being in the same room with the thing made people that crazy, it wouldn’t be easy to get it away from the future Mrs. Martin.

I noticed that Owen was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and asked, “Are you okay?”

He touched the cut, then frowned at the bloody fingertips he brought back. “I think so. I just had a bit of a Hitchcock moment back there with that airplane.”

“You’ve seen North by Northwest, but not Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

“It had spies in it! That’s different.”

We joined the others outside, and I quickly explained what I’d learned from Martin, then Owen told them about the elves.

Sam snorted. “I don’t trust elves.”

“Really?” I asked. “We have lots of elves at MSI.”

“Oh, I trust them. But these guys work for the Elf Lord, and he’s a real piece of work. You can’t believe a thing his people say. It may be the truth, but it’s all spun up in riddle and different meanings for words, and stuff like that, so they can tell the absolute truth and still be dishonest.”

While Sam ranted, Owen called the office to update Merlin. “They’ll try to track down the fiancée,” he said when he finished his call.

“What should we do?” I asked.

With a shrug, he said, “We may as well go back to the office and help. There’s not much else we can do until we have a target.”

“We’ll keep an eye on the elves while you kids check in with the boss,” Sam said. “I wanna make sure they don’t get up to no funny business.”

As we boarded the magic carpet, I glanced back at the club, thinking I’d seen something out of the corner of my eye. I hadn’t counted the number of jockeys along the front of the building on my way inside, but it seemed like there were more of them now. And if I wasn’t mistaken, one of them had a beard.

That was kind of weird, but the way this day was going, it only came in at about a four on a weirdness scale of one to ten. I was about to say something to Owen when I noticed something even more alarming, a man wearing a trenchcoat that was entirely too heavy for the weather, with a hat pulled low over his eyes. The carpet was already rising, so by the time I got Owen’s attention to point the man out, we’d reached the end of the block.

“It’s probably just one of my usual followers,” Owen said with a shrug. “They want to make sure I’m not up to anything evil. I’m getting used to it.”