No Quest For The Wicked

“Hey, you’re a wizard!” Owen said.

She shot him a withering glare. “Of course I am, even if I don’t have all your fancy spells.”

He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m just not used to not being able to do this for myself. Are you open to learning a fancy spell?”

“I’m always willing to learn,” she said archly. “That’s what keeps me young.”

Owen addressed the driver, saying, “Take us out over the river. I don’t want anyone below to get hurt.” The carpet banked as it turned east down Fourteenth Street. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be over the water, though I supposed it might be better than landing on the street if the carpet tipped again. To Granny, Owen said, “Repeat after me,” and then he said a long string of something that sounded like mostly consonants.

She tried to emulate him, but got her tongue tangled. “Do you have to use such foreign talk?” she complained, absently waving a hand that deflected the pursuing gargoyle again. “What’s wrong with good old English?”

“For this, yes, I’m afraid you need the foreign language. This is a pretty complicated process that’s countering other magic. Now, try it again.” He kept coaching her until he felt she wouldn’t carry out an entirely different spell. All the while, our carpet rose, dipped, and zigzagged as it evaded the gargoyle attacker. I played lookout and shouted warnings to the driver while Granny practiced.

When she got it, Owen said, “Now here’s the hand gesture.” That one she picked up a little more quickly, though she didn’t move her fingers as fluidly as he did. “The last part is all mental. You need to focus on the fact that the gargoyle is stone, that it shouldn’t be flying. It shouldn’t move at all. Can you do that?”

“That doesn’t take much imagination,” she said dryly. “It’s the natural order of things.”

“Okay, then, next time it comes at us, do it.” We were over the river now, nothing below us but dirty water. The gargoyle plummeted toward us, its wings folded against its sides in a steep dive. If it hit us, it would drive the carpet—and its passengers—straight into the river. “Now!” Owen shouted to Granny. Then he instructed the driver, “Hold your course until I say otherwise.”

Granny moved her hands the way he’d taught her while shouting that phrase that sounded like nonsense to me. I felt the tingle of magic, but the gargoyle kept dropping toward us. “Move!” Owen shouted to the driver. The carpet barely swerved out of the way as the gargoyle dropped like the proverbial stone. I couldn’t resist a glance over the side to watch it fall into the river. I imagined I heard a splash, but that was unlikely from this height.

“What did I just do?” Granny asked Owen.

“You told it to turn back into stone. I got the feeling this one had only recently been animated, so it was easy enough to return it to its original state.”

“Ha! Not so easy, since you needed me to do it,” Granny said with a grin, poking him in the chest.

“But you needed my fancy spell to do it,” he countered with a grin of his own.

“I’m sure I’d have figured something out eventually,” she said.

“Don’t try using that spell on our gargoyles,” he warned. “I’m not sure it would even work, since most of them have been alive for centuries. It’s more likely to just make them cranky.”

“I bet I could figure something out,” she said with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Then they’d better stay on my good side. Otherwise, I think they’d look real good in my garden. I could train ivy over them.”

Owen’s phone rang, and he winced guiltily at Granny’s mischievous grin as he said, “Hi, Sam. No, we’re okay, we got rid of it. We’re on the East River. It looks like we’re coming up on the Williamsburg Bridge.” Then his eyes went wide. “Oh, no, Rod and the others could be in danger, too.” He looked grim and nodded a few times as he listened.

“Are they okay?” I asked, clutching his arm as he ended the call.

“Yeah, Sam warned them in time.”

“Someone really doesn’t want us to succeed.”

“And that someone seems to be a step ahead of us.”

“On the bright side, our unknown follower couldn’t possibly have kept up with us through all that, not on foot, and we’d have seen anything else in the air.”

When we finally reached the MSI building without further incident, I asked the driver to take us to the front door. “I’m not getting off in midair this time,” I said with a shudder.