No Quest For The Wicked

“Yes, but do you think you’ll get your money if you decapitate him?” I asked.

“I wasn’t gonna de–decap–decapa—cut his head off,” he protested. “I was only gonna stick my axe in his back.”

“That’s not any better! It still would have killed him, and it’s hard to get money out of a dead man.”

“Not too much harder than getting it out of a live elf.”

“You were planning to cheat him all along,” I reminded him. “It wasn’t his fault that you got cheated first. It was those magical puritans who stole the brooch from you. Go after them.”

“Okay, where are they?” He swung his empty hands, then looked down to notice he didn’t have his axe.

Owen hid the axe behind his back and said, “Why don’t you come with me? Maybe we’ll find one of those puritans for you.” To me, he added, “Hold on for a second. I don’t want him messing things up again.” He marched the still reeling gnome over to Rod and handed Rod the tiny battleaxe.

While we’d been dealing with Thor, the elves had put whatever plan they’d come up with into motion. They moved as a group toward Mimi, Earl bringing up the rear and saying, “But remember—” before being cut off by Lyle.

It looked like Lyle was going to try Granny’s trick of channeling the power of the stone through proximity. I didn’t have high hopes for that, considering how susceptible he’d been to Mimi’s orders earlier. He stood close to Mimi and said, “Give me the Knot!”

She looked at him in genuine confusion and asked, “What?”

“The Knot is ours. You must give it to us.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, you should probably go sober up your leader, then change into your tuxedos and warm up or tune up or whatever it is you vocal groups do.”

“Yes, we should do that,” Lyle agreed, turning to go, but one of his sidekicks caught him by the shoulders and spun him back around to face Mimi. He nodded thanks to his colleague, then repeated to Mimi, “Your brooch belongs to us.”

Her hand went straight to her pocket. “My fiancé gave me this brooch. It belongs to me.”

Lyle fought the compulsion to agree with her, then said, “But it was taken from my people.”

“File a police report, then, but I’m not handing it over on your say-so.”

While they argued, I scanned the room for any other puritan agents. If we spotted them trying to stop the elves from getting the brooch, then we’d know who to look out for when we made our attempt.

But it wasn’t a person or even a group of people who took action against the elves. Something dark rushed down from the mezzanine, aiming at the elves. I instinctively ducked as it whooshed over my head, and then I got a good look at it.

It was gargoyles. Not MSI gargoyles, but the mossy, chipped, stained old gargoyles the puritans had sent against us earlier—the ones Granny had turned back into stone. Yet here they were, flying again.

“Great,” I muttered. “Just what we need, zombie gargoyles.”

Mimi saw them flying at her, and she reacted pretty much the way I’d expect someone who didn’t know that gargoyles could come to life would react to seeing such a thing.

In other words, she lost it completely.

She screamed like the forces of hell were coming at her and fell on the floor, curling into a ball to shield herself. The elves had turned to magically fight the gargoyles that were attacking them. The event staff, however, didn’t see the magically veiled gargoyles. All they saw was the band members gyrating oddly and their tormentor going into hysterics on the floor for no apparent reason. Some backed away from the crazy person, while others moved in for a better view. A couple snapped pictures with their cell phones.

I was surprised by how sorry I felt for her. Yeah, she probably deserved it, but she had no idea what was going on. I went over and knelt beside her. “Mimi?” I said gently.

“Katie?” She clutched at me, clinging to me like I was saving her from drowning. “You’ve got to help me. Save me from these things.”

“Yeah, I think we’d better get you out of here. You’ve been under a lot of stress,” I said. “Do you think you can stand up?”

“But those things … You see them, don’t you?”

“Yes, I see them. They’re really ugly gargoyles, aren’t they?”

Reassured that I was seeing what she saw and not just humoring her, she let me pull her to her feet. “But they’ll get me,” she said.