“Sorry, not going to happen.”
“What the-” Michael’s voice cut-off and Larissa turned. The shadow man from that first night was emerging from the wall, at least his torso was, the rest of his body still hidden. He wrapped his arms around Michael and pulled, taking Michael…
…through the wall.
“Michael!”
She ran to the wall and beat on it, but it was unyielding. “Michael!”
“He’s safe, I promise,” and Fallon was there in front of her. Larissa shrank back, but the wall was solid behind her, not allowing any more movement. “Sorry, Teach. You need to come with us now. The time of pussy-footing around is over.”
Laire’s voice popped up. “Is that what pussy-footing means? Why was I thinking it was something sexual?”
“Just read from the scroll.” Fallon sounded like an annoyed instructor during last period instead of someone in the midst of a kidnapping.
Laire huffed, but brought out a parchment sheet. Larissa recognized it from pictures in her lecture books. It was a magic scroll, which gave a magic user the ability to cast spells they normally couldn’t. There were several conditions to be able to use one, not the least of which was the magic user had to be a powerful caster – the book said only ten percent of casters were powerful enough to make any use of scrolls.
“What are you going to do to me?” Larissa hated that she couldn’t keep the tremor entirely out of her voice.
“You are going unconscious. This is the easiest way,” and even as Fallon explained, Larissa could hear Laire chanting in some strange language, a mixture of smooth vowels and guttural consonants.
Laire finished.
Nothing happened.
“Laire,” and Fallon’s annoyed voice was now ratcheted up several notches.
Laire was looking at the scroll with confusion plain on her heavily made-up face. “I have never had a scroll not work before. It’s a beginner spell – there should be no way they could mess it up.”
Larissa made a break for it, sprinting past the women, but as she stepped out the door someone picked her up, giving her body a hard squeeze. Even as she struggled a blindfold was placed over her eyes and ropes wrapped around her body.
“Hard way it is.”
It was an interrogation room – big and white, with a long table and two chairs in the middle, a couple spare bulbs hanging overhead, and one wall consisting of what was undoubtedly a two-way mirror.
Larissa sat on one of those chairs, looking toward the mirror. She wasn’t going to throw anything, not until she had a living, breathing target. Those mirrors were notoriously hard to break.
Fallon and Laire walked into the room. Well, more accurately, Fallon glided in, her balance centered on the balls of her feet. In contrast, Laire was wearing six-inch stilettos and was doing a hurried shuffle to keep up.
They stopped in front of the mirror. Fallon never so much as glanced at her reflection and leaned back against it. Laire was the opposite, leaning close to the mirror fix her make-up and slick on a very shiny gloss on her lips.
“My brother?” Larissa asked. Keep it cool. She could do that.
“He’s perfectly fine,” Fallon answered. “He’s back at his home right now without so much as a hair out of place, though very pissed over what happened. He’s calling his commanding officers even now.”
Several moments of silence followed. “Why?” So much for playing it cool. The word exploded out of Larissa. “Why am I here? Why did you kidnap me? You said we were meeting to talk, and I trusted you.”
“Told you we should have waited for Aislynn,” said the tiny mage to Fallon, still looking at herself in the mirror.
Fallon’s jaw tightened. She probably wasn’t the one often engaged in diplomacy, and the peeved look on her face told Larissa everything she needed to know about how Fallon felt being put in that position. Fallon said, “This was necessary. You are in a lot of danger and we had no other way to keep you safe.”
“Don’t try to sell me that crap. You’re mad that I didn’t play your game, and you decided to change the rules.”
“It was necessary,” Fallon repeated. Her sword kept peeking out from behind her head, a deadly reminder of what she could do. Well, she might be counting on that to help her out, but fat chance. This woman’s intimidation tactics weren’t working today.
Larissa put as much scorn in her voice as she could. “Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night, though I can’t imagine anything could.”
Laire, in the process of adding more eye shadow, spoke to Fallon then. “You aren’t helping the situation.”