Kicking It(91)

I wriggled experimentally, trying to see if there was any play in the knots. There wasn’t. I considered trying to set the ropes on fire, then discarded that idea. I don’t have fine control of my powers. If I tried to burn the ropes apart, the whole hotel could go up in a giant conflagration and thousands of people could be killed.

Still, I’d managed to open the elevator doors without setting the building aflame, so maybe I could play Jedi and unknot the ropes with the power of my mind.

I reached for my magic—and it wasn’t there.

Or rather, it was there, but it wasn’t available to me. Now I knew why I felt like I’d had a blanket thrown over me. Someone had put a dampening spell on my power so I couldn’t use it. Well, it was nice for the bad guys that Sammy Blue had thought of everything.

Beezle’s reassuring weight was still in my front pocket. Either Sammy Blue had forgotten about him or decided that Beezle was no threat. It was true that Beezle was a threat only if you were a bag of candy that did not want to be eaten, but that didn’t mean that my gargoyle wasn’t useful.

“Beezle!” I said through closed lips. My back was pressed up against a wall and no one was near me, but a lot of supernatural creatures have better hearing than I do. I knew werewolves that could hear a pin drop on the other side of the continent.

My gargoyle did not respond.

“Beezle!” I repeated, trying to wriggle my shoulder so that the coat pocket my gargoyle was nestled in would move.

The only response was a long exhalation.

“Seriously? You’re still asleep?” I muttered.

Beezle could untie my hands and feet. Even without my magic I could still use my sword. If I could find it. Since Sammy was so thorough, I was sure he hadn’t left it within my reach.

I opened my eyes a little more. Nobody was paying any attention to me. The furniture was pushed against the walls. The curtains were drawn. Three witches stood around a circle on the floor. They were young and completely ordinary-looking. They might have been office workers or college students. There was nothing to indicate that they were about to use their magic to torture another human being to death.

They were walking through the process of the spell, and occasionally one of them would use a piece of chalk to add a symbol inside the circle. Sammy Blue stood off in the corner, talking quietly on his cell phone, his back to me. I noticed he’d taken the time to change out of the suit he’d worn earlier and put on a different one—one that didn’t have a hole in the back from my nightfire blast.

The thing that hit me in the head had disappeared. Maybe it was taking a nap in the bedroom.

My sword leaned against the wall near the elevator, just about as far from me as it could possibly be. I’d have to get untied, sprint across the room—difficult, as I’d just been conked in the head and probably had a concussion—grab the sword, fight off three witches and a clever faerie, avoid whatever giant monster had hit me in the first place, find the Red Shoes and escape from the highest room in the building. All this without my magic.

No pressure.

“Beezle!” I said again, as quietly as I could.

“Your gargoyle will not wake,” Sammy Blue said, sliding his cell phone into his pocket. He turned and walked toward me, looking altogether too pleased with himself. “The circle that surrounds you quashes your magic as well as his. And since he is so small and infinitely more magical than you, the circle keeps him asleep. So do not seek his help, nor anyone else’s. No one will come.”

I opened my eyes fully, and for the first time noticed the circle drawn around me. It was far enough away from my body that I couldn’t smudge it and break the spell. Okay. This was actually good news. It meant that if I could get out of the circle my power would wake up. Now I just had to get out of the circle.

Sammy Blue stopped just outside the circle, his violet eyes bright with anticipation. “My queen was correct. She knew that you would fall into a trap if you thought you were acting the heroine. It was pathetically easy to lure you here.”

“And now with the evil-villain monologue,” I said under my breath, then more loudly, “You didn’t lure me here. I was sent here for another purpose.”

Sammy nodded. “To obtain the Red Shoes, yes. My queen made certain the rumor of the shoes reached Lucifer’s ears. Then she sent me here, to your city. Lucifer predictably recruited you to get the shoes for him. So you see, it was all planned from the start. And you behaved exactly as my queen expected.”

“Smugness is not an attractive quality,” I said.

Sammy gave a short laugh, then crossed to a watercolor of Lake Michigan that hung on the wall. He moved the painting aside to reveal a safe. He punched in a code on the electronic keypad, and the safe door swung open. Before continuing he carefully pulled a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his suit and put them on. Then he reached into the safe and drew out the Red Shoes.