Dangerous Women

And three: rescue Thomas. Can’t forget the mission, regardless of how complicated things got.

The door boomed again.

“Molly!” Andi screamed, her fear making her voice vibrant, piercing.

“Dammit,” I growled. “What would Harry do?”

If Harry was here, he would just hold the stupid door shut. His magic talents had been, like, superhero strong when it came to being able to deliver massive amounts of energy. I’m fairly sure he could have stopped a speeding locomotive. Or at least a speeding semitrailer. But my talents just didn’t run to the physical.

Harry had once told me that when you had one problem, you had a problem—but when you had several problems, you might also have several solutions.

I stood up and dropped my wands into my hands, gripping them hard. I faced the doorway and said, “Get ready.”

Andi flashed me a glance. “For what?”

“To open the door,” I said. “Then shut it behind me.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes. Go on three,” I said, and bent my knees slightly. “One!”

The door rattled again.

“Two!”

“Are you insane?” Andi demanded.

“Three!” I screamed, and sprinted for the door, lifting both wands.

Andi squeezed her eyes shut and swung the door open, and I deployed the One Woman Rave.

Channeling the strength of my will, light and sound burst from the ends of the two wands. Not light like from a flashlight—more like the light of a small nuclear explosion. The sound wasn’t loud like a scream, or a small explosion, or even the howl of a passing train. It was like standing on the deck of one of those old World War II battleships when they fired their big guns—a force that could stun a full-grown man and knock him on his ass.

I charged ahead with a wall of sound and furious light leading the way, and burst into the hall among the scattered forms of the startled, dazed turtlenecks.

And then I started playing nasty.

A few seconds later, the scattered turtlenecks were all on their feet again, though they looked a little disoriented and were blinking their eyes. Down the hallway, one of the turtlenecks was helping Lord Froggy to his feet, his lank hair disheveled, his robes in disarray. His ugly face was contorted in fury. “What is happening here, Listen?” he demanded. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. I doubt his ears were working very well.

“My lord,” Listen said, “I believe this is more of the work of the Ragged Lady.”

“What!? Speak up, fool!”

Listen’s cheek twitched once. Then he repeated himself in a shout.

Froggy made a hissing sound. “Meddling bitch,” he snarled. “Break down that door and bring me her heart.”

“Yes, my lord,” Listen said, and the turtlenecks grouped up around the door to room 8 again.

They didn’t use any tools. They didn’t need any. They just started kicking the door, three of them at a time, working in unison, driving the heels of their shoes at the wood. In three kicks, cracks began to form and the door groaned. In five, it broke and swung in loosely on its hinges.

“Kill her!” snarled Lord Froggy, pacing closer to the broken door. “Kill her!”

All but two of the turtlenecks poured into the room.

From behind my renewed veil, I figured the timing was about right to discontinue my illusion just as the door bounced back after they’d rushed through it. The silver numeral 8 hanging on the door blurred and melted back into a silver numeral 6.

Lord Froggy’s eyes widened in sudden, startled realization.

One of the turtlenecks flew back out the door to room 6 and smashed into the wall on the far side. He hit like a rag doll and flopped off it to the ground. There was a body-shaped outline in cracked marble and flecks of fresh blood left on the wall behind him.

And from the other side of the broken door, Thomas Raith, vampire, said, “It’s Listen, right? Wow. Did you clowns ever pick the wrong room.”

“We made a mistake,” Listen said.

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

And things started going crunch and thump in the room beyond.

Lord Froggy hissed and swiveled his bulgy head around on his gangly neck. “Ragged bitch,” he hissed. “I know you are here.”

This time, I knew exactly what Harry would do. I lifted my sonic wand and sent my voice down to the far end of the hall, behind him. “Hi there, Froggy. Is it as hard as it looks, holding up villain clichés, or does it come naturally to you?”

“You dare mock me?” the Fomor snarled. He threw a spiraling corkscrew of deep green energy down the hall, and it hissed and left burn marks upon everything it touched, ending at the doors. When it hit them, there was a snarling, crackling sound, and the green light spread across their surface in the pattern of a fisherman’s net.

“Hard to do anything else to a guy with a face like yours,” I said, this time from directly beside him. “Did you kill those girls, or did they volunteer once they saw you with your shirt off?”

The Fomor snarled and swatted at the air beside him. Then his eyes narrowed, and he started muttering and weaving his spatulate fingers in complicated patterns. I could feel the energy coming off of him at once, and knew exactly what he was trying to do—unravel my veil. But I’d been playing that game with Auntie Lea for months.

Lord Froggy hadn’t.

As his questing threads of magic spread out, I sent out whispers of my own power to barely brush them, guiding them one by one out and around the area covered by my veil. I couldn’t afford to let him find me. Not like that, anyway. He wasn’t thinking, and if I didn’t get him to, it was entirely possible that he’d be too stupid to fool.

I couldn’t have him giving up and leaving, either, so when I was sure I’d compromised his seeking spell I used the sonic wand again, this time directly above his head. “This kind of thing really isn’t for amateurs. Are you sure you shouldn’t sit this one out and let Listen give it a shot?”

Lord Froggy tilted his head up and then narrowed his eyes. He lifted a hand, spat a hissing word, and fire leapt up from his fingers to engulf the ceiling above him.

It took about two seconds for the fire alarm to go off, and another two before the sprinkler system kicked in. But I was back at the door to room 8 when the falling water began to dissolve my veil. Magic is a kind of energy, and follows its own laws. One of those laws is that water tends to ground out active magical constructs, and my veil started melting away like it was made of cotton candy.

“Hah!” spat the Fomor, spotting me. I saw him send a bolt of viridian light at me. I threw myself facedown to the floor and it passed over me, splashing against the door. I whipped over onto my back, just in time to raise a shield against a second bolt and a third. My physical shields aren’t great, but the Fomor’s spell was pure energy, and that made it easier for me to handle. I deflected the bolts left and right, and they blasted chunks of marble the size of bricks out of the walls when they struck.

Lord Froggy’s eyes flared even larger and more furious that he’d missed. “Mortal cow!”

Okay, now. That stung. I mean, maybe it’s a little shallow, and maybe it’s a little petty, and maybe it shows a lack of character of some kind that Froggy’s insult to my appearance got under my skin more effectively than attempted murder.

“Cow?” I snarled as water from the sprinkler system started soaking me. “I rock this dress!”

I dropped one of my wands and thrust my palm out at him, sending out an invisible bolt of pure memory, narrowed and focused with magic, like light passing through a magnifying glass. Sometimes you don’t really remember traumatic injuries, and my memory of getting shot in the leg was pretty blurry. It hadn’t hurt so much when I actually got shot and I’d had a few things occupying my attention. Mostly, I’d just felt surprised and then numb—but when they were tending the wound in the helicopter, later, now that was pain. They’d dug the bullet out with forceps, cleaned the site with something that burned like Hell itself, and when they’d put the pressure bandage on it and tightened the straps, it hurt so bad that I’d thought I was going to die.