19. The Most Dangerous Time of the Year
The Most Dangerous Time of the Year
Scarlett descended the stairs two at a time, her curls bouncing with righteous fury.
Meanwhile Delilah struggled to keep up. She was dragged down by a highly impractical velvet dress and the emotional whiplash of everything that had occurred in just the past hour.
Her brain felt like an overheated cell phone running too many apps at once: Mom missing.
Town in danger. Magical clone in attic. Just kissed Jasper Hopkins.
Mom MISSING. Jasper followed at a safe distance behind the sisters with the careful precision of a man who’d wandered into a minefield and was trying very hard not take a wrong step.
“...and I’m telling you,” Scarlett was saying, “we’re one hundred percent done taking crap from these Vegas rejects...”
Delilah sighed. This was classic Scarlett-in-crisis: all action, zero thought, and (all too frequently) maximum collateral damage. She’d been that way when they were kids, always ready to hex first and ask questions never.
“I’m serious, Del. They show up in our town, build their tacky casino, kidnap our mother? No. Hell no. Enough.”
At the base of the stairs, Delilah grabbed her sister’s arm, forcing her to halt. “Wait. Just stop for a second. Before we charge headlong into whatever half-baked revenge plan you’ve cooked up, what about Luna? Did you find her?”
“Oh!” Scarlett’s battle-ready expression softened. “Yeah, actually. Good news on that front. Belinda Chatterjee’s cousin’s ex-wife Davika lives in Paramus?—”
“Naturally.” Delilah nodded. The concept of six degrees of Kevin Bacon was amateur hour among witches. No matter how obscure the connection, someone in your coven dated someone who hexed someone who knows what you did last summer.
“—and the Paramus coven has an exchange program with the one under Times Square,” Scarlett continued, undeterred. “So they’re getting an urgent message to Luna. And if she’s already left the subway, they’ll let us know where she headed next.”
Jasper cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, did you just say there’s a coven underneath Times Square?”
“Not now,” Delilah mouthed at him.
“We can’t wait for Luna,” Scarlett announced. “We need to make a move.”
Delilah felt her stomach clench. “And what move would that be, exactly?”
A triumphant grin spread across her sister’s face. “ This .” She flung open the double doors to the dining room.
The dining room turned banquet hall was largely empty now.
Most of the guests had fled after witnessing their matriarch vanish in a puff of malevolent smoke.
But gathered in the center of the room, standing in a loose semicircle that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a particularly aggressive quilting bee, were about a dozen of Oak Haven’s most formidable witches. They were armed to the teeth.
Jerusha clutched an antique sword that had probably last seen action when tricorn hats were fashionable.
Aphra was wielding a medieval hand loom that she’d converted into some kind of primitive crossbow, her normally gentle face set in a determined scowl.
Polly from Spellbound Books had a chef’s knife in one hand, a boning knife in the other, and at least half a dozen paring knives dangling from her belt.
Beside Polly was her teenage daughter Violet, who was noodling around with nunchaku.
But the most remarkable character had to be Belinda Chatterjee, who was cradling a ceramic gnome.
A very angry-looking gnome, its ceramic body adorned with multiple grenades.
“Oh, come on,” Delilah muttered, a headache blooming behind her eyes.
“Is that . . . gnome . . . wearing . . . bombs?” Jasper’s breath was warm against her ear, sending a completely inappropriate shiver down her spine.
Get it together, Delilah, she scolded herself.
“Don’t ask,” she whispered back. “Just don’t make any sudden movements. Belinda’s gnomes are notoriously unstable, and I don’t mean emotionally. Well, they’re that too, but also unstable in the sense that nitroglycerin is unstable.”
Delilah’s gaze swept the room and landed on Zahir, who stood near the kitchen entrance, a pained expression on his face. “You let Polly steal your knives?” she called to him.
He threw his hands up in exasperation. “You expect me to argue? Belinda threatened to pull her gnome’s pin if I didn’t hand over my Wüsthofs.”
“Ladies,” Scarlett addressed the assembled witches, whose ages ranged from Violet’s sixteen to Jerusha’s near-immortal. “Tonight, we take the fight to the enemy. We may not have our magic yet, but we have something better. We have?—”
“A suicide gnome...” Delilah muttered under her breath.
“—righteous anger and the element of surprise!” Scarlett continued. “Those magicians think we’re just going to sit here and weep into our Saturnalia punch while they hold Mama hostage? Well, they’ve picked the wrong coven to mess with!”
The witches took their best shot at a battle cry but to Delilah it sounded less like a crew of fearsome warriors and more like a book club that had switched from chardonnay to tequila.
Jasper’s hand found hers. His palm was warm, his grip surprisingly firm. Part of her wanted to apologize for dragging him into this mess. Another part wanted to drag him somewhere private and finish what they’d started on the stairs.
Not the time. But if not now, when? If Jasper left Oak Haven tomorrow, he’d forget her entirely. For a second time. Delilah shoved the thought out of her mind as hard as she could.
“Witches have not and will never lose a fight against magicians.” Scarlett was really hitting her stride now. “Witches play to win all the time. In fact, I wouldn’t give a hoot for a witch who lost and laughed. By the gods, I actually pity those poor magicians we’re up against.”
“This is George C. Scott,” Jasper whispered. “She’s literally doing the scene from Patton —is nobody going to point that out?”
Delilah shrugged. “Most of the witches aren’t movie buffs, so I wager she gets away with it. Aphra probably caught her but she’s too nice to say anything.”
Scarlett whirled around to shush her sister before continuing.
“My friends, it is highly likely that our mother is being held at that casino. And if she’s not, someone at the casino definitely knows where she is.
So we are going to march right up to that monstrosity, and we are going to go through them like crap through a goose! ”
“You ladies realize this is a colossally idiotic idea, yes?”
The voice was male, bored, and vaguely European in a way that suggested its source had never actually been to Europe.
Every head in the room turned toward a solitary figure seated at one of the few remaining banquet tables.
Maximillian the Magnificent was methodically working his way through every leftover on the Saturnalia buffet, his tuxedo now polka-dotted with various sauces.
Delilah’s first thought was, Of course Max survived. Cockroaches and bad magicians, they live through anything .
“What the hell is he doing here?” Scarlett glared at the magician with undisguised loathing. “Zahir, why are you sharing our leftovers with this mope?”
Zahir shrugged. “I went to the wine cellar looking for Kelly, just like you told me to do. Found him instead. And don’t worry, I’ve got leftovers for days.”
Scarlett rounded on the hungry magician. “You should’ve run,” she said threateningly. “Why didn’t you run when you had a chance?”
Maximillian sighed dramatically and set down a half-eaten turkey leg.
“I thought that burgundy-clad harpy was taking me along for the ride. Instead, she transported me to your basement and left me there. Abandoned me among dusty bottles of—” he squinted at the label on the wine he’d apparently helped himself to “—Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Quite good, by the way.”
“ Where did she take our mother ?” Scarlett was leaning in so close that Maximillian had to lean back to avoid ending up with a face full of angry witch.
“How the hell should I know?” He plonked down in a chair and slurped his stolen wine. “Why would I help you, even if I did?”
“Because if you don’t help us, I will personally ensure that your career path runs from ‘mediocre magician’ to ‘mediocre magician who is also on fire.’”
Jasper’s grip on Delilah’s hand tightened. She glanced at him, surprised to see a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Your sister is formidable,” he whispered.
“That’s one word for it,” Delilah whispered back. “‘Terrifying’ and ‘unhinged’ are also acceptable.” She ambled up beside Max to try a different approach. Good cop to Scarlett’s pyromaniacal cop. “Do you remember us?”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t remember anything, remember? That’s how you witches like it. Sure, now you want me to remember, but that’s not?—”
“No,” Delilah interrupted. “Do you remember us from Las Vegas?”
Maximillian stared at the sisters, truly seeing them at last. His eyes widened with dawning recognition, then narrowed with outrage. “You!” he spluttered. “You tricked me! You stole my rabbit!”
“Rescued, more like. That poor rabbit had been stuffed into increasingly tiny hats for years. But yes. That was us.”
“You want to see him?” Scarlett’s smile turned predatory. “You want to see your little bunny Quentin again?”
“Wait, he’s here?” Maximillian put down the wine. His face was suddenly alight with hope. “You still have him?”
“For the time being.” Scarlett glanced over at Zahir, who had moved closer, his expression newly calculating. “Unless...”
“Yeah, the thing is,” Zahir caught on immediately, “I was just about to whip up a little lapin à la moutarde . Rabbit with mustard sauce? Quite delicious, especially with some of that Chateauneuf-du-Pape you’ve been swilling.”
“Don’t you dare!” Maximillian half rose from his seat, genuine panic in his eyes. “That rabbit is a trained professional! An artist!”
“What’s it worth to ya?” Scarlett asked.