Of course, Lucifer probably had nefarious plans for the shoes himself. But I couldn’t worry about that right now. I needed to deal with the crisis at hand and then worry about the next crisis when it occurred.
A key was needed to access the penthouse via the elevator, and Arkan produced it after much grumbling on his part and threatening on mine. Beezle fell asleep again in my pocket, snoring away like a baby piglet. Pretty much all he does is eat, sleep, make smart comments about my poor decisions, and watch bad television.
The elevator doors opened on the penthouse. It was curiously quiet. I’d expected an entourage, maybe a bunch of witches hanging around preparing a spell. But there was nothing except a room empty of people but full of expensive furniture. A row of windows faced Michigan Avenue. I pushed the sword into Arkan’s back. “Move.”
We stepped into the room, my anxiety growing with each passing moment. This wasn’t right. At the very least Sammy Blue should have been waiting for Arkan to return. That is, unless . . .
“You’re Sammy Blue,” I said.
He turned to face me, those crazy violet eyes agleam with triumph.
Ah. There’s the trap, then.
I had only half a second to turn before the blow fell. I had an impression of something large and scary bringing its fist down on my head. My sword clattered to the ground, and everything went black.
I woke to the sound of murmuring chatter, people moving around the room like bees in a hive. The back of my head ached, and so did my ribs and stomach. I suspected that Sammy Blue had either stepped on me or kicked me a few times while I was out cold. I also felt vaguely like a blanket had been thrown over me, even though there wasn’t one.
I opened my eyes just to slits so I could peek around without drawing attention. Unfortunately, I was lying on my side on the carpet, my hands and ankles bound, and so all I could really see were shoes in motion. From the sound of the conversation I deduced that the witches had arrived. My trapped and tied state led me to further deduce that I was the sacrifice for which they’d been waiting.
If I’d thought it through all the way I would have realized they’d need me for the spell. They wanted to curse Lucifer, and nothing carries a curse better than blood. The blood of the victim, if you can get it, is ideal. I couldn’t imagine anyone with sense in his head trying to stick Lucifer and carry away a sample, though. The next best thing was someone from his bloodline. Wasn’t it convenient that his great-granddaughter was at hand?
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.
“I believe you were looking for these,” he said.
The moment I saw the shoes I felt an almost overwhelming desire to possess them. They looked like a pair of red satin ballet slippers, just like the red shoes in that old movie about the dancer. Ribbons trailed from the ankles, shackles for whoever was unfortunate enough to be tempted to put them on. An aura radiated from the shoes, a palpable sense of wrongness, and it blended with desire.
I realized that was the power of the shoes—not simply that they would hurt you but that you would want the hurt, that they would twist you and bend you and break you, but you would love it all the while, down to your last moment on earth, still dancing, dancing forever like the twirling ballerina in a music box. I could see myself there, spinning in joy and agony, my arms thrown to the sky, welcoming death.
No, I thought. I was an Agent of Death. Death did not dictate to me. I would not let my life end like this, a broken marionette for the amusement of Sammy Blue.
The effort it took to tamp down the desire for the shoes made me nauseous. It took every shred of will that I had to remember who I was, and why I was there.
I looked at the shoes, and then at Sammy Blue with clear eyes. Surprise registered on his face.
“Interesting. There are few who can withstand the call of the shoes. Your will is very strong. It must be, to have survived the Maze.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then smiled. “That strength will make the spell last longer. And that will give it more power, yes?”
He turned to the witches for confirmation. They had all paused in their activities to watch Sammy gloat over me. One of them, a skinny redhead in designer jeans, nodded.
“The greater the endurance of the sacrifice, the stronger the curse will be when it is completed,” she said. She looked at me as she said this, with no malice or guilt. It didn’t make a difference to her one way or the other if I lived or died. This was just a job to her.
The other two seemed to share her indifference. There was no help coming from that quarter.
It was down to me, as usual.
“Now,” Sammy said, smiling widely. His smile was getting crazier by the minute. He was definitely looking forward to this. “I think you need to change your shoes.”
The longing for the shoes rose up again, but I tamped it down. I shook my head. “Uh-uh.”
Sammy narrowed his eyes at me. My resistance was a benefit to them, but it was also a problem. No doubt they had counted on me wanting to put the shoes on voluntarily. Now someone would have to break the circle to get them on me, and that would mean I’d have access to my magic again, even if it were for only a moment. I could see him calculating rapidly. He turned his back on me so he could conference with the witches.
