“Get in,” he said.
“What . . . ?”
“Get in the fucking car!”
I raised my hands and backed quickly into the limo, and the chauffeur slammed the door. I grabbed the handle as soon as he started for the driver’s side, but he’d locked the door, and there was no button or latch to let me out. I bounced to the front of the limo, ready to crawl out that way, but thick glass separated back from front, firmly in place. They’d not wanted their prisoner to escape.
The driver slammed himself inside the car and squealed away from Maya’s house just as two Magellan police cars, two sheriffs’ cars, and Nash’s official SUV sped toward us. The chauffeur drove through a yard to avoid them and then down Maya’s street to the main highway.
One sheriff’s car turned to pursue us, and I saw a flash of Lopez’s face at the wheel. The other four vehicles continued their charge to Maya’s lit-up house, Nash leading the way.
Meanwhile, Lopez chased the limo. The chauffeur drove through Magellan at triple the legal speed, and Lopez hung in there as we barreled out of town past my hotel and up the road toward Flat Mesa. About halfway along, the chauffeur jerked the wheel to the right, spinning us onto a road I hadn’t even known existed. It was narrow and treacherous, what was known as a primitive road. That meant it hadn’t even been graded, and dropped into and out of washes with jarring abruptness.
There was no way we could make it down this road in this car and not get stuck. Raised pickups with four-wheel drive could do it, but not a limousine. The recent rains had made the ground soft, and washes out here would be full of water. I didn’t care how big this car was; a good whitewater wash would sweep us away in seconds.
“Where the
hell
are you going?” I shouted.
If the chauffeur heard me through the glass, he made no sign. He rocketed through the desert at an insane speed. Looking back, I saw Lopez’s lights swerve wildly, and then go still. He’d hit mud or soft dirt, and his wheels would be spinning in place. I hoped he was all right.
A few moments later, the chauffeur slammed on the brakes. I went flying forward, barely stopping myself from slamming into the glass between us. Red lights blinked out of the darkness, and I heard the
thrub-thrub
of a helicopter.
The chauffeur yanked open my door, shoving his gun in my face again. I don’t know where he thought I was going to run, but I let him herd me toward the helicopter.
I approached it with my heart pounding. I hated flying, and I’d heard bad things about helicopters. Yes, I had many more things to worry about right now than fear of flying, but with the machine vibrating in front of me and a gun in my back, I developed a bad case of the shakes.
With no storm to help me, and my Beneath magic hibernating again, I had no choice. I climbed onto the step, the chauffeur pushed me in, and I landed on a seat that was much like a car seat. I couldn’t hear anything over the blades, couldn’t see anything but the glow of cockpit lights in the front.
The chauffeur dropped into the seat next to me, gun still aimed in my direction. He jammed on a headset and started shouting something. The pilot looked over his shoulder, arguing with him, but I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. The pilot swung around to his controls, and the helicopter lifted with a slight jerk and glided up into the night.
I hunkered into the seat with my arms folded. My face was sticky, and I realized I still had the councilman’s blood all over it. My jacket was spattered with it too.
We flew for a long time. I had no idea how far or how fast helicopters could go; I just knew that I was scared, uncomfortable, unhappy, and had to pee. I figured if the chauffeur had wanted me dead, he’d have shot me, so he must be under orders to take me someplace specific. Once I got there, I might be executed, but until then I was relatively safe. Such comforting thoughts.
By the clock in the cockpit, it was about two a.m. when we started to descend. I looked out the window and saw a city in the distance, far too big to be anything in northern Arizona. I had no idea which direction we’d gone, but I knew I wasn’t looking at Las Vegas or the enormous sprawl of Phoenix. That left Albuquerque or Santa Fe—we couldn’t have gone far enough to have reached Salt Lake City or L.A.
So by process of elimination, I was probably in New Mexico. That was confirmed as we started to land—I saw the twisty streets of old Santa Fe flash under us and the vast bulk of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the darkness. I’d been to Santa Fe plenty of times in my wanderings before I’d moved to Magellan, and I knew we’d headed north and west of the city.
We landed just outside a walled compound. The chauffeur had to lift me out of the helicopter, because I was too exhausted and shaky to manage on my own.
The compound turned out to be a large house surrounded by an equally large wall. The outer walls were adobe, smooth, plain, and unbroken. Inside the gate, the house itself formed another barrier, with small windows facing the approach.
Once through the next gated breezeway, I found paradise. The courtyard was a vast open space that followed the natural contours of the land, with desert mountain plants and trees in abundance. Walkways led through this lush garden, and a tiled arcade ran along all four sides of the house.
The chauffeur took me inside, still at gunpoint, and led me through cool tiled halls. The house had been built in the old Spanish style, with staircases bending upward beyond arches, rooms opening unexpectedly, and few windows except those that overlooked the courtyard. The room I was taken to, after they searched me, had a balcony, but below it was a sheer drop down the cliff face that the house had been built upon.
The chauffeur closed the door and locked me in. The balcony doors were easily opened, which meant they didn’t worry that I could escape that way.
I dropped a piece of loose tile over the wrought-iron balcony rail and waited a sickeningly long time before I heard a click of rock on rock below. Unless my jailers had conveniently stashed climbing gear under the bathroom sink, I was stuck.
I explored the room, finding phone and computer jacks, but no phones or computers. They’d taken my cell phone when they’d rudely patted me down, but they’d left my piece of magic mirror in its chamois bag. They probably thought I kept it so I could check my makeup on my daring adventures. Every person I’d seen here so far had been human, lucky me. A supernatural being would have sensed the mirror’s magic.
I sat down on the bed, which was amazingly comfortable. I’d vacation here if I wasn’t being held captive.
A full-length mirror in a heavy, carved frame hung on the wall to the left of the bed. I gazed into it for a few minutes, noting the splotches of dried blood on my face and Maya’s pretty shirt, the black mess of my hair, my eyes wide and brown. Brown, thankfully. No green gleam in sight. Of course, now that I could have used magic to help me escape, it had deserted me.
I took out the piece of magic mirror and angled it toward the mirror on the wall.
The magic mirror purred. “Oh, girlfriend, this is
nice.
Here I was all worried about you, and you’re sitting in splendor. So not fair.”
“Locked in splendor is more like it.”
I kept playing with the mirror until a white spark flashed between the magic mirror and the mundane one. Magic mirrors could enhance the properties of ordinary mirrors, or so I’d heard. I hadn’t taken the time to discover everything I could do with a magic mirror, being busy with the hotel and Beneath magic and dragons and being kidnapped and all. Plus, working with the magic mirror meant listening to it.
“Can you let me see through all mirrors in the house?” I asked. “Channel them into this one?”
“I don’t know. It depends on the mirrors and where they are.”
“Well, try,” I said impatiently.
“Give me a second. This is powerful magic, honey, not simple chanting and incense.”
Light danced between the two pieces of glass, glinting in the way mirrors did when they caught the sunlight. It was pitch-dark beyond the windows, except for the city lights I could see in the distance. The air through the balcony doors I’d left open was crisp and cold. Winter begins early at seven thousand feet.
A key scraped in the lock. I quickly dropped the mirror to the rug and slid it under the bed with my heel. “Give me a break, sugar,” the mirror said. “I can’t work if I can’t
see
anything.”
The young man who walked in didn’t hear the mirror. His aura told me he was human, one without magic. He was maybe twenty-two or so and good-looking. Very good-looking. Good thing the mirror hadn’t seen him, or I’d be listening to a panegyric about his flawless face, his chocolate brown hair, his light blue eyes, his firm body, and his ass in tight jeans. He had a Taser in his belt, and the two men standing outside the door held automatic rifles.
“All that hardware for me?” I asked.
“You’re dangerous,” the young man said. He closed the door behind him, and someone outside locked it. “Don’t bother trying to take me hostage. They wouldn’t care if you killed me. I’m expendable.”
I stood up. “And this doesn’t bother you?”
“It’s a good job, with lots of perks.” The young man shook a tablecloth over a table in the corner and started laying out silverware and glasses. “I make way more money than I would in an office job; plus I get lots of time off. They don’t mind if I party here when they’re out, and I meet a lot of women.”
“Paradise,” I said.
He grinned in an un-self-conscious way. “It is for me. But really, if you killed me, they’d just hire someone else.”
“I guess when you work for big reptiles, you have to expect them to be cold,” I said.
He gave me a puzzled look and then shrugged as he set a covered dish on the table and opened a bottle of wine. “Yeah, I guess. I’m Todd, by the way. This is
pollo en mole
, one of the cook’s specialties.”
“I already ate.”
“The wine’s from a local vintner. It’s pretty good, though I’m not really a wine guy.”
“You can take all of it away when you go, Todd. I’m not about to eat and drink anything served to me by dragons who want me dead. If they can’t fry me with fire, poison might work.”
Todd looked blank. “They don’t want to kill you; they just want to talk to you. Look, I’ll eat some first.” He picked up a fork and scooped a dripping bite of the chicken dish into his mouth. “Mmm. Damn good. I love poblano chiles. They’re not as hot as the habaneros but still tasty. Try some.”
“Maybe later,” I said.
I sank down on the bed again, trying to decide what to do. I believed Todd when he said the dragons wouldn’t care if I killed him. He was another flunky, a house boy, if a well-paid one. They counted on me being nice enough to not hurt an innocent. If I did hurt him, take him hostage, throw him over the balcony, or kill him, then I’d confirm to the dragons that I was the monster they believed me to be.
Todd took a sip of wine to show me that it wasn’t tainted. He put the cover back over the plate to keep it warm. Very thoughtful, was Todd.
“You all right?” he asked. He came and sat beside me on the bed, switching his Taser to the side of his belt opposite me. “I’m training to be a massage therapist, so I can give you a massage if you want. Neck and shoulders or full body, clothes on or off. Or if you need sex, I’m here for that too.”
I gave him an irritated look. “Do you offer that to all guests? And prisoners?”
“Sure. It’s part of my job.”
“What if I were a man?”
Todd laughed. “Then they’d have sent in a woman. Or a gay man.”
“They really take care of their guests, don’t they?”
“They do. Lie back and enjoy it. They’ll talk to you and release you in a couple of days. There’s clean towels in the bathroom if you want to shower, plus robes in your size. I can take your clothes down to be cleaned.”
“What I really want, Todd, is a phone.”
“Sorry. No can do.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that they’re holding me here against my will?”
Todd stood up, making sure I had a good view of his behind as he looked into the mirror to smooth his hair. “No, because they told me you’re their enemy, and these are some pretty cool guys. They’re not drug dealers or anything like that. Just businessmen. So if they don’t want you leaving before they can talk to you, they’ve got a good reason.”
“Sure. Why don’t you go away, now, Todd, so I can eat? Or shower? Or jump off the balcony, whatever I want to do?”
He grinned at me through the mirror. “You don’t look like the type who’d kill herself; you look like the type who’d try to talk her way out. That’s why they’re allowing you out on the balcony. It’s kind of cold tonight, though. You might want to close the windows.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“Sure.” Todd headed for the door. “You’re pretty good-looking, though, so if you change your mind about the sex, just thump on the door and tell the guard to let me back in.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, deadpan.