Would he change? Could he?
Probably not, Elena realized, and if he didn’t drop his insulting attitude toward her profession, which was not only her craft but her very spirit itself, he wouldn’t become a permanent mate. It just wouldn’t work.
Maybe the kids were the source of her tension. Tom tended to be a little formal and distant with her, but she expected that from Ben’s son. It might take Tom a while to open up. Polly had died just a couple of years before.
But what was with Gina? She was usually chatty and totally upfront about her feelings. Tonight was different, and Elena sensed that her daughter was holding back.
Unable to draw any visions from the topaz, Elena uncurled her legs and went to check on the kids. They were sitting in front of the TV watching a
Star Wars
DVD. As Obi-Wan Kenobi intoned, “I feel a great disturbance in the Force,” Elena felt Gina’s forehead. Nothing special there, but—
“Mo-om!” Gina batted away her hand.
“Okay, but when are you going to tell me what’s up?” Elena sat down and crossed her legs.
Gina evaded, staring at the TV set. “Nothing’s wrong.”
The movie’s music softened and Elena could hear sirens splitting the night. She stood. “That sounds close. I hope everything’s all right.” She glanced at Tom.
“Me too. Um, can I go to bed now?” He stood.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Something was definitely going on. Usually the kids watched DVDs until all hours, often falling asleep in front of the screen. She stared at Tom.
He returned her scrutiny, meeting her eyes without faltering. “I’m fine. Just a little tired. It was hot today and we walked around a lot.”
“Where did you go?”
“Through Capitol Park and over to J Street.”
Hmm. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Just to walk. It felt okay at the time but now I’m tired.”
Either this kid is the best liar in the world,
she thought,
or everything’s fine.
“Of course you can go to bed if you’re tired,” Elena said. “Gina?”
* * * * *
Tom slept in Elena’s guest room so often that it had started to feel like home. Even the cat had adopted him, curling up by his side in bed or occasionally kneading his chest with paws that only sometimes scratched, purring like a furry little machine. That usually sent him straight into dreamland, but tonight he couldn’t sleep, cat or no cat.
The sirens bothered him. He always worried about his father’s job. Dad said it was usually boring, but Tom knew that bad people could do bad things, like what had happened to his mom. Oh, they’d caught her killer, but he still didn’t have a mother. Though he missed her a lot, he always told himself that he and his dad got along fine, especially since they’d met Elena and Gina.
The thought comforted him, so finally he slept.
He was roused by the creak and groan of metal as Dexter opened the first-floor window of Tom’s room, tearing out the screen. Puffball screeched and, back arched high, leaped toward the window and clung to Dexter's metal visor. The knight, startled, fell away into the darkness.
Tom ran to the window and looked out. Dexter had fallen onto his back and now, weighed down by armor, tossed like a turtle, helpless on the ground. Tom clambered outside and shooed Puff away from Sir Dexter, then helped the knight up.
“What are you doing here?” Tom hissed. “Aren’t you supposed to be back in your immortal repose or whatever you called it?”
“I wanted to be,” Dexter said in a quiet rumbling voice. “But I have to find Sinister first.”
“Find
who?
”
“The left knight, the one Lady Gina warned you about. After you left, Sinister awakened. We fought and he evaded me. He is evil,” the knight said. “Although I was placed as a guardian for the future, he was entombed as punishment for his sins and wickedness.”
“Sins and-and wickedness? What do you mean?”
“Oh, he has killed many,” said the knight, dropping his head. “And for no reason at all. He is entirely without honor. Worse, I do not know how to find him.”
“I think I do,” Tom said. He raised his head, listening. He could hear the scream of police sirens and the beating of helicopter blades in the night sky.
“Wait here,” he told Dexter then climbed back into his bedroom and swiftly dressed. He figured that he had a better chance of seeing Gina alone without disturbing her mother if he didn’t walk through the dark Lautari house. Elena’s home was crowded with chairs, footstools, pouffes and lounges of every type and description, and most level surfaces were covered with knickknacks and tchotchkes. They were better than the most sophisticated burglar alarm system—if he bumped against anything he’d awaken everyone in the house.
Back outside, he grabbed Dexter’s mailed arm. “Let’s go find the Lady Gina and see if she can put back what’s been disturbed.”
* * * * *
Elena and Gina lived just a few blocks away from the McCullochs’ big house on Land Park Crescent. Elena’s cottage was more modest than Tom’s home and was located on a side street. Tom was never so happy that he’d spent the night at Gina’s and that the Lautaris lived in a quiet neighborhood. He and Sir Dexter would have presented a curious sight to any onlooker, but in a small side street in calm Land Park, everyone was asleep.
Tom tucked Dexter behind some camellia bushes at the side of Gina’s house. He slipped around farther to the back and tapped cautiously on the window he thought was Gina’s. After a few moments it opened.
To his horror, Elena’s tall figure was outlined by candlelight on lace. “Tom? What are you doing out of bed?”
Tom stuttered, “E-Elena! I’m sorry, I just wanted to talk with Gina for a second—”
“At this time of night? If you were five years older, I’d understand what you were doing.” Elena sniffed and grabbed her topaz. Tom could see an eerie golden light pulsing out of the jewel. “What are you up to, young man? I smell displacement. I feel magic in the air tonight! Has Gina been fiddling with my spells again?”
She whipped away from the window and a moment later a light went on in Gina’s room. Tom went to that window and beat frantically on it. “Elena! Elena! Wait! It’s not her fault!”
Elena opened the window again. She had calmed down considerably and, in fact, was laughing. “Tom, come in. It’s all right. I’m not angry.”
“B-but you don’t know what we did!” wailed Gina.
“You have no idea,” said Tom. “Listen, I’m coming in, and I’m bringing Sir Dexter.”
“What?” two female voices exclaimed.
Running feet thumped across the wooden floors of Elena’s cottage seconds before she opened the door. His metal joints squeaking and squealing, Sir Dexter mounted the stairs to the front porch of the cottage.
Elena’s brows lifted. She was an experienced modern witch, meaning that she read tarot cards and made charms for the lovelorn. She used her topaz the way others used a scrying mirror, seeing visions in its golden facets. Unlike her bored child, she never felt any particular need to tamper with the fabric of her world, and had never seen anything like Dexter outside the movies.
Gina regarded the knight with visible pride before eyeing Elena with trepidation. Elena folded her arms across her chest and glanced at Dexter’s metal-shod feet.
“Perhaps we all should stay on the porch,” she said, thinking of her polished wood floors. “The bushes will conceal our new friend from prying eyes.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Tom. “This neighborhood's dead.”
“Is that so? What’s that?” Elena asked. Sirens screamed, sounding as though they were just a few blocks away. “Perhaps you should tell me everything.”
She didn’t interrupt—she knew the value of careful listening. After she had heard the three tell their tales, she swept indoors, leaving them on the porch.
Tom whispered, “Is she mad?”
Gina rolled her eyes. “She's beyond mad. This is a disaster. I’m gonna be grounded until I’m nineteen.”
“Do not worry, little friends. Lady Elena will take care of all.”
They turned, astonished, to Sir Dexter. “What makes you think Elena can deal with Sinister?” asked Tom. “After all, you couldn’t.”
“I am not a witch, a warlock, or a magician,” said the knight. “I am but a lowly fighter with limited abilities. The Lady Elena has true power. She will make all right again, restore the balance.”
“Restore the balance?”
“Yes. When you released me, little Gina, you put the spells of the Door out of balance, so Sinister was able to leave. Normally, intention has to accompany a spell for it to work,” Dexter said. “Although you did not intend to release Sinister, enough magic was present to enable him to go free because balance had been lost. Lady Elena will restore the balance.”
“With your help, Sir Dexter,” said Elena. She was dressed in one of her exotic outfits and carried a basket on one arm. The topaz flashed on her chest. “Come on now, children, let’s go.”
Elena led the way to her big old Cadillac, and the three humans put Dexter into the large front seat. The events of the day had made him flexible enough to sit in it, though with difficulty. The kids piled into the back.
Elena drove as fast as she dared to the corner of 12th and J Streets. Once out of the car, she surveyed the damage at the doorway of the Masonic Temple while Tom and Gina pried Dexter out of the front seat.
“It’s bad,” Elena said, “but I think I can put it right. Dexter?”
Sir Dexter turned to the children and pressed a heavy, mailed hand onto each child’s shoulder. “It has been a wondrous experience,” he said solemnly. “Although I do not relish the disturbance, I am pleased to have made your acquaintance.”
He faced away from the doorway and somehow sprang upward and backward into his niche, melting into the stone. Elena looked down and examined the pentagram drawn on the sidewalk. “Crude,” she murmured, “but obviously effective.” She looked at Gina and sighed.
Elena stood in the center of the star and gripped her topaz. Spirit flowed through her body. Tingling, she stretched her arms to the sky. Power streamed through her, heady and rich. She swayed with the force of it, and sparks leaped from the tips of her fingers. She breathed into her heart chakra. The stone, hanging over her sternum, seized and channeled her energy, transforming force into intention and then action.
“Blow, storm, blow, wind, power come to me!” Her voice reverberated inside and out of her, as if she were a drum and the sound, magic.
A sudden wind swirled around her, whipping her long red skirt into a fiery froth. She reached into her basket and threw a glittering handful of metal fragments onto the ground, onto Dexter and into the alcove that Sinister had recently vacated. “Iron for strength and lead to ground. Spirit of Matter, hear me now!”
Her voice echoed and boomed off the buildings. Summer lightning cracked through the dry and empty sky.
“Spirit of Stillness, hear my need!” She tossed a handful of gravel. In his recess, Dexter flinched.
“Spirit of Coldness, obey me!” Handfuls of ice chips from a plastic bag. They melted with contact from her energized fingers. A thin, chill rain began to fall.
“Spirit of Darkness, hear my plea!” As Elena threw several chicken bones on the ground and into the knights’ alcoves, she heard a steady clumping on the sidewalk approaching the Masonic Temple. The rattle and scrape of metal increased in volume as her spell gathered strength.
“Spirit of Sleep, guide my purpose!” She flung inky ashes from her cauldron, covering all. Sir Dexter slumbered in his niche.
Sinister approached.
In appearance he did not differ greatly from Dexter, except that his mailed hands were covered with a sticky red substance. Blood, she guessed, but she didn’t allow fear to overtake her. A terrified cat was crouching on his shoulder.
She faced Sinister. She gripped her topaz in one hand and raised her other palm high. Yowling, the cat leapt from its perch and fled into the night.
A phalanx of five police cars screeched to a halt and a flood of black-clad officers spilled out. One of them was Ben, who took in the scene with an expression of disbelief that shifted rapidly into anger when he saw Gina and Tom cowering behind Elena.
Tom had seen that look on his father’s face before. Dad was royally pissed off… Who would be his target? He shrank behind Elena’s commanding figure.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Ben snarled.
“I’m cleaning up my daughter’s mess,” Elena said crisply. “Stay out of the way, Ben.”
“You know this broad, McCulloch?” one of the other cops asked.
Ben squirmed. “Yeah, she, uh, takes care of my son.”
Tom winced with embarrassment and the other cops laughed derisively as Elena speared Ben with a glance that could have cut steel.
Sinister turned and swept one mailed arm across the nearest cop’s throat, lifting the officer off his feet. Flung across the sidewalk, he hit the hood of a car with a sickening crunch. Ben drew his gun and fired. Shots pinged off Sinister’s breastplate and ricocheted dangerously.
Elena’s free hand shot out and the gun dropped out of Ben’s hand. Bullets fell to the ground as the shots dissipated. “I said stay out of my way, Ben McCulloch!”