Modern Sorcery: A Jonathan Shade Novel (27 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Bad things happen in threes.
 
First Anselma and Esther were tossed out a window.
 
Next Kelly and I were blasted out a window.
 
It seemed only fair that I should be able to chuck Ravenwood out the window too.

I fell toward certain death, but a sudden pain ripped through my left shoulder and my fall arced around.
 
I smashed through a window and landed in an office on the tenth floor.
 
I hit the floor hard, skidded over, and smashed into a chair, which in turn slammed into a desk then toppled backward to land on top of me.
 
It hurt but it was better than dying.

“Holy shit!” a man’s voice said.

Blood dripped into my eyes, and pain lanced through every inch of my body.
 
My shoulder throbbed.
 
I groaned.

I heard footsteps then someone touched my back.
 
“Holy shit,” the man said again and knelt beside me.
 
“Are you all right?”

“Ooohh,” I said.

“Jonathan?” Kelly said.

I shook my head.
 
Drops of blood splattered on the floor.
 
The cut on my arm had reopened and stained the bandage crimson.
 
My right side hurt a lot more than my left, though my left shoulder felt like it might be dislocated.

The man stood up, looked toward the window, and said, “Holy shit.”

Threes.

“Jonathan?”

“Kelly?” I said.

“I could use some help out here.”

I tried to push myself up, but my left arm wouldn’t work.
 
Yep, it was dislocated all right.
 
I used my right arm to lever myself up.
 
Nothing seemed broken.

The man stood slack-jawed and stared out the shattered window.

I managed to get to my feet and saw Kelly.
 
From my vantage point, she seemed to be hanging in midair, but since I couldn’t see her arms, I knew she had to be holding on to something.

“I’m slipping,” she said.

I staggered to the window and saw that she had stabbed her sword into the building and had a white-knuckle grip on the handle.

My vision blurred and I felt I would pass out.
 
I glanced at the man, who still stared.
 
“Hey, man.
 
Can you help us here?”

“Holy—”

“Dude, get your ass over here.”

He obeyed.

I told him to hold on to me.

I leaned out the window and tried to reach Kelly.
 
She was a little too far out for me to actually get a good grip on her since my left arm was useless.

“Can you swing toward me?” I asked.

“The sword is pulling free.
 
We’ll only get one shot at this.”

“I’ll catch you.”

“What’s wrong with your left arm?”

“It’s jacked.
 
Hang on.”
 
I turned to the man and pointed at my left arm.
 
“I need you to pull on my arm as hard as you can.”

“What?”

“Pull!”

He took hold of my forearm and pulled.
 
One sudden jolt of agony, and I felt the arm roll back into its socket.
 
The relief was instant.
 
My shoulder still throbbed, but it wasn’t incapacitating.
 
I turned back to Kelly.

“Okay, let’s do this.”

“Here goes nothing,” she said.

She swung back and as she started forward, the sword slipped free.
 
I reached for her.

At that precise moment, Esther popped into the room right beside me.

“You’re alive!” she said.

Her appearance and her shout distracted me.

My hand closed on air.

“Shit,” I said.

Kelly fell.

I winced and leaned out the window.
 
Kelly hit the ground hard, and I heard bones breaking even from ten stories up.

“Oh my God,” the man said.

“Uh-oh,” Esther said.

“She’s gonna be pissed.”

“She’s got to be dead,” the man said, thinking I was talking to him.

Esther simply shrugged.
 
“She won’t be too mad.
 
You didn’t do it on purpose.”

I shook my head.
 
I patted the man on the shoulder.
 
“Sorry about the mess,” I said.

When I finally reached Kelly, she lay on the ground with both legs and her left arm broken.

“I’ll catch you,” she said, mimicking me.

I spread my hands.
 
“I got distracted.”

“I saw Esther pop in.”

Esther hung back fifteen feet.

“It’s not her fault,” I said.

“I know.
 
I blame
you.
 
Is my sword all right?”

The blade was bent, scratched up, and chipped.

“Uh, no.”

“Wonderful.”

I knelt beside her and set her left arm.
 
It seemed to be healing already.
 
I moved to her legs and felt along them.

“They’re broken.”

“No shit, butterfingers.”

“I missed.
 
I’m sorry.”

“‘Sorry’ might be appropriate when you drop a baseball, but it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface when you drop a woman ten fucking stories.”

“You lived.”

“You’re going to need to get me to a hospital.
 
My bones are knitting together incorrectly.
 
They’ll have to rebreak them and reset them because you suck.”

“I know.”

I tried to pick her up, but my shoulder gave out, and I dropped her to the concrete again.

“Oh, shit.
 
I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to be.”

I pulled her up, and my side hurt so bad, I couldn’t get her over my shoulder.
 
In the end, I had to drag her back to my car.
 
We left the sword because she had plenty of them, including at least two in the back of my car.
 
Well, she
had
plenty of them at her place and mine, but I guessed she was down to whatever was in our vehicles.
 
I managed to get the passenger door open then struggled to get Kelly into the seat.

“Be careful with her,” Esther said.

I shot her a look, and she gave me a hesitant grin.

Good thing Ravenwood didn’t come outside.
 
We’d have been easily dispatched.

I had trouble getting the seat belt fastened, and Kelly glared at me.

“Sorry,” I said for the third time.

Three was not my favorite number.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

At the emergency room, a kind nurse patched me up and put my left arm in a sling.
 
I made some bad jokes, and she had the grace to at least smile.
 
I found Kelly in a curtained area.
 
She sat on a gurney where the doctor had to rebreak her legs to set them correctly.
 
He was in the middle of lecturing her about getting to the hospital sooner.
 
He seemed to think she’d waited a few weeks to come see him, but of course, she healed really fast.
 
I knew she’d be completely healed within a few hours.

I entered the room.
 
“You all set?” I said, keeping the bad jokes coming.

“You’ll need to get a wheelchair for me,” she said.

“I think I can manage that.”

“I haven’t released you,” the doctor said.
 
“I need to put casts on those legs.”

Kelly shook her head.
 
“No, you don’t.”

“Ms. Chan, your legs are broken.
 
They need to be kept in place while they heal.”

“Don’t argue with the doctor,” I said.

She shot me a look.
 
I knew I was already in the doghouse and ran the risk of eviction from even there.
 
But she knew it wasn’t wise to have the doctor discover that her legs were already healing.

I leaned over and whispered in her ear.
 
“You should have let me take you to see Lina.”

She whispered something that would be physically impossible and illegal in all fifty states and the territories.

“I’ll go get a wheelchair,” I said.

At least the doctor wasn’t looking at me as if I’d broken Kelly’s legs and kept her from help for ages.
 
Maybe it was a good thing that I was pretty beat up myself.
 
Regardless, I wanted to get us out of there before the police showed up.
 
If the doctor thought Kelly had been abducted and tortured, he’d make a report and we’d be detained for hours.
 
As it was, we had to wait while the doctor put casts on Kelly’s legs.

Eventually we were able to get out of there.
 
I wheeled Kelly out to the Firebird.

“Where’s Esther?” she asked.

“She popped out while you were cussing in the car,” I said.
 
“I think she’s keeping tabs on Ravenwood.”

“I wasn’t cussing in the car,” Kelly said.

I let that go.
 
If she wanted to rewrite history in her own mind, that was okay with me.
 
But when I initially suggested taking her to Lina, she went off on a profanity-laced diatribe about wizards in general and Lina in particular.
 
Esther had shaken her head, said, “Bored now,” and popped away.

We reached the car, and I was helping Kelly into the passenger seat when Esther suddenly appeared.
 
I jumped but in my defense, it’s hard not to be startled with someone appears right in front of you.

“Jump much?” Esther said.

“Where were you?” Kelly asked.

“I didn’t want to watch you bump off a doctor, so I thought I’d check on Ravenwood.”

“I didn’t bump off a doctor,” Kelly said, indignant.

“She wanted to but I told her it was bad form.”

“Hey, I was nice to the doctor.”

“Sure you were,” Esther said, clearly not believing her.
 
I found this amusing.
 
Esther looked at me.
 
“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a truck.
 
If I had my way, I’d go to bed for a week.
 
Why?”

“Because that’s how we can get Ravenwood.”

“Hit him with a truck?”

“No.
 
Get him to feel like he needs to rest for a week.”

I leaned against the car.
 
The sun had pulled its disappearing act, and the streetlights were coming on.
 
“I’m listening,” I said.

Esther smiled.
 
“Every time he uses magic, he needs to rest.
 
Right?”

“Okay,” I said.
 
“What are you suggesting?”

“Get him to use more magic.
 
Lots more.”

“How?” Kelly asked.

Esther shrugged.
 
“I just work here.”

“The only thing that comes to mind is to have a bunch of wizards attack him at once.
 
He’d have to defend himself, and that might get him to use quite a bit of magic.
 
Speaking of wizards, did Frank survive?”

Esther nodded.
 
“Ravenwood has him at DGI down in the catacombs.”

“Did everyone else want to be like Mike?”

“Sure looked like it to me,” Esther said.
 
“Nobody tried to argue with Ravenwood at all.”

“Wizards,” Kelly said and spit.
 
“Bunch of spineless pussies.”

“How do you really feel?”

“Like going home.
 
Oh wait, I don’t have a home.
 
And why don’t I have a home?
 
Because Ravenwood can use lots of magic and just switch bodies to rejuvenate.”

“Good point,” I said.
 
“We’d need him to use more magic but not be able to transfer.
 
Any ideas?”

“Get him an audition on
American Idol.
”

“Leave the humor to me, babe.”

“Don’t call me babe.”

“Can I call you babe if I have a good idea?”

“No, but if you have a good idea, I might forgive you for dropping me.”

“I didn’t drop you,” I said, feeling guilty.
 
“I just missed.”

I moved around to the driver’s side of the car.
 
Kelly leaned over and unlocked it.
 
I pulled off the sling and tossed it in the backseat so it would be easier to drive.

“What’s your idea?” Esther asked.

“Sharon,” I said and held up my cell phone.

I called Sharon and as the phone rang, I started the car and backed out of my space.
 
She answered on the third ring as we left the hospital parking lot.

“You’re interrupting my date,” Sharon said.

“No hello?
 
No how are you?” I asked.

“What do you want, Jonathan?”

“We need your help.”

“Not tonight, you don’t.”

“I was thinking tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I hung up and looked at Kelly.
 
“Guess it’s hotel time again.”

“You’d better stop at the store.
 
You’re going to need ibuprofen tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow, hell.
 
I need it now.”