Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (24 page)

If this break-in had been about anything other than Kyoko, something would have been stolen—the art hanging on my walls, the sculptures that had been shattered, my jewelry—but nothing was missing. The burglars had been looking for something, and all signs pointed to Kyoko.

“I’m really beginning to hate Jenny,” I said.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one.” The car lurched and Hudson scanned the dash. It lurched again, and Hudson cussed. “Oh, no, you don’t. Mike said you were fine. You
were
fine. Come on, baby. Not here.” The car sputtered and the door locks buzzed. We decelerated, and the engine quieted. “Oh, come on!” Hudson shouted.

He steered the car to the curb with the last of its momentum, then set the emergency brake. We were on a dark side street. Two blocks in front of us, a major street bisected ours, and cars zipped by, mocking us.

“How much farther to your house?” I asked.

“I’m cursed.” Hudson gripped the steering wheel with knuckles gone white. “The gods are pointing and laughing, and I’m the butt of their jokes. I should have guessed this would happen. I mean, why would something go my way? I can’t get a cell phone that works. I can’t get a car that works. It’s a goddamn elephant curse. ‘Here, look after this,’ Jenny says. ‘Oh, what is it?’ ‘It’s the bane of all things good. I know it looks like a baby elephant, but it’s evil incarnate—’”

He swung out of the car and slammed the door, cutting off his rant. A giant red wagon followed him, large enough for him to lie in. I watched him through the windshield until he lifted the hood. Sighing, I got out and shuffled to stand beside him.

“Know anything about engines?” Hudson asked.

I shook my head.
Only how to break them.

“I know enough to know there’s nothing wrong. Just like Mike said. Everything’s fine. The fuses are fine; the hoses are fine. The oil and gas and fluids are fine. It must be me and this voodoo curse I’ve picked up. First the truck, then the Suburban, then my bike, and now my car? That elephant is a walking, breathing hunk of bad luck.”

I hunched my shoulders. Hudson was a good man. He’d been supportive. He’d set his life aside to help me. He was a true gentleman. He didn’t deserve to have his life dismantled by my curse. And taking me home would only feed his growing paranoia and aggravation.

“I’m sorry, Hudson. This is—”

A dark, windowless van barreled down the empty road and whipped in front of the car. The back doors snapped open, and two dark figures leapt out. They were slender and moved like gravity didn’t exist beneath their feet. Both wore black—solid, unrelieved black—with ski masks covering everything but their eyes. The one on the left sprouted a hissing cobra head shimmering over his masked face. The one on the right protruded spikes like a puffer fish.

I was running before I told my feet to move. I made it two steps, then something slammed into my back and I crashed to the sidewalk. I pushed up immediately, but a sharp kick knocked my right arm askew, and I face-planted again. The weight of a small pony pounded into my kidney, and all the air burst from my lungs. Black spots danced in my vision, and when I could breathe again, my arms were pinned behind my back. The weight lifted and I sagged against the bonds. Zip ties—handcuffs by another name.

“Up.”

The command came with a sharp toe to my ribs. I groaned and rolled, pulling my knees toward my chest. Two pairs of hands grabbed my arms and yanked me to my feet.

“Who are you?” I wheezed. “What do you want?”

“No talking.”

The voice identified my assailant as a woman. She pushed me, and I stumbled a step forward.

“I’m not going anywh—”

I didn’t see the punch that caved in my solar plexus. I doubled over, gasping for air around a knot of fiery pain. My eyes watered, and I blinked away the tears.

A barrage of cussing pinpointed Hudson. With my next prodded step, I saw him. He was sprawled facedown above an enormous abyss, hands secured in zip ties. A black-clad, snake-headed figure stood with one foot on his neck. Blood ran down his forehead.

“Let him go!”

Heavy cloth covered my face, then a drawstring cut into my neck. My head was in a bag. I screamed and tried to run. A thick bar slammed into my midriff, knocking me back a step. Hands shoved me from behind, pushing me into the bar. I folded forward on a waist-high surface. The van. I was being shoved into the van. I flopped like a fish and kicked out. Pain chopped into my calf, and my right leg went numb from knee to toe. Rough hands slid me forward. I flailed with my left leg, but all I hit was air and the van.

Hudson’s cussing and yelling abruptly cut off to a wheeze. The van rocked. Something clubbed my thigh, and I cried out.

“Eva! Eva, are you there?”

“Hudson, don’t—”

Pain pounded into my stomach and cut off my air supply. I gasped and curled into a ball. The back doors slammed shut. The van rocked again, the engine revved, and the van gunned into motion.

I’d been kidnapped. For real.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I was suffocating. The bag clung to my mouth and nostrils, sucking flat against them with every gasp. The world diminished to my burning lungs and thundering heartbeat. Even those receded, distant. I disconnected from my body, drifting from the pain.

I was losing consciousness.

Panic flared. The bag sucked into my mouth, choking me. Unconscious, I would be helpless. I had to keep it together. In slow degrees, I calmed my breathing, forcing myself to hold each inhale a count of two, then four before releasing it. Air pulled more easily through the weave of the bag with steadier breaths.

I could hear the road beneath me now, the engine above my head. Hudson groaned. In the cab, three female voices conversed in short, terse phrases in a language I didn’t know.

In the midst of congratulating myself on using my years of practice to overpower my emotions, it occurred to me I’d neutralized my one advantage: my curse.

We needed out of this van. Now. Reaching our destination would be bad. My thoughts skittered away from defining
bad
. If I could kill the van, it would buy us time. Maybe the police would investigate the broken-down vehicle.

Maybe the women would move up their plans.

Hyperventilation tightened the bag around my face. I wheezed, fighting to relax. Panic might kill the van, but it wouldn’t help me. If only Hudson hadn’t insisted on leaving my loft—

My loft.

Were these women responsible? I could picture them going through my place, destroying my belongings. Anger sparked. I could use anger. I had mountains of anger, volcanoes of anger, all thanks to Jenny.

I focused on my rage at being blackmailed into this horrid, terrifying situation. I pictured Jenny and fanned my fury, then pushed it out from my body. In my mind, I wrapped it around the van’s engine and suffocated it.

My limbs twitched with jittery energy. My head pounded.

The van coughed and sputtered. Rapid-fire dialogue pelted between the women, the van coasted in silence, then rocked to a stop. The cab’s doors opened and closed. I listened hard, but I couldn’t tell if we were alone.

“Hudson,” I hissed.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I have a bag over my head. Can you see anything?”

“Nothing. Can you move?”

“A little.”

After a few muted thumps, Hudson said, “Roll over here.” New distance muffled his words. “Try to get your hood near my hands. Maybe I can take it off.”

I scrabbled on the cold metal floorboard, scrunching my knees to my chest to shrink my body in half. I knocked my head on a hard rod.

“Almost there. That’s my forearm. A little lower.”

I wriggled tighter in a ball. My calf spasmed in a charley horse and I bit my lip to keep from crying out. Any second now, the back doors would burst open and the women would pull us apart. I didn’t have time to baby my throbbing leg.

Voices rose outside the van. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but they were male voices, not female. My heart lurched with hope.
Let it be cops.
Hudson must have had the same thought, because we both started yelling and kicking at the same time.

The van rocked with our movements and our shouts echoed in the interior. A gunshot report, loud and distinct, cut through our racket. In unison, we froze. A second shot shattered the silence.

“That doesn’t sound like the police,” I said.

“Shh.”

It was a bit late for that.

I strained to listen past the ringing in my ears. The yelling had stopped. “Quick, get this off me,” I said. I wriggled back toward Hudson and stretched to align my neck and the bag’s drawstring with his bound hands.

The back door of the van clicked open.

“Shit, man.”

“Eva?” a second male voice asked.

I stilled, trying to place the voice. “Atlas?”

“Hang on.”

The van sagged under someone’s weight; then the drawstring tugged against my neck before loosening. Atlas yanked the bag off my head, taking a hunk of hair with it. I sucked in clean, crisp air and stared up into the eyes of my first kidnapper. Fanned out behind him were enormous gold-plated wings stretching beyond the van’s walls.

“Are you okay?” Edmond asked. He stood at the back door, his bulk filling the opening. Floating against the palm of the hand holding the van door open hung an enormous wire whisk with a green duck for a handle. Circling his girth like a bizarre construction worker’s tool belt were rolling pins and spatulas and pizza cutters and zesters.

“Get this off me,” Hudson demanded. Atlas eased around me and removed Hudson’s sack.

“Was that the retrievalist?” I asked.

“Nope. Those were ninjas,” Edmond said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before someone calls the cops.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until my hands are free.”

“I don’t know,” Edmond said to Atlas. “She might still be holding a grudge.”

“Ed, Jenny said—”

“You guys know Jenny?” Hudson demanded. He sat up in the same awkward listing, bent-knee position I huddled in. “You’re the scum who kidnapped Eva yesterday? What the fu—”

“Scum?” Atlas’s wings swelled and grew spikes. “You better watch your mouth, scrawny. We just rescued your ass. We can leave your ass here, too.”

“Out. I want out.
Now!
” I wormed toward Edmond and kicked out. He jumped back with surprising nimbleness. I launched to my feet, then fell straight into Edmond’s colossal chest when my legs collapsed.

“Easy, there,” he murmured. He didn’t seem to know where to hold me since my arms were pinned behind me. He settled on my shoulders, arms bent so he didn’t make accidental contact with my breasts. I dropped my head forward and fought off tears. My legs hurt, my stomach hurt, my arms and shoulders and hands and wrists hurt. I’d gotten a good look around, and there was no one else nearby. No police in sight, no Good Samaritan. Just two kidnappers rescuing me from three ninjas.

“Where did they go?” I asked. I got my feet working and stepped to the side so Hudson could get out of the van.

“They ran. That way.” Edmond pointed. We were close to a freeway, and the blocks were long and vacant.

“Which of you has the gun?” Hudson asked.

“That’d be me. Gangsta Boy Scout,” Atlas said. “And for the lady . . .” He hopped from the van and brandished a hand. With a click, a blade protruded past his fingers.

“Whoa, hang on,” I said.

“Turn around,” Atlas said.

“No.”

He blinked at me, then turned to Edmond and punched him hard in the arm. “I told you we scared her yesterday. We were only supposed to deliver a message, and you terrified her with the grab and go. The handcuffs were too much. Look, she doesn’t trust us at all.” He turned back to me. “Do we look like the kind of men who would hurt a woman?”

“Yes.”

A black vortex materialized behind Edmond’s linebacker shoulders, sucking his chef’s tool belt and whisk into its depths, warping reality around its edges. I took a step back.

“I’m sorry, Eva,” Edmond said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Hudson gave me a level look, then turned his back to Atlas. “Cut these off me,” he said. Hudson’s shiny metal top hat half swallowed his head, supported in the front by empty black-rimmed glasses. Lobsters swarmed over his feet, disappeared, and returned in Day-Glo colors. The hint of a woman’s face floated behind him, and the red wagon appeared with locomotive wheels. I looked away. After sucking up the electricity of two vehicles, the apparitions threatened to overwhelm me.

Atlas sawed through the zip tie with his knife. I felt foolish when I realized that had been his intent with me. When he’d freed Hudson, I turned to give Atlas my back. I held rigid, visions of the sharp blade slipping and slicing me open. When the zip tie fell to the ground, I rubbed my wrists. At this rate, the handcuff bruises were never going to heal.

I stepped away from Atlas and turned to put the cousins in my line of sight again. “Where are we?”