Don't Rhine on My Parade

  Chapter Eighteen

  So, there I was, back in the storage closet, surrounded by bloodstain cleaners and dirty mops, and handcuffed tightly to one of the metal shelves. Fantastic. Some superhero I was. Why couldn’t I have had a useful ability? Like laser vision, or super-human strength? I had seen this one show on TV where the lady had a bracelet that turned into a bullet-deflecting gauntlet that shot out a huge sword when she needed to decapitate some bad guys. That would be useful right about now.

  “Where’s my cool bracelet?” I shouted to no one in particular. At least, I hoped there was no one in here with me, because the Invisibility power would really freak me out. If bottles started flying off the shelves I was out of here. Except I was obviously not going anywhere.

  I gave the shelf a shake to test its strength. If it had been the shelves I had put together in my garage they would have fallen down on the first shake. That’s true craftsmanship for you. It’s also what you get when you buy the cheapest shelves at Walmart instead of shelling out the big bucks. Comforting now to know, were I ever to find myself knocked unconscious and handcuffed to my garage shelves, I could probably escape. I say “probably” because, once again, I didn’t get super-human strength in the superpowers lottery.

  I stared at the handcuffs for a while. It kind of freaked me out to think that someone had been touching me, man-handling me, while I was unconscious. That and the thought that being handcuffed in a closet probably didn’t mean they just wanted to talk with me. It wasn’t looking too good. Getting involved in all this magic stuff was obviously a bad idea. I had no idea what I was up against, and to be quite honest, I think I would rather not know. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

  I started to worry about my kids again. What would they do without a mommy? Who would watch them? Kiss them? Tuck them in at night and tell them stories?

  Poor Mark! How in the world would he manage being a single parent? He would most likely remarry. After a few years of grieving for me, of course. Some beautiful younger woman would come along who would love my children like her own. She would have to be younger and more beautiful because nothing else would cause Mark to get over his memories of me.

  She would probably be thinner too. If she didn’t have kids of her own then she wouldn’t have the stretch marks and slightly sagging tummy skin that I pretended I didn’t care about.

  How dare he! Here I was, risking my life for the good of all mankind and he was getting ready to cheat on me with a younger, hotter woman! The nerve of the man! And it’s not like I was an old hag either! I was still fairly attractive! Granted, I was a little heavier than when we first met, but those pounds were from giving birth to his children! You can’t expect a woman to blow up to the size of a beached whale, push a watermelon out of her uterus, and then instantly pop back to collegiate thinness! I was working on it, and I thought I was looking rather good. The other day in the grocery store I could have sworn a man was checking out my butt. It could have had something to do with the Hello Kitty sticker I found later stuck to my jeans, but I doubt it. My butt is pretty hot.

  I sat and stewed for a while. You give the best years of your life to a man. Bear his children, clean his house, pick up his dirty underwear, and what do you get for it? The instant you’re dead he starts looking for someone else. Not even cold in my grave and I could see it happening. Well. I gave myself a mental shake and gave the metal shelves another experimental tug. I was not going to lie down and let this happen. I was going to get home somehow and tell Mark exactly what I thought of him.

  “I want to hold your haaand!” the Beatles blared into the enclosed space. I jumped in the air, hit the end of the handcuffs, and knocked half the bottles off the shelf. My heart was pounding furiously in my throat and I snapped my head around trying to see where the sound was coming from. Oh. My purse. It was still on the back shelf where I had placed it to have both hands free for the statue. I had totally forgotten all about it and if I hadn’t gotten knocked on the head I would have left it here. That might have eventually clued the witches in to who had stolen their little treasure. Wow. Good thing they hadn’t found it. I rolled my eyes. James Bond I am not.

  I stretched as far as I could, trying to snag the handle of my purse. Too far away. The Beatles quit singing and my phone started that annoying thirty second beeping, designed to drive you crazy until you check your messages. I stretched again. My arms hadn’t grown any longer in the last five seconds. I decided to try my feet instead. I kicked off my flip-flops and hopped on one foot closer to the purse. I balanced with one hand on the shelf in front of me and leaned out with my other leg. My toes just brushed the side of the purse. I wiggled and twisted with my planted foot until I felt like I was doing a split. My foot hooked the purse strap and I tried to slowly bring it towards me.

  My bottom foot slid out from under me, my other leg flew up in the air, and I jerked painfully against the handcuffs and smashed face first back into my shelf. “Ouch” was an understatement. The good news though was that the purse had somehow dropped within arm’s reach. I rubbed my nose and wiggled it a bit to see if anything was broken. It hurt, a lot, but I didn’t hear any cartilage shifting about. Not that I would know what broken cartilage sounded like, but I’d read somewhere that that’s how you tell. My wrist was starting to look a bit mangled, like a bad rug burn or something. All my fingers worked, so, once again, I assumed that nothing was broken.

  Done checking for broken bones, I snatched up my purse in triumph. Aha! Now I could … I stopped. What could I do? I didn’t have Cecily’s number programmed in my phone. I didn’t even know Kethudrim’s or Jonathan’s. Do elves and werewolves even carry cell phones? I could call Mark and explain that I had been lying to him for years and could he please come rescue me from a coven of evil witches.

  Ha.

  Or I could just tell him that I had been knocked over the head and chained up in a closet, but he might wonder what I was doing at a homeless shelter. Would he believe I was volunteering?

  I could call the police. My memory might not be the best but I could remember how to dial 911. The only problem there was that it would definitely get back to Mark sometime and there I would be, having to explain again. Not to mention the whole “intent to steal” and “breaking and entering.”

  I made a face and yelped. My nose was not quite up to facial contortions yet.

  My difficulty was that I couldn’t really work up the proper amount of fear. If I really thought that I was in danger of imminent death, I would call everyone I knew for help. I just couldn’t believe that these witches meant to kill me. Stupid maybe, but that’s how I felt. This was America. People just don’t go around kidnapping and murdering here. Ok, so, some people do, watch the news. But they are usually misfit psychotics, not a non-profit organization. Besides, I often daydreamed about being a superhero, or a bounty hunter, or a cool-headed person who conquered impossible situations. Now was my chance. I could handle this.

  Who was I kidding? I was a stay-at-home mother of two. The only impossible situation I ever faced was grocery shopping with screaming toddlers. And cool-headed would not exactly be the adjective I would use to describe myself at those times. I sighed and almost dialed Mark’s number.

  I couldn’t do it. He would never understand. He would be hurt and betrayed. What if he left me? Or had me committed somewhere? I owed it to him to keep him in the dark. It was really for his own good, because I loved him.

  I started digging through my purse again. The contents hadn’t changed from earlier. No set of lock picks, or handcuff keys. No paper clips or bobby pins, not that I would know how to pick a lock with them even if I had them. I had my magic glasses which, so far, had been incredibly helpful. Not. Maybe if they could change into a fire-breathing dragon I would feel differently about them. I also had the disrupter.

  Hmm. What had they actually said about it? Would it work like a bomb and blow up everything or did it just affect magic? Cecily and company had t
o be getting worried about me. They couldn’t get in to rescue me because of the shield. But if I disrupted the shield … Of course, I might also blow myself up, which would be less than ideal. But it hadn’t sounded like that sort of bomb. This could be a genius idea!

  I ignored the little voice in the back of my head that went off like a fire alarm every time I catalogued something as a “genius idea.” What did it know? I could have a genius idea one day, and it could actually turn out to be a genius idea. What better time than the present? If I remembered correctly, this little beauty in my hands – I was becoming fonder of it by the minute — when activated would take down the magic shield and allow the cavalry to come galloping over the horizon for a heroic, just-in-the-nick-of-time rescue. Perfect! Then they could retrieve the statue themselves, which was hopefully still in the building somewhere.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to visualize the steps that Jonathan had showed me in the car. “Hmm, twist here, push there, twist the top, and … then push the top and bottom together! Aha!”

  I held the ball away from me and squinted my eyes. The distance and the squinting was to protect me from the magic blast.

  Nothing happened. Oh duh. There was something about a ten minute countdown so I could get the statue safely out of the building so its “magic powers” would not be harmed. Whoops. Well, this was the only way either one of us was getting out of the building that I could see; call it adapting orders in the field. I’m sure the Armed Forces have to do it all the time.

  Now all I had to do was wait. The thing was, I’m not very good at waiting. In fact, I hate waiting. I would rather drive ten extra hours in a car than have to sit and wait in an airport. I prefer microwave meals to actual cooking. Why spend an hour cooking a meal that will be eaten in less than fifteen minutes?

  Speaking of food, I was hungry. I dug around in my purse and came up with a sticky, melted cough drop and what used to be a breakfast bar but was now a bag full of crumbs. I ate both.

  Surely ten minutes had passed! Nope. Only three. I was going to die of boredom. Handcuffed in a witch’s broom closet, caught red-handed stealing, fate uncertain, and I was going to die of boredom before anything exciting happened.

  Somehow I made it through the next seven minutes. I did keep checking the bomb. No blinking lights. No ticking sounds. No voice of Sigourney Weaver saying “Self destruct in …” Very disappointing. I was expecting a little more drama from a magical bomb. If this was the movies it would have had all three: blinking lights, annoying ticking and a calm computer voice counting down to destruction.

  Finally ten minutes was up. Then eleven. Then twelve. Hmmm. Things were not looking so swell. Perhaps my non-magical self was incapable of feeling a blast of magic. Or, far more likely, I had screwed it up somehow.

  This depressing thought had just occurred to me when the closet door opened. I jumped as high in surprise as a person can who is handcuffed to a shelf and managed to drop the disrupter, which rolled out of sight behind some buckets. Oh well, there went using it as a threat. “Let me go or I shall destroy your magic shield with this disrupter that I have already tried to activate and can’t figure out how it works!” As threats go it probably wasn’t that effective. Much better that the evidence of my attempted attack was now hidden.

  All of this went quickly through my head while I squinted into the brighter light from the hallway which was silhouetting a man standing in the doorway. He stepped into the closet which suddenly felt a whole lot smaller. He was big, really big, and rather on the hairy side as well.

  “Hi,” I tried nervously, for starters. “I’m really sorry. I think there’s been a big mistake. If you could just let me go I promise never to bother you again.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a key, and started to unlock my handcuffs.

  I couldn’t help myself. It struck me as funny. It was either giggle or scream and my mouth started to babble on its own. “Really? Keys? Can’t you just, like, wave your hand and unlock them? What happened to your magical witch powers?”

  He looked me in the eyes for the first time. There was a coldness there like I have never seen before. I felt less than a person, less than an object. I was nothing to this man. If anything he was puzzled that I was even speaking to him. Like an ant on the sidewalk begging you not to step on it. Odd, but hardly worth your time. My mouth snapped shut; I didn’t feel like giggling any longer.

  If I had been thinking of breaking free and making a dash for the front door, I gave it up as soon as his hand clamped on my arm. “Clamped” being the operative word. I could feel my arm bones creaking under the pressure and I swear my fingers were turning blue. That and the fact that he made no allowance for our height difference and half dragged, half carried me out of the closet, made me miss most of our trip down the hallway. I was too busy trying to keep my feet somewhat under me and not whimper from the pain of my arm being torn out of socket.

  Totally on accident, I stumbled and got my legs tangled up with my captor’s. We both went down with a crash, me, unfortunately, underneath. All the air was crushed from my lungs and, once again, I missed a prime escape opportunity. Maybe if I had planned it I would have been prepared for the stumble and landed on top. At the moment I was merely thankful that I hadn’t torn my arm off in the fall.

  We lay there for a couple seconds longer than I thought absolutely necessary.

  “Look, you overgrown Wookie!” I hissed, “If you’re thinking about coping a feel I’m going to knee you so hard in the groin that—” my imagination misfired at that point, but I was saved from the embarrassment of not being able to come up with a witty insult by the sight of a new pair of feet inches from my nose.

  “Trouble, Charles?” a voice drawled with obvious sarcasm. There was no answer from my human blanket.

  “Charles?” the voice asked again with a little more concern and the weight was rolled off of me.

  I gasped my first full breath in what felt like forever and struggled to my feet. “Charles” was conscious, but decidedly dazed, with a trickle of blood running down the side of his face that matched a red smear on the wall. Dang! I was better than I knew! Too bad I had only succeeded in making him angry. Now was a trifle late to remember that you are always supposed to let the Wookie win.

  I rubbed my arm and turned my attention to the newcomer. Button down short-sleeve shirt, khaki pants, brown loafers with, ugh, black socks and thick coke-bottle glasses. In a word: Nerd. He helped the Wookie to his feet and just managed to protect me from being pummeled. Apparently Charles did not harbor warm feelings towards me.

  “Stop it, Charles!” the Nerd grunted, using all of his 150 pounds to push the big man back up against the wall. “You’ll get your chance in a minute.”

  I suddenly disliked the Nerd as much as I did the Wookie. I decided to try Outraged British Nobility with the added benefit of the Voice. Even without my ability it would often quell rude salesclerks and obnoxious checkout ladies.

  “Just What do you Think you are Doing? I have Never been so Insulted in my life! I Demand that you release me At Once and Beg me Not to take this matter up with the Police! Of all the Rude, Insufferable, Boorish, Ill-mannered, Nincompoops I have Ever—”

  The Nerd made a sketching motion with his fingers and mumbled “Confuto.”

  I broke off mid-sentence with a croak. I tried to clear my throat, no sound. I tried to scream, still no sound. Not good. I had one card up my sleeve and apparently I was not going to get a chance to use it.

  The Wookie stared at me for a minute. “I guess we should let her go …” he trailed off as the Nerd snarled at him.

  “Guard your mind, you idiot!” He turned on me, “No more of that now. I would advise you not to try it again. Most of us do not take kindly to having our minds coerced.”

  Since I could not retort I did the next most mature thing and stuck my tongue out at him. He casually backhanded me across the face with enough force to slam my head in
to the wall. I bit through my cheek and felt blood trickle down my chin.

  Eyes welling with tears, I stared at him in disbelief. No man had ever laid a hand on me in my entire life. It just wasn’t done in polite circles. Being a girl was supposed to protect you from physical violence. As the Nerd met my gaze with an emotionless stare I realized that the rules I thought applied in life were utterly useless here. So far I had been acting like everything was one big game. If I wanted to survive I was going to have to take my play to a whole new level.

  My eyes narrowed in hatred. I had never felt such antipathy for a human being before. If I got the chance, I would kill him. Okay. So I couldn’t actually kill him. But I would definitely let him know that he was not my favorite person! I kept that thought in my head as the Wookie grabbed up my arm again and continued the frog march down the hallway.

  We entered a large room where folding cots were stacked in rows against the wall. Metal folding chairs were arranged in a circle around a folding table covered with a black cloth. Short, fat candles provided the only light, but they covered the ground in the middle of the circle with only a narrow path leading to and around the table.

  Every chair was occupied and every head turned to look at us as we entered. No one had green skin, or a long warty nose, or even a black witch’s hat. They all looked like normal, everyday people. I don’t know what it was, but there was something else in the room. There was no mistaking this as a PTA meeting. The darkness outside the center candles seemed thick and almost gooey. I felt evil in the room. Pure, unadulterated, life-hating, evil.

  Then a figure stepped forward from the circle. Everyone else was wearing ordinary street clothes, but this woman was dressed in a hooded black robe. “Welcome, Piper,” she said sweetly, “We’ve been waiting for you."