Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

“Shoot the clown, aim for his right eye, and put as much of your own power into the shot as you can,” Adrian said, moving to stand behind me and, theoretically, out of harm’s way.

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because I want to know your maximum power with the staff and how inaccurate your aim is.” Okay, so maybe he had realized I’d been going for the skull and crossbones and not the middle of the pirate ship hull.

I held the staff up and aligned it with the clown’s big, blue right eye. The eyeball was easily three feet wide, but the staff seemed to kick left so I adjusted my aim a few feet to the east.

Gathering as much physical energy as I could summon without a concentrated buildup, I fed it all into the staff, and the ropes of flame came out wider, brighter, and faster- moving than anything I’d produced so far—so much that I jerked my arm a little to the right.

The flames went wide, hitting a wooden equipment shed behind the clown head. It whooshed into a massive bonfire, the likes of which only a pile of dried wood could produce.

“You. Are. A. Menace.” Adrian elbowed me aside and starting his hand motions again, muttering and weaving a spell I hoped would dampen the fire, which had spread to an adjacent building with fast-growing flames. It seemed to tamp briefly, then flared again.

Damn. His magic wasn’t working. I scrambled in my right jeans pocket and pulled out my flame-retardant charm. Thumbing off the top, I ran toward the burning buildings.

Adrian grabbed the back of my sweater as I passed him, pulling me to a halt. “What in bloody hell are you doing?”

“Trust me.” I wrenched free of him, got as close to the fire as I dared, and tossed the charm. Adrian came to stand beside me, and we both watched in awe as a plume of bright purple smoke shot into the air so high it briefly dwarfed the roller coaster. Too much Chinese beautyberry in the mixture, maybe.

On the positive side, the buildings were no longer burning. They simply crackled and turned black, sending occasional plumes of purple smoke skyward.

“You might wish to adjust that recipe a bit.” Adrian and I stood and watched the purple geysers erupt. They were kind of pretty, sparkling magenta and violet as the sunlight hit them.

Adrian spun in alarm as the distinctive whoop of a siren sounded in the distance. “It’s the constabulary. You’re going to get us arrested for arson.”

“Holy crap.” I raced back to the bench for my backpack and hooked fingers through the handle of Adrian’s briefcase. “Let’s go.”

“The transport,” he shouted, running for the patch of weeds. I set my backpack and his briefcase inside the transport next to him, rummaged in the backpack a split-second, and pulled out one of my premixed camouflage potions. I couldn’t leave my SUV here for the cops to tow away.

“You’re going to get us arrested, you stupid woman! Leave the vehicle!” His voice had risen about three octaves and I’m sure at some point I’d think his falsetto was funny.

Not that he’d be able to hear me laughing. As I turned to answer him, he disappeared. The SOB had taken the transport and left me—and he took my backpack.

Cursing, I sprinkled the camouflage potion in a circle around my Pathfinder so I wouldn’t have to steal it out of impound later. Damned hysterical Blue Congress wizard. Like waiting another thirty seconds for us to transport together would have killed him. Now I’d have to track him down to get my stuff back.

I ran into the transport just as blue flashing lights turned in at the entrance to Six Flags. In the distance, I heard fire engines on their way. Behind me, purple flares continued to shoot almost as high as the Jocco’s Mardi Gras Madness roller coaster. I had no idea what the fire department would make of it.

Just before time and space compressed around me, taking me to the transport nearest Adrian’s apartment, I spotted a pair of NOPD officers running breakneck toward the enormous, grinning clown with purple smoke drifting from behind its head.

I sat on a bench near the French Market on Decatur Street with my cell phone, squeaky clean tourists giving me wide berth on their way to drink hurricanes and soak up the New Orleans ambience. Probably thought I was a gutter punk, between the jeans I’d ripped the knee out of scrambling away from the clown fire and hair that was more pony than tail.

My backpack, retrieved from Adrian’s apartment after I’d tracked him down, leaned against my leg, the elven staff sticking out the top. It completed the picture of what the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce would not want to show off about our fair city: eccentric and possibly dangerous locals of questionable mental health.

Alex answered on the first ring. “Toxic purple smoke being reported at Six Flags. What did you do?”

If it weren’t true, I’d resent his assumption that I’d caused the incident. “A spell went a bit south. And it wasn’t toxic.”

He chuckled. “Where are you?”

“Outside Aunt Sally’s on Decatur. My SUV is still at Six Flags.”

“On my way.” He hung up without a good-bye. A half hour later, I spotted Alex’s Range Rover inching toward me down Decatur and hefted the pack over one shoulder. There was no place to pull over, so as soon as he stopped, I quickly opened the door and scaled the half- mile incline into the passenger seat.

Alex had bought the Range Rover when he got the job as DDT director, since his Mercedes convertible wasn’t suitable for transporting massive amounts of concealed specialized weaponry. Whether it used prete ammo or premium unleaded, the man liked his toys, and damned the price of gas. A pickup truck like Jake’s wasn’t cool enough and, besides, Jake had one so it wasn’t suitable.

I slammed the truck door behind me. “What a horrible day.”

“I thought every day you got to commit arson was a good day.” Alex stared straight ahead, eyes focused on traffic, but his mouth twitched.

“Go ahead and laugh. You can’t help yourself.”

The twitch turned into that crease at the corner of his mouth, just on the left side, that was about the sexiest thing going. Plus it felt good to share a joke, even if it was at my expense.

“Other than the fire, how’d the lesson with Adrian go?”

Better than I’d expected, overall. “He’s still a pain in the ass, but I think we’ll get through it okay. Too early to tell whether it will actually help me manage my elven skills. Today, I mostly showed him what I could do.”

“Like start fires?” Alex laid on his horn, scaring the crap out of a small flock of tourists wandering across Decatur.

I groaned. “Adrian got a firsthand view of my little aiming problem. It undid all the brownie points I’d earned showing him my other skills. I think the hydromancy freaked him out.” “He underestimated you,” Alex said, turning down Esplanade and heading away from the river. “We’ve all underestimated you at one time or another.”

This was the closest he’d ever come to admitting he’d been wrong not to take me or my magic abilities seriously when we first met after Katrina, which left me pathetically warm and fuzzy. “How’d things go with Ken today?”

“We should have done this a long time ago—set up the DDT unit and brought him in. He’s the perfect liaison with the NOPD. He doesn’t care if the department gives him shit. He just ignores them.”

Good for Ken. “He’s not freaked out by”—I fluttered my hand between Alex and me—“us?”

We finally escaped the Quarter and began winding along a back route to New Orleans East to avoid the interstate glut. “He’s good.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I might or might not have said more. Truth was, I passed out and didn’t awaken until Alex bounced his truck over the rutted entrance to Six Flags. I’d done enough physical magic to wear me out.