Shanna Swendson - Don't Hex with Texas

We’d just started to step off the doorstep to confront him when Sam gave another signal, this one silent. Headlights appeared, and a police car came slowly down the street. Owen immediately made the wards quit glowing, but it looked like the unusual light had attracted some attention, for the police car came to a stop in front of the bank. Our wizard crawled through the shadows to the side of the building, then took off running between buildings. I would have chased after him, but Owen gripped my arm.

“I can’t keep us hidden if we move very far,” he whispered.

We both held our breath as the police officer got out, swinging his flashlight back and forth. I couldn’t stop myself from wincing when the beam swept across us, but the cop didn’t seem to notice us. He leaned back into the car and got on the radio. “I thought I saw someone in front of the bank who ran off when I got here. I’m gonna check it out,” he said. The radio squawked, he paused to listen, then said, “Nah, I don’t think I need backup. Probably just some kid, but you never know, could be our mystery burglar.” He put the radio away, put his hand on his gun, and went in between the buildings, following the wizard’s path, but came back a moment later, empty-handed. He checked around the bank doorway, unaffected by the wards, then returned to his car.

He got back on the radio. “Didn’t see anything. It could have been just a dog, or else my eyes playing tricks on me. I’ll make one more circuit around town, then that’ll be the end of my shift. See you back at the barn.”

As soon as the car was gone, I turned to Owen. “We had him. Why didn’t we go after him? People walk around with veils and illusions all the time, so I don’t get why you couldn’t keep us hidden if we chased him.”

“Complete invisibility against someone who’s really looking takes a lot of power. Most so-called invisibility isn’t complete. It’s more of a spell to make people not notice something they weren’t paying attention to in the first place. It’s much harder to really be invisible to someone who’s intently looking for you. I know I couldn’t have kept the two of us invisible and silent while chasing our suspect. If we’d gone after him, we’d have been the ones who were caught.”

“And that would have ruined everything,” I admitted. “You couldn’t have done that time-freezing thing again, I guess?”

Instead of answering me, he knelt and put his hands on the ground. Then I felt the magic through the soles of my feet. “Not a good thing to do with someone around who’s linked to the world outside the spell,” he then said. “What if dispatch tried reaching the police officer here while he was frozen?

Now, let’s see how far our guy got.”

I had to pull up the hem of my robe to run after him down the alley where the wizard had disappeared. It would have been nice to get rid of the robes before we had to go running and searching, but I guessed if we found the guy, we wouldn’t want to be recognized. The air was as still as it had been the other night, but the only frozen living beings we saw in the alley were cats and rats.

I had no idea we had that many rats in this town. It gave me the creeps.

We searched the entire downtown area, weaving between buildings and looking under anything that might have offered shelter from Sam. The gargoyle returned just as we made it back to the bank.

“Sorry, boss, I lost him,” he said. “He went low, which is where I’m not as good. Scrambled between buildings and then got up under something. That’s where I lost him. I checked the area over, but if he got inside somewhere and went building to building and then ditched the robes, well, I’m good, but I’m not that good. You’d have needed a rat to track this guy, and I’m not yet on friendly terms with any of the locals.”

Owen looked at me. “Are there any good hiding places here, places where someone might know to hide out?”

“The upstairs rooms in most of these buildings on the square are vacant. You can get into some of them using the fire escapes. Kids sometimes hang out there. But there’s also a pretty good chance he got out of range before you had a chance to freeze him.”

Sam hopped up onto the trunk of the car so he could look Owen in the eye. “You did it again? I thought things seemed quiet. How long has it been?”

I compared my watch to the courthouse clock tower, factoring in the five minutes from the other night. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Drop it now,” Sam said. “People’ll notice, and it can’t be good for you or for the space-time continuum.”

“We can catch him!” Owen insisted. “What if he’s hiding in one of those buildings?”

“He was headin’ away from the square when I lost him. He was probably out of range. And if he’s gone to ground, he’ll stay for a while. I can go look in the buildings, but you’ve got to stop playing with the big stuff like that.”

With a sigh, Owen knelt again, and soon it was a lot easier to breathe. Sam took off to peek through windows, and we got into the car. I directed Owen down back roads that led away from town before going the long way back around to my parents’ house.

“He’ll be back tomorrow night, if Sam doesn’t catch him tonight,” he said after a while, sounding almost like he was trying to boost his own spirits.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Up to this point, he’s thought he was invincible because he could do magic. The wards really threw him. Now he has to suspect there’s another wizard around who’s stronger than he is. He’ll spend the day reading his spell book, maybe checking in with his correspondence course teacher. If we’re lucky, he might even try casing the bank in daylight to see what the problem is.”

“He won’t be able to get in, even in daylight, will he?”

“No. Which might even mean we could figure out our culprit that way and not have to stay up all night tomorrow. Is there anything you need to do tomorrow?”

“I should probably put in some time at work so I don’t get too far behind. You could come with me and see the joys of the family business. That would keep you away from Mom. I can take off pretty early, though.”

“I think I’ll help Sam stake out the bank. I’d really like to get this wrapped up.”

Sherri showed up on time for work the next morning, which was one of the signs of the impending apocalypse, and she came bearing a gift, which was definitely an omen of the end times. She brought a cake in a foil pan back to the office. “Is Owen here?” she asked. That explained the earliness and the cake, I thought.

“No, he had some things to do today. Why?”

“I wanted to apologize again for what a jerk Dean was to him yesterday. I made him this cake, since you didn’t get to have dessert at my house.” Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, and I actually felt sorry for her.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said, taking the cake from her and putting it on my desk.

“Dean was the one who was a jerk.”

“I don’t know what to do about Dean,” she blurted with a sob. “I think he’s got himself mixed up in something bad.”

I took her arm and helped her over to the sofa in the back of the office. “What is it?” I asked, sitting next to her and holding her hand.

“I think he’s involved with something illegal to make money. You know how he is, this is always going to be the thing that makes him rich, and it just puts us deeper in the hole, but at least all of those have been honest. Sort of. Now, though, he’s buying me way too much stuff, and I know I shouldn’t complain, but we don’t have that kind of money. He’s out at all hours, coming and going without telling me, and I think he’s meeting with shady people. I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes to jail.”