“Don’t get insolent with me, boy,” Sylvester snarled. “I haven’t forgiven you for knocking me out earlier.”
“I wasn’t trying to knock you out. You got in my way, and even if I hadn’t knocked you out, you wouldn’t have been able to take the brooch. Don’t you know how the Knot works?”
“Hand over the brooch!” Sylvester sputtered. He was deeply under the influence of the Eye, and I doubted he’d listen to reason. Even in the darkness, I could see his eyes glittering with need.
I instinctively flinched, but Owen stood firm. “If you want it, come and take it,” he said. “I don’t recall that you were very successful in your previous attempts.”
I wasn’t sure what Owen thought would happen when Sylvester called his bluff. The Knot wouldn’t protect me the way it had protected Mimi. I turned to Earl, who stood his ground while fidgeting uncomfortably. I gave him my best pleading look, but I didn’t expect much, even if he really was on our side. If he helped us, he’d blow his cover.
So far, Owen’s bluff was working. Sylvester held back, watching us, unable to tell which of us had the brooch. His eyes shifted back and forth between us as he tried to decide who would be the most likely keeper of the brooch. Owen oh-so-casually put his hand in his pocket, as if to protect something valuable, and then Sylvester made his move.
Chapter Fourteen
Sylvester rushed at Owen, who stepped forward to meet his attack, catching him off-guard and grabbing his arm to use Sylvester’s own momentum against him. The Elf Lord went flying, landing face-first on the path. The other elves hesitated, torn between keeping their positions and moving to help their leader. We darted through the opening Sylvester left.
Sylvester shouted, “Get them! Get the brooch!” and soon the other elves were after us. I didn’t see how we’d avoid capture for very long. They could outrun us, they had magic, and they had us outnumbered.
The elves had reached us and one even had a grip on my arm when a noise in the bushes beside the path startled me. I thought at first it was just some animal, but then something sprang out of the bushes onto the path with a bloodcurdling war cry. When it went on to shout, “Sneaky, greedy, cheap elves!” I knew it had to be Thor. I wasn’t sure, though, if he was attacking the elves or coming after the brooch. I jumped out of the way, just in case, and he ran past me into the group of elves. He swung his tiny battleaxe with a vengeance, but it didn’t seem like he actually hit anything. The elves jumped nimbly out of the way before he could hit them, and then it took him a while to recover after the momentum from each blow swung him around in a circle.
Something dark came out of the sky, and I dove for the nearest bush. After so many attacks by the antique zombie gargoyles, I wasn’t taking any chances. This one must have been one of ours, though, because it went for the elves. In the darkness, it was difficult to follow the fight. All I could see was a swarm of shadows. After taking down Sylvester, Owen guarded me, but at the moment, everyone was more focused on fighting each other than on going after the brooch. In fact, I wasn’t sure they’d yet figured out which one of us actually had the brooch, only that it was in the vicinity.
The sound of heavy breathing nearby jolted me out of my hiding place. “It’s here, it’s here, it’s here,” Sylvester muttered, sounding more and more unhinged. He pounced on the spot where I’d been just a second earlier. At that sound, Owen whirled away from watching the fight to pull me to my feet and away from the bush. Sylvester still came after me, his hands stretched out ahead of him and his fingers bent into claws. “It’s mine,” he rasped.
“Back off, buddy!” I ordered, on the off chance that I could use the Eye on other people even if it didn’t affect me. It didn’t work, or else Sylvester was too far gone under the power of the Eye itself to fall under the sway of the Eye’s holder. He kept advancing, and when Owen and I fled from him, we nearly bumped into Lyle.
There was a loud popping sound, and I felt magic nearby as Sylvester suddenly swayed, then collapsed. Rod stood behind him. “Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “I was trying to remember a spell that might work on an elf. Now, come on, we need to get out of here.”
We evaded Lyle, only to find ourselves facing Earl. Rod flexed his wrists, preparing to fight, but then Earl grinned and joined us, shouting over his shoulder, “Help! I’m being kidnapped!”
“Are you trying to make them come after us?” I asked him.
“Do you really think they’d come to rescue me?” he replied without breaking stride. “I was just coming up with an excuse to leave.”
We followed Rod into a rough, rocky, hilly area that felt like it was in the middle of the wilderness. I could still see the city skyline, so I knew we hadn’t somehow teleported out of the park without me noticing. We stopped in a secluded area surrounded by trees. There were some large rocks, just the right size to sit on, and I availed myself of one of them because I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me up any longer.
“I thought I said we didn’t need help,” Owen said, facing Rod.
“Yeah, but what I saw was you two with a bunch of elves on your tails. Admit it, you need us. You won’t last another five minutes without magical support, let alone an hour or more.”
“But who’s going to help us against all of you?” Owen asked, his voice soft and solemn.
“Thor’s having too much fun fighting elves to remember to come after the brooch, Earl just wants to keep it away from Sylvester, and you can tranquilize me if you have to. Remember, I came on this jaunt with that understanding.”
We went on the alert when we heard a slight crunching sound, like footsteps on the rocky ground. “I’ve set some wards that may confuse them for a moment,” Granny’s voice said as she entered our hideout.
“Good thinking,” Rod said.
Then I yelped as the end of her cane poked into my shoulder. “And as for you, young lady, I told you I wasn’t letting you out of my sight, and there you went, rushing off on your own and getting yourself into trouble.”
“What was I supposed to do?” I protested. “As soon as I got the brooch, I had to get out of there. If I’d gone back to get you I’d have been in even worse trouble.”
“And obviously you avoided all trouble by leaving on your own,” she said, and I could hear the smirk in her voice even if I couldn’t see it in the darkness.
Owen sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “The guests were already arriving, and we had a close call with a couple of them,” he said. “I’m not sure what we’d have done if we’d had to face the guests, the puritans, the gargoyles, the elves, Thor, and Mimi, all at the same time. You held back some of them, so you were helping even if you weren’t with us.”
That mollified her somewhat. She still made a loud “Hmmmph” sound, but she dropped the argument and quit poking me with her cane.
After a few minutes of rest, I asked, “Will Thor be okay? It’s just him against all those elves.”