Spellbound (Otherworld 12)

The problem was the lock. It was a combination, and I didn't have a hope in hell of figuring it out in the next few minutes. I tugged on the door, just in case it wasn't latched. No such luck.

As I fiddled with it, footsteps sounded in the hall. I backed against the bookshelf. Someone tried the door and I congratulated myself for having the foresight to lock it behind me. Then, after a test jangle, a key turned in the lock. I quickly cast a cover spell. Only as the last words left my mouth did I remember that it wasn't going to do any good.

The door swung open. In walked a young woman with a blond ponytail and the kind of Nordic beauty normally seen only in skin care ads. Megan. When her gaze fell on me, I stiffened, but her brows only lifted in the barest expression of surprise.

"I--" I began.

"Savannah," she said. "I expected I'd find you in here. Tossing a good-looking guy in the front door? About as obvious as dangling a steak over the wall to distract the guard dogs."

"It works."

"Only on the bitches who are starving."

She picked up a pair of scissors from the desk. When my hands flew up, she shook her head.

"Stabbing really isn't my style." A sly smile. "Not from the front, anyway. I need these to open a delivery box." She glanced at the file cabinet, the top drawer not quite closed. "I presume you're still interested in Amy."

"I--"

"I never trusted her. It was Alastair who insisted we let her in. Damaged, he said. Playing damaged, I said." She looked at me. "She picked a very convenient time to leave, didn't she? I suspect that means she had something to do with what happened. The murders. You were investigating. You came asking about her. The two cannot be unconnected."

"I--"

"You won't find her files in the cabinet. We keep the girls' records a little more secure than that." Her gaze shifted to the locked one, then lifted to mine. "Do you know how much our cookies cost?"

"Your cookies?"

"Nine-ninety-eight a dozen. We're avoiding breaking that tendollar mark, obviously. A small thing, but important for marketing purposes."

At the door, she turned. "A word of advice, Savannah. If you're breaking into a place and you hear the door opening? You're supposed to hide."

She left and closed it carefully behind her. I walked to the locked cabinet and entered 998 on the keypad. The lock whirred and the door popped open. I found Amy's file and got out of there.

Abject humiliation didn't set in until I was sitting at the roadside, waiting for Adam. I'd screwed up on the kind of breakin I'd done dozens of times before. The kind of breakin we might need to do again before we caught this witch-hunter.

I'd been lucky. Insanely lucky.

The next time I screwed up, we might find ourselves explaining things from a jail cell. Or worse. Until I got my spells back, I had to shift into the backseat and let Adam take the wheel.

As Adam drove us back to the motel, I read through Amy's application. For future reference only. Adam had already decided we could hold off on following up on the information. First, we needed to fix my power outage.

"You've got some crazy assassin chick hot on your trail," he'd said. "Hell, yes, you need your spells."

Getting in touch with the Fa

tes isn't easy. We aren't supposed to know anything about them. I only do because Paige took a nosedive through a portal six years ago and had to deal with the Fates to get back.

From that, I knew they made deals, which is why I was sure they were responsible for my situation. The last time, though, the person who actually made the bargain was my mother. So that was whom we had to talk to. Not easy when she's been dead for almost ten years. But I knew a way.

By evening, we were in Seattle, having left my bike and Adam's Jeep at Lucas and Paige's place, then caught a plane from Portland. It's only a three-hour drive, but both our vehicles were still in rough shape from separate accidents in Columbus. Adam could have left his Jeep at his apartment, but he was hoping for Lucas's help fixing it. Or at least his tools.

A drizzling rain started as we drove downtown in a rental car. Enough to be annoying. Not enough to actually make a pit stop to buy an umbrella.

The people lined up outside the theater weren't happy about the weather either, not when they had another twenty minutes before the doors opened. The marquee read WORLD-RENOWNED SPIRITUALIST JAIME VEGAS. ONE NIGHT ONLY. A banner across it announced that the show was sold out.

Jaime always sold out. If she didn't, she'd book herself into a smaller venue the next time. She figured that as long as people knew it wasn't easy getting tickets to her show, they'd keep coming, and she'd have a reason to keep touring, which she loved.

We walked along the line. When we turned to head into the theater, a middle-aged woman stepped into my path.