By the time we were ready to leave for the big multihostage exchange, my headache was worse than ever. It felt like someone was kicking at my skull from the inside, and come to think of it, someone probably was.

We got to the tunnel first, so that Owen could get his dragons settled down. They were overjoyed to see him, and he had to play a game of fetch before they’d stand still. Merlin, Rod, Sam, Rocky, and Rollo soon showed up. Sam saluted Owen with one wing and said, “I’ve had my people watching all the comings and goings at the store. Anyone we’re fairly sure is part of their outfit has a tail on them. That doesn’t mean we’ve got everyone, but we’ve got a lot of ground covered.”

Owen nodded. “Good. I don’t know what else he might try to pull tonight, so I wanted to be prepared.”

Ethan and Philip arrived next. Ethan was in full lawyer mode, suit, briefcase, and all. Owen directed them to the other side of the cavern. “Okay, Rod, do your thing,” he said.

Rod rubbed his palms together. “I’ll use a selective illusion. All of us should see everything, while they should only see their own side of the room until you give me the signal to drop or change it, and I can drop it in one direction either way.”

“And none of it will work on me, so I can make sure everyone’s being honest,” Ethan said. Normally, that was my job, but I couldn’t do it with my immunity to magic stripped away so we could get Ari out of my head. Whenever it happened, it wouldn’t be soon enough. She’d thoroughly awakened from the sedative, and she was really pissed off. I had to bite my lip to keep my mouth shut so I wouldn’t say all the things that came into my head.

Owen directed his dragons off to the sides of the room, then waved a hand, and they disappeared. “We’re all set now,” he said.

Merlin pulled out a pocket watch and checked it. “Mr. Idris should be here at any moment.”

“He’s here now,” a voice said from the darkness. Phelan Idris stepped forward out of the shadows, along with a few of his henchmen, the ones who’d been with him in the big magical battle we’d fought a couple of months ago. They still looked more like they were on their way to a science fiction convention to meet up with a bunch of other people who’d seen The Matrix a few too many times than like anyone you’d expect to be on the cutting edge of magic.

Then again, our side didn’t look all that intimidating unless you knew what they were capable of. Merlin looked like a little old man in a dapper suit, while Owen looked like an astonishingly good-looking version of the boy next door. Sam and his people could have starred in their own Disney cartoon.

“Let’s make this happen,” Idris said. “What is it you want? That is, if you really do have Ari.”

“Oh, we’ve got her, all right,” I said, rubbing my temple.

“We understand that one of your colleagues has taken custody of Miss Chandler’s friend,” Merlin said. “We would like you to secure her return.”

Idris’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. “What?” he squeaked, his voice going up about an octave. “Whoa, I had nothing to do with that! I may have mentioned that the dude trying to take back his company was dating one of Katie’s friends, but it was just a conversation, you know? I didn’t think she’d do anything about it.”

“Nevertheless,” Merlin replied, “we would like her safe return, and we do have someone who must have some meaning to your organization, or else she would not have been freed earlier. Your superiors will not be happy that she is in our custody.”

“And you think I can do anything about that?”

“You will if you want Ari back,” Owen said. “Unless you want to tell your bosses that you lost her.”

Idris looked even more panicked. “I’ll see what I—I’ll try—this could take time, you know.”

“Relax,” I told him. “It’s not like we’re going to cut off one of her fingers every fifteen minutes or torture her.” If there was any torture, it was the other way around. My head felt like she was throwing a hissy fit in there.

“And what if I don’t care whether or not I get her back?” Idris switched tactics, which played beautifully into our plan. We were supposed to stall him until Sylvia and her crew showed up with Marcia.

“Then we keep her. She might not think so favorably of you at that point,” Merlin said.

“Well, where is she?”

“Right in here,” I said, tapping my head. “It’s a long story involving a fairy godmother.”

He laughed, long, loud, and hard. “You expect me to believe that?”

Reluctantly, I eased my tight control on my tongue and let the foreign thoughts that had been welling up in my brain spill out. “You moron! I bet you didn’t even notice I was gone until they told you, did you? You were so busy with your precious business. I hate this! This wasn’t what I signed up for!” It was weird to hear someone else’s words coming out in my voice.

Idris wasn’t convinced. “Anyone who’s spent five minutes around Ari knows she’d say something like that.”

Before I knew what was happening, I’d put my hands on my hips. “Oh yeah? Well, how about this: I know you’ve got a mole shaped like Mickey Mouse on your—”

“Okay, I believe you!” he shouted at exactly the same time I bit down hard on my tongue. I didn’t want any more details like that about him. “What do you want me to do? I can’t do anything to get your friend back. I don’t have that kind of pull with these people.”

“You need do nothing more than you already have,” Merlin said. “Your presence is enough.”

“So you’re going to give Ari back, just because I’m here?”

Tags: Shanna Swendson Enchanted, Inc. Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net