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“Thanks for the report. I’ll see you later.”
The moment I hung up the phone, Mom pounced. “Wasn’t it sweet of Dean to check on you like that?”
“Yeah, it was really swell of him.” I could tell she was dying to know what Dean had told me, but the phone rang again before I had a chance to make something up. I was closest, so I answered.
It was Nita. “Help!” she said. “I still don’t have housekeeping help, and these people are animals.
I’ve had a bunch check out already, but there are still too many here. Can you come do a few rooms for me? Pretty please, and I’ll love you forever. I’ll even buy lunch next time.”
I wasn’t sure that going to the motel in the truck the would-be wizards had been chasing was such a good idea, but the chance to spy on them was nearly irresistible. “I’ll be right over.” I hung up the phone and told Mom, “Nita needs housekeeping help, so I’m going over there. Can I borrow your car? I had a little trouble starting the truck earlier today.”
The truck was unreliable enough that Mom didn’t question me and just handed over her keys, which had the added benefit of ensuring that she wouldn’t be wandering the town while the wizards were on the loose. I went upstairs to change shirts and do something different with my hair so I wouldn’t be so obviously recognized as the driver of the truck they’d been pursuing. A Cobb Comets baseball cap with my ponytail pulled through the back worked wonders.
While I drove to the motel in Mom’s car, I tried to think of ways to get rid of even more of our visiting wizards. I recognized one of the cars in the motel parking lot from the chase. Most of the spots were still empty, so the gangs must have been roving the streets still. As I made the rounds, I lit the magical candles in each room to get more of that jarring skewed spell into the air. I wasn’t sure how much good that would do, but I figured every little bit would help. It sounded like we’d already lost a few wizards to headaches caused by the candles.
The guys who’d been in the car chase were in their room, and I held my breath as I went in with a pile of towels. As I’d expected, they barely looked at me. “I was wondering when housekeeping would finally show up,” one of them said. I made sure to make a note of which one he was so I could tell Owen to give him a special blast.
“We’re full, so it takes longer,” I said, keeping my head down so my hat brim covered my face.
“Now, would you like me to change your sheets or just make the bed?” That was my subtle way of saying that I couldn’t do much about the bed while they were lying on it.
“Nah, don’t worry about it. Just clean the bathroom and leave the towels.”
On my way to the bathroom, I paused by the dresser and moved the candle behind a stack of pizza boxes, then lit it. The bathroom was enough to make me wish I had access to magical cleaning spells.
I had three brothers, so you’d think I’d be used to what guys could do to a bathroom, but this was something else. I was really going to make Owen give them the full treatment. It was a good thing I had gloves. By the time I’d finished clearing out their science experiments and returned to the main room, they were all holding their heads and moaning. I had to suppress a smug smirk.
“Who’d have thought that doing magic was such hard work?” One of them said. “I’m so drained, and my head is killing me.”
“Ssshhh!” another one said with a gesture in my direction.
“Oh, she probably doesn’t even speak English.”
Idiots, I thought, never mind that I talked to you in English . If I hadn’t been worried that the candle
would burn down and possibly start a fire in the room, which would be bad for Nita’s family, I’d have left it burning. Instead, I blew it out as I passed, and the jerks never even noticed. I hoped I could sic a few pixies on them.
I finally got around to Idris’s room. I didn’t see his rental car anywhere nearby, but then all rental cars looked alike to me. At any rate, the parking spaces in front of room twenty-five were empty, so it looked like this would be a good chance to search his room thoroughly in his absence. I tapped on the door and said, “Housekeeping,” then prepared to use my master key, but the door opened just before I got the key in the lock, and I was face to face with Phelan Idris, on my own and unguarded by anyone magical, as far as I could tell.
I kept my head down and held my breath, waiting for Idris to recognize me. But my nonmagical invisibility spell from being the “help” worked, and he just turned away from me after opening the door. “About time,” he said. “I need new towels.”
I hesitated. While his back was turned, I had the perfect opportunity to make a run for it. He could live without clean towels, and being alone in a motel room with Phelan Idris was very high on my list of experiences I could live without, so me running away was a win-win scenario. On the other hand, he hadn’t recognized me, and this was the best chance we’d have to see what he was up to. There was no telling what I could discover from being in his motel room with him when his guard was down.
Plus, it wasn’t like he could use magic on me, and I had a feeling I’d come out ahead in a physical fight, thanks to my brothers teaching me a few dirty tricks. I took a deep breath and crossed the threshold, even as a little voice in the back of my head warned me that this probably wasn’t the brightest thing I’d ever done.
His room wasn’t quite as messy as some of the other rooms had been. It merely had a high level of clutter and an odd smell that wasn’t stale pizza or dirty socks. Someone had been brewing potions in the bathtub, I suspected.
I put on the heaviest hick accent I could manage and lowered my voice to whiskey-and-cigarette tones. “Y’all have got us busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest,” I said as I took some cleaning supplies with me back to the bathroom. I saw the magical candle on the dresser as I passed, but I figured trying to light it in front of him was too risky. He was an idiot in a lot of areas, but he did know his magic and he was likely to recognize it.
His bathroom wasn’t frat-house filthy, but he’d definitely been up to something other than personal grooming in there. The towels and washcloths were a funny color, and they had a pungent smell. I dumped all the towels and washcloths into a plastic garbage bag to take to Owen for analysis. The chemical properties of potions could affect me even if the magic didn’t, so I kept my rubber gloves on while I cleaned the sink and bathtub.
I couldn’t resist looking at the toiletries spread out on the bathroom counter. It appeared that Idris was a devoted Rogaine user. He also wore the brand of body spray that was featured in the really annoying commercials where women lost control around men who wore it. His personal scent was
“Player,” which nearly sent me into uncontrollable giggles.
If he’d been brewing potions, he had to be up to something, and I needed to figure out what it was while I was in his room. I tried watching him out of the corner of my eye as I brought the bag of used towels out of the bathroom and stashed it on the edge of the housekeeping cart. Then I grabbed a stack of clean towels and headed back into the room.
He had papers spread over the bed and table, along with a bunch of what looked like necklaces. The closer I got to the table where the necklaces were, the more my own magical necklace vibrated. I immediately tripped on the carpet and sent my armload of towels flying around the room, letting a couple land on the bed and one land on the table.
