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“Oopsie!” I said, remembering to keep my voice low and my accent heavy. “That ol’ rug just reached up and grabbed me.” As I gathered towels, I made sure that I got one of the necklaces in the fold of a hand towel. “Now I guess I’d better get you some really fresh towels that haven’t been all over the floor.” I carried those towels back outside, slipping the necklace—which turned out to be a cheap Texas souvenir, the kind you can buy at the cash register at gas station convenience stores—into my pocket as I did so.
o;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.
“Oopsie!” I said, remembering to keep my voice low and my accent heavy. “That ol’ rug just reached up and grabbed me.” As I gathered towels, I made sure that I got one of the necklaces in the fold of a hand towel. “Now I guess I’d better get you some really fresh towels that haven’t been all over the floor.” I carried those towels back outside, slipping the necklace—which turned out to be a cheap Texas souvenir, the kind you can buy at the cash register at gas station convenience stores—into my pocket as I did so.
Idris fidgeted furiously while clenching his jaw as I carried yet another stack of towels to the bathroom and took my time arranging them. I whistled cheerily to myself while I worked, wandering in and out of the room to get a feather duster, which I used liberally all over the room, and then the vacuum cleaner. The feather duster was good at knocking things down so I could get a better look at them as I set them right—always just before Idris could get to me to keep me from touching them.
With the vacuum cleaner cord I managed to wipe out everything he had spread out on the bed. A few pages of parchment found their way into the pocket of my apron while Idris sputtered and I apologized heartily.
“You have got to be the worst hotel maid ever!” he blurted after I toppled a pile of books.
That was my cue to burst into sobs. “Oh, please don’t tell my boss. I need this job. I got three kids at home, and their daddy took off months ago. He was a no-account hard drinker who barely kept a job more than a week, but we needed what pay he did bring in. If I get fired here, my kids’ll starve.” I sniffled and ran a sleeve across my nose. “I’ll just get out of your way now. Have a nice day, sir. No need to tip me, since I caused you so much trouble.”
I’d almost made it to the door when he called out, “Hey, wait a second!” and caught me by the arm. I kept my head down and hoped he’d do something uncharacteristic like apologize, but instead he pulled the baseball cap off my head. It got tangled in my ponytail, so it didn’t quite work as a dramatic moment of revelation, but it was enough to show my face. “You!” he shouted. “What are you doing here, spying on me?”
I drew myself up to my full height, jerked my arm out of his grasp, and put a hand on my hip in an indignant posture. “You were the one who invited me in. Didn’t you recognize me? It’s not like I’m in disguise.” I gestured at my work clothes and set my baseball cap back on top of my head. “I really do work here. My friend’s family owns this motel, and I’m doing her a favor since you and your gang of merry men scared off the housekeeping staff. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
I almost made it to the door before it slammed shut on its own and he stepped in front of me. He couldn’t use magic directly on me, but it looked like he could use magic on other things that could affect me. I should have thought of that sooner, but now wasn’t the time for reevaluating this plan.
While he guarded the door, I turned and ran for the bathroom. That took him by surprise, so it was a few seconds before he realized I was running away from him instead of trying to get past him. His hesitation gave me just enough time to be armed when he got to the bathroom.
I hit him right in the eyes with a big burst of “Player” the moment he showed his face in the bathroom doorway, then while he was still rubbing his eyes and fumbling blindly, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled past him back into the main part of the room. Then I got back to my feet and sprinted for the door, hoping he hadn’t used a spell to seal it shut. Fortunately, it did open, but before I could get out, the smell of “Player” hit me, meaning Idris wasn’t far behind. He grabbed my wrist, pulling me back into the room. I backed away from him as much as I could with my wrist still in his grasp, but instead of pulling me back, he moved with me until I hit the wall, then he kept moving forward. The smell of his body spray was strong enough in that proximity to make my eyes water.
“I don’t think I’ll have to worry too much about Owen anymore,” he said in a pleasant, conversational tone that was more menacing than a growl, “considering I’ve got you now, and we both know what he’s willing to do to keep you safe.”
That made me more angry than scared. I’d given up the best relationship I’d ever had, left the best job I’d ever had, and exiled myself to the middle of nowhere in order to avoid exactly this situation, and here I’d walked right into it. I tried edging away from Idris sideways, not only because the thought of his body against mine was so repulsive to me, but mostly because if he got close enough, he’d find all of his stuff that I’d stashed in my pockets and in the pockets of my housekeeping apron. Priority one was getting away. Priority two was getting away with all the things I’d found in his room.
He kept coming after me, giving me just enough leeway to move but never releasing his grasp. Then he made the mistake of getting too close to me at just the right angle, and that gave me the opening I was looking for. A well-placed knee to a sensitive spot made him release my wrist as he grabbed at himself, then while he was still doubled over, I darted out of the room, grabbed the housekeeping cart, and nearly ran into Sam.
