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“I can’t keep us hidden if we move very far,” he whispered.
We both held our breath as the police officer got out, swinging his flashlight back and forth. I couldn’t stop myself from wincing when the beam swept across us, but the cop didn’t seem to notice us. He leaned back into the car and got on the radio. “I thought I saw someone in front of the bank who ran off when I got here. I’m gonna check it out,” he said. The radio squawked, he paused to listen, then said, “Nah, I don’t think I need backup. Probably just some kid, but you never know, could be our mystery burglar.” He put the radio away, put his hand on his gun, and went in between the buildings, following the wizard’s path, but came back a moment later, empty-handed. He checked around the bank doorway, unaffected by the wards, then returned to his car.
time, Owen parked behind the library on the other side of the bank, a place that was more sheltered than the Dairy Queen and on a different major road. Sam stood guard in front of the bank.
“No sign of ’im yet, boss,” he reported.
“How are you for energy?” Owen asked.
“They’ve been having church services of some kind or another in this town from shortly after dawn until nearly sunset, and I’ve been basking on rooftops all day, so I’m fully charged.” He looked up at me and added, “Gargoyles get extra power when the church is having a service. All that worship really jolts up the juice. I could get to like it here, plenty of sunshine, lots of churches. Hey, boss, too bad you don’t got something you can plug into to recharge, other than tapping into the little lady here.” And then he gulped audibly and said, “I didn’t mean it that way. Sorry.”
“We’ll be hiding over there at the next building,” Owen said evenly, ignoring Sam’s last comment.
“Signal us when you see something.”
Sam perched on the roof over the bank’s doorway, and Owen and I took refuge in the doorway of the chamber of commerce building next door to the bank. There, we couldn’t help but be close to each other because it was hard to crowd into a doorway recess with another person without touching. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted our rogue wizard to hurry and get there or to take his sweet time. The proximity was practically intoxicating, I was so acutely aware of Owen’s nearness. I was on the verge of suggesting that I wait in another doorway so I wouldn’t be tempted to do anything that might disrupt the fragile balance we had going between us when Sam called out, “I think he’s coming.”
The wizard I’d seen before rounded the corner from the square. He wore the same homemade-looking robes he’d been wearing the day I saw him, and I couldn’t spot anything that might identify him to me. The hood draped so low that his face was hidden in shadows, the sleeves covered his hands, and the robe dragged on the ground, completely covering his shoes. He carried a satchel that didn’t have any distinguishing characteristics—no recognizable marks, no logos, and definitely no monogrammed initials, which would have been really helpful.
The wizard hid in the doorway of the building directly across the street from the bank, took some things out of his satchel and spread them around, then took a small booklet out and flipped through it.
Referring to the book every so often, he arranged the items in front of him. He lit a couple of candles, using matches instead of the wave of a hand the way Owen might have, and then I felt the tingle of magic building.
He repacked his bag, looked both ways up and down the street, darted across the street, and stood in front of the bank doorway. Raising his arms over his head, he chanted some words in hesitant Latin, and now I was sure it was a he because that was definitely a male voice. Then he stepped forward, and just as he was about to hit the wards, I felt another surge of magic from very close by. The wards flared up in bright light, and the wizard bounced off them, falling on his back on the sidewalk. I knew that wards were usually invisible, so Owen must have added the light show for effect. It would have been nice if we could have seen the junior wizard’s face to enjoy his reaction, but the hood hid him completely.
We’d just started to step off the doorstep to confront him when Sam gave another signal, this one silent. Headlights appeared, and a police car came slowly down the street. Owen immediately made the wards quit glowing, but it looked like the unusual light had attracted some attention, for the police car came to a stop in front of the bank. Our wizard crawled through the shadows to the side of the building, then took off running between buildings. I would have chased after him, but Owen gripped my arm.
“I can’t keep us hidden if we move very far,” he whispered.
We both held our breath as the police officer got out, swinging his flashlight back and forth. I couldn’t stop myself from wincing when the beam swept across us, but the cop didn’t seem to notice us. He leaned back into the car and got on the radio. “I thought I saw someone in front of the bank who ran off when I got here. I’m gonna check it out,” he said. The radio squawked, he paused to listen, then said, “Nah, I don’t think I need backup. Probably just some kid, but you never know, could be our mystery burglar.” He put the radio away, put his hand on his gun, and went in between the buildings, following the wizard’s path, but came back a moment later, empty-handed. He checked around the bank doorway, unaffected by the wards, then returned to his car.
He got back on the radio. “Didn’t see anything. It could have been just a dog, or else my eyes playing tricks on me. I’ll make one more circuit around town, then that’ll be the end of my shift. See you back at the barn.”
As soon as the car was gone, I turned to Owen. “We had him. Why didn’t we go after him? People walk around with veils and illusions all the time, so I don’t get why you couldn’t keep us hidden if we chased him.”
“Complete invisibility against someone who’s really looking takes a lot of power. Most so-called invisibility isn’t complete. It’s more of a spell to make people not notice something they weren’t paying attention to in the first place. It’s much harder to really be invisible to someone who’s intently looking for you. I know I couldn’t have kept the two of us invisible and silent while chasing our suspect. If we’d gone after him, we’d have been the ones who were caught.”
“And that would have ruined everything,” I admitted. “You couldn’t have done that time-freezing thing again, I guess?”
Instead of answering me, he knelt and put his hands on the ground. Then I felt the magic through the soles of my feet. “Not a good thing to do with someone around who’s linked to the world outside the spell,” he then said. “What if dispatch tried reaching the police officer here while he was frozen?
Now, let’s see how far our guy got.”
I had to pull up the hem of my robe to run after him down the alley where the wizard had disappeared. It would have been nice to get rid of the robes before we had to go running and searching, but I guessed if we found the guy, we wouldn’t want to be recognized. The air was as still as it had been the other night, but the only frozen living beings we saw in the alley were cats and rats.
I had no idea we had that many rats in this town. It gave me the creeps.
We searched the entire downtown area, weaving between buildings and looking under anything that might have offered shelter from Sam. The gargoyle returned just as we made it back to the bank.
“Sorry, boss, I lost him,” he said. “He went low, which is where I’m not as good. Scrambled between buildings and then got up under something. That’s where I lost him. I checked the area over, but if he got inside somewhere and went building to building and then ditched the robes, well, I’m good, but I’m not that good. You’d have needed a rat to track this guy, and I’m not yet on friendly terms with any of the locals.”
Owen looked at me. “Are there any good hiding places here, places where someone might know to hide out?”
“The upstairs rooms in most of these buildings on the square are vacant. You can get into some of them using the fire escapes. Kids sometimes hang out there. But there’s also a pretty good chance he got out of range before you had a chance to freeze him.”
Sam hopped up onto the trunk of the car so he could look Owen in the eye. “You did it again? I thought things seemed quiet. How long has it been?”
I compared my watch to the courthouse clock tower, factoring in the five minutes from the other night. “Fifteen minutes.”
