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“I know. That was me.”
“No, there was someone else, a woman.”
Owen and Rod reached us, and Owen said, “Earl? Does this mean the Elf Lord wants to cooperate?”
“Actually, Earl’s freelancing,” I said. “But why don’t we get away from here before we chat? My grandmother has been left unsupervised for far too long.”
“We’ll need a diversion because that woman in black is still out there,” Rod said.
“I’m good at diversions,” Earl said. He held out his hand, palm up, and a small orb of light formed on it. He blew on the orb, sending it flying, then said to us, “Go, and don’t look at it.” We ran for the elevators as the orb zoomed around just below the ceiling. The woman who’d been following us spotted us, but before she could make a move, there was a bright flash of light that would have been blinding if we’d been looking at it. We made it safely to the elevator, and Rod hit a couple of extra buttons so it wouldn’t be obvious from outside where we were heading.
As I expected, we found Granny and Thor in the lingerie section. Thor was waiting uncomfortably while Granny harangued a saleswoman. “Did you find what you sought?” Thor asked us. Then he growled at the back of his throat when he saw Earl. “An elf? Are you double-crossing me?”
“You’re working with him?” Earl asked.
“We don’t yet know what’s really going on with either of you,” Owen said.
“I take it you didn’t find what you wanted, then,” Thor said.
“No, false alarm,” Rod said.
Thor glared up at Earl. “So, elf, what’s your game? Are you a lackey of the Elf Lord?”
“I am a spy in the court of the Elf Lord. My people want to make sure he doesn’t obtain the Knot or the Eye. I believe the best way to ensure that is to help these wizards who plan to destroy the brooch.”
“How do we know we can trust you?”
Earl shrugged. “How do we know we can trust anyone in this group?”
Granny came over to us, scowling. “I thought this was supposed to be a big store, but they don’t have a proper girdle, just those Spandex panties,” she said. “I don’t hold with this Spandex stuff. Don’t trust it at all.” She noticed Earl and said, “My, I didn’t realize they made your kind this big.”
“Granny, Earl is an elf,” I explained. “He’s different from the wee folk back home.”
“There are factions among the elves?” Rod asked Earl. “We hadn’t heard anything about that.”
“The Elf Lord would like a return to the old ways, when he held absolute power. Many of us would prefer that not happen. His office now is mostly ceremonial, and for some of us, even that is too much.”
“You’re trying to eliminate the position entirely,” I translated.
“Not necessarily immediately, but over time. And that won’t happen if Sylvester gets the brooch—and you can be assured that he won’t hand the Eye over to the wizards.”
“Maybe we’d better continue this discussion in another venue,” I suggested. “Someone may be following us.” Not to mention the fact that it was weird being with my boyfriend and my grandmother while surrounded by underwear. My grandmother was related to my mother, after all, which meant there was a strong possibility that at any moment she would suggest that I needed to pick up some nice things while I was there. Or worse, she’d ask me to explain a thong.
“In case we really are being followed, I suggest we take the escalator and spread out,” Rod said. “Even if one of us gets caught, the others could still have a chance to get away.”
Earl went down first to act as a scout. When he made it to the next floor below, Rod went. Thor and Granny followed after a group of shoppers went down. Although both Earl and Thor looked magically odd to me, I knew they were likely using magic to hide their nonhuman features from ordinary people. The other shoppers would only see a lanky kid and a little old man, even if I thought they looked incredibly odd riding an escalator.
As we waited for our turn to go down, Owen whispered to me, “We only have three tranquilizer darts.”
I saw what he meant. “And we’ve got four magic users with us. Does it work on elves and gnomes?”
“Jake said it worked on everyone. And I would suggest not mentioning the darts to our new friends.”
“And probably not Granny, either,” I said. “I don’t think she’d hurt me to make sure I couldn’t knock her out, but then we don’t know what she’d be like under the influence of the Eye.”
“At least we can be sure of each other,” he said with one of his shy smiles that made my heart go pitter-patter.
“Yeah, because I’d feel really bad if I had to dart you.”
