“Where is Agent Davis?”
“You said he was at the front door,” Sorsha said, her voice distant.
“I’ll bet you a steak dinner he isn’t there now,” Alex said. “In fact, I’ll bet as soon as he let me in, he came up here and killed Warner.” A disturbing thought occurred to Alex and he stepped around Sorsha and into the hall. “If you’re his target, he might still be here.”
“No,” Sorsha said, confidently. “He knows me better than that. We worked together long enough that he’d know his only chance would be to surprise me.”
“So where would he go? He can’t do anything to help his confederates aboard the floaters, so what’s his play?”
“He’s probably fled,” Sorsha said. “He’d know that the first thing we’d do is lock down the building.”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said. “If he just wanted to escape, he wouldn’t need to kill Warner. He’s still in the hotel.”
Sorsha cocked her head to the side and her hair fell across half her face. She looked like she was about to disagree with him, but then her head came up, her eyes opened wide, and she gasped. Her hands gripped her gut and she doubled over in pain. Alex grabbed her arm, holding her steady as she swayed.
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s not in the hotel,” she gasped. “He’s in my home.”
She gasped again, pressing her hand to her stomach and Alex hooked his good arm under hers to keep her upright. Her breathing was coming in ragged gasps and her pale skin took on a yellowish tinge.
“Davis must have had Warner order a floater sent here,” Alex said, helping Sorsha back to the parlor and onto a chase longue. “That’s why he killed him, to give himself time to get up to your castle undetected.”
Sorsha began muttering in that deep, echo-y voice of her spell casting, while rubbing her stomach with her hand. A bright bluish light glowed from under the Sorceress’ palm and spread out over her body. After a few seconds, her breathing became regular and her skin tone returned to normal. She opened her eyes and looked up at Alex, standing over her.
“The kind of magic that protects my home is … intimate,” she explained. “It’s tied to me.”
“What happened?”
“Agent Davis has a spell breaker,” she said. “He just used it to break open my front door.”
“What does he want in your house?”
“He wants to start a war, remember,” she said, standing slowly. “If he drops my house on the city…”
“It would flatten a city block,” Alex said.
“More likely two,” Sorsha said, her composure fully returned. She spread her arms and shook out her hands like a weight lifter getting ready to set a record. “Now stand back. I’m going to go stop Agent Davis.”
Alex stepped close to her, looking her hard in the eyes.
“Not without me, you’re not.”
“This isn’t the time for heroics,” Sorsha said, trying and failing to push him out of the way. “I hardly need your help to subdue one intruder in my home.”
She raised her hands and Alex grabbed her left wrist.
“Yes, you do,” he said. “This isn’t some last act of desperation, Sorceress. Think about it. Davis had a floater brought here before I ever showed up. This was his plan all along. He’s thought it through. He knows he might have to face you to succeed. Whatever his plans are, they include taking you down.”
Sorsha’s face was grim but her cheeks pinked. Clearly she wasn’t used to being so completely wrong about someone, or so thoroughly out-maneuvered.
“I bet his plans don’t include you,” she said with a smile and a nod. “Put your arm around me and hold on.”
Alex slipped his right arm around her slim waist and pulled her against him. He was very aware of her, pressing against him, and he pushed the thought from his mind.
Sorsha raised her arms and spoke a long, complicated sentence in her Sorceress’ voice. The second the echoes of her words faded away, Alex heard a sound like a thousand nails being scraped across plate glass, and he felt his body being twisted like taffy in a puller. It didn’t hurt, but he wanted to vomit. Clinging to the Sorceress, he pressed his face down into her hair. She smelled like strawberries and cream, which he would have found intoxicating at any other moment.
Alex had the distinct impression that he’d been rolled flat in a clothes wringer and slipped under a door. Then, a tremendous light flashed before his eyes and he dropped to his knees on a hard stone surface, still holding on to the Sorceress.
He assumed that she traveled this way all the time, but when he finally looked up, panting and trying not to shake, he found Sorsha leaning against his chest with her eyes shut tight. After a long moment she opened them and gently pushed herself away.
“It will wear off after a moment,” she said, slumping down to sit on the stone in her slinky black dress.
Alex put his free hand on his knee to push himself upright, but a wave of nausea gripped him, and he stopped. When his stomach finally stopped vibrating, and his vision cleared, he tried again, levering himself up to a standing position. Once he was stable, he reached down and helped Sorsha to her feet.
They had landed on a stone balcony with a marble railing running around it. A comfortable-looking chaise longue sat under an elegant lamp next to a side table with a book sitting on it. Beyond the chaise stood a set of stained glass doors depicting a woodland scene with trees, shrubs, and wildlife.
“This is my private entrance, Lockerby,” Sorsha said, reaching out to open the doors.
If Alex hadn’t been looking at her slender hand on the door handle, he would have missed the brief spark of magic that leapt between the two when she turned it.
She pushed the doors open and stepped into a vaulted room with an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the high ceiling. A large, four-poster bed stood on a raised dais along the right side of the room. Its posts were carved in keeping with the theme of the stained glass, with vines, leaves, and forest creatures spiraling around them, up to the canopy. Around the room stood intricately carved dressing tables, chests of drawers, wardrobes, and even a small breakfast table in a round nook with gigantic windows to let in the light.
As grand as the room was, it appeared to be in a state of disarray. Toiletries on the dressing table were left out, drawers were open in the chests, and a trail of the Sorceress’ unmentionables led from the bed to a door Alex could only assume was a bathroom. Alex noted that the pair of lace-trimmed underwear matched the brassiere and the garter belt — all were a light sky blue, like the Sorceress’ eyes. He assumed there were matching stockings, but thinking about that was extremely distracting with Sorsha a few feet in front of him. He reached into his coat pocket and took hold of his pistol, focusing his mind on the task at hand.
“This way,” Sorsha said, leading the way across her bedroom without comment.
She continued out onto a balcony above a foyer that could have fit Alex’s entire office inside it twice. The upper balcony ran around the room in a U shape with carved balusters supporting polished cherry-wood handrails. Thick Persian carpets covered the balcony’s hardwood floor, ending in a runner that descended the wide stair, flaring out at the bottom as the staircase did. The main floor was white marble and decorated with furniture from couch chairs to hall trees to elegant tables supporting Asian-looking vases. Only two things looked out of place in this ocean of elegance, the shattered and broken front door, and the figure of a man lying on the cold floor, a large red pool spreading out beneath him.
“Hitchens!” Sorsha screamed, then before Alex could stop her, she hurled herself over the banister. She spread out her arms and uttered a word and her fall arrested just as she reached the floor. She landed on the marble with a sharp clack from her high heels.