“We’ve been invited to a party out on Long Island.”
“Oh. Nice. Who’s having the party?”
“Some people I’ve been working with.”
He sounded deliberately vague, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he meant lawyers or if he meant magical people. I wasn’t sure which I’d prefer. “Am I dressed okay?” I’d changed into dressier shoes, but otherwise I was wearing my work clothes—a skirt and blouse.
“You look fine, very nice. I’ll be the luckiest fellow there.”
I breathed a sigh of relief when we left the tunnel, but the traffic didn’t ease much. I glanced at my watch. We’d been on the road for an hour. I would have eaten more lunch if I’d known dinner would be this late.
As if reading my mind, Ethan said, “Do you want to stop and get a snack? This is taking a little longer than I’d planned.”
“How much farther until we get there?”
“The directions say it shouldn’t be long now.”
“Then let’s stay on the road.”
An hour later, I wondered about the definition of “not long now.” We were on the Long Island Expressway and officially outside New York City, but we were nowhere near what I’d consider the country—at least, I thought we were still firmly entrenched in an urban area. It was pitch black, so it was hard to tell. If I hadn’t been so hungry that my stomach was about to climb my neck to see if my throat had been cut, as my mother would say, it wouldn’t have been a bad drive. Trapped in the car together, Ethan and I had managed to have the kind of small-talk conversation we’d skipped on our previous dates.
“Ah, here’s our exit,” Ethan said at last.
I was surprised by how abruptly we went from city to country. Within a few miles, I felt like we were in a deserted area, even though I knew civilization wasn’t that far away, probably just beyond a stand of trees. Ethan squinted at a note by the light of the car’s dashboard. “Okay, it says here we go another two miles, then turn right, and then we should see it.”
“Great!” I hoped they had good food, and lots of it.
Ethan made the right turn, then the car came to an abrupt halt.
“Did you hit something?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. The car just died.”
I restrained myself from making a remark about how he should have bought American, and instead looked out the window to see where we were and what was going on. What I saw was unsettling, to say the least.
“Um, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” I said softly.
We were surrounded by a menagerie of magical creatures straight out of some of my more colorful nightmares. They weren’t the relatively friendly types who worked at MSI. These were the kind of beasties who teamed up with the wicked witch in Disney cartoons. My old buddy Mr. Bones was there, freed from the NO PARKING sign where Owen had stuck him Monday morning.
“Whoa,” Ethan said. “Now what? Magic shouldn’t work on us, right?”
“Magic doesn’t work on us, but they can harm us physically.” I noticed a fireball forming in Mr. Bones’s hand. “And your car isn’t immune to magic. That doesn’t rub off from the driver. If they do something to the car, we’re in trouble.”
He hit the button to unlock the doors and said, “Jump!”
Fortunately for Ethan’s insurance company, the skeletal creature with the fireball held back once we were outside the car. It looked like they had us right where they wanted us.
Or to be more accurate, they had me right where they wanted me—on the passenger side of the car, separated from Ethan, who was still on the driver’s side, away from the scary mob. They were all closing in on me. Ethan could have made a run for it if he’d wanted to. It was nice of him to stick with me, but I wished he’d run for help. There wasn’t a lot two magical immunes could do against that bunch, other than spot them if they tried to make themselves invisible or normal looking.
I tried for the icy calm Owen usually displayed in a confrontation like this. “What do you want?” I asked.
Mr. Bones said, “You’re becoming a problem.” I wasn’t sure if it was giving me an evil grin or if it just looked that way because of the way its face was formed.
I forced a laugh. “If y’all are worried about me, then you’ve got bigger problems than anyone can help you with and you may as well give up.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ethan edging toward the car’s trunk while ducking behind the car. I hoped he didn’t do anything stupid—unless, of course, it was both stupid and effective and didn’t get him or me hurt or killed.