Kicking It

the walls. The curtains were drawn. Three witches stood around a circle on the floor. They were young and completely ordinary-looking. They might have been office workers or college students. There was nothing to indicate that they were about to use their magic to torture another human being to death.

They were walking through the process of the spell, and occasionally one of them would use a piece of chalk to add a symbol inside the circle. Sammy Blue stood off in the corner, talking quietly on his cell phone, his back to me. I noticed he’d taken the time to change out of the suit he’d worn earlier and put on a different one—one that didn’t have a hole in the back from my nightfire blast.

The thing that hit me in the head had disappeared. Maybe it was taking a nap in the bedroom.

My sword leaned against the wall near the elevator, just about as far from me as it could possibly be. I’d have to get untied, sprint across the room—difficult, as I’d just been conked in the head and probably had a concussion—grab the sword, fight off three witches and a clever faerie, avoid whatever giant monster had hit me in the first place, find the Red Shoes and escape from the highest room in the building. All this without my magic.

No pressure.

“Beezle!” I said again, as quietly as I could.

“Your gargoyle will not wake,” Sammy Blue said, sliding his cell phone into his pocket. He turned and walked toward me, looking altogether too pleased with himself. “The circle that surrounds you quashes your magic as well as his. And since he is so small and infinitely more magical than you, the circle keeps him asleep. So do not seek his help, nor anyone else’s. No one will come.”

I opened my eyes fully, and for the first time noticed the circle drawn around me. It was far enough away from my body that I couldn’t smudge it and break the spell. Okay. This was actually good news. It meant that if I could get out of the circle my power would wake up. Now I just had to get out of the circle.

Sammy Blue stopped just outside the circle, his violet eyes bright with anticipation. “My queen was correct. She knew that you would fall into a trap if you thought you were acting the heroine. It was pathetically easy to lure you here.”

“And now with the evil-villain monologue,” I said under my breath, then more loudly, “You didn’t lure me here. I was sent here for another purpose.”

Sammy nodded. “To obtain the Red Shoes, yes. My queen made certain the rumor of the shoes reached Lucifer’s ears. Then she sent me here, to your city. Lucifer predictably recruited you to get the shoes for him. So you see, it was all planned from the start. And you behaved exactly as my queen expected.”

“Smugness is not an attractive quality,” I said.

Sammy gave a short laugh, then crossed to a watercolor of Lake Michigan that hung on the wall. He moved the painting aside to reveal a safe. He punched in a code on the electronic keypad, and the safe door swung open. Before continuing he carefully pulled a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his suit and put them on. Then he reached into the safe and drew out the Red Shoes.

“I believe you were looking for these,” he said.

The moment I saw the shoes I felt an almost overwhelming desire to possess them. They looked like a pair of red satin ballet slippers, just like the red shoes in that old movie about the dancer. Ribbons trailed from the ankles, shackles for whoever was unfortunate enough to be tempted to put them on. An aura radiated from the shoes, a palpable sense of wrongness, and it blended with desire.

I realized that was the power of the shoes—not simply that they would hurt you but that you would want the hurt, that they would twist you and bend you and break you, but you would love it all the while, down to your last moment on earth, still dancing, dancing forever like the twirling ballerina in a music box. I could see myself there, spinning in joy and agony, my arms thrown to the sky, welcoming death.

No, I thought. I was an Agent of Death. Death did not dictate to me. I would not let my life end like this, a broken marionette for the amusement of Sammy Blue.

The effort it took to tamp down the desire for the shoes made me nauseous. It took every shred of will that I had to remember who I was, and why I was there.

I looked at the shoes, and then at Sammy Blue with clear eyes. Surprise registered on his face.

“Interesting. There are few who can withstand the call of the shoes. Your will is very strong. It must be, to have survived the Maze.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then smiled. “That strength will make the spell last longer. And that will give it more power, yes?”

He turned to the witches for confirmation. They had all paused in their activities to watch Sammy gloat over me. One of them, a skinny redhead in designer jeans, nodded.

“The greater the endurance of the sacrifice, the stronger the curse will be when it is completed,” she said. She looked at me as she said this, with no malice or guilt. It didn’t make a difference to her one way or the other if I lived or died. This was just a job to her.

The other two seemed to share her indifference. There was no help coming from that quarter.

It was down to me, as usual.

“Now,” Sammy said, smiling widely. His smile was getting crazier by the minute. He was definitely looking forward to this. “I think you need to change your shoes.”

The longing for the shoes rose up again, but I tamped it down. I shook my head. “Uh-uh.”

Sammy narrowed his eyes at me. My resistance was a benefit to them, but it was also a problem. No doubt they had counted on me wanting to put the shoes on voluntarily. Now someone would have to break the circle to get them on me, and that would mean I’d have access to my magic again, even if it were for only a moment. I could see him calculating rapidly. He turned his back on me so he could conference with the witches.

I had to do something. I couldn’t wait for Sammy and his three little sorceresses to figure out how to force the shoes on me. But the only thing I had at the moment was my will—no magic, no sword.

Your will was enough in the Maze.

The thought appeared out of nowhere. My will had been enough in the Maze. My magic had been taken from me there, and I’d survived. More than survived—I’d beaten it, and no one in history had ever beaten the Maze. Except me.

The snake on my palm twitched. My Agent’s magic wasn’t the only power inside me. The blood of Lucifer Morningstar ran in my veins. The well inside me was deep with magic, more than I’d even begun to touch. That magic made the witches’ circle seem like a toy, a toy I could break if I so chose.

The spell over me wavered. I felt it, like a radio signal breaking up. I drew up my will, concentrated on the place where I felt the spell breaking.

And I snapped it. Beezle grunted awake inside my pocket and poked his head out.

“Better stay inside,” I said. He ducked back under my lapel. I pushed the force of my will into the knots that bound me and, like that, they were gone.

I stood and faced Sammy Blue and the three witches. They were huddled together, not concerned about me at all. Too bad for them.

Before I’d learned I was the many-greats-granddaughter of the first of the fallen, I’d killed a nephilim called Ramuell. I’d done this by letting my power flow up through me, allowing the full force of it to blossom and become something I could not control. It had exploded out of me like a burst of sunlight.

All that had remained of Ramuell was a little pile of ash. Ramuell had been a creature of darkness, and the merest hint of the sun would have melted him anyway. But it’s not a good idea for humans—or faeries—to fly too close to the sun, either.

I drew on the power that lay buried inside me—the light of the sun, the light of Lucifer Morningstar. Instead of letting it explode out of me indiscriminately, I focused it on the four people in front of me, who all looked up at the same time.

And who all looked very surprised to see me standing there.

“Impossible,” Sammy Blue said.

“Your eyes,” one of the witches said. “There are stars in your eyes.”

“I know,” I said, and let my magic fly.

The air was filled with the light of the sun, a light like a nuclear weapon exploding. Four sets of arms flew up in the air to block that light, to attempt in vain to hide from it.

The Red Shoes fell to the ground.

I tamped down the magic that flowed crazily in my blood now, put it back in a box for another day. That power was too intoxicating—and too close to Lucifer for my liking. The light in the room returned to normal.