Chapter Fourteen

When Angel returned about twenty minutes later with Gina Price in tow (her cursed shoes had also been running shoes; she was training for a triathlon the following week and her old shoes had suddenly torn a hole - she'd been thrilled with the great last-minute find), he found Emily speaking with William and Calder near one of the rattling trunks.

He directed Gina Price toward Ana-Monique and went to speak with Emily.

"Angel," Emily said as he approached but her eyes followed Gina, "it looks like things are coming together."

"Actually, we have a problem," Calder said.

Emily tossed out her wrist, bracelets and piercings rattling.

"Mr. Hart's locked in a broom cupboard," William burst out.

"You're welcome," said Emily.

Angel swore softly. "Why? Where?"

Three fingers pointed toward the far corner.

"He said we were probably going to steal his liver," Calder elaborated. "But we were only trying to get his shoes."

"We had to stop him!" William continued. "But I didn't want to, you know, stop him." He made a grabbing motion.

"It put the old lady on edge even without the grabbing," Calder said. "Isn't her liver past the expiration date anyway?"

"I caught him as he came down the stairs," Emily said with a dark grin. "I guess I'm a hero now."

Angel swallowed uncomfortably. "But Judith-?"

"Even my mum can't explain away the fact that we want to tie the man to the wall. He thinks she's a plant."

Angel ground his teeth in frustration. He'd had so much hope in her… "Okay," he sighed, rubbing his head. "Is there anything in the broom closet he can use to cut off his own toes?"

Emily just looked blankly at him.

"Right," Angel nodded quickly. "So I guess...I'll go drag him out. Or knock him out. Can I do that?"

"I'll do that," Emily said. "I might have already nipped him. We're close."

Angel gave her a look. "No one here is food," he reminded her sternly.

Emily shrugged. "I was helping," she said.

"Don't help too much," Angel replied. He glanced at the boys. "Everyone else settled? Ritual set? Offering ready? How many pairs of shoes do you have?"

Gina Price walked quickly back through doorway, shaking her head. "This is exactly how people get their livers stolen," she muttered as she increased her pace.

"Yeah," Calder said as he moved to intercept Gina, "It's going great."

Gina gave him a quick nod and tried to sidestep around Calder. "Thanks, but you're all...crazy. Not my cup of tea...I'm just going..."

"No, look," Angel said quickly, holding up his hand placatingly as he approached her. "I swear, your liver's going to be fine. Honestly, it's your feet that might get cut up."

Gina's face went pale. She feinted to the right and then dashed left around Calder. "I'm going home," she said, holding up her own hand, the silver ring that was her Palm glowed. "Let me go and I won't activate my distress button."

Gemma Moon's voice came from the first ice room, "So when are we starting?"

Trying not to panic, and trying to fight his urges to just knock Gina out, too (although was it assault if it saved the person from a much worse injury?), Angel held up both hands while moving to block the doorway. "Look," he said, "I know how this must look-"

"Do you?" she interrupted.

"But I swear," Angel continued as if she hadn't, "this will all be over in-" he checked in with the sun as it inched its way closer to directly below them, "-seven minutes. Eight. We're on your side." He gave her his most innocent-looking expression, hoping it would help.

"Get out of my way!" Gina said, her voice raising worryingly high.

"Listen," Emily said, pushing Angel aside, "I'm the owner of Decade, we take safety very seriously here. Angel's a bit intense. How about I take you downstairs and call you a cab? You can sit in my office until it gets here."

Angel gave Emily a skeptical sideways look.

"The last thing we need is the police showing up over a misunderstanding of kinks," Emily said calmly. "It happens. Let's get you home."

Deciding he was just going to have to trust Emily after the looks she'd been giving Gina, Angel reluctantly stepped aside.

"Thanks," Gina sniffed to Emily as they headed through the door.

"Of course," Emily said, her arm wrapping around Gina's shoulder. She looked back and winked at Angel as they exited out into the main room.

Angel swore softly under his breath again.

"Is she going to be okay?" William whispered to Angel.

Instead of answering, Angel turned to them and said, "Make sure you're ready to start. It's almost midnight. I'll handle Mr. Hart."

"Wait, there's still one more," Calder protested. "Vivian Stokes."

Angel shrugged helplessly. "We gave her a chance," he replied. "We need to focus on the people who showed up."

William and Calder exchanged dissatisfied looks with that answer, but didn't argue.

On his way over to the broom closet, Angel stopped by the ice room to see how Ana-Monique was doing with the other restrainees. Judith was valiantly maintaining a stoic expression, and she was doing by far the best.

"Have I mentioned how incredibly claustrophobic I am?" Penelope Gardner was saying as beads of sweat ran down her pale face to Ana-Monique, who was still trying to soothe Mrs. Willis over Gemma and Bays complaining that they were bored.

"Great," Angel said quietly, inching back. "Looks like you've got...everything…" He hurried away before she could notice he was there and ask for help.

The broom closet was at the far end of the dungeon, and the door to it was rattling like the trunks. Angel edged up to it and knocked. "Mr. Hart?" he asked tentatively.

The rattling stopped. "Hello? Oh god help me! They're insane here! Seriously, man, you've got to get me out of here."

"Yeah," Angel agreed. "Yeah, of course, I will. Just...just hang tight for a few minutes, okay?"

"You sure?" Santiago Hart's muffled voice came through the door. "You're going to get me out of here?"

"Of course," Angel replied soothingly. "I- I just need to get a key. Give me-" Angel checked in with the sun again. "Four minutes. Okay?"

"Okay, yeah, okay." Mr. Hart's heart pounded so loudly Angel could hear it through the door like his ear was pressed against his chest.

Angel turned around. The boys were behind him in the room with the chair, getting ready to start the summoning. After watching them for a moment from afar, he decided they were alright and headed back toward the first ice room, which Brona was watching from near the shelves against the opposite wall, her expression a mix of horrified fascination and pity, presumably for Ana-Monique.

"You could help you know," he said as he approached her, nodding toward the ice-walled room where a myriad of sounds from sobbing to whining to that high-pitched old lady indignation were coming from. Brona raised her eyebrows at him like she used to when he'd say something inflammatory in front of his father just to get the reaction.

"You can still talk," he pointed out. "I've proven bad at it myself on many occasions - and not just tonight. I don't think she wants me going in there to help."

Brona crossed her arms in front of her chest. "I think poor communication is a family trait," she said stiffly.

"Not on your side," Angel replied. Brona hadn't often interjected herself into the arguments between Liam and his father, but Angel could remember her saying things quietly to him when they were alone together; short things, yet profound. Things that would make him reconsider his life choices until the call of his addictions or the shout of his father made him forget.

"I would hardly-" Brona shifted her posture uncomfortable, looking around the dungeon. "I am quite out of my element here."

The corner of Angel's mouth twitched in a smile. "Yeah, me too."

Brona glanced at him sideways through narrowed eyes.

Angel shrugged innocently. "This place is for fairies, not vampires," he pointed out. Although privately he thought the ice walls weren't a bad idea.

"How fortunate," Brona replied dryly, although Angel thought that it was. At least for him. But from what he'd heard, fairies could be a kinky bunch.

"Well," Angel sighed. "I'm going to go see if-"

"I'm here!" A woman in her late-30's, early-40's suddenly burst into the room. She skidded to a halt, beads and bangles jangling from her outfit that would have looked normal in a 1940's cabaret. She looked around the room, taking in the scene that Ana-Monique was desperately trying to calm, said, "Holy shit, no I'm not!" and ran from the room again.

Angel swore under his breath and dashed after her, calling back to William and Calder, "Go!"

"It's 11:58!" William protested after him.

"Close enough!" Angel disappeared through the gate, passing a short goblin-esque creature Angel had often seen manning the back door; it looked bewildered as they passed.

On the other side of the waterfall, the lady Angel assumed to be Vivian Stokes was just disappearing into the foyer with the lifts, and Angel tore after her.

"Nope, nope, nope, nope-" she was saying, "-where are the damn stairs?! Oh-"

"Wait, please!" Angel called after her, reaching the foyer just as Vivian Stokes reached the emergency stairway. Miraculously, she paused and turned to look at him cautiously. She was wearing bright green eyeshadow. Then, getting an idea, Angel said, "Go see Emily Slipp. She's the owner. She's calling a cab for the other person who decided she wasn't interested."

Well plucked eyebrows arched up. "Oh. That's...suspiciously nice of her."

"This is a high-end establishment," Angel shrugged. "In fact-" He looked back toward the waterfall, where the goblin (half-goblin, actually, Angel thought; full goblins were much uglier than this fellow) was taking his time returning across the forest room. Angel snapped his fingers at him authoritatively and tried not to wince at the glare he got in response. "Would you please escort this lady to Emily's office?" he asked, earning another glare. "Quickly?"

The pace didn't change in the slightest. So Angel changed it for him.

"Thank you very much," he said as if the half-goblin had agreed enthusiastically, then he turned and nodded farewell to Vivian Stokes as if that was that and all was well, and eased out of the doorway back into the forest room. Once out of sight, he dashed up to the glaring goblin, told him in a hushed tone to tell Emily to add a generous tip to the final bill for him, and, once the goblin was happily trotting off, he hurried back into the dungeon, proud of himself for that solution.

The pride was quickly forgotten, though, when he arrived and found most of the victims fighting at their restraints, the broom closet door banging practically off its hinges, and something like lightning and thunder coming from the far ice room. Less than a minute left, and the victims would be shrieking in their inability to get to their feet.

Angel hurried up to the first ice room and noticed Brona first, who was actually trying to talk Mrs. Willis down. Angel almost smiled, but he looked at Ana-Monique and said, "Double check the restraints," he said. "They get stronger with the spell."

Ana-Monique nodded curtly and she bent to check Gemma Moon's ankle restraints with utter professionalism, even though Gemma was trying very hard to bite her in frustration ("This is not sexy and O is EXPENSIVE!").

"Mr. Hart?" Ana-Monique asked.

"On him," Angel said, then hesitated. "I mean not- Never mind."

He dashed back down to the broom closet and broke the lock with a quick twist (he'd be seeing that on the final bill, too), and Mr. Hart fell out practically on top of him.

"Oh thank god," Mr. Hart said. "Wait- You're the guy who-"

"Sorry, no time," Angel said as another clap of thunder came from the ice room behind him. He bent and picked Mr. Hart up, hefting him on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes (if sacks of potatoes thrashed and spewed out curse words). With one or two close calls of nearly crashing to the floor, Angel took him back to the first ice room, shouting that he needed handcuffs just as he arrived.

At once, there was a huge, final-sounding crash of thunder and each of the victims suddenly became still and glassy-eyed. This was it. He set Mr. Hart down as the magic from the curse started to take hold of him. Mr Hart looked blankly around, probably for the nearest knife. Ana-Monique slid a pile of restraints across the slate floor, screeching horribly.

"Do you need-" she started, but Angel interrupted.

"-I got it, go on."

As the manager of the offending store, they'd decided that while the boys would summon the fairy, Ana-Monique should be the one to make the actual apology. She dashed off down the dungeon for the third room.

Angel grabbed one of the handcuffs at random, shaking off others that got caught on it and managed to slap one end on Santiago Hart's wrist before he got too far (the shelves just across the way seemed to have caught his attention). A surprisingly horrible grunting, moaning sound began to come from the other victims as they found their restraints keeping them in place. Metal began to rattle like ghost chains.

Brona appeared quickly next to Angel, glancing behind her with a thoroughly unnerved expression, and Angel could hardly blame her.

"SORRY?" A voice screeched from the other end of the hall, drawing Angel and Brona's attention.

Angel winced. "Fairies," he muttered.

"Indeed," Brona agreed in the same tone. "I'll go see if they need instruction." Lifting her skirts a few inches, she marched off toward the last dungeon room.

Mr. Hart twisted harder away from Angel, drawing his attention back, and he grabbed Mr. Hart's other elbow, pulling it behind his back, and cuffed his other wrist. The magic itched unpleasantly under Angel's hands. "I feel like I should tell you your rights," he said to the man as he began to struggle, "but somehow I don't think you'll find it funny."

Mr. Hart grunted in surprise and then in frustration, twisting and jerking around to figure out what had happened. Angel took him by the elbow to get him to stop before he ran into something, but that only made him thrash harder. Gemma Moon (Angel assumed it was Gemma) screamed in such loud rage Angel nearly let go to protect his ears.

"And yet," Angel muttered, aware that he was talking to himself, "this isn't nearly as bad as last night. A minute should be-"

"Angel!" Brona's voice called urgently, and Angel turned, looking in the direction that Brona was pointing and getting himself yanked by another of Mr. Hart's thrashes.

A cold fist clenched Angel's stomach.

Judith Cole was standing calmly in front of the same shelves Mr. Hart had been going for, perusing her options.

Angel swore foully. "You're on your own, buddy," he said, and shoved Mr. Hart into the ice room hard enough to make him fall, wincing as he crashed into Bays. Angel reached Judith just as she picked up a beautiful obsidian dagger and he grabbed her wrist with his right hand, wrapping his other arm around her waist to twist her away.

She cried out in shock and then wrenched herself to the right, where Angel's grip with his left hand at her waist was weakest. She broke free and they stumbled, tripping over each other's feet for several steps, but Angel managed to keep them from falling. Judith wrench again, this time the other way to free her wrist with the dagger, but Angel's grip was strong and there was no way in hell he'd let her go.

She screamed in frustration again, adding to the shouts from the other room. She reached for the dagger with her free hand but like a snake weaving through grass, Angel's arm wrapped around in front of hers and then behind her back, forcing her shoulder back.

A crash sounded behind them, but Angel couldn't afford to turn around and see what kind of trouble Mr. Hart was getting himself into. Judith threw her weight again and they stumbled. Angel's shoulder hit the shelves, knocking several things off with glass smashing against the floor, and something heavy falling painfully onto Angel's head. For a second in his dizziness, Angel's grip loosened and Judith slithered free, the dagger still in her hand. Angel stumbled after her and tripped over Mr. Hart, who was scrambling, still cuffed, over to the fallen objects, and Angel fell hard onto the slate.

He might have actually blacked out for a second or two because the next thing Angel knew, he was looking up at Judith, who had taken off her left shoe and was balancing, steady as a ballerina, on her right foot, preparing to slice the toes off her raised left foot.

"Judith," Angel groaned, rolling up. He felt surprisingly dizzy.

She didn't seem to hear him. Judith placed the sharp edge of the dagger against the outside of her foot.

With a last burst of effort, Angel lunged upward, grabbed her wrist, and yanked hard away from her foot. They fell, Angel landing hard again on the slate and Judith landing just as hard on his stomach, which was already nauseous with dizziness. The dagger clattered away and Angel groaned in pain, clinging hard to Judith's wrist.

But she didn't try to fight him, which in his state took a few moments to realize.

Come to think of it, the whole room was much quieter than it had been.

Angel looked around. His vision seemed a bit fuzzy, but Judith was close enough that he could see her bewildered expression. She looked over at him and he breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes were clear and present. She was back.

Angel let go of her wrist and relaxed back against the stone floor, breathing hard.

"Oh goodness," he heard Judith say, and her weight abruptly lifted from his stomach.

"Mum?" William's voice and fast footsteps came from the other end of the hall. "What happened?"

"I don't know, I-"

The next several moments were chaos that Angel's brain couldn't quite sort. Calder helped him up. People were freed from their restraints. Most of them ran from the room.

Finally, Angel heard his name and he blinked, his focus coming around to Ana-Monique.

"You with us?" she asked.

Angel nodded, and it was a bit painful. "Yeah," he croaked. "Got hit in the head. Did it work?"

She smiled. "We had to beg a little extra hard, but it's nothing our dignities can't recover from. Curse is lifted."

Angel exhaled deeply.

"Exactly," Ana-Monique agreed.

Angel looked around. The place was a wreck. Cuffs, ropes, and other restraint lay strewn everywhere, the slate was scuffed, ice chipped, potions smashed where they'd fallen off the shelves, and there was a burning smell coming from the fairy summoning circle that Angel didn't even want to look at.

"Hey," Angel said, turning to Ana-Monique, "now seems like an ideal time to mention that I can't afford all these damages."

"We'll work something out," she promised him.

"Good," Angel nodded gratefully. "In that case, it also seems like an ideal time to mention that I'd like to go pass out for a bit."

"You go do that," she nodded. "I'll clean up what I can."

"Get the boys to help," he told her. "And do not touch those potions." He pointed to the puddle on the floor by the shelves, which was starting to steam.

"No worries there," she said, eyeing it warily.

Angel stumbled away, quite forgetting Brona, who caught up with him at the elevator, and quite forgetting where he'd parked the car until Brona reminded him, and quite forgetting that his car had an automatic mode until William ran out after them and set it up for him.

"By the way," William said after making sure Angel was buckled, "thanks for looking after my mum."

"Ah, well," Angel replied slurrily, "Mums are important."

William hugged him, a bit awkwardly with their angle. "Don't touch the steering wheel," he reminded Angel before he closed the door. "Let her take care of you this time."

"You know me way too well," Angel complained, but he crossed his arms so he wouldn't be tempted to drive, and William closed the door. Angel didn't remember much of the rest of the night.