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“Who’d have thought that doing magic was such hard work?” One of them said. “I’m so drained, and my head is killing me.”

“Ssshhh!” another one said with a gesture in my direction.Advertisement

“Oh, she probably doesn’t even speak English.”

Idiots, I thought, never mind that I talked to you in English . If I hadn’t been worried that the candle

would burn down and possibly start a fire in the room, which would be bad for Nita’s family, I’d have left it burning. Instead, I blew it out as I passed, and the jerks never even noticed. I hoped I could sic a few pixies on them.

I finally got around to Idris’s room. I didn’t see his rental car anywhere nearby, but then all rental cars looked alike to me. At any rate, the parking spaces in front of room twenty-five were empty, so it looked like this would be a good chance to search his room thoroughly in his absence. I tapped on the door and said, “Housekeeping,” then prepared to use my master key, but the door opened just before I got the key in the lock, and I was face to face with Phelan Idris, on my own and unguarded by anyone magical, as far as I could tell.

I kept my head down and held my breath, waiting for Idris to recognize me. But my nonmagical invisibility spell from being the “help” worked, and he just turned away from me after opening the door. “About time,” he said. “I need new towels.”

I hesitated. While his back was turned, I had the perfect opportunity to make a run for it. He could live without clean towels, and being alone in a motel room with Phelan Idris was very high on my list of experiences I could live without, so me running away was a win-win scenario. On the other hand, he hadn’t recognized me, and this was the best chance we’d have to see what he was up to. There was no telling what I could discover from being in his motel room with him when his guard was down.

Plus, it wasn’t like he could use magic on me, and I had a feeling I’d come out ahead in a physical fight, thanks to my brothers teaching me a few dirty tricks. I took a deep breath and crossed the threshold, even as a little voice in the back of my head warned me that this probably wasn’t the brightest thing I’d ever done.

His room wasn’t quite as messy as some of the other rooms had been. It merely had a high level of clutter and an odd smell that wasn’t stale pizza or dirty socks. Someone had been brewing potions in the bathtub, I suspected.

I put on the heaviest hick accent I could manage and lowered my voice to whiskey-and-cigarette tones. “Y’all have got us busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest,” I said as I took some cleaning supplies with me back to the bathroom. I saw the magical candle on the dresser as I passed, but I figured trying to light it in front of him was too risky. He was an idiot in a lot of areas, but he did know his magic and he was likely to recognize it.

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His bathroom wasn’t frat-house filthy, but he’d definitely been up to something other than personal grooming in there. The towels and washcloths were a funny color, and they had a pungent smell. I dumped all the towels and washcloths into a plastic garbage bag to take to Owen for analysis. The chemical properties of potions could affect me even if the magic didn’t, so I kept my rubber gloves on while I cleaned the sink and bathtub.

I couldn’t resist looking at the toiletries spread out on the bathroom counter. It appeared that Idris was a devoted Rogaine user. He also wore the brand of body spray that was featured in the really annoying commercials where women lost control around men who wore it. His personal scent was

“Player,” which nearly sent me into uncontrollable giggles.

If he’d been brewing potions, he had to be up to something, and I needed to figure out what it was while I was in his room. I tried watching him out of the corner of my eye as I brought the bag of used towels out of the bathroom and stashed it on the edge of the housekeeping cart. Then I grabbed a stack of clean towels and headed back into the room.

He had papers spread over the bed and table, along with a bunch of what looked like necklaces. The closer I got to the table where the necklaces were, the more my own magical necklace vibrated. I immediately tripped on the carpet and sent my armload of towels flying around the room, letting a couple land on the bed and one land on the table.

“Oopsie!” I said, remembering to keep my voice low and my accent heavy. “That ol’ rug just reached up and grabbed me.” As I gathered towels, I made sure that I got one of the necklaces in the fold of a hand towel. “Now I guess I’d better get you some really fresh towels that haven’t been all over the floor.” I carried those towels back outside, slipping the necklace—which turned out to be a cheap Texas souvenir, the kind you can buy at the cash register at gas station convenience stores—into my pocket as I did so. pqdm.com