The Magic Touch (26 page)

“Get them all!” Froister yelled.

“Lamps!” Ray shouted at the kids. “Start rubbing lamps!”

The kids dived away from the attacking djinni and toward the lighting fixtures. Being so much smaller, they had no trouble ducking under the displays and around tables. Bobby made a grab for a tall floor lamp, but before he could touch it, a Hispanic man in a black leather jacket appeared out of nowhere and threw his arms around him. Bobby stamped on the man’s foot, and flung himself away under a table. Out of the corner of his eye, Ray saw half of the man turn to insubstantial smoke to follow him. Bobby scrambled out of sight.

Mariana’s tiny dog stood between her and a couple of big white kids. She leaped for a lamp. The gangbangers jumped right over the dog, but it hung on to one of them with its teeth in his leg, distracting them long enough for her to duck behind a cluster of statues. She stuck out a tiny hand and rubbed a lamp vigorously. One of the gangbangers suddenly changed sides, pushing his brothers away from her. They turned into smoke to try and counter him, but he spread out across their path like jelly on a piece of bread.

A handful of older men burst out of the back room, and fanned out through the showroom, following the children. These looked like they knew what they were doing. Better start getting some more of the djinni on his side. Ray reached for a lamp, and passed his palm over its surface. A gangbanger wearing a Jackal badge appeared next to him with glassy eyes and folded arms. Before Ray could open his mouth to make a wish, a clump of smoke turned into a wiry, dark-haired man, who rubbed the lamp right after him, undoing his control. The djinn turned to the man, instead. Peter sneaked under the man’s legs and rubbed the lamp again, preventing the man from making a bad wish. A redheaded man came in behind
him
,
until the gangbanger looked dizzy, not knowing to whom he should answer.

Ray broke away and went for the next lamp he could reach. Peter tried to follow, but Redhead picked him up bodily and carried him toward the pair of big swinging doors at the back of the showroom, walking straight through the displays.

“Help!” Peter yelled.

Ray dodged around the tables, trying to get the boy back. Genie-Jackals and others were appearing and vanishing all over the place as the children and men fought over control of their lamps, getting in each other’s way.

Peter swatted down at the man’s back with his bat, hitting nothing but his own knees when his captor turned partly to smoke. As Ray ducked around the displays, trying to reach him, Peter got smart and smacked Redhead’s arms. The djinn couldn’t dematerialize and hold a solid boy at the same time. Peter dropped to the floor and fled back toward the lamps.

Ray’s helpers had the advantage of size, but if the djinni could walk through solid objects, it wouldn’t help them for long. Ray worried that in his desperation he had led the children into deadly danger.

A couple of gangbangers grabbed Clarice by each arm, and flew with her, shrieking, toward the ceiling. She kicked out with her tiger-striped skates, sending sprays of crystal pendants flying off a nearby chandelier. The other children caught on, shoving lamps toward the floor. Over the crashing and shattering of glass Froister started screaming orders in a more hysterical voice. Ray had a chance to grin before someone else took a poke at him. Maybe being uncompromisingly solid had its advantages after all.

“Be careful of the displays!” Froister howled.

Chanel’s high, concert hall-trained voice shrilled over all the noise. “I found Grandma! She’s in the back room!”

“Good!” Ray shouted back, but his voice wasn’t as mighty as his sister’s. “Tell her we’re coming!”

“There’s a hundred people back there!”

“I know!”

“Him!” Froister shouted, standing on the cash register desk and pointing at Ray. “I want him! He’s a fairy godfather. Take him!”

A big man, who looked like he had just stepped out of the Arabian nights and put on a business suit, waded through the displays. Ray backed away from him, but found himself trapped against the statue of a verdigris dolphin and shell. The big man picked Ray up effortlessly and pinned him against the wall by his arms.

Froister addressed him over the man’s shoulders.

“Why are you fighting us, young man?” he asked in a reasonable, conversational tone as if there wasn’t a mad chase going on all around them. Another glass shade exploded, and he winced. “We’re allies, you and I. Our organizations are all set to merge.”

“You’re evil,” Ray shouted at him. He kicked at his captor, but the man just made his midsection into steam. “Ugh!”

Froister regarded him with sympathy. “Young man, did you ever think of what you could do with
real
power, not the poor wave-the-wand type the fairy godmothers let you have, or whatever you can glean with a few spare brownie points? You could control a city! Hoard untold riches! All this could be yours, if you help us.” His voice rang with triumph and conviction, but Ray knew a nut when he heard one. “Help us, and you’ll have power! All you have to do is cooperate on one tiny thing. That’s all I ask. And then vast power will be yours!”

Ray narrowed his eyes and twisted his lips to sneer, even though his shoulders felt like they were dislocating, and his back was pressed against something sharp.

“I’ve heard all this crap for years from these gangbangers,” Ray spat. “Easy power. Easy influence, free,
if
you pay their price. I wouldn’t fall for it from them, and
I am not going to listen to you, either.
I know you’re evil. I won’t serve evil. You want something? You can whistle for it.” He felt another sharp stab in the spine as the big man shoved him harder against the wall.

“Integrity,” Froister said unexpectedly. He nodded. “Too bad. Destroy him and his little friends!”

The big man yanked him away from the wall and threw him over his head and into a glass table which crashed under him into a million fragments. Ray lay on the ruins of it, stunned. Someone screamed. The sound cut into his consciousness.

His head spinning, Ray picked himself up. He was bleeding from hundreds of tiny cuts, but the real pain came from an eight-inch-long dagger-like shard of glass sticking into his thigh. Warm blood seeped down his pants leg and pooled on the floor. Ray just looked down at it, gasping. It was so deep it didn’t hurt yet. He reached through his overdrawn mental piggy bank, pleading for help.
I know I don’t have any more brownie points
, he thought,
but I’m going to bleed to death!

Suddenly, his bank account was full of thousands of tiny, glittering suns. One of them hopped up eagerly and vanished from the picture. The rest of the FGU was helping him! He felt pressure in the gash as the glass popped out. The wand echoed the goodness of the magic that stopped the bleeding and mended his flesh.

He had no time to concentrate on the wonder, because he found himself in the middle of a whirlwind of black smoke. The wind blew his arms up like gravity flipping into reverse, leaving his midsection vulnerable to the fists that lashed out from the smoke, pummeling him. Ray immediately dragged his elbows down against his ribs, and jabbed out at his attackers. There were howls of delighted laughter in the dark cloud. His punches hit nothing substantial. A fist knocked him in the jaw, and he tripped backward against the frame of the glass table. Glass cut into his palms as he tried to save himself.

A heavy fist connected with the side of his head, and Ray gasped as stars danced in his eyes. He wiped blood onto his face when he clapped his hand to the side of his head. It was time to fight back! He started grabbing the hands that punched out at him, crushing knuckles and fingers with the strength built up over a summer of digging flowerbeds. There were cries of anguish in the circle of smoke. The hands disappeared, but not before he saw blood from the fragments of glass in his palms.

One arc of the circle suddenly vanished with an audible “Poof!” and Ray heard Matthew’s voice cry out in triumph.

“I’ve got one!”

“Wish for him to protect us!” Ray shouted, cradling his hand. “All of us!”

The senior djinni immediately went after Matthew, but there was suddenly a wall of shimmering force between them and the boy. The circle of smoke around Ray dissipated when the genie-Jackals found their punches were no longer connecting with their targets. Ray scrambled over the shattered displays, gathering up the children as he went, until they were pressed against the inside of one of the sidewalls of the showroom. A huge man with a scalloped crew cut stood facing the other djinni with his arms folded, protecting them.

“Break through his spell!” Froister shouted. “He’s only one.”

The big man gave Froister a strange look. Ray knew there was some reason that they couldn’t just wish through the protective spell. The young djinni regrouped in three bunches. Ray saw gang badges for not only the Riverside Jackals, but the Backyard Wolves as well. Two gangs! The conspiracy of evil had spread farther than he had dreamed. They had to be stopped somehow before they really did take over the city. The solution lay with the fairy godparents trapped in the back room, if only he could get them out.

“Ray, you’re hurt!” Matthew said, goggling at the broken glass dusting his clothes. Ray brushed at himself, then decided his condition wasn’t important. They had to get them from this spot to the warehouse, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Now, what?” Bobby asked.

Ray turned to Matthew. “Tell your guy here to keep a protective shell around us as we move. We’re going in the back.” Matthew, wide-eyed, nodded, and passed on the instructions.

Without turning his head, the burly djinn said, “I hear and obey.”

“Okay. Everyone stick together.” Ray gripped Chanel’s and Jorge’s hands, and started moving toward the back room.

The other djinni hung outside the protective barrier like piranha watching a side of beef being lowered into their tank. Froister was still jumping up and down shouting orders.

Their protector shoved open the doors of the warehouse, and Ray stood and stared, shocked.

Chapter 25

Beyond the first aisle of boxes, the warehouse looked like a Red Cross camp after a disaster. Rows of camp beds were set out along two edges of a big open square, with people in bedraggled clothes asleep or resting on them. In the middle, dozens of chairs of every description were huddled in little circles. The men in them were unshaven, and the women’s hairstyles had flattened out. They all sprang out of their chairs as the doors flew open against the walls. Everyone rushed to the edge of the open square, but could come no farther.

“Ray!” Grandma Eustatia cried.

Ray saw his grandmother and tried to run to her, but he bounced off an invisible wall that extended all the way around the room. He got to his knees and felt his way along, but he sensed no gap in the spell. His bloodied hands left a streak on the solid air for a few seconds before fading. Froister had his prisoners securely locked up. Ray had to find a way to break the spell.

“I’ll get you out,” he said. He turned to Matthew to have him make another wish.

Suddenly, he felt a cold wind on the back of his neck, and spun around. The children huddled against him, terrified. Their protector was no longer standing beside them. He was back with the other gang members. All of them showed their teeth in fierce grins as they advanced, snarling like wild animals.

“The lamp!” Ray cried. “We forgot to protect the lamp!” He reached into his piggy bank for some brownie points to take up the slack. The evil magic in the room caused the tiny sparks to twist into abnormal shapes as he wished on them. He was afraid to trust them. Ray’s group was stuck with what flesh and bone could do to defeat the djinni.

“Scatter!” Bobby shouted. The children broke back out into the showroom, dodging gangbangers and rubbing lamps as they went. The senior djinni followed in their wake, to keep the membership under their control, but they were outnumbered by Ray’s miniature army. Ray faked to the left, and tried to run out into the showroom, but Zeon pounced on him and caught his head in a hammerlock. The big man had an insane look on his face.

“I’m gonna take you out,” he whispered, his face close to Ray’s, his eyes glinting ferally under the long eyelashes. “I’m gonna pull your guts out and tie them into knots around every light pole on this street. You gonna die in pain, sucker,” he said, sneering. He caught Ray’s flailing arm and twisted it up against his shoulder blades. Ray gasped. The rest of the Jackals crowded around, kicking and punching him.

Suddenly, outside the circle of fists and feet, Ray heard the voice, almost inside his head, “What wouldst thou, O my mother?”

“Do
something
to help me and the other kids,” Chanel’s voice stated, loud and clear. “Especially my brother!”

“Where is that voice coming from?” Froister asked. “Somebody, find that girl!”

Ray gasped. He fell to the ground, and got kicked hard in the ribs. He curled up in a ball to protect his face and belly. Blows kept impacting his back and rear. He was worried that they’d do permanent damage to his kidneys, when the blows started to become fewer. He dared a peek up under the angle of his elbow. One of the gangbangers, and not the largest one, either, was yanking djinni off him one by one and tossing them over his shoulder like handkerchiefs. He got to his feet. Chanel was standing next to one of the lamps, her magic shell glowing brightly enough he didn’t need the wand to see it. She looked scared, but not one of the djinni even paused as they got close to her. They couldn’t see her at all!

Clarice on wheels got to Ray first, but the others were close behind. They helped him to his feet. Ray grabbed Peter and planted him next to Chanel with his baseball bat. “Stay near this lamp. Don’t let anyone else close,” he said.

Froister was furious. “How dare you corrupt one of our membership! You asked for it!” he said. “Listen up!” He clapped his hands, and the djinni stood to attention. “The next wish: kill the intruders! Destroy them! Oh, my beautiful shop,” he moaned, as the other adults echoed his orders.

The genie-Jackals and genie-Wolves dematerialized. The next thing the children knew was that they were in the hands of the enemy. Each of them was seized by one, two, or three gang-genies, and hauled inexorably toward the back room. They kicked, struggled, and screamed, but they were held tightly. Ray tried to go after them, making up wishes and discarding them, as the deformed stars danced in his head.

Something tripped him up and a heavy foot planted itself in the middle of his back. Once again, failing to pay attention to his physical surroundings, Ray had put himself at risk. He planted his sore palms on the glass-strewn floor and pushed up. The foot pressed down harder and he sprawled, barking his chin on a fragment of lamp frame. Chanel looked at him from her post near the lamp. She made as if to come to help him, but he waved her back. A voice over his head laughed, and Ray groaned.

“You’re mine,” Zeon whispered dangerously. “Your ass is history. I’m gonna take you apart. I’m gonna …”

His low voice was suddenly drowned out by a sound like flapping wings. Suddenly, the room was full of men and women. Ray didn’t know whether the smell of evil had attracted them or Chanel’s wish had brought them, but the cavalry had arrived in the person of the entire Guardian Angel Society. Ray heard a grunt as someone knocked Zeon off his back. He scrambled to his feet, brushing glass off his front, and stared.

“Hi, boyfriend,” Antoinette said, as she delivered another hearty kick to Zeon’s brisket. The big gangbanger turned his middle to smoke, but somehow the foot connected anyhow. Zeon moaned and dropped to the floor. Antoinette gave Ray a brilliant smile, and waded into the fray against another genie-Jackal.

It didn’t seem to matter if the djinni were solid or not. The guardian angels grabbed at any part of a djinn they could reach, and held tightly. The gang-genies struggled furiously, but magic couldn’t get them free. When they struck out physically, the guardian angels twisted arms, grabbed feet and lifted, or just engaged their opponents with fisticuffs or hearty hammerlocks. They were effective, efficient fighters.

Ray, panting, followed in Antoinette’s wake as she warded off an attack with a two-handed karate block. “I didn’t know you were a guardian angel.”

“Your partner knew right away,” she said, evading a kick from a black-clad djinn and flipping him upside down into a standing lamp. Another djinn ran to save the lamp, leaving his companion lying flat on the floor. “My uncle got me into the society. I told you I was helping him out, but you didn’t ask me any details. I was there the night of the fire, and you never even saw me until the end.”

“I’m sorry,” Ray said, feeling more than a little stupid. “You knew about me?”

A glass fixture fell to the ground between them, shattering with a hearty
crash
,
but none of the particles struck either one of them.

“Sure did. My uncle is your guardian angel. He thought it was important that I know.”

“I was going to tell you,” Ray said sheepishly.

“I know,” Antoinette said. Her eyes flashed adoring fire at him, and he felt a wonderful tingle in his belly. Her face changed suddenly to alarm. “Duck!” she cried.

A djinn melted a whole brass lamp in his hand and hefted it straight at Ray. The Reverend Barnes caught it in his bare hands and put it on the floor, where it bubbled, setting the linoleum ablaze. A couple of the GAS jumped the fire-setting djinn and sat on him.

“Organize!” the Reverend Barnes shouted. “I want them all in there!” He pointed to the warehouse doors. Matthew, temporarily free of entanglement, jumped forward and started to muster the other children.

“When you get genie lamps, carry them in after me!” he cried.

The kids started polishing lamps furiously. Now that they had protection, they could keep the genies who answered their summons. Peter saw the fire-starting djinn appear before him. Peter pointed to the warehouse entrance. Obediently, the djinn vanished, and reappeared to stand with the others, glassy-eyed, and the angels sat heavily on the floor.

“I knew you couldn’t keep out of it,” the Reverend Barnes said to Ray over a gangbanger he was holding in a hammerlock. “You did good, son.” The youth struggled, but even when he turned into smoke, the guardian angel held him tight. A moment later he vanished. His lamp must have been rubbed.

“Get them! Get them!” Froister called, shaking his fists over everyone’s head. “Obey the third wish! Destroy them all!”

“Uh-oh,” Ray said. He could feel a force building up around them as the djinni strove to follow their guildmaster’s instructions. Something incredibly evil was going to happen. The whole building began to shake. Winds howled through the broken windows, whipping what was left of the chandeliers until they smacked into the ceiling. Desperately, Ray threw all of the brownie points in his head out to protect him and the children and the guardian angels and the FGU. He flung himself to the floor as the two powers collided, overfilling the building, and the roof blew off.

O O O

Ray gawked up at the daylit sky. It was full of pretty sparks and flowers made of light. His dazed brain even enjoyed the shower of little pieces of shingle and rafter as they pattered harmlessly down around him.

Antoinette was next to him in a second, helping him to his feet.

“What did you do?” she asked. “That was spectacular.”

Ray stood up rather unsteadily. He looked around, but he could see only guardian angels and children. “Where’s Froister?” he asked, all of the last few minutes coming back to him in a rush. “I want a word with that man.”

“Gone,” Reverend Barnes said.

Ray threw his head back and howled at the sky. “Coward!”

“Now, calm down,” the Reverend Barnes said severely. “That’s not worthy behavior for a conquering champion.” Ray was embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he said. He heard another outcry, dozens of voices together.

“Get us out of here!”

Ray and the others ran through the swinging doors to the back room. Chanel threw herself at her grandmother and was rebounded several feet by the barrier. She tried again. When she couldn’t batter through, she turned on Ray.

“Get her out!” she demanded, her face set. “Right this minute!”

“Hold on, Chanel.” The Reverend Barnes shook his head. “It takes the genie who put it up to break it down. Who was that?”

Matthew was in a corner of the warehouse, imperiously ordering all of the other children to place lamps in rows. The djinni stood in rows, too, staring straight ahead with their arms folded. Reverend Barnes put the question to them.

A glassy-eyed Zeon was unable to lie. “It was Hakeem.”

“Hakeem?” Bobby asked. “Ray’s buddy made an
invisible wall
?”
His whole concept of big brothers and their relative boringness had been dented forever today, if not entirely shattered.

“Hakeem’s not here,” Ray said, searching the crowd of gangbangers.

“All the lamps are accounted for,” Matthew said. “We rubbed all the others left in the showroom twice to make sure.”

“Then he’s somewhere else in here,” Ray said. He looked around for the shop’s cashier, and found her hiding under the cash desk. He helped her to her feet. “Miss, excuse me, are there any more lamps in this store?”

She looked at him as if he was crazy. “The place is full of them. In boxes. In the back.”

“No, it’d have to be a used one,” Ray said. “Like these others.” She shrugged, looking dazed. Ray went back to Zeon. “Where’d it go?” he demanded, stifling the urge to grab the other by the collar and shake the information out of him. Zeon must have thought worse was in store for him. His face was covered with beads of sweat.

“I don’t know. Froister, he took it with him the other day.”

“Need string,” Rose shouted, leaning on the barrier. “He’s in trouble. He’ll be needy. I’m sure you can find him, Raymond. You’re the only one with a wand.”

Ray looked at her gratefully. He emptied a load of broken glass out of his pocket, but the wand was there, too, safe and whole. As his family and friends watched with wonder, he tested the air with the shining star.

The wand felt so marvelously good in his fingers after all that evil that he enjoyed it just for a moment before concentrating on the task. Off to one side was the bundle of need strings belonging to the gangbangers, a pretty pathetic lot all told. Ray tested the cube containing the FGU. No wonder he wasn’t able to sense them from the street. This thing was a very effective barrier. It was a miracle the brownie points had gotten through to him.

But there was one hopeless string calling to him, apart from all the others. He followed it, with Antoinette, the Reverend Barnes, and all the kids trailing behind him, to a small office in one of the near corners of the warehouse. Ray pushed through the doors. The trace was coming from the desk, from a pretty, dainty lamp made of milk glass with a painted scene on the body. He gawked at it.

“Hakeem? That’s his lamp?”

“Well,
I
like it,” Antoinette said. “I’d hate to see what you would choose. Maybe you have hidden artistic tendencies, too.”

Ray thought ruefully of the green art lamp, now smashed to splinters. “I guess so.” He brushed the side of the milk glass pane. Hakeem appeared with folded arms.

“What wouldst thou, O my mother?” he said, in a flat voice. Then he blinked. “Ray? Thank heavens, brother. I’ve been stuck in there for ages!”

“It’s all over,” Antoinette said reassuringly. “Are you all right?”

“Where’s Mr. Froister?” Hakeem asked, his eyes wide.

“Split,” Ray said. “His buddies, too.” Hakeem looked relieved.

“Son, destroy that magical barrier out there,” the Reverend Barnes said, pointing out the door at the crowd of fairy godparents leaning as closely as they could to see. Hakeem looked at Ray for instructions.

“What he said,” Ray told him.

“With pleasure!”

Hakeem blinked, and the crowd of fairy godparents swelled toward them as the barrier dropped, and the ones leaning on it stumbled over. Rose pushed her way through to come in and kiss Ray.

“Oh, I am
so
proud of you!” she said. Ray was so glad to see her alive and well and spunky that he couldn’t say a word. He hugged her back.