clothes and whatever else you want.”
“Holy cats!” I stuffed the money into my pockets like contraband. “What is it you think I’m going to need? A mink coat?”
“It doesn’t have to be mink. When you’re done, meet me out front.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, mentally wrestling with pockets full of cash and freedom.
“I’m going to go buy a toothbrush, and then I’m going to get us some transportation.”
“Where are you going to do that at this hour? Are you even old enough to rent a car?”
He stared at me like he couldn’t believe I’d just said that, and after the mental lightbulb snapped on, I couldn’t believe I had either.
“Oh my God! You’re going to steal one?”
Fortunately, I had not said this nearly as loud as it sounded in my head, which was very loud indeed, since it was accompanied by police sirens and clanging prison doors.
Carson gave me a long, patronizing look. “Would you prefer to walk to Chicago?”
“You can’t call Maguire to send one of his fifteen cars for us?”
He hesitated as if considering it, then said slowly, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Maguire’s giving me a long leash on this, but it’s still a leash.”
I thought about Maguire behind his square mile of desk, surveying his kingdom, with armed guards and, for all I knew, flying monkeys at his command. If Carson had some reason he wanted to stay under the boss’s radar, I was okay with that.
I wasn’t okay with stealing, but we needed a car, and the binding promise muzzled my objection. I stood there wrestling my conscience for so long that Carson’s expression softened in sympathy.
“Here,” he said, taking the coat from my shoulders and sending me into the store with a little shove. “Fifteen minutes. Shop fast.”
I had fifteen minutes and four hundred dollars. Carson had given me a lot of rope with which to hang myself. Did he trust me to come back, or did he trust the geas?
Fulfilling my vow was nonnegotiable, but I had some choice about how to go about it, as long as my subconscious believed it would work. Telling the security guard who watched me load my handbasket with toothpaste and clean underwear at three a.m. that I’d been kidnapped? Spiking pulse—and common sense—nixed that idea.
I could go out the back door and find a taxi or a phone. I could call Agent Taylor. I could share with him everything I knew, and give evidence against Maguire in exchange for immunity on my crimes so far.
Then he’d ship me back to Texas by Express Mail. The geas would put me in the bughouse and Maguire would take revenge on my family, or Taylor, and that would finish me off.
But most important, with me in jail or exile, the FBI would have no psychic on the job. Alexis’s best chance was for me to do what I was doing—throw in my lot with Carson and follow her trail. We had to get to her, or get to the jackal, before the kidnappers did.
“Are you all right, miss?”
My dilemma had brought me to a halt by a counter full of accessories. The clerk behind it was a doughy-looking woman wearing a blue smock and a name tag that said DORIS. In my distracted state, it took me a moment to realize she was not wholly there.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. Especially compared with someone stuck for eternity as a greeter at Walmart. I think that’s what Sister Michaela called purgatory.
“Can I help you find something?”
I sighed, wishing it were that easy. “Do you have something that will help me rescue a girl from kidnappers who might also possibly be a fraternity of wizards?”
Doris cocked her head, pondering my problem. “Maybe something from the hunting and outdoors department?”
Very tempting. “I have to find her first. The only things I have to go on are a hunch and a plastic mummy flash drive.”
“A flash drive?” she asked, blinking behind cat-eye glasses. “Would that be in camera equipment?”
“It’s a computer …” I eyed her seventies shag hairdo and went with, “… thingy.”
“Oh, we have computers,” said Doris happily. “Aisle thirty-two. Cutest little netbooks for surfing that World Wide Web.”
That would teach me to judge a shade by her hairstyle.
“Thanks, Doris.” Her faded form had sharpened at the edges while we’d talked. How long had she been asking “Can I help you?” and getting no answer? I made a point of telling her, “You’ve been a real help.”
She