The Courtship of Julian St. Albans (39 page)

Finally Julian emerged, looking refreshed and
smiling. There was an amplification spell on the balcony at the top of the
stairs, and Julian stepped into it with a smile. “Thank you all for coming
to celebrate my Courtship with me, and participate in my Masquerade,” he
said, saluting them with his own drink.

They toasted back as a crowd, everyone taking
at least a sip, then going quiet as they waited for the news.

“I have decided to take
as my master-husband,” said Julian.

Horace chirped, turned, and
bit him on the ear.

Julian’s face underwent an odd transformation
from the warm, cheerful smile through confusion to pain, almost in slow-motion.
“Ow! I, oh. Oh! I, er, I’ve decided to take Alex Benedict,” finished
Julian.

Alex swallowed, handed off his glass to whoever
was nearby to take it, and stepped up to the bottom of the stairs.

That was, of course, when
chaos descended.

CHAPTER
29

In Which Battles Are Fought

Fog rolled out, presumably from Duckworth, to
envelop the entire ballroom and creep up the stairs toward Julian. “We’ve
got to keep Julian safe,” said Alex.

“We’ve got to keep
you
safe first, and we can’t see a
thing,” said James.

“Right,” said Alex. “Let me try
something.” He felt around until he was literally holding onto James’
pocket, so there was no question of his location. Then he firmly rapped his
cane on the marble floor to ground himself, and started humming at any sources
of magical light in the place, including his own costume. He hummed brightness
to them, and clarity, and watched as objects around him began to glow, lighting
up the fog like beacons.

“You are such a target right
now,” said Jacques irritably.

“Right, sorry,” said Alex, whistling
his own headdress down, then resuming his little duet with the other light
sources in the room. The ceiling lights were especially receptive, since the
ideas of bright and clear were already part of their makeup, though Alex could
see the glow from Chudleigh’s sun off to one side of the ballroom, as well as
many smaller lights here and there that were all together starting to burn off
the fog.

Alex felt himself tugged back and a whisper of,
“Stairs,” warned him to step up, but he kept humming, softly but
surely, trying to dispel the fog so they could see the inevitable attack when
it came.

Alex was also listening as best he could, but
the fog muffled his magical senses as well as physical, and the plethora of
magic in the room made the perfect camouflage. It wasn’t until they got his
head above the worst of it that he saw the cleverness of their attack. In
addition to the fog, there were dozens of mechanical spiders spinning their way
down from the high ceiling where they’d likely been waiting all evening, hidden
among the decorations.

“We’ve got to get to Julian,” said
Alex, and now he was the one tugging them along. The fog was reaching tendrils
up toward the balcony and at least one of the spiders was about to land in
Julian’s branches, the tall costume a disadvantage now that they were being
attacked from above.

“We’ll back you up,” said James, and
Alex’s ears popped long enough to hear the sounds of the crowd panicking below,
giving Willoughby and Duckworth the perfect opportunity to escape.

“I hope someone’s backing them up,”
said Alex darkly. He ran up the rest of the stairs and toward Julian, hearing
the swish-clang behind him of at least one of those wicked spiders meeting a
swift end. A spider had latched onto the branches and was creeping toward
Julian’s face while the young man worked at the buttons of his coat.

Alex’s heart leapt just as the spider did, and
he was shocked when Horace launched himself out of the branches to knock the
spider away and over the balcony into the fog.

Julian slipped out of his coat and then came to
hug Alex tightly. “I almost said Willoughby,” he said softly.
“Horace saved me twice.”

James and Jacques crowded in behind them,
circling around the two of them on the small balcony. Most of the spiders had
stopped descending out over the crowd and were climbing back up their own
threads to the ceiling, and then toward their little oasis of peace.

“Horace will be
fine,” said Alex. “I can fix anything that breaks.”

“We need to stop this at the source,”
said James. More and more of the spiders were converging on their location, and
the two Guardians could only cover so many fronts. They were mostly using
swords, though James had a gun in one hand and was using it to shoot some of
the spiders that were hanging just out of reach, waiting for the four of them
to try to move off the balcony.

“Duckworth made them,” said Alex,
“but I’d bet anything he’s controlling the fog while Willoughby takes care
of the spiders.”

The fog was thickening below them, surging at
the balcony railings, repelled for the moment by the same charm that prevented
clumsy partygoers from toppling over them. Alex wasn’t sure what the fog was
going to do once it got to them, but he had a feeling its purpose wasn’t just
to blind and befuddle.

“We need to get out of here,” said
Jacques, evidently coming to the same conclusion. “Where does this
mezzanine go?”

“Off to the other side there’s the little
room where Emmy and I rested,” said Julian, “but it’s a dead end, I
don’t know what’s to the right.”

“To the right it is,” said James, and
he began clearing a path in that direction while Jacques got out his own gun
and started shooting some of the spiders off in the distance. Alex started
humming again, pulling Julian close to him and adding a bit of oomph to both
Julian’s Keep-Safe charm and Alex’s own protective charm. He kept an eye out on
the floor and managed to squash one spider that had climbed up onto the balcony
from below, the construct sneaking through the safety wards where the fog was
thwarted.

As they got out of the little balcony area and
onto the main mezzanine, there were more spiders, and the fog had worked its
way up the stairs, masking their progress. Alex used his cane to knock one away
from James’ ankle, but he was starting to really wonder how many of these they
could cope with. He hummed again, trying to get the lights to brighten, trying
to see if Horace was okay, but mostly he was just trying not to completely
panic.

Julian seemed to have achieved a state of numb
calm, and looked terribly vulnerable with no weapon or even a jacket. The
spiders had swarmed over his discarded costume and then ignored it when it
proved to be empty. Alex pulled Julian in close to his side, too busy trying to
keep the light spell building to say anything.

When Alex felt a weight settle onto his
shoulder, he nearly bashed it with his cane before a familiar voice said,
“Oi! You don’t want to be doin’ that, now.”

“Con, what are doing here?” said
Alex, though he knew the little fae could take care of himself well enough. Not
that Alex could even see him at the moment.

“I owes ye a third bit of info, and I
noticed that them there spiders don’t go much near yon fountain boy an’ his
running water,” said Con, voice smug. “But you kin wait on yon bauble
until you’re well again, you’re running on empty.”

“Tell me about it,” said Alex,
suddenly acutely aware of his own dwindling magical reserves. “You’re a
lifesaver, Con.”

“A fairy always pays
his debts,” said Con, and the weight vanished.

Alex changed his tune to a spell any first-year
magic student could do and conjured a nice, smoky little bit of fire right up
by the sprinkler above them. He spread a few more throughout the hall, just in
case the system was segregated, and it didn’t take long before the whole place
and all the expensively rented or borrowed costumes were deluged with waves of
conjured water, clean and clear but very thorough.

The spider constructs started to stutter in
their movements, the ones still hanging from the ceiling failing first as they
dropped to the floor with clatters that echoed strangely in the fog. The ones
crawling up over the balcony tried to retreat beneath it, but Alex put a little
fire there, too, and the spells directed a nice wash of water over them.
Running water could disrupt magic, and Alex had to keep re-lighting his little
fires as they went out, but the effort paid off. The spiders began to literally
fall apart, too hastily constructed for the spells to be properly anchored in
the metal or, apparently, for the metal body parts to be attached with anything
but magic.

“I hate getting my uniform wet and I still
adore you,” said Jacques, still tugging them toward the door and their
presumed escape.

“My cleaner can fix it,” said Alex,
bashing a few more spiders with his cane. These crumbled into parts when he hit
them instead of rolling away and re-gathering their strength as before.

“I hope so, these are dry clean
only,” said James. The fog, far from being dispelled by the water, was
getting closer, and James was doing something with his Guardian badge to make
it generate light.

“I’ll get the door,” said Julian,
darting forward out of Alex’s grip before Alex could protest.

“I’ll get you,” said Willoughby,
trying to tug Julian through the now-open doorway. “I’ll have you no
matter how you try to thwart me, my little consort.”

Julian had hooked his hand in Alex’s jacket
pocket much as Alex had earlier with James, and Alex felt a pure surge of love
for his Guardian as he said to Julian, “Reach in.”

“He’s not magical enough to resist the fog
and my mask both,” said Willoughby, irritated. Julian was struggling
against himself as much as Willoughby, trying to pull away, drop his gaze, and
resist the spell.

Alex grinned as Julian slipped his hand deeper
into Alex’s pocket. “You can do it,” he said, glad to see Willoughby
was still interpreting it as directions to resist the man’s spell.

Julian froze for a moment, all his struggles
turned to stillness before his hand moved inside Alex’s pocket. “I’m not
yours,” said Julian, pulling Jacques’ knife out and plunging it into
Willoughby’s side.

Alex pulled Julian away, and James took over,
knocking the man out and stripping off his mask, which Alex helpfully crushed
under one bespelled shoe. Jacques guarded the mezzanine side of their little
group, but the spiders seemed to have fallen completely with their master.

“There’s still Duckworth,” said Alex,
watching as the fog thickened even more. Alex whistled up his headdress, and
the glow of it cleared things enough that Alex heard a yell from the stairs
that sounded familiar. “Up here!” he yelled back.

“Target!” said
James, sounding supremely annoyed.

“Benedict, where in the blazes are
you!” came the voice again, more clearly the bellowing of one Agent
Smedley.

“We have Willoughby,
get Duckworth!” yelled Alex back.

A moment later, Smedley’s bulk took shape in
the fog, flanked by a pair of the dress-uniformed police officers who’d been
providing security tonight. “Where is he?” asked Smedley. “All
those spider-things just fell apart.”

“A little faerie told me they were
vulnerable to running water,” said Alex smugly.

The two officers were already following Julian,
who was looking white as a sheet, but led them to the bleeding, unconscious
Willoughby with Jacques’ dagger still buried in his side. “He’ll need an
ambulance, the Guardians did a number on him,” said one of the officers.

“Lots of people here will get to go
first,” said Smedley, “but I’ll make sure it’s noted.” He turned
to Alex and the two Guardians, who were still on alert but looking quite
pleased to no longer be outnumbered and cornered. “Can you take these two
into the consort’s little powder room and keep them both safe?”

“We can,” said
James, grabbing one of Alex’s elbows.

“We will,” said
Jacques, grabbing one of Julian’s.

Alex was still dubious about the fog, something
bothering him about the way it had been repelled by the anti-falling spells
when Horace and the spiders went right through them. Still, it was thinner by
the other door, and hadn’t penetrated the little conference room at all, so who
was he to argue. The room was even dry and spider-free.

“I don’t suppose you know a good drying
spell,” said Julian, as Alex once again allowed his headdress to recede,
hoping that was the last time tonight he’d be called upon to wear the stupid
thing up.

Alex pulled off his mask and sat, then nodded.
“I do, but I’m going to have to borrow a bit of magic from each of you to
do it, because I’m about done.”

Julian put his hand trustingly into Alex’s
outstretched one, and it was easy enough to whistle the water in their clothes
into vapour, making the room a bit steamy. He did each Guardian as well, then
sat back and closed his eyes with a sigh.

“Are you angry with
me?” asked Julian worriedly.

“What? No, what would I
be mad about?” said Alex, confused.

Julian blushed. “Well,
we are engaged now.”

Alex laughed. “That is not something to be
upset about, Julian, I told you I wanted to win you and I meant it.” He
opened his eyes, intending to lean forward and give Julian a kiss, but then his
brows furrowed. “Why’s it so misty in here?”

“I thought that was
your steam-spell,” said James.

“That ought to have dissipated by
now,” said Alex, trying to dredge up one more bit of energy to fight.
“This is the fog, look.” He was just so tired, and it would be so
easy to rest right here.

“It’s coming in under the door,” said
Jacques. He pulled down one of the tapestries and tried to stuff it along the
crack, but the fog just kept on coming.

“How does it even know where we are?”
said Julian, sounding as tired as Alex felt.

“That’s the question, isn’t it, little
fox?” said an annoyingly familiar voice. “How do I know where you
are, how can I keep targeting everyone you love, how will it all turn
out?”