Episode Three: Her Ladyship: Scene 21

Kanesha was the first to act. She stepped on the man’s foot, grinding her high heel into him with an unpleasant sound. That caused me to roll out from under table and to my feet. Two of the others were in hand to hand with Her Ladyship’s bodyguards, and there was only one more.

Who was pointing a gun at me. No doubt I was the only target not too close to one of his own people. I hesitated not at all…I rushed him.

The gun went off, but it went over my head as I dropped to roll into his feet. He went down – unfortunately landing on top of me, but that only put me in a good position to get my fist into his solar plexus. I rolled him off myself. “Is that all of them?”

Her Ladyship was standing with grace. She nodded. I didn’t ask what the spell was, but now I thought it had to be something subtle.

A luck spell, maybe? “You know,” she said as she swept over to me. “You could have set me up to get killed.”

“And proved people right about me? I’d never get rid of your people if I did that.” Besides, I wasn’t going to kill an old lady. If I could. Not knowing how powerful she was, I wasn’t making that judgment. Sure, I could take her physically, but…

And, of course, that was when the cops pretty much sauntered in to do clean up. Oddly, they didn’t ask too many probing questions. If it was a luck spell, it was still in effect. “Truce?” I asked her as one of her bodyguards helped her to her car.

She nodded. “Truce.”

I turned to Kanesha. “Well, that was exciting. I can’t believe we randomly got held up.”

“Might not have been random.” Kanesha waited to finish until Her Ladyship was in the car and leaving. “I think she set us up.”

“To see which way I’d jump? It does seem odd that they were so easy to take down.”

Kanesha nodded.

“She was using magic.”

“Or maybe it was a recipe for goulash.”

At that, I laughed. “I think it’s borscht. That that’s a reference to. I don’t know. Something about swearing in Russian.”

Her grin broadened. “Given we didn’t exactly get much afternoon tea, how about we go somewhere and pick up some real food on Thea’s credit card?”

I wasn’t going to argue. I was, though, going to stay alert the entire way. I let Kanesha choose and she took us to a deli sandwich place. Ordered real subs with lots of toppings on them to deal with the memory of those entirely too neat little sandwiches.

I supposed they were a British thing too, but I preferred my sandwiches big and with lots of stuff in them.

Going native?

That thought was stray and I shook my head. It evaporated, but not quite from memory.

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