chicken. A dragonfly screen flickered in the grass. The boy, Oliver, was lying facedown in the gravel.
Antigone’s cheek was pressed into the red carpet. She’d put a large man’s foot on her head to disguise herself, but there hadn’t been much need. The place was strewn with bodies. Young, old, men, women, children, monks. Under tables, on tables, tangled up in tablecloths, buried beneath food, shattered china, and the limbs of dining partners.
So many people and so much silence. Each breath felt like a sneeze in church. The Quick Water had worked. She’d seen the horrible man coming with his people, and she’d shoved Dennis down and whispered at Jax. He hadn’t stopped. Not at first. Not until the doors had moved and the two green men had stepped aside for the monster in the bright white suit beneath the soiled lab coat. She stopped her breath and felt her heart quicken.
The cloak. She hoped Nolan was right.
A small crowd had entered behind Phoenix. Don’t look closely, she thought. Don’t, don’t, don’t.
The bodies closest to the kitchen were all facedown. The bodies closest to the kitchen were all foaming at the mouth.
The monster in the white coat moved farther into the room, prodding the unconscious dying, grinning from ear to ear.
Suddenly, he stopped and closed his eyes, lifting his face and raising his arms.
“Children of Brendan,” he said, falsely somber, “I pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed—”
He stopped, interrupted by a cough. Lowering his long arms, he squinted around the room. Nolan’s voice descended from the ceiling.
“ ‘My name is Edwin Harry Laughlin.’ ” Lilting, mocking. “ ‘I am sixteen years old and a recent Acolyte in the Order of Brendan, Ashtown. My father’s name is Harry Hamilton Laughlin. My mother’s name was Pansy. She died two years ago, after one of my father’s experiments.’ ”
Phoenix’s face purpled, and then paled quickly as he collected himself. “It seems we have a wit in the room,” he drawled. “Do show yourself now. Or how can I know in which direction to applaud?”
Antigone bit her lip, watching Phoenix’s men swivel and search. And then the two identical green men slid forward, creeping smoothly across the bodies like stalking wolves. Their nostrils were flared, and their eyes were on one of the heat vents just beneath the beamed ceiling.
“Shoot him,” Phoenix said.
The men drew guns, and a pair of fireballs corkscrewed toward the vent, exploding in the grate.
“Idiots!” Phoenix groaned. “I would prefer if you didn’t burn the place. Bullets! Use bullets. And your heads.”
The men tucked away their weapons and drew new ones — long-barreled revolvers. The beveled grate bent and puckered as they fired, and the smell of sulfur and gunpowder drifted through the room.
Antigone jerked at each report, but no one was watching. She could see Dennis breathing hard. Jax was inching forward, his jar tucked beneath his arm, dropper in hand. Antigone wanted to yell at him to stop moving. The men were right there. If any of them so much as glanced down, he’d be killed.
The firing stopped. All eyes were on the ruined grate. The silence was brief.
“ ‘My mother,’ ” Nolan said, “ ‘was the sort of sweet, empty-headed thing great men like my father can find themselves burdened with. There were even moments when I loved her. But I hate her Gypsy blood. I hate that it is in me. I want it out. I will get it out. My father tried, and he came close. I will succeed. At least, there are times when I think I will. I dream that I will. But my waking hours are spent in pain. My legs. My mind. Too many blood purifications. Too much electricity. I cannot sleep without nightmares, and when I wake, my bed is swamped with sweat.’ ”
Dr. Phoenix was a statue, his face bloodless. His eyes unfocused. “You, sir …,” he began, but his voice trailed away. His jaw clenched, pulsing. His chest heaved. He was panting now, rolling his head, clenching his fists. Antigone tensed and slid a little farther away. Nolan had wanted Phoenix angry, but why that would make him take off his coat, she didn’t understand.
And then, suddenly, the thin man with the black hair raised quivering hands to his shoulders. He tore off the stained white coat and threw it on the ground. His suit coat followed. Antigone blinked. The man’s hair was whitening. His nostrils flared, and his shoulders thickened, broadening. Huge hands balled into hairy melon fists. His legs thickened, shortening and bowing out.
Snarling, Phoenix — Mr. Ashes — leapt forward, scrambling over bodies, jerking the guns from his sons’ hands.
A gun fired, but not his. Flame flashed out of the vent, and Dr. Phoenix — Mr. Ashes — dropped to his knees. One of the twins fell. The other reached the wall. The firing shifted toward the door, into the crowd.
Yelping, leaving one of their own behind on the floor, the men flooded back into the hall.
Antigone saw Jax pinch two drops into the next mouth, roll over the body quickly, and wriggle on.
Dennis raised his head nervously and then scooched himself forward.
The coat was on the ground. Antigone puffed out her cheeks. It was her turn.
Antigone tucked her little bottle into her jacket pocket. She had a gun in the other, but guns were everywhere. Sliding slowly over a drooling monk, still gripping her Quick Water, she braced herself and prepared to run.
Phoenix rose to his feet, and his back rippled beneath his shirt as he looked up at the vent. Dropping his guns, he splayed and flexed huge fingers. His voice was molasses-thick and just as slow. “I’m not that easy to kill, friend.”
“You and me both,” said the voice of Nolan. “But the green one there looks hurt.”
Phoenix moved like a gorilla, knuckling off the ground as he rushed toward the wall beneath the vent. Behind him, one of the wounded twins struggled to his feet. The other stepped out of his way.
Phoenix leapt at the wall and two wrecking-ball fists crashed through the plaster. Leaving his arms in the holes, he pulled himself up off the floor. One fist at a time, he punched grips in the plaster as he climbed.
Antigone’s eyes locked on the rumpled white coat. She should have gone already. What was she waiting for? Jax was nodding at her. Dennis, peering through bodies, widened his eyes meaningfully. She had to be fast. Faster than she had ever been in her life.
One of the bodies near the kitchen door moaned loudly, coming to. Another one rolled onto its side. A third struggled to sit up. She’d waited too long. Phoenix’s men were peering back in from the hall.
“Go!” Dennis yelled. “Run!”
Antigone scrambled to her feet. Three men jumped forward through the door. Nolan’s gun cracked again and they jumped back. Both twins turned.
Antigone’s knees were bouncing high. Running through the bodies was like running through Cyrus’s pool of tires — tripping, slipping, bouncing off backs, stepping on wrists. Her eyes searched for empty spots of floor and bounced back up to the coat. Jax was high-stepping toward the kitchen. Dennis lagged behind him.
The twins were hesitating, picking their prey from among three runners. The coat was rumpled on the floor halfway between Antigone and the worried crowd in the doorway. Thirty feet. Fifteen.
She heard Phoenix crash back off the wall behind her. Nolan was firing again, trying to cover her.
Antigone slid across a tangle of teenage limbs in white shirts and snatched the coat. Turning toward the kitchen door, she ran like a dog in drifted snow, leaping bodies, popcorning up and down wherever her feet could find the floor. She was the only real target now. She was racing two bleeding green men with golden eyes.
The coat flapped behind her like a flag.
Guns were cracking all around. A bullet ripped through her short hair, and a pair of fireballs swirled over her head and exploded on the wall. Phoenix was roaring. Nolan was yelling. Jax and Dennis were shouting over their shoulders. They reached the door and burst through in front of her.
One of the lean twins was faster than the other. He dove, snagging her ankle.
Twisting at top speed, she fell backward through the kitchen door, slammed onto the floor, and slid headfirst into the island of still-flaming burners.
The kitchen was all stench and burnt food and groaning bodies. Gunner was sitting up with his head in his hands. Jax was sweeping pots off the burners and shouting something. Dennis had tripped over little Hillary Drake and tumbled beneath a table.
Antigone jumped to her feet, dropped her Quick Water on the floor, and jerked her small revolver from her
