Graves' end

his finger until the bone clicked against Lia’s magic field… even as the mote sailed lazily on toward whatever corner it would finally fetch up in.

“Hmmm.”

It was only then that he noticed the coat he’d tossed aside was lying on the floor, well outside his established circle.

Graves thought about this. Thought hard. He looked up at the glass on the shelf, wondering if he might be able to knock it off.

It would take a little experimentation to find out.

He took off his hat and moved it toward the barrier. The felt brim crumpled against empty air at exactly the point he expected, the crown bunching up into his bony hand.

He pulled it back, then tossed it gently, like a kid flying an overturned pie tin. It sailed easily outside the barrier this time around, now that he wasn’t in contact with it.

“Well all right,” Graves said. If he threw hard enough, he might have a chance at hitting Lia’s voodoo waterglass. He bent to retrieve the hat, but his forehead and hands clinked against the magic boundary once again.

The hat, he understood in dismay, was out of reach, and he had nothing else to throw.

He sagged against the unseen barrier in defeat. “Coulda planned that out better, couldn’t I?” he muttered.

Chapter Fifteen

An hour after dark, Lia and Hannah sat sipping pinot noir under the stars, surrounded by the Yard’s dense, potted wilderness while they lounged around on last season’s unsold garden chairs. They had citronella candles burning for light (and irony, considering the bugwomen they were trying to repel). The music was turned down to a whisper, though prowling imaginals would, thanks to Lia’s efforts, still perceive a full-volume blare. Tom was curled up nearby, catnapping.

Lia had her laptop open with a number of IM windows displayed on the screen. A collection of internet pervs addressed her variously as Cammie, Chloe, Zoe, Lisa, and Mia. She paid them little mind, typing just enough to keep them going. Which wasn’t much, as the men on the other sides of the message windows needed just a touch of believably female participation to fill in the gaps in their fantasies.

All Lia needed out of them was to be called by the wrong name.

She had the branch she’d torn down earlier propped up next to her chair. She was still prepared for the worst, but she felt far more relaxed now that she knew Hannah, at least, would be safe here until morning.

The rest of the otherworlders must have known the Ant was gone, but they couldn’t know if she’d been destroyed, captured, or if she’d run off of her own accord. The deflective eyes and other wards had neatly concealed the Tzitzimitl’s demise, and they were still preventing the rest of the entities from seeing anything that happened within the fence’s perimeter. The party the otherworlders thought was going on inside the compound still seemed loud and lively.

Lia could imagine the remaining Tzitzimime stalking the streets and scratching their freakish heads, although she didn’t send herself back out to observe them. Better to lay low, at this point. And besides, she knew Black Tom was out there keeping watch around the edges of things, even if his catbody seemed to be asleep beside her.

Hannah leaned back in her chair and looked up at the bright splash of stars overhead. “So, where are we supposed to sleep tonight?” she asked. And then, after a pause, “Are we supposed to sleep tonight?”

Lia looked over. She was feeling better by now, over the shock of Hannah’s close call, soothed by the wine and the quiet. She decided she liked having Han out here for company. Lia tended to protect the Yard like a secret, and therefore rarely entertained. Hannah may have owned the place on paper, but after dark, the territory still belonged to Lia and her Tom. This change of pace was nice, though. Cozy and convivial, in an eye-of-the-hurricane sort of way.

“I was thinking right here, campout-style, if you want,” she said in belated response to Hannah’s query about the sleeping arrangements. “I’ve got sleeping bags, I’ve just gotta go down below to get them.”

“Is it… you know, safe? To go to sleep?”

“Sure,” Lia said. “Everything’s holding. And I can keep an eye on things from my dreams.”

“Can you really?” Hannah seemed charmed by the idea.

Lia nodded, sipping her wine and smiling. She liked the odd combination of candle-and-computerlight. It seemed both warm and ice-cold at the same time.

“That’s amazing,” Hannah said.

“Just something I learned. You could learn too, if you wanted.”

Hannah snorted at the idea. “Yeah, I can see the marquee now: ‘Hannah Potter and the Angry Ant…’” She shook her head and smiled wistfully. “How weird that that’s really my name, though, huh? Like Harry’s long-lost aunt or something.”

Lia grinned back. “That’s a synchronicity,” she told her. “You should take it as a sign.”

Hannah laughed again, but shook her head. “I could never be like you,” she said quietly, seeming to consider her young friend in a brand new light. “You saved my life tonight, I think.”

Lia blushed. “That necklace did,” she said. “Your name did. The palindrome. Just lucky, is all.”

“But you gave me that necklace!” Hannah said. “You made it for me, years ago.”

“Yeah, that’s right, I did, didn’t I?” Lia teased, waggling her fingers in a mesmeric manner. “All part of my master plan.”

“See, now, I can’t even tell if you’re kidding or not.”

“I am,” Lia said. “But that’s still sort of the way these things work, sometimes.”

“Oh.” Hannah seemed unsure of how she wanted to feel about that piece of information. “Well… what about whatsisname, then, down in your place? Dexter?”

Lia waved off the question and refilled her wineglass. “Let’s not worry about that right now,” she said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

Graves’ first throw bounced off the waterglass on the shelf with a musical clink, down in the old bomb shelter. The glass resounded with a deeper note in response to his second bullseye, something more like a clank, but the force of the hit only tipped the inverted tumbler back on the shelf for an instant, failing to overturn it.

His third throw went ludicrously wide, knocking some other, untargeted knickknack right off Lia’s crowded shelf. He didn’t know what it’d been, hadn’t been looking at it, and couldn’t even hope to guess at the object’s original form after it crashed to the concrete floor and exploded into a thousand ceramic shards. Graves cringed, but he worked yet another small bone loose from his left hand and threw again, harder still. So hard that momentum unbalanced him and his full-body, forward-hopping follow-through left him staring down at the floor between his feet by the time he caught himself against the transparent magical barrier. He heard rather than saw his knucklebone hit the symbolic dome that kept the barrier in place (it made a dull clunk against the glass), and the force field scraped a few encouraging inches across the floor under his weight.

He looked up, his hopes on the rise, but they crested and plummeted when he saw that the impact had merely driven the overturned waterglass further in amongst the books behind it. It was socked in there but good, now, nestled into a pocket of cushioning paper on three sides.

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” Graves yelled in frustration. His tiny handbones weren’t cutting it, weight-wise, and he was almost down to throwing toes. “All right, nuts to this.”

He reached down and detached a kneecap. His lower leg promptly fell off, but he ignored it. One problem at a time. Balancing like a flamingo, he hefted the weighty patella in the still-assembled palm of his bony right hand, wound up, and fired off his most forceful fastball.

This time he nailed it. The glass broke and crumpled inward with a satisfying crunch. Graves threw his arms