Fugitives of Chaos

It was the matter-of-fact way he said that, that made us all pause and look at each other, and remember what a serious business we were involved in.

I bit my lip. 'Okay, fine. Here is my thinking so far: We can't just run away. Since they have powers like Quentin's or Vanity's, they could just find us again, by magic. The moment Boggin knew we were making a break, he sent his people to guard the borders and, if he is smart, to guard the green table in his office, the big green table in a warehouse somewhere that he stole from Mestor…'

Vanity said, 'Who is Mestor?'

'… Drinkwater. And Boggin would protect the safe in the Great Hall.'

Colin chimed in, 'Or booby-trap it.'

'Since each power has one that cancels out another, he would put Mr. Glum to the South, to stop me; Dr. Fell to the North, to stop Quentin; Mrs. Wren to the West, and Miss Daw to the East. Since Wren left her position to go help Fell when they discovered we were up North, here, West, is the safest spot.

And we do not need to go East, because Victor got his powers back anyway, including some he did not have before.'

Victor shook his head. 'Don't overestimate me.'

I said, 'You beat Dr. Fell!'

'I'm sorry I didn't make this clear before. All I was do-ing was intercepting and copying the information packages Dr. Fell was sending out to control his nanites, and using his nanites to produce certain preprogrammed effects. During the fight, I had the creature Amelia put in my bloodstream operating to block his attempts to invade my nervous system. Since my security firewall was a living entity with free will, Fell wasn't able to come up with an attack combination. The creature was also the one who enabled me to intercept Fell's control codes, since it originally was made from him, and was tapped into his frequencies and ciphers. In effect, I had Fell's codebook in my hands during the fight. I would not be able to defeat another Cyclopes.'

Vanity said, 'But you remember at least as much of your powers as we had before they erased our brains, right? All Amelia meant was that we don't need to go East.'

I hugged myself. It was feeling colder. 'We can pause here to see if Colin can remember how to turn his powers on. Then we go straight to the Great Hall and try to break into that safe.

'I tried to blackmail ap Cymru into giving us plane tickets to Rome; it did not work, but he may have gotten them anyway. I have a key in my pocket that opens a bus locker in Waterside Street in Abertwyi.

He also said he would get us passports and ID papers. We'll take the ID, but the airplane tickets are just a red herring. While they are looking for us in Rome, we take a boat out to sea. Once we are far away, we have Vanity call her magic boat, which can bring us anywhere in the world in one day. More than one world. There are other dimensions, or something.'

Quentin said, 'We can't steal a boat. It would make us vulnerable to a curse. We have to be careful about that.'

Victor said, 'I can borrow Lily's motorboat.'

Vanity said, 'I have a magic boat? When did I get a magic boat? What does it look like?'

Colin said, 'Blackmail… who? Are we talking about Taffy? Boggin's henchman? The guy who hangs out here and does not seem to have a job, except for giving cigarettes and porn magazines to minors?'

I nodded. 'He is actually a she, a goddess named Lav-erna, the queen of all fraud. She works for Lord Hermes, Trismegistus, who leads one of the factions of the Olympians, who fought a civil war, but were helping our side, except that I had a dream from your dad—I mean Morpheus—telling me we couldn't trust him. He was in our common room during the meeting of…'

Colin interrupted. 'Does Victor, even with his normal memory back, does he know any of this backstory stuff you are telling us now?'

Victor shook his head.

Colin wagged a finger in my face. 'No more talk about quitting as leader, then. Okay? If you try to resign again, I'll mutiny. Now, then! How do I get my powers back? What am I supposed to be able to do again?'

I said, 'Write love letters. And I saw you jump nearly thirty feet straight up once. And maybe anything else you want. Your power works on desire. You wish it; it happens.'

He closed his eyes, tilted back his head, spread his hands. 'I wish I had my powers!'

We all looked at him.

He opened one eye. 'Is something supposed to happen?'

I said, 'I don't know!'

He closed his eye again. 'I wish for a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich!' He held his hand up.

He wiggled his fingers. His hand stayed empty, of course.

He opened his eyes. 'Is this like one of those monkey's paw things, where my Aunt Petunia is going to die in a plane crash and leave me the money to buy a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich?'

I said, 'I think it has to be something you really, really want.'

He closed his eyes again, spread his legs, and put his arms out as if he were ready to catch a sandbag or something about to be dropped on him. 'Marilyn Monroe, as she was when she appeared in Seven Year Itch, naked from her bubble-bath, lonely, horny, and needing the warmth and comfort of an Irish schoolboy half her age! One, two, three… go! And she has her own birth control.'

Quentin said, 'You're not Irish.'

Colin muttered, 'I sure as hell am not English, thank God!'