The clown leaned forward in his chair and glared at us. “Then whose job is it?”
“There’s got to be someone else,” said Enoch. “People who are better equipped, who’ve trained for this sort of thing …”
“The first thing the corrupted did three weeks ago was attack the Peculiar Home Guard. In less than a day, they were scattered to the four winds. With them gone, and now our ymbrynes, who does the defense of peculiardom fall to, eh? People like you and me, that’s who.” The clown threw down his turkey leg. “You cowards disgust me. I just lost my appetite.”
“They are tired, had long journey,” said the folding man. “Give them break.”
The clown waved his finger in the air like a schoolmarm. “Uh-uh. Nobody rides for free. I don’t care if you’re here for an hour or a month, as long as you’re here, you’ve got to be willing to fight. Now, you’re a scrawny- looking bunch, but you’re peculiar, so I know you’ve all got hidden talents. Show me what you can do!”
He got up and moved toward Enoch, one arm extended like he was going to search Enoch’s pockets for his peculiar ability. “You there,” he said. “Do your thing!”
“I’ll need a dead person in order to demonstrate,” Enoch said.
“That could be you, if you so much as lay one finger on me.”
The clown rerouted himself toward Emma. “Then how about you, sweetheart,” he said, and Emma held a particular finger up and made a flame dance atop it like a birthday candle. The clown laughed and said, “Sense of humor! I like that,” and moved on to the blind brothers.
“They’re connected in the head,” said Melina, putting herself between the clown and the brothers. “They can see with their ears, and always know what the other’s thinking.”
The clown clapped his hands. “Finally, something useful! They’ll be our lookouts—put one in the carnival and keep the other here. If anything goes wrong out there, we’ll know right away!”
He pushed past Melina. The brothers shied away from him.
“You can’t separate them!” said Melina. “Joel-and-Peter don’t like being apart.”
“And I don’t like being hunted by invisible corpse beasts,” said the clown, and he began to pry the older brother from the younger. The boys locked arms and moaned loudly, their tongues clicking and eyes rolling wildly in their heads. I was about to intervene when the brothers came apart and let out a doubled scream so loud and piercing I feared my head would break. The dishes on the table shattered, everyone ducked and clapped their hands over their ears, and I thought I could hear, from the frozen floors below, cracks spidering through the ice.
As the echo faded, Joel-and-Peter clutched each other on the floor, shaking.
“See what you did!” Melina shouted at the clown.
