Credit cards. Health card. Driver’s license…His eyes widened. If forced to guess, he’d have said Dr. Rebik was in his mid to late sixties.
According to his driver’s license, he was thirty-eight.
And he looked worse than his picture.
* * *
“I was right.”
“I know.”
“You were wrong.”
“Yeah. I got that.”
“There’s a song, you know. When I’m right and you’re wrong.”
Dean stopped pacing long enough to glare at the cat. “Don’t sing it.”
Austin sat down on the dining room table, stuck a foot in the air, and began washing his butt.
“Very subtle.” The dining room was exactly fourteen paces long. Provided he shortened the last step. “What do we do now?”
“You mean now that you admit I’m right?”
“Yes!”
“Well, we have to stop her. She’s sucking your life force out and what’s to say she won’t get tired of waiting for Claire and start sucking harder.”
“Lance said he knew how to stop her.”
“Which would be relevant if Lance wasn’t off with Claire.”
“Can we use the elevator on her?”
Austin sat up and shook his head. “It’s a little obvious. I suspect she’d sense it. What are you doing?”
Dean paused in the middle of crumpling up a sheet of newspaper. “I’m going to clean the windows. It’s what I do when I need to think.”
The two huge windows in the dining room were already spotless, but he sprayed them with a vinegar-and-water solution and began to rub.
“That’s a very annoying noise.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re not going to stop, are you?”
“No.”
When the paper was wet, he tossed it into the garbage and reached for another sheet. As he pulled it off the early edition, Austin’s paw snaked out and smacked it back down.
“There’s our answer!”
Dean scanned the headlines and frowned. “The waterfront renewal project?”
“No. The life-sized stone statue found at the mall!”
“The mall?”
“The very one! And you know what a life-sized stone statue means.”
“Bad garden art?”
“Basilisk! We go to the mall. We capture it. We turn Meryat to stone!”
“Claire…”
“You want Claire coming home to find Meryat waiting for her.”
No. He didn’t. “How do we capture a basilisk without turning to stone ourselves?”
Austin stared up at him in disbelief. “Do I have to think of everything?”
TWELVE
WHILE KEEPERS SPENT pretty much their entire lives fighting to keep the world safe, they didn’t usually get involved in actual fighting of the hand-to-hand, teeth-to-arm, knees-to-groin variety. And no matter how many Saturday afternoons got wasted watching badly dubbed kung fu movies, it didn’t help.
Diana realized this about ten seconds into the fight. She couldn’t reach the possibilities, she’d lost her prepared defenses, and she had no idea how to disable her opponents with a shopping cart. Not that there was a shopping cart handy.
Running, while the intelligent response, had got them exactly seven paces closer to the throne before two of the giant bugs—moving in that creepy, skittery, fast way that giant bugs had laid claim to since the old black-and-white movie days—had cut them off. Diving out of the way of a flailing forearm, or foreleg, or sixleg or whatever it was called on a bug, Diana smacked her head against the floor and, just for an instant, heard the voice of Ms. McBride, her last biology teacher.
“…size to mass ratio…”
Yeah. That was helpful.
Fortunately, her belief that the meat-minds were too clumsy to simultaneously walk and breathe made them an avoidable threat for the most part. The bugs were the problem. Just as the bugs had been the problem in the access corridor.
“Diana, are you listening?”
Apparently not.
She caught a quick glimpse of Kris going up and over a meat-mind, her black hightops digging into knees, thighs, hips, chest, and shoulders like they were part of her own personal jungle gym. As the mall elf leaped clear, the pursuing bug knocked the meat-mind ass over tip and got itself tangled in the sudden barricade of flailing arms and legs. Diana wasted a moment imagining what Kris could do with a shopping cart, then, at the last possible instant, dropped flat and slid under a descending carapace.
And let’s hear it for polished marble floors! she noted as her slide put her considerably closer to the wand. She could see it, lying all pink and plastic on the steps of the throne, but she couldn’t…quite…reach…
The bug’s leg caught her a glancing blow, skidding her a couple of meters in the wrong direction.
“This will be on the final exam.”
What will?
She’d written her final biology exam only ten days ago. You’d think I’d remember more of it. Which was either a scathing indictment of the public school system, or she should start worrying about her short-term memory.
Curved, swordlike mandibles cut through the back of her sweater and hoisted her onto her feet.
Mandibles. Maxillae. Labium or lower lip.
Her final exam’d had an entire section on bugs. Class Insecta. A useless spewing of information she assumed she’d never need again—her present situation having been unanticipated at the time. Evidently, a little shortsighted of her.
Insects. Nearly a million known species.
Every kind of land environment supports a flourishing insect population.
“So, Ms. McBride, if bugs are so great, how come they aren’t taking over the world like in them old movies?”
Diana smiled and mentally thanked Daryl Mills. The bug holding her shuddered as its exoskeleton cracked in a dozen places with a sound like cheap wineglasses hitting a concrete floor. She jumped clear as it collapsed under its own weight. Most of a sperm whale’s weight was supported by water. Elephants had evolved massive bones and muscles to deal with their bulk. Size/mass ratio.
Giant bugs were impossible.
So there.
The sound of breaking glass filled the throne room and pieces of chitin buzzed around like shrapnel. The Shadowlord shrieked like a hockey mom after a bad call.
Three steps and she’d be at the dais. Up two stairs and she’d have the wand. One moment after that, it would all be over but the fat lady singing. Whatever that meant.
Three steps and…
Something caught her between the shoulder blades and she went down, hard.
Epicuticle, she thought muzzily as it bounced and landed about two centimeters
