Or, more accurately, someone.
Slashing through the undergrowth with a stick and a scowl was a long, horsey face under another floppy hat. The owner of the face stopped a yard off, taking in the burning forest, the flailing roots, the naked war mage and the screaming vamps. And me, sprawled over the partner I really hoped I hadn’t just killed. For a long time, he didn’t say anything. And then he sighed.
“Just like your mother,” he told me. “You really know how to make an entrance.”
Chapter Nine
The drizzle condensed into a driving rain on the way to the house, so conversation was kept to a minimum. Although I did protest when the massive red creature slung an unconscious Pritkin over one shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. And then again when Pritkin’s head, now soaking wet and dripping, was allowed to bang against the creature’s backside when it stood up.
“That thing will kill him!” I said, struggling to my feet.
But the man—our captor, Roger—didn’t seem to care. I decided to go with Roger, since no way was I calling him Dad. And I had to call him something.
“He’s a war mage. They’re almost impossible to kill.” He scowled. “Even on purpose.”
He took off into the underbrush. And since Big Red followed, I had no choice but to go, too. Thankfully, we must have gone most of the distance on our crazy ride, because a few minutes later, our host shoved open a side door on a pretty, pale blue cottage.
And Big Red slammed Pritkin down on a table, hard enough to rattle the surrounding shelves.
“I thought you said you weren’t trying to kill him!” I glared at Roger, who was shrugging out of his wet coat.
He shot me a disgruntled look. “Didn’t look like you needed the help.” And then he disappeared up a flight of stairs.
I bent over Pritkin, my heart in my throat. One day, that famous hard head of his wasn’t going to be hard enough. Maybe today, since it was oozing something all over the tabletop.
I couldn’t tell what, because Roger hadn’t turned on a light, and the room was mostly in shadow. A vague haze was filtering down the stairs, but it wasn’t enough to see by. Until my fumbling hand finally found a light switch on the wall, and a small fixture over the table sprang to life.
And showed me a puddle of dirty water, not blood.
I sat down abruptly, feeling faint.
A quick check showed me a lot of cuts and scrapes on the too-still body, but nothing that looked life-threatening. I took off the hoodie and wrapped it around him to preserve whatever modesty either of us had left, and noticed that my hands were shaking. A moment later, the trembling had spread throughout my body, making even sitting up difficult.
I wasn’t sure whether that was from worry about Pritkin, or from getting hit with a dozen or so little “toys” all at the same time, or from having an entire forest attack me. But my head suddenly seemed to think that it would feel better on my knees.
Like right now.
I flopped over, and then just stayed there, my body continuing its long-running demonstration on why I was not cut out for this crap.
For a few minutes, the only noise was my labored breathing and a clock ticking somewhere, annoyingly loud. And rain lashing the windows, because apparently I only visited Tony’s in lousy weather. And something making a tiny scrape, scrape, scrape sound.
Something close.
My head jerked up, and my heart leapt back to what was starting to feel like its new home, just behind my tonsils. But all I saw was dark. Maybe because the main source of light was almost on top of me.
But nothing lunged at me out of the gloom, and my eyes slowly adjusted. And sent back images of a typical kitchen, circa the 1960s, which I guess was the last time anybody had bothered to update this place. Across a rectangular space was a lime trifecta of stove, fridge, and sink, a square window framed by white curtains, and a door leading into an adjacent room.
And a robot slumped on a chair, poking itself in the eye.
I froze.
It was the one with acid green potion bombs poking out of its chest like buboes on a plague victim. And while I wasn’t clear on much right now, I was very, very clear on one thing: I did not want to find out what those bombs did. I was suddenly afraid to move, not knowing what it might view as a threat.
Minutes passed. The clock, a big wooden cuckoo by the door, continued to tick. The rain continued to beat against the windows. And the robot continued to scratch at its eye, only I couldn’t figure out what it was—
Oh.
Like the Tin Man with his floppy garden sack, and Big Red, whose shoulders terminated in nothing but a small knob, this one didn’t have a proper head. As if whoever had designed them had just lost interest above the collar. But somebody else had decided that wouldn’t do, and had stuffed a white plastic bucket partly down the neck hole.
That might not have been so bad, since at least it had been formed into vaguely the right shape. And its cheerful, prosaic surface was less Children of the Corn than Tin Man’s. But then somebody had had to go and ruin it.
By gluing a pair of false eyelashes to the front.
For a moment, I just stared.
They were thick and black and droopy, like two dispirited spiders, and one had slid halfway down what I guess you’d have to call the cheek, maybe because eyelash glue was designed to stick to other eyelashes, not to shiny plastic. This seemed to bother the . . . whatever it was . . . which kept poking at it, trying to slide it back into place. But despite having nice, robotic-looking hands instead of gardening shears, it didn’t appear to be making much progress.
I watched it for a while, blankly, a not-unpleasant white noise buzzing in my ears. And then I decided that maybe I just wouldn’t think at all for a while. My brain obviously wasn’t up to it, and zoning out was sounding really good right about—
But of course not.
There was a heavy tread on the stairs, and then Roger burst back into the kitchen, with his usual frenetic energy and a basin of water. “Dropping in like this,” he was grumbling, as if he’d been talking to himself. “Could have gotten your damned fool self killed!”
“You’re not exactly easy to find,” I said, my voice sounding a little strange and a little breathy, like I was doing a bad Marilyn impression. I put my head down on the table.
That left me looking at him sideways, but it didn’t help. He was scowling from this angle, too. “You might have called!”
“Called?”
“We’re in the phone book!” he said, and slammed one down on the wood in front of me.
I blinked at it, cross-eyed. “Under what? Gods and demons?”
“The only demon is the one you brought with you,” he said, transferring the scowl to Pritkin.
And okay, I thought. It looked like Mom was home. Because I didn’t think her . . . lover? friend? pet? . . . was likely to have figured out what Pritkin was that fast. He’d barely laid eyes on the guy, and Pritkin looked like a human.
Well, usually. At the moment he looked more like a corpse. I got up with the vague idea of doing something, only my legs vetoed that plan halfway through the motion, which left me stumbling awkwardly into the table.
It hurt. A lot. My knee came into painful contact with one of the table’s sturdy legs, and the table won. I backed off, to the accompaniment of Roger cursing a string worthy of a war mage I knew.
“Sit down before you fall down!”
“Too late,” I mumbled, but my butt somehow found the chair again anyway. He slammed the basin down on the tabletop and muttered some more, while cleaning off Pritkin like he was going to die of dirt or something. I kind of thought if that was the case, we’d both be goners, since we’d passed filthy a while ago. But on the plus side, I didn’t look so improper anymore, being decently covered in mud.
Silver lining, I thought, and sprawled there, watching the robot try to fix its wonky eyelash.
It kind of looked like it had had a hard night.
I could relate.
“What is that?” I asked, after a few minutes.
Roger looked up from checking Pritkin for damage. “Is that what you came here to ask?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t need to know, do you?” he snapped, and slammed out.
I stared after him for a moment. And then I managed to get up and check on Pritkin, too, who was a good deal cleaner but no more conscious than he’d ever been. I felt my stomach fall, since my first-aid training hadn’t included what to do for magical pranks or man-eating forests or attacks by supernatural robots.
I put a hand on his cheek, and his skin felt clammy. Or maybe it was just that it was chilly in here, too. His face turned into my palm, his breath warm on my skin, a gentle, reassuring caress.
Until it suddenly stopped.
I grabbed and shook him, which didn’t make much of a difference because I didn’t have much strength. And then, about the time the room was starting to collapse in on me, and the light was graying out and I was contemplating a heart attack to go with my stroke, he gave a loud snort. Followed by what, even charitably, could only be called a snore.
I sat down abruptly, trying to decide between bursting into tears and passing out. But neither sounded all that great. So I finally settled for just listening to him breathe for a while.
And the man upstairs knock about angrily.
“I don’t think he’s happy to see me,” I told Pritkin, who failed to have an opinion on the matter.
But somebody else did.
“Oh no, it’s not like—” someone said, and then cut off with a little “eep.”
I frowned. I was exhausted and freaked out and possibly edging up on crazy, but I wasn’t quite there yet. And I was pretty sure that had come from the robot thing. And since it didn’t have a mouth, that was . .
Well, that was interesting.
I got up again.
The poking had suspiciously stopped, with the creature’s hands lying demurely in its lap. A lap that I only just noticed was covered by a frilly half apron. It was green, too, with white gingham checks and an eyelet ruffle.
Nothing like color coordination, I thought, and edged closer.