Scarlett

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Synopsis

Author's Notes

This first-season tale begins immediately after the conclusion of “The Lab Brat,” covering the period through “Pinch Sitter” and “Too Cute” and concluding with events in “The Big House.” (“Road Worrier” and “The Teachings of Don Jake” are here assumed to take place in the summer between Scarlett and Daria’s sophomore and junior high-school years.) The timeframe is in the late 1990s, Lawndale being a suburb of an east-coast mid-Atlantic city, probably Baltimore.

The original story was begun in late August 2004. It was then interrupted by a computer crash only a week or two later, and was further interrupted when the original plot was tossed out while the story was in progress and a new plot was sought. (I discovered that many of the elements of what I had planned for the tale had already appeared in a Marvel Comics graphic novel called 1602—Virginia Dare and all that. Damn!) After two years of research, a new plot was located and the story was able to continue on to the end. The story is posted in HTML with different typefaces and modified screen captures from the show. Because the story is occasionally updated and corrected, it helps to refresh the screen each time a webpage for this tale is accessed.

The idea of doing an illustrated fanfic was very appealing. I actually got the idea from reading the illustrated versions of Diane Long’s famous Daria fanfics, “The Last Stupor” and “Undone.” When I began writing “Scarlett,” however, I did not have an illustrated fanfic in mind. The story was going to be purely text-based. Then I decided to teach myself HTML, bought a book on it, and began constructing the “Scarlett” webpages as an experiment. The problems in using screen captures are obvious: unclear shots, the need to modify certain shots, trouble with over-modifying JPG shots, a lack of pictures on certain things the story calls for, an excess of pictures on things having nothing at all to do with the story, the tendency to let certain interesting pictures dominate sections of the storytelling, etc. Plus, I had to offer the option of reading the story in chapters or all at once, there were issues with my tinkering with different type fonts and layouts to get different effects, etc. By the way, all the pictures in this story will reveal their origins if you place the cursor over them in IE7.

Despite the story’s use of the screen names of certain members of Daria fandom’s Infamous Unserious Five (Scarlett, Tananda, Angelinhel, Taryn, Beth Ann, Mahna Mahna, Woot, etc.), and the names of other Daria fanfic writers and fans (e.g., Guy, E. A. Smith, etc.), real-life IUF members and other fans are not meant to be the subjects of this story. Their screen names simply seemed right for the characters featured herein who had no given names in the TV series. Anyone who knows nothing about the glorious heyday of the IUF in Daria fandom should consult their collected legends in “The Cave” at Thea Zara’s Sh33p’s Fluff. This explains little and leaves the investigator more confused than before, but thus it serves its purpose.

Acknowledgments

On her first day at Lawndale High School, she decided to get everything out in the open, so she wore her ankh. Forever after that, students who didn’t remember her name called her the Ankh Girl, which she didn’t mind too much, or various rude nicknames revolving around the word witch, which she didn’t like at all. She preferred being called Scarlett, her real name, but few bothered and almost no one ever spelled it right (two t’s, not one).

Her aunt dropped her off in front of Lawndale High School at 7:20 a.m. on a Tuesday in September, reminding her with a smile that the word “sophomore” was Greek for “wise fool.” After checking in at the main office (and correcting the spelling of her name on almost every school official document in her file), Scarlett was put in a group with five other new students and taken on a tour by the principal, Angela Li, a talkative Asian woman with an excess of school spirit that indicated Ms. Li actually believed what she was ranting on about. This was potentially bad, but Scarlett decided she could live with it. She wanted little more at this point than to fade into the background to study her new environment and its inhabitants in peace.

In minutes, she had categorized all five of her fellow new students: a self-centered Cuteness Queen with long orange-red hair, a brunette Self-Outcast Brain who was clearly the Cuteness Queen’s dour older sister, a tall Anal Retentive Manager fond of propriety and drab clothing, a shaggy-haired Extreme Skateboarder in baggy pants and sunglasses, and a pleasant but unexciting Closet Trekkie. The Brain and the Extreme Skateboarder seemed to have issues with fitting in. Scarlett soon lost interest in all of them, though she suspected the polar-opposite sisters would provide colorful entertainment in the future. In this, she was quickly proven correct. (The temptation to call the Brain’s sister “Pinky” was terrible.)

She also suspected the principal, the living embodiment of George Orwell’s Big Brother, would lock horns with the Brain and Extreme Skateboarder, and again she was proven correct as both were deposited into a self-esteem class in less than a week’s time. The Brain figured a way out of it, of course, aided by another outcast, a leggy Art Chick who took nothing seriously. Scarlett could tell the Brain and the Art Chick would be a dyad for life, each half of a whole, and counted them lucky.

For her part, Scarlett went to classes, went to lunch, went to more classes, and so on, falling into the rhythm of her new life. It was not so different from her old life back in the western suburbs of Chicago, before her aunt was downsized and decided, as did Scarlett, that a move to the east coast was called for. Her aunt was gainfully employed in online sales again, working on her laptop at all hours anyplace in the apartment, even on the toilet. For her part, Scarlett did her homework, listened to every sort of music, made a tiny circle of semi-close friends, played with her hair when she thought no one else was looking, and stayed out of the limelight.

She was asked a lot of questions, of course, which she always answered in her soft, Midwestern voice. Yes, she was a pagan, a Wiccan to be specific, but no, she wasn’t a Satanist, it wasn’t like that at all. Yes, she knew spells, but no, she couldn’t make people fall in love or put hexes on teachers, sorry about that. Yes, she knew about Goths, but no, she didn’t think of herself as a Goth, though she dressed almost entirely in dark tones from her long black V-neck sweater to her high-heeled, narrow-toed boots, with a gray tee and brown ankle-length skirt to round out her ensemble. Yes, she was named Scarlett because of her hair, which was a shoulder-length waterfall of the reddest blood-red anyone ever remembered seeing, parted in the middle with one long thin strand swinging over her face. No, her parents were no longer alive; her unmarried paternal aunt was her sole guardian.

Everything went well until the October day Scarlett walked into the high-school science classroom between periods, hoping to get a clarification on a literature assignment from another student. The student she sought was talking with someone else, and while waiting Scarlett idly looked into the glass tank full of white mice newly returned from a student research project. One of them caught her attention: a mouse curled into a ball in a corner, shivering despite the warmth of the room.

A girl standing near Scarlett noticed the object of her gaze and walked over. It was the Brain.

“That one looks ill,” said Scarlett, pointing.

“I almost wish it were,” said the Brain. “It was conditioned to fear everything in its environment.”

Scarlett’s face crinkled into a look of disgust. “That’s awful.”

“That’s what happens when a cheerleader kidnaps your lab mouse in the belief that you’re trying to steal her boyfriend, then gives the mouse to her psychopathic little brother for a few days before you can bribe her to give the mouse back,” said the Brain. “Long story.”

“A little kid tortured it?”

“To put it kindly.”

Scarlett stared at the shivering ball of white fur. “What’ll happen to it?” she finally asked—but the Brain had already left class to find the Art Chick. Her literature assignment forgotten, Scarlett steeled herself and went to the science teacher, a divorced and bitter middle-aged woman named Janet Barch.

“Oh, he’s useless for research now,” snapped Ms. Barch, fists on her hips as she surveyed the mouse tank. “Just like a man. No spine at all. If I had a hungry boa constrictor, I’d solve two problems at once, but I don’t, so I’ll have to—”

“Can I have him?”

“Can you have him?” Barch repeated in astonishment. “Why would you want a worthless thing like that?”

“Why would you?” Scarlett replied.

Ten minutes later and late for her next class, Scarlett tucked the mouse into her locker. The mouse now shivered on a pile of shredded tissues inside a Tupperware container with holes punched in the lid. A selection of food pellets lay against his back in the event he recovered from his trauma sufficiently to eat. At days’ end, Scarlett took the mouse home to her aunt’s apartment and badgered her aunt into driving her to a pet store to get a proper cage for it. The cage and all its crawl-tube accessories cost $74.89, but her aunt had just made a major online sale and was in the mood to splurge.

Fresh wood shavings and a colorful plastic cage did not seem to improve the mouse’s demeanor. Scarlett forgot about her homework and tried for hours to get the mouse to stop shivering and respond instead to its surroundings. She began to wonder if it had been poisoned or suffered internal injuries. As she checked the Internet on her laptop for possible cures, she thought bad thoughts about rotten kids who tormented helpless creatures. When the Internet proved unhelpful, she tried a couple of spells to no avail, and she even tried prayer with the same result.

At 11 p.m. and feeling desperate, Scarlett went into her closet where her altar was hidden (but only from company, as her aunt didn’t mind if she was a Wiccan), and she took down her boxes and bags of herbs. She was out of her depth here and knew it, but something had to be done. After sorting through what she had, she picked out five herbs in particular and dropped them into the cage in front of the mouse’s nose.

The mouse immediately uncurled and sneezed violently, emitting tiny squeaks as it did. When it stopped, it looked around with a dazed air.

“Is that better?” Scarlett said.

“What an awful dream I’ve had,” said the mouse in a thin, clear voice. “It was horrible, just horrible.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Scarlett. She knew immediately that reality had changed, but she was flexible about the boundaries of reality and went with the flow. “Hope this is better.”

“There was this grinning blond kid,” the mouse went on, “and he . . . whoa.” The mouse looked directly up at Scarlett, its nose and whiskers twitching. “Oh, man,” he groaned. “I blew it.”

“Guess so,” said Scarlett in her soft voice, as if she had talked with mice every day of her life. “Why don’t you have some dinner? You look starved.”

The mouse stared at her a moment longer. “This doesn’t smell or sound like a house I’ve been in before,” it said.

“It isn’t. You’re at my aunt’s apartment, in my room.” She pointed to the nearby water bottle and dish of pellets. “Go drink and eat. We’ll talk later.” She had wanted to keep talking, but the mouse was in bad shape and she wasn’t willing to see it die just for the thrill of an interspecies chat. After a last long look, the mouse did as it was told. Scarlett watched it lick at the water nozzle, turning its head to peer at her now and then, while she in turn pondered on what exactly was going on and what she should do about it.

She contained herself until the mouse had eaten its second food pellet. “So,” she said, “are you supposed to be my familiar?”

“Your familiar?” The mouse snorted lightly. “I don’t think we’re that familiar yet.” After a moment, it added in a contrite voice, “Just kidding. No, I’m not a familiar, if you mean like a magical animal for a wizard or something.” After another moment, it said, “Thank you. I really am grateful for . . . well, everything.”

“You’re welcome. I was thinking that I knew a few people who said they had familiars and talked with them, but I always figured they were exaggerating. Sort of like people who live alone say they can talk with their miniature dogs and understand everything they say, but they really don’t.”

The mouse finished off another pellet and licked its pink nose with a tiny pink tongue. “I’m inclined to agree,” it said. “As far as I know, I’m the only real-life talking animal around here. Humans excluded.” It gave her a concerned look. “Maybe we should talk about this. I’d not like to be put on television or anything, if you don’t mind. I know there’s a lot of money to be made, but I’m not very good with travel, and crowds make me nervous. Plus, I’m more than a little concerned that someone will want to take me apart to see how I work, sort of like those frogs that got dissected in science lab a few weeks ago, and—”

“No,” she said. “That won’t happen.”

“Easy for you to say. I bet every one of those frogs said the same thing, too.”

“It won’t,” said Scarlett.

The mouse subsided and ate one more food pellet.

“I’m Scarlett,” she said.

“I can tell,” said the mouse, looking up. “What’s your name, though?”

She smiled through her red bangs. “Cute. Rude, but cute.”

“I shouldn’t do that,” said the mouse in a lower tone. “All I need is to tick you off to win a one-way trip down the toilet bowl.”

“Say what you want. I don’t mind. What’s your name?”

“Uh, let me get back to you on that, if that’s okay. I’m a little careful with my name. Everyone should be.” The mouse picked up another food pellet and nibbled at it. “It’s not Algernon, I can tell you that,” it added between nibbles. “And don’t say Stuart Little or Reepicheep, either. Ugh.”

Why it wouldn’t give its name was certainly queer. It was just a mouse. A talking mouse with an unusual amount of literary knowledge, yes, but still a mouse. Maybe it was afraid of being cursed. She shrugged, still smiling though the unreality of the situation was beginning to tug at her. “So, where are you from? If you’re not from around here, that is.”

“I’m not, in a way, but in a—” The mouse put down the food pellet, appearing to think and chew at the same time. “Look,” it said after it swallowed, “I’d like nothing more than to pretend this whole conversation never happened. It’s just that I woke up from this awful dream and was so disoriented that—”

“It wasn’t a dream,” she said. “I rescued you today from a classroom where you got used in an experiment. Someone told me a mean kid kidnapped and tortured you. You were rolled up in a ball doing nothing but shaking. The science teacher was going to get rid of you, I think.”

“Oh,” said the mouse after an appropriate pause. “Oh. So, that wasn’t a drea—” The mouse shivered all over and rubbed its eyes. “Oh, man. Wish you hadn’t told me. Oh, man.”

“Finish your food,” she said gently. “You need your strength.”

“Right.” The mouse looked down, appearing weary. “Scarlett,” it said, “I’m rather tense, and I owe you a tremendous apology. I’m not myself lately—ha, ha.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, no, I am worried about it. I’m not usually like this.” It rubbed its eyes again. “Perhaps I should get some sleep, and with any luck you’ll wake up tomorrow and forget this ever happened.”

“Sleep would do you good. I need to do my homework, anyway.”

“What time is it?” The mouse peered at a radio/CD clock-alarm near the cage. “Hey, you’d better hurry. It’s late.”

“I’ll be fine.” On impulse, Scarlett started to reach for the trapdoor on top of the cage, meaning to open it and pet the mouse. She stopped herself almost immediately, though it took all her willpower to do so. It might not like to be petted if it was this intelligent. “You get some sleep. We’ll talk later.”

“Perhaps,” said the mouse. It yawned and began to wash itself with its tongue and paws.

She watched for a few moments, then said on impulse, “You weren’t always a mouse, were you?”

The mouse started, looking up at her with wide, shocked eyes. It then regained its composure and looked away, continuing to wash itself but more slowly. “I’m very tired,” it said, as if to itself, then crawled off inside an opaque hutch in the cage and did not come out again for the rest of that night.

Scarlett hit the alarm at six a.m. the following morning, bleary eyed from staying up past midnight with her homework and trying to get over the idea that she had a talking mouse for a pet. She quickly got out of bed in her red, knee-length nightshirt, turned on the light in her closet, padded over to the mouse cage in sock feet (phew—she’d forgotten that mice did tend to stink after a while), and peered inside. The cage appeared empty at first glance, and she was afraid for a moment that it had escaped. It was a smart mouse, for sure. Where could it have gone?

Her fears were laid to rest when she spotted the mouse inside the gray plastic hutch, near a back wall. However, the mouse lay on its back without moving, its eyes closed and tiny feet in the air. Her breath again caught in her throat. Was it dead already? It must have been in worse shape than she’d thought when she’d gotten it, and it had finally succumbed to its injuries.

Oblivious to her dread, the mouse suddenly scratched its nose with a forepaw. It then snuggled down into the wood shavings, still on its back, with its head turned to one side and mouth open a bit. Scarlett leaned closer and heard the mouse softly snore. Not dead—just dead tired. She sat down on the floor, weak-kneed with relief.

Had it all been a dream, then, that the mouse had talked to her? It didn’t seem like it, which was incredibly exciting, up to a point. If the mouse could talk, other fantastic things were possible—practically anything was possible, in fact, which was the frightening part. It was a grave threat to her life, the world, and the cosmos, not that that was a bad thing. Normality was boring. She had the idea that anyone else would have screamed and run out of the room when the mouse spoke, but that was so lame. Doing what other people did was not Scarlett’s idea of a good time.

If not a dream, then, was the talking mouse a practical joke? Was a microphone hidden in its fur? Was it a robot? Hiding a microphone on a mouse seemed like a stupid thing to do, even as an elaborate prank. The way the mouse acted as it spoke eliminated the possibility of it being a robot; a special effect that good appeared only in the movies and cost loads of money, more than any joke was worth. The talking mouse was the real thing, then.

Other things bugged her. Sleeping mice always curled up on their stomachs or sides, and did not stretch out on their backs with their feet off the ground—and they never snored. This mouse must also have a marvelous set of lungs and vocal cords to make itself heard so clearly in relatively normal vocal registers. How could that be?

The weirdness ran deep, and part of Scarlett’s sleep-fogged mind had trouble accepting what had happened. She drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees to consider the situation. It really was a talking mouse, but given the way it spoke and acted, and how it reacted to her last question, it had likely not always been a mouse. It had strong “guy” overtones in voice and behavior, and its knowledge was the sort only a human would have. The conclusion was obvious.

But how could a thing like that happen? Magic seemed as reasonable as any other cause. Could the mouse be bewitched, like in fairy tales, or had it been genetically engineered to be super-smart, like in science-fiction movies? Had it escaped from a lab, like the mice and rats in that movie about NIMH? It knew about Flowers for Algernon and other mouse-related books, so it was well read on talking mice and brainy mice. Curiouser and curiouser.

With school starting at eight, there was little time for further musings. Scarlett would have faked an illness and stayed home if a major test hadn’t been scheduled for ten o’clock in English the following day. She grabbed clean clothing and headed out of her room for the hall bathroom, which was hers in the apartment as her aunt’s bedroom had its own attached bathroom. She briefly considered showering and then changing in her room, as she usually did, but the mouse . . . if it had a guy mind, it would probably stare at her with its little pink eyes if she changed in front of it, which would be just too weird, sorry. Anyway, she didn’t need to give it something to blab about to everyone else. Certain trust issues had to be resolved, and soon.

She got ready for school, grabbed a handful of granola bars and threw them into her gray hiker’s backpack, then peeked in on her aunt, who was still sleeping. Must be nice to have a job where you could work from home, she thought. She also checked on the mouse, but it was out cold. After quietly refilling its food dish and water bottle, she locked the door to her room, checked the thermostat, and headed for the door.

And stopped. She hurried back to her room, unlocked the door, and quietly went inside. Finding a blank index card on her computer desk, she got a pen and wrote out a message.

HI THERE! I’M AT SCHOOL UNTIL 3. MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE UNTIL I GET BACK. DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAGE, MY AUNT THROWS STUFF AT CRAWLY THINGS. NO OFFENSE.

—SCARLETT

After a moment, she added:

P.S. DO YOU LIKE MUFFINS? WE HAVE BLUEBERRY AND APPLE. WE HAVE GRANOLA BARS, TOO. ALSO, WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED? I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO GET YOU. WE’LL TALK LATER. BYE!

She leaned the index card against the side of the cage, the words facing inward. That done, she fled.

School dragged on for far too long. Scarlett guessed she had checked the clocks and her watch over six thousand times before lunch, amazed at how slow time could go when you desperately wanted to be somewhere else. On her way into the huge, brightly lit cafeteria, she saw Lawndale High’s most gothic Goth student, Andrea, eating lunch by herself. Scarlett gave a little wave and smile, deciding not to tell Andrea or anyone else about the mouse, at least for now.

Andrea saw Scarlett and waved her over, calling “C’mere!” with some urgency.

“What’s up?” Scarlett said.

“Did you get a mouse from Ms. Barch yesterday?” Andrea asked. “A sick mouse?”

Scarlett felt her throat go dry. Uh-oh. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s kind of sick, yeah.”

“Brittany was asking about it last period,” Andrea said. “I think she wants to get it back from you.”

Scarlett had heard through the rumor mill that Brittany Taylor, one of the high school’s cheerleaders, was the girl who had kidnapped the mouse, then given it to her sadistic little brother. “Why?” she gasped.

“I dunno. Thought you should know before she sees you.”

“Okay. Um . . . thanks.” Andrea waved and went back to her lunch as Scarlett left.

Being on a different class schedule, Scarlett had little contact with many of the other sophomores. However, she did have the same general math class that Brittany and the Art Chick shared, and that class was next period. She did not eat much of her lunch, wondering what she would say to Brittany on the matter. The cheerleaders could be intimidating, but there was no sense in running from trouble. She got rid of her tray, went to her locker, got her things, and headed for math.

Brittany was waiting for her at the door. A cheery natural blonde with pigtails and a stunning pair of breasts that caused boys to run into walls and doors instead of watching where they were going, Brittany always wore a too-tight Lawndale cheerleader’s uniform, “to give the school more spirit.”

“Hey!” Brittany called, seeing Scarlett approach. “I forgot your name, but can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” said Scarlett, swallowing.

“See,” said Brittany, “my little brother had this mouse that I sort of like borrowed from another student in science, you know? I had to give it back in exchange for my boyfriend—it’s kind of a long story—but now my brother’s all mad and he wants to buy the mouse back from anyone who has it, and he said he’d give me five dollars if I got it back for him, and he’d pay almost as much to whoever I got it from. Do you have the mouse? I was going to make him pay me twenty for it if you did. I could use the money for new pom-poms, ‘cause mine are sort of worn out.”

Scarlett took a deep breath. “That mouse is very sick,” she said. “I . . . I don’t think it has long to live, and I just want to make it comfortable before it . . . goes.” This was technically true. Nothing on earth lived for very long, relatively speaking, and she did want to make it comfortable.

“Oh, no!” squealed Brittany. “That’s terrible! On the other hand, it did bite me once, so . . . oh, well! Are you sure you don’t want to sell it if it’s going to die anyway?”

“If it’s sick,” said Scarlett, “it might make you sick, too, if you touched it or breathed the air around it.”

“Oh, that’s right! Forget it then. Or you can give it right to my little brother so he can get sick instead. That’s okay with me.” Brittany turned to go back inside the classroom.

“Wait,” said Scarlett, hoping it wasn’t a mistake to ask. “Why did your brother want that mouse in particular, and not another one?”

“What? Oh, I don’t know. He said he really needed it for a special experiment. Kids, huh?”

A special experiment? Well, he could forget setting eyes on that mouse again, Scarlett decided as she made a face. The crisis averted, she went into class and got her homework ready for review—and discovered she’d done the wrong page in her confusion the night before, after the mouse went to sleep.

She ran almost the whole way home after school, unable to find a ride with anyone. Coming in the apartment door, she slammed and locked the door behind her, dumped her backpack on the floor by the kitchen table, and staggered down the hall to her room, huffing and sweating like a fountain.

“Hi, sweetie,” called her aunt from the bathroom. “How was school today?”

“Sucked!” Scarlett called, fumbling with the keys to her door.

“That’s nice,” said her aunt. “I might make a big sale tonight. Want to order out Chinese? There’s a place in town that delivers.”

“Yeah, sure!” She got into her room, locked the door behind her, and went to the mouse’s cage.

The mouse was crawling through one of the colorful plastic tubes leading out of the main cage. She saw it stop and eye her for a moment, then continue walking through the tube as if nothing was wrong. When it came out into the cage again, it washed its face.

“How was your day?” Scarlett asked.

The mouse ignored her, acting exactly like a normal mouse.

“Did you get enough sleep?” she said.

Same response.

“Is the food and water okay? You want some granola? We have muffins and I think crackers, too. Did you see my note? I hurried back from school so we could talk.”

The mouse yawned.

She began to worry that she had perhaps hallucinated or dreamed the whole thing after all. “Would you like to go for a swim?” she said, playing hardball. “We have a lovely toilet, and I can make the water go round and round and round, and I can even make a little high dive for you and—”

“All right, all right!” cried the mouse, looking panicked. “Stop it! Don’t even joke about that!”

Scarlett took a deep breath, held it, then let it out. “Okay,” she said, “so I wasn’t on drugs or anything last night. Good.”

“I wish I were on drugs,” said the mouse. “At least I wouldn’t be so bored, plus I ache all over, thanks to that damn kid. Pardon my French. Nice place you got here, though. Uh, you don’t have a cat or dog, do you? I can smell them around.”

“The people who had the apartment before us had cats.” Scarlett pulled the chair from her computer desk over and sat by the cage. “There’s a little dog in the apartment below us, but it never goes out. We don’t have anything.”

“Are we still in Lawndale? I meant to ask the other night, but—”

“Lawndale, the north side. I thought you said you weren’t from around here.”

“Not originally, no. Thanks for the note, by the way. You know, a granola bar or muffin might hit the spot. These oblong green pellets are pretty bland.”

“Sure. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”

“Where the hell am I going to go?” called the mouse. “Excuse my French.”

“Hell is not French,” Scarlett retorted. “And neither is damn.”

“Okay, okay, whatever. Granola bar?”

When Scarlett returned, the mouse was standing on its hind feet, its face pressed against the bars of the cage. “I can’t read the titles of those books over there,” it said, squinting. “I love to read, but mouse eyes aren’t made for long distance vision. Guess contacts are out of the question.”

“Here,” she said, dropping some crumbled bits of granola bar into the cage. The mouse went over, sniffed, and picked up on, nibbling away rapidly. “Do you mind a little conversation?” she asked, leaning forward in her chair.

The mouse shrugged. She was positive it was a shrug, given the way its arms and shoulders rose and fell as it ate.

“Okay,” she said, “so, like, do you talk to anyone else besides me?”

The mouse shook its head, chewing away with its cheeks bulging with granola.

“Do you speak any other languages, like hamster, rat, rabbit, anything like that?”

The mouse looked up at her with a tilted head, still eating, then swallowed its food and cleared its throat. “No, I’m afraid not. A little French—ha, ha—but that’s about it. I’m terrible with languages, even English. Can we have some yes-no questions, so I don’t have to open my mouth? I’m really getting into this nut bar here. Tasty.”

Scarlett nodded, rocking in her seat. “Did you talk to that girl that had you for her maze experiment? Auburn hair, glasses, kind of sarcastic?”

A shake of the head no.

“You just pretended you were a mouse, and she never caught on?”

The mouse nodded, then cleared its throat again. “I am a mouse,” it said stiffly.

“But you weren’t always a mouse, right?”

The chewing stopped for a moment. When the mouse resumed eating, it turned away to look at something besides Scarlett.

“I didn’t get a yes-no on that one.”

The mouse ignored her.

“You used to be human, but you’re really upset about being a mouse now?”

Putting down the lump of granola it was eating, the mouse sat back in a despondent posture. “Do we really have to talk about this? Are you going to throw me down the toilet if I don’t answer?”

“Of course not! How can you say such a thing?”

“Because people do that!” the mouse yelled—not in a terribly loud voice, but loud enough. He subsided and waved a forepaw around. “Because I saw a kid do that once, a long time ago! I keep thinking about it.”

“Was the kid who did that you?”

The mouse lowered his head. “No, but I didn’t stop him. Can we talk about anything else at all, please?”

“Uh, sure. Why is it you’ll talk to me, but not to anyone else? Or am I assuming too much there?”

“No, just to you,” said the mouse with a sigh. “I wasn’t going to talk to anyone at all, if I could help it. I had the mouse thing down cold until you caught me off-guard the other night. Now . . . well, you know what I am, you haven’t done anything horrible to me—yet—and frankly it’s been so long since I talked to anyone, it’s sort of a relief. I was kind of going crazy. Maybe talking is better.”

“How did you get to be a mouse anyway? Were you cursed? Are you an alien or a robot? Are you from the future? Or is it sort of complicated?”

“It’s . . . look, if we talk about now, can I go back to eating granola afterward? I mean, I still want to talk, but that topic sort of disturbs me.”

“Hmm. I guess. So, once upon a time, you were a guy. An older guy, I’d guess.”

The mouse looked at her with wide eyes. “How’d you know that?” it fairly shouted.

“It made sense.” Scarlett gave herself a secret high five. Right again! “So, start at the beginning. Who are you, and how’d you get to be a mouse?”

The mouse looked around its cage, then picked up a crumb of granola and ate it. It wiped its paws on its fur and settled back again, sitting upright with its forepaws at its sides.

“Well,” it began, “to tell the truth, I don’t know why I’m a mouse. I was human, yeah, and I was a lot older than you. You’re what, fifteen, sixteen?”

“Sixteen.”

“Yeah. I was three times older than you, almost.”

“Three times older than me.” She guessed around fifty. “Before what happened?”

“I was a skydiving instructor.” The mouse became increasingly uneasy as it continued. “I worked at a little county airport west of here, near Leeville. One day about a year ago, I was on a jump with a few buddies, and—” The mouse hugged itself with its forearms and shivered “—something went wrong.”

“Went wrong?” repeated Scarlett, but she immediately knew what the mouse meant.

“The chutes were sabotaged, all three of them. Someone got into them and cut through the straps that make the chutes come open.” The mouse’s gaze drifted and it looked into the distance, still hugging itself. “I was tumbling, I remember that. There was a pasture below me, and some cows, and then—” It shivered again and rubbed its eyes “—then I woke up, and I was like this. Reincarnation or something, I guess. I don’t know what happened to my buddies. I saw some newspapers later, and I know we were all supposed to have been, you know, killed in the accident, but I don’t know if they came back like I did, or what. I just don’t know.”

Scarlett remembered to close her mouth. Reincarnation was a possibility she had not even considered, which surprised her as she often thought about what would happen to her in the afterlife, and she had wanted to come back as some kind of bird. “So, you died,” she said.

“Uh, I don’t know. In a way, maybe, but in a way not, obviously. I’ve been thinking about this for a year now, getting into the library here and trying to research anything at all that might tell me what happened. I was able to read some books and use the computers until the library people figured someone was using the system at night, so I sneaked over to the high school to use the computers there. They knew someone was using them, but I learned the passwords the principal uses, and her computer use doesn’t show up on the system. She’s got something going on in that school, for sure, but I don’t know what.” The mouse’s voice hardened. “Then, two weeks ago, I got careless, and this dumb jock who was making out with his cheerleader girlfriend after school caught me in a box and put me in with the other lab mice in the science classroom. I thought I was a goner then, but the girl who got me for research was pretty good. I was going to escape, but then that bimbo cheerleader got me. I bit her, but it didn’t help. She gave me to—” The mouse took a nervous breath and finished in a rush “—her demonic kid brother, and I don’t remember too much about what happened after that, until you came along.”

Scarlett mulled the story over. “You have no idea why you came back as a mouse,” she said.

“None. Not a clue.”

“But someone murd—uh, fixed your parachute so it wouldn’t open, right?”

A nod. “Yeah,” it said in a low voice. “Did a professional job of it, too. I think whoever it was knew exactly what to do. The newspapers said it was an accident, that we’d accidentally used parachutes that were supposed to be sent out for repairs. That doesn’t make any sense to me. We each packed our own parachutes, I know that for a fact, and there was nothing wrong with them. We hardly left them alone for a moment. This city must have the most incompetent detectives in the world. I don’t know.”

“Do you think you came back because you want revenge on the person who, uh, did all that to you with the parachute?”

“What?” The mouse shook its head. “As mad as I get thinking about it, I really haven’t thought too much about revenge, at least not right now. I’ve been pretty busy just trying to stay alive. Being a mouse is the pits. And why would I come back as a mouse if I wanted revenge? Man, I’d come back as a B-52 bomber, atom-bomb that son of a bitch. Pardon my French.”

“Bitch isn’t French, either.”

“Kid, look, it’s just a saying, all right?” The mouse looked down at the granola crumbs around it. “Are we done here?”

“I have one more question. Two more, actually. If you came down in a cow pasture over in Leeville, which is sort of a long drive from here, how’d you get to Lawndale?”

The mouse was reaching for a granola crumb but stopped. “That part, I don’t know. When I came to, I was already here in town, under a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. I have no clue how that came about, no clue at all. I ran around like a madman for days, being chased by damn kids on their bikes and dogs and cats and God knows what, even an owl, just every evil thing in the world before I sorted out what to do and got into the library. That was a trick, I’ll tell you.” It sighed again. “One more question?”

“Okay. I need to start my homework, anyway, if you don’t mind me working on the desk next to you.”

“Hey, it’s your room.” The mouse looked uneasy again. “You know, I was going to say, I don’t know what to tell you about your changing clothes in here, you know? I mean, you’re a kid and this is your room, and I’m a mouse, yeah, but I—”

“Already taken care of. I’ll change in the bathroom from now on. Last question: What can I call you? ‘Mouse’ is a little simpleminded.”

“Ah. You can call me Roger. No point in mentioning any last names, I guess. I’m not big enough for one, ha ha.” The mouse coughed. “We done for now? Granola time?”

“Sure.” Feeling like she was having an out-of-body experience, Scarlett got up from her chair to get her backpack from the kitchen.

“Oh, hey, kid?” called the mouse.

“Scarlett,” said Scarlett.

“Scarlett, right. Sorry. By any chance, do you know anyone named Barksdale from Leeville?”

“Uh, no, I don’t.”

“Rats.” The mouse winced. “I hate saying that. Just curious. I was dating this hot babe named Rita who lived over there. Kinda curious how she was doing, if she was still around, you know?”

“What? You want to see her?”

“No, no. She hates mice.” The mouse shook its head, looking sad. “This is one messed-up life, let me tell you.”

Scarlett nodded and left. She had a feeling that having this mouse around was going to make her life quite messed up as well.

Doing her homework was difficult with a talking mouse only two feet away, but Scarlett was able to focus her attention with superhuman effort, restricting herself to occasional comments about her classes or teachers while the mouse ate. When the apartment doorbell rang, she rushed out to get the Chinese food order, then brought back her share of the chicken fried rice and sweet-and-sour soup to eat at her desk, again locking the door behind her. She spotted the mouse—Roger, she reminded herself, his name is Roger—trying to read her math homework through the cage bars. He retreated to pick up more granola as she sat down again and arranged the food on her desk with her schoolbooks and papers. The mouse cage still had a bit of a sharp odor—mouse pee, she knew, but tried not to think about it so she could eat.

“You know anything about math?” she asked. “I’m having problems with number twelve.”

“Uh,” said Roger, but Scarlett had already propped up her math book beside the cage. “Number twelve, right there,” she added. “I hate word problems.”

“I . . . oh, what the hell.” The mouse went to the bars and peered out, squinting. After a pause, Scarlett noticed the mouse was moving its lips as it read.

“Did you ever have any kids?” she asked. “I mean, not when you were a mouse, but when you were a guy.”

Roger glanced at her, then looked back at the book. “Uh, no. Not that I know of. Divorced twice, but no kids.”

“What do you mean, not that you know of?”

“I meant no. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any surprises out there for me. Someone would have mentioned it, otherwise, I’m sure.”

She stared down at the mouse, marveling at how calm she sounded as she talked to it. “Why’d you get divorced? Two times?”

Roger groaned and eyed her. “Look, do you want help or not? I can’t do everything at once, unlike a teenager.”

“Oh, okay. The math first, then.”

“All right.” The mouse read the problem aloud, then told her how to solve it. Scarlett scribbled the information down. “How about number fourteen?” she asked.

“Aren’t you supposed to do this by yourself? How are you going to learn anything otherwise?”

“I hate math.”

“Everybody hates math. So what? You still have to know math in real life.”

“Just help me with number fourteen, and that will be it.”

Roger groaned again, then went back to reading the book.

“Do you want me to look up stuff about you in the school computers tomorrow?” she asked, continuing to speak even when the mouse gave her an annoyed look. “Like, about the, uh, skydiving thing, or anything else? I can print it off and bring it back so you can read it.”

“Let me think about that. I looked up a lot of stuff when I was in the school in the last few months. Good thing kids are messy, I’ll tell you that. I ate pretty well right off the floor, every night.”

“Eww.”

“A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”

“If I come back in the next life, it won’t be as a mouse.”

“This wasn’t my first choice, either, but I got stuck with it anyway. Let me finish reading this, okay?” Scarlett subsided, and soon Roger recited the formula for finding the answer. She had just finished copying the information down when the phone rang again. “Bet it’s Tan,” she said to Roger. “One of my friends.” She picked up the handset and said, “Scarlett, hi.”

“Hello?” said a boy on the other end. He sounded young, maybe fifth or sixth grade. “Scarlett?”

She frowned, not recognizing the voice. “Yeah?”

“My name is Brian. Brian Taylor. I’m Brittany’s brother. You know her? The cheerleader?”

Scarlett’s eyes grew large. She glanced at Roger. “Who?” she said, stalling.

“Brian Taylor!” the boy repeated in irritation. “Hey, I called because I wanted to ask you something. Do you have a white mouse that you got from a science teacher? One that my sister took away from me? It’s my mouse, you know. She gave it to me.”

“Uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said—and hung up. “Crap,” she whispered, looking at Roger with concern. “And that’s not French.”

“Obscene phone call?” Roger asked. He looked away from the math book.

“No.” She debated over whether to say anything, then decided to come clean. “It was that kid who was messing with you, the cheerleader’s brother. I think he wants to get you back. He must have gotten my phone number from someone.”

Roger looked at Scarlett in horror. His pink mouth fell open. “Oh, no!”

“It’s okay, I didn’t say—”

“Scarlett, listen to me! I’ll do anything you want, but don’t let that kid get me! Please, don’t do it!”

“He won’t, all right?” she said. “He tried to get his sister to buy you from me today at school, but I said no.”

“He did? Man, this is really bad!” Anxious and agitated, Roger began to walk on all fours in a circle inside his cage. “This is really bad! I can’t go back there! That kid is sick! He’s a monster! I can’t go back there!”

The phone rang again. Scarlett let it ring twice, then picked it up and listened.

“Hello?” said Brian Taylor.

“Stop calling here, okay?” she snapped, then hung up again. After a moment of thought, she unplugged the phone from the wall to prevent further interruptions. Getting back in her chair, she noticed Roger was not in view in his cage. Leaning to once side, she saw him hunched up in a far corner of the hutch. “Hey,” she said softly, “it’s okay. He’s not—”

“It’s not okay, damn it!”

“He won’t get you, I promise. He won’t.” She swallowed. Whatever that damn kid had done to Roger, she didn’t want to know about it. “Listen, hey, let’s talk about something else.” When he didn’t respond, she called, “Roger?”

A pause. “What?” he said in a faint voice.

“You haven’t asked me any questions, you know. I’ve been asking you everything, so ask me something, okay?”

With a little more coaxing, Roger came out of the hutch again. “Sorry,” he said. “That kid really gets to me. I can’t believe I’m such a chicken.”

“Chicken?” said Scarlett, forcing a smile. “You don’t look like a chicken.” He glared at her, but she refused to be upset. “Hey, it’s a joke! You’re safe here.”

Roger didn’t look as if he felt any better, but he muttered, “Okay, okay.”

“Ask me a question. Ask me anything.”

“Anything?” Roger looked up at Scarlett, then his gaze dropped to a spot below her chin. He squinted. “All right. Lean a little closer,” he said.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, suspicious, but she leaned closer anyway.

“That crosslike thing you’re wearing on that necklace,” he said. “I can see it now. What is that?”

“Oh! This is an ankh. It’s made of silver. My aunt got it for me online from a company in Egypt last Christmas. I mean, last Yule. Winter solstice. Whatever.”

“An ankh? That’s one of those things you see in old tombs, right?”

“It’s a symbol,” she said, warming to the subject. “The ancients used it to stand for eternal life and a bunch of other things. I wear it because of my . . . uh, my beliefs.”

“Your beliefs? Is this some kind of Christian thing?”

“Uh, no. It’s—okay, this is going to come out funny, but I’m serious, okay? I’m a Wiccan.”

Roger tilted his head as he eyed her. “You’re a what?”

“A Wiccan. I’m a witch.”

Roger sat stock-still for a moment. Not even his nose twitched. “A witch,” he said flatly.

“Yes, but not like on the movies, okay? And I’m not into Satan or drugs or anything like that. This is a real religion. Some people call it New Age or whatever, but it’s more than that. I guess I don’t want you to make fun of it. Some people do, and I’m a little sensitive about it. Anyway, that’s what I am: a witch.”

“I see,” said the mouse, who clearly did not see. “A witch.” He took a breath and shrugged. “Well, I’m a mouse, so I guess I’m in no position to make fun of anything. Wait—you asked me something yesterday, about me being your familiar. Was that, uh, some kind of witch thing?”

“Yeah, but a familiar is a whole different thing, and I don’t think you’re one. You’re something else. Forget about it.”

“This is almost funny,” said Roger. “I jump out of an airplane only to find out my chute’s been sabotaged, and I land on a cow and die, and then I come back to life as a mouse and almost get killed two hundred times until I hide in a school and get captured and used in lab experiments and tortured by a little hoodlum, and now I’m living with a teenage witch.” He thought about it. “Yeah, I think I’ve got it right. Does that sound right to you?”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with me being a witch, okay?”

“I didn’t say that! I just said . . . look, Scarlett, I’m sort of overwhelmed with life at the moment, okay? Really. Look at it from my perspective. I don’t mean anything by it, all right?”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Me, too. Okay, more questions. Uh, what grade are you in? You go to Lawndale High, right?”

“Yeah. Tenth grade.”

“And you live with your aunt, right? Where are your parents?”

“My dad died of cancer when I was two, and my mom was killed in a car accident right after that. My dad’s older sister, Elaine, she’s my guardian. We sort of hang out together, I guess.”

“Sorry to hear about your parents.”

Scarlett shrugged. “I really don’t remember them. My aunt’s always been there for me, though. She’s pretty cool.”

Roger’s nose twitched. “She doesn’t make you pick up your room. I bet that’s what you mean by cool.”

Scarlett frowned and looked around. “What’s wrong with my room?”

“You’ve got underwear and socks and everything all over the floor, even sticking out from under your bed, and—” Roger broke off, peering at Scarlett’s face. “Is that purple lipstick you’re wearing?”

“Yeah, it is. And my room looks fine. I know where everything is, okay? I don’t need to pick it up all the time. You’re not like my guardian or anything, so give me a break.”

“I know, I know. I was just . . . anyway, uh, are you dating? Got a boyfriend?”

“A boyfriend?” She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “No. I go on dates once in a while. Usually a bunch of us go together and hang out, see what’s up.” She paused, looking glum. “No one wants to go out with a witch in this high school, I guess. I don’t know what guys think of me, really. I don’t know much what anyone thinks of me.” Nervous, she began to play with her hair.

“You’re more likely to go on a date than I am, that’s for sure.”

“Do you wish you weren’t a mouse?”

“Yeah, I do. Love to see that Rita again, for sure. I can’t figure out how I’m going to be anything else but this, but if I changed once, I guess it could happen again—only I don’t feel like testing the Great Wheel of Karma to see if I get reincarnated one more time. I’ll stay alive as a mouse as long as I can, thanks.”

“That’s funny,” said Scarlett after a moment. “I was just thinking that talking to you feels sort of natural now. It’s weird.”

“I get the feeling you don’t go out a lot. I don’t mean anything bad by that, just that here you are with me, and you even did your homework. I was afraid at first you’d talk my ears off, or call all your friends and invite them over to meet me.”

She thought about that. “My aunt gets on me a lot if I don’t do my homework, so I’m just used to doing it, no matter what happens. We had a tornado warning once when we lived back in the Chicago area, and I just kept on working on homework because there wasn’t anything else to do. And I don’t have many friends here, just a few. They’re pretty cool, but . . . I don’t know if I’d surprise them with you just now. I like it that you’re my secret, you know?”

Scarlett stopped talking. The mouse wasn’t looking at her. It was staring hard at the carton of chicken fried rice on the table near it. “Hey, are you hungry?” she asked.

“What?” Roger appeared distracted. “Oh, no. It’s just—can you move that box there closer? The one with the red stripes going up.”

Puzzled, she did as asked. Roger stood up on his hind legs and peered at the box. “Good Time Chinese Restaurant,” he said, reading the label on the carton. “That’s the place I woke up next to when I turned into a mouse,” he said in wonder. “After the skydiving thing, I mean. How strange.”

“Really? My aunt said they deliver.”

Roger snorted. “I guess they do, in a manner of speaking.”

Scarlett pointed at the carton. “Do you think we should go by there, you and me? Maybe see if, I don’t know, anyone knows anything unusual?”

Roger looked at her with big eyes. “You mean about what happened to me? Who’s going to know anything about that? I mean, seriously. It’s probably just a restaurant, and some angel with a lousy sense of humor is up there having a good laugh at my expense. That’s all.” The mouse shook his head. “And, to tell the truth, I really don’t want to get out much myself. I had just a hell of a time before trying to keep from getting eaten, and being an albino didn’t help when I was trying to hide, either. If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather just stay in here. It’s safe and warm and there’s food and water, and you’re sort of looking out for me on top of it. I could get to be a real bum. Beats running around out there in the real world. At least like this.”

“Aw, no joy rides on my shoulder or anything?”

“I’d rather you didn’t even try to pick me up,” said Roger with concern. “That cheerleader did, and then she dropped me when I bit her. Frankly, heights scare me to death after my little, uh, escapade with the parachute and—” The mouse sighed. “You know what I mean.” It coughed, then said, “I need a rest, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s okay. Sorry if this bothered you, talking about stuff.”

“You don’t bother me. That Brian kid bothers me. Just make sure he doesn’t know I’m here and that no one lets him into your room. That’s all I ask.” Roger hesitated. “He’s a little too fond of electrical things, if you get my drift. And dropping things out of high windows into buckets of water.”

Scarlett frowned. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he stays out.”

“Great. That’s all from me, then. Just want to rest.” Roger ambled off into the hutch, but he stopped before going in and sat up—and waved a forepaw. “See you later,” he said. “And thanks for the granola.”

“Sure. Goodnight.” Scarlett watched him go, then reconsidered her idea for visiting the Chinese place. She could look the location up later on, and then go by and see if she could find out if it was unusual in any way. It couldn’t hurt. After all, it was only a Chinese restaurant. What could possibly be unusual about a Chinese restaurant?

“. . . and then Krissie hit the ball in the air like a baseball and it bounced off Krissy’s head, and Krissy hit Chrissy because—”

“You’re doing it again,” said Scarlett, her head stuck in her school locker.

“Wha—oh, right.” Tananda backtracked. “Okay, so, Krissie with an ‘i-e’ hit the ball in the air like a baseball, and it bounced off Krissy with a ‘y’s head and so she turned and hit Chrissy with a ‘c-h’ and a ‘y’ because she thought she’d done it, but Chrissee with a ‘c-h’ and an ‘e-e’ got mad and hit Krissie with an ‘i-e’ because it was her fault, and everybody started hitting each other and that was great until Miz Morris came charging out on the field waving her clipboard and screaming, ‘God bleeping damn it, this isn’t bleeping rollerball, this is bleeping girls’ field hockey, and if you bleeping bitches can’t keep out of the bleeping emergency room and send the other team to the bleeping emergency room instead, then I’ll send you back to bleeping Economics class and you can draw bleeping diagrams on the bleeping chalkboard with Mrs. Bennett until you get bleeping menopause,’ and that sort of got us calmed down.” Tananda shook her head with admiration. “Miz Morris is a hard ass, but she’s got a great command voice.”

Tananda paused as Scarlett shut and locked her school locker, then struggled to lift her overstuffed gray backpack. Tan pushed her chewing gum to one side of her mouth and pointed. “Need a hand with that?”

“No,” gasped Scarlett, heaving the backpack straps over her shoulders and hopping to get the weight properly seated on her back. “I’m—oof!—fine!”

“You should get on the team,” said Tananda, chewing her gum again. “Then you won’t have to carry so many books.”

Scarlett eyed her friend. Tananda was a tall, willowy teen with pale blonde hair and a fondness for conservative, one-piece pastel dresses that gave the fatal illusion that she was on the meek side. Her blonde, shoulder-length bangs had a greenish sheen from an attempt to dye her hair several months ago. Today she had her blue-and-gold field hockey bag slung over one shoulder—and no books in sight.

“I like books,” said Scarlett.

Tananda shrugged. “Whatever. You get tired of it, come join the Leopards and you’ll get a by on some of your tests. Plus, you get to fight a lot. It’s cool.”

“That doesn’t seem—” Scarlett gave up. “Never mind. I’m ready. Thanks for going with me.”

“No prob. Practice isn’t until five, so I got time.” Tananda snapped her gum as they walked toward the exit doors. “Why the Chinese place?”

“Just curious about something.”

“Were you expecting trouble?” The eagerness in Tananda’s voice could not be missed.

“I don’t know,” said Scarlett. “I just . . . wanted to be careful.”

“Careful. Got it.” Tananda grinned, revealing chipped teeth. She tugged the hockey stick bag farther up on her shoulder. “Hey, how’s that mouse doing? The one you got the other day from Bitch? I mean, Barch?”

Scarlett looked around hastily, half expecting the science teacher to be right behind them. “He—uh—it’s fine, just fine.”

“Looked like it was sick either or in withdrawal. That Daria give it heroin or something?”

“No, it, uh, had a bad cold. It’s better now. Um, don’t tell Brittany anything about it, please. Her little brother’s trying to get the mouse from me, and I don’t want him to have it.”

“Boobzilla has a brother?” Tananda hit the exit doors and held one open for Scarlett. “Does he got mental problems like his big sis?”

“He’s a mean kid,” said Scarlett glumly. “He likes to torture animals.”

Tananda looked down at Scarlett with narrow eyes. “Torture animals? How?”

Scarlett felt her stomach churn. She hated talking about stuff like this. “He just likes to hurt them any way he can.”

“That’s just sick, hurting little animals,” said Tananda. Her voice was hard and cold. “Freaking little bastard. I’ll kick his freaking little bastard ass next time I see him.”

“Don’t start a fight!”

“Oh,” said Tananda, her voice becoming eager again. “I won’t. Promise. I won’t start a fight.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. She had no idea why a sports fiend like Tananda had picked her to be a friend, but she knew better than to question her luck. “Are you playing in a game Saturday?”

“Yeah.” Tananda became even more animated. “We meet the Oakwood Ho’s at nine in the morning on Field B behind the school. You ought to come see it. First game of the season. Can’t wait.”

“You’re playing the Oakwood Knotholes?”

“That’s what I said.”

Scarlett made a dubious face as they walked toward downtown Lawndale. “Don’t you think that high school girls’ field hockey is getting sort of . . . uh . . . out of, uh, control?”

“Out of control?” Tananda sounded genuinely puzzled. “How?”

“Well . . . I can hear your team screaming, ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’ on the practice field all the way out to my aunt’s apartment, five blocks away.”

Tananda nodded, still puzzled. “So?”

Scarlett sighed. “Good luck on Saturday. I’ll try to make it. I’ve never been to any athletic game before.”

“You ought to go. Beats the living crap out of that wussy-ass football that Chairman Li likes.”

“You shouldn’t call her that.”

“Why?” Tananda gave a half smile and looked around. “You see her following us?”

“Well, one day she might, and she might get mad and give you detention.”

Tananda came to a stop and clapped a hand to her forehead, uttering a string of swear words that Scarlett had never even considered saying aloud. “I forgot I had detention today,” Tananda said when she finished. She shrugged and continued walking. “Screw it. I’ll stay after school tomorrow. Morris runs detention and she knows me. I’ll tell her I had stuff to do. She won’t care.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Scarlett carefully, “and I’m sorry if this sounds like that, but how come you get into trouble so often?”

Tananda shrugged again. “It’s a gift.”

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll send you to the school psychologist, Dr. Manson?”

“Heh. Manson.” A knowing grin came over Tananda’s face. “She’s the reason I got detention. She asked me last week how I got such a bad attitude, and I said it was both nature and nurture. Then I asked her how Squeaky Fromme was doing. I think it pissed her off. Fascist know-it-all.”

“Were you the one who wrote ‘Eat the rich!’ on Manson’s door in green spray paint, sometime Monday?”

“Huh.” Tananda tried to suppress her smile. “Don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

Scarlett exhaled. It was impossible not to like Tananda, even if you dreaded that you might one day get on her bad side. They chatted about homework and classes for a few minutes as they crossed streets and passed businesses. Traffic began to pick up as the early part of rush hour began.

“There it is,” Scarlett said, pointing. “The Good Time Chinese Restaurant.”

Tananda surveyed it and snapped her gum. “Still haven’t told me why you had to come here.”

“To be honest,” said Scarlett slowly, “I’m not sure myself. I have to look around for something.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. It sounds stupid, I know, but . . . I just have to look around.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Tananda scanned their surroundings. “And I’ll just . . . be careful, like you asked.”

“Don’t kill anyone.”

Tananda smiled and popped her gum again, still scanning the street ahead.

Scarlett came to a stop beside the restaurant, huffing and sweating under the load from her backpack. Her shoulders and lower back ached. After a moment to adjust the backpack’s straps, she led the way down a side alley to the back of the restaurant, where a small parking lot was. The only way out of the artificial box canyon, excluding the door into the restaurant, was an alleyway across the parking lot. An overflowing gray dumpster with “GOOD TIME” written in red Chinese-like letters on its side was the only large object present, other than three small, unoccupied delivery trucks and a stack of mashed cardboard boxes. Scarlett swallowed, fearing that something worse than a mouse might lurk in the immediate area. She wondered if she could take her backpack off and use it as a club if muggers appeared, then decided she couldn’t. The backpack would have to come off in order for her to run away, however, which sounded like a good plan if it came to that.

Something in the air was not quite right. “It’s quiet back here,” Scarlett murmured, trying to steady her nerves.

Tananda said nothing. Looking to the left and right, she reached up and unzipped the side of her long shoulder bag. She pulled out her field hockey stick, which was chipped and scarred in numerous places along its length, and began to take casual swipes at bits of trash on the ground with it, her face expressionless but alert.

Scarlett recalled that Roger the mouse had regained consciousness after his accident—well, non-accident—at this spot. She shivered and studied the ground. It was filthy with dirt, oil spills, wads of gum, and everything else imaginable—and some things that were not imaginable. The asphalt near the dumpster was grooved from the wheels rolling back and forth, probably when the trash truck came by. Scarlett frowned. It occurred to her that the alleyway was just broad enough for a car to pass through, but a big truck would have a hard time getting back here. How did they get rid of all their garbage, then?

Taking a deep breath, she walked forward and stood on tiptoes to peer into the dumpster, which had both lids open from an excess of trash. She didn’t dare touch the corroded rim of the dumpster. Everything looked like the sort of stuff you’d find in a dumpster—used Chinese food cartons, broken glasses, soiled napkins, a newspaper, wadded paper towels, the works. At least it didn’t smell bad.

She frowned, then sniffed deeply.

It didn’t smell at all. The dumpster was clearly full of rotting food, but it didn’t stink.

Scarlett stepped back, then looked around again. A gleam of light from the ground caught her eye. She bent down and picked up a silvery dime, standing up only with an effort under the weight on her back. As she did, pocketing the coin, she noticed Tananda had straightened and now held her hockey stick at the ready with both hands. Scarlett turned to see what Tananda was staring at.

“Hey, lookie here,” said a deep feminine voice. Six teenage girls in jeans, shorts, and slacks now blocked the alleyway, all wearing red T-shirts—and the words “OAKWOOD HIGH KNOTHOLES FIELD HOCKEY” printed across the front in bold gold letters. They stood only twenty-five feet away, grinning at the two girls. Tananda stepped between Scarlett and the newcomers.

“Looks like a couple of local hookers,” said another girl in the group. “Pretty skanky pair if you ask me.”

“You want to see skanky hookers,” said Tananda in a calm, clear voice, “you can go home and look in your mommas’ bedrooms.”

The grins on the Oakwood girls’ faces froze. Scarlett felt the blood run out of her face. It was just about time to run away.

“You’ve got a big mouth for a skinny ho,” said the girl who first spoke, a tall beefy blonde with a pixie cut. Her huge forearms were the sort one only gets from prolonged weightlifting.

“And you’ve got a big ho to go with your big mouth, bitch,” Tananda replied. “Must come from using your hockey stick as a boyfriend.”

The Oakwood girls’ smiles vanished.

“Tan,” whispered Scarlett, now really frightened.

“Nice stick you have,” said the beefy blonde, her face a wall of granite. “How would you like to have it for dinner about now?”

“I’ll feed it to you for dessert,” said Tananda. “You look like you’ve already eaten.” She paused one second, then added in an undertone, “Each other.”

The eyes of the six girls facing them opened very wide.

Fighting panic, Scarlett tried to slip the overweight backpack off her shoulders, but one of the straps snagged a button on her black sweater and she couldn’t undo it. Cold panic shot through her veins right up to her brain.

“Bye-bye, baby,” whispered the blonde, her big hands balled into fists. Tananda raised her hockey stick, knees bent and turning her left side to the newcomers. The blonde took a step forward, the other five following and spreading out to the sides to flank and surround the two Lawndale girls.

Someone behind the Oakwood girls coughed. A girl in the rear turned around and gasped, “Oh, Jesus!” At that point, all the girls turned around, even the blonde.

“Kindergarten must be out,” said a girl’s voice, somewhere from the middle of the alley. Scarlett could not see the speaker. “Aren’t you kids a little far from home?”

“Butt out of this!” snapped the tall blonde—who then grunted with a loud “UNH!” as the curved head of Tananda’s hockey stick slammed into her lower back. The tall blonde sank to her knees, her eyes squeezed shut against the intense pain, and she cursed unintelligibly through her teeth.

“Freeze or eat this,” said Tananda evenly as the other five girls made moves to run. The girls obediently froze in place, looking from Tan to the other girl who kept them hemmed in. Tananda studied her opponents, then called out, “Hi, Angel,” without taking her eyes from them.

“Hey,” said the other girl. “Pickup game with your little friends back here?”

“Yeah, until you showed up and ruined everything.”

“That’s the story of my life,” said the unseen girl. “I’m never where I’m wanted.”

“Where’re you heading?”

“Nowhere. I saw these sweet young things following you and wanted to see if I could party, too.”

“Party’s over,” said Tananda. “Their mommas are calling.” She swung her hockey stick to one side, in the direction of the only alleyway out, on the other side of the little parking lot. “Run,” she said, “and take the boss ho with you.”

“Go to hell,” hissed the Oakwood blonde at Tananda as the other girls helped her to her feet. “You go straight to hell.”

Tananda smiled broadly. “You,” she said, jabbing her hockey stick in the direction of the blonde. “I’m going to pick my teeth with you on Saturday.”

The blonde glared and growled, but the other five girls hustled her away toward the distant alley and escape. When they were gone, Scarlett swallowed, overcome with a giddy wave of relief. Her knees were about to collapse, and she felt like she had to pee in the next thirty seconds or else explode. Her backpack strap was still snagged on her sweater, but she didn’t care anymore.

A tall teen girl with short golden hair brushed back in a retro-‘70s style walked out from the alley that Scarlett and Tananda had taken earlier. Wearing tight baby-blue jeans and a sleeveless white blouse and gray vest, she looked like any other teenager with “PLAY OR DIE” tattooed on her bare left shoulder and a gold winged skull with rubies for eyes on her necklace. A blue-and-gold Leopards hockey-stick bag was slung over her right shoulder. “Practice doesn’t start until five,” she told Tananda. “Don’t wear yourself out early.”

“I wouldn’t have,” grumbled Tananda. “It would’ve been fun.”

“Hmmm.” Angel eyed Scarlett, who was crossing her legs next to the dumpster. “Hey,” she called. “You’re that ankh girl, right?”

“Yeah!” Scarlett squeaked. “Do you mind if I go into the restaurant for a moment? I need to use the bathroom. I’m kind of in a hurry.”

Angel and Tananda exchanged looks. “Sure,” said Angel. “We can’t eat before practice, but maybe you can fill me in on what just happened when we head back to the field.”

“I didn’t start it this time!” Tananda began, looking irritated. “I swear, they came up—”

“I saw it, I saw it, don’t get your thong in a knot. What were you doing back here, anyway?”

Tananda pointed at Scarlett, who was hurrying ahead with fast, small steps to get into the restaurant. Scarlett heard them talk just before she hit the door going in. “She wanted me to go with her,” Tananda said. “Dunno why. Looking for something, I think.”

“She lose something around here?”

“I dunno, ask her.”

“Didn’t you ask her?”

“Hey, I can’t do everything!”

A frigid blast of air conditioning washed over Scarlett as she entered the Good Time restaurant. The smell of spicy Chinese dishes and loud dance music berated her senses next. No one was at the cashier’s station; the walls were hung with watercolors of various mundane landscapes and city scenes, giving the restaurant a very un-Chinese look. Under considerable pressure to find a bathroom, Scarlett scurried toward the back where she thought her goal might lie.

“Can I help you, hon?” called a woman behind her.

Scarlett flinched and turned around. Coming through a black-painted doorway was a tall, semi-attractive blonde dressed in a red tank top and matching miniskirt. With her elaborate tattoos and vacant smile, the overall effect was as trashy as anything The Jerry Springer Show could cough up.

“I need to use the restroom!” Scarlett hissed.

“Well, sure!” said the blonde, pointing. “It’s down that hall on the right! Can’t miss it!”

Scarlett finished her business in a more relaxed frame of mind. Her relaxed state vanished when she opened the restroom door and discovered a full-grown German shepherd sitting immediately outside the bathroom in the hall, growling at her. She froze in the doorway, too frightened to scream or shut the door.

“Hermione!” cried the blonde. She walked over and shook a finger at the wolflike dog. “Shame on you! She’s a customer!” The blonde rubbed the dog’s head with a careless hand, smiling at the now-silent beast. “Don’t be scared of her, hon. Hermione’s just a big ol’ sweetie-pie. Aren’t you a sweetie-pie, you big silly dog?”

Hermione accepted the petting with half-closed eyes that never looked away from Scarlett. The dog’s lips parted to reveal huge pointed teeth.

“I have to go!” Scarlett said in a high voice. “Can I get past her?”

“Oh, sure.” The blonde turned her head in Scarlett’s direction, their faces close together. “Were you looking for anything, hon?”

“Was I what?” asked Scarlett, eyeing the dog that was still eyeing her.

“Behind the restaurant. Were you looking for anything back there?”

Scarlett’s head snapped up. The blonde was smiling at her, but the smile wasn’t real. Though she appeared young, perhaps in her early thirties, something in the blonde’s face made her look much older and distinctly unfriendly.

She was watching us! She must have seen us on a security camera! “N-n-no!” Scarlett gasped. “We were just messing around! We didn’t do anything!”

“No problem. Just wanted to make sure you were going to spray-paint stuff on our walls or get into gang fights.”

“We weren’t, I promise! Those other girls started it!”

“Well, okay.” The blonde grinned and looked back at her dog, who was enjoying a scratch behind the ears. “Hermione and I like a quiet neighborhood with no trouble. Don’t we, girl? Yes, we do.” She stopped scratching the dog and straightened up. “You’d better be running along. We’re going to open for dinner soon.”

Scarlett nodded quick agreement and hurried outside. Tananda and Angel were waiting for her. “Heading back to school?” asked Angel.

“I have to,” said Scarlett, nervously glancing back at the restaurant. “I live on the other side of it.”

“We’ll walk together then,” said Angel, “in case we meet some strays.”

“That would be cool,” said Tananda. “Wish Taryn had been here with Kevo.”

“Kevo?” asked Scarlett, who already knew Taryn was the goaltender for the Leopards.

“Her stick,” said Tananda.

“‘Cause it’s made out of Kevlar,” said Angel.

“It’s a nickname,” said Tananda.

“It’s got a smiley face on the head,” said Angel.

“She knocked out Louise Johnson’s two front teeth with it in ninth grade,” said Tananda. She sighed at the memory. “Damn, that was a great game.”

“Good times,” agreed Angel. “Hey, you wanna watch us practice?”

“I have to go home and feed my mouse,” said Scarlett, who felt she had almost recovered from her experience. “No, seriously, I do. But I’d like to see your game Saturday.”

“That’s cool,” said Tananda. “Say hi to your rat for me.”

“This that mouse that Brittany’s been looking for ‘cause her brother’s supposed to pay her twenty bucks for it or something?” asked Angel.

“Yeah,” said Scarlett, and filled her in on the rest of the story, except for the parts about Roger actually talking.

“Brian Taylor,” said Angel. She gave a long slow sigh and shook her head. “I know that kid.”

“We should have Heidi Ross drop by his place and show him her arm lock,” said Tananda. “She can pop a soda can by squeezing it on the inside of her elbow. She could try it on Brian.”

“She would do it,” said Angel. “She would love to do it.”

The talk drifted to the special abilities of the other Lawndale Leopard girls’ field hockey team, which included belching, towel-snapping, larceny, forgery, auto theft, and certain other talents that caused Scarlett to think she should wash out her ears when she got home. There was no possible way she would ever join the Leopards, even in her wildest dreams. Being friends with them was another matter entirely. It never hurt to have partner-defenders like these.

“See you tomorrow!” the girls called to Scarlett when she left them at the hockey field. She waved goodbye, pleased that she had their promise to look out for her if any Oakwood girls came by again. However, the possibility that the Oakwood field hockey team might come looking for her later, blaming her in part for their humiliation behind the Chinese restaurant, made her stomach turn over. If the Oakwood Knotholes were anything like the Lawndale Leopards, she was a goner.

It wasn’t until she got within sight of the apartment complex she called home that Scarlett remembered the dime she’d picked up behind the Chinese restaurant. She pulled it from her pocket and looked at it closely in the fading light from sunset. It looked like a typical dime of an old type. The date on it was 1949. One side had the head of an ancient god on it, Roman or Greek she assumed, with wings coming from its ears. “LIBERTY” was written around the edge. The backside had “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” around the edge, with a large V behind what looked like the planet Earth in the center. She wondered if the coin was worth anything, then dropped it back in her pocket.

It wasn’t much, but the dime was her only souvenir of her failed expedition to find anything unusual at the Good Time Chinese restaurant, other than the fact that the owner let her dog run around inside the place, probably against health department regulations. If nothing else, she had a good story to tell Roger that evening when she did her homework with him.

Scarlett arrived home at the apartment to find her aunt working on her laptop on the kitchen table. “Hi, sweetie!” her aunt called, waving. “Want to go check out the mall tonight? I need a new outfit for meeting clients over lunch. Assuming I can ever get them to meet me, that is.”

“Sure, uh, a little later. I need some things, too. I’ll be in my room.”

“I have to finish up here. Do your homework first, and then we’ll go.”

“Okay, great!” Scarlett hurried off. Soon, she had related the story of her day to Roger the mouse while preparing to have him help her with her homework. She skipped mention of the encounter with the Oakwood field-hockey bullies (no sense in worrying him) and stuck to the brief investigation behind the Good Time restaurant. “It was kind of dull, really,” Scarlett finished. “We came, we saw, we left, no problem.”

“Didn’t find anything? Figures.” Roger again did that strange-looking shoulder shrug (strange to see done by a mouse, that is) and nibbled at the granola crumb Scarlett had dropped into his cage. “Don’t know why I expected anything different. Can you move your book closer? It would be easier to read that way. Damn rodent myopia.”

“Sure.” Scarlett scooted the math book over. It was propped up on a cookbook stand with the pages held open by a metal bar. “I just need the five odd-numbered ones on page thirty-nine.”

“I still think you should be doing your own homework instead of having someone else figure it out for you.”

“You told me last night you liked doing it because at least you weren’t bored.”

Roger sighed. “That’s true. I hope all this brainwork doesn’t shorten my lifespan. Just kidding. I’d charge for this, if I had anywhere to spend my earnings.”

Scarlett reached into her sweater pocket and brought out the dime she’d found. “Here,” she said, pushing it between the bars of the bars to fall into the wood shavings. “There’s your first month’s paycheck.” She tried not to smirk, but failed.

Roger eyed the silvery coin, then gave Scarlett a woebegone look. “Thaaanks. What, I’m starting a bank account with this?”

“Come on, you’re a mouse. You’re supposed to like shiny things. Or maybe that was pack rats that do that, I forget.”

Roger put down the granola crumb and walked over on all fours to examine and sniff the coin. He stared hard at the profile of the deity on the front side. “A Mercury dime,” he said. “Don’t see those anymore. Smells like whoever had it last likes eating spicy beef sticks. I used to love those things, but now they turn my stomach and you don’t want to see a mouse throw up.”

“Can’t be any worse than watching you poop.”

Roger looked at Scarlett in undisguised horror. “You do not do that! No way! No! Absolutely not! Tell me you haven’t!”

Roger was pretty easy to spoof. “Just kidding,” she said with a grin. “Wow, you’re really tightly wired, as my aunt would say.” And you really were a guy in your former life. No mouse would give a rat’s ass about pooping in public. The thought made her laugh.

After glaring at her, Roger continued examining the dime. “Damn, I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid. Pardon my French.” He reached down with a pink forepaw and flipped the coin over. “Hey,” he said in surprise, “where’s that thingamajig that’s supposed to be on the back?”

“What thing?” Scarlett rose up in her seat and peered down over Roger’s head at the coin. “It’s got a V on it, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but Mercury dimes didn’t have that. They had like some kind of, uh, like a bundle of sticks on the back, I forget what it was called, and some branches on the sides. It was an old symbol of something from Roman times.”

Scarlett frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The government never made any dimes like this.” He looked at the front of the coin again. “And this was made in nineteen forty-nine. I thought they were making Roosevelt dimes then. Hey, do you have a dime? A regular dime, I mean, in your purse or somewhere?”

“Just a minute.” Scarlett found a dime in a desk drawer and dropped it in Roger’s cage. The white mouse picked up the dime and hauled it over next to the Mercury dime, then laid it down, face up.

“See,” said Roger, pointing at the newer dime with his right forepaw, “That’s Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was president of the United States during World War Two. On the back . . . oh, who cares. My point was, I thought they started making Roosevelt dimes after he died. He had a brain hemorrhage near the end of the war, in nineteen forty-five. I forget what year it was the Roosevelt dimes came out, but before then, they made only Mercury dimes. That’s the head of the god Mercury, with the wings over his ears. He was Roman, but I don’t remember what he did. Anyway—” Roger flipped the Mercury dime over again and studied the small globe superimposed over the background V “—this just doesn’t look right. I bet somebody stamped their own coins just for fun. Maybe it’s a commemorative issue. This dime can’t be a real one.”

“Why not?”

“Well, like I just said, because the year is wrong, and that thing on the back isn’t what Mercury dimes had on their backsides.”

She snorted. “Maybe they did, and you didn’t know it.”

Roger managed to look wounded. “Hey, I had lots of dimes like this when I was a kid, Scarlett. I had a big coin collection. Wonder where it is now. Boy, that takes me back.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Look, I need to get my homework done at some point here.”

“Listen, do me a favor first, okay? Oh, don’t give me that look! This will just take a minute. Please? For me, your favorite little mouse? I knew you would. Okay, can you turn on your computer and bring up a search engine? Get something that looks for pictures on the Internet.”

Scarlett moved over to her computer desk and did as she was asked. “Okay, now what?”

“Type in, uh, ‘Mercury’ and ‘dime,’ then see what you get. See if you can get pictures of this coin.”

A few moments passed as Scarlett’s fingers clicked over the keys. “Okay . . . oh.” She maneuvered the computer’s mouse, then clicked a key and studied the screen—and frowned. “Yeah, there’s some kind of thing on the back . . . it looks like a big stick or bundle of sticks, with little branches or leaves around it. No V.”

“Yeah, there you go. See? This dime is counterfeit. Or someone just made it for a joke.”

Scarlett kept reading the computer screen, and her frowned deepened. “It says here that they stopped making Mercury dimes after nineteen forty-five, the year the president died. They started making Roosevelt dimes the next year.”

“Ah ha! I knew it! This coin’s a fake.” Roger studied the back of the dime. “It does have the ‘V for Victory’ symbol, which is sort of funny. They used that in World War Two, the allies did. And that little planet Earth with North and South America on it. Maybe someone who hated Roosevelt had it stamped. Republicans hated him. Maybe this is some Republican’s coin, who knows.”

“Is it worth anything?”

“Nah, probably not. Just a curio, except it’s made from pure silver. They used to do that before they went to clad coins with copper in the middle. You want it back?”

“Uh, sure.”

Roger appeared to smile. “Good, ‘cause whoever was handling this coin last also liked scratching his butt. Phew, stinks.”

Scarlett recoiled. “Eww! No, I think you should have it. Keep it in your cage.”

The mouse’s smile widened into a grin. “I’ll put it in the corner over here, then, away from my mansion.” Roger dragged the coin as far from his hutch as he could. “I tell you,” he said, “having a nose as sensitive as a mouse is sort of a curse.”

Her urge to get her homework done was starting to fade, despite the need to get more underwear and clothes at the mall. A new pair of boots wouldn’t hurt, either. “What sorts of things can you smell?”

“Anything. I can tell what you had for lunch—spaghetti and garlic bread, I think—and what sort of soap you used this morning, which books you were using all day, if you were hanging around kids who smoked, what—”

“I don’t smoke.”

“I know. You’d really stink if you did, but you do walk around kids who do. Some of them smoke pot, too. The odor clings to your clothes and hair. And I can smell air freshener and underarm deodorants and perfumes and colognes and all that, just everything. I know you don’t use perfume. Not yet, anyway. Wait till you get a boyfriend.”

A mild flush passed over Scarlett’s face. “How do you know I don’t?”

“I’d smell guy smells all over you if you did.”

“Well, maybe I’ve got a boyfriend but he doesn’t smell.”

“What, you mean he doesn’t have a nose?”

Scarlett made a face at the mouse, then pulled a lock of hair in front of her nose and sniffed. “I don’t smell anything in my hair.”

“Human noses aren’t that great, but mine is. I can tell you don’t drink alcohol, either, thank God. Anyway, don’t worry about it. Don’t eat any bean burritos, and everything will be fine.”

“You’re gross.” She pointed at her math book. “Do my homework!”

Roger stuck out his tongue at her, wiggling his ears very fast. Scarlett burst into laughter. “Entertainments costs a quarter,” he said when he returned to normal.

“Come on, help me with my math!”

“Make me.”

“Fine. I guess I will have a bean burrito for dinner.” Scarlett started to get up from her chair.

“Hold it!” cried Roger. He rushed to the side of the cage facing the math book. “The way you solve the first problem on page thirty-nine goes like this.”

Math, social studies, and English passed quickly. Roger was running through his plastic-tube maze when he stopped and came out into the open. “I was just thinking,” he said. “You smelled the garbage dumpster and it didn’t have an odor?”

“No. Maybe they’ve got clean garbage.”

“Or maybe it’s not garbage. I don’t remember much from when I woke up as a mouse, so I’m no help. It might be worth going back and poking around in the dumpster, see what else is in there.”

“Eww, no. If you want to poke around in the dumpster, I’ll be glad to take you over there.”

“No, thanks. Too many cats and dogs in the neighborhood. I’d never make it back alive.”

“Oh, right.” Scarlett paused and turned her head, hearing footsteps in the hallway outside her room.

A knock sounded on the door. “Scarlett, you ready to go?” her aunt called.

“Yeah, just a minute!” Scarlett leaned down to Roger and whispered, “We’re going to the mall. You want anything?”

“Rita Barksdale, if you see her,” said the mouse. “Just kidding. She was one hot babe. Damn everything.”

“Pardon your French,” Scarlett said quickly.

“Ah, yeah,” said Roger, giving her the eye. “Other than that, maybe you could bring me something fattening, like a granola bar. Make sure it doesn’t have chocolate in it. Chocolate doesn’t agree with my system anymore.”

“No girlfriend, no chocolate,” said Scarlett. “What do you do for fun?”

“Your homework.” The mouse paused, trying to look unconcerned. “Don’t be gone too long. It’s awfully quiet and boring around here without you.”

She smiled. “Aww. I can turn on the radio or my mini-TV while I’m out. How about that?”

“TV would be great, thanks. A news channel, if it can get one.”

“We have cable, no problem.” Scarlett set up her six-inch television set next to the cage, close enough for Roger to see. “You sure you don’t want to go shopping with us?”

“No, no. I’m . . . still a little shaky about heights and carnivores and so on. Have a good time.”

“You, too.”

Scarlett made sure that the doors to her room and the apartment were locked when she and her aunt went out into the cool autumn air. Traffic was light by the time they arrived at Lawndale Mall, west of their apartment complex. The mall itself, its modern interior badly painted in gray and yellow, was busy but not overly crowded as evening fell over the suburb. Having completely different ideas about what was stylish and necessary in the clothing department, Scarlett and her aunt agreed to split up and head for different stores, meeting back an hour later at the Yogurts of the World shop near the main entrance. Scarlett set out at a quick pace for Cashman’s, motivated to get what she needed and get back to see the mouse.

Too bad that a Books by the Ton outlet was right in the way. Slowing as she passed the store entrance, Scarlett gave in and walked back to browse the volumes for a few moments. New fiction, new nonfiction, bargain books, next year’s calendars, New Age books, a Halloween table for the kiddies . . . Scarlett forgot what time it was as she drifted through the shop, looking and reading. So much to see, so little time to see it.

On impulse, she paused before the Halloween table and reached down to flip open a pop-up book of monsters. An ugly witch clad in black arose from the first two pages, stirring a caldron and grinning up at Scarlett. She turned her head to read the words printed around the witch’s feet. It sounded like Shakespeare.

’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.

It was not the kiddieland rhyme she had expected. She let the book fall shut and stepped back, feeling eerie.

Something in the air was not quite right. Scarlett tilted her head, let her gaze become unfocused, and listened. She was having a premonition, just like the one earlier in the alley with Tananda before the Oakwood girls found them. Like the one she had when her aunt came home early from work back in Chicago to say she’d been laid off. Like any of a number of other premonitions she’d had since childhood, all of them accurate and with a lead time of less than a minute before—

Soft, heavy footsteps could be heard from the wide walkway of the mall. A large shape passed by the windows at the front of Books by the Ton. Scarlett turned her head toward it but did not look directly at it. It was a man, quite tall and broad, moving with quickness and ease. She had the impression that he wore a trench coat and hat, his hands shoved into coat pockets, overdressed for the weather. The man had a confident stride and went by as if nothing were important except for him.

Then, just as he was passing by, the man slowed, distracted by something, and almost came to a stop in view of the last window before he would walk out of sight. He turned his head to look into the store.

He was looking right at her.

Don’t look at him, whispered a voice inside her. She pretended to study the Halloween table’s offerings, then turned and walked off toward the calendars as if she had an interest in them, which she did not. She felt the large man’s eyes on her, staring, taking her in.

And then he moved on and was out of sight.

All her interest in buying a book had vanished. Scarlett checked her watch. Only fifteen minutes were left to finish shopping before she was to meet her aunt. With a groan, she headed for the bookstore’s open doors to reach the main concourse . . . and slowed, glancing nervously left and right before she went out. No sign of any giant around. Relieved, she walked quickly to Cashman’s, grabbed two packs of new underwear, some socks, and a new belt, paid for her purchases, then left with her bag and headed for Yogurts of the World. New blouses, boots, and sweaters would have to wait. She kept up a rapid pace as she walked by an electronics store, an athletic shoe store, a perfume-and-bath-oils store—

Again, something in the air was not quite right.

Her pace slowed as she looked about. She was approaching a side corridor that led to lockers and restrooms. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary among the crowd of shoppers around her.

Stop, said the soundless voice. She came to a halt and got out of the way of those around her, pressing against the window of a fashion store. She let her awareness expand.

Someone was waiting for her in the side corridor just ahead. It was the giant. She was positive of it. Be still, don’t panic, said the voice of her judgment. Her gaze lowered and she opened her Cashman’s bag, pretending to check her purchases.

A hand fell on her shoulder.

“Goodness, you act like I scared you or something, sweetie!” said her aunt gaily. “I’ve never seen you jump like that!”

“Let’s go back this way!” said Scarlett quickly, taking her aunt by the arm and turning her around to walk back the way they’d come. “I have to show you something!”

“Can it wait for tomorrow?”

“No, you have to see this!” Scarlett tried to get her aunt to walk faster. She could tell without looking that the giant had stepped out from the corridor and was watching them. “There’s this neat pair of boots at Cashman’s. You have to see them!”

“Well, all right,” said her aunt, who was carrying two shopping bags in one hand. “Let’s make it fast. Do you need more money?”

“No, no, I’m fine. You have to see them.”

“Why didn’t you just buy them to begin with?”

“I wanted you to see them first!” Scarlett snapped. She was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, it’s—they’re just cool boots!”

They wasted ten minutes in Cashman’s looking at boots before Scarlet decided it was safe to leave. She had no further sense of danger. The giant must have left the mall.

“I don’t know what it is with teenagers and clothing,” murmured her aunt as she drove the two of them home. “Boots. Well, I admit I liked shoes when I was your age, but not boots, really. Certainly not knee-high black-leather boots. Maybe a little on the kinky side. What do you think?”

“What?” Scarlett blinked and looked at her aunt. “I’m sorry, I was thinking. What were you saying?”

“Never mind.”

It was only as she climbed the stairway to the second floor where their apartment was that Scarlett remembered she had promised Roger she would bring home a special granola bar. She muttered a curse under her breath and shrugged. Nothing she could do about it now. She stopped outside the door to the apartment, all the shopping bags in her hands, waiting for her aunt to climb the stairs up—

—and saw with a start that the door was ajar. The keyhole for the deadbolt was scratched up.

Roger.

She dropped the bags and shoved hard on the door as she went in. The door banged into the doorstop against the wall and rebounded, but she was already inside. Nothing in the foyer, kitchen, or living room had been disturbed.

But her bedroom door at the end of the hallway was wide open, the light on.

“No!” she screamed. She ran in, half-fearing someone would leap out at her with a knife, half-afraid she would be grabbed and kidnapped, but nothing stopped her all the way through the apartment to her room.

The central cage of the mouse enclosure was on the floor, the top removed. Roger, of course, was gone.

To Scarlett’s infinite frustration, the police were only mildly interested in the break-in. The only thing reported missing was a white mouse, and the apartment was otherwise undamaged and intact. The officers were even skeptical of Scarlett’s claim that she had not left the cage on the floor with the lid off, but her aunt swore the front door had been locked. The scratch marks (said the officers) matched those typically found when someone was trying to open a key lock with a wire or similar device, but was having trouble doing it. The officers took notes, promised to drive by the apartment building more often at night, then left. Scarlett hardly slept the rest of the evening from worry.

“They didn’t even take fingerprints!” she complained to Tananda the following day at school over lunch. “I can’t believe it! They thought it was a joke that someone stole my mouse! Isn’t that like kidnapping or pet-napping or something? Wouldn’t fingerprints help find out who did it?”

“From their point of view, solving a missing mouse case probably doesn’t have the fame potential of solving a triple murder,” said Tananda. She pointed at Scarlett’s tray with her fork. “You gonna eat that brownie?”

“What if Brian did it?” Scarlett moaned, feeling sick. “What if he took my mouse home and did something awful to it? Tan, what am I going to do?”

Tananda eyed the brownie and sighed. “That little bastard Brian must have wanted that mouse pretty bad to do breaking and entering.” She looked thoughtful. “Hmm. If he could break into your place and kidnap your mouse, I wonder if we could break into his house and kidnap him. I bet Beth Ann could do it. She knows a lot about stalking. There was this guy she liked in ninth grade, and she put on this black ninja suit and waited until he was in the shower in phys-ed, and then she—”

“I see Brittany,” Scarlett interrupted, glaring over Tananda’s shoulder. “Maybe she knows if Brian took Roge—my mouse, I mean. Maybe she knows if Brian stole my mouse.”

Tananda gave her red-haired friend an odd look before she turned around. Brittany the buxom blonde had just entered the cafeteria and was heading for the tray line, while tearfully relating a story to a cluster of sympathetic female friends. All of them wore identical cheerleading outfits in Lawndale’s school colors. Before Scarlett could object, Tananda got up and walked over to intercept the blue-and-gold clique. “Hey, Brittany!” Tan called. “Did Brian get that mouse back?”

Brittany sniffed as she looked around. Mascara ran down her face; even her pigtails drooped. “What?” she called back.

“Did Brian get his mouse back last night?” Tananda repeated.

“Oh, who cares about him?” Brittany shouted. “My Kevvy is all gross and ugly because he’s in this stupid science experiment, and Ms. Barch won’t let him be handsome and not-gross again until the experiment is over!” She burst into a new spate of weeping, and the other cheerleaders crowded in to comfort her. The group left without another word.

“Jeez Louise,” Tananda muttered as she went back to the table. She picked up her lunch tray and took the uneaten brownie that Scarlett glumly offered. “I have to go, but I’ll find out what I can,” she promised. “I’ll call you later.”

Scarlett nodded, grateful for the help. She pushed her tray away. “I’m not hungry.”

Tananda left with Scarlett’s tray on top of her own. Scarlett sat alone in the emptying cafeteria, trying to imagine what she could do next—assuming that attempts to save Roger weren’t already too late. She found her hands clasped together in front of her mouth, and it occurred to her that prayer was really all she had left. Prayer it would be, then.

Scarlett felt she had a personal relationship with the Goddess, but it wasn’t the sort of thing where she expected the Goddess would ever do much more for her than send her comfort or make her stronger in dealing with life’s many downturns. This time, things were different. Trying not to look too obvious about it, Scarlett closed her eyes and mouthed the words of her request. If it’s not too much to ask for, please send me a little help, anything You can, so I can save my mouse. A talking mouse has to be special to someone in the world, maybe even to You, and if he is special then give me a clue about where he is, anything at all, so I can—

“Excuse me,” said a voice to her right. Startled, Scarlett opened her eyes and looked up.

“Sorry if I’m butting in,” said the Brain, Daria Morgendorffer herself. “I was eating lunch behind you and thought I heard you say you were looking for a mouse. Is it that mouse from science lab, the one Brittany’s been trying to get for her little brother?”

“Yes,” said Scarlett, too stunned to say more.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” said Daria, “my sister’s been trying to get the local village idiots to contribute to a fund so she can get a nose job—don’t ask—and as a result, someone who uses colored pencils stuck a note to our front door last night saying he was going to contribute lots of money to her nose-job fund as soon as he picked up his reward for getting a mouse for a friend of his. The note was from a younger brother of a friend of my sister’s. You know Sandi Griffin?”

This can’t be true! I don’t believe it! Thank you, Goddess! “The Sandi who’s in that fashion bunch?”

“That’s her. Her brother Chris left the note. I think he’s planning to marry my sister, which is fine with me as long as he gets her out of the house by the end of the month.”

“Did he say who was giving him the reward?” Scarlett asked, her words running together in her excitement.

“No, but I’ve overheard Sandi say that Chris goes to Lawndale Elementary, which is where Brian Taylor goes, I believe. I hope that’s of some help.”

“Yes! Oh, yes, thank you!” Scarlett jumped to her feet and cried “Thank you!” again to Daria (and the Goddess) before she ran out of the lunchroom—and stopped right outside the door in the hallway. Whatever was she going to do next? She could call the Griffins’ house—but no one was probably home, and if she got Chris . . . no, that wouldn’t work. She would have to go there in person, right after school. But who would let her in to get the mouse? Certainly not Chris, if he was out to collect the reward—unless he’d already collected it after taking the mouse to Brian earlier that day!

Heartsick, Scarlett wandered the corridors until the bell rang for the next period. She went through the motions for the next two periods, becoming steadily more depressed about her chances to save Roger—until, on her way to her last-period study hall, she spotted Sandi Griffin walking alone. Sandi’s face was still puffy from cosmetic nasal surgery, but at least the nose splits were off. A desperate plan came to Scarlett, and she headed for Sandi at once.

The beautiful brunette freshman saw her coming. “I’m sorry,” she said with a disdainful glance at Scarlett’s outfit, “but we have no more openings for membership in the Fashion Club. Perhaps next year.”

“No,” said Scarlett as Sandi was turning away, “it’s not about that. Do you know if your brother Chris got a mouse last night?”

“Oh!” Sandi snapped, coming to a stop. Her face filled with sudden fury. “That little retard! I’d strangle him if I could only find someone to do it for me. Last night he said he brought home a mouse he’d found, but then it bit him and he dropped it and it got away and who knows where the little beast went. I could just—”

“I’m a part-time animal-catcher!” Scarlett interrupted, saying whatever came into her head. “I’m really good with animals, all kinds of animals! I can get rid of mice in no time!”

“So can my cat Fluffy,” said Sandi, starting to turn away again. “The problem has doubtless already been solved.”

Oh, Goddess, no! “Wait! If the mouse hasn’t been caught, can I try to catch it? Please? I need the practice!”

Sandi frowned as she stared at the silver ankh on Scarlett’s necklace. “Aren’t you like some kind of witch or Halloween thing or whatever?”

“Trust me, the stuff I know works,” said Scarlett. “You don’t want to take the chance there’s a live mouse in your room tonight, right?”

Sandi hesitated, a look of anxiety crossing her face before she regained her composure. “You have a point. How much do you charge, and how long will it take?”

“The first time’s for free, and it shouldn’t take more than five minutes!”

“We have a deal. Meet me outside the gym doors at two thirty-five sharp, near the parking lot. My date will drive us over.”

Scarlett promised to be there and hurried off to study hall, filled with elation. The minutes crawled by until the final bell rang and she was out of the room and down the hall like a bolt. She skipped going to her locker in her haste to get to the parking-lot door in the back of the gymnasium, where she discovered she was early. Most of the home-bound crowd of students and teachers were already gone by the time Sandi showed up, walking with a guy Scarlett recognized as a junior classman.

“Guy,” said Sandi, “this person is my hired help for the evening. Let her off at my house first, then take me to the mall.”

“Sure thing,” said her date, who then looked Scarlett over. “Hey, aren’t you that ankh girl I’ve heard about?”

“She is,” growled Sandi, “and if you wish the continued pleasure of my company, you’ll keep the rest of your remarks addressed to me alone.” Sandi handed Scarlett a single key. “This is for the front door. The alarm will be off, so let yourself in, do whatever it is you witches do to get rid of mice, and leave the key on the stand with the vase by the front door.” She shivered. “And if you’re too late and Fluffy’s found the mouse first, please clean everything up before I get home.”

Scarlett’s heart sank again. She got into the back of the junior’s Trans-Am, shoving aside piles of library books on dinosaurs and fossils, and buckled in for the ride.

“I had a cool day today,” said Guy, starting the car. “I was in science class giving my report on Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis, and Miz Barch said—”

“Guy,” Sandi interrupted in a loud voice, “what exactly did you agree to do in order to have a date with me?”

“Uh, um . . . no dinosaur talk.”

“And?“

“And, uh, no talking about anything having to do with science or math or history or anything else like that, for the rest of the date, and anytime afterward if you’re around, or you’ll never date me again, ever, period.”

“Precisely. Now, be a good chauffeur and shut up and drive.”

“Okay.” Guy looked in the rear-view mirror at Scarlett. “Hey,” he began, “do you—”

Sandi loudly cleared her throat and gave Guy a killing glare.

“—uh, never mind,” he finished quickly, and he shut up and drove the rest of the way to Sandi’s home, which lay in a large upscale subdivision west of the high school.

Guy pulled over when he reached the Griffins’ two-story, beige-brick home and let Scarlett out on the sidewalk. “If you see either of my two loser brothers,” said Sandi, “tell them you have my permission to be there, and they’d better not bother you or I’ll deal with them when I get home. Good luck finding that damn mouse—and remember to clean up!” Sandi signaled to Guy, and he pulled away from the curb with tires squealing. “Not so fast, damn it!” Scarlett heard Sandi cry as the car roared away.

There was no time to lose. Scarlett ran across the yard and up the front steps, reached the door, and fumbled trying to get the key into the lock. She noticed the keyhole had numerous scratches over it. Perhaps Chris Griffin had been practicing his lock-picking skills on his own home. The key went in and the door opened.

The Griffin residence was posh by any standard, but it also showed signs of being well used by aggressive boys. The walls were smudged, the carpet bore dirty sneaker-prints, and the wooden railing to the stairs going to the second floor was scratched and nicked in dozens of places. Several pictures hung at angles on the walls, and someone had stuck a pencil point-first into the ceiling of the entry foyer.

“Roger!” Scarlett yelled. She hurried to the right into the huge family room. “Roger! It’s me, Scarlett! Where are you? Roger!” Passing through the family room, she passed an open door to the garage and entered a solarium—no Roger—and continued around in a large circle to the left, entering the oversized kitchen next. Though there was no sign of anyone home, the boys had obviously been there, judging from the open cans of soda and half-empty jars of food left out on the kitchen counters. Some of the jars were still cool to the touch. Scarlett resisted the urge to put the food away and moved on—until she saw the pet food dish on the floor by a row of cabinets. Sandi’s cat! “Roger!” she yelled. “Say something!”

“Where the hell have you been?” cried a shrill voice above her. “Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, get me out of this frickin’ madhouse!”

Scarlett looked up. Four feet above her, clutching a crossbar on a rack made for holding pots and pans, was a small white mouse with panic-filled pink eyes. “Roger!” she shrieked.

“The frickin’ cat’s on top of the refrigerator!” Roger yelled back. “The son-of-a-bitch’s been trying to jump over and knock me off of here for the last hour! Shoot it or something, already!”

Scarlett looked. A large white Persian cat was crouched on top of the refrigerator, just as Roger said, trying to keep tabs on both Scarlett and the mouse at the same time.

“Chase it off!” Roger screamed. “Hurry! This thing is slippery, I can’t hold on forever! And I’m scared spitless of heights!”

A quick look around the kitchen revealed numerous things that Scarlett could throw at the cat, but she balked at physically harming another creature unless there was no other possible option. Then she spotted the spice rack. She darted over, snatched out a bottle, opened the cap, and flung some of the contents at the Persian.

The effect was dramatic. The cat jumped to its feet, hissed loudly—then it sneezed violently, sneezed again even harder, then leapt down from the fridge and raced off through the house, wailing all the while.

“What did you throw at it?” shouted Roger, nose twitching.

“Cayenne pepper!” she said.

“Oh! Oh, no! Ohmigod!” Roger flinched on his perch. “It’s—it’s—I—” The white mouse drew back its head and, as Scarlett watched in horror, gave a mighty sneeze of its own.

And flew backwards off the stainless-steel rack like a tiny white missile.

Scarlett lunged even as she watched it happen and thrust her cupped hands out, but she was a tad short and as she tried to catch Roger her feet tangled and she went off balance and fell forward but she went on tiptoe and stretched on her way down to gain a few extra inches and the mouse landed in her hands but she kept falling and WHOOF!—she was sprawled over the kitchen floor with the wind knocked out of her and a white mouse sneezing up a storm in her hands. She tried to take a breath, but her lungs were full of needles and all she could do was gasp like a fish out of water. Her nose was twitching by now, too, but one cannot sneeze without air in her lungs.

The cat! Dazed, she groaned and got to her knees. It was impossible to speak, but she had Roger and that was all she cared about. There was no time to check him for injuries, so she tucked him in a pocket of her sweater and staggered out of the kitchen for the front door. She remembered only at the last moment to leave the key behind.

The way home was long. As she was crossing the outer limits of the Lawndale Mall’s vast parking-lot system, she found herself too tired to go on. She sat down on a grass-covered island dividing two overflow lots, carefully removed Roger from her pocket, and sat his limp form on her sweater-covered lap. For a frightening moment she thought he was dead, but he stirred, shook himself, and looked up. They gazed at each other in silence.

“‘Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick’?” Scarlett said at last. “Where the heck did you get that?”

“Don’t ever leave me again,” said the mouse. “I mean it.”

“Okay,” she promised, “but that means you’ll have to come to school with me.”

“Maybe somewhere in your backpack,” he said. “Maybe you could fix up a box or something. You could leave me in your locker between classes.”

“This’ll be tough.”

“I don’t care. I’ll do all your homework.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Just don’t leave me behind.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

He fell asleep in her pocket on the way home. She heard him snoring as she walked.

“Did you go out with some friends?” asked her aunt when she got in.

“No. Just went by the mall.”

“That’s nice. I had two more locks put on the front door with a special alarm. No one’s going to break in here now! Want me to order out pizza for supper? What do you want on it?”

“Sure. Anything, I don’t care.”

She put Roger in the cage and watched him crawl into his hutch and fall over, sound asleep again. It was Friday evening. There was nothing to do. She put down her gray backpack and took off her sweater, took a bathroom break, then came out and looked at the mouse cage for a while, thinking.

She was thinking about what he must have been like as a human. If he had been about fifty when he died in the skydiving accident, he would have been as old as her father would have been, had he lived, too. Her father had been a wonderful “little” brother, her aunt always said, a big man but just wonderful.

Her gaze drifted over to her computer. After a moment, she turned it on, waited for it to boot up, then got online. She found a search engine she liked, thought for a couple of minutes, then typed in a few words and hit the return key. She read the results, hit the return key again, then hit it again. She then tried a different combination of words.

Bingo. She clicked on one entry and read the webpage that appeared next, from the website of the local newspaper, the Lawndale Sun-Herald. The article was archived from just over a year ago.

It really happened, thought Scarlett in shock. I kind of believed him before, but he really was telling me the truth. He did get killed! He really is reincarnated!

The private detective’s name was Roger LaSouris. He had been investigating organized crime activity in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and was said to have been closing in on the leaders of an extortion and arson ring. Skydiving was his hobby, though he was a part-time instructor as well. (Why didn't he tell me he was a detective, too? Scarlett wondered.) An investigation was being conducted, but nothing worse than negligence was suspected. The damaged chutes were said to have been packed by personnel at a small county airport just for practice, then were set aside to be taken out for repairs, as the mouse had said. Someone had mistaken the damaged parachutes for normal ones and, without checking them, had put them in a spot where the group of three skydivers had taken and used them.

We each packed our own parachutes, I know that for a fact, Roger had said, and there was nothing wrong with them.

Scarlett read the rest of the article, then did a few more searches. Another article appeared that showed the case had been closed, no charges filed. The skydivers should not have used parachutes they had not packed, said the investigators.

But that wasn’t what Roger had said, and she believed him. It was pretty obvious what had happened. Detective Roger LaSouris—now Roger the mouse—really had been murdered. One or more people in the police investigation must have known the truth but covered it up. It had been an inside job. Maybe the leader of the extortion ring had ordered LaSouris taken out before he got too close. She could find no further mention of the extortion and arson ring he was supposed to have been investigating.

Now Scarlett was the only person who knew the whole truth, other than Roger. She had no one she could talk to about it. Everything was over and done with, and the world had moved on.

She printed off the articles and hid them away. She then looked up the longevity of the average mouse. If it was lucky, a mouse could live to see its third birthday. If Roger had been a mouse for a year now, he had about a year or two left.

She shut down her laptop, thoroughly depressed. Life wasn’t just unfair; at times, it positively sucked out loud.

At least she would be with Roger for a little while. It would be fun to have someone to talk to at school, when time allowed. She had always wanted a friend more than a pet.

When she fell asleep later that night with her headphones on, music playing in her ears and her stomach full of pepperoni pizza, she had an odd dream that she was suddenly as small as Roger the mouse. Someone was chasing them, however, and Roger was trying to protect her as they ran. Then something reached down and snatched Roger away, but this time he was really gone, gone forever.

And then that something came down for her, and as it did she looked up and saw it—a cosmic entity of wickedness that filled the night above her, a thing of absolute evil and infinite size. As it reached down and caught her, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

The dawn found Scarlett already up, unable to sleep past seven. She wandered into the kitchen, got a blueberry muffin from the refrigerator, then wandered back to the bedroom. Roger was up by then, too, yawning in the tiny doorway of his hutch.

“Wanna muffin?” Scarlett said.

He blinked groggily at her. “Sure, thanks.”

She unlocked the top of the cage, lifted it away, broke off a small piece of her muffin, and carefully set it in front of the mouse. She hesitated, her hand still in the cage, then gently stroked his back with a fingertip. Roger didn’t object; in fact, he closed his eyes and lay down in the wood shavings, letting the massage continue. “So glad to be alive,” he mumbled.

Scarlett withdrew her hand a few moments later and ate the rest of her muffin. “I’m glad you’re alive, too.”

Roger raised his head and sniffed at the muffin chunk before him. “Aren’t you going to school?”

“It’s Saturday. Oh, I was invited to go see a game this morning at school. It starts at nine.”

The mouse looked up in concern. “This will sound stupid on top of everything that’s happened, but could you take me with you? I don’t want to be here alone anymore.”

“I thought you didn’t want to go outdoors.”

“I don’t,” Roger sighed, “but if I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go, so I may as well be outside with you instead of home by myself when it happens.”

Scarlett recalled her nightmare. She frowned, disturbed at the memory. “Don’t be morbid.”

“Waiting here for another monster kid to kidnap me is morbid. Can I go with you?”

“I guess. We’ll have to find some way to keep you safe.”

“We’ll work it out. What kind of game is it, by the way?”

“Field hockey. Some friends of mine are playing in a big game against Oakwood High. It might be a little rough.”

“Rough, ha. Bring it on.” Roger got up on all fours and began to nibble at the muffin.

“Scarlett?” called her aunt from her bedroom down the hall. “Scarlett, who are you talking to?”

Scarlett froze in shock, then put a finger to her lips and shushed the mouse. “Nobody!” she called back.

“It sounds like you’re talking to a guy. Is there a guy in your room?”

“No, it’s just me! I’m trying a ventriloquist thing with my mouse!”

Someone got out of bed and came down the hall. Her aunt appeared a moment later in her bathrobe, her hair a mess, and looked around. “Oh,” she said in embarrassment. “I thought I heard someone else in here. Sorry!”

“No problem,” said Scarlett in a very deep voice, trying to sound like Roger. “I’ll keep it down.”

“Are you going out today?”

Scarlett nodded and resumed her usual voice. “I was going to the field hockey game at school. I wanna take off about eight or so. I might go somewhere afterward with some friends.”

“Okay. Listen, can you get some air freshener for this room? That mouse smells awful.”

Roger turned, cheeks bulging with muffin crumbs, and gave Scarlett’s aunt an insulted look.

“I’ll take care of it, promise!” said Scarlett. When her aunt left, she shut and locked her bedroom door. “Crap, sorry about that. I’ll have to be more careful when we talk.”

“Some nerve, saying I stink,” Roger grumbled. “Like people don’t stink when they go to the bathroom. Yeah, right.”

“Oh, get over it. It does smell a little in here.” Scarlett picked up her school backpack, unzipped it, and looked inside. “‘Bout time we did something about it.”

“If you’re going to get air freshener,” Roger said, giving in, “get something that smells like fresh baked bread. I like that smell. Or maybe a scented candle with a flowery odor like rose or lilac, but not too strong. Don’t get any ammonia or anything really powerful, please. That’ll choke me right off. And don’t spray it right at me, either.”

“Yes, your majesty. We can wait until after the game to go to Food Lord, then you can pick out what you want. The pet department there might have something, too.”

“Great,” said Roger. “So, how’re we going to get to this game so that I don’t get eaten?”

Scarlett emptied her backpack’s messy contents onto her bed. “If I could find a small cage, I could stuff it in here so you’d have some protection and some air, too. I think we have a big Tupperware container that might work, though. I’ll just leave the lid off.”

Twenty minutes of experimentation passed with moderate success at the end. The cereal-box-shaped Tupperware container, when filled a quarter of the way up with tissues and wood shavings instead, became a reasonably well armored mouse holder inside Scarlett’s backpack. The top of the backpack was left unzipped so Roger could get plenty of air and also peek or climb out as well.

“I might try sitting on your shoulder once in a while, if you could get used to that,” he said. “As long as you don’t forget I’m there and start swatting at me.”

“Let’s give it a try.” Scarlett reached down and cupped her hand in front of Roger. He looked up at her, gathered his courage, then climbed into her palm. She lifted him with care. When he got out on her shoulder, she shivered (his feet tickled), then stood up and walked slowly around the room.

“I don’t think anyone can even see me through your hair,” said Roger. “It’s like being under a big red willow tree. And I don’t mind the height so much when it’s you. I don’t think my claws are tearing up your nightshirt, or I hope not.”

“Don’t worry about it. Lemme go get showered and dressed, then we’ll go for a walk, if you’re up to it.”

Roger gulped audibly but said, “Sure, let’s do it to it.”

At five after eight, Scarlett left the apartment complex in her usual outfit, with Roger clinging to her right shoulder. “This isn’t so bad,” he admitted. “Try not to run, though. I mean, unless you have to.”

“Let’s hope I don’t,” she murmured, thinking uncomfortable thoughts. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

“We were going to the game, right? Just tell me what’s around us. I can’t see too well through your hair, but I can smell and hear everything. Nice soap fragrance, by the way.”

“Thanks. Okay, this is the corner of Ward Street and Murphy Avenue. Pizza Forest and the Multimovieplex are about a block north of us. The Big Strawberry and the mall are way west of us, Seven Corners and the industrial park are to the east, and Lawndale High and the athletic field are five blocks south.”

“Giant strawberry?”

Scarlett set off across the street, then went south along Murphy Avenue. “Yeah, it’s some kind of huge strawberry statue made out of metal or something. This whole place used to be a big strawberry farm, I think, before they built everything else over it. That’s what someone at school told me, anyway.”

“The air smells good. I like autumn.”

“It’s all right.” Scarlett took a deep breath and plunged in. “So, you used to be a detective?”

The mouse gasped. “How did you know that?” he asked after a surprised pause.

Bingo. “Read about it on the Internet. Your name is Roger LaSouris, and you were looking for some bad guys before you were mouse-ified.”

Roger groaned. “Yeah, that’s me,” he said in a low voice. “I just didn’t want to think about my old job too much. That was part of my other life, not this one.”

“So, who were you looking for?”

“We shouldn’t . . . oh, what the hell, doesn’t matter now. There was some guy or some gang going around this area setting fires in old run-down warehouses so the owners could collect the insurance, working for hire, but then whoever it was started branching out, threatening to set fires to perfectly good places unless he or they got paid a ton of money up front. The police were looking into it, but they weren’t getting anywhere for some reason. I got a client who hired me to go looking for whoever it was after his office got torched. I started getting some leads, I was really getting somewhere, and then I went skydiving one day and here I am.”

“Did the police catch who was doing it?”

“Nah. I didn’t have time to get the evidence to them before . . . before I turned into a mouse.”

“So, you mean there’s evidence you have about who did it?”

“Yeah, but it’s hidden away. Actually, that’s kind of a problem in itself, ‘cause I left it all in a package with my old girlfriend, Rita Barksdale. And, um, I didn’t actually tell her I was leaving it with her, either. I stuck it behind some things on a shelf in her basement. I didn’t give her any instructions on what to do with it if I got killed or anything, and I don’t think she’s found it, or there would have been something in the papers about Bruno getting busted.”

“Bruno?”

“Oh, yeah.” Roger sighed again. “Bruno Nagy. The few people who knew about him called him Bruno the Giant. Big guy, a master with pyrotechnics, but I couldn’t get anything on him beyond a couple years ago, like he appeared out of nowhere. The cops had his fingerprints, but they didn’t match anything in their database, not even Interpol’s. I think he was living around here somewhere, but nothing turned up. You’d think he just . . . hey, is something wrong?”

“What?” Scarlett squeaked. “Why’d you say that?”

“Your heart is beating really fast all of a sudden. I can feel it through my feet. You smell differently, too, like you’re afraid.”

“That’s stupid!” she snapped, but the words almost caught in her throat because she was thinking about the giant man who had stalked her at the Lawndale Mall. It was Bruno, she was sure of it. The guy Roger had been hunting for was the same guy who had started to come after her—but she had no idea why she was so sure of it, or why someone like Bruno would bother with her. She simply knew it was so, and that was that.

“Calm down, okay?” said the mouse. “Your breathing’s gone way up, too, and you’re almost running!”

“Oh, stop it!” she said, her voice rising as she slowed her pace. “I am not!”

“Whoa, don’t get touchy.” She felt Roger move about on her shoulder. “Police sirens ahead of us,” he said.

“Where?” she said, but she could hear them, too, faintly.

“I hear something else,” said the mouse. “Lots of people noises. It’s blocks away, but it sounds like . . . a riot.”

“A riot?” Scarlett looked around as she walked. “I don’t see anything.”

“You will. Be careful.”

The police sirens grew louder. Scarlett was only two blocks from school. A black Lawndale police car shot through a cross street ahead of her at full speed, lights flashing.

Scarlett guessed at the direction the sirens were coming from. She could hear distant shouts as well. “I think it’s at the school,” she said.

“We should go home,” said Roger firmly.

“No. We’re going to see what’s going on.” She sped up her pace. “My friends are there.”

“Scarlett, don’t be foolish.”

“Get in the backpack.”

“All right, fine, I will.” He started to move, but she felt the mouse stop and continue holding on to his perch on her shoulder a few moments longer before retiring.

Scarlett came to the street running along the north side of Lawndale High School. All the action was to the east, where the athletic fields were. As she crossed the street to the school and headed along the sidewalk toward the shouting and sirens, a bullhorn rose above the chaos. “This is a police order!” she heard. “We want everyone to disperse! Clear the field, now! We want everyone off the field! Go home!”

Many students were visible ahead, most running in Scarlett’s direction. She stopped and pressed herself against the school building to get out of their way as they passed by. Many laughed in excitement, though a few were nervous or frightened. When the majority was gone, she continued on her way east. The athletic fields came into view when she rounded the school to the right and passed the football stadium.

Police cars and ambulances were parked everywhere ahead near the southern athletic field, which was used for soccer and field hockey games. Adults and children were leaving the area on foot in droves. Many were tense and angry; a few children threw rocks at unseen targets. A cloud of smoke hung over the playing field.

“Scarlett, please be careful,” came Roger’s muffled voice from her backpack. He suddenly sneezed. “Ow, my sinuses!” he cried, and he sneezed again and again.

“I am being careful!” said Scarlett, heading straight for the riot. Her nose began to tickle. The air smelled funny—bad funny.

A few seconds later, a group of teenage girls wearing blue athletic shirts, gold shorts, and white shoes came out of the crowd. They left the scene at a jog, coughing and looking back occasionally and wiping their eyes. One spotted Scarlett and waved at her. It was Tananda. “Hey, Scar!” she cried. “You missed it!”

“I missed the game?” Scarlett shouted back in puzzlement. “It’s not even nine o’clock yet!”

“No, you missed the fight!” shouted Tananda. “It was awesome!” The other Lawndale Leopards (they could be no one else) jumped up and down, fists in the air, and cheered lustily. Scarlett noticed that they all had red eyes and runny noses.

“You got into a fight?” said Scarlett. Something in the air was affecting her sinuses. She covered her nose with a hand and began to back up, fighting a sneeze.

“No, our moms did!” yelled a girl Scarlett recognized as Taryn the goalkeeper. “Right before the game, our moms went over and got into a fight with the Knotholes’ moms!”

“The cops took our sticks and threw us out, or else we’d be back there, too,” said Angel with a grin. She coughed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Whose idea was it to throw the tear gas at the Knotholes’ bench?”

“Big Jen did it, I think,” said Tananda. “Her mom’s a cop. Bet she got it from her mom.”

..

“My mom got arrested!” said another red-haired girl called Kelly. “I saw it! I gotta bail her out so she can beat up some more Ho’s moms!”

Another general cheer went up, missed with shouts of “My mom got busted, too!” and “Your mom ain’t got no bust!” and assorted threats, curses, and obscenities. Scarlett heard Roger trying to muffle his sneezes in the backpack.

“Now we gotta wait until next Saturday for the real game,” said Tananda. She turned to Scarlett. “You wanna go to the police station with us after we go to the mall? We might have a post-game party at Mahna Mahna’s place, too.”

“Uh, sure. Mall first.” Scarlett figured the chances that Bruno would go after her again with so many violence-prone Leopards around were slim indeed. The gang set off, sorting itself into smaller clusters as they headed west for Lawndale Mall. It took several minutes for the effects of the tear gas to clear.

“What’s in the backpack?” asked Tananda, walking beside Scarlett. “You weren’t going to do homework during the game, were you?”

“Uh, no,” said Scarlett, taking a chance. “It’s my mouse. I made a little place for him in there so he could go places with me.”

“Lemme see.” Tananda caught Scarlett by the arm, pulled her to a stop, then unzipped the backpack and peered inside. “Wow,” she said. “Cute little thing. I like him. Is he trained?”

“Do you mean like housebroken?” Scarlett asked. “Or do you mean like—”

Tananda suddenly gasped. “Whoa!” she exclaimed in astonishment as she looked into the backpack. “How’d you get him to do that? That’s great!”

“What’s great?” said Scarlett, trying to turn her head to see into the backpack, too.

Tananda released the backpack and laughed. “Ohmigod!” she said, her face radiant. “That was so cool! He’s like awesome!”

Scarlett took off the backpack and peered inside. Roger looked up at her from inside the Tupperware container. Wearing an innocent face, he hunched up his shoulders and held his palms up at his sides as if to say he had no idea what Tananda was talking about.

Scarlett snorted in amusement, zipped up the backpack to leave a small hole at the top again, and put it back on. “Show off,” she muttered, wondering what he had done but not wanting to ask and find out.

“You could do a show with him for Bitch’s science class,” said Tananda, “or you could except Bitch would try to dissect him afterward just for laughs. Good to see he’s doing better, though.”

“What was Barch saying at the end of class yesterday about a roller-hockey game?” Scarlett said, trying to change the subject.

“Oh, that. The annual faculty-DJ roller-hockey game is coming in two weeks. It’s not as much fun as a real field hockey game, but it’s still all right. There’s a betting pool on when each teacher or disk jockey will go down in the game, temporarily or permanently. ‘Popeye’ DeMartino almost bought it last year.”

Scarlett was horrified. “The kids bet on which teachers are going to die?”

“There’s a dead pool, yeah, but my money’s on who’s gonna get maimed. DeMartino’s too tough to kick the bucket just yet, but he might take out a DJ before they carry him out. He’s got a thing about Rock-and-Roll Randy ‘cause they . . . hey, I think I’ve seen that dog before. “

“Huh?” Scarlett looked around. A German shepherd was trotting along on the other side of the street, paying no attention to them. She gasped in recognition. “That’s the dog that was in the Chinese restaurant!”

“What was it doing in a restaurant?” said Tananda. “Isn’t that sort of illegal, dog hair and all?”

“When you went with me to Good Time Chinese, that dog was inside!” exclaimed Scarlett. “There was a blonde lady in there, too. I think she was its owner.”

Tananda turned around and walked backward as she shouted to a group of girls behind her. “Hey, Kristen! No, Kristen with an ‘i’ and an ‘e’! Yeah, you! C’mere! Tell Scarlett what you said about the lady that took over Good Time Chinese!”

A lithe Goth girl detached herself from a cluster of friends and jogged over. Her black shag-cut hair had a splash of red in front; her lipstick was black and her eye makeup was heavy and dark. Scarlett recalled seeing her hanging around Andrea at times, though Kristen was a freshman. “Sup?” Kristen said after taking a chocolate Tootsie-Roll Pop out of her mouth.

“What was it that Woot told you about that lady who runs Good Time Chinese?” said Tananda. “Something about—”

“Hey, Woot!” Kristen shouted behind her. “Come up here!”

Another teen hurried up, this one a long-haired girl with Han Chinese features, an excitable manner, and a mouth full of chewing gum.

“What was it you said your mom heard from Ms. Li about that blonde lady that took over Good Time Chinese?” said Kristen.

“Oh, yeah!” said Woot in an animated tone, her gum snapping. “She like bought out the previous owners, you know? And then she like turned the place into something that was not like Chinese at all, like it was sort of like Country Buffet or something, you know, but with Chinese food and all? And like now the food’s not as good was it was and it’s sorta going downhill and all, so it like sucks, you know? Oh, and I heard she was like a real bitch.”

“Her name was like wolf-something, right?” said Kristen, and she put the Tootsie-Roll back in her mouth.

“Yeah, her name’s Adele Wolff, with two f’s.” Woot wrinkled her nose. “She sorta looks young but she’s really kinda old and she’s so skanky she’d get thrown out of a trailer park, you know? And she’s got like these weird tattoos and all with like really weird stuff, plus she’s got those dogs and all, like that one.” Woot pointed to the German shepherd that was still paralleling their course. “And I heard she’s a bigger bitch than her dogs.”

..

“She’s got more than one dog?” asked Scarlett with concern. Her gaze never left the German shepherd. She wondered if she was in danger—or if Roger was in more danger than her.

“Oh, she’s got like three or four of them, but the rest are probably at her place,” said Woot. “She’s not supposed to bring her dogs to the restaurant and all. If she did, you should call the police on her. I don’t want dog hair in my food, you know? Like, eww.”

“Wish I had my stick,” muttered Tananda, eyeing the dog.

“I’ve got something to stick it with,” Kristen growled after taking the sucker out of her mouth again. “I almost used it on Upchuck last week and made him a soprano.”

“Upchuck sings opera?” said Woot in surprise.

“That dog makes me nervous,” Scarlett admitted, ignoring Woot. “I don’t want him to get my mouse.”

“You have a mouse?” Kristen exclaimed. “Is he in your backpack?”

Scarlett glanced at the dog—but Hermione was trotting away down a side street, leaving the group behind. Thank the Goddess! she thought. “Yeah, he’s in there, but wait until we get to the mall before I show him to you. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Hey!” yelled Kristen to the other girls. “Scarlett’s got a mouse in her backpack!”

Crap! Scarlett wanted to kick herself for opening her mouth, but it was too late now. She begged off showing Roger to anyone until they got to the mall, but the other girls remained clustered around her in a huge mob all the rest of the way there—which, Scarlett reflected, wasn’t so bad a result after all, considering the potential threats.

The Lawndale Mall appeared in due time, and Scarlett and her escort of Leopards crossed the broad parking lots and went in through the J. J. Jeeter’s entrance. The Leopards laughed and shouted and swore and pretended to shoplift cheap jewelry just to drive the floor staff crazy. Several girls were detained but had to be released for lack of evidence.

Once in the main concourse, the girls again crowded around Scarlett until she showed each and every one of them her mouse. Roger took it well, though Scarlett thought he looked shaky and tired, probably from being jarred around on the long walk. She begged off from the group for a few moments and went into a restroom, locking herself in a toilet stall for some privacy.

“Are you okay?” she whispered into the backpack.

“Nauseated and scared spitless, and I almost sneezed my damn head off from the tear gas, but I’m fine otherwise,” said Roger, trembling a little. “I could smell that damn dog from in here. I swear I’ve smelled him somewhere else before now, but I don’t know where. I got some of his scent on you after you went to Good Time Chinese that last time, but I know I’ve smelled him before then, too. Huh. Whatever. Are we in a bathroom or something? It stinks in here.”

“It’s a ladies room, and it doesn’t smell that bad,” said Scarlett. “Lucky for you, I don’t have to go yet. I’m sorry about everyone else looking at you, though. My bad for talking about you.”

“Oh, forget it. They’re all right, I guess, except for the one who burped on me. Man, I thought I’d die.”

“Do you mind if we hang out at the mall for a while? I think it’s safe here.”

“Sure. Hey, is there a pet store in here? You can get some deodorizer or something for the cage.”

“Oh, yeah! That’s why we came out here to begin with, isn’t it?”

“More or less. I had another idea. Could you make a long-distance call for me?”

Scarlett frowned and felt her sweater pocket for her money purse. “I have some change, but not a lot. Where do you want me to call?”

“Leeville. I’ve got the number memorized. I want you to call Rita. Don’t tell her who you are, just call her and tell her to look in her basement on the shelves next to the stairs, behind the popcorn popper. Just tell her to do that, and nothing else. Maybe she’ll send the package to the FBI. Mmm, knowing Rita, maybe you’d better tell her where to send it, too. She’s a little . . . you know.”

“Slow?”

“Easy to distract, let’s say.”

Scarlett thought it over and sighed. “Sure, why not.”

“Thanks!” said Roger in relief. “Maybe all that work I did finding this Bruno guy won’t go to waste after all!”

Scarlett thought that putting Bruno the Giant away would be an excellent idea, too, for her own reasons. She did not want to upset the mouse by telling him about her encounter with Bruno a few days earlier, especially since it had happened in that same mall.

When she left the ladies room, Scarlett told the Leopards she needed to make a phone call in private before she could join them at the food court for a post-game brunch. The other girls agreed, then waved and called goodbye as they left, as the pay phones were next to the public restrooms. Tananda held back to wait for Scarlett, peering in the window of a sporting goods store across the concourse.

Scarlett walked back to the phones and carefully set her backpack on the counter by the phone itself. She pulled off the handset, stuck some coins from her pocket purse in the slot, and put her face next to the backpack’s top. “What was the number to Rita’s place?” she whispered.

Roger called out the numbers and Scarlett dialed. She mentally rehearsed what she would say until she heard the phone pick up on the other end. “Hello?” Scarlett said brightly. “Who’s this?”

No answer came. She could hear someone’s slow, heavy breathing on the other end.

“Is this Rita?” Scarlett continued. Still no response.

Something was not quite right.

“Hello?” Scarlett asked, her anxiety rising. “Anyone there? Is this Rita Barksdale?”

On the other end of the line, she heard a distant door open. “I'm out of the shower now!” a woman called. “Who is it?”

She heard a deep intake of breath.

“Scarlett,” whispered a coarse, deep voice that drew out the syllables of her name.

She was paralyzed in an instant. Not a thing entered her head except absolute terror.

“Who did you say it was, Bruno?” the woman in the background called again.

“Sorry,” said the voice, louder this time. “Wrong number.”

And the phone hung up.

Frightened to the core, Scarlett hung up the phone. Bruno knew it was me calling! He’s got some kind of special power that tells him when I’m around! He must have been using it to find me when I was here last—but I can detect when he’s around, too, with my intuition that tells me when something bad is about to happen! I knew when he was approaching me last time in the mall, I knew where he was waiting to get me, and I had a premonition just now that it was him on the phone! We can sense each other’s presence—but why in the world is he stalking ME?

“Hey!” called Roger, peeking out of the backpack. “Why’d you hang up? Wasn’t she home? Did you get an answering machine?”

“Bruno,” she whispered numbly. “I got Bruno instead.”

“What?!” the mouse cried. “You got Bruno?! How did you do that?”

“He’s there with Rita!” Scarlett told him. “He knew it was me, Roger! He said my name, but I didn’t tell him who I was. He knows who I am!”

“Oh, God!” The mouse began to tremble. “He’s there with Rita? Is she in trouble? Did he hurt her? We have to call the police!”

“I don’t think he was hurting her. She was calling to him from the shower, and she didn’t sound like she was in trouble. I think they’re dating.”

The mouse gasped. “They’re DATING?!” he yelled.

“Not so loud!” Scarlett snapped, and she tried to collect her thoughts. “I think Bruno’s hunting for me, Roger! I didn’t tell you before, but he tried to kidnap me from this mall the night you were taken from the apartment! He’s got the same psychic powers I do, so he can sense where I am just as I can sense him!”

“You have psychic powers?!” Roger fairly shrieked. “WHAT psychic powers?!”

“Damn it, Roger, not so loud!”

“You’ve got honest-to-God psychic powers? You’re telling me you’re a real witch with supernatural powers, and Bruno the Giant Pyromaniac has the same super powers you do, and he’s shacked up with my ex-girlfriend and is trying to kidnap you and probably me, too? Is that it? Am I getting the picture?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! And stop shouting!”

“I agree!” said a voice that was neither Scarlett’s nor Roger’s. Scarlett and Roger gasped and turned to look at the narrow entrance to the pay-phone alcove.

“Stop shouting!” said Tananda. She looked from Scarlett to the mouse with a wide-eyed gaze. “Everyone in the freakin’ world can hear you! Keep it down!”

“Oh, Goddess,” said Scarlett in redoubled horror, covering her mouth with her hands. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Forget it,” groaned Roger. He clamped a paw over his pink eyes. “Me and my big mouth. Jesus Harley Davidson Christ.”

“Are you two in trouble?” asked Tananda, eyeing the mouse in astonishment.

“Yes!” said Scarlett and Roger in unison.

For a moment Tananda was at a loss for words—then she straightened up. “Get back in the backpack,” she said to Roger. “Hurry, before someone comes in here. You—” She pointed to Scarlett “—put the backpack on. Pretend like nothing’s happened. Where’s this guy who’s following you?”

“Leeville,” said Scarlett. “He was on the phone, but he knows—”

“Later! Drop it for now!” Tananda turned and pointed a finger at Roger, who still clung to the top of the backpack. “And you get back in there right now, before I use you as a field hockey ball!”

Roger gasped and dived into the backpack. Tananda zipped the pack shut, helped Scarlett on with it, and herded her friend out of the phone alcove and away from passersby who regarded them with puzzled looks. They walked swiftly down the broad, yellow-painted mall corridor. “We need to find a place to talk,” said Tananda. “We can’t do it here.”

Scarlett noticed they were walking by a pet shop called Our Furry and Scaly Friends, the place where she and her aunt had purchased Roger’s cage less than a week earlier. She quickly nudged Tananda and pointed inside.

“We can’t talk in there!” said Tananda curtly. “Too open, too many people!”

“No, I have to buy something for Roger! It’ll only take a second!”

Tananda rolled her eyes. “Well, hurry!”

Scarlett hurried into the shop and, with the help of the balding owner, was back outside in three minutes with a bottle of mouse-cage deodorizer. There she found that Tananda had collected several of the other Leopards around her. “We’ll meet you all at Mahna Mahna’s later, maybe noonish,” said Tan. “I’m going with Scarlett to her place to de-stink her rat. We’ll bring something for the party.”

“Chocolate!” suggested Kristen. “Only Communists never eat chocolate!”

“Popcorn and chips!” said several others. “Cheese dip from the Cheese Guy shop!”

“Beer!”

“We’re not supposed to buy beer, diptard! We’re underage!”

“Then get bail money for our moms so they can buy us beer!”

With a cheer, the other Leopards elected to free their mothers from jail before any further shopping for party supplies, and the group broke up.

“You don’t drink, do you?” Tananda asked Scarlett as they left the mall.

“No,” Scarlett admitted, the deodorizer stuffed into a side pocket of her backpack. “My aunt would kill me if I did, and I hate the taste of alcohol anyway.”

“I don’t drink all that often,” Tananda said. “My mom said if I was going to drink, I’d better do it in front of her so she’d know about it, so we each kill a beer a couple times a week after school.” She reached over and unzipped Scarlett’s backpack. “Hey, Roger or whoever!” she said into it. “Do you drink?”

“I could use a whiskey on the rocks right about now,” came Roger’s voice from inside the pack.

“Roger!” said Scarlett, shocked. “You don’t drink!”

“I never said I didn’t drink!” Roger retorted. “And I’m a mouse! I don’t drink all that much!”

“We’re going someplace special to talk,” said Tananda to Roger. “You can probably get a whiskey when you get there.”

“Thank God,” said the mouse in the backpack. “It’s been ages.”

“Are we going to Mahna Mahna’s party?” asked Scarlett nervously.

“Later,” said Tananda. “That can wait. We’re going to see someone who can really help you.”

Scarlett stared at her friend. “Who?”

Tananda rubbed her chin. “He’s an old guy, but he’s cool,” she said. “He helped out a bunch of us Leopards years ago, and he still helps us out when he can. He’s like a really cool uncle. You ever see a TV show called Sick, Sad World?”

Scarlett shook her head. “It’s supposed to be kind of weird and gross, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but a long time ago, some of us Leopards were on it. They did this special exposé about violent girls, and our scout group got to be the main story. They still show that episode sometimes on reruns ‘cause it’s so popular. You know that kids’ scout group that used to be around here, the Blue Belles?”

Scarlett’s eyes grew wide. “The one the police shut down ‘cause the kids were running it like a gang? I heard about that! That was you?”

Tananda gave her a toothy grin. “Got a little blue bell tattooed on my ankle and everything. Some guy named Axl did it for me. I don’t think he believed I was eighteen, though.”

“Didn’t they send you—I mean, all those girls to a juvenile-delinquent camp?”

“Yeah, but that was all right. One of the main counselors there was this old guy who used to be a Marine or something. He got us straightened out fast, but he wasn’t ever mean and he really cared what happened to us. He always did the right thing, even when he wasn’t sober. It was his idea to start a field hockey team at Lawndale High and get us in it, so he talked to Chairman Li and Miz Morris so our, um, how’d he put it, our ‘antisocial impulses would have an acceptable and rewarding outlet.’ That means we can fight all we want, and it’s okay. He always comes to our games, too. He was there this morning until our moms got into it with the Oakwood moms. He said he’d be at the Dutchman Inn for the rest of the weekend if I needed him. He’s got family in the area, I think, but he doesn’t like most of ‘em.”

Scarlett raised an eyebrow. “He said he’d be there if you needed him?”

“Yeah, it sounds weird, but at the game he said something bizarre might happen to me today, and I might need to tell him about it. I didn’t know what he meant until I saw you talking to Mickey Rat back there—”

“Don’t call me that!” Roger yelled from the backpack.

“Shut up! Anyway, I knew right off you two were the ‘something’ he was talking about. You couldn’t be anything else.”

“Wait a minute!” Roger stuck his head out of the backpack. “Is this guy really huge, built like a concrete wall, fond of matches, name of Bruno Nagy?”

“No, that’s not him, and get back in there!” Tan took a half-hearted swipe at him with her right fist. Roger squeaked and disappeared into the pack.

“How’d he know that you might need to talk to him?” asked Scarlett.

“‘Cause he’s psychic,” said Tananda. “Just like you and your rat.”

“He’s psychic?” cried Scarlett. She came to a halt.

“I’m not psychic, and I’m not a rat, damn it!” yelled Roger from inside the backpack. “I’m just a mouse that talks, okay?”

“Yeah, psychic like you,” said Tananda to Scarlett, ignoring Roger. “What’s your problem?”

“It’s just that—I don’t think—I mean, I just—oh, I don’t know what to think. I give up.”

“Hey,” said Tananda. She stepped close to Scarlett and put a hand on her shoulder. “Calm down, okay? Look, maybe you can use your powers or something and tell me if this is the right thing to do. You gotta trust me that I know what I’m doing.”

Looking unsure, Scarlett nodded, then took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Is this the right thing to do, to go with Tan to see this guy? she thought.

For a moment, she felt only vaguely foolish. Then her mind cleared. She felt no sense of immediate danger at all. Go with her, said a soundless voice deep inside her mind.

She opened her eyes, now at peace. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s go.” The two girls started off again, Tananda pointing the way.

“Who’s right?” called Roger from inside the backpack. “Would someone tell me what’s going on here?”

“We’re getting help,” said Scarlett in relief. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Would you mind telling me a little about Roger Rat there?” asked Tananda. “If that’s okay, I mean.”

“I can do my own talking!” Roger snapped, then added in a lower tone, “Scarlett, you go first.”

As they walked, Scarlett and Roger began to fill Tananda in on the goings-on since the day Scarlett rescued a frightened white mouse left over from a science experiment at school. For once, they left out nothing.

“So, that was Bruno the Giant on the phone,” finished Scarlett, several blocks later. “He’s the same guy Roger was looking for before his parachute got sabotaged, only now Bruno’s with Roger’s ex-girlfriend and is trying to kidnap me, I think, but I don’t know why. And there’s that weird lady at Good Time Chinese and her dog, and I don’t trust her because she knew you and I were poking around back there, and that’s the place where Roger was turned into a mouse, and now her dog’s following me around, maybe, and I don’t know what to do!”

“Remember the part about Brian Taylor trying to get all his friends to kidnap me!” said Roger, still inside the backpack. “That’s important! Don’t let ‘em do it again!”

“We won’t,” said Tananda. “I mean, I won’t. Oh, hell. Look, you guys need protection. I gotta tell the other girls something so they can help out, okay? Lemme just tell them there’s some people bothering you, and we’ll keep a lookout for dogs and giants and aliens and all that crap.” Her face glowed. “We might even get into a fight!”

“Go ahead and tell them a little bit, but not too much,” Scarlett said in surrender. “This whole thing is getting crazier by the minute.”

“But don’t tell everyone about me talking or anything, okay?” called Roger. “I don’t want to be dissected!”

Tananda shook her head. “You know, for a mouse, you’ve got a lot of mental issues. Don’t worry about it, though. I won’t tell. This is a great secret!”

“As long as it stays a secret,” Roger grumbled.

“So, you’re actually an old guy stuck inside a mouse?” Tananda asked, making an ick face. “That’s like really creepy. Are you a pervert?”

After a moment, Roger poked his head out of the backpack. “Excuse me?” he said. “You beat up other girls with a hockey stick, and you are calling me creepy?”

“What I’m doing is socially acceptable,” said Tan. “We get uniforms and a school budget for it. You, on the other hand—don’t let me catch you sneaking around our locker room waiting for a free show. I can towel-snap your butt into next year just like that.”

Roger gave Tananda a look that was pained, disgusted, and annoyed all at once, which was a remarkable feat considering he was doing it with a mouse face, then muttered something impolite and disappeared from view.

“Don’t pick at him, please,” Scarlett said. “He’s really okay.”

“Whatever,” said Tananda with a shrug. “He’s your boyfriend, not mine.” She then pointed ahead to a sprawling, six-story hotel with an illuminated wooden shoe on the roof. “That’s the place.”

The Dutchman Inn had a run-down 1970s look to it, with a décor heavily dependent on orange furniture and brown wood paneling, but it still did a good business thanks to its location by the Interstate. Tananda led Scarlett right past the check-in/check-out lines at the front desk, over to the elevators.

“We’re going to room five-thirteen,” said Tan, punching the elevator buttons. “You’ll like him. Uncle Max is cool.”

“Uncle Max?” said Scarlett nervously.

“It’s what we call him. He hates it.” The elevator arrived, and the two girls got in. Tan punched the button marked “5.”

“Is this safe?” said Scarlett as the doors closed.

“I don’t know,” said Tananda. “You’re the one being chased by a giant.”

“No, I meant . . . forget it.”

They got off at the fifth floor and headed down a hallway. Tananda walked up to the door marked “513” and pounded on it with a fist. “Hey, Uncle Max!” she shouted. “Get off the toilet and answer the door!” She turned to Scarlett. “He hates that,” she said with a grin.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’, all right already!” someone shouted behind the door. “Gimme a minute!” A moment later, the door opened and a gray-haired gentleman with a professional air peered out. He wore a shirt, slacks, tie, and polished black shoes. A tall glass of clear liquid and ice cubes was in his right hand. “Ah, jeez,” he growled when he saw Tananda. “Whaddya lookin’ for, kid—my wallet?” His face suddenly cleared, he set his glass on the floor, and he reached for Tananda with both arms. “C’mere, Greenie! Good to see ya!”

Tananda threw her arms around him and they hugged for a moment. The old guy kissed Tan on the top of her head, gave her a last squeeze, and turned to Scarlett, who hung back in the hallway. “C’mon in,” he said, waving her into the room, “and bring that rotten bum Roger with ya.”

Scarlett was halfway into the room when she realized no one had yet told the old guy about Roger. Her head jerked around in a flash, but the old guy was even quicker and reached inside her unzipped backpack. “Roger!” he shouted. “C’mon outta there!”

Before Scarlett could stop him, the old guy pulled a squirming white mouse out of the pack and held it up in the air. “You old bum!” the old guy roared with delight. “You miserable bum! You stinkin’ bum! Good to see ya!”

“Ohmigod!” shrieked Roger with huge pink eyes. “Ohmigod! Don’t drop me! Aaagh!”

The old guy put the mouse down on a desktop in the room, next to a row of liquor bottles. Roger sat there for a moment, quivering all over—then looked up at the old guy. “Max?” gasped the mouse. “Max Lane? Good Lord, is that really you?”

“In the flesh!” said Max. He picked up his drink again and took a deep swallow, then spun around and pointed at Tananda. “Hey! Stay outta the booze! Drink your mom’s stuff, not mine!”

“Oh, bite me,” said Tananda, but she put the bottle of Jack Daniels down again.

“You know this guy?” Scarlett asked Roger in amazement.

“That’s Max Lane!” exclaimed Roger, quivering in excitement. “He’s a detective, too! He was the guy who hired me to work with him on the Bruno Nagy case!” He turned to Max, his pleasant manner evaporating. “Where the hell have you been, damn you?” he shouted. “I got killed waiting for you to give me the word on Bruno! What happened?”

“What happened?” Max barked. His dark eyebrows knit together as he glared at the mouse. “The son of a bitch blew up my D.C. office just like he did my Baltimore office, and he almost blew me up with it. Then I almost killed myself tryin’ to get to the airport to warn ya not to jump right after that, ‘cause I had a feelin’ somethin’ bad was comin’ your way, but you and the others had already gone up and jumped! It was Bruno that had your ‘chute lines cut! Someone at the airport owed him a favor, and cuttin’ your lines was the payback. Sounds like some people at the state capitol owed Bruno favors, too, ‘cause the investigation afterward wasn’t worth squat.” Max drained his glass, then sadly looked down at the mouse. “I’m sorry, buddy. I’m sorry for what happened to ya. I couldn’t stop it.” Max’s dark expression eased, and he shrugged. “Least ya got to come back. Not many people get to do that.”

“But now I’m a mouse!” Roger roared.

“Better that than a hamster,” said Max. “Hey, you want a whiskey on the rocks, like old times?”

The mouse bristled for a moment . . . then exhaled, looking weary. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

“You two were hunting for Bruno?” asked Scarlett, wondering if this would all turn out to be a dream but fearing it wouldn’t.

“We were,” said Max. He took a shot glass from a drawer and filled it a quarter full with whiskey, then spooned crushed ice into it from an ice container and pushed the glass in front of Roger. The mouse immediately got up, stuck his nose into the shot glass, and began lapping up the whiskey.

“But Bruno got you both back and then got away!” Scarlett said.

“He did,” said Max somberly. He started to pick up a bottle of scotch, then reconsidered and put it down again. “I’ve been on the run for the last year. As long as I keep moving around at random, he can’t get a fix on me or stick a trap in my path. If I wasn’t a psi like him, I’d be dead already. Probably wouldn’t even get reincarnated, either.” He nodded in Roger’s direction. “Some people have all the luck.”

“Uncle Max?” Tananda put a hand on his arm. “This guy’s trying to kill you?”

“Huh? Oh.” Max sat on the edge of the bed, playing with his glass. “Yeah, that’s about the size of it. I got a little premonition I better be movin’ on, so I gotta check out of here in a few minutes and go somewhere else. Ya can’t go with me. I’m like a big bull’s-eye, and I don’t want you anywhere near me in case Bruno gets a major itch for a firework show.”

Tananda’s eyes narrowed, and her lower lip stuck out. Scarlett thought she was on the verge of crying. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Uncle Max,” Tan said.

“And nothing’s gonna happen to me, Greenie, as long as I keep movin’. I was gonna visit with my favorite nephew in town, but instead I think I’m gonna head for the Midwest next. There’s a family reunion comin’ up in Sloatstown in a few months. Hmm, forget I said that. Don’t want to tip Bruno off.”

“Mister Lane?” said Scarlett.

“Max,” said Max.

“Um, Max, do you have any advice for me? That guy Bruno is—”

“He’s after you, too, yeah. That’s ‘cause you’re a psi, like me and him. He hates other psis, hates them more than anything. Wish I’d known that earlier.”

Scarlett’s heart sank. “So, is there anything that—”

“You could run for it and take Roger with you,” Max interrupted. “But if that’s not an option, you might think about turning the tables on Bruno.”

“Do what?”

“Go after him instead of him comin’ after you. Bruno’s got a big ego. He’d never believe anyone like you would go after him—no offense. He was surprised enough when I did. He didn’t like that at all. If he had two psis goin’ after him, that would rattle his cage a little. You must’ve gotten away from him once already, and almost nobody ever does that. Who knows, you might find out something about him we could use to stop him.”

“Like what?” Scarlett asked, though she had already rejected the idea of a high-schooler like her hunting down a psychopathic monster like Bruno.

Max waved a hand. “Well, like, where’s he from? He appeared out of nowhere a couple years ago. Roger and I traced him back to Lawndale, but he must’ve been somewhere else before then. Where was he? How’s he get around? Does he have any friends in the area? Does he have any weaknesses?”

“Would the police help?” said Scarlett.

A queer high giggle rang through the room. Everyone turned to see Roger holding on to the edge of the empty shot glass with one paw, slapping his hind leg with his other forepaw as he guffawed. “Would the police help?” he repeated, then put a paw to one ear, pantomiming a telephone conversation. “‘Hello, officer? I’m a witch and I want to report a giant magical pyromaniac who’s trying to kill my talking mouse!’” Roger doubled over in further laughter, then suddenly began to hiccup.

Tananda turned to Scarlett with a fierce look. “The Leopards will protect you, I swear it! And we’ll protect you, too, Uncle Max!”

“Look after her and Roger instead,” said Max, getting to his feet. “Forget about me. I’ve gotta protect myself for now. Party’s over, folks. I gotta get packed. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer, Greenie. Give the other girls my best.”

Scarlett scooped the hiccupping Roger into her backpack, then shook hands with Max Lane. Tananda gave Max a long hug before she and Scarlett left. Tan wiped her eyes several times, but Scarlett saw Tan’s rigid, angry face and left her alone with her thoughts until they reached the street.

“Why does he call you Greenie?” she asked Tananda.

Tan didn’t answer for a block, but finally wiped her eyes again and said, “‘Cause I dyed my hair green a couple of times. It’s sort of our little joke.”

Scarlett felt a need to say something, but what she instinctively said was not what she had really meant to say. “I won’t let Bruno hurt Max,” was what came out of Scarlett’s mouth. “I’m a psi, and I won’t let it happen.”

“Thanks,” said Tananda with feeling. “And we’ll watch out for you, too.”

They reached out and held hands for a few moments as they walked. The moment was spoiled only by a loud snoring sound coming from the backpack.

“Damn drunken mouse,” said Scarlett. The two girls burst into laughter and let go of each other’s hands. They decided to head for Scarlett’s place before going to Mahna Mahna’s as-good-as-a-victory party, and the rest of the day went fairly well, despite Roger throwing up twice and Scarlett having to run home when the police showed up to arrest the underage beer drinkers and their moms.

Back in her room that evening, Scarlett sat at her desk and looked at Roger, still snoring among the freshly deodorized wood shavings in his cage. Through all the craziness of that Saturday, she was sure of only one thing:

Bruno is going to kill Roger and me, and it’s going to hurt a hell of a lot when he does.

Two nerve-wracking days passed, during which Scarlett thought about running away from home about six thousand times and hardly slept a wink. The drunken Roger passed out Saturday evening and stayed out all day Sunday. When Monday morning came, Scarlett talked her aunt into driving her to school by faking cramps. She was damned if she would be caught out alone in the open, fearing at any moment Bruno would appear out of nowhere to finish her off in a spectacular and messy way. No such attack materialized and her intuition offered no warnings, but she remained fearful and alert nonetheless.

She survived the morning without incident except to spill a bowl of peas all over herself in the cafeteria. After lunch, Scarlett tiredly spun the dial on her school locker and opened it. Taking off her backpack and setting it on the hall floor with care, she began an exchange of books and papers between pack and locker in preparation for her next class.

“Don’t rustle those papers so loudly,” groaned a voice from the Tupperware container at the bottom of the backpack. It was the first time Roger had spoken since the weekend.

She smiled in spite of herself. “I’ll try to be more careful.”

“Man, I hurt all over. What day is this? Wednesday?”

“Shhh,” said Scarlett, hearing someone approach.

“My head is killing me! This is the worst hangover in—”

“Shush!” Scarlett thumped the side of the backpack with a booted foot, bringing a gasp and a moan from the backpack’s inhabitant. Moments later, the Brain and the Art Chick walked by, too engrossed in their own conversation to notice anything out of the ordinary.

“C’mon, Daria!” said the Art Chick. “We could have pizza money for the rest of our lives! If we could rent out one fake boob for twenty dollars a weekend, think of how much we’d get if we rented out ten boobs! Upchuck would be our best repeat customer! Think about it!”

“I’ve thought about it,” grumbled the Brain, “and I don’t think there’s any cure for your condition short of a brain transplant.”

“Then give me your boobs and I’ll do the money-making!”

“Keep your hands off my boobs, Lane. I have to give them back to Doctor Shar by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Can we go see her so I can get my own boobs, then? Does she have big boobs, like really big boobs? You know how guys are about big boobs.”

The Brain and the Art Chick disappeared around a corner. Scarlett sighed and continued trading books and papers between locker and backpack.

“Did I hallucinate that conversation?” asked Roger from inside the backpack. “What the hell was that all about?”

“Forget it,” she replied, getting tense again. “You don’t need to know. And it’s Monday.”

“What happened to Sunday, damn it? And why aren’t you out trying to save Rita?”

“Rita doesn’t need saving half as much as we do!” said Scarlett crossly. “And if you ever get drunk on me again, you will go down a toilet!”

Roger made whining noises but subsided. Scarlett did feel sorry for the little idiot, but she had a lot else on her mind, like the chance that Bruno the Giant would show up to shoot her dead or blow up her aunt’s apartment, or both. Or worse. She had talked to Tananda twice since Mahna Mahna’s party, but nothing was accomplished there except to gain Tan’s repeated declarations that the Leopards were solidly on Scarlett’s side, no matter what. Not much good that will do me when Bruno shows up, Scarlett thought glumly as she shut her locker door with a bang.

“Ow!” came a muffled cry from within the backpack. “Keep it down, okay?”

“I’m going to math now!” Scarlett hissed. “Be quiet!”

Math was boring, as usual (Quadratic Equations Week began today), but it gave her a little time to think. She didn’t like the idea of running away and hiding for the rest of her probably short life, mostly because she didn’t know where she could go. However, she liked the idea of getting killed even less.

Giving up, however, was unthinkable. If she couldn’t run, hide, or surrender, what was left?

She tapped her pencil’s eraser against her upturned nose. What was it Max Lane had said about her going after Bruno? Bruno would never believe it. Well, thought Scarlett, I wouldn’t believe it, either, if I were him. I wouldn’t know what to think. Forget it, this is no help. My only advantage—which isn’t much of an advantage—is that I’ll instinctively know when he’s coming after me. If I’m lucky, I’ll have time to scream so they can find my body. I guess if my precognition alarm hasn’t gone off, then Bruno’s not coming after me. Yet.

So, would it do me any good to rattle the big lunk’s cage? If I went after him, he might think I knew something that he didn’t, or maybe he’d think I had a foolproof plan or weapon. Do I really want to make him mad, though? No—but what does it matter? He’s tried to get me once already. Max said he hates me just because I’m a psi like him, so he’s already got me in his sights. I run, he gets me. I stay, he gets me. I can’t win for the losing, great. If it doesn’t matter what I do, what’s there to lose by going after him, except for my cowardice? Maybe Max is right, I should try something and rattle his cage, since he’s going to blow my freaking head off anyway. It’s like yelling obscenities at an atom bomb, but what the hell. Go out with a bang. Oh, man, I wish I hadn’t thought that.

“Anyone want to try to work out problem number eight on the board?” asked Mr. Smith, the teacher. “Anyone? Jane? Oh, right, you did a problem earlier. Scarlett, how about you?” He held out a piece of chalk. “Come on up and give it a shot!”

Scarlett grimaced (Give it a shot, way to go) and got up. Her intuition hadn’t warned her that she would be called on in class, but it never worked for little things, only for big, life-changing things, and always for dangerous things. Taking the chalk, she stood before the board and considered what she should write. Not a thing came to mind, except to wonder if Max Lane was any relation to Jane Lane. She decided not, as it seemed like too much of a coincidence.

“Give it the old college try!” said the teacher in an encouraging tone.

Scarlett sighed. Well, this is just great. I look stupid as hell standing up here. I’ll pretend to think, then. Squint my eyes, rub my chin. That’s it. Smithy will get tired of it and call on someone else like he always does. Huh. If I thought really hard about where Bruno came from, would my power tell me what country or place he was from before he got to the U.S., or what state he was born in, or what city? This is pretty damn important, not like—

“Just solve for X, Scarlett,” said the teacher. Someone in the back of the room snickered. She recognized the snicker-er as the extreme skateboarder who had joined school at the same time she had. What a dork. Keep pretending to think, and ignore him. Solve for X, solve for X. Yeah, right. I can’t even solve my own life issues. Where did Bruno come from? Think hard. Where did Big Bruno come from, Goddess? She did think hard—and after a moment, the image of the back alley behind the Good Time Chinese restaurant came to mind. She shook her head and frowned. No, that’s not it. What country or state did Bruno come from before he came to Lawndale? That’s what I meant.

“Scarlett?” said Mr. Smith. He sighed. “Okay, you can sit down. Dewey, you think this is so funny, you come up and try it. Come on!”

Scarlett gave up the chalk in relief and took her seat. The picture of Good Time Chinese had not left her mind, though; it floated in the back of her consciousness, waiting. This is getting me nowhere. Her gaze drifted down to her backpack, on the floor beside her, and she pictured Roger asleep inside in his deodorized, aerated container. He told me he reappeared after his death behind the—

She blinked and sat up in her seat. Roger had awakened as a mouse behind the Good Time Chinese restaurant. Perhaps other people and things had magically appeared there, like that dime Roger said might be counterfeit. Perhaps Bruno had appeared there, too . . . but how? And from where?

I could go back to Good Time Chinese and investigate it—oh, right, and get bitten by that damn dog, probably. What was that blonde lady’s name, Wolf something? Maybe I could go back if she doesn’t suspect me of anything bad. She let me go, after all, and I haven’t done anything bad anyway, so what’s the problem? I could go back in the front door this time and skip the alley, do nothing suspicious. I could go by there this evening and take Tananda and maybe some of the other girls. Safety in numbers, they say. Maybe we could look around and see what there is to be seen. Roger would come, too, if he wants. Hmmm . . .

She worked herself up to an artificially inflated level of confidence, then shared her intuition with Tananda between classes—making sure that Roger was sound asleep in the backpack first.

“You think Bruno’s connected to the Chinese place?” asked Tan after Scarlett filled her in.

“I dunno. It’s just a guess, but it made sense. It might be dangerous, though, with the dogs around. And if Bruno shows up—”

“I’ll go,” said Tan with a grim look. “Maybe it will help Uncle Max.”

“Maybe some of the others could go with us.”

“Yeah, like Angel,” said Tan immediately. “Mahna Mahna would be good, too. Taryn and Kevo, Beth Ann, Woot, Kristen . . . yeah, we’ve got enough. Time to put on the war lipstick.”

“Look—no, Tan, look at me. No fighting, okay? It’s too dangerous! We’re just going over to scout around, scope out the place. Maybe Roger can sneak in and—no, wait, the dogs. I forgot. I should leave him home tonight or something.”

“No idea at all what we might find there?”

“None, except maybe for Bruno. That would be really bad.”

“Not for us. I’d kick his big Bruno ass.” Tananda looked thoughtful. “I don’t think he’d blow up the restaurant if he has anything to do with it, so I think we’re safe there. He can’t shoot anybody without the police coming. And I’m a girl, so he might hesitate long enough for me to hit him right where it counts.”

“No fighting, okay?”

“I won’t start anything, promise!”

“That’s not what I said!”

Tan snorted. “I heard you.”

Scarlett gave up. “I’ll call you when I get home. I have to get clearance from my aunt first.”

The bell rang and the girls ran to their separate classes. The occupant of Scarlett’s backpack groaned when she entered class, and she drew a few stares from other students who overheard her whisper, “Shut up!”

Contemporary Art Appreciation was one of the highlights of her school day, because all she had to do was watch lots of movies and slide shows given by the teacher, Ms. Defoe, who loved to talk but rarely asked questions about the material. It gave Scarlett lots of time to think. Thinking, however, only made her worry, and her earlier confidence melted away. By the end of school, her last nerve was shot and she was ready to hop on the first bus heading for California to get out of Bruno the Giant’s territory.

“Hey,” said a voice behind her. “Whoa! Calm down, it’s just me!”

Scarlett forced her heart to stop beating a hundred times a second. “Hi, Kristen,” she said when she could speak normally.

“Tan said you were kinda freaked out,” said the Goth girl with the skull-and-crossbones backpack. “No prob, the Leopards got you covered.” She reached in a pocket of her black windbreaker and pulled out an open bag of chocolate candies. “M&Ms?” she asked.

“Thanks.” She took the candy offered and tossed all of it in her mouth.

“Chocolate cures everything,” said Kristen, pouring some for herself. “You’d be surprised.”

“It won’t cure this mess,” Scarlett grumbled.

“Tan said there might be dogs around tonight.”

“Shhh!” Scarlett nodded at her backpack.

“What?” Kristen looked puzzled.

Oh, that’s right, she doesn’t know everything about Roger. “Uh, my mouse is sleeping.”

Kristen gave Scarlett a strange look, then shrugged. “Whatever,” she said in a stage whisper. “Anyway, chocolate will definitely cure the dog thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Dogs love chocolate, but it makes them sick,” said Kristen. “If we meet any dogs that make you nervous, I’ll drop a little chocolate for them—not enough to really hurt them, but enough to slow them down. It gives them the runs.”

The idea of making an animal sick repelled Scarlett, but not as much as the image of the same animal chewing her leg off. “Does that work right away?”

“No. Usually takes a day or so. Why?”

Scarlett groaned. “Just forget it. Don’t give them anything. The wrong dog might eat it.”

“Oh, yeah. All right, no chocolate to the dogs. Hey, you live out near Pizza Forest, right?”

“Yeah.”

The Goth girl giggled through a mouthful of candy. “When I was thirteen, one of the squirrels there told me his name was Phil, and he said talking squirrels were an endangered species and asked me if I wanted to help save his nuts, so guess where I kicked him? That was such a riot! I think those guys in the animal suits are all from Lawndale State University. The job market sucks around here, which is perfect because those guys suck, too.”

“Were you in the Blue Belles, too?” asked Scarlett, who already knew the answer.

“Oh, that was awesome! You should’ve been there. We had such a blast!”

Scarlett shook her head. “Are you my bodyguard for the time being?”

“Actually, Beth Ann’s your bodyguard. I wanted to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Tan said you were a real witch. Is that true?”

“Tan wasn’t supposed to say anything about that,” Scarlett muttered darkly, wondering if Tananda had said anything about Roger as well. “And I’m not like a—”

“Can you like put a curse on someone and make them fall down a lot or get a heart attack? Not a fatal heart attack, just a little heart attack. The faculty-DJ roller hockey game is in a couple weeks, and Andrea and I put twenty each on DeMartino to crash and burn.”

Scarlett sighed. “I can’t do it.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

“Damn! Oh, well. Maybe if I gave DeMartino a five-pound bag of M&Ms before the game, he might eat a bunch of them and have a—”

“So, where’s Beth Ann?” Scarlett interrupted, looking around.

“She’s around. You sure about the curse thing? I could split some of my winnings with you.”

“All I want to do tonight is just—”

“I know, I know, recon in force, no fighting unless they start it, yadda yadda yadda. Hey, school pictures are next week. I’m thinking of having my nose pierced before then. How do you think that’d look? Would it kill my parents? Say yes.”

“I dunno. I’m sorry, I just can’t think straight today.”

“You just need more chocolate. Here. By the way, Tan says Uncle Max might be in trouble. That true?”

Scarlett pocketed the handful of chocolate candies. “Yeah. He might be.”

Kristen was silent for a minute as they walked. “I can’t believe anyone would want to hurt Uncle Max,” she finally said in a low voice. “He’s such a good guy.”

“Bruno probably would,” said Scarlett.

Kristen inhaled through her nose, then exhaled heavily. “That’s how the Big Boy wants it, that’s how the Big Boy gets it,” she murmured. “Better sharpen up my cutlery.”

“No! No fighting, okay?”

“I heard you.” Kristen slowed and stopped when they reached the next corner. “Beth Ann will walk you the rest of the way home. See you tomorrow.”

Scarlett looked around but saw no one nearby. “Where is she?”

“Over there,” said Kristen, waving as she walked off in a different direction.

Scarlett frowned and looked around once more. She seemed to be alone. This made her nervous, so she hurried the last two blocks to her aunt’s apartment complex and went up the stairs. A note written in pencil on an index card was stuck to the apartment door with a wet wad of chewing gum.

SEE YOU TOMORROW! BETH ANN

What the hell? she thought. How did she . . . oh, whatever. She threw out the note after she went into the apartment. Her aunt Elaine was in the apartment’s little kitchen cutting up carrots with a large chef’s knife while her laptop made buzzing noises on the table.

“How was school?” her aunt asked, pausing in her work.

“Sucked. Can I go out tonight with some friends? No boys, just girls.”

“Where are you going?”

“Restaurant, Chinese place. We just wanted to get out for a while.”

“Which friends are these?”

Scarlett rolled her eyes in mild annoyance. “Oh, you know, gang members, psychopaths, carjackers, muggers, violent types in and out of jail all the time. The usual.”

“All right, as long as you get your homework done first. Do you have a lot of it?”

“Nah, not much. I’ll do it now.”

“Be back by ten, okay? School night.”

“Sure, thanks.” Scarlett reached over and took a few sliced carrots before heading back to her room. The carrots were perfectly and identically cut, as always. Her aunt was always so tidy.

“What’s that smell?” asked her aunt, wrinkling her nose at Scarlett’s backpack. “Did you take that mouse to school with you?”

“I’ll put more deodorizer in his cage!” Scarlett called, hurrying off. She ran into her room, locked the door, then took the newly awakened Roger out of her backpack. “Listen,” she said as he groggily tried to rub his eyes, “I’m going out tonight with some friends. It would be better if you didn’t come along.”

“You promised you wouldn’t leave me here,” Roger grumbled petulantly. “Where the hell do you have to go that’s so important, anyway?”

She gently lowered the mouse into his cage. “We’re just going out, no big.”

“I don’t like being here by myself,” said Roger, squinting up at her. “You said you’d take me with you when you went out.”

“I’m . . . I’m going on a date, okay? I’d rather I was alone. I mean, I don’t want someone listening in to everything that’s going on, all right? It’s personal.”

Roger gave her a sour look. “I get it.” He turned his back on her and tried to walk into his hutch on his rear legs, but he tripped and fell on the wood shavings. He picked himself up with as much dignity as he could muster, then waddled in on all fours and hid in a corner where she couldn’t see him.

I hated lying to him, but it’s for the best. He’d never let me go if he knew the truth, and he’d be in too much danger with those damn dogs around. Scarlett sighed and got out her homework, sitting down at the desk to knock her lessons out as quickly as she could.

She had been working only a few minutes on a history paper before Roger came out of his hutch. “You know to be careful, right?” he asked. “I mean, when you go out on a date?”

Scarlett put down her pencil. “Careful?”

“Yeah, careful. You know, if you’re with a guy and—look, I don’t know what kids today really do these days or anything, all right? But you’ve got to take care of yourself. You can’t just let a guy do anything he wants to do. He’ll feed you a line like you wouldn’t believe just to—well, you know. You have to be really—”

“Excuse me,” said Scarlett with a touch of irritation, “but are you talking about sex?”

Roger’s ears and nose turned a bright pink. He drew himself up. “Yes,” he said. “I am. And you—”

Scarlett glared at the mouse, then reached down, picked up a used nightshirt from the floor, and draped it over the mouse cage so the latter was completely covered. “Hey!” shouted Roger in a muffled voice, but she got up and left. She locked herself in the bathroom for a while to stand in front of the mirror with her arms crossed in front of her, glaring at the sink. When she calmed down, she came out and went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water and a few more perfectly cut carrot sticks. Then she came back and sat down at her desk, then lifted a corner of her nightshirt and peered into the cage.

“Apologize,” she said to the mouse, who was holding his nose with both forepaws.

“Apologize?” said Roger in a nasal voice. “For what?”

“You don’t know anything about me, you’ve got the wrong idea entirely about what I’m like, and stop acting like you’re my parent, okay? I don’t like it!”

“Okay, jeez! I’m sorry! Just get this thing off the cage! Phew!”

She took the nightshirt off the cage, still glaring. As soon as she did, the mouse raised a tiny paw in hr direction—and gave her the finger with a long middle claw. Scarlett stared in shock, then burst into laughter. She slapped her knees and rocked back and forth until the fit passed. “You little monster,” she said, wiping her eyes. “That was pretty good.”

“That was for your stinky nightshirt,” said the mouse in a cross tone. “I could have suffocated.”

There was a knock at the bedroom door. Scarlett turned around in her chair, mirth gone. “What?”

“Everything okay in there, sweetie?” called her aunt.

“Yeah. I was just laughing at something on TV.”

“Okay, just checking.”

Relaxing again, the teenage witch and the talking mouse regarded each other. “Now that we’re over that,” the girl said, “what do we do?”

“Our first fight,” said Roger, looking uncomfortable.

“Look,” said Scarlett, “we’re not going to argue about this anymore. Don’t worry about my sex life, and I won’t worry about yours.”

“Not fair,” said the mouse mournfully. “I don’t have one anymore.”

“Maybe I’ll go to a pet shop and get you a girlfriend, then.”

“No!” cried Roger, waving his paws at her in sudden panic. “No, don’t do that!”

“Why?”

“Because that would just be a mouse! I don’t want to be around real mice! They’re—they’re barbaric and gross! They’re not like me! They’re not human, and some of them bite!”

Scarlett fought down a smile. “Oh, fine, I’ll get you a mouse Playboy or something.”

“Just . . . just don’t worry about it, okay? Just forget I brought it up. Go out and have fun.” Blushing bright pink again, Roger went back into his hutch and disappeared.

“I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” Scarlett called after him, but Roger didn’t rise to the bait. I don’t know what I really would do on a real date, she reflected. All the guys around here are such . . . what’s that word . . . dopes. They’re the least exciting bunch I’ve ever seen. They look awful, they talk awful, they behave like dorks—what’s the use? She shook her head and dived back into her homework. It was hard to concentrate, but not because of anything Roger said. She was starting to think that going back to Good Time Chinese might prove to be the worst thing she could possibly do, if Bruno appeared. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the issue, but nothing intuitive came up for or against it.

“Aunt Elaine?” Scarlett asked an hour later, homework done and Tananda and company on their way to walk her to the restaurant.

Her bright-eyed aunt looked up from her laptop at the kitchen table as she took a sip of pomegranate juice from a wineglass. “That’s my name,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing.” Scarlett sat down in the chair across from her aunt. “Just thinking.”

“An unappreciated habit,” said her aunt, setting the glass aside. “About what?”

“Stuff.”

Her aunt’s smile grew as she leaned back in her chair. “You remind me of your father,” she said. “Art was such a worrier. He felt responsible for everything and everyone. He always had something picking at his mind.”

Scarlett picked at her fingernails. “Was he brave?” she asked, and was surprised at herself because she had never asked that question before. She had always assumed he was.

“Oh, yes,” said Elaine slowly, looking over Scarlett’s head at the wall beyond. “He was the bravest man who ever lived. He was in the war, you know.”

“The war?” Scarlett frowned. This was news. “What war?”

“Why, the war,” her aunt repeated. “He had to fight, it wasn’t a choice, but he never ran when times were bad. He was always there where he was needed, doing his best to do the right thing. He was a wonderful brother. We owe him so much—everything, really.”

Scarlett looked down at her fingers again. “Am I like him?” she asked, fearful of the answer.

Elaine’s gaze turned to her niece. “More than you know, dear,” she said, and there was a curious note in her tone. She looked back at her laptop. “You had best be going if you’re to meet your friends.”

“But they’re not—”

The doorbell rang, and several people began knocking on the door at the same time.

“—here yet,” said Scarlett, looking at her aunt oddly as she got up to answer the door.

“Have a nice evening out,” said Elaine with a wave and a smile. When Scarlett had left with her companions and the door closed behind them, however, the smile faded. The woman sat in thought, staring at the door, then got up and went to the refrigerator to get out more carrots. She put the bag on the countertop, then hesitated and looked back at her laptop.

She then picked up the twelve-inch chef’s knife and gave it a little toss in the air. “Finish the rest of them,” she said, walking from the counter back to the table. “I’ve got a little work to do.”

The long knife hovered in the air over the counter as Elaine left with the laptop, then turned and sliced open the bag of carrots with one stroke. After nudging one carrot out, it swiftly sliced it into little sticks and nudged out another one with its tip. Each carrot slice was perfectly and identically cut. As always.

A half-hour later, Scarlett decided that of all her bad ideas, returning to the Good Time Chinese restaurant had won the door prize. Bruno could have driven back from Leeville by now, and that weird dog lady already has her eye on me—and so does her dog. What was I thinking? Too nervous to look at a menu, she drank two of the glasses of water at her table while she looked around at the dining room’s distinctly non-Chinese décor: dark gray indoor-outdoor carpeting, acoustical ceiling tiles, and dark wood paneling on which was hung amateurish watercolors of old castles, European knights in armor, rustic cottages, Bavarian farmers, and—for some reason—a bland picture of a nude blonde on a sofa. One could not imagine a place less Asian in accent.

“Ohmigaaawd!” breathed Woot as she stared at a menu in the booth behind Scarlett. “There’s like no meat in any of these dishes! They don’t even have like chicken or shrimp or baloney or anything!”

“No way,” grumbled Mahna Mahna, also behind Scarlett and peering at her own menu. “Tofu? What the hell is tofu?”

“It’s bean curd,” said Scarlett, just before drinking yet another glass of water.

“Bean what?” cried Taryn, sitting at another table.

“She said curd,” clarified Angel, “not . . . forget it.” She leaned back in her seat in the booth across from Scarlett, watching her drink disappear down Scarlett’s throat, and shook her head.

“They use flavored tofu for meat,” said Tananda, sitting next to Angel. “What’s that all about? I mean, that’s just gross.”

“If Kevo were here,” Taryn muttered, “he’d know what to do with bean tur—”

“Are you all ready to order, or are you still waitin’ for your parole officers to arrive?” asked a tall, twenty-something waitress. Tattoos of broken hearts and crossed battleaxes stood out on her forearms.

“My P.O. quit last month on account of job stress,” said Angel. “Hey, what kind of Chinese restaurant is this, with the tofu thing going on?”

The waitress tucked her chewing gum in one cheek. “Vee-gan,” she said. “This is a vegan kinda Chinese restaurant.”

“Okay,” Tananda broke in, “can you go cut up a vegan and serve him or her in place of the pork that’s supposed to go on the pork fried rice?”

“Prob’ly could. I’ll ask the manager.” The waitress snapped her gum. “I’ll bring s’more water while you’re thinkin’, if that’s what it is you’re doin’.”

“You’ve got quite a mouth on you,” said Angel. “Wanna dump being a waitress and join our hockey team? We need a new assistant coach. Ours hasn’t gotten out of the county lockup yet.”

“Nah, I don’t need the trouble,” said the waitress. “Already did time in Kinsington, got out when my appeal went through, and now I’m tryin’ to go straight.” She turned and walked away. “I gotta go help with the cookin’. Break somethin’ when you’re ready to order.”

“She’s got a real attitude,” said Tananda admiringly as the waitress disappeared into the kitchen. “I hope I grow up to be just like her.”

“Hey,” said Angel, snapping her fingers in front of Scarlett’s glazed eyes. “Enterprise, this is Earth, over.”

Scarlett came back to reality and pushed away the empty glass of water. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m . . . just out of it. Kind of nervous.”

“Why?” asked Tananda. “You’re here with us. What could possibly go wrong?” She turned to Angel. “Don’t say it.”

Angel grinned and looked away. “I didn’t say anything!” she responded.

There was movement in the booth behind Angel and Tananda. A moment later, Kristen and a girl nicknamed Darkwing appeared, looking at Angel. “We’re, uh, going for a walk, around outside somewhere,” said Kristen. “We’ll be back in about—”

“Go look in the dumpster already and talk to me when you get back,” said Angel. “And make sure you wash your hands before you eat afterward. Or not, whatever.” She looked at the menu again. “Wish we could have brought our hockey sticks tonight. Damn social workers.”

“Kristen’s got a switchblade in her boot,” said Tananda, “and Darkwing said she knows karate. They’ll be fine.”

“I still miss my stick. Don’t feel right without it. I feel . . .”

“Naked?” offered Tananda.

“Hell, no, I just feel like I don’t have my hockey stick.”

Scarlett shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable. “Do you see that dog anywhere?” she whispered.

“Nah,” said Tananda after a look around. “Why?”

“I gotta go to the bathroom.” Scarlett scooted across her seat. “Can someone go with me?”

“That’s what you get for drinking your water and mine and Angel’s, too,” said Tananda. “You don’t need anybody to hold your hand. We’ve got everything covered. Just go. In there, I mean, not here.”

“How come every time I see you, you’re going to the bathroom?” said Angel. “You have a chipmunk’s bladder?”

“No, I just drank too much,” said Scarlett, standing up and wincing. “Too nervous.”

“Yell if you see anything.” Angel shook her head again. “Yell even if you don’t see anything. We need some excitement.”

Scarlett almost made it to the restroom without incident. No German shepherds or trashy blondes blocked her way this time, but she did run into the waitress once more. The waitress wore a chef’s apron splattered with a red fluid Scarlett hoped was runny ketchup, holding a similarly stained meat cleaver while she searched through a group of order slips hanging from clips above a counter. The waitress noticed Scarlett and waved to her briefly before looking through the orders again.

“Rhonda!” called someone from the kitchen. “The tofu’s burning!”

“I’ll be there inna freakin’ minute!” the waitress shouted back, then gripped the cleaver tighter and muttered, “This damn place gets on my last freakin’ nerve.”

Scarlett hastily locked herself in the one-toilet restroom, her appetite gone. She considered staying in the tiny room until the police or fire department got her out, but she knew that would never work. Bruno would tear down the door and get her first. The best thing to do was leave and tell the other girls there had been a mistake, nothing was worth seeing here, and they should go home before they were killed. It was a great plan, and Scarlett promised herself she would get right on it—after she used the facilities, of course. She had to go so badly she thought she would burst.

She was washing her hands before leaving when she heard a man in the dining room shout, “FREEZE!” Then a number of heavy footsteps ran past the restroom door against a background of wild shouts and cries, mostly from teenage girls. It was impossible to tell what was going on, except that Angel appeared to have gotten a solid response to her wish for some excitement. Scarlett was paralyzed with indecision. Now what? Is Bruno here? Am I going to die? Why can’t I be brave like my father was? This was such a bad idea!

Screwing up her remaining courage, Scarlett turned off the light, then carefully unlocked the restroom door and peeked out. A tremendous amount of noise—teenage girls and adult men shouting, yelling, arguing, and possibly fighting—came from the direction of the restaurant entrance and foyer, beyond the dining room to the left. What had become of the other dining patrons could only be imagined, though if they were smart, they were hiding under the tables. Across the hall from the ladies’ room was a broom closet and the men’s room, with two swinging kitchen doors to the right. The doors were still moving on their hinges.

Maybe I can sneak out and escape with the other girls, Scarlett thought. She eased out into the hall and pulled the restroom door shut behind her. Stepping to one side, she then peered into the now-empty dining room, wondering where everyone had gone.

Shouts suddenly broke out from the kitchen behind her. “Come out with your hands up, Rhonda!” cried a male voice. “This is the police! Don’t make us come in after you!”

“You’re surrounded!” shouted another man. “Throw down the hatchet and surrender!”

Scarlett’s mind instantly filled up with urgent messages from her autonomic nervous system to cut out the heroism and run for it. She started for the dining hall, but the rooms’ overhead lights went out at that moment. She scrambled back and started to go for the kitchen, only to hear a crashing noise and two gunshots behind the swinging doors. She was closest to the door marked “JANITOR ONLY,” and that was the door whose knob she grasped and flung open, diving inside the broom closet a moment later and slamming the door shut behind her.

It was dark in the closet except for fluorescent light coming under the door. The air smelled like moldy rags and oil; the floor had an odd metallic ring under her boots. She had gotten a momentary glimpse of a couple of buckets and a dry mop against the far wall before the door closed, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Not daring to open the door for fear of being shot (or worse), she instead felt along the wall to the side of the door for a light switch, hoping to find a way to lock the door after she could see her surroundings. A round object like a button came to hand instead. She pushed it.

The button lit up, bright red. The hum of machinery came from all about. Another door slid over the first door, throwing the room into complete blackness except for the red button. The floor lurched, then it slowly dropped under her feet. She gave a brief shriek, but the floor continued to descend, taking her with it. After a panicked moment, she realized she had gotten into an elevator, not a closet. She pushed herself back against a rumbling wall, wondering what in the world she had done and how she was ever going to get out of there.

The elevator ran for about a thousand years before grinding to a jerky halt some distance below the main floor of the restaurant. The door slid open, and dim light poured in from the room beyond. Scarcely daring to breathe, Scarlett leaned away from the wall to look out.

The elevator had taken her to what appeared to be a basement used for storage. A single ceiling light fixture with a small bulb was the only illumination, leaving the far walls in darkness. Everywhere she looked to either side of an aisle in front of the elevator door were cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another, boxes of every size. Several were open, and inside them she could see . . . books.

Her curiosity overcame her fright once she was convinced she was alone. As the only other place to go was back to the main floor (to be shot, perhaps), Scarlett left the elevator and made her way over to the nearest open box of books. She looked down and read the title of the uppermost volume: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, with a black swastika below the title on a bright red cover. After a pause, she reached down and moved the book over to see, below it, A History of the S.S., with Invasion: Operation Sea Lion, 1940 at its side.

Someone was clearly into history of the World War Two kind. Puzzled, she looked in other open boxes and found more of the same: Defeat in the West. Roosevelt’s Secret War. The Gathering Storm. Nazi Secret Weapons, 1939-1945. The Luftwaffe War Diaries. The Battle of Britain. The Enigma Code. Panzer Battles on the Eastern Front. Stalin and the Great Patriotic War. The Siege of Leningrad.

She turned to another box and found a different sort of topic on the books inside: The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The Manhattan Project. Day of Trinity. Oppenheimer. Allied Secret Weapons of World War II. The Inside Story of the ICBM. Heisenberg’s War. The Los Alamos Primer. Hiroshima.

She picked up the small paperback copy of Hiroshima, with the towering mushroom cloud on the cover in black and white, but she did not thumb through it. The subject matter did not appeal to Scarlett, who liked less depressing fare. It looked as if someone was storing a considerable library in the basement—but why was all of this here, below a pseudo-Chinese restaurant? Who owned this stuff?

She looked back at the elevator and noticed a light switch. When she reached over and flipped it on, the entire basement was illuminated. It was then she discovered the whole forty-by-forty-foot basement was filled with boxes, crates, cartons, mailing tubes, and more—and the walls were decorated with flags and portraits. Most of the flags were red and had black swastikas on them. Most of the portraits were of the same person: a pale, dark-haired man with a comb-over, a small mustache, and dark, penetrating eyes. She recognized him at once from her history books. Her skin began to crawl.

“Ohhh-kaaay,” she whispered, thoroughly creeped out. “I think it’s time for me to head back up and get the hell out of this—”

“Nice likeness, eh?” said a voice right behind her.

Scarlett shrieked halfway through the word “likeness,” accidentally flinging Hiroshima into the air as she turned around in an instant, still shrieking.

Ten feet away from her was a German shepherd, sitting on its haunches as it watched her. She recognized it immediately as Hermione, the dog that had followed her the other day after growling at her outside the restroom upstairs.

“Ouch!” said the dog, a pained look on its face. “No need for all the racket, all right? My hearing’s much more sensitive than yours. Watch it, okay?”

Scarlett backed up into a massive stack of book-filled boxes, knocking some over and almost falling down with them. She struggled to keep her balance as the large dog watched, its head tilted in interest at her antics.

“Are you all right?” asked the dog. Its voice was deep, and it had a tendency to roll its r’s, sounding a bit like Astro from The Jetsons. After waiting for an answer but getting none, the dog tried again. “Are you hurt? You almost fell down there.”

“Uh . . . uh . . . I’m . . . f-f-fine,” Scarlett gasped, her eyes big as moons.

“Good,” said the German shepherd. “What’s going on upstairs, anyway? Sounds like a police raid.”

“I . . . I . . . I don’t know!”

“Probably had to do with Rhonda. She was always bragging that the penitentiary released her by mistake. Doesn’t matter. I never liked her anyway. Any cook who won’t throw meat scraps to a dog isn’t worth her salt. Get it?” The dog actually smiled. “That’s been my philosophy for the last year or so, since I became a dog. Speaking of which, how is Roger these days?”

Her brain seized up again. “R-R-R-R-R-R-Roger?”

“Y-y-y-yes, y-y-y-your mouse,” said the dog, rolling its eyes. “I can smell him all over you from here. His real name is Roger LaSouris, right? He was a friend of mine. Did he tell you what happened to get him in his current, um, condition?”

Scarlett looked at the elevator, considering a run for freedom—only to discover the elevator door had closed and the elevator was gently rumbling again, heading back up. The question of escape was academic anyway, as she knew the dog would get her long before she reached the door.

“You’re not really listening to me, are you?” asked the dog, leaning toward her.

“Uh, ah, no! I mean, yes, yes, I am!”

“I would think after having a talking mouse around, you’d be a little more forthcoming. Roger does talk to you, right?”

Some of Scarlett’s presence of mind returned to her. “I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said, her throat dry from fear, “and I don’t know how you think you know so much about me, but I need to find out what’s happened to my friends upstairs, so if you don’t mind, I’m—”

Hermione jumped to her feet and barked once. A German shepherd’s bark drowns out all other sounds in a snap. Scarlett shrieked again and pressed her back to the closed elevator door, ninety percent terrified and ten percent angry with herself for being so dreadfully afraid.

“I do mind,” said Hermione, walking in Scarlett’s direction. “Move away from the door.” When Scarlett didn’t respond, Hermione pulled back black lips from enormous yellow-white fangs and growled a warning that could not be mistaken.

“Wait a minute!” Scarlett cried. “Okay, okay!” She immediately left the elevator door, but did not dare approach the dog. Boxes blocked her way to either side, so she hastily climbed over the nearest stack, not caring how clumsy she looked. Hermione, calm again, came around the stack and nodded approval. “Have a seat,” said the dog. “Pick a box. Doesn’t matter which one. Take a load off.”

Scarlett found a suitable spot and sat down, knees together, arms wrapped around her in a fearful hug. She took in more of the room as she did. She had never seen a place with so much Nazi memorabilia in it. In fact, she had never seen any Nazi memorabilia at all, except in encyclopedias. The basement was covered with the stuff. She thought that not even a museum would have so complete a collection.

Hermione sat down about ten feet from her and nipped at an itchy spot on her rump before turning back to the red-haired girl. “I still hear footsteps upstairs,” said the dog. “Police haven’t left yet. The elevator’s gone, so we’ve got time to kill.”

“I wish you hadn’t put it that way,” said Scarlett.

“Ah, there you go,” said Hermione, smiling. “Good one. The boss lady said you were smart and gutsy, but I was beginning to wonder.”

“I’m not feeling very brave, but I am confused. What is all this stuff?”

“Oh, this garbage?” said the dog with a disdainful toss of its head. “This is the boss lady’s. She’s kind of a collector. I should warn you, before she gets here, that she’s a little strange in the head. For an older babe she’s built like a brick you-know-what, but her attic’s a mess, if you get my meaning.”

“No,” said Scarlett, her courage returning. “I don’t think I do get your meaning. Are you saying she’s crazy?”

“Crazy is as crazy does,” said the dog, “so yeah, she’s pretty crazy. Don’t call her that, though. She’ll be pretty angry about it, and you won’t like her when she’s angry. Trust me, I know.”

“Why would you put up with her, if she’s crazy?” asked Scarlett. “And why are you even here?”

“That’s kind of an interesting story,” said the dog. “By the way, my dog name is Hermione. I’m a girl dog, I know, but not necessarily a bitch. Little joke there. You’re not laughing, so . . . eh. My name used to be Marcello Lupo, Ph.D., when I was human—and a man—but the boss lady decided to call me Hermione when I came back like this. Who was I to argue? And the reason I put up with her is that the boss lady, crazy or not, is the only person who can change me back into teacher-man Marcello Lupo again. That’s it in a nutshell.”

Scarlett blinked. “She can turn you back into a human? How?”

The dog sighed. “That’s another interesting story, one that I don’t think I should share with you. Suffice to say that I’m convinced she can, so I’m all over it. She wants me to jump, I’ll jump and I won’t even ask how high. My turn to ask a question or two: What are you doing down here?”

Scarlett took a ragged breath, wondering where the Leopards had gone and why weren’t they rescuing her from this mess. “That was an accident,” she said. “When all the shooting and yelling started, I ran over and hid in this closet, and it—”

“Excuse me,” said Hermione. The dog got up and walked over to Scarlett, who pulled back as far as she could. The big dog sat down almost on her booted feet. “Funny thing about being a dog,” said Hermione. “You wouldn’t believe how good my senses of hearing and smelling are. I can sense emotional states in people with one hundred percent accuracy, absolutely. It’s like having a lie detector going all the time inside my head. I can tell instantly when people aren’t truthful. Even better, I can tell when they’re only covering up, avoiding something important that they should have told me. Are you with me so far?”

Scarlett, her arms crossed in front of her face in the hope they might provide some protection if Hermione tried to bite her, nodded once.

“Good, that’s very good,” said the dog. “Now, another thing. I used to be a college professor. I worked at Middleton College, a dump academically but at least I had tenure. My specialty was English literature, but I did some Viking stuff—Beowulf, Njal’s Saga, all that. You know anything about Viking mythology? Anything about the Norse god Tyr? He once made a promise to a wolf monster, and to prove he was telling the truth, he stuck his hand in the wolf’s mouth. As it turned out, he was lying, and the wolf bit off his hand. Bad things happen to people who lie to dogs or wolves, especially to me. Capice?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Great.” Hermione turned and walked back to the spot where she had originally been sitting, then sat there again. “Now,” she said to Scarlett, “what were you doing down here?”

Scarlett found it difficult to lower her arms again. “I was trying to find out why this place is so strange,” she said, trembling.

Hermione looked at the ceiling and tilted her head to one side, considering the response, then looked back at Scarlett. “Yeah, I can buy that. What exactly did you notice was strange about this place? I’m not disagreeing with you, it is pretty strange, but I want to know exactly why you thought it was strange.”

Scarlett swallowed and managed to get her arms down to her lap again, though she was ready at any moment to curl up into a ball to avoid being bitten in the face. “This is where Roger appeared,” she said.

“I knew it!” said the dog in a triumphant voice. “I knew it! Roger was here, too! I was just guessing before, based on some stuff the boss lady said, but I knew he was here, too! That little rat! Literally, too. So, old Roger’s alive. Of the three of us, he was the luckiest, landing on that cow. At least he was more or less intact afterward. Wonder if our other pal came back as well. Whatever. Two good turns out of three on the great wheel of karma—not bad.” Hermione snorted. “Sorry, don’t mind me. I was having a eureka moment. Okay, that’s out of the way, so let’s talk about you again.”

“I’d like to ask a question, if I may,” said Scarlett, steeling herself for the response.

Hermione shook her head no, grinning just enough to reveal her fangs again. “If I was less of a gentleman . . . well, let’s say instead that if I wasn’t so nice a dog, I’d take off your left arm for interrupting me, but I’ll let it pass. I have a few more questions for you before you get a turn . . . if I may.”

“All right.” It’s not like I can refuse you, is it?

“Thank you. So . . . what do you know about this place, other than that this is where Roger and I appeared after our little skydiving accident?”

After reviewing all she knew, Scarlett decided to go for broke. “This is where Bruno Nagy appeared, too,” she said.

The effect her words had was electric. Hermione sat up straighter, her mouth open slightly and her ears turned right at Scarlett. The dog was speechless with shock.

Scarlett risked a smile of her own. “I was just guessing, based on an intuition I had. I’m having a little eureka moment, too.”

“Bruno Nagy,” said Hermione in a flat tone, “is not a name you should ever throw about in a careless way. You were a very unwise little girl to say what you did about him on top of that. He hates for people to know his business. My boss lady may be as nutty as a king-size Payday bar, but Bruno is something else altogether, and he will not be pleased to hear this.”

Scarlett knew then that she was as good as dead. Oddly, the knowledge did not bother her greatly. She had figured this was going to happen, sooner or later. In a way, the knowledge emboldened her. She sat up straighter herself. “You’re not going to hurt me,” she said on impulse.

“Like hell I won’t,” said Hermione, her voice full of promise.

Scarlett felt a rush of quiet anger. She got to her feet and looked down on Hermione, who got to her feet as well. Hermione’s ears flattened back, and she lowered her muzzle and growled.

“You don’t dare touch me until your master comes back,” said Scarlett, feeling in her bones that she was speaking the truth. “I’m too important for you to even scratch. Knock off the act.”

“I would dearly love to tear out your throat,” snarled the German shepherd. “I love that idea right now more than anything else in the world, even turning back into a human again.” Slowly, the dog’s hackles fell. Her head lifted, her teeth vanished behind her lips, and her ears rose again. She sat down facing Scarlett, almost calm as she continued. “What I will do instead, as soon as the opportunity presents itself, is to tear your precious Roger apart with my bare teeth and eat him right in front of you, and I will take my time about it so you don’t miss a single precious moment of that three-ring event. You will listen to his screams for as long as I can make them last, and with any luck you will regret that you ever pulled that little stunt on me. That would satisfy me almost as much as killing you.”

Scarlett was really afraid this time, but she did not show it. That won’t happen, she told herself. Nothing bad will ever happen to Roger. I will make sure of that.

It was then she noticed that something in the air was not quite right. Oh, no! Now what?

Hermione tilted her head and looked at something behind Scarlett. “As for your fate,” the dog added, “I’ll leave that to my mistress.”

Scarlett hesitated, unsure if this was a trick, but she read in the dog’s manner that Hermione was not going to attack. There was no need for her to do so, now that someone else had arrived.

But who?

Scarlett swallowed and turned around.

Standing a short distance behind her, next to a flag, a wall map, and other Nazi-era items, was a tall, curvaceous blonde whose pale blue eyes were much older than the rest of her looked. It was the restaurant’s owner. She wore a red tank top and matching miniskirt with a slit up one side for a mildly slutty effect. Tattoos were visible on her arms, and she wore sandals and an incongruous Nazi officer’s cap. She had literally appeared out of nowhere, unless she had previously been hiding behind some of the boxes, which Scarlett doubted was the case.

“Meet Adele Wolff,” said Hermione, “my alpha mistress . . . and the future ruler of the world. Or destroyer, as the case may be.”

Scarlett just stared. The blonde stared back, shaking her head slightly from side to side as if inspecting a difficult stain on a favorite blouse.

“She’s your what?” said Scarlett, at a loss for clever comebacks.

“You don’t get it, do you?” asked Hermione. “Easy enough for me, being a former professor and all, but . . . here goes. Adele Wolff. Old High German for ‘noble wolf.’ Usually shortened to ‘Adolf’ as a man’s name. Get it now?” The dog sighed again. “Adele was born the last day of April, nineteen forty-five, right outside this very building. Light bulb finally turn on? No? All this talk about reincarnation and the great wheel of karma doesn’t . . . I give up.”

The dog then lowered its head in an unmistakable bow to the silent blonde in the trashy red outfit. “Scarlett is yours, Mein Fuehrer,” Hermione said.

It took a while after Scarlett left for Roger to cool off and think about the situation in the larger scheme of things. He paced the plastic tunnels of his mouse den until his feet were tired, then flopped down on the wood shavings in his hutch to consider the problem. So, Scarlett was going on a date. Big deal. Millions of kids went on dates, and everything turned out fine. She was right, he should stay the hell out of her personal life. He could deal with that, sort of.

If going on a date was what she was really doing.

What worried Roger as much as the idea that the normally thoughtful Scarlett might let a loudmouthed, hormone-driven, baggy-pants teenage “player” take advantage of her on a date was the nagging suspicion that Scarlett had not been completely honest with him when she said she was going on a date to begin with. He couldn’t put his finger (rather, foreclaw) on it, but that whole business about having a date tonight, coming out of the clear blue with no prior warning—and she hadn’t said a thing about the guy she was going out with, either!—that smelled fishy. It stank of a whole net full of fish.

He rolled over on his back on the wood shavings, looking as concerned as his mouse facial muscles would allow. Was she was up to something? If so, what? He didn’t trust her lunatic girlfriends from the field hockey team, that was for sure. They were dangerous as well as crazy. Was she going somewhere with them tonight instead? If so, why hadn’t she told him about it? What could she possibly be doing that would make her not want to take him with her? She had promised she would always take him with her, she had promised him, and now . . . it just wasn’t right. It wasn’t like her.

Roger sighed and gently rubbed his pink eyes. Scarlett was a wonderful kid: bright, caring, sensitive—a little quirky but definitely no airhead. She was brave, too, with a bit of the old spirit of adventure, like when she went to check out that Chinese restaurant and came back with that weird counterfeit dime. Like when she rescued him from that cat in that evil kid’s home. Like when she took him to see that field hockey game that was called off because of the rioting and tear gas. Like when she went to meet Max Lane and . . .

Roger’s eyes came wide open. Despite being in an alcoholic fog at the time, he now remembered that Max Lane said he was on the run because he was being stalked by Bruno Nagy—and Scarlett had promised that girl Tannenbaum or whatever, the one with the greenish blonde hair, that she would never let anyone hurt “Uncle Max.” Was that what she was doing tonight, protecting Max from Bruno—Bruno, the giant psychic murderous pyromaniac, who had already tried to kill or kidnap Scarlett at the mall? Was she even now on her way to confront him or, worse yet, attack him? It wasn’t like she was completely helpless. She was a witch, after all. Who knew what she really could do if pushed?

The mouse sat upright with a gasp. He knew in his bones that Scarlett was going somewhere dangerous right this very minute. She might be trying to spy on that Chinese restaurant again, the one where the big dogs lived, the place where Roger had been reincarnated. Was there a connection between that restaurant and Bruno Nagy? That place was definitely not kosher, if a man could be brought back to life in the alley behind it after a skydiving accident, transformed into an animal. What else was—

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. The door to Scarlett’s room opened.

She’s back! That was fast! “Scarlett, wait!” he cried. “Don’t go out yet!” He scurried out of his hutch to tell her of his suspicions.

Only . . . Scarlett wasn’t in the room with him. Scarlett’s Aunt Elaine was standing in the doorway instead, staring at Roger with her mouth open as if . . . well, just as if she had seen a talking mouse.

Roger cried out in horror, then ran back into his hutch and hid, furious with himself and frightened of the consequences. Only seconds later, the wire door in the top of cage rattled and squeaked on its hinges as it was opened. Roger then heard human fingers gently pry away the roof of his plastic hutch. He looked up, not knowing what would happen next.

Gray-haired Aunt Elaine gazed down at him with a dumbfounded expression. Here we go, Roger thought, steeling himself. Better play it safe so she’ll think she was hallucinating.

“So you are a talking mouse!” Aunt Elaine said. “I should have guessed. My niece is a lousy ventriloquist. Did Scarlett do this to you, turn you into a rodent? I swear, I had no idea she could do that. What’s your name?”

Roger swallowed. After a moment, he sniffed in her direction and wiggled his nose, pretending to be a curious, normal mouse.

“Can the act, buster!” said Elaine with a frown. “I know magic when I see it. Speak to me before I turn you outside and let the neighborhood cats deal with you.”

“Okay! All right, already!” Roger cried in panic. “I give up! I don’t know who or what turned me into a mouse, but Scarlett didn’t do it! It wasn’t her fault!”

“Why are you here in my niece’s room, then?” Elaine shot back. “If you’ve been trying any funny stuff with her, my boy, I promise that you’ll suffer endless torments such as you never—”

“No, no, no, no! I swear to God, it’s not like that! Nothing happened! I’m like her pet or something, her buddy—except that I’m worried about her, okay? She said she was going on a date tonight, but—”

“On a date?” Aunt Elaine drew back. “She wasn’t going on a date. She told me she was going out with her friends for Chinese food.”

“Augh!” Roger cried. “Not the Chinese place! That’s where I got reincarnated after my accident! Scarlett’s almost been whacked twice at that place, once by a bunch of hoodlum girls and then later by this big German shepherd! And the owner’s crazy, too! I think Scarlett’s going to try something, maybe even go after that giant that’s coming after her and me!”

Elaine’s mouth fell open. “What giant?”

“His name is Bruno Nagy! It’s a long story, but—”

“Nagy?” yelled Elaine. “Farkas Nagy?”

“No, Bruno! His name’s Bruno! I mean, that’s the only name we came up with for him when we were trying to track him down!”

“You were hunting for this giant? Who in the blessed Otherworld are you?”

“Roger, Roger LaSouris! I was a detective in Baltimore, and—”

“Stop right there!” Elaine hurried out of the room. “Wait a minute! Don’t you dare leave!”

“I’m in a cage!” yelled Roger. “Where the hell am I going to go?”

Moments later, Elaine returned. Roger left his hutch in time to see her place a laptop computer on Scarlett’s desk beside his cage, then open and turn it so he could see the screen. He ambled over to the cage bars and sat up to get a better view.

Elaine’s fingers ran over the keyboard at lightning speed. “Let’s see if he’s up to his usual tricks,” she muttered. “I should be able to get a television link, and then . . .”

A new window popped up on the laptop screen, showing an attractive woman reporter interviewing a dignified, middle-aged gentleman wearing glasses, a bow tie, and a suit. He sat in front of a wall of bookshelves. “That’s true,” said the man with a knowing air. “Most reported sightings of unidentified flying objects can be reasonably explained away, but certain ones have defied any attempts to—”

Elaine typed something, then passed her right hand in front of the laptop screen and spoke a word that sounded like Mer-thin.

The bow-tied man on the screen hesitated, glanced irritably at Elaine, then exhaled. The young woman interviewing him stopped moving, frozen in place as she waited expectantly for a reply. The setting around the gentleman then became three-dimensional, as if the laptop monitor were a window into another place, and the little window grew to fill the entire laptop screen.

“Hello, Elaine,” the man said evenly, looking out of the screen directly at Scarlett’s aunt. “I hope this is important. You know how I love being on this show.”

“You’re not really on it, you’re only pretending!” she retorted. “This is about Scarlett. I’m worried about her. I found a talking mouse in her room, and he tells me she—”

“A talking mouse?” said the man. He turned to stare at Roger with furrowed brow. “You can’t be serious! On this world?” He gestured at Roger. “Say something, there! Can you really speak?”

“Uh, yeah, I can,” said Roger nervously. What the hell is this, a whole goddamn family of wizards and witches? “I—uh, Scarlett found me some days ago outside a restaurant here in Lawndale, and—”

“May the sky fall upon me!” the man interrupted, then he turned back to Elaine. His accent was becoming less American and more British by the second. “What were you saying again, about Scarlett being in trouble?”

“I don’t know what’s happened to her!” said Elaine, whose Midwestern accent was also mutating, taking on a cultured British tone. “It could be nothing, but the mouse said she was being chased by someone named Bruno Nagy, a giant, and—”

“Farkas Nagy?” the gentleman roared, aghast. “A scion of Fenrir here, on this world, in this city? Where in the name of the Nameless is Scarlett?”

“She went out a hour ago with some friends from school!” cried Elaine. “I never once had a clue that anything was amiss in any way!”

“I said his name was Bruno, not Farkas!” shouted Roger, trying to get a word in edgewise.

The man on the laptop screen turned to the mouse again. “Describe him!” he commanded.

“Wha—uh, I haven’t seen him, but from what I’ve heard, he’s huge, maybe seven feet tall, strong as a bulldozer, likes to blow things up, not much of a ‘people person,’ if you get my—”

“Farkas,” said the man in the computer with certainty. “‘Bruno’ is probably what other people call him, a nickname. A big Eastern European man with the manners of a gangster—perfect sort of fellow to call Bruno. Wouldn’t bother him a bit, as long as he could sow destruction and get paid for it.” He glanced at Roger again. “Is that what he does here?”

“Yes, he’s an arsonist and a murderer! He killed me a year ago and—”

“There you are!” said the man. He turned to Elaine and jabbed a finger at her. “Not a moment to lose! Throw the steel-cutter in the wagon, crack the whip, and be off!”

“Without you?” said Elaine. “Not a chance! Where would I be then, you old fool?” She slammed down the screen of the laptop, ignoring a pained cry that came from within the computer, and tucked it under her arm. She started to leave, then glanced back at Roger, thought for a moment, and put down the laptop again as she walked over to Roger’s cage. “Don’t give me any grief,” she said as she reached into the cage and snatched a shrieking Roger out. “You’re coming with me, and you’ve a lot of explaining to do!”

Roger’s cries ended when he was deposited in a pocket of the button-up sweater that Elaine wore. He managed to crawl up the side of the pocket and stick his head out. “What’s going on?” he shouted. “Who are you people? Are you aliens, wizards, or just insane?”

“It’s you who should be answering my questions!” snapped Elaine, who glanced back at his cage and added, “Wait, what’s this?” She reached into the cage again and pulled out the odd dime that Scarlett had found behind the Good Time restaurant. The astonishment on her face could not be missed. “Where did you get this?” she demanded.

“Scarlett found it behind the Chinese restaurant where I appeared! Now who the hell—”

“He followed us,” said Elaine, rubbing a pale thumb over the coin. “Farkas found a doorway somehow. That’s it, then: him or us.” Ignoring a flurry of questions from the mouse in her pocket, she marched into the kitchen, opened a drawer, then took out the foot-long chef’s knife in a fine leather sheath. “Steel-Cutter® Kitchenware” was what Roger saw stamped on the sheath before Elaine tucked the knife under her arm with the laptop and left the apartment, locking the door behind her.

“We haven’t much time,” Elaine said as she descended the stairs. It was almost dusk outside, and the air was cool. The sounds of evening traffic filled the air. “I’m going to the restaurant in case she went there first. Once we get in the car, Mister Mouse, start talking and don’t stop. Tell me everything that’s happened and leave out nothing.”

“When do I get my questions answered?” whined Roger from her pocket.

“If you want Scarlett to see the sun rise tomorrow, not to mention see you alive as well, then you’ll talk until you run out of breath!” she snapped. Elaine strode across the parking lot until she reached a rusted, dented Mini-Cooper in blue. She unlocked the rear door, tossed the sheathed knife on the floor amid a pile of computer printouts and takeout-meal refuse from eight different fast-food restaurants, then put the laptop down on the backseat and popped it open. “I want Merthin to hear this, too,” she said, making sure the screen was up, then locking a seatbelt over it to keep it in place.

“Merthin?” said Roger. “What kind of name is that?”

“It’s Welsh, you little fool. You Americans, right down to the mice, think you know everything. I have half a mind to—”

“He’s the guy inside the computer?”

“The same,” she said, shutting the rear door. “Except that’s not really a computer, but that’s neither here nor there.” She took Roger out of her pocket after opening the front door, leaning inside and put him on the passenger seat, then got in and shut the door. “Start talking,” she said, starting the car without buckling in.

“Where are we—AIEEE!” he shrieked, gripping the seat with his claws as Elaine floored the Mini-Cooper in reverse. The car jolted to a stop, then took off as Elaine stared grimly straight ahead, clutching the steering wheel in white-knuckled hands.

“Be careful, damn it!” Roger yelled, hanging on for his life. “I don’t want to die yet!”

“She won’t listen,” said a sour voice from the backseat. “She never listens to anyone when she’s in a hurry. You’d best hold on tight if you value your life.”

“Merthin, please!” said Elaine, shifting gears. “All right, Mister Mouse, talk!”

As best as he was able under the circumstances, Roger recited a shortened version of the events that had transpired since he was hired by psychic detective Max Lane to hunt for an arsonist named Bruno Nagy. Merthin and Elaine asked a few questions but kept them brief.

“I can’t believe this went on right under my nose!” growled Elaine as she gripped the steering wheel, struggling through the evening rush hour. “Talking mice, giants, psychic detectives—and not a word about it to me! Me, her guardian! What’s wrong with young people these days that they can’t talk to anyone about their problems? It’s not like I haven’t suffered for her, either, oh no. I fled the island with nothing more than the clothes on my back, a baby in one arm, an ungrateful scrying-stone in the other, and the Lady’s brand, we all survived translation, and then I buckled down and made a life for us! That I did!”

”Elaine, please, no one is arguing that you—” said the laptop.

“I had everything completely under control,” Elaine interrupted. “A nice apartment, a good school for her, everything proper and mundane, the way I wanted it. Even when I lost my job and we had to move, not a hint of trouble—and now this! It’s enough to make me want to slap a bishop or a basilisk! Where did I go wrong?”

“Slap a what?” asked Roger through gritted teeth, his claws gripping the seat cushion.

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand!”

“Don’t blame yourself, my dear,” said Merthin mildly. “We knew that wherever we went, there would be a risk, but anything was better than the alternative.”

“I do blame myself!” Elaine shouted, swerving the Mini-Cooper around another vehicle. “She’s my responsibility! She’s the last of us, now that almost everything else is gone! My brother and sisters, our families, our old home, even the Lady—everyone but her and the two of us, gone!”

“Are you all wizards, friendly wizards, like in those Harry Potter books?” Roger asked in an anxious voice.

“Oh, Harry Potter!” Elaine spat. “The very nerve! These people don’t know what real magic is!”

“Now, Elaine, I happen to like those books,” said Merthin. “They’re rather clever, especially the parts where—”

“You, of all people!” Elaine cried. “How can you say that? You!”

“Elaine, they’re just books!”

“The greatest wizard of our age, reduced to reading storybooks for children and hamming it up on television!”

“It isn’t like I can do much else, my dear, and those books are not for children only, you know,” Merthin responded, stung. “Plenty of adults read them. You should see the Potter-related material on the Internet alone. Even the fan fiction is amazing. In fact, I wrote a short story myself about young Potter that has gotten rave reviews in one of the Potter forums online, and—”

“Stop it! Please stop it! Oh, what has become of us? What’s become of us all?”

“Elaine, you’re blowing this entirely out of propor—”

“What? Think of Scarlett, you old imbecile! Stop thinking just of yourself or your stupid children’s books!”

There was a sigh from the backseat. “Now I know what Nentres went through. Poor bastard.”

“What?”

“Nothing, Elaine.”

“Button your lip! There’s the . . . oh, mercy, the police are there!”

“What?” said Roger. “The police? Where are we?”

“At the restaurant, the police are at the restaurant!” said Elaine. “What’s happened? I’m going to park around the block.”

The Mini-Cooper shot ahead, then suddenly swerved to the right, then to the left, then jerked to a stop. Roger carefully let go of the seat cushion when he heard the engine shut off. Disoriented, he fought down the urge to throw up and got to his feet. “What do we do now?” he said.

“You’ll do nothing but wait here until I return!” said Elaine, opening her car door. She slammed it shut, then opened the rear door and got the chef’s knife, which she tucked up her sweater sleeve. She then slammed the rears door and walked away into the neon-lit darkness.

“I can’t believe it,” muttered Roger. “This can’t be happening to me. I’ve been turned into a mouse after crashing into a cow, a giant magical pyromaniac is going out with my girlfriend, I’m the pet of a teenage witch who hangs out with reform-school girls, and now I’m stuck in a Mini-Cooper with a talking computer while a crazy lady is running around outside with a butcher knife. Was I such a bad person in my former life? Do I really deserve this?”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it,” said Merthin. “I’ve been through worse many a time. One of my girlfriends trapped me inside a scrying-stone, a wolf-god’s army destroyed our last home, and I’ve lost almost all my powers except divination and prophecy, and not even those work that well anymore. I certainly didn’t foretell your appearance, although to be honest you aren’t all that important.”

“Hey!”

“No offense. Look on the bright side: at least you can run away when you have to. I can’t.”

“Oh, thank you, I feel so much better now.” Roger heaved a sigh and considered what the computer had said. “A wolf-god’s army, you say?”

“I’m afraid so. Bad business, that was. Unraveled the whole island, lost it completely.”

“You lived on an island?”

“We did at that. Over a thousand years, not a single problem until Fenrir’s pack showed up, damn their eyes.”

“A thousand years.”

“Over a thousand, actually. Almost fifteen hundred. I’m afraid it was a bit dull at times, though I would have preferred more of that to our present circumstances.”

Having nothing to do and nowhere to go, Roger flopped down on his stomach. “Okay, I’ll play along. Which island was this, anyway?”

“Oh, the island, the Isle of the Blest. Not a part of your universe, reality, whatever you call it, but real all the same.”

“Isle of the Blest.” Roger was silent for a moment. “Avalon?” he finally said.

“The same, yes. Gone now. Damnable shame.”

“You’re from Avalon.”

“I said that. Bit slow for a mouse, aren’t you?”

“Wait a minute. Avalon, that was where King Ar—”

“Yes, yes, he was there, too. He arose and led the fight at the end, when Fenrir’s pack came, but to no avail. Terrible tragedy. I knew him well, advised him all his life. A great man. He was Elaine’s younger brother. Half-brother, really. Such a good sort. Better than most of the rest of his family, if you get my drift. I don’t mean Elaine, of course, though she can be a trial. Keep that between ourselves, if you would.”

Roger was silent again, processing all he had heard. “And you were the king’s wizard, Merlin.”

“I prefer my original name, in Welsh, but you can call me what you like. I do hope Scarlett is in good shape. If we lose her, everything will be for nothing. Elaine was right about that.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Roger asked, getting anxious. “I mean, you’re supposed to be a powerful wizard, right?”

“Can’t do a thing, my good fellow. All her mother’s fault, though I don’t blame her too much these days.”

“Whose mother?”

“Scarlett’s, lad. Do keep up with me. She was the one who trapped me here. My own fault, really. Wasn’t paying attention. The affair with the valkyrie didn’t help, either.”

“Scarlett said that Elaine was her aunt.”

“And so she is, as fine a person as her father was.”

“Her father. Elaine’s brother.”

“What was it you did in your previous life? Hod carrier? Ditch digger? Village idiot? Nothing intellectual, I can tell. Hold on, I hear someone coming.”

Roger jumped to his feet. Indeed, scores of footsteps could be heard outside the car. He almost jumped down and hid under the seat, but he didn’t see the point of it. He wanted to see what craziness was coming next. He did not have long to wait.

All four car doors opened at the same time. Startled, Roger looked up into a dozen faces crowding in, peering down at him with surprise and delight.

“It’s Scarlett’s rat!” cried Tananda. She was wearing her full field-hockey gear, her stick and helmet in her hands. In fact, all the girls around the car wore hockey garb, blue and gold T-shirts emblazoned with the Lawndale Leopards’ team name and snarling mascot. Some girls had war stripes painted across their cheeks.

“I’m not a rat!” Roger yelled, forgetting to be discrete. “We’ve been over this before!”

“Holy crap!” whispered Mahna Mahna. “He talks!”

“Of course he talks!” said Tananda. “I told you Scarlett was a witch!”

“I didn’t think you meant a witch witch!”

The Leopards crowded in still further. Angel reached down and poked Roger in the side with a finger. “Do you know any magic tricks?” she said. “What number am I thinking of?”

“Are you Scarlett’s friends?” called a voice that Roger recognized as Elaine’s.

“Yeah!” shouted Tananda, and the assembled girls gave out a cheer that almost deafened Roger.

“After the cops chased us away and we realized Scarlett was gone,” said Angel, “we went home and got our stuff!”

“That dumpster had a secret door on the bottom!” put in Kristen. “It was full of guns and all kinds of cool stuff! All the trash on top was fake!”

“We gave most of it to my mom,” added Big Jen. “It’s in her bedroom so she’ll be sure to see it when she gets home tonight.”

“It’s party time!” yelled Woot, sparking another wild cheer.

“Kevo wants blood!” cried Taryn, waving her hockey stick in the air. “Feed him!”

“Listen to me!” Elaine shouted, calming the group. “Listen! I believe Scarlett is in danger! Enemies of our family might be holding her inside that restaurant. The police are leaving shortly. As soon as they’re gone, we’re going to have to go in and look for her! Scarlett is my niece, the last of her line, the last of the children of Avalon! Stand with us this night, and you will be heroes such as this world has only dreamed! Our foes are terrible and deadly, but your names will be enshrined in legend and glory will be yours, if you but save her and keep her family name alive! Are you with me?”

A chaos of screams and roars greeted this call. Roger clapped his paws over his ears, but it didn’t help. He heard a ringing sound in his head for minutes afterward.

As the Leopards checked their gear and prepared themselves for the final assault, Tananda sat down on the Mini-Cooper’s passenger seat next to Roger, causing him to bounce in the air for a moment. “Hey,” she said. “You going in with us?”

“I doubt I’d be much help,” he confessed. “One of the disadvantages of being a mouse. I’m not much good in a fight.”

“Yeah,” said Tan. “Sucks to be you.”

“Tell me about it.” Roger’s ears perked up. “Say, I had a question.”

“Sure, shoot.”

“I never thought to ask her before, but what is Scarlett’s last name?”

“Scarlett? Oh, Pendragon. Her last name’s Pendragon. Kinda weird, huh? It’s like a ‘pen’ with a ‘dragon’ after it. Kinda cool.”

“Pendragon,” repeated Roger. He nodded wearily. “It figures.”

“Cheer up,” said Tan. “We’ll get her out of there. I’ve been dying for a good fight.”

“I’m sure we’ll all be dying soon, but never mind. Good luck.”

“Thanks, rat. Stay safe.”

“The police have left!” called Elaine, watching the restaurant. “Are you ready?” When the girls answered in the affirmative, Elaine reached into the car, took out the now-silent laptop, and set off for the Good Time Chinese restaurant. “It’s time!” she cried. “For victory and glory!”

“For glory!” the girls cried back. They shut the car’s doors and followed.

“Valhalla!” shouted Angel, just behind Elaine. She raised her hockey stick. “To Valhalla!”

“Valhalla!” shouted the other girls. “Valhalla! Valhalla!”

Roger heard it from the car, even with the doors shut. He hid under the seat until he could hear nothing more, and all was quiet. “I’ll just stay here until they return,” he said to himself. “Better to be safe than—”

The car door abruptly opened. A huge, scarred hand reached under the seat and snatched him out one second later, then held the terrified mouse up before a pair of narrow red eyes, high above the ground.

A broad mouth below the eyes broke into a smile, revealing sharpened fangs instead of human teeth.

“Roger,” said a coarse, deep voice. “You were looking for me?”

Roger’s eyes almost fell out of his head. “Bruno?” he squeaked.

The fanged smile widened.

The car door slammed shut, and a huge figure strode away into the darkness, tiny screams coming from one of its closed hands. Moments later, all was quiet again.

“Thank you, Hermione,” said Adele Wolff. “Your faithfulness is appreciated.” Her gaze went back to Scarlett, missing nothing. “I can’t say I wasn’t expecting you back, though I certainly wasn’t expecting the police would come in right after you. I thought at first that you had called them on me, but they seem concerned only with picking up Rhonda. Serves me right for not checking her references when I hired her. That’s how it goes sometimes. I can never find good help.”

Scarlett swallowed. “Hermione said you were going to rule the world, or destroy it.”

“That’s true,” said Adele without hesitation. “One or the other.”

“Well, which is it?”

“I don’t know yet. I think we will have to wait for another time to find out.” A thin smile crossed Adele’s face. “A completely different time.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” said Scarlett. “You can’t—” She was interrupted by a low growl from the German shepherd, but she forged on. “Well, it is! Look at you! You’re . . . you’re just a restaurant owner with a dog! You can’t possibly take over the earth!”

Adele did not appear upset to be challenged. “Much of what you say is true,” she replied. “I do have more than one dog, though I have only one dog that talks. The others are in their kennel upstairs.” She glanced at the dog. “Relax, Hermione. I can handle this.”

“I will tear her down at your command,” said Hermione, eyeing Scarlett with teeth bared.

“Not now. Later, perhaps, but not now.”

“Jawohl, mein Fuehrer!” the dog snapped.

Adele turned to Scarlett. “I am a restaurant owner, in this life. I’m not a very good restaurant owner, and I freely admit I’m probably one of the worst ones ever. That’s not important. The restaurant business is only a cover. If it makes me look foolish to this abomination of a world, all the better.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Scarlett, spreading her hands in bewilderment. “None of what you’re saying makes any sense.”

“That’s good, then. That’s the way it should be.” Adele looked up at the ceiling. The sound of hard-soled shoes could be heard moving across the floor above. “The police are leaving, I think. Doesn’t sound like they found the other dogs. I wonder if Rhonda is with them. I should go up and say goodbye, give a statement, but . . . no. It doesn’t matter, either.” She looked down at the dog. “I think tonight’s the night to do it. Scarlett’s here, and there have been too many interruptions, with more sure to come. I can’t wait for the other history books to come in, and all my credit cards are maxed out. Tonight it is.”

“Tonight?” said Hermione with a touch of eagerness. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Adele replied, giving the dog a grin. “And I haven’t forgotten my promise to change you into your former self, though I will miss your company as you are. I’ve always liked dogs, but . . .” She sighed. “You look so much like Blondi. She was a good dog.”

“Blondi?” asked Scarlett.

“The dog I had in my previous life.”

Scarlett fidgeted, becoming nervous. “What exactly are you doing tonight?”

“Putting an end to this accursed disaster of a world, then remaking it into the world it should have been.” Adele reached behind her back with her right hand, feeling for something at waist level. “But first, a little test—” Adele whipped her arm forward and threw something at Scarlett, who shrieked and flung up her hands to shield her face. By instinct, she grabbed for the oncoming object with her right hand to stop it—

—and felt a thump in her palm, her fingers snapping shut on a handle. She slowly opened her eyes and looked to see what she had caught. It was an old, long-bladed military knife, with twin lightning bolts and a swastika engraved on its bright golden handle.

“It is you,” said Adele, surprise evident on her face. “Farkas was right. You are the one he was looking for! Hermione!”

Before Scarlett knew what to do next, Hermione leaped up and gently caught Scarlett’s right wrist in her mouth, putting her forepaws on the girl’s chest. The dog glared at Scarlett and applied increasing pressure with her teeth until Scarlett let go of the weapon, which fell to the floor. The dog got down again, picked up the knife’s golden hilt with her mouth, and trotted away to place the blade at Adele’s feet.

“Danke,” said Adele, picking up the knife and putting it back in its sheath behind her, under her skirt’s waistband. She smirked at Scarlett. “From the look on your face, I’ll bet no one’s ever thrown a knife at you before. Scarlett Pendragon, daughter of King Arthur and the supernatural Lady of the Lake, the water spirit who according to legend could catch thrown swords with ease. So much like your mother. You have a curious pedigree, I admit. I am not well versed in Arthurian lore, but I did not believe Arthur and Viviane had ever been lovers. So much for that. They obviously grew fond of each other over the centuries they spent on that mythical island of theirs. I wonder what Morgan le Fay thought of that. Whatever. You did not come here through this gateway, I know, so there must be others.” She looked thoughtful. “I should ask Farkas about it. That could be trouble.”

“What kind of bull is that about my dad being King Arthur?” Scarlett retorted. “My father and mother are dead! They weren’t myths, they were real people! You don’t know anything about them!”

“Before I met Farkas, that was true: I didn’t. And from what Farkas said, your parents weren’t myths before, but they certainly are now.” Adele glanced down at Hermione. “Go upstairs the secret way and see if everyone’s gone, then tell the clones to come on in. I summoned them when the police arrived, but I had them wait a couple blocks away. Farkas will get here on his own instincts. He always does.”

“Will you be all right down here with her?” asked Hermione, getting to her feet.

“Perfectly fine,” said Adele with a twisted smile. “Hurry, we have much to do before we’re interrupted again.”

The German shepherd trotted off toward the wall behind Adele, pressed the top of her head against a certain spot, then left through the tall trapdoor that appeared in the wall to her left. The trapdoor closed a moment later. Now I know how that lady got in here, Scarlett thought.

“If you try to overpower me, I will not be gentle with you,” said Adele, watching Scarlett closely. “If it looks like you are trying to cast a spell on me, I will be equally un-gentle. Think before you act.”

“I want to know what you’re going to do with me,” Scarlett said, fighting down her fear.

“Give you to Farkas, of course, for whatever he wishes to do with you. We had an agreement on that. He would do certain favors for me, and I would do certain favors for him. We’ve been very good for each other since he came here through my gateway.”

“Who is Farkas?”

“I think you know him as Bruno Nagy.”

Oh, crap. Scarlett felt her heart sink. “Is there any way you can explain this to me, what’s really happening? I’m totally lost here.”

Adele considered the request, then shrugged. “We have a little time.” She stepped forward, rounding a stack of boxes, and took off her Nazi officer’s cap. “It looks strange, I know,” she said, looking at the cap in her hands. “A dreadful affectation of mine. It’s the real thing, a Luftwaffe captain’s hat, and it . . . well, never mind. A bedtime story for a little girl—I believe I can do that.”

She approached within ten feet of Scarlett and stopped, still looking down at the hat. “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a little community called Lawndale, and in that little community was an old building. It was built in the late eighteen hundreds as a bank, but it changed hands many times and became a real-estate office, an accounting office, a classroom annex, and several times a restaurant. This building acquired a bad reputation over time, too. There seems to have been something wrong in its construction, some quirk that made it . . . strange, untrustworthy . . . unlikable, that would be the best word. Rumor had it that the building was haunted. Odd things happened in it. Strange drafts were felt, strange sounds were heard, and people who worked there sometimes disappeared for good. Not everyone believed these stories, so the building changed hands, over and over, until recently when I bought it from a Chinese family who could no longer tolerate the building’s peculiarities.”

Adele put the cap back on her head and looked at Scarlett again. “I was different, because I was born just behind this building in the alley, just over fifty years ago. My mother was taking a shortcut while visiting neighbors and went into labor right where that dumpster sits now. A woman should never tell her age, but I am fifty-two, and I don’t mind if I tell my age because I wasn’t a woman once. I was a man, and I had the entire world within my reach.”

Scarlett was aware of her own breathing. “Adolf Hitler,” she said.

Adele nodded once. “My compliments to your history teacher.”

“But Hitler’s dead!”

“His soul is not.” Adele crossed her arms in front of her and began to pace, keeping Scarlett within view as she walked. The faded tattoos of swastikas on her arms were clearly visible. “I came to full self-awareness at puberty, though I’d had dreams and intuitions about my real identity before then. I have no idea how it happened that I was reborn. Unlike Hermione or that mouse you own—the one that Farkas is seeking too, by the way—unlike them, I was truly born, not created out of nothing. It seems to be a quirk of the gateway to do that. At any rate, I lived most of my life here in town, slowly regaining my old knowledge and sense of things, and I began to read to learn more about what happened, how things turned out after . . . after my previous life ended.” She took on a resigned expression. “I was disappointed, to say the least, though I knew things had not turned out well. Even my own people have turned against me. Those who believe in my cause number in the hundreds when once they were in the millions. My name is cursed and reviled, or else I am made fun of in stupid movies. So it goes with the ignorant.

“As you can imagine, I knew early on not to discuss my true nature with anyone, especially my family, who already believed I spent entirely too much time with books and not enough time doing womanly things, like cooking or dating.” Adele’s face with filled with loathing. “Those things did not interest me in the slightest. I was interested only in my legacy . . . and my destiny.”

She stopped and turned to regard Scarlett. “Have you ever heard the urban legend about the House of Bad Grades?”

Startled, Scarlett nodded. “The place where that girl was accidentally sealed up in a fallout shelter so she couldn’t go to college, and—”

“That part’s a lot of nonsense, but the story began with this building. When I was a girl in the nineteen fifties, living next door to this place, it was being used as an annex for the local high school, which was much smaller than it is now. The students who studied in this building said it was haunted, and they invented all sorts of stories to explain why they couldn’t do their work. That’s how the legend got started, right here.”

Screwing up her courage again, Scarlett asked, “Is this building haunted?”

Adele smiled again. “No. Not haunted.” She looked to once side, at a huge poster of Hitler in medieval armor, riding a horse and carrying a Nazi banner in his right hand. “It has a gateway.”

Scarlett remembered Adele using that term earlier. “What do you mean, a gateway?”

“It is difficult to explain.” Adele began pacing again, ever watchful. “The short form of it is, the rear wall of this building, where the back alley is, is the boundary of an invisible door that opens into other worlds and universes. It opens into other timelines and other realities, sometimes at random and sometimes on command. Do you read any science fiction?”

Ever more nervous, Scarlett thought carefully about her answer. “A little.”

“I read a lot of it in my previous life, all the major authors of the time: Wells, Gernsback, Amazing Stories, that kind of thing. It prepared me for the unexpected, so I quickly recognized the gateway for what it was. This building is not haunted in the usual sense, but you could say it is haunted by possibility, as the gateway connects to every possible world you can imagine, even fantasy ones. Farkas himself came from one of those other worlds, a sort of alternate history where the Central Powers of World War One triumphed, then triumphed again in World War Two, conquering all but the Americas. The British had to flee to Canada. I think Farkas had some hand in the destruction of Avalon, but that’s for him to say. At any rate, I have many times tested the gateway’s range of possibilities and found them as real as the world we now share, you and me. And tonight . . . I mean to seize one of those possibilities and make it my own, and this reality will be no more.”

She took off her cap and tossed it to Scarlett, who tried to catch the hat but fumbled and dropped it. Scarlett picked it up and examined it with one eye on Adele, who was clearly irked by the teenager’s clumsiness. The black felt-and-leather visor cap had elaborate silver trim, with a swastika in the claws of an eagle with widespread wings. It appeared little used.

“I went back in time a few days ago and got that,” Adele said with a touch of pride. “I took it from a Luftwaffe officer who left it in his wardrobe while he was in the bathroom, showering. I used the gateway to enter his bedroom, get his cap, and leave. That was in Cherbourg in occupied France, in the year nineteen forty-two—summer, I think, as it was warm out and still early morning. I could smell the sea in the air, bakeries cooking bread.”

Scarlett looked at the cap a little longer, then put it down on a box. She knew in her bones it was the real thing, and newly made. She can do it. She really can. Great Holy Goddess.

“Don’t believe me?” asked Adele.

“No, I believe you,” Scarlett whispered after a beat. “I believe you went back in time and did what you said you did.”

Adele raised an eyebrow. “Why, though? Why do you believe me? No one else would believe it if I had told them. Why do you?”

Scarlett looked up at the tall blonde and spoke honestly. “Because I feel it. I sense it is true, in your voice, so I believe it.”

“With your magical intuition, you can do this?”

After a moment of hesitation, Scarlett nodded.

“Interesting,” said Adele. “Farkas does that, too. And what else can you sense about me?”

Scarlett knew she was entering very dangerous ground, but she moved ahead. “It’s not what I sense about you. It’s what I know, about what you said.”

Adele frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s what I know about Adolf Hitler, from my history class.” Scarlett steadied herself. “Mister DeMartino, my teacher, told us about Hitler the other day. He said Hitler read a lot, and he owned a lot of books, but he liked things like history, politics, stuff like that. He even read about religion and the occult, but he didn’t read science fiction, that anyone ever knew.”

Adele’s frown became a frozen mask. “Well, they were wrong, then, weren’t they?”

After a moment, Scarlett shook her head. “No, they weren’t. Mister DeMartino said that Hitler didn’t like novels, and Hitler even admitted that. He read only a few, and most of what he read were old pulp Westerns, of all things, written by some German guy. Hitler read Westerns, but not science fiction.”

A dark light began to form in the tall blonde’s eyes. “I withdraw my praise for your history teacher. He is obviously a fool.”

“He’s not a fool,” said Scarlett, growing angry. “He knows what he’s talking about.” She lifted her chin, aware now of the truth. “You’re not Adolf Hitler. You’re insane.”

Adele Wolff crossed the space to Scarlett so quickly that the girl had no time to protect herself. Stars exploded in Scarlett’s vision as a fist hammered the left side of her head. When Scarlett recovered consciousness a few seconds later, she found herself lying on her back on the floor, her left cheek in agony and a tremendous force bearing down on her chest and abdomen. She blinked and looked up to see a long knife with a golden hilt pointing at a spot between her eyes, the tip mere inches away.

“I . . . am . . . not . . . insane!” the blonde hissed, her blue eyes gleaming. “They lied about me, everyone did! My family, the doctors, everyone! I . . . have . . . never . . . been . . . insane! Never!”

Scarlett stared at the knife and did not dare breathe, though with Adele kneeling on her chest she could not have breathed even if she had tried.

“Mein Fuhrer,” came Hermione’s voice from a hidden speaker. “The police are gone, and I have summoned the clones. They should be here in a minute.”

The blonde smiled again as she got to her feet and sheathed the blade. Scarlett gasped and coughed on the floor, her head and chest aflame. She rubbed her aching face and wiped away tears.

“Any other proof you care to offer that I am not actually Adolf Hitler?” asked Adele in a casual tone, looking down at the girl at her feet.

I could, if I wanted, thought Scarlett, looking up at her nemesis. For one thing, we’ve been talking all this time, and not once have you said a single word about the Jews. Hitler would have ranted about them for hours, blaming them for all his woes, but you do not. You are not Adolf Hitler—but you ARE the most dangerous human being I’ve ever met. Scarlett slowly shook her head no.

“Good.” Adele stepped back. “Get up. Story time is over. The clones will be here soon.”

“C-c-clones?” wheezed Scarlett as she got to her knees, then to her feet. The silver ankh swung askew on its chain.

“Clones make the best soldiers,” said Adele. “Everyone knows that. Loyal, obedient, and think alike. I’ve been recruiting them for years. I recognized their potential from reading science fiction.” She gave Scarlett the eye, waiting to see if the girl challenged that statement.

Hermione was right: she’s the number-one craziest nut bar in the whole universe. I can’t afford to piss her off anymore. Scarlett swayed unsteadily on her feet as she held the side of her face. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying, though her eyes streamed.

“I used only natural clones, though,” Adele continued. “Natural twins, triplets, and so on. Some of them around here were created by bad fertility drugs, but a clone is a clone is a clone. I’ve even got two sets of delinquent quintuplets in my service. Can you believe that I’m Hitler now?”

“I won’t argue with you,” said Scarlett through clenched teeth. The side of her head hurt more every minute, and she knew she was going to have a terrible bruise. She leaned against a stack of boxes for support, then looked down into the uppermost box. Inside the Third Reich was the title of the book on the top.

And it came to her, then. The books, the gateway, time travel, Adele’s madness. It all made sense.

“You’re going back in time,” she said, looking up at Adele. “You’re taking all these history and science books with you, and you’re going to . . .” She broke off, overcome at the enormity of what she was saying.

Adele watched her impassively. “Go on,” she said. “You’re right so far.”

“You’re . . . you’re . . .” Scarlett forced herself to say it. “You’re going to change history.”

A nod. “Yes.”

“So the Nazis win.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Concentration camps, atomic bombs, ICBMs, burning cities—Holy Great GODDESS!

“‘Oh’?” said Adele with a mocking smile. “Is that all you can say? Just ‘Oh’?”

Scarlett shook her head, aghast. “You really are insane. You’re madder than mad.”

Adele’s face lost its smile. “It will be a pleasure to see you die,” she said, her face like stone. She pushed the button to summon the elevator, never taking her eyes off the smaller girl.

So, this is it, thought Scarlett with an odd detachment, listening to the elevator motor rumble as she rubbed her cheek. This is the end of my short, unfinished, not-quite-a-full life. She looked up and calmly studied her captor. I wonder if I can take her down with me. I bet I can. I don’t know how, but I know I can. I can save the world—and I will.

“Mein Fuhrer!” came Hermione’s shout over the intercom. “There’s a problem outside!”

“What problem?” Adele shouted back, still not looking away from Scarlett.

“Fighting! There’s a bunch of girls outside in sports uniforms, and they’re—” The sound of breaking glass could be heard in the background. “They’re breaking in! The clones are trying to stop them, but—”

More shattering glass was heard. Adele’s lips pulled back from her teeth. “I’m coming up!” she shouted. “Don’t let the other dogs out yet! Go to the kitchen and wait for me!”

“Jawohl!” The Intercom clicked off.

“I have a question,” said Scarlett, who feared nothing now that she knew her fate.

“Ask it, wretch,” said Adele stonily.

“Does Hermione know that Hitler poisoned his dog, before he killed himself?”

A muscle trembled in Adele Wolff’s cheek. When the elevator door opened, Adele lunged forward, grabbed Scarlett by the arm, and shoved her inside. Scarlett hit the opposite wall hard but kept her footing. Adele got in after her, punched a button, and stood facing the teenager.

“Give me one good reason to kill you before Farkas gets here,” Adele hissed. She pulled her knife out once again, gripping the golden handle in her fist. “One good reason, that’s all I ask.”

Scarlett pressed herself into a corner of the compartment and said nothing, waiting.

The elevator rumbled to a stop. The door opened to darkness and the sound of men shouting and windows breaking everywhere.

Adele motioned Scarlett forward with a wave of her dagger. “Children first,” she said, forcing a smile. “Head for the kitchen, or die here.”

Scarlett peeked out of the elevator. The main fighting was in the dining hall, not nearby. She stepped out and headed for the swinging door she thought led to the kitchen.

“Scarlett!” cried a familiar voice. She looked back and saw Tananda, her blue Lawndale Leopards jersey torn to shreds and a field hockey stick in her hands. Sweat ran down Tananda’s face in streams.

“Behind you!” Scarlett shouted, seeing movement. Tan spun, slashed downward with the stick, and struck a burly man hard on the thigh. He roared in pain but caught her as he fell. They collapsed in a furious struggle, Tan’s fists flying. More fights raged around them between stick-swinging Leopards and men wearing black clothing.

“Keep moving!” snapped Adele, stepping out of the elevator and motioning Scarlett onward with her knife.

At the same moment, Scarlett heard the door swing open behind her. “Get in here, so I can lock the door!” shouted Hermione to Adele. “There’s no time!”

“The books!” yelled Adele. “We have to bring the books up and take them through the gateway!”

“We don’t have time!” Hermione yelled back. “The attackers are everywhere!”

“Then we’ll make time! Get the girl in the kitchen and wait for me!” Adele turned, dagger out and ready, and started toward the dining hall.

Scarlett felt Hermione’s teeth clamp down on the hem of her long skirt and pull her back. No! She struggled against the pull—and felt her silver ankh bump against her chest. In an instant, she reached up, pulled off the ankh and its chain, then threw them overhand at Adele.

The ankh’s chain wrapped around one of the blonde’s bare lower legs above her ankle. Adele stepped on the end of the chain with her other foot, tripping herself, and fell on her face in the dining room entrance.

At that moment, Aunt Elaine appeared, standing over the stunned Adele with a long object in one hand and her laptop computer held under the other. “Scarlett!” she yelled. “Catch!” She threw the object she held.

It was a foot-long chef’s knife with a shining blade, coming right at Scarlett’s head.

Not again! Scarlett yelped and raised her arms to defend herself, simultaneously reaching for the whirling knife with her right hand. She knew she would catch it.

And then a leaping German shepherd was in her way. “I got it!” Hermione cried. “I g—OW!”

The knife’s heavy handle smacked the dog on the nose and was knocked to one side, away from Scarlett’s outstretched hand. It flew instead into the stone lintel on the side of the swinging kitchen door, where the blade went in up to the hilt. Scarlett stared at it for a moment in amazement. That’s Aunt Elaine’s best cutting knife! she thought. It went right into that stone! What kind of knife is that?

“Get it!” shrieked Elaine. “Scarlett, pull it out!”

Scarlett looked back at her aunt—and saw a furious Adele rise from the floor behind the older woman. Even as Scarlett opened her mouth to cry a warning, Adele’s golden-hilted dagger came down into Elaine’s back. Scarlett’s aunt cried out in pain, then toppled.

“NO!” Scarlett was hardly aware she had screamed. She stared at Adele and her dagger, standing over the body of her beloved aunt—then whirled, grabbed the hilt of the chef’s knife, and pulled it out of the stone. She turned back to Adele, seeing red . . . but something was different. Scarlett looked down at what she held in her right hand. What she held was not a knife any longer. She had a sword.

The sword was finely made of mirrorlike steel, with a long hilt of gold in the shape of two long-bodied dragons entwined in battle. The head of one dragon formed the pommel of the sword. The dragons’ tails stretched out to form the crossguard. Stunned beyond words, Scarlett lifted the blade and found the sword was perfectly balanced in her grip. Written down the length of one side of the blade were the words, PULL ME OUT. She turned the blade and read on the other side, THROW ME IN. The blade itself gave off light that filled the hallway and beyond, the peculiar illumination growing stronger by the second.

Scarlett lowered the blade, focused her rage on Adele, and took a slow step forward. And then another. And another.

“Excuse me!” Hermione whined, crouching on the floor with her tail down and ears flattened in surrender. “I was wondering if I could escape. I’ve made a terrible error and I regret it and I’ll never bother—”

“Get out of here,” Scarlett whispered.

“Right!” said Hermione, scrambling from the floor to escape. As the dog ran to get past her former mistress, Adele raised her dagger and hissed, “Traitor!” as she thrust down. Hermione yelped, staggered, then fell on her side a few paces beyond in the dining hall, whining and writhing in agony.

Scarlett continued to advance, her sword out. Adele backed up into the darkened dining room, where the sounds of all fighting had ceased. Scarlett paused to kneel by the body of her aunt, sword at the ready. The laptop lay silent at her side. Something was clutched in her aunt’s left hand. “Elaine?” Scarlett said, touching the old woman’s hair.

Elaine’s eyes opened, a faint gleam visible within. “Take this,” she whispered, putting out her left hand. Scarlett looked down and took the item: the chef knife’s sheath. She tucked it into the waistband of her long skirt without questioning the deed.

“It is yours now, your birthright,” said Elaine, her voice fading. “Excalibur the Stone-Cutter is yours. Go, and . . .” The eyes closed again. It was impossible to tell if the old woman still breathed.

Scarlett stroked her aunt’s hair, then looked around. She saw her ankh necklace on the floor, picked it up, and put it on with one hand. She then stood and walked out into the dining hall. Her sword illuminated every corner of the room with its brilliance. It was immediately evident that nearly all the Leopards were on their feet—but none of the black-clothed men were.

“Oh, my Gawd!” cried Woot, holding a tissue to her split lip. “Scarlett’s a Jedi!”

“Idiot,” snapped Adele, who raised her dagger high. She then spoke a word that sounded like tear-fing.

And instantly she held a sword of her own, a long golden-hilted weapon whose long blade gave off a fiery orange glow.

“Strange,” said Adele, lowering her blade and assuming a relaxed posture. “Very strange that our weapons came through their respective gateways in smaller form, but instinctively knew their rightful users. You have Excalibur, and I have the sword of Odin’s grandson, the superweapon of the Elder Edda, the blade that cuts through stone and steel as easily as does yours.” She grinned madly. “Only Tyrfing, my sword, never misses, and it always kills when drawn. I picked it up in another universe only a month ago, using my gateway. Took the longest time to find where it had gone, but . . . it was worth it.”

Adele made a preparatory swipe through the air, her sword leaving a trail of red flame behind it. The Leopards solemnly drew back, pulling the unconscious forms of Adele’s henchmen with them, administering a few extra blows to the “clones” who showed signs of recovering.

Scarlett swallowed. Excalibur? I’m holding the real Excalibur? She shook her head, trying to keep up with the crazed pace of events, but she felt overwhelmed. She knew nothing about swordfighting, even with a weapon as well made as Excalibur. The best she could hope for was to take Adele down before she too died, or else injure the madwoman enough for the Leopards to take her prisoner. The world depends on me, the whole world and everyone on it. I will not let them down. She thought of her aunt, of her father’s courage—and raised her sword with both hands, her chin down, her eyes up.

Adele raised her own fiery superweapon—and with a cry, she attacked.

Adele ran at Scarlett to chop downward with Tyrfing, but she pulled up short, strike incomplete, when a startled Scarlett swung Excalibur in a wide horizontal arc two-handed, then took a long step closer and returned with another roundhouse swing that came within a foot of taking Adele’s head off. Unexpectedly, long narrow sparks snapped between the two swords when the weapons came within a few feet of each other. Though the fighting was clumsy and neither sword-wielder had hit, the Leopards gasped and pulled back even farther from the battle, finally grasping the danger before them. Adele began circling her foe counterclockwise, while Scarlett turned in place, crouched and waiting, her sword raised.

“We made lightning!” cried Adele, her face aglow. “What’s up with that?” She giggled, near hysteria. “Surrender yet?”

A reply was worthless. Scarlett steadied herself, waiting for another attack. A less-than-competent defense was better than anything else until she got the hang of what she needed to do to win—if that ever happened. Excalibur wasn’t doing anything to make the fight easier, like give her advice or take over the fighting for her. She was on her own. Damn stupid sword!

Scarlett did not have to wait long for more action. Adele suddenly grinned and charged again, stopping at the last moment to strike low at the smaller girl, the fiery sword slashing across Scarlett’s abdomen. Scarlett jerked, feeling a painful sting across her gut, but the attack had no other effect except to cut off the front hem of her sweater, which fell to the floor and was quickly kicked aside. Scarlett swung back, but too late—Adele had already moved out of reach. The blonde stopped circling when she had her back to the unoccupied corridor leading to the kitchen.

“You were lucky there,” Adele yelled, “but you won’t be lucky for much longer!” She charged once more—but Scarlett was ready and whipped Excalibur around to hit and deflect Tyrfing in mid-flight. A loud tone rang out like a high-pitched tuning fork as a shower of white sparks sprayed from the collision. The stunned combatants parted immediately, their arms shaken nerveless by the impact.

“I would have thought two magic swords like ours would cut each other in half,” said Adele. “Get it? They cut through everything!” Her high-pitched braying laugh spoiled her posture of confidence. “Nice to know that they can’t get ruined, isn’t it? Think of how expensive they’re be, out there in the real world!”

Scarlett still said nothing, keeping Adele solidly in view. For her part, Adele kept glancing around to make sure no one was creeping up on her.

“Go get ’er, Scarlett!” cried a Leopard. “Kick her ass!” A chorus of cheers rang out from Scarlett’s allies.

“Yeah? Well, screw you!” Adele shouted back.

Kick her ass, right, Scarlett thought in distraction. She stabbed my aunt, she’s trying to destroy the world, here we are trying to kill each other, and all I have to do is kick her ass. What a bunch of—

A hockey stick suddenly flew past Scarlett’s head and banged into the wall behind Adele, causing her curse and dance around, wary of more surprise attacks.

“Don’t throw anything else!” cried Scarlett, staying where she was. “You’re going to hit me too, damn it!”

“Why can’t we rush her?” called a Leopard.

“Because she’ll cut you to pieces!” Scarlett yelled back. “Her sword is too powerful! Stay away from her!”

“I can do more than cut you bitches up!” Adele shouted. “I’ll kill all of you if you don’t get out of here! Beat it!”

There was a little silence. The Leopards eyed the blonde, but none responded.

“I said, get out, now!” Adele shrieked, almost losing control. She scanned the motionless crowd around her. “Right now!”

“Nah, I wanna see this,” said Angel at last.

“Definitely,” said Tananda. The other Leopards chorused agreement.

“Listen to me!” said Scarlett, stepping slowly to one side to draw Adele’s attention. She wanted to keep the blonde from looking back, seeing Elaine, and possibly attacking her again for no good reason except sheer evil. “She may have a point! If you get too close to us, you’ll get hurt! But if you’re going to stay, and she comes after you, throw everything you can at her! Hit her with everything, and I mean everything, even tables and chairs! Knock her out at a distance—only don’t do it now! Not right now, no! I don’t want to get hit, too!”

“Not a lot of faith in our aim, but . . . okey-dokey,” said Angel. She took up a fighting stance with her hockey stick raised for an overhand throw. In moments, every other Leopard in the dining hall copied her movements until almost two dozen battered sticks were ready to be hurled.

Adele looked nervously around, then her face filled with anger—backed by more than a little fear. “Get out, damn you!” she cried. “You have no right to interfere! This is my right!”

“You have no right to destroy our world,” said Scarlett. She edged one cautious step closer to her opponent, looking braver than she felt. “We have every right to defend our planet from you. You will go no further.”

“Bitch!” Adele hissed. “Stupid little redheaded bitch!”

Scarlett shook her head in disapproval. A reply was beneath her.

“What was that part again about her destroying the world?” asked Tananda, glancing uneasily at Scarlett. “Are you like serious?”

“I am,” said Scarlett steadily. “She was about to do it, before you got here.”

“She’s going to destroy the world?” said Kristen. “You mean, this world, the whole freakin’ planet? Does she have like a bomb or something?”

“Something like that, yes,” said Scarlett. “She does. No time to explain, but you stopped her.”

Adele’s face became feral with rage. “No, you didn’t!” she snapped—and she lunged at Scarlett, sword pulling back for another swing. Scarlett instinctively swung to block the blow. Their swords collided in a renewed splash of lightning and fiery sparks. The blow almost knocked Excalibur from Scarlett’s hands, but she hung on. Adele reversed her swing in an eyeblink; Scarlett again tried to parry the blow but missed. It could have been a trick of the ever-shifting light, but Scarlett had a terrifying moment when she thought the burning Tyrfing had sliced right through her left arm between the wrist and the elbow. Her arm stung as if lashed by a hot wire, and she cried out in pain but kept the sword in her grip. Both opponents backpedaled with swords ready, puffing from exertion.

Scarlett felt something wrong with her left arm and looked down. Part of her sweater sleeve had been sliced through, and a tube of fabric had fallen down around her wrist. How the hell did that happen? she wondered as she quickly flung the cut-away piece aside.

Adele gave Scarlett a confused look, glancing from the shortened sweater sleeve up to Scarlett’s face, then down to the glowing, unbloodied Tyrfing in her hands. Her expression quickly darkened as she looked up again. “You don’t know how to swordfight!” she snarled. “You’re just a child!”

“I don’t think you know how to fight, either,” said Scarlett, feeling oddly calm as well as incredibly lucky. She moved her sword to one side, then to the other, observing how the rattled Adele stared at the tip of Excalibur with mounting fear. The change in Adele’s behavior was painfully obvious.

“You’re afraid you’re going to lose,” said Scarlett. “You’re afraid you’re going to die.”

“I’m not afraid!” Adele roared. “You’re the one who’s afraid to die! It’s you!”

“No,” said Scarlett in a low voice, and she realized that she wasn’t afraid. Her earlier nervousness was gone. She knew nothing about this insanely hazardous kind of fighting, but she was damned if she would let anyone get the better of her, especially now. She would stop Adele from changing history. She would do it because she knew she could, even if the details of how she would do that escaped her.

She realized, too, that this stupid fight had to stop soon, before someone else got killed or injured besides Aunt Elaine and that dog. Neither combatant was an experienced sword fighter; the battle would have ended long ago otherwise. The Leopards would surely get hurt if they decided to charge and end the fight themselves, which they might be on the verge of doing. It was clear that Adele wasn’t going to end this idiotic fight, so—

It’s up to me, Scarlett thought—and it came to her, then, how to end the fight. It was a trick, but she knew it would work if she did it right, and she adopted the plan without question. It was the only way out. I hope I am as brave as you were, Father, she thought, taking a deep breath. I hope you will be proud of me, wherever you are.

Scarlett relaxed her stance, then lowered her brilliant sword until the tip of Excalibur touched the floor. She then moved her feet closer together and stood erect, her left side turned toward Adele, feet at right angles. She did not allow herself to think of what was going to happen next. She allowed herself only to act.

“If you strike me down,” said Scarlett to Adele in a clear, loud voice, “I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Every eye in the dining hall turned toward her. Adele’s mouth fell open. She blinked and winced as sweat ran into her eyes. “What?” she said.

“I said, if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Scarlett made sure her grip on Excalibur was solid, and she waited and watched.

No one moved. Adele’s face had turned white with fear.

“Ohmigawd!” Woot whispered loudly. “Ohmigawd, I remember this part!”

“Scarlett,” said Tananda uneasily, “what the hell are you—”

“Afraid to try it?” said Scarlett to her foe, ignoring everyone else. A tiny part of her mind shrieked disbelief that she was really doing this, but she was dead calm outside. She let go of Excalibur’s hilt with one hand, then stretched her left arm out to the side, palm open and fingers spread, offering Adele a clear strike. “Try it,” she said. “Come and strike me down. See what happens.”

Adele trembled where she stood. Drops of cold sweat fell from her hair and chin. Tyrfing, its fiery glow illuminating its mistress’s features, shook in her grasp.

“Scarlett,” said Angel in warning.

Scarlett smiled. She didn’t feel like it but did anyway, then she turned her face away from Adele to look at the assembled Leopards. “See?” she said gaily. “She isn’t going to—”

She heard the rush of footsteps she had expected, saw the looks of shock and fear on her friends’ faces, and instantly whirled around with Excalibur swinging up in her right hand. She then lunged and stabbed straight out with her sword, one-handed, taking a long step in the direction of the charging Adele, who ran up and thrust at Scarlett with Tyrfing, her face set in a rictus of madness. The orange sword of fire and the brilliant sword of light shot by each other in a wild halo of sparks, missing by inches, and found their intended targets. Each sank deep into an unarmored body, right up to the weapons’ golden crosspieces. Scarlett and Adele were thrown forward from the double impact to their chests, their wind knocked out but their right hands curled around sword hilts shoved against each other’s ribcage.

Scarlett was aware from the intense pain she felt that she had been run clean through the chest and had only moments left to live, though she was still conscious and able to stand. She did not dare breathe. The Leopards around the dining hall dropped their hockey sticks and screamed their lungs out in horror.

In wordless shock, Scarlett raised her head and stared into Adele’s pasty gray face, barely two feet from her own. Adele’s blue eyes were open wide as could be, with the white showing all around. Her mouth was a tiny o of surprise. The taller woman caught Scarlett by the right shoulder for support.

“You . . .” Adele gasped, then she coughed and her face twisted in agony. Long seconds passed before she could speak again. “You did this to . . .” She shivered, then her legs gave out and she sank to the floor with a thump, still clutching the hilt of her enchanted sword. She looked up in astonishment at Scarlett’s chest, at the bloodless spot where Tyrfing pierced the girl’s T-shirt. “How . . .” she gasped. “I don’t . . . understand . . . how you . . .”

I’ve killed her. Dear Goddess, I’ve killed her. Scarlett forgot about the pain in her own chest, which had miraculously subsided to near nothing. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, stricken with guilt. “I’m really sorry.”

Adele shook her head, trying to comprehend even as she weakened. Then she looked up again and her mixture of pain and puzzlement had been replaced by a mad, knowing smile.

“He said . . . it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t kill you.” Blood ran from her mouth, down her chin to her neck. “He said . . . suicide to . . . fight you . . . but . . . he said—” Adele’s smile grew, though her voice was barely audible. “I’ll be back,” she whispered.

Then Adele’s eyes rolled up. She fell to one side, effortlessly pulling Tyrfing out of Scarlett’s body as the taller woman slid off Excalibur’s shining blade. Tyrfing’s orange fire went out, and it fell with a clatter by the side of its former owner, changing again into a long-bladed dagger—with no blood upon its blade. The lightning bolts and swastika were now missing from the engraved hilt.

Scarlett gaped in horror at the body that gazed with empty eyes at her boots. A glistening smear of red ran down Excalibur from crosspiece to tip. Scarlett stared at her sword, then deliberately let it drop ringing to the floor as she took several steps back from the weapons and Adele.

Speechless, Scarlett looked down at herself, then reached up and felt her breastbone. Her gray T-shirt had a high clean slit in the center of her chest, cut by the passage of Tyrfing. The top of the center band between her bra cups had been sliced through as well, though the bra remained in one piece. She reached behind her and felt other holes in both her T-shirt and sweater. She had been stabbed right through the chest—but there was no blood and, when she checked, no wounds. She brought her hands to her eyes, gazing at them without comprehension, wondering why she wasn’t dead.

“Who are you?” said a voice in wonder.

Scarlett looked up. Every Leopard in the room stared at her in amazement, awe, or fear.

“Who are you, really?” Angel repeated. “You can’t be human. I thought she’d killed you. That sword came out of your back, I saw it, but you . . . you’re not . . . it didn’t even . . .”

“That’s right,” Scarlett replied, unable to think of anything clever to say.

“I’m sorry I thought you were kind of a wimp all this time,” said Tananda in an undertone.

“Who are you?” Angel repeated.

“Scarlett Pendragon,” said Scarlett.

“Are you from this planet?” asked Tananda.

If my father really was who Adele said he was, and my mother, too, then—I give up.

“No,” said Scarlett, though she wasn’t sure she believed it. “I’m not, but . . . I’m just me. I’m still like you.”

A long beat passed.

“Riiiiight,” said Woot.

Scarlett was about to reply, but she heard something odd and turned around instead.

“Scarlett,” said a low, gruff voice. It was the dog, Hermione, her head raised just off the floor.

She cautiously walked over to stand near the German shepherd’s head. “What?” she said.

“The scabbard of Excalibur,” Hermione wheezed in a thick voice. Bloody foam dripped from her tongue and teeth. “I saw the old woman give you something. It had to be the scabbard of Excalibur. Your wounds will not bleed and your injuries will be fully healed. As long as you bear it on your person, you cannot be killed.”

Scarlett knelt, then reached for the leather kitchen-knife sheath she had tucked into the waistband of her skirt. “This?” she said, pulling it out. “This thing is the scabbard?”

Hermione nodded, then eased her head down to the floor. Her dark eyes gazed up at the red-haired girl. “It must be disguised like the swords were, covered by a glamour. Enchanted.” She looked at the leather sheath for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Scarlett. “Magic,” she said in awe. “Real magic, like the gateway.”

On impulse, Scarlett laid the scabbard on the dog’s side near the bloody stab wound. “Does this help?” she asked. “Are you being healed?”

The German shepherd gave her a weak, toothy smile. “I wish, but no. Its powers work only if you were carrying it before you were hurt. So say the legends. I would know. I was . . . I was once a teacher.” The dog looked away, eyes dimming. “I gave myself to evil . . . and regret it.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered. She stroked the dog’s head. “I forgive you.”

Hermione’s eyes closed. She exhaled in a long sigh, trembled, then was still.

After a suitable pause, Scarlett took back the sheath and got to her feet. She felt too stunned to think clearly; even doing little things was an effort. She made ready to tuck the knife sheath back into the waistband of her dress—but after thinking it over, stuck it up inside her T-shirt under her damaged bra, next to her heart, so it would not be lost at an inconvenient time. She gave the dog a sad last look, then looked solemnly at her aunt’s body. For a moment she believed her aunt was dead—then revelation burst over her. Elaine was holding the scabbard when she was stabbed. Adele’s dagger could not possibly have hurt her!

Energized, Scarlett ran to her aunt and felt all across the old woman’s back. A slash through the fabric of her aunt’s sweater, yes, but no blood. “Elaine!” she shouted, shaking her aunt by the shoulder. “Aunt Elaine!”

Her ashen-faced aunt stirred, then opened her eyes a crack. “Chest,” she whispered hoarsely. “Hurts.”

“Your chest hurts? What’s wrong?”

“Heart . . . hurts.” A spasm of agony crossed Elaine’s face. “Hurts . . . bad.”

Heart attack? Scarlett wondered. She might have had a heart attack from the pain when Adele stabbed her! “I’ll get help, don’t worry! I’ll take care of it!”

“Wait.” Elaine tried to turn her head to face the kitchen door. “There . . . I saw . . .”

“What?” Scarlett looked down the corridor at the door to the kitchen. “What did you . . .”

She stopped and looked hard at the kitchen door. She had a sense that someone was back there. Rhonda? Hadn’t the police caught her already? Then what—

Something in the air was not quite right.

Goddess, no! Scarlett jumped to her feet and ran back into the dining hall to snatch up Excalibur in her right hand. She took Tyrfing in her left, but no lightning passing between the weapons with Tyrfing in its dagger shape. “Get my aunt and run for it!” she shrieked at the Leopards. “Get her out of here! Hurry!”

The Leopards stared at her, not comprehending.

“Grab her!” She yelled, pointing down the corridor with the dagger. “Bruno is back there! Get her out of here now!”

Several of the Leopards snapped out of it and hurried to obey. Under Angel’s leadership, they swiftly carried Elaine through the smashed glass doors, out of the building and into the night air. Tananda waved them on, then turned to Scarlett. “I want to stay,” she said. “I won’t leave you here alone.”

Scarlett knew from her tone that Tan meant every word of it. She looked down the dark corridor again, expecting Bruno to charge at her through the swinging doors.

“Please,” said Tananda.

Scarlett held up Tyrfing. “You saw her use it?” she asked.

Tan bit her lower lip and nodded.

“All right,” said Scarlett as she handed it over. “Be careful with it, and don’t get it too near me. I don’t think these swords like each other.”

Tananda stepped back a few feet, then held out the dagger and said, “Tyrfing.” The sword appeared instantly, its long blade rippling with orange flame. Tan’s face filled with awe as she lifted the sword and made a few gentle passes with it.

“Be very careful,” Scarlett repeated. “Adele said that sword never misses, and it’ll cut through anything.” She recalled that Adele had said something else about the mythic weapon, but she did not remember what. No matter now.

“If it never misses,” said Tananda, glancing from the blade to her friend, “then why didn’t it hurt you?”

I don’t need to mention the scabbard. “It can’t. I think I’m immune to getting hurt, at least for now. It doesn’t matter if anything hits me.”

“Oh.” A pause as Tananda thought it over. “You mean that lady couldn’t do a thing to you, when you were fighting? That’s kind of like cheating, isn’t it?”

“It’s not—” Scarlett rolled her eyes and dropped the issue. “Let me go first,” she said. “You watch my back in case one of the clones comes after us.”

“Clones, yeah, I was going to ask about that,” said Tan. “All those guys looked alike. So, they were clones like that sheep, Dolly Parton, or whatever its name was?”

“Well, they were more like . . . oh, forget it. Long story.” Scarlett looked at her friend and smiled. “Thanks for rescuing me, by the way.”

Tan laughed. “Oh, yeah, right, like you really needed it.”

“Hey, I did!”

“Shuddup, Supergirl.”

Scarlett looked down the corridor to the kitchen. “Tan,” she said, “Bruno is really dangerous. Are you sure you want to—”

“I’m not leaving. Forget the speech.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Question for you,” said Tananda. “If we do make it . . .”

“What?”

“Can I be in charge of your personal army, back on your home planet?”

Scarlett sighed. There was no way to get the truth across to Tan when Scarlett wasn’t even sure what the truth was. “Sure,” she said, giving in. “If I get an army, it’s yours.”

Tananda beamed with delight, then thrust her sword high and threw back her head to cry out in triumph, “Yesss!”

“That’s very special,” said Scarlett. “If you’re through celebrating, then . . .”

“I’m done,” said Tan, her sword lowered and her expression solemn. “Let’s get ‘im. I’m damned if I’m gonna let that big stinkhole Bruno hurt Uncle Max.”

“That’s the spirit.” Scarlett took a deep breath and steeled herself. “I’ll lead.”

“Hey, I can lead. Why can’t I go first?”

“Because I can’t get hurt, remember?”

“Oh, right. I still think it’s cheating, but okay. Lead on.”

Gripping Excalibur tightly in both hands, Scarlett headed down the short corridor to the door leading into the kitchen of Good Time Chinese. Light came through the cracks around the swinging door. There was definitely something not right in the air, and her premonition put her nerves more on edge with every step.

“You may come directly in,” said a coarse, deep voice on the other side of the door. Scarlett recognized Bruno at once. The voice added, “I promise not to bite . . . yet,” then chuckled.

“Scarlett!” shrieked a familiar voice. “Look out! He’s right—AAAAAAHHH!!!”

“Roger?” said Scarlett—then she set her jaw and rushed the last few steps to kick the door open, Excalibur pulled back over her right shoulder for a murderous slash.

It would have been an effective entrance, except that her huge, trench coat-wearing target was over twenty feet away and held an enormous black gun aimed at her face. In Scarlett’s startled vision, the gun’s muzzle was as big as a tank cannon’s.

Bruno Nagy smiled and revealed a mouthful of nonhuman fangs. “Scarlett,” he said, his voice a rumble of thunder. “Do come in.”

Scarlett forced herself to look away from the barrel of Bruno’s oversized handgun and take in the rest of him. He was a monster in every sense of the word, much bigger than Roger had described him. Bruno towered over her even at a distance, eight feet high and built like an ox. The top of his head brushed the tile kitchen ceiling. Scars and coarse hair crisscrossed the back of the oversized left hand wrapped around his cannonlike gun. He had ivory claws for fingernails, and his feet encased in dark hide boots that would have comfortably fit Frankenstein’s monster. A black-leather trench coat of impeccable design cloaked the rest of his brutish form; his left hand rested deep inside a pocket of the coat. The collar of a purple silk shirt showed at the top of his belted coat—an incongruous touch of class on an otherwise hideous shape.

Bruno’s face was the worst. He was human only in a casual sense; his appearance spoke loudly of the beast. Yellowed tusks rose from his lower jaw in place of canines, his other teeth pointed at the ends like a carnivore’s. Dark bristles sprang from his eyebrows, swept back from his forehead, and ran down his cheeks. A squashed nose, lantern jaw, and deformed ears completed the unearthly picture, but for the gleaming red pools that were his eyes. Bruno stood against a bank of grease-stained ovens and steel ventilation hoods along the far wall. Before him was a long table where someone had been chopping up a bloody haunch of raw beef less than an hour before. The kitchen extended to the left and right, but only the spot where Bruno stood held Scarlett’s attention.

Why in the world did Rita ever go out with this guy? she wondered in amazement. No accounting for tastes, I guess. She swallowed and said the first thing that came into her head, which was, “My, what big teeth you have, Grandma.”

Bruno gave Scarlett a broad smile. “The better to eat you with, my dear,” he said, his deep voice drumming in her bones. “No hurry, however. I have all the time in the world.”

Scarlett eyed the giant’s canine fangs, then risked another look around the kitchen to be sure she wasn’t about to be ambushed. “Were you expecting me?” she asked.

“No, but Adele was kind enough to send me a warning when she realized you were in her restaurant again,” said Bruno. “You and I have met twice before, in a manner of speaking, but I must say it is a pleasure to have an actual conversation with you. There’s so little time for niceties in this world. And I see you brought a friend as well. That was thoughtful. I always have room for dessert.”

He didn’t expect me, thought Scarlett. Maybe he can’t predict what I’m going to do. She stepped into the kitchen holding Excalibur like a baseball bat, prepared to swing despite its lack of utility against Bruno’s oversized firearm—not to mention the space she would have to cross in order to reach him first, and the table in the way. Tananda, her bloodless face tight with tension, stayed in the hall several feet behind, out of the way in case Excalibur came around in a wide slash.

“Where’s Roger?” said Scarlett, wanting to keep the conversation going. A direct attack did not seem like a good idea just yet, and she needed to think.

“Roger LaSouris, the great mouse detective.” Bruno sighed. “He and I had not met face-to-face, either, until just a few minutes ago. A dogged but minor-league player compared to his all-star associate, Maxwell Lane—if I am using the correct sports analogies for your world.” Bruno’s gaze shifted to a spot over her shoulder and behind her. “Minor league in the same way as your companion is to you, Scarlett.”

“Tan can hold her own,” said Scarlett. The sword drew back in her grip. “I’d like Roger back, please.”

“Roger,” said Bruno with distaste. He withdrew his right hand from his pocket and held out his wide, open palm. In the middle of his hand was a tiny white mouse, its tail trapped between two of Bruno’s massive fingers.

“Scarlett!” cried Roger shrilly. “Get out of here! Run for it! You don’t know what you’re up against!”

“I’m know what I’m doing,” Scarlett retorted, “but it’s pretty obvious that you didn’t! Did Bruno kidnap you out of the apartment?”

“I was in your aunt’s car outside!” Roger yelled. “He got me there!”

“The car?” Scarlett said in disbelief. “Aunt Elaine brought you? What the hell’s going on?”

“It was all her idea!” Roger yelled. “She and this English guy who’s stuck inside a computer got it in their heads to come and rescue you because they said you’re related to King Arthur or some kind of crapola—”

“What?”

“It’s true,” interrupted Bruno, looking at Roger with mild annoyance. “Scarlett is Arthur Pendragon’s only surviving child—an unfortunate oversight on my part.”

“What do you know about my parents?” Scarlett shot at Bruno.

“Don’t you want to hear the rest of my story?” cried Roger. “Your crazy aunt—”

Bruno used his thumb to thump Roger on the head (“Ow!”). “Your parents are dead,” said the giant in a casual tone. “Just over a decade and a half ago, in time relative to you, I killed your father after a prolonged and difficult battle. Your supernatural mother faded into oblivion soon thereafter when the isle of Avalon disintegrated, its magical architecture undone by my forces. Your troublesome aunt rescued you and fled Avalon through a gateway that she then destroyed so no one could follow her. You are all that is left of the glory that was Avalon and Camelot before it, you and your aunt and that pitiful excuse for a wizard that your mother entrapped in a stone centuries ago. You are not from this world, child, but from a place and time you know only as bedtime stories.”

“That’s a bunch of lies!” Scarlett shouted, trembling with anger and fear. “My parents were real, normal people! They—”

“Real, normal people do not possess enchanted swords that are given over to their offspring for battle,” Bruno said patiently. “Name one other person, a real person anywhere, who has done the same. I dare you.”

Scarlett glanced uneasily at Excalibur, then glared at Bruno. “That doesn’t matter! I’m as normal as they were!”

“In a sense, you are correct,” said Bruno. “You could also have said that you were as ab-normal as they were, and you would have been equally correct. Normal people do not have paranormal powers like you do. Normal people do not have talking mice as pets.”

“I’m not a pet!” Roger yelled, then yelped when Bruno moved his fingers together and squeezed the mouse’s tail. “OW! Son of a bitch!”

“Stop hurting him!” said Scarlett, the heat rising in her face. “Stop being such a creep!”

Bruno’s mouth twitched, the corners rising in a smile. “I’m afraid I won’t do that. Being a creep, as you call it, is what I enjoy most in life.”

Scarlett fought down the urge to charge Bruno and cut him to pieces, his gun be damned. Of her options, talking was still best. Bruno did act as if he had all the time in the world; his confidence was troubling. Worse, she had no assurance that the scabbard of Excalibur made her immune to firearms as it apparently did to swords. Even if she was, Tananda would be maimed or killed if Bruno shot at her. Anything Scarlett did might result in Tan’s swift demise. Indeed, Bruno’s weapon looked as though it was actually targeting Tan, who was standing behind the near-invulnerable Scarlett. Allowing her best friend to come along to confront Bruno now looked like a very bad idea.

“I don’t understand a few things here,” Scarlett said, hoping to delay a fight until she had a better plan—or any plan at all. “Why were you after my parents anyway, if what you’re telling me is true?”

“There is war in the heavens as there is here on earth,” said Bruno, warming to the topic. “Powers and principalities of which you have never dreamed exist everywhere across Creation. You have heard of only a few in myths and fables, but these powers are real and contend with each other for the same reasons as do men, for influence, wealth, territory, and revenge. I myself serve a mighty power that seeks to expand its range of influence, and to do that potential opponents must be eliminated early on. Your former homeland contained such an obstacle. Your parents fought courageously against the invasion, of course, though it gained them nothing. They had everything heroes require—strength, courage, wit, cunning, luck . . . so, of course, to overcome such formidable obstacles, I used the quickest and surest means to the end, any shortcut that would work. I blinded and poisoned your father as we fought, and my sorcerers broke the island apart to break your mother, rather than attack her directly. Victory is victory, no matter how gained.”

Scarlett frowned. She couldn’t believe this sadistic jerk was telling her he had actually killed her parents. It was too fantastic to be true. It was worse than ridiculous, because her parents . . .

Then she remembered her aunt’s eyes opening, a faint gleam visible within. “Take this,” the old woman whispered as she gave Scarlett the knife’s sheath. “It is yours now, your birthright. Excalibur the Stone-Cutter is yours. Go, and . . .”

She glanced at her sword—a sword with unearthly powers. It wasn’t normal in any way.

And neither was she.

So, logically, her parents would have been exactly like her . . . only greater, being older.

Bruno appeared to read her mind. “‘Search your feelings,’” he quoted. “‘You know it to be true.’ Isn’t that how that quaint movie goes? I believe you used a line from that film or a similar one when you tricked Adele, the poor mad little thing. You and I are not so different, are we? We know victory is too precious a thing to win fairly. Adele had no chance against you, as I knew your aunt would surely bring you Excalibur and its sheath if you were in danger. I even told her so, knowing she would be contrary and arrange to meet you and fight you, to prove me wrong. No loss for me, as she had served her primary purpose in bringing me to this world to obtain you, but the fight between the two of you was instructive nonetheless. You are a clever one when you put your mind to it.”

Scarlett swallowed. Perhaps Bruno was indeed what he said he was—and she was who he said she was, too. The terrible implications became clear.

“You killed my parents,” she said in an even voice. “You really killed them.”

Bruno smirked. “Is it finally sinking in?”

“And now you’re going to try to kill me.”

“Oh, no,” said Bruno with assurance. “I won’t do that. You I will take prisoner and lead through the gateway in this building, so I may offer you to the greater power I follow. Believe it or not, you are the whole reason this war across universes was fought. You are the reason Avalon was attacked and destroyed, the reason I killed your parents, and the reason your aunt fled to this miserable world with that toy of a sword on her belt, a powerless wizard in a stone on her back, and you in her arms. I suspect your parents knew their fight with me would end only in their deaths, but perhaps they knew it would also delay me long enough to enable your escape. When your accursed aunt opened that gateway and fled, I swore I would find you if I had to search every world in every cosmos to do it—and, wouldn’t you know, I did find you.”

I was the reason for all this? I was the reason my parents died? How can I be the cause of all this? I can’t possibly be that special! “You searched every planet in the universe for me?” she asked dully.

Bruno shrugged. “Not every world, no. I have no objection to shortcuts, as I’ve said before.”

He means Adele was his shortcut, I’m sure of it—but how? How did that work? Scarlett thought it odd that she wasn’t very afraid of Bruno now. Words came out of her as she felt her way along, sensing what she said was right. “Shortcuts,” she repeated. “You did not search every world, because that would take too long. So, to overcome such an obstacle, you had to cheat, because you were not great enough to do otherwise.”

Bruno’s red eyes grew bright. “You wound me,” he said. “Your own world’s master conqueror, Alexander the Great, when confronted with the Gordian knot that could not be untied, merely drew his sword and sliced it in two. Even a mortal such as he understood what everyone destined for greatness knows: tedium is for the petty. Consider how you overcame Adele Wolff, that nasty trick with the scabbard, teasing her into thinking she could win against you. You have no objection to shortcuts, either. Victory is all that matters.”

Like hell it is, you rotten bastard. I didn’t know I was invulnerable, and I’m sorry Adele died—but I won’t be sorry when you do. “How did you find me if my aunt destroyed the way here? How did you do it without searching every world in existence? What shortcut did you use for that?”

“That is for me to know,” said Bruno tightly. “I think I have been over-generous in sharing my unlimited supply of time with you. Prepare yourself to leave.”

“I thought you had all the time in the world.”

“You do not.”

“You’re taking me to see your leader and seal my fate, whatever it is.”

“Yes.”

“If I do that, will my friends go free? Roger and Tananda, will you let them go?”

Bruno’s lower lip curled. “You disappoint me, wasting my time and yours to ask such a thing.”

Scarlett’s eyes hardened. You bastard. I will never know my father and mother because of you, you filthy creature. Never know them, never see them, never touch them. “You disappoint me,” she said coldly. “That my family could be undone by someone as low as you is enough to make me choke.”

“The apple never falls far from the tree,” Bruno said in a deceptively soft voice. “Your father said something similar to me before he met his unhappy end—a fate that will appear merciful compared to the torment that awaits you when my master, the Lord of Wolves, has you in his teeth. Let us end this parley by whatever means you choose and be done.”

“Scarlett,” said Tananda in a low voice, “this is probably a bad time to ask, but did that lady who owned this sword before me say that it never misses and it cuts through anything?”

“She did,” said Scarlett. She tensed and licked her lips, watching Bruno, knowing the next few seconds might be her last.

“And did she say that it always killed when it was drawn?”

“Yeah, she—”

Tananda bodyslammed Scarlett from behind, knocking her to the left out of Bruno’s line of fire. Scarlett fell sprawling on the floor as a deafening explosion rang in the room, followed in the same instant by a metallic ricochet and the clatter of pots and pans crashing down. She scrambled to her feet clutching Excalibur as two more gunshots assailed her eardrums, simultaneous with long flashes of white light leaping from Bruno’s gun directly at Tananda. Each gunshot, however, was followed by another ricochet as the bullet struck the whirling Tyrfing and was knocked aside in a burst of sparks and sound. Tan’s fiery orange sword had already cut through the intervening food-preparation table in several places, causing the entire table to collapse noisily to the floor in a flat heap.

Tananda ran at Bruno over the remains of the table, her flaming sword coming down to split him from head to foot, when a great blur smashed through the swinging kitchen door, leapt on her from behind, and threw her to the floor. Scarlett thought for a moment the snarling creature was an enormous gray dog—then realized it was a huge wolf. She screamed Tan’s name and charged, Excalibur pulled back for a killing thrust at the beast savaging her best friend.

Bruno grinned down at Scarlett as she came, and he threw something small and white at her. “Catch!” he said.

Roger! Scarlett tried to halt her charge to grab Roger instead of striking out with Excalibur, but she stumbled over the collapsed food-preparation table just as a shrieking Roger hit her in center of her chest. To keep from falling on him she tried to turn her body in midair, but was only partially successful. She slammed into the remains of the table on her side, knocking out her wind. Excalibur stayed in her grasp, held straight out in her right hand toward the wolf that straddled and tore at a screaming Tananda.

“Ow! Goddamn sonofabitchin’ frickin’ hell!” yelled a high voice nearby. “That frickin’ hurt!”

Scarlett got to her feet in a rush. The wolf turned its head and saw her, swiftly releasing its grip on Tananda’s right shoulder and scrambling out of reach. Fear gleamed in its humanlike eyes.

A huge black boot came down on the blade of Tyrfing, pinning it flat against the floor. The barrel of Bruno’s gun lowered and brushed against Tananda’s pale blonde head. “Stay where you are,” said Bruno, looking Scarlett in the eye. “I cannot hurt you, true, but your friend is at my mercy.”

Scarlett had stopped dead in her tracks as soon as the gun went to Tan’s head. Seething with frustration, she looked down at her friend, who lay gasping with her gaze turned toward the brute whose firearm was pressed to her temple. Blood was splattered over Tan’s face and soaked through her ripped-up Lawndale Leopards jersey. The wolf had injured her shoulder and upper arm, but she still held on to Tyrfing with both hands. Dreadful pain was visible on her face.

“Congratulations,” growled Bruno at Tananda. “You figured out that your sword would not miss even bullets and would cut through them with ease. I was hoping you weren’t quite so quick. You were as invulnerable for a few moments as your damnable red-haired friend—but you aren’t now, and for that I must thank you, Adele.”

“You’re welcome,” said the wolf—with the voice of Adele Wolff. “Always a pleasure to work with you, my master Farkas. And thank you for giving me a second chance.”

“You are welcome as well,” said Bruno. His huge gun traced a small circle on Tananda’s forehead as he looked back at Scarlett. “Put down your sword, and I will spare your friend’s life. You, however, must come with me to my own master, the Lord of Wolves. Your life for hers. What say you?”

He was lying, and Scarlett knew it even as he spoke. Tananda would die the moment Scarlett let her guard down. She thought as hard as she could, but again she knew of nothing better to do than delay the inevitable. “Before we burn that bridge,” she said, not releasing Excalibur, “I want to know how you found me. I want to know the shortcut you used to get to this world.”

“You don’t have the time for games, child.”

“I want to know!” Scarlett insisted. “You might have all the cards, but I still want to know. I want to know how you found me. Give me that, at least!”

“Blow her friend’s brains out and let me eat what’s left,” said Adele, staring at Scarlett with her head down and ears pressed back. “Make the redhead suffer as she made me suffer, before she goes to feed almighty Fenrir.”

Bruno inhaled reflectively, studying Scarlett—then nodded. “No harm in humoring a little girl, I suppose,” he said. “She fought well.”

“Just kill her!” snapped the wolf, drool flipping from its jaws. “Kill her, or let me do it!”

“Be calm, Adele,” said Bruno without looking away from Scarlett. “If the threat of more conversation bothers you, then go get your clones, the few who haven’t roused themselves and run away by now, and bring all your books around back of the restaurant, where there’s room. I’m sending you back in time to accomplish your own original mission. You’re going to change history and bring this world into the pack of the Wolf Lord, under the Thousand-Year Reich. In fact—” Bruno started to smile again, though he was looking at Scarlett when he did it “—I might even change your form into that of your namesake so you can take his place. I would trust you as the ruler of the new order more than I would him.”

The wolf, who had appeared to regard Bruno’s plan with increasing delight, now glared up at the brute with the gun. “I hope you’re not saying that I’m not Adolf Hitler,” she grumbled, “because I am.”

“Of course not,” said Bruno soothingly, still watching Scarlett, his gun still pressed to Tananda’s head. “Of course not. I need for you to hurry, though . . . and that was an order, not a request. Get going. We don’t have all the time in the world, now.”

“Yes, my master.” With a look of naked hatred at Scarlett, Adele trotted out the swinging door toward the dining hall beyond.

“Good help is so hard to find,” said Bruno to Scarlett in a more relaxed tone. “Briefly, then, the tale of how I found you. I was knowledgeable enough to know the means to ask a boon of the Three Fates, the Norns who rule the past, present, and future. After your accursed aunt took you from my clutches, I journeyed across many a world and dimension, many a strange plane of reality and time, facing trials you cannot imagine even in your nightmares. When I reached the Well of Urda, at the root of Yggdrasil the World-Ash, there I met the Three Fates and asked them where you were hidden so that I might capture you. They considered the problem for three days, then offered me the means to reach you if I would only give up that which was most precious to me.”

Bruno gave Scarlett a wicked, toothy smile. “I was amazed that such a boon would be so easily gained. I came from a world whose history is divergent from yours, from before the time of your First World War. My true name is Farkas Nagy, and I was once the emperor of the Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia,what you would call the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. I dabbled in sorcery and had gained the attention and support of my master Fenrir before my ascension to the throne, destroying all who opposed me with ease. With Fenrir’s supernatural help—a shortcut, you see—I won all the wars I fought against the Western Powers, America and the like. I had worked long and hard to build my empire, which stretched from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the Ural Mountains and Persia, from Norway down to the Mediterranean shores of Africa. It was mine to do with as I chose—and I gave it to the Norns. The secrets of atomic weaponry that my scientists had sought to control fell instead into the hands of the West, and my empire was attacked by fleets of aircraft and burned to ashes in a week’s time.” He tilted his head toward Scarlett. “All for you.”

Scarlett remembered the tiny dime that showed only the Western Hemisphere, with the V-for-Victory sign on the back. He must have brought the dime with him when he came over to this world, losing it or tossing it away as he entered this new earth.

“With payment rendered,” Bruno continued, “the three Fates induced a madwoman from your world, Adele Wolff, to discover the secrets of the invisible gateway between worlds that lies in the back wall of this building, behind me. The gateway is a weakness in the barriers separating universe from universe, a weak place that can be manipulated by ones with great psychic power, such as you or me.” Bruno raised an eyebrow. “Adele is one of us, you see, and so is that troublesome fellow Maxwell Lane. I cannot allow just anyone to have a chance to control this gateway, so of course Max and anyone helping him—all other psychics, in fact, but those who work for me—must be destroyed. That includes you as well, but you are even more important than Max or Adele.”

“How?” asked Scarlett, dumbfounded. “Why did you go through all of this just to find me?”

Bruno snorted. “You are the daughter of a great power,” he said as if repeating a simple fact to a child. “You have within you the magical potential of your mother, mixed with the human courage and stamina of your father. You are a tremendous danger to the future plans of my master, Lord of Wolves. Further, by consuming you, my master Fenrir will gain all the potential that you possess, strengthening him beyond measure. That is why you are so important, why I invaded Avalon, why your parents died.”

“Oh,” said Scarlett. It made complete sense now, everything did. She looked down at Tananda, who by now was looking back at her. She heard the elevator running in the hallway near the kitchen. Adele the wolf must be directing her surviving “clones” to bring up the boxes of books, preparing for her world’s change in history—and possible destruction.

“Ready to go now?” asked Bruno.

Scarlett thought for a moment longer. “Just a couple of minor things,” she said, looking up from Tananda to Bruno’s red eyes. “One, you cheated the Fates.”

Bruno frowned. “I beg your pardon,” he said.

“You cheated the Fates,” she repeated. “The most precious thing you had was not your empire. You gave that up too easily. The most precious thing you had was you. You think only of yourself, as if you were the only thing of worth in all the universes. Your empire was not what you should have given up to find me.”

Bruno appeared to consider this. “Perhaps I did cheat the Fates,” he said in agreement. “An interesting thought. Still, I got what I wanted—you.”

“Not yet, you haven’t,” said Scarlett. “And Tananda has not yet killed anyone with her sword.”

Bruno’s red eyes widened. He looked down at Tananda. His finger tightened on the trigger of his gun.

“Surprise!” shrieked a squeaky voice. Startled, Scarlett and Bruno both looked over at the same time at the nearest corner of the kitchen, expecting to see Roger the mouse. Instead, they saw a gray squirrel leaping from an open ventilation duct. It bounded up like lightning and landed on Bruno’s face, clawing and biting for all it was worth as Bruno roared and jerked back. His boot came off Tananda’s sword, and his gun swung away from her head, discharging to blow a six-inch-wide hole in a wall. Tan rolled and lashed upward with Tyrfing a desperate instant later.

Bruno’s left hand and the monstrous pistol it clutched flew across the room in a spray of blood, severed at the wrist. Hand and gun tumbled across the floor into a corner. Screaming like the very devil, Bruno grabbed the frenzied ball of gray fur from his face and flung it away with his right hand. Then, the stump of his left arm pressed to his side by his right elbow, he turned and rushed at the wall behind him—and went through it like Alice through a looking-glass, vanishing before Scarlett’s eyes.

“Crap, I think my paw’s broken!” screamed the squirrel, getting to its feet on a countertop, favoring a foreleg.

“Phil?” cried Roger from under one of the stoves. “Phil Ardilla? Is that you?”

“Roger?” yelled the squirrel. “I thought you were dead! You know that Marcello came back as a dog after our skydiving accident, right?”

“Shut up!” yelled Scarlett. She pointed to the swinging door with the glowing Excalibur. “Tan, you’ve got to stop Adele! She’s going to change history by letting Adolf Hitler win the Second World War! Do something before she destroys the world! I have to go after Bruno!”

Teeth gritted against terrible pain, Tananda rose to her feet, the flaming Tyrfing clutched in both hands, then charged through the doorway with a wild yell. Scarlett faced the wall where Bruno had fled, then put out her hand and pointed, summoning all her willpower. This had better work, she thought grimly. Help me, Goddess! “Take me to Bruno Nagy!” she shouted at the gateway, then walked toward the wall, hoping she wouldn’t collide with it.

She didn’t. The wall was as insubstantial as smoke. She was through it and out the other side in an eyeblink

“No!” cried Roger. He ran out from under the stove, waving his forepaws at the wall. “Scarlett! Scarlett! It’s a trap!”

Scarlett passed through the kitchen’s ghostly wall and came out in a cold, damp darkness. She spun around in fright, wondering what had happened, but could not see her way back to the restaurant. The cool air smelled of wet stone and mold, mixed with a sharp ammonia-like odor that made her wrinkle her nose and cough. Drips of water splashed at regular intervals from all around. Heavy footsteps echoed from unseen walls.

She halted and raised Excalibur to shed its light over her surroundings. When her eyes had adjusted to the illumination, she discovered she was in a shadowed cavern, in a chamber as large as a suburban home. The floor was relatively flat stone worn smooth by countless feet. Of the gateway there was no sign; she had stepped out of a wall of living rock that glistened with moisture. She coughed again and spat to get the awful taste of the air out of her mouth. Where is this place? she wondered, and how the hell am I ever going to get home?

A rustling noise above led her to look up and make the unnerving discovery that the stalactite-covered ceiling was covered with hundreds of small bats. The little beasts snapped their wings and glared with yellow eyes at the intruder. Scarlett fought down the urge to drop her sword and flee. The sharp stench, she realized, was the odor of bat droppings. I’d better get out of here before I get something gross in my hair, she thought. Her self-control restored, she noticed the thumping of footsteps was fading into the distance. Bruno! He’s escaping! She held Excalibur aloft and took careful steps in the direction of the fleeing villain, picking her way through the muck and debris littering the floor. Some of the debris looked like scattered bones, but she had no urge to stay and investigate further.

The chamber had several exits, each about ten to twelve feet in height and width. Scarlett located a tunnel from which the footsteps echoed most clearly, one from which she also detected a cool breeze. This must the way the bats got in, she thought, and thus encouraged she set off in pursuit. The tunnel ran upward over a long distance and was free of rubble for most of its length. To her surprise, thick electric cables and water pipes ran along the walls and ceiling, mounted in place with rusted metal brackets. Unlit electric lights were spaced along the ceiling as well. Some of the light fixtures were bent or damaged, and most of the pipes were badly corroded with age. Able to see fairly well now thanks to her sword, Scarlett held Excalibur high and began to jog as she went, hoping to catch up to her quarry without running into walls or falling over debris. The stone corridor twisted and turned in great curves as it rose, making her wonder if it had been carved long ago by an underground river. She wondered too if she was running to meet her own death, a possibility that kept her from moving too quickly.

A rumbling echo was followed by a loud metallic clanging. She put on a burst of speed, seeing light reflected on the cavern walls ahead. The source of the light was soon revealed to be luminescent fungi sprouting along the ceiling of the tunnel, not daylight as she had hoped. On the cave floor below the greenish-yellow fungi was a human skeleton. The arms were missing and the skull had rolled away to one side. The rest of the remains wore rotting garments and boots. Scarlett covered her mouth, suddenly ill, but forced herself to step around the corpse and move on. She had no idea how long the body had been there, but no trace of flesh remained on the bones, all rotted away by time or eaten by cavern predators. She made herself think about catching up with Bruno to keep her queasy stomach in check.

What am I going to do with Bruno if I do find him? she thought as she hurried along. I don’t want to kill anyone else, but don’t I owe it to my parents to avenge them? I killed Adele, though I regretted it—or I thought I had killed her, until she came back to life as that damn wolf. How could she do that? It was the same sort of thing that happened to Roger and Hermione-Marcello, and maybe that squirrel Phil, too. If I killed Bruno, what would he come back as? Why is everyone who dies around here reincarnated as an animal? I bet the gateway is doing it. Adele said she could turn Hermione back into human form, though she didn’t say how, and Bruno said he could turn Adele the wolf into Hitler. Roger appeared in the alley next to the gateway as a mouse after he died. The gate has got to be the answer. How does it work? Are Bruno and Adele controlling it? Could I make it do the same, or should I destroy the gate when I get home? If I only knew what I was going to do with—oh, damn it!

The corridor abruptly ended in a thick iron door mounted in a mortared stone wall. The noise she had heard earlier, she realized, was Bruno shutting the door behind him. She walked up and pushed on the great hatch, but to no avail; it was stuck in place, perhaps locked or barred. Then she remembered Excalibur, which her aunt said could cut steel. She raised the blade and carefully poked at the door. The sword tip went through the iron with only a slight effort on her part. In a few moments she had sawed out an irregularly shaped hole in the door. Then she pushed on the cut-out’s center as hard as she could. The large disk of iron fell to the stone floor on the other side with a deafening clatter. She was angry with herself at first for creating so much noise, then gave up worrying over it. It’s not like he didn’t know I was coming after him, she told herself. She then checked what lay beyond—another huge chamber—and cautiously stepped through.

“That was a neat trick,” a familiar voice called. “What do you call that little can opener?”

Scarlett gasped and prepared to fight, sword raised in both hands—but her opponent was not making any aggressive move. Across the broad chamber stood a tall woman in a ripped-up waitress’s outfit, carelessly holding a large meat cleaver at her side. Both the cleaver and the woman holding it were splattered with blood, mud, and who knew what else. The woman was chewing a wad of gum. “Hey,” said the one-time waitress of the Good Time Chinese restaurant. “I remember you. You were with those other girls at table five. You know what’s going on here?”

Rhonda, was that her name? “How did you get here?” Scarlett called back.

The waitress laughed. The sound echoed all around them. “Hell, kid, you tell me. I backed up into a wall when the cops showed up, and I fell out the other side into here. There aren’t any cops behind you, are there?”

“No, just me,” said Scarlett. “Did you see a big guy run past here?”

“A big guy, like a circus freak wearing a trench coat? Yeah, he went thataway.” Rhonda pointed to another exit tunnel with her meat cleaver. “You lookin’ for him?”

“Yes!” Scarlett made for the exit.

“You know where the hell we are?”

“I haven’t the faintest, but I have to go! Thanks!”

“Wait!” said Rhonda, waving the axe at the smaller girl, who pulled up short at the exit. “Wait just a second. I been runnin’ around here for half an hour with all kind of zombie-wolf creepozoids tryin’ to chew my ass off, and I’m gettin’ tired of it. I don’t know what kind of nuthouse you’re runnin’ here, but—”

“Help me catch that guy, and I’ll do what I can to get us both out!” Scarlett shouted back. “Hurry!”

“Well—okay, I’m comin’. Better you than me in front, though.”

What does she mean by that? Scarlett wondered as she ran into the tunnel—straight into a snarling blur of mangy fur and teeth that rushed at her from the darkness. She shrieked and swung Excalibur in unthinking panic. The severed head and forearms of the creature crashed into her separately from the lower two-thirds of its body. She lashed out once more at the dismembered monster as she backed up, almost running into Rhonda. “Merciful Goddess!” she cried in horror.

“Yeah, they suck, don’t they?” said Rhonda with a sigh. “Good job on that one, kid, but watch it with that switchblade. You almost stuck me in the throat with it.”

Scarlett wiped splattered blood from her face on a sleeve of her ruined sweater. It wasn’t her blood, though it hardly mattered. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I was just . . . sorry.” She gathered her shaky courage and headed into the tunnel once more, at a more cautious pace.

More skeletal bodies awaited her in the rising cave corridor, lying alone or tangled together. She eventually stopped looking at them except to avoid stepping on them, and instead strained to hear her quarry. Bruno was far ahead now. She wondered if he knew this place personally, given the speed with which he was moving. The walls became more thickly lined with cables and pipes, and she passed faded signs written in an unfamiliar European language with strange accent marks.

“So, my name’s Rhonda,” said the axe-bearing waitress, following Scarlett with ease. “What’s yours? Red Sonja?”

“Scarlett!” Scarlett puffed, trying to save her wind. “Scarlett Pendragon!”

“Scarlett, huh? Figures. Where’d you get that sword?”

“My aunt . . . gave it to me!” Scarlett heard a loud clanging noise far ahead, followed by another and another. What’s Bruno doing now? Is he pounding on something?

“Is that glow-in-the-dark pigsticker supposed to be from Star Wars or something?”

A curious metallic clatter sounded from up the tunnel, followed by a rushing, rumbling noise. “Can’t . . . explain it now!” Scarlett gasped. “I have . . . to catch . . . that creep, but . . . getting tired!”

“Good thing I spent time workin’ out in the weight room at Kinsington,” said Rhonda. “They had a nice one, lots of machines and free weights. Great treadmills, too. I’m barely breaking a sweat.”

A definite roar could be heard. Scarlett put two and two together. “Water!” she cried, slowing down. “That’s water coming!”

Perhaps spurred by the flood behind it, a fast-moving shape of gray fur and claws ran out of the darkness ahead. Scarlett reflexively thrust at the monster, twisted her sword to the left, and stepped aside. The dying creature fell, shivered, then went limp, its fanged mouth falling open. It did look like a zombie wolf—but it had run at her upright like a man. How did it get down here? No time for answers now. The roaring grew louder. It was too late to turn back. “I think Bruno’s flooding the tunnel!” Scarlett yelled. She looked at the pipes along the corridor walls. “Grab onto something and climb up!”

Even as she said it, it occurred to Scarlett that she was holding a weapon that she could not put down. The sheath was too small and it was stuffed into her bra, not attached to a belt—not that she was wearing a belt to begin with.

“You better grab something, too, kid!” yelled Rhonda. “Here it comes!”

Scarlett glanced up the tunnel. In Excalibur’s light, she saw trickles of black water running down toward her, swiftly turning into a churning mass of filth shoved along by the torrent behind it. On impulse, Scarlett ran to the wall on her right and jammed Excalibur into the stonework up to its hilt. The area was plunged into darkness as she grabbed for an inch-thick metal cable, reaching up where she last saw it. Her fingers found purchase and she pulled herself up with all her strength. The raging flood reached her and swept past, filling the black corridor with the dreadful stench of dead fish. Unseen objects in the flood struck Scarlett’s boots as she blindly tried to scramble higher. Where is the water coming from? Am I going to drown here? Resolve then stiffened her spine. I am going to make it! Bruno isn’t going to get me without a fight!

“Hey, kid!” yelled Rhonda over the thundering current. “You okay up there?”

“I’m still here!” Scarlett yelled back. She remembered her sword and tried to recall where she had stuck it in the wall. Raising a leg and moving it around, she felt her knee bump Excalibur’s hilt, then managed to move the hilt a few inches out of the wall by maneuvering her knee against it. Light from the base of the blade spilled around her, revealing the surging rapids below. The flood did not look as deep as she had feared. Taking a risk, Scarlett carefully lowered herself to the ground and discovered the stinking tide was up to her hips, fordable with difficulty. Pulling out Excalibur with her left hand, she began walking uphill again, her right hand holding a nearby pipe as a handrail. “Let’s go!” she shouted behind her. “Come on!”

“I gotta get me one of them light sabers,” Rhonda grumbled, splashing through the black river after the smaller girl. “Are they on sale somewhere, the real ones?”

Scarlett didn’t answer, as there was nothing she could say, so she continued to fight her way against the current. The water had to be coming from a freshwater lake or river, she decided, given its fishy odor and lack of a salty smell. It was colder than hell in any event. Her waterlogged boots kicked against underwater debris. Each step was harder to take than the previous one, but she forced herself to keep going.

In time she came to another large hatch set in a stone wall blocking the tunnel, but no iron door was in view. A torrent shot through the aperture in a monstrous jet, cascading to the floor up to ten feet down the corridor. Scarlett pulled herself to the right side of the stone wall using pipes and cables as handrails. There, the water was only a few inches deep—but the howling blast of water coming through the narrow doorway was too powerful for Scarlett to force her way through.

Damn Bruno anyway, Scarlett thought darkly, soaked to the skin. He knows he can’t hurt me with bullets or knives, but he knows too well that he can drown me. When I catch him, he’s going down like a lead submarine. She ground her teeth with frustration, staring at the huge jet of water—then had an idea. She looked back and saw Rhonda was not far behind. “Hang on again!” she yelled. “I’m going to try something!”

If Rhonda made a reply, it was lost in the thundering of the waterfall. Scarlett examined the wall on her right. If she was careful, she could climb up on a low pipe, holding an electric cable with her right hand, and hew at the upper part of the stone wall with her sword. This she did, standing on a pipe three feet above the floor, while swinging Excalibur at the wall at a height she judged was above the water level on the other side.

Her guess was not far off. After slicing several times through the stonework and mortar, Excalibur caused a portion of the wall to break loose and collapse to the floor, shoved out by water pressure on the other side. Scarlett continued to hack at the stone until more of the upper wall broke free, leaving a high-placed gap large enough for her to climb out. The water spilling over the gap into the tunnel was not powerful enough to stop her. Once more she jammed Excalibur into the wall for safekeeping, as close as possible to the newly created exit, then pulled herself up until she could reach the lip of the wall and clumsily haul herself through.

On the other side of the wall was a vast dark chamber filled with the roar of water. Scarlett pulled Excalibur from the wall as she got over the top of the barrier, but she then lost her balance and fell off into the freezing, stinking lake. Barely able to keep hold of her sword, she hit bottom and clumsily thrashed about in the current, terrified and disoriented, until she regained her presence of mind and forced herself to stop struggling. Moments later she reappeared on her feet, coughing and sputtering as her head broke the surface. The black water was over four feet high in the room, up to the base of her neck. Chilled to the bone, she raised the light-giving Excalibur with trembling fingers and put her back to the wall of the chamber, edging away from the hatchway so she wouldn’t be sucked through. “Rhonda!” she screamed. “Rhonda, come on! Hurry! Rhonda!” Unable to do more for her companion, Scarlett waded off to find a way out of this mess.

The thundering of water came from the opposite side of the chamber. By the light of her sword she saw turbulence in the water there, around a twisted pipe. The rapid flow was filling the chamber. Smashing the pipe was Bruno’s doing, no doubt, Scarlett thought. His way of cheating to get to victory, though what he hopes to get out of this disaster is beyond me. Maybe staying alive is victory enough for him now. She scanned the rest of the unlit chamber, which she guessed was a hundred feet across, circular with a smooth-domed ceiling no more than twenty feet high. It didn’t look like a cave; it looked more like a manmade room, perhaps a huge cellar or meeting place. The wall behind her was covered with tattered posters sporting the unidentified language she had seen elsewhere in this underground complex. The words had an excess of exclamation marks and capital letters, as if the writings were shouted orders. One poster had the image of a grim, mustachioed soldier with a spiked helmet, holding what looked like a machine gun with a glowing bayonet on the end.

She was wading toward what appeared to be a tunnel leading up out of the room when something black fluttered across the water before her in the glow of Excalibur, heading for the same exit she was. An instant later, hundreds of bats hurled through the room on their way out of the caverns. Scarlett shrieked and waved her sword about in a panicked defense. It didn’t matter, as none of the bats would have a thing to do with her. Her terror soon passed and she felt vaguely ashamed of herself, though she kept her sword ready. As the last bats winged their way through the chamber, Scarlett straightened up and again waded across the room right for the exit.

Halfway there, numb with cold, she heard something move in the water behind her. She started to turn around. Two powerful hands caught her shoulders from behind and pulled her over backwards. She went under instantly, her sudden gasp filling her mouth with water. Excalibur flew out of her grasp. As she struggled, a fanged mouth clamped down on her throat and crushed her windpipe. Blind, mad with pain, and unable to breathe, Scarlett thrashed and kicked but could do nothing against the fur-covered thing that held her down. Her ears filled with a roaring noise. She tried to scream, tried to inhale, tried to escape—and failed. It’s tearing out my throat! Help me, Goddess! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! I can’t brea—

The teeth on her throat were suddenly gone as her attacker let go without warning. Free, Scarlett rolled in the water and came to her feet, coughing and gagging. A furious churning took place in the water only a few feet from her, but she could have cared less. She vomited up water, took a shallow breath and cried out because her throat hurt like a railroad spike had been driven into it, then vomited again. After another gasping breath, she realized she was still alive. She couldn’t believe it.

“Die, damn you!” Rhonda shrieked, fighting something in the water a short distance away. Her meat cleaver slammed home into her opponent, again and again. “Goddammit, die when I tell you to die, you ugly son of a bitch!”

Scarlett felt her tortured throat. Her skin was unbroken. The sheath of Excalibur had shielded her from death once more. She stepped back and almost stumbled over something on the floor, under the water. Was it Excalibur? She took a ragged breath and dove instantly, arms out and numb fingers feeling along the bottom. She touched something, but it was long and cylindrical—a human bone. She dropped it and felt about again, blind as a cave fish, then touched something that lit up with a white light. A moment later she broke the water’s surface, Excalibur aloft, the room illuminated with its glow.

“About freakin’ time!” Rhonda yelled. She then flailed at the floating body of the dead zombie-wolf with her blood-spattered meat cleaver with every word she spoke. “Don’t—you—screw—with—me—ever—again!” Gasping from exertion, she shoved the mangled body away and waded over to Scarlett. She stopped just out of reach of Excalibur. “Don’t hit me with that!” Rhonda yelled. “Calm down! It’s just me!”

Scarlett slowly lowered her sword until it went underwater. Rhonda waded close. “You okay? You all right?” she said, still wary—then she dropped her cleaver in the water and hugged the smaller girl. Scarlett hugged back with her free arm. She struggled not to cry.

“We gotta get movin’, kid,” said Rhonda after a few moments. “The water’s getting deeper, and I’m freezin’ my ass off. Where do we go from here?”

Scarlett wordlessly pointed Excalibur toward the exit the bats had taken. Rhonda dove underwater and got her meat cleaver, then together they waded together to the new tunnel. It was made of mortared brick and held a stone staircase leading up. They left the water and slogged up the steps side by side.

“Your giant came through here a little while ago,” said Rhonda, looking at the steps ahead in Excalibur’s light. Someone had left a trail of wet footprints there before them. “Why’re you tryin’ to catch him, anyway?”

Scarlett sighed, exhausted. “He killed my parents,” she said.

“Killed your parents? Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you plannin’ on killin’ him, then?”

Scarlett nodded. No use fighting it. “Yeah, I am.”

“Oh.” Rhonda was silent for a dozen steps up. “That makes sense,” she finally said. “Need some help?”

“I guess.” Scarlett was about to respond further when something stopped her. Something in the air . . .

She halted dead in her tracks, looking up the staircase, and reached for Rhonda to stop her as well. Her companion gave her a puzzled look.

“He’s up there,” Scarlett whispered. She stretched her awareness, listened to what it told her. “He’s not running anymore. He’s waiting for us.”

“You sure about that?” asked Rhonda, her confusion deepening.

Scarlett nodded and moved into the lead. “Careful. He’s going to be real trouble.”

“How can you tell?” Rhonda pressed. “Did you hear him do something?”

“Shhh,” said Scarlett. She continued up the stairs at a slow pace, sword ready.

They reached the top of the stairs and came out of a wall to enter another chamber, one so huge that Scarlett couldn’t see the ends of it. It appeared to be an underground train station. The area before them was a brick-and-stone platform that ended in a drop-off of about two feet. Beyond that were railroad tracks, then darkness. Wary and nervous, they walked across the platform and stopped near the edge. Nothing moved in the vast darkness.

“Where is he?” said Rhonda, turning in place with her axe raised. “You see him?”

Scarlett looked down, moving Excalibur around for better light. She spotted a trail of large wet footprints. They led off the platform and followed the nearest set of rails off to the right. “Bruno went that way,” she said, pointing.

“Bruno’s the giant you’re lookin’ for?”

“Yes.” Scarlett took a deep breath. She could tell Bruno wasn’t far away at all. “Let’s go. I hope he doesn’t have a gun this time.”

They got down from the platform and began walking along the rails. Scarlett’s premonition of danger deepened as she approached another tunnel in the wall ahead, this one obviously sized for a train. The other rails curved away to go out their own tunnels, leaving the underground station. A breeze went through Scarlett’s hair, blowing toward the tunnel ahead. There must be a way to the surface through there, she thought. Maybe when we get out of here I’ll find out where we are.

“I was thinkin’ I should take your friend up on her offer to work for your field hockey team,” said Rhonda. “That’s if I can find a good lawyer to spring me from prison again if I get caught. I don’t think I’m cut out for the food-service industry.”

“How’d you get into prison to begin with?” asked Scarlett, who instantly regretted her words.

“Oh . . .” Rhonda’s voice died off.

“Never mind. Forget it.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Not much of a story, really.”

“I’m sorry I asked, and I apologize.”

“Well, nothin’ would’a happened if my damn boyfriend hadn’t stolen my savin’s and started a meth lab in my house trailer while I was doin’ time in the county for punchin’ out that bouncer in McGrundy’s Pub and drivin’ my pickup through the front door, which wasn’t my fault ‘cause they served me the beer that got me drunk anyway, and then Frank had the nerve—”

“Rhonda, don’t—”

“—to shack up with my halfwit cousin Lisa Marie and get my mom’s second ex-husband Scooter to look for customers in south Baltimore, which pissed off all the big gangs—”

“Seriously, you don’t need to—”

“—and it was probably the Blood Orioles that came out to my place and worked them over them in my livin’ room with my one good working lawn mower, before I could get out there and do it myself when the cops let me out of jail, and it was just bad timin’ that I was out there tryin’ to clean up the mess when that damn sheriff came by to—”

“Stop it! Just stop talking, please!”

“I’m just sayin’, it wasn’t my fault! Nothin’s wrong with me! I’ve been through anger management classes fourteen times!”

“All right! I believe you, I believe you! Forget I mentioned it!”

“Fine, whatever.” They entered the tunnel and walked in silence for a few moments. “Lookin’ back,” the waitress finally said, “I guess in a way it was kind of funny, ‘cause all that was left of Frank was—”

“Rhonda!”

“Well, you asked!”

“I said, forget it! Just look out for . . . forget that, too. There he is.”

“There who . . . oh.”

Scarlett and Rhonda stopped in the tunnel on opposite sides of the railroad track they were following. Hovering in the darkness ahead of them was the tiny flame of a butane cigarette lighter, touching the end of a thick cigar. The cigar was clenched in the pointed tusks of Bruno Nagy’s mouth. After a few puffs, Bruno snapped off the lighter and drew deeply on the cigar. The orange ash illuminated his bestial face. He then exhaled, visible in the light from Excalibur.

“Ladies,” he said in his rough voice, nodding in their direction.

“Why aren’t you still running?” asked Scarlett, feeling much braver now with her sword in hand and Rhonda at her side.

“I can’t,” said Bruno calmly. He turned and nodded at something behind him. Scarlett moved Excalibur to one side to see better. In moments she could tell that the tunnel had long ago collapsed, the rubble pile beginning only a few yards farther on.

“Welcome to Vienna, once the glory of my old home world,” said Bruno. “For too brief a time it was the capital of my empire, the seat of my temporal power, the gem on my crown. We’re about fifty feet below street level. I haven’t been here since I took my werewolf army to Avalon to kill your parents. The remains of my army still roam the subterranean half of Vienna, but I doubt there’s much left above us; the Allies were very thorough in their atomic bombing, I hear. This city alone was hit half a dozen times, leaving only ash and rubble and the once-lovely Danube, which is filling the tunnels below us as I speak. A pity you couldn’t be down there keeping my werewolves company as they drown, but—eh, we rarely get what we want, do we?”

“Looks like we have you trapped instead,” Scarlett growled.

“Indeed,” agreed Bruno. “The only way out for me is straight up, through the ventilation shaft in the ceiling which goes right to the surface . . . but I can’t climb anywhere with only one hand.”

That’s too bad, Scarlett almost said—but something about this picture was wrong. Bruno did not appear desperate, though his circumstances certainly appeared dire. “What are you hiding up your sleeve?” she asked instead, tensing for an attack.

Bruno gave her a twisted grin. “An interesting expression. To answer your question, nothing.” He shook his left arm, pulled back his trench coat sleeve, and showed her the bloodied stump of his wrist, covered with a piece of cloth and tied off with a thick leather belt. He then dropped his arm. He did not appear concerned about his injury.

“You gonna finish this gorilla off by yourself?” asked Rhonda. “Or can I help?”

He’s planning something, Scarlett thought. He’s too cocky. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Stay back until I can—”

“You forgot,” interrupted Bruno, tapping ash from his cigar with his right hand, “that I said I had dabbled in sorcery.” He put the cigar in his mouth and drew in a huge breath.

Danger! screamed Scarlett’s instincts. “Get back!” she yelled to Rhonda. “He’s going to—”

Bruno took the cigar from his mouth and blew out a brilliant fountain of yellow fire as if he were a human flamethrower. Scarlett, already in the act of backing up, saw the tongue of dragon flame roaring at her and threw herself on her back, arms crossed in front of her face. She hit the rocky ground hard enough to knock out her wind. Searing heat scorched her exposed skin and roasted her still-damp clothing. Acting on instinct, she slapped at her clothes and rolled on the ground, half aware of Rhonda’s screams nearby.

When the flame-fountain subsided, she quickly got to her knees. Small fires burned here and there in the tunnel around her. A breeze blew the smoke upward to the ceiling and out a ventilation grill, but the air was still hazy. Rhonda was on her hands and knees on the other side of the tracks, wheezing and coughing as her clothes smoldered. The flame-fountain had missed her, being aimed at Scarlett instead.

Then Scarlett discovered that Excalibur was not in her grasp. It was not anywhere within reach.

It was about ten feet away, pinned to the ground beneath Bruno’s right boot.

“My supernatural powers are strongest on this world,” said the bestial giant. “I heal at a tremendous rate as well. My hand will be entirely regrown in a day’s time; the pain has already ceased. And I lied when I said I was trapped. I have the power here to summon a gateway of my own, only briefly but sufficient for any purposes of escape. I will use it shortly to take you to my master, Fenrir, receive my reward, and continue in my master’s service. Your friend’s flesh will feed the survivors of my werewolf legions, as did the flesh of the scientists and wizards who created them. Our adventure together is done.”

Rhonda snarled, then leaped to her feet and charged, her cleaver swinging back for a lethal blow. Bruno leaned back as she reached him, slapped the blade out of Rhonda’s hand, then backhanded his attacker a split second later and sent her flying back across the railroad tracks. She rolled on the ground, then lay unconscious in a tumbled heap.

Bruno smirked at Rhonda’s body, then looked down again at Scarlett. His red eyes glowed. “If you are searching for last words, I can recommend those of your father, spoken to me at his death. ‘If there is justice, let it swallow you, and if there is goodness, let it wash your stain from mortal view, for all eternity.’ Always good with a phrase, your father. Now it’s your turn. Last words, my dear?”

Scarlett looked daggers at the giant but bit back the curse on the tip of her tongue. Her face relaxed, and she stood up. She had one last idea. What was it Bruno had said? You are the daughter of a great power. You have within you the magical potential of your mother, mixed with the human courage and stamina of your father. You are a tremendous danger to the future plans of my master, Lord of Wolves. She closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled. She visualized summoning all the psychic power she had, whatever it was and whatever it could do, and prepared for what was likely to be her final act.

Bruno raised his chin and waited.

Scarlett opened her eyes and calmly said, “I call upon the Fates you cheated to take their vengeance against you, at this moment of your triumph.” Then she waited, too.

Bruno’s face cleared with surprise. He looked around expectantly, mildly concerned—then smiled again. “It would appear,” he said to Scarlett, “that your wish has fallen on deaf ears, or else the Fates have better things to do. Maybe I will cheat them again in the future, since they don’t mind my abuse. Now, however, we must be off. To be on the safe side, you don’t mind if I put a gag in your mouth before we leave, do you?”

Scarlett merely glared at him.

“Excellent,” said Bruno, and he reached for her with his good right hand.

A halo of white flame flashed around Bruno’s form, turning him into a black silhouette for an instant. In the next instant, Bruno was encased in a fine silvery mesh, a second flash illuminated his burly shape from behind, and he trembled and shook from head to toe, fanged mouth open in a mute roar. Purplish sparks leaped and snapped from every part of him, curling in the air like mad snakes.

The electrical display ceased. The air smelled of ozone. Bruno rocked on his massive feet, then toppled forward and slammed into the stone ground face-first.

Hovering in the air behind where he had been standing was a circular hole in space, about six feet across. Stepping through the hole was a man wearing a dark gray business suit and Ray-Ban sunglasses, carrying a large black weapon that looked like it belonged on the set of a bad science-fiction movie. Smoke drifted from its muzzle. Behind him came a woman wearing a gray skirt-suit and Ray-Bans while holding a similar device that also smoked. Both wore earphones wired into their suit jackets.

“Excuse me,” said the man in a brusque tone. He knelt and felt the side of Bruno’s misshapen head. “Clear!” he called back through the hole in space. He pulled a black rectangular box from inside his suit jacket and stuck it to the silver webbing on Bruno’s back, then stood. The woman in the gray skirt-suit helped a dazed Rhonda to her feet, offering a handkerchief for her bloody nose.

The air around Bruno then sparkled—and the unconscious giant disappeared into thin air.

“Wha . . . what’s happening?” asked Scarlett, scarcely believing what she saw. “Who are you?”

“No names,” said the man.

“No credentials,” said the woman.

“We’re with a certain government agency that watches out for certain . . . different ones,” said the man. “Keeping track of them, let’s say.”

“Are you with the ‘Men in Black,’ like in the movie?” asked Scarlett.

“If I told you,” said the man, “I’d have ask my partner to kill you.”

“Hate that movie,” grumbled the woman. “Got the aliens all wrong. Damn Hollywood.”

“So, you are the Men in Black.” Scarlett then frowned. “But you’re wearing gray.”

“We’re undercover,” the woman explained.

“And gray is the new black, anyway,” said the man. “It said so in last month’s GQ.”

“Okay, sure, whatever. What’d you do with Bruno?”

“Short-range teleporter. He’s aboard our black helicopter on the other side of this dimensional rift, heading for a long vacation in a federal correctional facility—after he’s had a fair trial, of course.”

Thinking she must be dreaming, Scarlett started to smile. “But why are you using a black helicopter if gray is the new black? Shouldn’t you have a gray helicopter?”

The man and woman looked deeply annoyed. “Damn kids,” said the woman. She then put an arm around a woozy Rhonda and escorted her through the circular gateway, holding her black sci-fi weapon in her free hand.

The man reached down and picked up Excalibur by its golden hilt, handing it back to Scarlett with care. “If you’ll follow me,” he said, and he turned and stepped through the gateway.

Scarlett took a last look around, then did the same—and found herself back in the wood-paneled dining room of the Good Time Chinese restaurant. She looked back at the gate hovering in the air, which disappeared when the man pulled what looked like a TV remote from his pocket and aimed it at the gate. He pushed a button, and the gate was gone. Scarlett looked down at Excalibur, which had suddenly turned back into a kitchen knife. This she managed to stick into the waistband of her skirt, hidden under her sweater. There was nowhere else to put it.

..

“You will of course have the good taste not to mention to anyone that you saw any of this,” said the man. “The government would appreciate that.”

“Which government is that?” asked Scarlett.

The agents merely sighed.

“I know, I know, you can’t tell me. But how did you find me? How did you know where I was?”

“Show me the contents of your right pocket,” said the man.

Scarlett did so and came up with a handful of half-melted, water-faded chocolate M&Ms. Only one of the M&Ms was bright and undamaged—a blue one. The male agent picked that one from Scarlett’s hand.

“Cross-universal beacon,” said the agent, examining the M&M. “It contains trace amounts of plutonium-186, its radiation detectable using—”

“Shh,” said the female agent.

“Right,” said the man, pocketing the fake M&M. “Sorry.”

“Those are the M&Ms that Kristen gave me earlier this evening,” said Scarlett. “I’m glad I didn’t eat it.” Then it hit her. “She works for you,” she said, staring wide-eyed at the two agents. “Kristen’s one of you, the Men in Black. She wears nothing but black all day because she’s a Goth, so no one would ever guess that she’s . . . oh, Goddess.”

The agents smiled and looked proud. “She’s a great kid,” said the woman, beaming.

“Gotta love her,” said the man.

“And she’s your kid,” said Scarlett, guessing but knowing she was right. “You’re her parents!”

The agents looked shocked even with their Ray-Bans on. “Need to call home!” they said in unison, and they immediately left the restaurant. Scarlett shook her head, then dropped the spoiled candy on the carpet and looked around. “Tan!” she cried.

“Hey,” said a dispirited Tananda, still wearing her ripped-up field hockey uniform. She stood next to a dining table, holding Tyrfing with its tip touching the carpet. Bandages covered her injured shoulder under her tee.

“Good to see you,” said Scarlett in relief, walking over. “How did everything—?”

“Sucked,” grumbled Tan. “I chased off all the clones so they couldn’t load the books into the time machine or whatever it was, then just as I was going to turn that damn wolf into thin-sliced pastrami, the black helicopter people came and caught her, then they took away everything that looked suspicious and told me not to talk to anyone about it or else they’d post Internet pictures of me in sixth grade wearing my braces. Rat bastards. I didn’t get to kill anything except time. Maybe I should go look for Brian Taylor.” She suddenly lifted the sword and slashed down at the nearest tabletop, slicing it completely in half. The two pieces of the table fell to the floor with a loud clatter. The orange glow of Tyrfing then faded, and the sword turned back into an ornate dagger. “There,” said Tananda, sticking the dagger in her belt. “Now I’ve killed something. Lousy fly.”

“Tan!” cried a familiar voice. “Scarlett!” Max Lane hurried up and threw his arms around them both. “You’re safe! Thank heavens! I didn’t know if we would get to you in time!”

“We?” said Scarlett. “You were working with the Men in Black?”

“Yes, but no, I didn’t mean them.” Max released the girls and waved someone over. Scarlett and Tananda turned and spotted a long-haired brunette walking over in a black cocktail dress. She was attractive, cheerful, and had an easy air of confidence about her. It was also unavoidably obvious that she had the cleavage of a porn star, a 48DD if one there ever was. She was on the verge of falling out of the top of her gown.

“This is my new psychic associate,” said Max grandly, putting a friendly arm around the smiling woman’s waist. “Girls, meet Miss Noe Vember, a paranormal par excellence!”

Tananda gave the busty Noe Vember a narrow-eyed look from head to toe. “Is that—” she began.

“—my real name?” finished the brunette. “Yeah! And I was last year’s Miss November of Pander magazine, too! What a coincidence!”

“Where did—” said Scarlett.

“—we meet? Oh, that was such a coincidence, too! Maxie was leaving the Dutchman Inn this last Saturday as I was going in, and we passed each other in the lobby and we had exactly the same type of luggage, down to the same color and tags, and when he said I looked like I was a natural to be in a centerfold, I knew right then he was psychic, just like me!”

“What were—” started Tananda.

“—we doing to help the Men in Black?” Noe giggled. “Oh, Maxie here told me about that big bad guy that was chasing him, and I said, ‘I bet he’s an invader from an alternate historical dimension or something, you know?’ It was just a lucky guess, but then Maxie said a couple hours ago that he had a premonition about you girls and we should call for reinforcements, I said, ‘I bet the government’s already looking into this guy, so let’s tell them to come get him!’ That was just another lucky guess, but when we did call, not five minutes later this huge black helicopter—”

“Right,” Tan groaned. “Forget it.”

“Miss Vember and I are forming our own detective agency,” said Max. “We’re going to call ourselves the Night Owls!”

“Figures, with those hooters,” muttered Tananda.

Everyone pretended not to have heard that. “We’d better get going,” said Max. “Looks like everything’s finally under control here. Give Roger my best. I’ll see him later.”

“Roger!” exclaimed Scarlett, horrified that she had forgotten all about him. “Where is he?”

“Over there by the animal cage, talking to Adele,” said Max. “Tell him thanks for telling us where he hid the evidence that will put Bruno behind bars forever. The Men in Black will get it out of Rita Barksdale’s basement when she’s not home. Take care, Greenie! Love ya!” He waved as he escorted the giggly Noe outside the restaurant to a waiting taxi.

Tan waved back, then shrugged and looked for Scarlett, only to see that her friend had run off to find her talking mouse. She sighed and decided instead to find the other Leopards and see how they were doing. Her fingers played with the hilt of her new dagger. She smiled. Scarlett and Uncle Max were safe, the world was saved, she had a magic sword, and Scarlett Pendragon had promised her an army of her own. Plus, there was the rematch with the Oakwood Knotholes that coming Saturday. Life was good.

Scarlett, meanwhile, spotted a small white shape on the ground near the aforementioned cage, near the doors to the restaurant. Roger was making faces at a snarling wolf inside the heavy-duty container, sticking out his pink tongue and wiggling his ears. He shrieked when Scarlett snatched him up to her face, but recovered quickly. “Scarlett!” he shouted, trying to hug her cheek. “Thank heaven you’re alive! Your aunt’s at Cedars of Lawndale hospital, but she’s going to be okay! Max and his psychic sex toy said so!”

“That’s good.” Scarlett put Roger on her shoulder beneath her red hair. “Let’s go see her. You can hear about what happened at the same time she does. I don’t think I could stand to repeat the story.”

“I was so worried about you!” Roger sniffled, clutching her ruined sweater. He then began to cry in a long series of tiny squeaks and whines. Scarlett reached up and gently stroked his back—then looked down and noticed the wolf in the cage was watching her through the heavy wire mesh with hate-filled eyes.

“I’ll remember this,” said Adele through curled lips and sharp teeth. “Trust me, Scarlett, I will always remember this.”

Scarlett stared back, then nodded. “I will remember this, too,” she said, “but no hard feelings. In fact . . .” Scarlett walked away, picked something off the floor nearby, and walked back to the cage. “Here,” she said. “A little treat for the road.”

The ruined M&Ms dropped one by one through the metal bars of the wolf’s cage, plopping down in front of Adele. Adele looked down and sniffed at them. “Hey,” she said. “Chocolate! I could use some right now. Thanks!” The wolf licked the mess up in a second, then licked her lips and looked up at Scarlett with a hopeful expression. “Got any more?”

“No,” said Scarlett. “I think that will do just fine.”

The two agents retrieved the cage at that point and picked it up. “Can we drop you anywhere?” one asked.

“Cedars of Lawndale, and hurry,” said Scarlett. “My Aunt Elaine’s there.”

“Our helicopter’s in an unused parking lot across the street,” said the agent. “Let’s go!”

Meanwhile, stuck for safekeeping inside the dumpster behind the Good Time Chinese restaurant, a laptop popped open. “Elaine!” cried a voice from inside the computer. “Bloody hell, Elaine, you promised you’d come back for me!”

“That wasn’t half bad,” said Scarlett cheerily, two weeks later as she walked out of the gymnasium with her friends. “I never thought roller hockey was worth watching, but after that faculty-DJ game, I’d have to say my time wasn’t wasted.”

“DeMartino didn’t die,” Kristen glumly reminded her. “I lost fifty bucks on that.”

“Barch punching Rock-and-Roll Randy’s lights out was awesome,” said Tananda. “I almost liked her.”

Angel leaned over to speak to Scarlett’s right shoulder. “What did you think of it, Roger Rat?” she asked.

“I can’t hear you,” Roger grumbled, clutching Scarlett’s sweater. “I’m deaf from all the damn screaming. And I’m not a rat!”

“If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck,” said Tan, “then it must be a rat.”

“Do you ever listen to yourself?” said Roger. “I mean, seriously listen to what you’re saying, ever?”

“Yeah, but it’s probably not as interesting as listening to you scream when I towel-snap your butt into next year.”

“I should have taken pictures of the game for Elaine,” said Scarlett. “It would’ve cheered her up, especially that free-for-all at the end that the cops had to break up.”

Kristen swallowed a mouthful of chocolate candy. “How’s your aunt doing since she left Cedars of Lawndale?”

“Better. She gets around a little, but she needs a lot of rest.” Scarlett was silent for a few moments. “She apologized to me for not telling me the truth about my dad and mom, but I said it was okay. She couldn’t have told me the truth before now. I’d never have believed it. She was going to wait until I was out of high school to tell me, ‘cause she was afraid it would mess up my life.”

“Not like the truth messed up your life anyway,” observed Tananda.

“Well, that’s different,” said Scarlett.

“Oh? Exactly how?”

“Anyone else going to the homecoming game?” asked Woot. “I’m going to ask Bob.”

“Bob?” said Roger. “The moron with the sleeveless shirt and green-dyed hair and a safety pin through his nose? That Bob?”

“What?” yelled Woot.

“Care—ful,” whispered Scarlett to her tiny companion.

“I’m just saying,” Roger hastily added, “it sounds like he’s . . . um . . . intriguing!”

“That’s what I like about him, too,” said Woot, calming down. “And he can crush a beer can on his head with one hand!”

“There’s some kind of moral here, I’m sure,” Roger muttered.

“Not likely,” said Scarlett.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Angel. She reached in a pocket and pulled out a crumpled letter. “I forgot about this! Look what I got today! They liked our ideas!”

“Sick, Sad World?” said Scarlett. Everyone crowded around Angel to read the letter, aided by a streetlight’s illumination. On a sheet of light gray letterhead with the oval SSW logo at the top, they read:

Dear Budding Reporters:

Thank you for your submissions and congratulations! We have decided to accept the following story ideas that you submitted for SICK, SAD WORLD!

1. Adolf Hitler reincarnated as a blonde! (We might pitch her as “madcap” and “leggy” for promotional purposes.)

2. Flying steak knives! (We know you said “magic swords that turn into steak knives” but there are far more steak knives than magic swords, so we are going with the steak knives.)

3. Psychic detectives chasing cross-dimensional villains! (We might turn this one into “psychic Nazi hunter” and combine it with #1. Close enough.)

4. Rats on Ritalin! (Your original idea with the talking mouse was almost there, but the drug angle was perfect. Thanks to Roger, whoever he is, for that one.)

5. Delinquent quintuplets! (Taken exactly as you had it.)

6. Soccer moms with axes to grind! (Nice idea, though we had a few questions: Is this “Rhonda” a real person? She’s not really a mother, is she? We were a little concerned about that. Does she live anywhere near our corporate headquarters? Can you warn us if she does?)

And thanks to those former members of Lawndale’s Blue Belles, once featured on our show, who were kind enough to hand-deliver your story ideas last weekend to our staff. We appreciated their explaining in detail what would happen if we accidentally and not-on-purpose made use of ideas similar to the ones you submitted, which would of course never happen, and thank you for releasing our attorneys unharmed.

We will forward the list to our accounting department, which will contact you with payment details in the near future. Please do not hesitate to stop by our offices again, although we do ask that you not bring flaming swords into the main lobby and security areas next time. And please call ahead—several days ahead. (Please don’t be put off if you arrive during a company holiday and no one is available to see you!)

Once again, thank you for all your hard work, and keep those great ideas coming!

SICK, SAD WORLD EDITORIAL STAFF

The cheers were deafening, louder than when the Lawndale Leopards had defeated the Oakwood Knotholes in sudden death overtime the week before, and even louder than when Ms. Barch punched out Rock-and-Roll Randy’s lights out. Roger clapped his paws over his ears and bore it as best he could.

Later that evening, when Scarlett and Roger were back in Scarlett’s room and feeling a bit slow from all the pizza they had consumed after the game, Roger lay on his back in his cage and sighed. “Phil promised to come by later this week and visit,” he said. “He’s living in a tree off Glen Oaks Lane, driving some homeowner crazy over there. Guy sounds like a nutcase, yelling about his father and how squirrels are taking over the world. Phil says knocking over garbage cans is a lot more fun than working at Pizza Forest. He hated that place. Mean kids.”

“That’s good,” said Scarlett. She was lying on her bed reading Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d’Arthur while eating a cinnamon-apple muffin.

“Shame about Marcello. Hope Adele likes living in a federal dog pound for the rest of her life. Maybe Bruno can take her for walks.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You hear anything from Rhonda?”

“Yeah. She says the witness protection program is for the birds. They changed her name to Jordana and now she works at some roadside museum across the road from a paintball place. She can’t talk about her former life because Bruno or his old cross-dimensional associates might come looking for her, so she says she makes up stuff about based on her favorite movies, like Jaws or whatever. People think she’s crazy.”

“Can’t imagine why they would think that.”

After a beat, Scarlett added, “She said she’s got a boyfriend.”

“What? No way.”

“Yes, way.”

“Rhonda? Psycho axe-wielding Rhonda? Rhonda who used to tell people she chopped up her family because they wouldn’t let her watch Wheel of Fortune? That Rhonda?”

“Yeah. She said he runs the paintball place. He’s an old Vietnam vet named Jim. He lives part-time at a VA psych hospital. She said he was her soul-mate.”

Roger was quiet for a half minute, then said, “That frightens me.”

“Merthin cast her horoscope and said she’d be fine.”

“Some old fart stuck in a laptop said it was ‘fine’ that Lizzie Borden was dating Rambo, and you believe him?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Roger sighed heavily. “Never mind. Hey, maybe they could take Brian Taylor for a special tour of the paintball place sometime, when no one else is around. They could give him a five-minute head start before they . . . you know . . . oh, well. It was just a thought.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Scarlett finished her muffin and licked her fingers as she read.

“You know,” Roger said at last, looking anxious, “I am a little worried about that cross-dimensional wormhole in the back of the Chinese place. I mean, you don’t know what could come crawling out of there next time.”

“Not a problem,” said Scarlett, turning a page. “Aunt Elaine gave me an idea for a way to fix it.”

“Fix it? What do you mean, fix it? What did you do?”

Scarlett sighed and put a finger in the book on the page she was reading, then closed the book and looked up. “I fixed the gateway so it would only do funny stuff, nothing bad anymore. No bad people can come through it, only funny or silly ones.”

“What are you talking about? Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, people dressed like calendar holidays, or a hurricane that makes everyone sing and dance, stuff like that. Stuff to make life around here more interesting.”

Roger rolled over and gave Scarlett a narrow-eyed look. “You’re pulling my leg,” he said.

“Of course,” said Scarlett. She returned to her book with an ill-concealed smirk.

Roger finally shook his head. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” he muttered. He lay down again and closed his eyes, then added, “I hope.”

FINIS

A Few Final Notes

This story attempts to tie together many oddball elements in the Dariaverse as we know it to form a coherent (more or less) whole, adding in background characters who never had names or personalities that we know of. The background character known here as Scarlett appeared on Daria in the very first episode, “Esteemsters,” and was last seen at Daria and Jane’s graduation in the movie Is It College Yet? She had no known name in the show. As mentioned in “Author’s Notes,” the IUF and other Daria fans provided names for many characters here. Many minor characters from the series were freely borrowed (Ms. Morris, Brian Taylor, Rita Barksdale, Chris Griffin, Fluffy, etc.); they are fairly well known, but the origins for characters perhaps less known are given below.

The Lawndale Leopards are my own invention, though the high school does have a field hockey team for girls, and there is a muscular girl named Heidi on it, per The Daria Diaries. I connected them to the bandit girl scouts of The Daria Diaries, in the Sick, Sad World section.

The white mouse is the same one Daria had in “The Lab Brat.” Rita’s (dead) ex-boyfriend Roger was mentioned in “I Don’t.” Rita’s ex-boyfriend Bruno was mentioned in the same episode. (“She sure knows how to pick ‘em.”) Big Jen is actually the background character named Jennifer, per a seating chart used by Mr. O’Neill in the episode “Café Disaffecto.” (See discussion of the names of background characters on The Paperpusher’s Message Board.) Roll-and-Roll Randy is a DJ who appeared on “The Big House.” Axl is from “Pierced.” Max Lane is Jane Lane’s paternal uncle from “The Teachings of Don Jake,” which is also where Sloatstown appeared. Farkas, Bruno Nagy’s “real” first name, is Hungarian for “wolf.”

Various Lawndale sites (such as in Chapter Seven) were borrowed from the map of Lawndale in The Daria Diaries and the Virtual Lawndale webpage on the MTV website. The infamous Good Time Chinese Restaurant and its interdimensional wormhole appeared in “Depth Takes a Holiday.” The Lawndale Mall is the same one called Cranberry Commons in The Daria Diaries; the name was changed on Virtual Lawndale. The Dutchman Inn was mentioned in “Fire!” Cedars of Lawndale hospital appeared in “Ill” and “Jake of Hearts.”

Some characters’ last names are actually animal names in foreign languages, but the reader is left to discover which ones are so encoded, and why they are so named. The name of Phil, the Pizza Forest Squirrel, came from a webpage on the MTV.com Daria website. At the story’s end, Phil is of course tormenting Daria’s father, Jake Morgendorffer. Marcello, later Hermione, was the imaginary future Significant Other of Daria Morgendorffer, per her story in “Write Where It Hurts.” Middleton College was where Daria’s parents met when they were undergraduates.

“Groped by an Angel” had the only mention of black helicopters in the show, and one therefore appears in Chapter Fifteen. The Men in Black (actually, the special agents in gray) are from “The Lawndale File.” I borrowed some of the dialogue for the two special agents from the same episode. The blue M&M was chosen as the tracer for Scarlett because Jane didn’t like blue M&Ms in “Antisocial Climbers.” Plutonium-186 is the “impossible” isotope used by Isaac Asimov in his novel, The Gods Themselves. Pander Magazine was taken from an old National Lampoon comic strip: “The Aesop Brothers, Siamese Twins” by Rodrigues. Miss Noe Vember (dreadful pun, so sorry) is from The Daria Diaries. Rhonda of course is from The Daria Database. Jordana appeared in “The Daria Hunter” and also shows up on a webpage at MTV’s Daria website. Jim and Jim's Paintballing Jungle also appeared in “The Daria Hunter.”

The letter from Sick, Sad World follows the style of a similar letter that appears in The Daria Database. The SSW bit with Adolf Hitler as a leggy blonde (Adele Wolff) was in “Fat Like Me”; the flying steak knife (Excalibur) was in “A Tree Grows in Lawndale”; the rats on Ritalin were in Is It Fall Yet? The House of Bad Grades was in “Legends of the Mall.” Delinquent quintuplets (Adele’s clone army) were from “Sappy Anniversary.”

As far as Arthurian legend goes, Elaine Garlot (Caer-lot), Scarlett’s aunt, was indeed King Arthur Pendragon’s eldest half-sibling, sister to the notorious Morgan le Fay and Morgause. She was married to a king named Nentres and her son was a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table. Excalibur’s story is more than adequately covered in Wikipedia, as are the details about the sword Tyrfing. “Merthin” is how Merlin is pronounced in Welsh. The Lady of the Lake (Viviane) could indeed catch a thrown sword with her bare hand, and while underwater.

Several people have asked what the original plot of the story was, before I dumped it because of Marvel Comics’ 1602 story line. Here it is, for whatever it’s worth.

The second Roanoake Colony in a nearby alternate universe was actually composed of members of a secret society of magic-using humans, who followed a tradition laid down by Roger Bacon in volumes of secret writings on alchemy. This secret society was in danger of being discovered and killed off, so Sir Walter Raleigh, with the blessing of Queen Elizabeth I and several prominent (but secret) wizards in her court, gathered up the remaining society members and had them try to establish a colony in the New World. The society members fought with the natives and all died of disease, starvation, exposure, and fighting, except for a few survivors who were taken to the island known as Croatoan. The next expedition to Roanoke some years later (after the defeat of the Spanish Armada) found no one there, but they did go to Croatoan and there found Virginia Dare, living by herself. She was taken to England where it was discovered that the use of alchemical substances had turned her into a super-wizard, someone capable of changing the nature of reality itself, and she was adopted into Elizabeth's court.

Soon, though, she became more powerful than any other being and assumed control of England after Elizabeth's death. She then attacked Europe and won, and eventually gained control over most of the Earth through her magic and armies. Then, about two hundred years after her birth, an enemy of surpassing evil appeared to challenge her and plunged the entire world into magical-technological warfare, culminating in a long thermonuclear war in that Earth's twentieth century. As black-hole bombs were being fired off to unravel the entire thread of reality in that universe, the clone-daughter of the immortal Empress Virginia—named Scarlett Dare—was sent to an alternate universe through a peculiar wormhole that came out at a Chinese restaurant in Lawndale, and the infant Scarlett and her one protector, an "aunt" (a secret agent of the Empress Virginia) settled into life in the USA.

And then someone came through the wormhole and found them. The “enemy of surpassing evil” was the monster created by Victor von Frankenstein, who in the original novel by Mary Shelley was a superintelligent, superpowerful creature. Here, he survived his suicide attempt at the North Pole and began a career of conquest. He ruled most of Asia and Africa and managed to escape the destruction of his Earth. And Lawndale's earth was his next target for conquest.

So.... so much for the original idea.

Hope you enjoyed the story!

Last updated 2/6/07