“I’m fit as a fiddle,” she assured him as she settled him back on his feet. “Have fun, and don’t break any laws. The Wynchesters may live outside of society’s rules, but people like us cannot. Please be safe. And come back home in time for dinner.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Quentin kissed her cheek. “I’m beating you at cards afterward.”
She snorted. “Thatwouldbe an improbable twist, wouldn’t it.”
2
Mr. Jacob Wynchester spent all morning scowling at the same handwritten poem. Immersed in the worn leather-bound notebook in his hand, he exited the rear of his family’s three-story house and glanced up just in time to avoid being decapitated by a pair of large, very sharp swords.
“Watch out!” yelled his sister Elizabeth as she danced to the right.
“Isn’t the person swinging the sword the one who ought to be watching what they’re doing?” Jacob asked.
His sister-in-law Kuni parried, her long black braids swinging. She and Elizabeth zigzagged across the rear lawn amid a clatter of curses and clanging blades.
Jacob headed left, toward a big, whitewashed wooden barn almost half as wide as the Wynchesters’ sprawling house.
The barn door was visibly ajar. Jacob’s heart pounded. He always ensured it remained locked tight when he wasn’t there.
He shoved his poetry notebook into the pocket of his leather apron and cupped his hands around his mouth as he sprinted up to the open door.
“How many times must I remind you ne’er-do-wells not to access the barn without me present?” he shouted. “Insecure openings are exactly how we lose a python, and you remember how long it took the last time—”
A trim white man wearing a leather helmet fitted with mismatched goggles poked his head out of the door. “Sorry. I got distracted. Shutting now.”
The door closed in Jacob’s face.
He sighed and yanked it back open. “I was coming inside. Please remember that everything in this barn is a wild animal, with fangs or claws or venom. It is a privilege and a responsibility—”
And a fire hazard.
He gaped at the absolute chaos his brother-in-law Stephen had installed in Jacob’s private barn.
Slippery chutes and knotted ropes and grooved tracks covered every solid surface, and most of the space in between. Each pathway was dotted with random objects: old boots, lined-up dominoes, feathers, wheeled trolleys, glass vials and bottles with varying quantities of colored liquids, hammers, razors, pulleys, trapdoors, and what looked like an entire row of fresh strawberries.
Most baffling of all: the dozens of precarious lit candles.
In a wooden barn.
Here, where a hundred different terrestrial or winged wild animals might bang into them and set the entire neighborhood on fire.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Stephen.
“You really do not,” murmured Jacob, “or you would be running as fast as your legs could carry you.”
“This version is much more pragmatic than the last prototype,” Stephen assured him, peering at Jacob with one overly magnified light-gray eye. “The first item of note is the goose-launching station.”
Jacob enunciated, “Extinguish the candles.”
Stephen beamed at him. “I knew you would say that. I installed them specifically so you could see how quickly the flames can be doused. Watch this.”
He pulled a lever.
The entire room came to life. Every pulley in Stephen’s contraption dropped or lifted or tugged, sending all the objects crashing into one another, one at a time, until hoses sprang forth from a central cylinder like snakes from Medusa’s head. Water gushed forth from each hose, not only extinguishing each flame with enough force to knock the candles over, but also drenching Jacob and Stephen and every other animal or object in a five-yard radius.
Stephen grinned in satisfaction. “What do you think?”
Jacob swiped water from his face. “I think I’ll kill you.”
