“You ready?” I asked Delaney.
“Oh, sure. So how do we handle that?” She pointed.
I followed her finger to the switchbacks, turrets, slides, and lookouts of the sprawling, castle climbing structure.
The wooden play equipment all seem to be where it should be. Swings, tunnel slides, monkey bars, cute little unicorn pony standing in front of a swirling vortex in the ground.
Hold on.
Unicorn?
“It’s a unicorn,” Bathin breathed, coming up beside me. “Holy shit, it’s pink. Pink.” He turned to me. “You see it, right? The unicorn? The pink unicorn?”
He didn’t sound like himself. All the swagger, all the ego was gone. He looked like he’d just seen a ghost. Or, well, a pink unicorn in front of a swirling vortex to Hell in a playground.
“We see it,” Delaney said. All calm, that girl. And obviously perplexed by Bathin’s reaction. “I don’t think it’s evil, dude.”
Bathin blinked. Several times. “It’s aunicorn. Of course it’s evil.”
“Maybe to a demon,” Ryder said.
Bathin laughed, one short, disbelieving bark. “Yes, to a demon. And to everyone.Everyone. It’spink.”
We stared at the unicorn, which was about the size of a sheep and…well, posing was probably the best description. Its glossy, light-blue mane flowed down its neck, the light-blue tail arched elegantly, and four tiny, perfect, pearly-white hooves shone in the grass.
The rest of it was, indeed, pink. From the tip of its nose raised high and proud, to the bottom of its legs, one of which was lifted in a curl.
The wind, which wasn’t stirring a thing around us, tossed the unicorn’s mane so that it flowed hypnotically.
And the horn was a thing of beauty. It wasn’t pearl like the delicate little hooves, no, it was diamond. Sharp and shining with fractal rainbows, clear as a star, glowing with power.
It was hard to look away from the horn. As a matter of fact, there was a palpable draw to the creature, or maybe the vortex swirling in the ground behind it.
Ryder had already taken several steps toward it, but Delaney reached out and grabbed his arm. “Me, first,” she said. Then: “Myra?”
“I brought a turnip.”
“Oh…kay?”
“It seemed like the right thing at the time.” I dug it out of my bag and stood next to her. “I also brought a candy ring thing. So there’s that.”
“Do unicorns like turnips and candy ring things?”
“Nope. They like clear springs and virgins. We’re basically screwed.”
She snorted, and I grinned. Yeah, sometimes this job was just too ridiculous for words.
She opened her palm like a TV doctor asking for a scalpel.
“Turnip,” she intoned.
I slapped the turnip into her hand.
“Turnip.”
“Candy ring thing.”
I slapped it into her hand.
