Jenny was arguing with Ronnie. From the pieces I heard, it sounded like Ronnie wanted to go out and make a heroic last stand in the hopes of taking Alex with him.
Jenny told him he was an idiot.
She was right, but it was the same heroic nonsense any of us might have done at his age.
We needed to buy time. I closed my eyes and waded through the pain and fear from the house. I teased out the various minds until I found the ones I wanted.
The mice in the attic were tense. They knew their home was under assault. They didn’t understand the nature of their enemy, but they didn’t particularly care. Like Ronnie, they wanted to run out and attack.
Their arrogance was very unmouselike. They’d lived and evolved with humans for too long.
The feel of my thoughts was familiar, as much a part of their home as the rafters and the insulation. So, they listened as I tried to explain what was happening.
One of the mice scampered through the gable vent and onto the roof. It crawled down a gutter and opened its senses to me, allowing me my first real look at our attacker.
Mouse vision was strange. They perceived a slightly higher and more limited spectrum of color than humans. They were also rather nearsighted.
A blurry Alex Barclay stood in front of the equally blurry porch with his tentacle arm slithering through the air like a snake. The movement was both hypnotic and nauseating. All around him, his oily-skinned shoggoth-fed children pounded windows and dug up plants. One had climbed onto the roof and was trying to tear off the shingles.
From Alex’s movements, I realized he couldseethe spells keeping him out. He was directing the others to attack specific physical nodes while he tugged the invisible strands of magic, unraveling the net one strand at a time.
I shared with the mice what I needed, along with what would happen if Alex succeeded. They were frightened. I felt their tiny hearts vibrate faster. But they weren’t convinced.
“What’s going on back there, Temple?” asked Annette.
Splitting myself between two locations was giving me a stabbing headache. “I’m asking the mice for help. They want to know what’s in it for them.”
“You told them the end of the world includes mice, right?” she asked.
“They think they’re clever and tough enough to survive the coming of R’gngyk.”
Jenny covered her phone. “Ronnie says he has a sling that was blessed by Pope Formosus. He thinks he can get to the roof and take Alex out from there.”
“Bad idea,” said Annette. “From what I saw on theWidowmaker, Alex can reach the roof with that tentacle.”
I covered my ears to shut them out and asked the mice what they wanted.
They showed me.
“You’re out of your tiny minds,” I replied. No way in any hell was I going to give them unlimited access to my power. An army of magic-wielding mice would be just as dangerous as R’gngyk in the long run.
The mouse outside scurried back up the gutter and into the relative safety of the attic. They turned their minds away from me, preparing to go back to whatever mouse business they’d been up to.
I sent a counteroffer. They couldn’t have unlimited access to my knowledge of magic, but I’d teach them two simple defensive spells.
They conferred and demanded a thousand defensive spells. Numbers weren’t their strong suit.
We settled on five spells in exchange for their help. Twelve mice volunteered to let me deeper into their thoughts. We ran out of the attic and down to the ground.
Outside, we gathered a short distance from Alex. We stood on our hind legs in a circle six inches wide. Our front paws traced the patterns of a spell. My words emerged from their mouths as a series of high-pitched chirps.
Alex turned. He didn’t see us at first. Then his gaze dropped.
Jenny would have had a witty quip at the ready, something snarky and irreverent and triumphant to say as she knocked his block off.
I wasn’t like her. I triggered my spell in silence.
A tiny fireball appeared in the center of our circle. It shot toward Alex, growing to the size of a large pumpkin by the time it struck.
