“Are you crazy?” Glenda leaped to her feet in a storm of sand. “Why would you warn them? We have the advantage!”
“Now, I’ve noticed that you keep sayingwe. You are here solely to identify the men, after which you will go no further.” The witch exhaled deeply, her eyes the white of hard-boiled eggs. “As for surprise . . . the sorcerer never had to announce his intentions. He made the declaration, of his own accord, that he would destroy God and reshape this world. Without that warning, and without the resulting wars launched against him, I imagine his studies would have progressed much faster. Even if it was simple arrogance, I respect it. And”—the witch smiled with a rare ferocity—“maybe I’m a little arrogant, too.”
Glenda stood poised, trembling with fury. But what could she do? In a controlled release of tension, she splashed into the shallows to join the witch.
“So yes, Glenda,” Domitia continued over the cries of gulls and gushing of water. “I will declare my intentions: that I am coming to destroy the sorcerer and maintain the order of our world.”
Glenda waited in wary readiness, her toes sinking into wet sand, while Domitia moved her hands in the air, steering herself through a foreign space. “There we are, a little closer, and . . . OH!” The witch sounded genuinely shocked. “Well. Good for them, I suppose. The timing is unfortunate, but . . .” She grimaced. “This will have to do. Here we go.”
CHAPTER 47
In Which I Will Not Describe the Preceding Events out of a Sense of Demure Politeness, but You Can Be Assured that It Was Some Real Freaky Shit, Some Real Satisfying You Know What, Which Involved Magic and, No I Shan’t Say, and Wow Am I Glad to Have Absolute Privacy in This Underwater Bedroom, I Sure Would Hate to Have Any of This Observed or—
Excuse me for interrupting . . . whatever this is. If you’ll allow it, I can arrange to call back later.”
I was hanging by my ankles, buck naked, when the voice came. It seemed to emanate from a bubble holding a woman’s projected face, which bobbed before us.
Merulo leaned back. “No, this is as good a time as any.”
“If you’re sure.” The woman sounded faintly embarrassed. She looked like an elf, although her face was pleasantly round-cheeked, and her skin a darker shade of blue. One of her eyes wandered slightly, drooping. “Well then, first I’d like to perform an identification. Glenda? Is this the sorcerer Merulo? And is that . . . Sir Cameron?”
Glenda’s doll-like face appeared in the hovering bubble. “Oh my God, Cameron! Oh my GOD.”
“Microwave! Microwave!” I sputtered, flailing.
With a flick of his wand and a rushed mutter, the sorcerer summoned the illusion of clothing. My illusory shirt promptly fell down over my face, denying me sight.
“I can give you some privacy, but first, please take this as an announcement of intent.” The woman spoke in a melodious voice, which I might have found pleasant under different circumstances. “I, Domitia, the one they call the mongrel witch, will be putting an end to your schemes.” A pause. Then, with a touch less drama: “If you’d prefer to come my way to finish this, that’d be terrific. Just follow the connection made by the call.”
“No. I won’t.” Merulo’s face was hidden from me, but I imagined it held some variation of his usual scowl. “You are Domitia the half-dragon?”
The seriousness of it all hit then, and my heart pounded in my throat. I wanted down, quite badly, but also feared interrupting.
“Indeed,” said the woman, in her strange, musical voice. “I simply offer this warning then: I will be coming.”
“How admirable,” spat the sorcerer. “Now get out. I haven’t finished with him yet.”
CHAPTER 48
In Which Glenda Now Has Seen Things She Will Never Be Able to Erase from Her Mind, for the Rest of Her Life She Will Close Her Eyes and There It Will Be, the Mad Sorcerer as Nude and Bony as a Dried Fish, and Cameron, She Doesn’t Even Want to Think About Cameron, but Rest Assured Her Urge to Kill Has Temporarily Been Overcome by the Urge to Take a Vow of Celibacy and Retreat to Somewhere Quiet and Pastoral.
They’re degenerates.” Glenda’s tongue felt thick with revulsion. “Sick and twisted, evil, filthy inverts!”
The witch strode along the beach toward her parked carriage, leaving dark footprints in the sand. “Glenda, shut up.”
This shocked Glenda so badly that she did, in fact, shut up. Domitia’s next actions were salt in the wound, as from the depths of the carriage she withdrew bundles that Glenda recognized as purchases from the last town stop. The witch sat on the steps of her carriage, uncovering a fresh pie and a sealed jar of sweet tea.
“What are you . . . what could you possibly be doing? Weneed to go after them. They’ll be jumping through any number of portals. Have you gone mad?”
The witch bit deeply into the pie, releasing the strong odour of ginger. She ate slowly, and with relish, only stopping to answer after her immediate appetite was satiated. “A ten-minute head start seems fair.”
Glenda squawked in disbelief. Water lapped around her bare feet. Kicking it into a spray, she marched to where her shoes lay in the sand and seized them with a force meant to signal her rage. “Is this a game to you? These men are foul, and we have them in our sights at last. You’d let them get away?”
Another hearty bite of the pie. The scent of ginger, mingled with sea brine and heated sand, was not entirely unpleasant. “I’ll be going against a full-blooded dragon, one with time itself under his command. To be frank, Glenda, I do not expect to make it out alive. Allow me this final meal in peace.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so preoccupied with eating all the time, you’d be better equipped to fight.”
This got the witch to look up from her meal. Brushing crumbs from her chin, she pointed at something behind the elf, singing faint words. Even in her rage, Glenda felt some curiosity, and so she turned.
