Behind he prince, a shadow stirred in the greenhouse doorway—something too large to be Zephyr.
Magdala’s chest tightened. Could it be the assassin? Yesterday, she might have hesitated, but she needed her paycheck, and if an assassin slashed the prince’s throat, Magdala would find herself perched atop the mountain of furniture right next to her father.
She didn’t dare shout and warn him; she might startle the shadow. Smooth and even, she lifted her shotfire and set the arm-length white barrel on the windowsill.
Asherton glanced up at her. A look of surprise crossed his face, and then his jaw tightened and his gold-green eyes locked on her with dark intensity.
Magdala tried to line up the shot, but Asherton blocked her view.
Catching his eyes, she jerked her head, hoping he would step aside. He furrowed his brow and then, slowly, turned. The shadow moved into the light, and the blood drained from Magdala’s face.
Lewis, the giant gawper tuber Asherton had assured her would never escape his copper pot, swayed in the doorway, balancing on a tangle of brown roots. He was ugly, like a gnarled, worm-eaten tree, with a scabrous, vulture-like head, a sharp, curved beak, and vines winding out from his body like woody arms.
Asherton whirled around and shouted up at Magdala, “Do not shoot him!” then he an. Lewis trundled afterhim. Magdala aimed her shotfire again, but they disappeared around the corner of the greenhouse before she could squeeze the trigger.
“SKAT!” Magdala screamed. Slinging her shotfire on her back, Magdala launched off her cot and charged all the way down to the kitchen.
Zephyr was standing over the stove, cracking eggs into a cast iron pan. “What’s wrong?” he asked, alarmed.
“Lewis is after Asherton!” Magdala cried as she crashed out the door.
Magdala ran like she’d never run in her life, because if the prince was devoured, it was all over. Elegy might be hers, but she was still as poor as the day she’d left it.
Without the faintest idea how to fight a giant carnivorous plant, Magdala reached the greenhouse and skidded around the corner just as Lewis caught up to Asherton. A rough, bark-encrusted vine wound around his ankle. Lewis flung him to the ground like a dog would with a rabbit.
Magdala dropped to one knee and swung her shotfire from her back. Shutting one eye, she lined up a shot at Lewis’s head.
“Don’t shoot him!” Asherton cried, spitting dirt. “He’s an endangered …” He didn’t finish the sentence. Lewis swung him into the greenhouse wall – he struck it hard, glass spiderwebbing around his body. Rearing back, Lewis released a guttural roar. Magdala matched it with a battlefield scream as she charged him, cracking the stock of her shotfire against his scabby head.
The creature turned toward her, slowly, as if it was insulted by the blow. Magdala didn’t quail, and she didn’t hesitate. She slammed the shotfire into Lewis’s head over and over and over. He screeched, strands of saliva clinging to his curved, yellow teeth, but she beat him down. His jaw thudded into the dirt, and Asherton jumped up and launched onto the plant's head.
“Run!” Asherton ordered. Magdala threw herself on his back. Their combined weight sank the tuber’s beak into the soil.
“I told you to run,” Asherton grunted.
Magdala reached around him and braced her hands on the creature’s head. “I’myourbodyguard,” she hissed. “I’m supposed to be protecting you.”
Asherton shot an exasperated look at her over his shoulder. “You’re not helping.”
“I bloody well am!” Magdala cried.
Lewis thrashed, forcing Asherton to lean his full weight on the tuber, his fingers hooked in the hinge of its jaw. Magdala’s head rested on Asherton’s back, her legs straddling Lewis’s thick, woody stem.
“What do we do?” she panted. Asherton’s shirt was damp with sweat against her cheek.
“There’s a glass jar in the greenhouse full of …” Lewis writhed, and Asherton inhaled sharply, tensing beneath her “… full of glowing green caterpillars. Bring it to me.”
“You can’t hold him alone.”
“Stop talking and go!”
She hesitated. Asherton was already trembling with the effort of restraining Lewis. Without her extra weight, she doubted he would hold him long. “I’ll stay. You go,” she said.
“Devney, if you haven’t noticed, I am in thecenterof this pile. Which means that I can’t get up until you do. So you have to go because I cannot!”
“I’ll twist to the side and you can slide out.”
Asherton groaned in exasperation.
