spooky_nine

“Great artists must sacrifice for their JESUS OW,” says Iphigenia, jerking her hand away.

“I told you it would sting,” says Nicole. “And this is just disinfectant–you need a rabies shot.”

“They didn’t have rabies,” Iphigenia scowls. “They were just startled by the damn paparazzi.”

“You wore a gown made of live minks to an awards show. You didn’t anticipate some flash photography?”

“I’m sure we all take comfort in your perfect hindsight, Nicole.”

She sighs. “I said the same thing beforehand, so it’s foresight, actually. I also told you to wear panties.”

“What is this,” says Iphigenia, “a nunnery?”

The tenpenny presses against her lips, not hard, just enough to keep it in place. Andrea smells the fresh tang of metal. She wants so badly to take a taste.

“Good, Andrea,” says Dr. Baum. “Thirty more seconds and you’ll get a treat!” Her hand is on the spray bottle, humiliating, a punishment for cats.

“Pica” derives from the Latin for “magpie.” Birds, cats, hunting. If they did this to a starving man it’d be torture, or at the least interrogation, but Andrea has no answers to give. She’s just hungry. Ten seconds. Without iron inside her, she knows she’ll break.

At the bottom of the stair is a dome with a dozen corridors leading out. Of course.

“I can’t see very far down any of them,” says Yael, who’s too busy glancing at the candle to really look.

“This is the first test.”

“Oh,” says Yael, “right, the tests.”

“Graverobber prevention,” says Silhouine, with an odd confidence. “The gods would have known which path is the true one, you see?”

“So we just have outsmart the gods.”

“And that can’t be too hard,” Silhouine smirks, and leans on a giveaway piece of masonry, which embeds an obliging dart in her head.

They look at the table askance.

“I sort of want to read the flap copy,” says Tananarive.

“Aren’t you afraid that would unleash it?” says Rawley. “Or possibly instill it?”

There are eight stacks of the same book on clearance, entitled The Riker Within. Somebody has arranged them at different heights to make it look as if they’re going fast. The effect is unconvincing.

“Maybe it introduces him,” says Tananarive. “Via penetration?”

“Or it’s a guide to rooting him out–”

“I don’t like what that implies about me!”

From the lower right quadrant of eight glossy covers, Jonathan Frakes beams up.

The little bat clings to the booster tank until just before they crack atmosphere, then pries its claws free and drops. It’s too thin up here for wings, and his joints barely respond anyway; he just falls, with a startling terminal velocity, until his half-frozen elbows can open enough to send him into the corkscrew of a broken dive.

Buzz breaks the link and pulls off his helmet. “That was so better than skydiving,” he gasps.

“What is it like to be a bat?” asks his operator, shutting down.

“Kickass!” says Buzz, as a wobbly vespertilionid bonks into the window.

“And anyway,” she says, “I’m only fourteen, and more anyway, I already have a–a suitor, if you must know.”

It would be different if he were threatening her somehow: she’d know how to deal with that. But instinct tells her that fists are not the proper tools for this situation. Proserpina, exasperated, wishes she knew how to counterpunch a grin that makes her back tingle.

“So which is it,” Elijah says, “you’re too young to pursue, or already caught?”

“Neither,” she finds herself whispering.

Her overall impression of kissing is that it is sort of wet, and rather defuses everything.