. . .
Jane shakes Tom.
“Death ray!” she says. “Into the house!”
She attempts to disentangle herself from Tom. Tom attempts to disentangle himself from her. They attempt to disentangle themselves from one another.
. . .
“There goes the roof,” sighs Linus.
He had always liked the library roof. He stands there, disconsolately, in the rain. The wall behind him begins gently to weep blood.
“Is that being melancholy or sanguine?” Jane asks, with interest.
“Jane,” says Tom.
“Well, I was going to criticize him for being melancholy at a time like this,” says Jane. “But now I’m not sure!”
“I am going to be choleric!” says Tom. “She’s a space princess assassin! She’s trained in calculating complex trajectories! She’s going to figure out the correct angles any second now, jump up here, and slaughter the lot of us!”
“Unless,” Jane observes, “we slam the doors in her face right as she jumps.”
“Brilliant!” says Tom. “That’s thinking like a Doom Team Auxiliary!”
Jane makes a horrible face at him for reasons Tom cannot comprehend. Seventy seconds later they hear Maria’s heel jets firing.
“Now!” says Tom.
Tom and Jane and Linus and Edmund slam the balcony doors in Maria’s face. She smashes into the clear plastic with enough force to knock the children back.
Maria and Mouser look startled and flat. Tom and Jane and Linus and Edmund look winded. But the children recover first.
“Whoop!” says Linus. He pulls open the doors. He grabs the cat. He slams the doors again.
Maria slides down and falls onto the ground below.
“You brats!” she shouts after them, as they scamper out of the library. “The Fan Hoeng will destroy you all!”
“She’s really getting into this assassination thing,” says Linus, nervously.
“That’s blood showing, that’s what that is,” Edmund says.
“. . . Sorry,” the antichrist says.
. . .
They tumble one after another into Tom’s bedroom. They use science devices to set up a hasty perimeter. They unleash the drones. They tie a string with some pots and pans to the door.
They set Mouser down on the bed.
The cat looks at them. Then the cat begins to clean his foot. Then he looks at them again.
Mouser mews.
Tom chews on his lip. “We’re going to have to get a whisker,” he says.
Mouser scurries desperately for cover, almost as if he understands. Jane dives. Jane grabs him by the foot. Mouser struggles wildly. She lets go of the foot because she’s afraid of breaking Mouser’s leg but this only enhances Mouser’s determination to escape.
Tom seizes the cat.
Jane tries to get at a whisker.
“Come on, Mouser,” says Edmund. He attempts to glamour the cat with his wolf-eyes but it only makes the cat wiggle harder to get away.
“It’s just one whisker,” says Tom. “You can spare one whisker!”
Jane hesitates. She is struck by a sudden moral conundrum.
“Is it really right to maim a cat just so the rest of us can live?”
“We can think about ethics later!” Tom delays. “Right now, there’s a smoking gun!”
. . .
“It’s all right,” says Linus.
There is a black dog standing near the entrance of the room. Its leg is tangled in the string. If it moved it would rattle the pots and pans. But it does not move. It simply stands there. It pants. It looks at Mouser.
Mouser goes very still.
Linus walks forward. He takes hold of the whisker. There is a momentary shiver in the room. Then it is plucked.
Jane blinks. The dog is gone.
. . .
“Let’s get mittens,” says Tom.
He strides dramatically to his science wardrobe. He flings it open. He shoves the coats aside and opens the Marvelous Mittens Box.
Then he stares.
“Someone’s been —”
“They’ve ransacked our wardrobe,” Linus declares.
“Ridiculous,” says Tom. He shakes his head. He shakes his head again. “Impossible. Nobody would . . . who would . . . they’re mittens. Nobody has ever stolen mittens.”
“Nobody,” says Jane, “but an awful lovable space princess assassin nanny standing between the Doom Team and a Taoist Immortality Elixir — that’s who!”
“No!” cries Tom.
“But what if it is cold out?” asks Linus. He cannot quite accept it.
“Use balefire,” grumbles Tom.
“I cannot warm my hands with balefire!” says Linus. He turns away.
He sulks.
“Nobody understands the life of an antichrist.”
“You’re fracturing!” says Jane. She bumps Tom and Linus on the back. “The Doom Team has to stick together!”
Tom sighs. He looks down. He looks at Linus.
Linus gives him a half-smile.
Tom grips Linus’ hand for a moment. Then he salutes. Edmund flips them a forehead twiddle. Mouser mews.
Jane watches for a moment, then she shrugs.
“Come on!” she says. “Let’s hunt those kettles and mittens down.”
. . .
“Let’s hunt those kettles and mittens down.”
“And the packages!” Linus adds.
“Yes,” says Tom thoughtfully. “Brown paper packages, tied with a string — opium, maybe?”
“That is not one of Maria’s favorite things,” Jane lectures sternly.
“I’m just saying!”
“It’s probably alchemical stuff,” Jane says. “Mercury and whatnot.”
“Oh, God,” says Tom. “(Sorry, Linus.) I don’t want to drink mercury!”
“It’ll put hair on your chest,” Edmund says.
Tom snorts.
The Doom Team sneaks out through the halls. They skulk through the house. It is mysteriously empty. Finally they approach the kitchen.
The entire house supply of kettles and mittens sits in a pile in the middle of the kitchen.
Maria slouches against the wall. Her gunbrella is by her side.
. . .
“I didn’t want to kill you at first,” Maria says. “Isn’t that funny? It took having to hunt down and slaughter four kids that I’ve practically raised up from nothing —”
“It’s been three months,” Tom says.
“— to realize that it’s not my targets that I’ve been fighting. It’s been me, all along. It’s been that part of me that doesn’t want to be an assassin, that just wants to be an ordinary space princess and not gun down a series of lovable scamps.”
Jane sneaks up. She pats Maria’s arm. “I hear you,” she says. She sneaks back away.
“But,” says Maria, after a momentary pause, “once I knew that — once I knew that the only person I was really fighting was myself — I was able to move beyond it. I think. So you’re going to come in here, because you have to. It’s your one . . . slim . . . chance. And then I’m going to charge up my space gun and I’m going to shoot you, and you’re going to be dead, and I will have a 4/27 assassination success rate at last.”
. . .
Tom pushes Linus. Linus staggers forward into the field of fire.
Maria picks up the gun. She points it at him. It begins charging.
Linus looks helplessly at Tom.
“Go,” Tom says.
“Go?”
Tom rolls his eyes.
“Oh,” says Linus. He blinks. He shakes his head once to clear it. “Oh. Right.”
He walks to the pile of kettles and mittens.
He walks out in front of the space gun.
He isn’t suave yet, for clarity. He isn’t confident yet, isn’t artistic (horribly or otherwise) yet; he isn’t Mr. Enemy yet at all.
He isn’t even Lethal.
He’s just an ordinary boy.
“How long,” says Tom. The gun veers to point his way. Tom sweats. “How long does it take for that thing to charge?”
“Seventy-five seconds,” says Maria.
“Really?”
“It’s a weakness,” says Maria. She gestures vaguely at the line of devastation that an earlier shot left through Britain. “There are corresponding advantages. Of course I have needle darts and kicking people to death, too, but that wouldn’t hardly be sporting.”
Linus searches through the pile. He finds his favorite pair of mittens. He puts them on.
“Linus!” says Tom.
Mr. Enemy wouldn’t have done that.
. . .
Linus blinks at Tom for a full two seconds. Then a horrified blush spreads across his face as he realizes his error. He head-desks the pile of mittens and kettles. This isn’t really a head-desking but there is no standard English word for dramatically banging your head into a pile of warm woolen mittens and bright copper kettles. There is a German word, of course, drastisch-senken-sieden-koptin-einen-haufen-warmenwollen-faustlinge-undhelle-kupfer-kesseln-expialadocien . . . but that isn’t immediately helpful when you’re dealing with nannies hailing from space.
“That is so embarrassing,” says Linus. Then he frowns. “Hey.”
He straightens. He rubs at the polish on one of the bright copper kettles. The copper smears away revealing only the dark black of a Fan Hoeng kettle-soul below.
“Fake kettles,” says Linus. It is almost a relief to him. It distracts him from his error. Now he gets to be cool.
He gives Maria his best cool, awesome antichrist glare.
“Very cunning,” the antichrist says.
. . .
Maria’s gun whines. It is getting ready to fire. Each second that passes brings the inevitable doom of the Doom Team and its auxiliaries . . .
Closer!
. . .
Linus scans the room. There is a black dog standing by the pot cupboard. It pants. Linus walks over to the pot cupboard. He opens it. He doesn’t bother hurrying.
Jane blinks again. The black dog is gone.
The gun chimes.
. . .
“Let’s put an end to all this nonchalance,” cries Maria, in a gale of laughter. Of claughter. Of laughriegaling!
It is a wicked sound is what it is.
She points the gun right at Linus. She fires. She shoots a ray of pure death. It hits Linus full-on. Circular ripples of fading death pass through the room.
There is a silence.
Linus smirks at her. He looks somber. He smombers. He does not bother looking harmed.
Behind him in the pot cupboard there are pristine bright copper kettles. He takes one down. He puts it under his arm.
The shelves behind him are dead and yet they bleed.
“I’m not being nonchalant,” Linus says. He gives her a smile. Everyone has forgotten about his putting on the mittens. He is confident of this. “It’s just, you can’t hurt me, Maria. You’re just a space princess assassin and I’m . . . well . . . I’m going to be the Devil’s skin.”
Maria opens and closes her mouth with a prim little click.
“You really are,” she says. “Aren’t you.”
“No,” says Jane. She glares at Linus.
Linus gives her a little shrug.
. . .
“I don’t know why I’d deny it,” Linus says. He glares right at Maria. “Fine. Is that what it takes to scare you? I’m wickedness itself, you b—. I’m evil. I’m the doom of your little world. I am Linus Friedman Evans, herald of the end, so give me your best shot, you filthy alien nanny —”
He stands up straighter. He glares at her. He turns his head very far to the left and then very far to the right because he’s never actually learned how to spin it all the way around no matter how intimidating it would, under the circumstances, be.
“But don’t you dare lay a single finger on my friends.”
“Oi!” says Jane.
She is glaring at Linus. Edmund is glaring at Linus. But it’s Tom who acts.
Tom has walked out into the room. He is stomping right past Maria. He shoves the gunbrella barrel out of the way as he walks past, because he remembers that it has a two-shot charge. He stands right in front of Linus.
He looks his little brother in the eyes for a moment. He takes two fistfuls of Linus’ collar.
“You never,” says Tom. “You don’t ever, you little snot.”
“What?” Linus says.
Then Tom lets go.
“You be Linus.”
“. . . oh,” says Linus.
He deflates.
. . .
Tom turns on Maria.
“He doesn’t have to be,” Tom says. His eyes are intense. “He doesn’t have to be evil. He doesn’t have to be the Devil’s skin. He can just be him, no matter what you or he or anybody else says. So you shut up with your stupid death rays that don’t do anything and your ‘oh, you really are, aren’t you nee nee nee’ and you leave my little brother alone.”
Maria shrugs.
“I just wanted to know if I should set this thing to ‘holy,’” she says, mildly; but there’s two shots in a charge, and Tom’s standing right there, so she fires.
“Also,” says Tom, calmly, “As a general life lesson, never let a boy adventurer walk right past you and touch your gun. That’s just not cricket!”
. . .
Billows of smoke fill the kitchen.
Tom takes Linus’ arm. He drags him towards the door.
“But,” says Linus. “But. But. She can set it to holy. She can kill me. I could die.”
“No,” says Tom.
They stagger through the smoking ruins. They meet up with Jane and Edmund. Edmund is swallowing the smoke, gulping it down into his wolf-stomach, to keep a little space clear for them to breathe.
“We’ve got to get to Amelia’s study,” hisses Jane.
“Got it,” Tom says.
“But I could die,” says Linus. “I mean, wouldn’t that bite the Devil’s butt?”
“There’s nothing good about biting the Devil’s butt,” says Tom, as Peter, were he there, would almost certainly confirm.
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