. . .

“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.

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