Chapter 6: Into the Fire
Because of the security system, the teleporter couldn’t carry Ivy and Bean all the way to Pink’s base in the space elevator’s counterweight. Instead, it deposited them in her secondary headquarters at geostationary orbit. There, in the midst of the central control room, with the Earth filling the vast window before them, they floated, weightless. The elevator’s black nanocarbon ribbon stretched away to the globe and disappeared into the swirling white foam of the thunderstorm raging below. Occasionally, flashes of lightning were visible in the clouds.
Bean held Ivy in her arms while Ivy sobbed.
They were both soaked from the rain. Water danced around them in the air, round and clear like marbles. Bean always thought weightless liquids looked like Jell-O.
Nestled against Bean’s chest, Ivy’s frizzy red hair bounced and waved, occasionally casting off more of the round globs of water. In one hand, Ivy clutched half of the ruined leather case of her grimoire. Its rescued parchment pages, most of them smeared and unreadable, swirled around in the air, blown hither and thither by the stations’ ventilation system.
“I’ll never be a real witch now,” Ivy cried. Tears poured from her eyes and floated away. “That Fancy Nancy is awful!”
“She’s a dame,” muttered Bean as her sopping fedora floated past her eyes. “You just can’t trust dames. Al Seven knows.”
Ivy looked into Bean’s eyes, her lip quivering, and then again buried her face in Bean’s chest.
Bean clumsily patted her shoulders. “Maybe …”
She didn’t finish.
“What is it?” Ivy asked.
“Nothing.”
“You can’t say nothing,” said Ivy as she tugged on Bean’s T-shirt. “We have to tell each other our secrets, remember? We made a blood oath.”
Bean shrugged. “It was more like a spit oath, really.”
“It was an oath of liquids,” said Ivy quietly, her voice solemn, “and those are very powerful.”
“Maybe,” said Bean, “it isn’t really right for us to work for Pink Vicious. It feels kind of bad.”
“But we are bad, remember? We tried to be good, but it didn’t work.”
“Maybe we were doing it wrong,” said Bean as she wrapped her arms tightly around Ivy’s waist. Their clothes were soaking wet from the rain, and it was rather uncomfortable, but Bean didn’t let go. “We were trying to be good because we wanted birds to land on our fingers and wolves to come out of the forest to lick our feet, like in that painting, but maybe it’s not enough to want to be good. Maybe you have to want to be good for a good reason.”
“But I want to be bad,” said Ivy. “I want to be a witch, and I’m pretty sure that’s bad. Pink Vicious is a witch, and she’s bad.”
“I want to be Al Seven,” said Bean, “and he’s bad.”
“See? We have to be bad. We can’t help it.”
“What about Fancy Nancy? Is she bad?”
Ivy paused for a moment and turned her eyes to the Earth. Bean followed her gaze to see the black shadow of night creeping across the clouds over the Congo. “She broke my book,” Ivy whispered.
Bean nodded. “That is pretty bad.”
“That’s awful!”
Bean set to thinking. She wished she had another ball of lowfat Belladoona cheese in a just-for-you serving size. Playing with the wax helped her think. Besides that, fighting in the jungle had made her hungry, so she might even eat the cheese this time.
“But Fancy Nancy has magic, doesn’t she?” Bean asked.
Ivy rubbed her red and puffy eyes. She frowned. “She’s … she’s a magical girl. I’m not sure that’s quite the same thing—”
“It’s close enough,” Bean replied. “And since she has magic, maybe you can take it.”
Ivy twisted her mouth, looking doubtful. “Some witches have their magic naturally, like Pink Vicious, but a lot of them have to train …”
“Well, I bet it’s the same for magical girls,” said Bean. “She had her hand in her pocket when we first saw her, and she said something about magic. She has something there, and I bet it’s where she gets her power. Since she broke your book, we’ll take whatever she’s got to replace it. Fair’s fair.”
Ivy gazed at Bean, mouth open, for half a minute. But then she nodded slowly. “Fair’s fair,” Ivy repeated. She rested a cheek on Bean’s shoulder and closed her eyes. “Yes … fair’s fair …”
Nancy and the others found a scree slope by means of which they could pick their way down to the clearing below. After a lot of scrabbling over slippery rock, a lot of falling, and a lot of bruises, they at last discovered a cave near the base of the cliff where they could wait out the storm. It was a hollow in the sandstone, probably carved over a million years by seeping water. It was almost thirty feet deep, spacious and dusty but mostly clean aside from a faint, fetid smell suggesting it had at one time been home to animals that had since moved on.
Evening came on and the clouds overhead turned from gray to black. They watched the elephants slowly march, as if in some somber procession, past the cave’s mouth. Junie B., especially, gazed at them with rapturous attention, her mouth hanging open.
“I have an elephant,” she said quietly. “Philip Johnny Bob. I will have to tell him I saw some of his friends, I think.” She rocked back and forth for a moment before she added, “But Philip Johnny Bob is small. His friends here could stomple us, probably.”
Cam was still out. She breathed shallowly but steadily. Nancy laid a hand on her forehead. It was hot.
Perhaps because of the rain, the air cooled surprisingly quickly once the sun set, and the kids began to shiver in their sopping clothes.
“We need a fire,” Nancy murmured as she hugged her knees to her chest.
“We’re not going to get one of those,” Judy replied from the cave’s back end as her teeth chattered. “No matches, and everything’s wet.”
Amelia, sitting cross-legged near the cave’s mouth, blinked a couple of times and tapped her chin. After a minute, she stood and walked out of the cave. Nancy began wearily climbing to her feet to follow, but Finally gave her a solemn look and shook her head.
Nancy sat back down.
Over the next hour, Amelia returned three times, first with bundles of sticks, and lastly with tufts of dry grass she’d plucked from beneath overhanging rocks. She sat cross-legged in the center of the cave, pulled a wicked-looking fighting knife out of her sleeve, and began whittling the wet bark off the branches. Once she finished, she split open the smaller sticks. After almost another hour, when it was nearly pitch dark, she had built up a cone-shaped pile of passably dry wood. Then she piled tufts of grass onto the flat side of a split branch, stuck a stick in the midst of it, and began spinning the stick back and forth in her hands.
Judy, who had her face against her knees, looked up and muttered, “No way she’ll make that work.” Her dark ring throbbed.
Minutes passed. Crickets, almost deafeningly loud, chirruped outside the cave. Inside, Amelia’s hands moved back and forth, back and forth, with a soft whooshing sound. At long last, a small wisp of smoke, almost impossible to see, rose from the grass. Amelia blew on it gently, and it glowed orange.
Judy’s eyebrows slowly rose as the first flame licked up from the tinder, and her ring slowly lightened. Amelia added twigs, and a flame appeared. She kept blowing and feeding, blowing and feeding, and the fire grew. The first of the thin sticks caught and began to crackle.
“Wowee wow wow,” Junie B. whispered.
Finally nodded and said quietly with a note of pride, “Amelia Bedelia has trouble understanding abstractions, but she will always do exactly what you tell her to. If you say you want fire, she’ll get you fire—one way or another.”
Mouse grumbled incoherently and licked her paw.
Nancy crawled forward on her knees and held her hands out over the dancing flames. She sighed as the chill on the air began to fade. Amelia added a branch as thick as her wrist and smiled, clearly pleased. The firelight danced in her pale eyes. Smoke tumbled against the cave’s roof and billowed out into the night.
Judy nodded, and her glowing ring turned a pleasant sky blue. “Ahhh, that is nice, for real and absolute positive … last one out of her wet clothes is an aardwolf!” With that, she dropped her mud-streaked lab coat and then peeled off her lettered T-shirt and tiger-striped pajama pants. Down to a pair of boxers decorated with cartoon frogs, she laid her clothes out near the fire, threw herself down against a smooth rock, and lazily stretched her arms over her head.
Amelia followed suit, untying her apron and climbing out of her black dress. She fed another branch to the crackling fire and flopped down next to Judy in nothing but a tank-top and a pair of bicycle shorts. Junie B. scrambled out of her skirt and blouse and leggings and frumpy cardigan, but wasn’t content to sit with the others in her elephant-themed Underoos. Instead, she danced around near the cave mouth, whooping and hollering, until Nancy told her to sit down.
Nancy wasn’t keen on undressing in front of the others, but even as she crouched near the fire, she felt chilled—except in a few spots where the flames heated her wet clothes enough to make them painful. Figuring she’d best get everything dry, she grit her teeth, turned her back on everyone else, and meticulously removed first her mud-caked sneakers, then her sopping leg warmers, and then her socks, her tutu, her leggings, her ruined straw hat, her pearls, her shawl, and her boa. As Nancy carefully laid out these items in rows, Judy began cackling. The more things Nancy took off, the louder the laughter got.
Finally down to panties and an undershirt, Nancy rounded on her, teeth clenched. “Something funny, Judy?”
Judy slapped her pale knee and guffawed. “Just how much were you wearing? We’re in the rainforest, and you’re dressed for Antarctica!”
Nancy’s face heated up. Crossing her arms, she sat apart from the others and pouted. The gravel of the cave floor bit uncomfortably into her feet: she didn’t go barefoot often, as she liked to wear fancy shoes outdoors and fuzzy slippers in the house.
But she didn’t pout for long. It crossed her mind that they should probably dry out Cam’s clothes as well. She crawled to Cam, unlaced her sneakers, pulled them off, and squeezed as much water out of them as she could. She yanked the rubber bands off the cuffs of Cam’s jeans. The jeans were completely soaked and left blue stains on Nancy’s hands.
She struggled to peel off Cam’s pants, but with much tugging and grunting, finally managed it. She wrung them out as well as she could before laying them with the other clothes around the fire. When she began pulling off Cam’s shirt, she was first embarrassed and then jealous to discover that Cam was wearing a bra.
Cam was also, Nancy saw, enormously freckled. Nancy had freckles, too, of course, yet hers were light and fairly sparse. But they covered Cam from head to toe, clustering particularly thickly on her shoulders, forearms, and cheeks, suggesting a lot of time spent in the sun. Furthering that impression was her wiry, well-muscled build, which indicated that she played sports. Even more impressive than that, however, were the unmistakable signs of developing womanhood.
Once again, Nancy was conscious of her own round belly and chubby thighs. She hunched down as much as she could.
Cam still breathed steadily. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. Her chest moved slowly up and down. Unsure of what else to do, Nancy clasped Cam’s right hand in her own. Her face heated again when she remembered that she’d awakened that morning to find Judy doing the same thing.
The cave grew pleasantly warm, but then grew unpleasantly hot. Fresh sweat trickled down Nancy’s temple, and her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten since that morning—none of them had. For several minutes, she sat there, simply holding Cam’s hand until Cam finally stirred. She rolled her head to one side and groaned softly.
Cam whispered, “Eric …”
Nancy’s face heated up again.
At last, Cam opened her eyes and blinked a few times as the orange firelight cast flickering shadows across her face. Then she raised her head and groggily looked down at Nancy’s hand in her own.
She dropped her head back to the gravel and chuckled quietly.
“You’re awake,” Nancy said.
“How do you feel?” Finally asked, walking to Cam and snuffling gently against her hair.
“My chest hurts,” Cam rasped. “And I’m thirsty.”
Wordlessly, Amelia rose again and slipped out. A minute later, she returned with a deep, pitcher-like leaf full of rainwater. Cam struggled up onto her elbows, took it with a small nod of thanks, and drank.
Finally glanced toward Mouse, who was still licking her paw. “We’ll need to find food soon. The kids can’t go without replenishing their energy, not if the nanoprobes are going to keep hardening their tissues.”
A trickle of water ran down Cam’s cheek. She brushed it away and lowered the leaf. “While we were on the train, I memorized a lot of information about edible plants. Once it’s light, we can forage.”
“We don’t have that kind of time,” said Mouse.
Finally grunted. “We might not have a choice. We have to eat.”
Cam sat up cross-legged. Slipping her hand from Nancy’s grasp, she pressed her fingers to her temples. Her brow crumpled.
“Does your head hurt?” Nancy asked.
“It’s hurt since this started,” Cam replied. “It’s never really stopped.”
She paused for a moment. “Click,” she said. Then she closed her eyes and again said, “Click.”
Her shoulders relaxed, and she sighed deeply.
Nancy began to ask another question, but stopped herself. Nonetheless, a small sound escaped her lips.
Cam glanced at her and offered a tight smile. “My memory’s still working. I guess … I guess I worry sometimes that I might lose it.”
Judy snorted loudly and flopped back against her rock, grumbling. Her glowing ring changed from blue to green.
Cam laughed quietly.
Nancy twisted up her mouth. “What’s the matter, Judy?”
“Nothing,” Judy replied as she crossed her arms. Her voice was sharp.
Cam laughed again. “Ask her what WBMS stands for, Nancy.”
Judy shot to her feet. “Shut up, Cam!”
Nancy looked back and forth between them, confused.
“World’s Best Mystery Solver,” Cam said. “That’s how she introduced herself to me. I said, great, and I thought we could talk about solving mysteries, so I told her I’d solved thirty-three of them and have a photographic memory. Ever since then, she’s been mad at me.”
Judy, a deep scowl on her face, lowered herself back to the ground. “You don’t have to brag about it all the time!”
“I wasn’t bragging, Judy. It’s just a fact. I thought we could share notes. I didn’t think it was a competition.”
Judy hunched her shoulders and looked away. “If I had a memory like that, I coulda solved a hundred or more. It’s not fair—”
“Maybe you could, Judy. It’s just something I was born with. It’s nothing to be proud of.”
Judy ducked her head. “Roar,” she muttered.
To change the subject, Nancy cleared her throat softly and asked, “Who’s Eric?”
She started when Junie B. fell on her back, kicked her legs, and burst into giggles. Judy rolled her eyes.
“Eeeeriiic!” cooed Junie B. as she rolled back and forth on the ground with her arms around her shoulders. “Oh, Eeeeriiic!” She made loud kissing noises.
In spite of herself, Nancy giggled.
Cam carefully lay back down and laughed quietly. “Where’d you hear that name?”
“You said it in your sleep,” Nancy replied.
Cam closed her eyes and smiled—but it was a small, melancholy smile. “He’s a friend,” she said. “A very good friend. He always helps me solve mysteries.” Then, with her eyes still closed, she whispered, “Click.” A moment passed, and she added, “At least I can see him anytime I want to.”
A lump formed in Nancy’s throat. She shifted her feet and fidgeted. She knew Cam was only in fifth grade, but still, she looked and sounded so mature—
“Is he,” she asked, rocking back and forth and feeling dizzy, “your, um … your buh-buh-buh—?”
“Boyfriend?” Cam said, her voice tinged with amusement.
Nancy swallowed.
Cam laughed silently for a moment before she said, “No. I’ve known him all my life. We’ve always been friends—and I wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of that.”
Remembering her dream from that morning, Nancy blurted, “Have you ever held his hand?”
She clapped her own hands over her mouth.
Cam gave her an unreadable glance before saying, “I have to close my eyes to use my memory. Sometimes we have to keep moving while I’m doing it—so he leads me by the hand.”
Clearing her throat, Nancy interlaced her fingers and stared down at them. “What’s it like?”
Cam merely shrugged.
Judy made an exaggerated show of yawning. “Is this gonna turn into an LBS? A long boring story? Why are we talkin’ about boyfriends? Who cares?”
Taking Cam’s hand again and squeezing it, Nancy scowled at Judy. “Don’t you like romance—?”
Judy made a loud raspberry. “Guh-ross! No way, José! Elizabeth Blackwell, first woman doctor, didn’t need a boyfriend, and neither does Judy Moody.”
Cam slid her hand out of Nancy’s grasp and put it behind her own head. “You mentioned someone to me, Judy … what was his name? Frank?”
Judy jumped up. “Just cuz he sent me five Valentines in first grade—!”
Cam laughed. Rolling back and forth, Junie B. made more kissing noises and cried, “Ooh, Fraaaaank!”
Judy’s face turned red.
“Ooh la la,” said Nancy, rising to her knees and clasping her hands together. “Oh, Judy, that’s wonderful! Five Valentines! He worships you from afar!”
Making a growling noise in her throat, Judy lowered herself back to the ground. “Yeah, well, sometimes I wish he’d worship me from farther.”
Cam yawned and stretched. “Well, Junie B. probably has us all beat in the boyfriend department, right?”
Junie B. sat up and waved a hand through the air. “That was in kindergarten, though. Boyfriends are for babies, I think.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend anymore?” asked Nancy.
Junie B. counted off on her fingers. “Herb is my bestest friend. And Lenny is my second bestest friend. And José is my third best, probably—”
“That’s three boyfriends,” said Amelia.
“Best friends,” said Junie B. “Best friends are not boyfriends, except maybe sometimes.”
Amelia rubbed her chin and scowled. “So they’re not boys? Lenny is a weird name for a girl, isn’t it?”
Finally sighed.
“Boyfriends,” Judy muttered. “Who cares about boyfriends? What got this started?” She stared straight at Nancy. “You. You’re such a fancy-nancy girly girl—”
Nancy crossed her arms and scowled.
“That’s right,” said Cam, groaning softly as she sat up. “Nancy got us all talking about boys, but she still hasn’t spilled the beans—”
Amelia leapt to her feet. “Don’t spill them! If you have beans, we should eat them! I’m hungry!”
Mouse grinned smugly at Finally, and Finally growled in reply.
Nancy’s face warmed again. Suddenly, the heat from the fire was oppressive. She tugged on her undershirt. “Well, I mean, I don’t … I only …”
“You seemed awfully interested in boys all of a sudden,” said Cam, the yellow firelight flickering in her ice-blue eyes.
Nancy swallowed loudly.
She loved love. She always had. She loved stories of princes and princesses who fought against all odds to live happily ever after. She loved stories of tragic lovers who defied their families or the rules of class. She had many times, in elaborate ceremonies, married her sister JoJo to Bree’s brother Freddy in the backyard. Once, with Bree’s help, she had even tried to convince her guitar teacher to fall in love with her babysitter, though that hadn’t worked out.
Nancy loved love, but she had always thought of it as something for other people. Still, the dream about Lionel from that morning had been running through her head all day.
If Nancy were to have a boyfriend, Lionel might be an obvious choice. They were close friends. He always made her laugh. She wished she could pet his curly blond hair, though she had never got up the courage to do so. The two of them had been in second grade together, and Lionel had seemed so shy—until their teacher, Miss Glass, made them do a talent show act together. Nancy had gone over to Lionel’s house, which was big and fancy, almost like a mansion. He showed her his room, which was lion-themed, and he put on a lion mask and chased her. They scampered all over the house, giggling. It was simple roughhousing, but it was especially fun for a reason Nancy at the time couldn’t describe or understand—the particular pleasure that came from being chased by a boy.
From that moment forward, Lionel was no longer shy. He became the class clown, always cracking jokes, always showing off, always creating strange things for arts and crafts—like his crown that looked like bloody sharks’ teeth.
Of course, if not Lionel, there was Robert. Nancy had been taken with Robert when she first learned he was from Paris—though she later discovered that it was Paris, Texas, rather than Paris, France. Still, Robert was nice. And he could throw a rope like a real cowboy. And he was a good athlete, too: he was star of the boys’ soccer team, whereas Lionel was the worst player.
Nancy fidgeted uncomfortably as Cam continued to fix her with cold eyes and a sly grin. “Well, Nancy? We’re waiting.”
Nancy cleared her throat. “I don’t have … I mean—”
Cam needled. “But do you have a boy you like?”
Nancy shifted and laced her fingers together. “I mean …”
She suddenly had both Lionel and Robert in her head, and discovered that she couldn’t say which one she liked better. And she didn’t want to say anyway.
“I … like him,” she stammered, “but, I mean, I don’t like like him—”
Cam cut her off with a fresh laugh.
“Names,” said Judy, impatiently slapping a foot against the gravel. “We had to name names, so you have to name names.”
Nancy was sure her face must be beat-red. She clenched her teeth and her fists, squeezed her eyes shut, and finally said quickly, “Lionel.”
“Oooooh, Lionel!” cried Junie B., once again rolling on the ground and kissing the air.
Kissing? Nancy thought of Lionel again and imagined …
No, she couldn’t picture that. Not in the slightest.
Finally’s ears perked up. She raised her head, and her nose quivered. “Everyone quiet,” she hissed.
Immediately, the kids hunkered down. The fire crackled, making their shadows dance on the walls. The crickets echoed loudly and rhythmically outside.
Finally padded to the cave entrance, wet nose in the air. Mouse hid behind Judy.
“Maybe making the fire wasn’t wise,” Mouse mumbled.
“What is it?” Nancy whispered, crawling on hands and knees toward Finally. “Is it those two girls again—?”
Finally shook her head, but froze when a loud voice came from the darkness outside—a voice speaking rapidly and unintelligibly with an accent Nancy didn’t recognize. Instinctively, she skittered toward the back of the cave, barely missing the fire and wincing when the gravel bit into her knees.
Most of the other kids, and Mouse, crowded to the back as well and hunkered together, bellies heaving and beads of sweat dripping down their faces. Cam, however, rose slowly to her feet, clenched her right fist, and stood as tall as she could behind the fire, staring toward the cave’s black mouth. Finally crouched low and growled, as if ready to pounce.
The voice came again—louder, angrier, more insistent. It was a man’s voice, and after days of hearing nothing but girls and women, it sounded horribly deep and powerful.
Something tugged at Nancy’s brain. She couldn’t understand what the voice was saying, but some of the sounds it made—
“French!” she gasped. “He’s speaking French!”
“You know French?” Judy asked.
“Um … a little.”
Judy threw up her hands. “Why is someone speaking French in Africa?”
Cam turned her face from the cave entrance long enough to cast an incredulous glance over her shoulder.
A man stepped into the firelight. He tall and thin, but had firm, stringy muscle showing under his ebony skin. He wore loose, mottled green fatigues, open at the throat, and his bushy black hair, shaved at the sides, stood up on his head in a high-and-tight. Against his shoulder, he held a rifle pointed into the cave; Nancy wasn’t sure, but she’d once walked into the room while her father was watching a movie about Vietnam, and the rifle looked familiar—an AK-47, probably. The man held the gun on Finally, but had his large, round eyes on Cam. The yellow firelight flickered from his ivory eyeballs, and he pulled back heavy lips to reveal equally bright teeth.
While the other kids cowered, Cam, in nothing but her underwear, raised her chin, flexed her small hands, and held her ground.
Hand shaking, Judy slowly raised her ring, which throbbed yellow, but Nancy grabbed her hand and forced it back down.
Nancy’s mouth was dry. She quickly ran her tongue over her lips and, voice quaking, croaked, “Um … bonjour! Comment-allez vous aujourd’hui?”
Judy glared at her.
Nancy swayed on her feet. “Voulez-vous de beurre?”
“Seriously?” said Judy.
“Sorry, but that’s all I know!”
Another man stepped in out of the shadows. Shorter and more heavyset, with his fatigues hanging open almost to his waist to show his round, glossy belly, he packed an RPG launcher over his shoulders. At his side was a skinny, hungry-looking boy with prominent cheekbones and bloodshot eyes, probably Cam’s age, with an AK of his own.
“Oh no,” Mouse whispered. “They’re guerrillas.”
“No they’re not, they’re people,” said Amelia, scratching her head. “Calling them gorillas is mean.” She tapped her chin for a moment and added, “Though I like gorillas.”
“Mouse,” Nancy whispered, “are we bulletproof?”
Mouse scratched briefly at her ear. “Ah, well, that’s a good question, Nancy … um, no. I mean, not really.”
“What’s the point of having superpowers if we’re not bulletproof?” hissed Judy through clenched teeth.
The man who’d stepped in first pointed his chin at Cam and spoke again.
This time, his voice sounded different. The accent was still heavy, but now the words almost made sense. It took Nancy’s mind a moment to piece the sounds together, but then she recognized English: Who are you? What are you doing here?
Cam spoke, and her voice was loud enough to make Nancy jump. “Let these girls go,” she said, waving a hand toward the back of the cave. Her shoulders trembled. “They’re just children. I’m … I’m probably closer to what you’re looking for, right? You don’t need them. Just let them go.”
As if for emphasis, she awkwardly twirled a strand of hair around one finger.
Cam’s words touched something in the back of Nancy’s mind. She could’t understand what Cam was saying, but, nonetheless, something nameless in her gut knew Cam was saying terrible words—and it filled her with dread. “Cam,” said Nancy, “what are you doing?”
“Quiet, Nancy.”
Finally growled again. The tall, thin man flicked his eyes toward the dog and slid his finger toward the rifle’s trigger.
“Finally, just back up,” Cam said. “Let them go,” she said again, loudly. “They don’t interest you. Only I do. So just let them go.”
The young boy had his eyes fixed on Cam. His face was impassive, his heavy-lidded eyes dull, his thick lips pressed firmly together. He hardly blinked as the flickering fire reflected in his eyes. But though he looked impassive, his breathing was shallow, ragged. He gave Nancy the distinct impression of a rabid dog about to pounce.
The thick man with the rocket launcher now spoke, also in heavily accented English. “Look at their hair,” he said with a deep, gravelly voice. “Five of them, naked around a fire, in a cave—with two familiars. They are witches. I say we kill them.”
The tall man grinned, showing his bright white teeth again. “Calm down, Manda. They are children.”
“Exactly, Eshele,” said Manda, spitting on the ground. “Is it not obvious? They work for the Pink One.”
“The Pink One?” said Nancy, her heart racing. “You mean Pink Vicious?”
Now Eshele pointed his rifle at her, and she let out a squeak before clapping her hands over her mouth. “Are you her servants?”
Cam’s shoulders lowered slightly as she lost some of her tension. “We’re trying to fight Pink Vicious,” she said. “We had a run-in with two of her … her witches.” She waved a hand toward Junie B. “One of us is injured. Do you have medicine?”
Manda shook his head. “Do not trust them, Eshele.”
Eshele grunted. “Let us take them to the Toothmonger. She will know what to do with them.”
Manda made a growling noise. He glanced at the boy, who still had his eyes fixed on Cam, and cuffed him on the ear. The boy replied with a muffled howl and then scampered out of the cave.
Manda pointed his chin toward Nancy. “All of you, you will come with us. Get dressed first. And do not try any of your black magic, or we will kill you.”
Nancy swallowed. With knees shaking, she hunched her shoulders, crossed her arms over herself, walked to her discarded clothes, and began to fumble her way into them.
She didn’t know what a Toothmonger was, but she was sure it couldn’t be anything nice.
