Paying the Piper

Seven: Mission Accomplished...or Something

Quentin knew the time had come. He'd given Faye a full week to conveniently change schools again. And in lieu of that working, he'd warned the others to avoid Faye.

But it didn't seem to matter. Despite all his warnings, Rhia, Hannah, and even Ryland all seemed curious about Faye, friendly to her, maybe even interested in her. Perhaps that was part of her power, part of what made her so dangerous. Just like his dad.

The Faye Threat had become personal, and even though he was no closer to defining what exactly was wrong with her, she had to go.

Rubbing his eyes under his glasses, Quentin tried to ease the headache growing. He looked at a stack of library books that had been completely useless thus far. His conversations with Marietta and internet searches had been better.

"Good thing Rhia's not here to know how books have let me down," Quentin told Smaug. The lizard didn't seem interested, however. He sighed, then decided to bring the useless stack of books downstairs to return to the library.

He was just going to have to tell Faye that he knew the truth and he wasn't afraid to use it. It was his last resort, but the time had come.

The time had also come to feed The Hairless Wonder, his cat. As he balanced the nine library books in his arms, he looked around for his cat, surprised the animal wasn't meowing to remind him it was dinner time.

But Hairy wasn't in any of the usual places (which mostly just meant his dad's room when his dad wasn't there—Hairy was a big believer in sprawling exactly where he was least supposed to sprawl). Quentin wandered down the hallway, hearing noise from his brother's room.

"Is Hairy in here?" Quentin poked his head into the open doorway and immediately saw the answer to his question. Ryland was stroking the hairless cat as he watched something on his computer. It was in Korean, but Quentin was pleased to find he recognized it as Running Man, a comedic game show.

"New one?" he asked, shifting the pile of books in his arms to keep them from teetering.

Ryland shooed Hairy in Quentin's direction then took a swig of some Korean drink. Quentin found it hilarious that the cans in South Korea were about half the size of American cans. But then, maybe that was why South Koreans were half the size of Americans too.

"No, just one of my favorites."

They lapsed into silence, watching as one of the participants ran from zombies. Quentin had actually seen this one already too, now that he noticed the zombies. As Hairy twined between his legs and the crowd's laughter roared from the computer, he found it hard to reconcile his reality with other people's reality. In Ryland's room, it seemed as though dark entities and threats were just wisps of smoke that dissipated on the wind.

Ryland glanced at him, eyeing the stack of books in his arms. "Are you really going to read all night again? That's not even homework."

Quentin looked up at him from over the top of his glasses. "And people actually wonder why my grades are better than yours?"

"They wonder because everything about me just screams perfection. So when somebody else's grades are better, even though he is so obviously inferior..." Ryland trailed off as he ducked. Quentin had lobbed one of the smaller hardcovers at his head.

The book sailed harmlessly past Ryland's shoulder and thudded to the ground. Ryland picked it up, reading the title aloud: "Werewolves, Witches, and Warlocks, a Definitive Guide to the Mysterious." He took a slurp of his drink. "AKA, no one can refute me, so I can make up whatever I want and call it 'definitive.'"

As much as Quentin hated to admit it, he found Ryland's exaggerated point of view was not actually that exaggerated. Most of the books he had checked out either spiritualized everything to the point of gagging (did you know you could make yourself psychic if you visualized a third eye on your forehead?) or had Middle Age depictions (he wondered that none of them actually said to grab a torch and pitchfork to hunt whatever said beast). He supposed those who knew best never bothered to write about it because they knew no one would believe them anyway. Or maybe the Gendormi library was just too ancient to have anything better.