The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(51)

“Oh, I’m just going to enjoy this,” Risky said. She said it in a German/Scandinavian sort of accent so that just came out as yoost and enjoy sounded like enyooooy.

Because, see, she was in her Nordic goddess of the underworld mode.

Xiao flew up and up then dived and swooped between two of the stones, scraped beneath the lintel, and hit Risky in the back.

Risky toppled on top of Thor. She lost her grip on the sword.

“Hang on, Stefan!” Jarrah cried. “Hang on!”

“ . . . . !” He said in a voice so tiny it can’t be shown using visible letters.

Jarrah’s phone made a fruity little chime indicating a text message.

Jarrah stared at her phone. And said, “Can that be right?”

Risky jumped up and slapped Xiao away with her dead hand. With a weary groan, she fumbled for and found Thor’s sword. The thunder god looked too tired and stunned to do much about it.

Risky/Hel raised high the sword of Thor. And she smote him the deathblow!

Or would have. Except that at that moment Mack realized if Thor lost and Risky won, he, personally (and the whole world) was toast.

So in a moment of total crazy that was his own personal version of berserk, he grabbed Risky’s braid (the blond one) and yanked her head back hard.

She spun around. Her face, half living beauty and half dead encrusted zombie, froze him to the marrow.

“I . . . ,” he managed to sob. “I really should have taken some time to learn more Vargran.”

That non sequitur gave Risky just a second’s pause, during which Thor leaped, passed one arm around her neck and the other behind, and trapped her in the kind of headlock Stefan had often used on Mack.

Mack breathed a sigh of relief, retreated hastily away, tripped, fell hard on his back, and looked up dazed, only to find that Nine Iron had his blade out and pressed against Mack’s very heart.

The problem was that although Nine Iron was slow, there wasn’t really any way for Mack to move that didn’t involve impaling himself.

“For the Pale Queen,” Nine Iron croaked, and leaned forward. “And for my one true love!”

“Well, let’s give it a birl,” Jarrah said.





Chapter Thirty-three



Jarrah gave it a birl, which is Australian for “gave it a try.”

“Arb harid fie-ma!” Jarrah shouted.

And instantly nothing happened.

“Arb harid fie-ma!” Jarrah cried again.

And still nothing.

“My enlightened puissance is run down!” Jarrah cried. Which was a sentence she had never imagined she’d say. “Mack! You try it!” Jarrah shouted.

Nine Iron said, “Now ends the . . .” He paused, fumbled with his free hand for his oxygen line.

“What is it again?” Mack cried.

“Arb harid fie-ma!”

“. . . last hope of . . .” Nine Iron wheezed.

“Arg?”

“Arb!”

“. . . humanity!”

“Arb harid fie-ma!” Mack cried.

And Nine Iron shoved the blade into . . . Well, we’ll have to assume he shoved it into the ground. Because Mack was no longer staring up at a triumphant Nine Iron.

He was staring up at a tall, ghostly white woman with no eyes, mouth, nose, or hair. She had hands like flippers.

Mack blinked.

It was a mannequin.

A mannequin wearing a green dress and standing beside another mannequin wearing a purple dress.

Xiao was sprawled across a table piled with sweaters.

Dietmar stood nearby, blinking at the same mannequin as Mack.

Jarrah was still staring at her phone.

The four of them were in a department store. The women’s department.

Xiao quickly resumed her human form.

The store did not seem to be open. There were no customers. No clerks. And the lights were low.

It would take some time for them to figure out what had happened. The short version is: it’s best not to use magic words you don’t know very well.

Because what Jarrah had asked her mother for were the words to say “Restore my friend,” meaning “Return Stefan to his normal size.” That would have been Arb harut-ma.

Whereas harid is the Vargran word for store. Not restore. Just store.

And of course, since she’d yelled at her mother that she had to go, her mother had texted back the word fie-ma, which as we all know is the Vargran form of the verb “to go.”

So what she had said in effect was “Friend store go!”

Her friend was now, in fact, in a store. All her friends were. They were all in a large London department store called Harrods. Which, to be fair, did sound a lot like harid.

We can’t really blame Vargran for any of this. And on the plus side, the proper Vargran words, properly pronounced, did restore Stefan to normal size.

With two careful, delicate fingers, Jarrah drew a butterfly-sized Stefan from her pocket and set him atop a soft silk scarf.

She dialed her mother back and said, “One more time, eh?”

Once the store opened, they were able to buy a shirt for the newly normal-sized Stefan.

Mack’s phone chirped for a text. He read,


Mack, what should I wear?

Mack frowned and said, “What?” Then he texted,