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He shook Judy to get her attention. “Why don’t you do something? Call up a dragon or something. C’mon!”

Judy gaped at him. “Whaaa… ?”

Even if Judy had any conscious control over her crypto-summoning powers, she was blitzed out of her mind. There’d be no help there.

“Oooh, pretty.” Judy touched the stone. It changed color, from black to bright red. The tingle in Monster’s hand became a stinging bite. He released the stone. Or he tried to.

He couldn’t let go.

Time slowed. It was so slow, it almost appeared to stop. But Monster noticed the slight ripple in the grass. He and Judy were unaffected, but the rest of the world had ground to a halt.

“What did you do now?” he asked.

Judy pointed to a bird hanging in the air and made a cooing sound.

“Give me the stone now!” shouted Lotus, unaffected by the time slip. Monster yelped in terror of the old lady (he would deny that later) and struck her with the stone in his hand. Three things happened. Not exactly at the same time, but close enough that most wouldn’t have noticed.

In the instant that the stone made contact with Lotus, the force of Monster’s glancing blow was amplified ten thousand times. With a thunderous boom, she was hurled upward, a luminescent comet burning through the night sky. She passed through the atmosphere before gravity slowed her enough to begin her descent. The earth had rotated beneath her by then, and she came down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

The second effect was a twist in the fragile framework of time and space. Judy and Monster disappeared.

The third and final effect was the restoration of the normal flow of time.

The triumphant imp howled over the defeated gnome, then scampered away, disappearing into the bushes.

“What just happened?” asked Ed.

“Beats me.”

“They escaped,” said Lotus from behind them.

Ed and Ferdinand jumped. It wasn’t Lotus’s sudden appearance. Both of them were used to that by now. It was something in her voice, a quality they’d never before heard. She was angry.

She was also soaking wet, and a strand of gray hair fell across her face. It was a small thing, seemingly insignificant. But Ed and Ferdinand had never seen a single hair out of place on Lotus’s head.

Ed asked, “But how—”

“I don’t know,” replied Lotus.

Ferdinand and Ed exchanged glances.

“You don’t?” said Ferdinand.

“No, I don’t.” Lotus smoothed an errant strand of hair out of her face. “But believe me, I do intend to find out.”

20

Monster had never teleported, but he’d heard it was a lousy way to travel. It wasn’t difficult, magically speaking, to cut loose from the fabric of space and time. The hard part was the reconnection. The body wanted to remain part of the universe—so much so that it’d fall back into place just about anywhere. Without proper aim, a teleport spell could transport someone anywhere in the universe, and anywhere was a very big place, so big that the odds of actually ending up somewhere where you didn’t die instantly qualified as a miracle. Not to mention the extreme gut-wrenching strain on every cell of the body, not so much painful as unpleasant, like riding in a centrifuge for six hours straight. Or so Monster had heard.

This teleportation was so gentle that he didn’t notice until it was done—like rolling across the surface of the universe before plopping comfortably into a Monster-shaped hole that was already there and waiting, warm and inviting.

He cursed, realizing the stone in his hand had become white hot. He released it. It bounced off his foot, and when he hopped around, he tripped over someone.

It was Judy, out cold. She was breathing. He put his ear to her chest, and her heartbeat seemed okay. Not that he knew enough to be sure. He slapped her lightly on the face, but she wouldn’t wake up. He opened her eyelids and checked her pupils. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but they usually did that on TV, so he gave it a shot. She looked okay, he guessed. Just unconscious.

He took stock