Garlick popped his head around the nearest column and chuckled. “Well... that pretty much leaves everything on the table, now doesn’t it!”
3
An hour later, Daffi watched in proud happiness as a large gaggle of school children made their way slowly around the Doggerbank exhibit.
“They like it!” she hissed in excitement to Garlick, who was winding himself around her ankles in an effort to trip her up.
It was a cute little game they’d played for years now. Everyone else said her familiar was trying to kill her, but she knew better. He just loved her. Same as when he kept trying to get her to sign random things. They always turned out to be a better deal on her spell liability insurance or something. He was just trying to look after her.
She just had to be careful to step over him when she was at the top of stairs. She wouldn’t want to kick him or anything.
“Really? I guess there’s no accounting for taste.” Garlick’s voice was filled with curiosity as he peered around the curtain they were both currently hiding behind. With a hiss of irritation, he lashed her leg with his tail. “Can’t see.”
Automatically she leaned down and scooped him up. Immediately he started to purr but then swallowed quickly.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, sounding like he’d swallowed a box of bees. “Bloody species automatic reactions.”
She scratched behind his ear and he purred like a broken chainsaw as they watched the gaggle of kids swarming around the center section of the exhibit. Daffi was particularly proud of it.
A recreation of a Doggerbank magical circle, it had taken her months to research and draw up. The unique sigils around the edges had been extremely difficult to get right. Several she wasn’t sure she actually had right. The archaic form of Gaulish the Doggerbank natives had spoken was difficult to translate, and several times she hadn’t been sure if the sigils meant “now wrap and bake under hot coals for two hours” or “press two for an interdimensional gateway.” It could go either way. But... since the circle wasn’t a real one to be used for ritual, it didn’t matter.
She smiled fondly as the kids, all tweens by the looks of them, sat down around the edges of the circle.
“Awww… isn’t that cute?” she murmured to Garlick.
“Yeah, right. Cute.” The cat made dry-heaving sounds. “Can we teleport them somewhere else… like the bottom of the Thames?”
“Oh behave, you,” she chuckled. “You love kids. I know you do. I saw you the other day playing peekaboo with that baby in the pushchair.”
“I absolutely was not!” The cat huffed indignantly. “I was trying to make its heart stop in terror at my magnificence.”
“Yeah, sure… is that why you were blowing raspberries?”
“Well…” the cat muttered in a small voice. “Babies are cute. When they don’t stink the place up.”
But Daffi wasn’t listening to him anymore. Instead her gaze had locked onto one of the kids as he pulled a book from his backpack. That wasn’t anything unusual. Very often the teachers with school groups would ensure there was at least one guidebook in the group, but this wasn’t a guidebook. It wasn’t anything close. A prickle rolled down her spine, all her witchy senses coming to the fore.
It was a grimoire. A real one. What the ever-loving cupcake was a kid doing with a real grimoire?
“Mothers love and maiden’s sight,
Prevent me from getting an awful fright,
Check the cabinets below
For a missing book or spells to go?”
Her spell was hastily constructed and muttered quickly, the silver white sparkles of her magic hovering in the air in front of her as she quickly checked whether the book the kid had was one of the museum’s. Most of the cases were theft-proof yes, but that was in case high-tech thieves decided to descend from wires on the ceiling in the middle of the night. The warnings on the side stated clearly that they weren’t rated against nuclear explosion, sharks, or children under eleven.
When the swirling sparkles didn’t turn red, she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t one of the museum’s grimoires. Her relief flip-flopped back to anxiety within seconds. If it wasn’t one of theirs, what the hell had they brought into the museum?
The rest of the kids settled down, looking toward the boy with the book as he walked around the circle and muttered softly. She frowned and leaned forward. Was he just reading, or…
The feel of something powering up hit her in the gut at precisely the same moment she caught a snippet of what he was saying. It was an ancient Sumerian incantation.
“No, no, no!” she shouted as she and Garlick tumbled out of hiding behind the curtain. “You can’t cross the streams that way!”
In her haste, she knocked over a display with a replica of a Doggerbank machete on it. The pretend blade went tumbling through the air and hit a child in the back of the head. He fell forward into the circle with a scream and disappeared.
Silence fell.
Then the dragon appeared.
The size of a city bus, it was tiny at first but then expanded to fill all available space with a loud “pop.” The smell of fire and petunias filled the air, and Daffi was forced to duck quickly before she was decapitated by a tail slicing through the air.
Kids screamed and scattered.
“I got this!” Garlick yelled, sprinting across the circle and leaping in the air to become kung-fu kitty. Drop-kicking the kid with the book expertly, he separated the two. The kid went flying one way, and the book slid across the painted floor…
…right under the feet of a charging barbarian.
Daffi squeaked as nearly six feet of blue-painted, half-naked and utterly drool-worthy male appeared in the middle of the circle. He wore the tiniest mini-kilt in a tartan she’d never seen before, waving his… axe about as he looked around. Blond hair worthy of its own TV commercial swung around his shoulders like a cape and he had the cutest, tiniest pair of blue wings in the middle of seriously buff shoulder blades.
“Oh shit… not a fae,” she whimpered, ducking again as the dragon whirled around and roared at the fae warrior. Sure enough, in the middle of its back where she’d normally have expected reptilian wings were butterfly wings instead.
“Shitshitshit.” Not just a fae, but a fae and a fae dragon. “I am so getting fired for this.”
“Begone foul beast!” the fae bellowed, racing toward the dragon, axe raised over his head. The movement highlighted all the heavily carved muscles in the front of his body and all Daffi’s feminine instincts sighed happily. He even had those v-things at the sides of his hips and everything…
“Do something!” Garlick screamed as the dragon sent a gout of flame toward the fae and nearly fried the cat instead.
“Yes, right!” She snapped out of her daydream of having Mr. Tall, blond and winged’s babies and stood up.
“Mother’s might and crone’s wisdom,
Hold this beast from another kingdom,
Stop its rampage, the scaly brute,
Bind it tightly, tiny and cute.”
Sparkles of white magic shot through the air. The dragon surged toward the buff-fae, jaws wide open as the fairy guy swung for him with his massive axe… and completely missed. Not because his aim was off but because the dragon was now three inches long.