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The cold left her, but she kept shivering, her teeth chattering, because she hadn’t
distributed the cold as efficiently as she should have, and she was now freezing from the
inside. Rondeau draped his jacket around her shoulders, which was a nice gesture, but
useless, since clothing was only good at trapping a person’s own body heat, and her heat
was negligible. “St-st-stove,” she said, and B rushed to the gas range (how had Bethany
rigged a gas range on a train?—she really had been very good) and lit up all four
burners. He turned on the oven, too, and opened the door. Marla sucked in the heat,
getting her body temperature up, stopping before she drew in too much and had to toss
off a fireball to cool down, which would have ruined all that effort she’d put in with the
cold. “Enough,” she said, blowing out a last exhalation of cold vapor. B turned off the
stove. “Let’s go,” she said, and led them back to the engine car, where the doors were
still open.
The platform was covered in a sheet of ice about two inches deep, and tiny golden frogs
were suspended inside like bits of fruit in a gelatin mold. “Walk carefully, it’s slick,”
Marla said, and they made their way across the ice, walking over the frozen frogs.
“They’re kind of pretty,” Rondeau said, looking down. “It’s a shame they’re instant
hopping death.”
“Mmm,” Marla said.
“Do you think they’re dead?” B asked.
“I don’t know. I think you can freeze amphibians, and they come back to life when you
thaw them. But I’m not sure. I don’t think they can get out of here, though, and if they
live, they’ll starve. I don’t think there’s much in the way of flies down here.”
“Maybe Mutex will come back for them,” B said.
“Maybe,” Marla said. “If he lives through the day.” They reached the stairs, and
climbed up out of the darkness.
“So what now?” Rondeau said when they reached the surface. “We go meet the next
sorcerer in line for the throne?”
“Sure,” Marla said. “Unless you have a better suggestion, yeah, I think we should get in
touch with the next sorcerer in line. They can’t all be collaborating with Mutex, and
maybe the next one in charge will help us rally the troops. Sorcerers aren’t usually very
good at working together, but if things get dire enough, it’s been known to happen.”
“And if Mutex continues with his old modus operandi, and shows up to kill the next
sorcerer?”
“Then we try to kill him first,” Marla said. “Sort of like what we had in mind with
Bethany, only preferably without the betrayal.”
Rondeau shook his head. “We should have a plan. That’s your line, I know, but it’s true.
We can’t keep rushing in. Those frogs almost killed you last time.”