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store before B could protest. He returned a moment later carrying two cans of hairspray
and a handful of cheap, translucent lighters.
“Planning to do your hair and smoke some cigarettes?” B said when Rondeau jumped
back in.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about Mutex and his menagerie. He’s got frogs,
yeah, they get all the hype, but he’s also got hummingbirds, and those little bastards are
all but unkillable. I Cursed a couple of them, and that killed them, but I was thinking
about what happened when I Cursed them—they burst into flame. And Hamil told us
that the hummingbirds were warriors for the sun god. So I’m thinking, blades don’t kill
them, beating the shit out of them doesn’t kill them, but maybe…”
“Fire,” B said. “Got it. And the hairspray and lighters are the classic ingredients for a
homemade B-movie flamethrower that’s as likely to explode in your face as anything
else.”
“You see?” Rondeau said. “Maybe I’m going to be indispensable to the fate of the
world after all.”
Moments later they reached the park. Rondeau double-parked just inside the gate—it
was easy to do that, B reflected, when you didn’t have to worry about getting a parking
ticket—and started running flat-out in the direction of the Tea Garden.
B hurried after him. Rondeau didn’t strike him as the running type. He seemed better
suited to sauntering, strolling, or possibly swaggering. Since he was running, B figured
it was a good idea for him to run, too, even if he did feel a little ridiculous with Marla’s
cloak flapping out behind him.
“Marlita!”
Marla turned, and there beyond the half-open gate was Rondeau, grinning, running, and
carrying (rather improbably) a couple of aerosol cans. B was behind him, puffing as he
ran.
“Rondeau,” she said. “Rondeau! Why aren’t you dead?”
“B played the cavalry,” he said, and winked. “Because I’m so crucial to the fate of the
world, you know.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she said. “Is the Celestial dead?”
“No,” Ch’ang Hao and Rondeau said, simultaneously.
B approached Marla, looking sidelong at the wall of birds. He unhooked her cloak and
handed it over. “I didn’t even get blood on it,” he said. “I, ah, dealt with things another
way.”