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In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

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has le Sacrifice."<br />

After spitting in her bathroom sink she skipped over into<br />

Penny's room. "Perfect for a pajama party!" she giggled.<br />

Maia knocked on Max's pajama party door, but he wasn't there,<br />

so they went back and Penny sat at Maia's boudoir mirror as Maia took<br />

out and hung her clothes.<br />

When Maia took a break and opened the French doors to her<br />

balcony and pulled out a cigarette, Penny took advantage of the<br />

opportunity and retreated to her water wonderland and flopped down<br />

on the bed in a daze. Next thing she knew Maia was sitting on her bed,<br />

shaking her. Apparently it was already afternoon.<br />

Alessandro had been back over an hour, and Maia urged Penny.<br />

"We have to tell him that bitch is interrogating Max!"<br />

"Don't you think you should let him sleep?" Penny asked, but<br />

Maia was set, and the two of them creaked down the dim corridors to<br />

Alessandro's wing of the house, built earlier, in the seventeenth century,<br />

had unadorned vaulted ceilings instead of fancy sculptured plaster ones.<br />

Maia, at least, knew her way around, and stopped towards the<br />

end of the hall at a door that glowed yellow along the bottom. She put<br />

her ear to it and knocked, but there was no answer.<br />

"Maybe he's asleep!" Penny whispered, but Maia was already<br />

further down the hall, to another line of light. She knocked.<br />

"Endrez!" He was seated on the floor propped up against a<br />

massive trunk. His nose, brow and cheek were all covered with<br />

bandages now as he searched through some boxes. Books were piled<br />

on the floor around him, and plastic wrapped paintings leaned against<br />

the trunk that looked like it was filled with metal junk. Of course it<br />

probably was not junk, gold flashed out here and there, and none of the<br />

stuff looked like theater props.<br />

“Sandro, you should be in bed!" Maia scolded, looking over the<br />

contents of the trunk. A glove made of steel plates and chain mail<br />

jutted out like a drowning hand from the jumble of what were actually<br />

gold handled swords and pieces of tarnished armor.<br />

"I know it is here, I put it here for safety, I know it is here, I<br />

know," he rambled feverishly. "And I found these!" He waved vaguely<br />

to the books, plopped his head back against the trunk, nearly passed<br />

out. The bare bulb dangling from the central stone vault put the room<br />

into harsh relief.<br />

"Where is Max?" he asked Maia, without opening his eyes.<br />

"Max is under interrogation with your mother," Penny said, still<br />

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