(A/N: Sorry this is so late in coming. I accidentally deleted it, and had to recreate it from scratch. Which is not an easy job, let me tell you. I just hope I get this finished in my lifetime. Well, read and enjoy!)
Meeting FriendsBrenda decided to check out the book shop on her own to see if they had any new Pratchett. Maybe she could pick up one or two of the early books for Todd.
She went to the counter and asked, "Do you have any Terry Pratchett?"
"That would be under 'P'," the clerk said, and when she heard those words, Brenda did a double-take.
"Nick!" She was overjoyed to see him after all this time. "I thought you were away at school!"
"I am. I'm going to school here now. I'm taking a film course, so I can learn to write screenplays."
"You never told me that—" she started to say, then realized that he had probably changed schools to be near her. Bless his heart.
"I don't wanna go in some stupid book store!" Fred protested.
"Tough. I have to get something for school." Lance pushed open the door and they went inside.
Pietro looked around and saw Brenda standing by the counter, talking to some guy. An idea formed itself inside his brain, one which would surely get them into trouble, but was infinitely better than another night of whiny Toad complaining about being grounded. "Hey guys!"
Lance and Fred turned and looked at him.
"C'mere, Ihavetotellyousomething."
"Take a Ritalin or something, Speedy," Lance said.
"JUST COME HERE!" Pietro yelled at them. So they came.
"OK, Pietro, what is it?"
Taking a deep breath, the speed demon pointed over to Brenda. "Let's bring home a surprise for the Toad-man."
"What are you talking about?" Fred asked. "What surprise?"
"Her."
Lance and Fred both looked at Pietro like he was insane. "We can't kidnap people!" Lance insisted.
"Who said anything about kidnapping? We'll ask her to come with us. If she says no, it's no."
"Fine. Let's go get her," Lance said, starting off in Brenda's direction.
Pietro followed at a discreet distance, waiting for the right moment to introduce himself to Brenda's . . . friend? He hoped the guy wasn't anything closer; it would absolutely kill the Toad. Poor guy was really hung up on this chick.
Finally there was a break in the conversation, and Pietro approached her. "Hey, Brenda."
"Hello, Pietro. Boys," she nodded to Lance and Fred, who were pretending to look at the new hardcovers. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"Yeah, same here. Uh, are you busy tonight?"
Brenda pondered this a moment. "Not especially. Why?"
"Well, canyoucometoourplace?" Pietro asked, all in one breath.
"What about Ms. Darkholme? I don't think she likes me."
"She's in the hospital," Lance told her. "She's having . . . uh, minor surgery."
"Oh dear. I hope she's all right."
"Oh, sure. She'll be home tomorrow night. So now's our only chance to get you to visit Todd this week." Pietro was maneuvering them toward the door as they spoke. "Let's go already!"
Brenda wasn't sure what to do. Finally, however, Nick suggested that she make a call home. "Tell them you'll be helping out here the rest of the night, and they can pick you up at nine-thirty. So you'll have to be back here by nine at the latest."
"Okay. Can we do that?" she asked.
"Yeah, I guess so," Lance mumbled.
And so an arrangement was made. The shape of things to come had begun to take form, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Mystique was supposed to be resting after her surgery, but part of her knew that she needed to go home. Something was wrong—she wasn't sure what, but she knew somehow that she was needed.
She started to pack up her things when a doctor came and said, "Where do you think you're going?"
She still couldn't speak, so she wrote on a handy note pad, I HAVE TO GO HOME. MY KIDS NEED ME.
"You can go home tomorrow. You need to rest right now."
IF I REST, THEY'LL DESTROY MY HOUSE!
"They can't be that bad . . ."
BELIEVE ME, THEY ARE.
"Is there someone you can call?"
Mystique looked at him as if he were insane. AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TALK TO THEM?
"I can have someone call for you. Or you can borrow my laptop and send an e-mail."
I'D RATHER JUST GO HOME.
"You're too sick."
IT'S AN EMERGENCY. I'LL SIGN WHATEVER YOU WANT, JUST LET ME GO!
"I can't do that. Why don't you give me the number, and I'll call for you?"
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THEY'LL TELL YOU THE TRUTH?
"Tell you what. I get off in about 20 minutes. If you get back in bed right now, I'll swing by and make sure everything's okay. Do we have a deal?"
She thought about it. OKAY. YOU WIN.
Back at the Brotherhood house, the plan was underway. Pietro would sneak Brenda in while Lance and Fred distracted Mr. Creed. Everyone had their fingers crossed.
"Go," Lance whispered. As soon as Pietro and Brenda were halfway up the stairs, he shouted, "Come on, Blob!"
"Why'd you make me go out?" Fred complained, in a similarly loud voice.
"Oh, so this is my fault? If you hadn't eaten the last of the pizza, we wouldn't have had to go out!"
There was a creak as Mr. Creed got up from his chair.
"You could have gotten take—" Suddenly there was a big, hairy hand around his throat.
"You wanna keep the noise down? I'm watching wrestling!"
Lance looked up and saw Pietro give the "all clear" signal. "Come on, Fred."
"Aw, but I wanna watch—"
"I'll show you where Mystique keeps her cookie stash," Lance whispered.
"I'm coming."
While the mock argument went on, Pietro snuck Brenda into Toad's room. "You two have fun!" he whispered, before disappearing back downstairs in a blaze of speed.
The two of them stood there looking at each other for what seemed like forever. Finally they both laughed nervously.
"I never had a girl in my room before," Todd said. He quietly closed the door so that they wouldn't be overheard.
"I've never even thought of being in a boy's room before," Brenda confessed. "I live—lived—with a group of nuns all my life. I've never even seen a boy's room before."
"So I'm your first, huh?" he grinned.
"What shall we do?" Brenda asked. She looked around the room for some ideas, but there wasn't much there. She saw The Colour of Magic lying on a shelf and picked it up.
"Yeah, I meant to return that to you . . ."
"Did you finish it?"
"Most of it. Pietro borrowed it, and then Lance looked through it—I don't think he likes it though, he reads car magazines—but I'm near the end . . ."
"Really?"
"I really like it, too. It's . . . different. Like this." He flipped through until he came to a relevant passage, and held the book out to her.
Brenda began to read.
"After the first Age of Magic the disposal of grimoires began to become a severe problem on the Discworld. A spell is still a spell even when imprisoned temporarily in parchment and ink. It has potency. This is not a problem while the book's owner still lives, but on his death the spell book becomes a source of uncontrolled power that cannot easily be defused.
"In short, spell books leak magic."*
She stopped and looked up at him. "You're right, it is interesting."
"Go on," Todd urged her. "I like the way you read."
"Do you?"
"Yeah," he said, feeling shivery all over. There was a strange glowy feeling in the pit of his stomach that he'd never had before. "Could you read it to me?"
"Of course I could. Where would you like me to start?"
"Go back to the beginning. I want to hear all that cosmic stuff in your voice. Can you make a little KKRRKK noise for the footnotes?"
"I suppose." She flipped back to the beginning, and began.
By the time she got to the end of Part I, Todd felt as if he'd found a missing piece of his soul, that up until then, he hadn't even known was lost. "Don't stop, please. Read some more."
"I can't. It's half past nine. I have to go." Brenda marked her place and put the book aside.
"It can't be time already!" Todd moaned. "Stay a little while longer, huh?"
Brenda looked at him regretfully. "I wish I could, but if I stay, they'll miss me at home."
"You could stay and say you were at a friend's house."
"They'd want to know who."
Todd sighed. "I get it. You're ashamed of me."
"No . . . I'm worried for you. I don't want you getting in trouble because of me." She sighed. "At the Institute, they don't have a high opinion of you and your friends . . . I've been warned to stay away from you."
"Yeah . . . me and Fuzzy didn't exactly hit it off."
"Who?"
"You know, the blue dude."
"Kurt?"
"Yeah, him. He said I smelled like a litterbox or something, and I wasn't gonna just take that, you know? So we kinda got in a fight . . ."
"I see."
"But it wasn't my fault! Anyway, they just make a lot of stuff up to make us look bad. We're none of us angels, but we're not that bad, are we?"
She thought she understood. "Nobody's black or white. We all come in shades of gray."
"Hey, that's good. You ought to get a job writing bumper stickers."
Pietro interrupted them at that moment. "Hey, you wanna get a move on there, chickie-baby? We can only stall Tall, Dark, and Hairy for so long."
"All right." Brenda gathered up her things and prepared to leave. She gave The Colour of Magic back to Todd. "I'll have to finish this another time."
"Okay."
She gave him a little kiss on the cheek. "See you in school."
Todd just stood there, in shock. As she went around the corner he murmured, "I'll never wash that cheek again."
Pietro gave him a funny look. "You never wash that cheek anyway. Hey, Brenda, wait up! We have to make sure the coast is clear."
Keys in hand, Lance stood at the front door. "Uh . . . Mr. Creed?"
The figure in the armchair moved with unbelievable swiftness between Lance and the door. "Where're you going?"
"To—to the store. You want anything?"
Behind the big man's back, Pietro zipped Brenda outside, put her in the car, and came back in before anyone noticed.
"Just get some milk," Creed said, and went back to his chair.
Lance nodded and went out to the car. He hoped no one would notice that he had a passenger. Then again, their neighbors tended to steer clear of the Brotherhood house. Way clear.
Brenda arrived back at the book shop at nine on the dot, helped Nick straighten up while he locked up the till, and was waiting outside when Scott came to pick her up.
"How was your evening?" he asked.
"Oh . . . fine," she said, looking out the window.
She breathed a sigh of relief that everything had gone off all right, and wondered if she could get away with it again.
It was the most dangerous thing she'd ever done in her life . . . and it felt good.
"Just fine."
*The Colour of Magic (British edition), p. 127