Something amusing,
Something confusing,
Let’s have some fun for once:
We’re playing catch today!

Something that’s foolish,
Something that’s ghoulish,
Let’s have some fun for once:
We’re playing catch today!

Nobody’s hurt, nobody dies;
She made that look fake on purpose, you guys!
Comic conventions,
Willing suspension,
Nothing significant to say;
We’re playing catch today!

Something that’s wacky,
Something that’s tacky,
Let’s have some fun for once:
We’re playing catch today!

Something athletic,
Something kinetic,
Let’s have some fun for once:
We’re playing catch today!

Nothing with gods, no deals to make
These broken folks are taking a break!
No coughs or sneezes,
No deadly diseases,
No plot contrivance to convey;
Go and grab your baseball:
We’re playing catch today!

Something exciting,
Something inviting,
Let’s have some fun for once:
We’re playing catch today!

Giddy and gleeful
Endearingly evil,
Let’s have some fun for once:
We’re playing catch today!

Something amusing,
Something confusing,
Let’s have some fun for once:
We’re playing catch today!

Something that's sappy,
Something that's happy
Let’s have some fun for once!
We’re playing catch today!

No crying tears
No fraying nerves
No misery for five thousand words.
Stunning diversions!
Clever subversions!
Magical talent on display!

Alleyways and side streets!
Pulsing lights and drum beats!
Fireworks and flashes!
Blundering and crashes!
Hackering!
Attackering!
Duplicity!
Stupidity!
Dessert!
Dirt!
Shams!
Scams!
Music!
Magic!
Logic!
Panic!

No social ills, not one hate crime,
And there’s a happy ending this time!
Goodness and gladness,
Roll with the madness——
For once they might just be okay!
Tragedy was last week,
We’re playing catch today!

Milo paused with his coat halfway off. There was a baseball on the dresser.

He checked the window first. It was not impossible the ball had broken the tiny window, hit the mirror, engaged the auto-repair function on the glass, and then landed sedately on the dresser like it belonged there. Not likely, but not impossible.

He stood on tiptoe and tapped the multicoloured merged glass of the windowpane. Well, tapped near it. The safety spell and the window were still intact.

He turned and regarded the baseball.

There was a note on lined paper under the baseball. He recognized the flower motif from the current kitchen pad. It said Please Remember… in ribbony pastel script that was entirely out of character for Hyacinth’s block letter handwriting, and with deference that did not suit her very well either. You could get ten of these little pads at the stationer’s for a disme, though, that suited her fine.

The printing underneath was in block letters, but they had been stencilled.

Milo read.

He twitched a smile and glanced up in the mirror. Ann, is this for real?

Why don’t you go downstairs and find out?

…because he sounds mad at me and it might be a prank.

I think it’s for real, Milo. Anyway, if Erik wants to prank you, it would be nice if you let him.

Yeah, I guess.

Milo went downstairs with the baseball and the note.

Mordecai and Erik were in the kitchen having tomato soup and cheese omelettes. Mordecai liked to do brunch on Sigurd’s Days. Milo put the note on the table and pushed it towards Mordecai without looking at him. Now he’ll say, “Erik, is this from you?” and Erik will say, “Nope, that’s a forgery. I wouldn’t ask anything so silly.”

The note said: MILO, MY ARM HURTS TODAY AND THAT’S YOUR FAULT. YOU BETTER PLAY CATCH WITH MY UNCLE BECAUSE I CAN’T. YOU OWE ME, SO ENTERTAIN ME.

Mordecai said: “I see you’re making big plans for me while I’m trying to sleep in, dear one.”

Erik giggled and shrugged.

“Does it really hurt?”

“You said I didn’t need any more shots until I was seventeen,” Erik said.

“Well, now you don’t need any measles instead… after the booster,” he muttered aside. He covered a cough.

“What?”

“Are you all done with your omelette? Do you want to watch Milo and me being silly or not?”

Milo clutched the baseball in both hands and beamed. Why, I don’t think it’s silly at all!

◈◈◈

“Okay, Milo, I am not trying to hit you with this. Okay? You believe me? I don’t believe you believe me. You promise this time?” He took two big steps closer and made the most nonthreatening underhanded toss he could manage.

It didn’t make any difference. The ball slowed, stopped, and hovered in midair before it got anywhere near Milo’s hand, as if obeying an invisible traffic signal. He reached up and calmly collected it. He rolled it back.

Mordecai lifted the toe of his somewhat dusty shoe and caught it easily.

Erik collapsed on the backstairs, laughing.

“Milo, I don’t know what this game is that you’ve invented, but it is not catch. If you want to roll a ball back and forth, we can do that in the dining room and play with Lucy. If you’re just being funny for Erik, I think he’s had enough. Will you be serious now, please? This is hard on my back.” Mordecai made another incredibly weak throw.

It stopped in midair again. This time Milo had the good grace to look ashamed about it. He tried tossing the ball back. It hit the ground halfway and bounced towards the abandoned warehouse.

Then it made a panicked U-turn, zipped over to Mordecai, and hovered in the air at shoulder height, frozen and waiting for him.

Mordecai sighed.

Milo looked pained. He turned his head aside.

“I’m not mad… Okay, I’m a little… I’m baffled, Milo,” Mordecai said. “Is this like a reflex with you? I can’t do magic at your level, you have to come down to mine and use motor skills. I’m certain you’re able to throw and catch a ball. You make watches. Do you need a glove?” He turned to Erik. The ball was still hovering and waiting. “Erik, do you have a baseball glove?”

Erik sniffled and wiped his right eye with his sleeve. “Gloves are for sissies,” he managed. “We’re not sandlot people, Uncle. We play on the street.”

“I apologize for impugning your character, I’ve forgotten a lot of my childhood. There’s an ocean of time and absinthe between me and it. Milo…” He sighed. “It’s all right. Just please try. I’m not going to hurt you.” He plucked the ball out of the air and threw again.

This time, instead of stopping, the ball blew through the traffic signal and bopped Milo right in the centre of his forehead. It fell to the cobbled ground and bounced only once.

“I’m sorry, I’m lying. Apparently.”

Maggie’s voice drifted from above: “Stop cheating, Mr. Rose!”

Milo glared up at her. Room 202’s window was open. She was gazing down at them with a grin.

“My Mom said I’m allowed to mess with you for a lesson, because you’re being dumb and your magic makes no sense. You wanna play catch with me, or are you too scared I’ll beat you?”

Mordecai addressed Erik, hoping for confirmation from a fellow sane person, “It is not possible to beat a person at catch, catch is a cooperative activity. What is she…”

Milo picked up the ball and flung it straight at her head. It stopped and fell to the ground as if shot. It didn’t even bounce that time.

“One point D’Iver!” Maggie cried. She disappeared from the window.

“Oh,” Mordecai said.

Erik was laughing again.

◈◈◈

Ten minutes later, they had reconfigured for Competitive Catch. Mordecai had dragged Hyacinth out of the basement with a warning that she would be required for the “inevitable medical disaster.” Calliope and Lucy — who had been down there for some help with a pending art project — came along for fun, with the baby trailing behind in the Lu-ambulator.

The General was observing from the second storey window. She had blessed the entire proceeding with a less-intrusive variation of her “show me” spell, for educational purposes. Perhaps Calliope would show an interest, for her own sake or Lucy’s. Or perhaps Mr. Rose would do something to straighten out his ridiculous constructions once everyone could see them.

Judging from the look of the new Lu-ambulator, this was highly unlikely, but the General didn’t get where she was by rolling over and accepting it when reality was stupid.

Mordecai was standing between the combatants with his hands warding both of them away. “Okay! We are civilized people and we are going to have rules! Even street baseball has rules!”

“Not really,” Erik said.

“Dear one, please let your poor uncle pretend he can prevent this absurd situation from blowing up in all our faces, okay?”

“‘Kay.”

“We will call it a point for the opposite side if the ball gets past you, hits the ground, or is damaged irreparably because of something you did. If you catch the ball with your hands, or with magic in some way that allows you to hold it an arm’s length away from you for at least three seconds and then throw it back, we’ll call that a point for you. If anyone gets hit with the ball, that is negative a million points for the person who threw it starting right now.”

Calliope raised a hand and called out, “You can’t do it that way, Em. They’ll just slow it down with magic and let it boink off them. That’s like asking them to cheat.”

He sighed. “No points. No points if it hits someone. And no dessert.”

Milo began pointing frantic fingers at Maggie. He waved at Mordecai and indicated the faint red mark on his forehead.

“Oh, come on!” Maggie snapped. “That doesn’t count! That’s… Whaddaycallit? Mom!”

“An ex post facto law,” said both Calliope and the General.

“Yeah, those aren’t legal around here,” Calliope added.

“I’m running a small dictatorship in this house,” Hyacinth said. “It’s like a pension for me. Make me some flags with my face on them, Calliope.”

“That’s not legal either,” said Calliope. “Except the flags.”

“Your dessert status is pending, and your called point is invalid for this match,” Mordecai said. “All right?”

Maggie turned up her nose. “Then I won the last one.”

Milo grit his teeth and hucked the ball at her head again. The air ten feet above lit up in a tangle of white light that snapped out suddenly when Mordecai caught the ball.

He winced and flexed his hand. “That wasn’t a match, Milo didn’t know he was playing. This is a friendly game. We’re friends. Let’s remember to act like we’re friends.”

“Sure,” said Maggie.

Milo nodded, frowning.

Mordecai sighed. He gave Maggie the ball and stamped up the backstairs, to lean on the railing beside Hyacinth. “We will be lucky to live through this.”

“Hey, that’s a normal Sigur’ Day in the Hyacinth Republic.”

“Still not legal, Cin,” Calliope said.

“I want those flags,” said Hyacinth.

“I’ll see if Chris knows anyone who does silkscreens.”

Maggie wound up, but not physically. The sky above her lit up in regular patterns. Milo disregarded the sky and watched her. He didn’t need a simplified interface, he could feel it. A tangled glowing mass lit up above his head in response, shifting, building, and reweaving itself.

“Look, Lucy! Fireworks!” Calliope said. Lucy stared at the lightshow and cooed her impression.

Maggie threw the ball, a low underhanded pitch. It appeared to divide in two, and then in three, leaving a total of six balls arcing in Milo’s direction.

Milo put up a helpless hand and then allowed the one real baseball to strike him a glancing blow on the shoulder. He fell to his knees on the cobbles, clutching his shirt. He pulled back his hand and examined it for blood, eyes wide with shock. Then he keeled over backwards and lay there.

“Hey!” Maggie snarled. “You did that on purpose! Get up, you jackass!”

“Magnificent,” said the General.

“Well, what do you want me to call it?”

“The most logical tactical move, and one which you should have acted to prevent.”

“I want my dessert back!”

Milo sat up with a smile. He shook his finger at her.

“Uncle Mordecai!”

“Don’t look at me, it’s Hyacinth’s dictatorship.”

“I’ll allow it,” said the blonde woman, grinning.

Maggie huffed a growl and kicked at the cobbles.

Erik covered his laugh with both hands, muffling it.

“Magnificent, you knew the consequences. Are you going to continue the game or not?”

“Oh… FINE.” She fired the word like a shell. She glared at Milo. The sky above her lit up again. Lucy was audibly pleased.

Milo considered her building defences and decided to act before even he knew what he was doing. He threw the ball straight up. It vanished.

“You need to be at least two points ahead to win by killing the ball and you’re not, Mr. Rose,” Maggie warned him.

The ball dropped down, straight through the patterned light. The more Maggie worked to compensate, the more the “show me” spell obscured the ball’s trajectory. She caught it trying to sneak behind her and dove for it. It missed her hand and bopped her right between the pigtails.

Her head blew up, leaving a black, ashen crater among the cobbles.

“What the fuck?” said Hyacinth.

Milo paled and his mouth dropped open in horror.

“Babe!” Calliope said.

He shook his head at her, crossing both hands in front of him.

Maggie’s soot-stained hands were feeling frantically around on the ground, then between her shoulders, investigating the stump of her neck. She began crawling and touching each cobble, as if searching for a dropped pair of glasses.

Mordecai put both hands on the railing and dropped his head between them, breathing hard. Erik tugged on one of his belt loops. The boy was shaking his head, “Uh-uh.”

“I know, I know,” said Mordecai. “I just need a second, I know.”

“Magnificent, you’ve made your point,” said the General.

The baseball whizzed past Milo and dropped onto the cobbles.

“Now I have,” Maggie said. The illusion evaporated and she stood up. “It’s the real ball, Milo. Check it. The real one hit me in the head too. One point D’Iver. No dessert for you.”

Milo did his level best to convey soul-crushing trauma, disbelief, irritation and defeat — all without speaking or trying consciously to do so. It was as if a grenade had gone off in his face and, instead of killing him, it displayed a personal insult in flowery script: Dear Milo, Petula Clark is a boring singer. Love, Maggie D’Iver.

Calliope doubled over giggling and applauded. “Oh, man, that was great. You guys! Wasn’t that great?” Calliope had missed the bad part of the war, just like Maggie. She had nothing real to compare to an exploding head. It was like a cartoon!

Mordecai and Hyacinth, who had witnessed the bad part of the war live and in person, were both standing at the top of the stairs and trying to outdo Milo for the Best Nonverbal Actor Award.

Then Hyacinth started cackling and Mordecai sat down. He curled over, hoping to tip the blood back into his brain. “Oh, that’s fine. Just a little flashback. That’s fine. What a lovely day. I hate all of you.” Erik patted his shoulder.

“They have,” the General announced, “inevitably, I might add — removed the penalty for hitting each other with the ball from the equation. If the two of you wish to continue, it will be with the risk of actual physical injury, so I suggest you both consider how seriously you want to play.”

Maggie was examining the consequences of her actions with a queasy expression. “Hey, I made it look fake on purpose, you guys. Milo, you didn’t really think you blew off my head. Come on.”

After a moment, Milo waggled a hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He nodded and touched his chest. Me too.

“Still wanna play?”

Milo wandered away and picked up the ball. The sky lit up.

 Maggie grinned.

◈◈◈

Milo decided he was going to be a mature adult here and not try to bash Maggie’s face in with a baseball, dessert or no. So the question was, how he was going to beat her without killing her, because she could take his magic apart and he didn’t know how to do that. All he could do was make his magic faster or weirder. Faster was not an option for this throw — he had to walk over there and pick up the ball and by the time he got back in throwing distance she already had a castle of light in the air.

On the other hand, it was super easy to tell what she was trying to do. Like one of Lucy’s board books that had “Cat” in huge black letters. For example, he knew he couldn’t drop the ball or throw it at the ground and get a point that way, because she’d already arranged an Invisible Net to catch it at a height of Six Inches.

That was actually really smart and he arranged a slightly larger one himself, which sloped vertically in front of him and curved in a bowl shape to either side. Maybe she wouldn’t notice that part.

Now he could try to get past her net or do something to get through it, but he couldn’t undo what she’d already done.

It was like she’d arranged a handful of matches to spell FREE. She could switch them around and change the word to FEAR or ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM if she wanted. He didn’t have matches, he was using a pencil, but it didn’t make much difference because she had an eraser. He could draw around her matches and do something like CareFREE or FREEdom, but his options were comparatively limited.

No they’re not, he thought. If I let her box me into making sense, I’m sunk. She’s better at it.

While he was thinking about all this stuff, she was trying to put together a spell to yank the ball out of his hand and deliver it to her.

FREBglorp can be a word, he thought.

Quickly, before she could grab it herself, he threw the ball. Halfway through his high trajectory, it began to pulse with multicoloured light like a jukebox. Blue, fading to green, then yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, and back to blue. A familiar drumbeat kicked in, keeping time with the light.

“‘Ballroom Blitz’!” Calliope cried. She applauded.

He winced. He didn’t want to upset her, but he hoped she wasn’t going to keep doing that. He needed to hear.

The ball jerked to a polite stop, well within grabbing distance.

Are you ready, Maggie? he thought.

She did not try to catch the ball, an obvious trap. She let him drop it right when he wanted, expecting the net to catch it for her. It did.

She said “Ha!” and leaned down to pick up the ball.

The ball fell through the net just before her fingers could touch it, and hit the ground. She said, “Hey!”

Milo clasped his hands. Oh. Perfect timing. Phew.

Calliope renewed her applause and jumped up and down. “One point Rose! Woo!”

He waved, I love you, Calliope. Please don’t clap.

Maggie was examining the ball and the magic involved, alternately staring at the object itself and the tangled light over his head. The drumbeat and pulsing colours continued unabated. “What did you do to this? Do you even know what you’ve done to this?”

He shrugged. He’d produced a time-based distortion effect on the shape of the ball which prevented Maggie’s net from recognizing it as a ball, plus a rhythm-based guide to help him guess when to throw it. But also whatever the heck else he could think of to hide it. Like, the ball was running a fragment of the checklist he’d made for Erik’s metal eye and the insulation spell from the latest toaster. 

“The man is obviously flailing,” the General opined, above. “I believe the colloquial term is to ‘throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.’”

“No,” Maggie replied with a grin. She held up the ball. “This is on purpose, Mom. He knows it…”

He yanked the ball back and caught it, one-handed. Oh, yeah. He’d also sketched the last couple matches into that return spell Maggie was writing.

“Two points Rose!” said Calliope, and Hyacinth and Mordecai.

Maggie shrieked and stamped both her feet on the cobbles. “Damn it! He knows I can’t read it! He threw a bunch of stuff at the wall, but there’s, like, a painting under there, and he’s not giving me enough time to see what it is.”

Milo held on to the ball and watched the colours cycle. If he didn’t time this just right, she’d grab the ball before it flattened out and violated her net specifications. She’d score a point and he might not be able to yank it back before it changed in her hands and she felt it. If she figured this out, he didn’t have a Plan B.

He hadn’t even had a Plan A. This was like a fractional letter of a plan here.

He threw.

She ducked left and caught the ball with her hand. The drumbeat and the colours ceased.

Milo grit his teeth and banged his forehead with the heel of his palm. He should’ve done something to physically prevent her from doing that, but he forgot it was an option. Also, how did she figure out he hadn’t done something? He cast a narrow glance at the tangle of light above his head. Not weird enough?

“Two points,” the General began gravely.

Before he had time to analyze what he must’ve done wrong, she threw the ball back, aiming to the right of him. Wincing, he prepared to catch the ball with his hand too.

A gust of wind forced the ball to hook left. It got past his hand and went right through his damn net.

No! How did she…

“Pardon me. Three points D’Iver,” said the General. “Two points Rose.”

He tried to engage his return spell and cut down on the time she had to plan her next move, but that didn’t work either. She couldn’t have taken apart everything, his net was still there! Did she honestly have enough time to detach and erase just the ball? Disbelieving, and not a little admiring, he cautiously approached the ball and picked it up. No drums, no colours, no checklist, no insulation, no nothing.

No magic.

No way!

He produced a quick little ray of green light, just to test. It halted a wobbly inch from the ball’s surface and the whole effect snapped out.

She wasn’t good enough to take apart what he’d done, but she was good enough to hit a moving target with a five-inch sphere of anti-magic, which was warping but still intact.

He tucked the ball under his arm and gave her a little applause.

“No painting, no wall,” Maggie replied, smiling.

Before she even finished speaking, he had spiked the ball against the cobbles about two feet in front of her shoes. Yeah, and no magic and no net.

“Shit!” She caught it on the bounce, but that didn’t count.

“Language, Magnificent,” said the General.

Calliope touched a hand to her ear as if adjusting a headset and adopted a sportscaster’s twang, “It’s the bottom of the ninth and we’re all tied up, folks! We don’t know when it’s gonna end!”

Mordecai paled. “Oh, gods. I should have specified.”

“It’s over when one of them is up by two points, ’cos then they can kill my ball,” Erik said. He cupped a hand to his mouth, “Hey! You guys are gonna buy me a new ball if you ruin this one. That’s not ex post whatever-it-is, that’s the nice thing we do when we break a cute little kid’s toy on purpose, okay? And my arm still hurts too!”

“I’m terrible at making rules,” said Mordecai, watching the lightshow with trepidation.

“This from the guy who thought he was gonna take over a country and write legislation,” said Hyacinth. She raised her voice, “In the name of my dictatorship, flags pending, I’m calling the game when one of you is up by two points, so leave the ball alone.”

Erik nudged her and muttered, “Cut it out, I want a new ball.”

Hyacinth waved a careless hand, “Nevermind, the cute little kid is taking advantage of you, kill away.”

“Dear one,” said Mordecai.

“I’ll be nicer when I feel better,” Erik said. He smiled. “I’m not a happiness pump.”

“I think we need to establish that’s not meant as an excuse…”

Maggie’s image split into three, connected at the edge of her skirt as if she were a set of paper dolls. The three Maggies threw six baseballs in two volleys. She had already written the multi-image thing and it didn’t require putting magic directly on the baseball. It was all done with mirrors. Well, sort of.

Milo easily deduced the position of the real ball from the position of the virtual reflectors and caught it with his hand, since Maggie’s anti-magic field was still in play.

The goddamn ball was hot! He felt its leather surface blister against his palm and smelled cooking bacon.

He almost dropped it. Almost. He grit his teeth and tightened his grip.

“Shit,” Maggie said.

He smiled. You have no idea I used to hold my hand over a lamp for fun. Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep holding the boiling ball and think what he was going to do next. Every sense he had told him the damn thing was cooking his hand. He could hear it sizzling. Once he was sure he’d cleared the three-second requirement, all he could do was throw it back and hope she was still surprised enough to miss it.

She caught it, but she held it and stared at him.

He spared a glance at his hand and flexed the fingers. Yeah. No worse than stealing a warm roll off a baking sheet.

“You knew I wouldn’t hurt you,” she said.

“What did you do?” Hyacinth demanded from the bleachers.

Milo shrugged. He guessed he knew, but it didn’t occur to him as a fully formed thought until after he let go of the ball.

“I didn’t do anything, I just gave him an opening to freak me the frig out,” Maggie said.

“Magnificent…”

“Oh, language. Fine. I’m sorry I know rude words and when to use ‘em.” She drew a deep breath and let it all out in a woosh. “Milo, do you want to call this a draw?”

Did he want to accept a draw when he now knew he was playing with an unstable magic/no-magic baseball that she could enchant without a moment’s notice?

Ann thought that was a very good idea. She liked having ten fingers.

He shook his head and beckoned the girl forward. No, go on. Kick my butt for real. That was smart as hell. I wanna see what else you come up with.

Milo…

Oh, we can invite Lola over and she’ll help build us better fingers. It’ll be fun for her. Then you guys can make out in our bedroom. It probably won’t blow up anyway. If I can keep it going a few more throws, the anti-magic will break down and then I’ll rewrite the ball before she can.

She appeared to be putting together some kind of diversion. He kept the magic in soft focus and watched the ball.

She threw it towards the stairs. For a second, he thought she was going to break the window and try to let the ball hit the floor indoors. It curved and blew past Erik, Mordecai and Hyacinth before stopping in front of Lucy in her Lu-ambulator at the bottom of the stairs. It flew a circle around her head, blinking in primary colours and playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in simple beeps. The ball sprouted two googly eyes and a red tongue and blew a raspberry at the baby, making her giggle and squeal.

A lighted sign with an arrow appeared above Maggie’s head, blinking, with tiny fireworks and confetti to either side: Free Fun Babysitter! Throw the Game and Let Me Win!

So we’re doing psychology now, thought Milo, as the baseball continued to entertain the baby.

“Babe, maybe we should consider this,” Calliope said.

Nope. Milo tried his return spell again, but it failed to take hold. He suspected the anti-magic was still intact and the effects were anchored to something other than the ball. He expanded the parameters and grabbed that whole chunk of atmosphere with the loud snap of a collapsing vacuum. Lucy blinked and complained. Calliope picked her up and bounced her. “Daddy’s competitive, sweetie. You’ll get it when you’re older.”

“Five points Rose!” Hyacinth declared.

Milo threw the ball back in the direction of the spectators. It left a rainbow contrail of glitter and bounced down the railing. The portion of Maggie’s spell with the blinking arrow and “Free Babysitter” appeared over Mordecai’s head.

Erik regarded it with a frown. “Hey, my uncle is fun.”

“No I’m not,” said Mordecai.

Hyacinth jumped up and down. “I’m free and fun! What the hell, Milo?”

The ball was headed for the ground. Maggie gave a gasp and snapped off her anti-magic field, the quickest solution. Both she and Milo made a grab for the ball with duelling intentions. It jerked back and forth, dropping and rising but never quite touching the cobbles at the bottom of the stairs.

“You guys are gonna,” Erik said.

The ball somehow deflated and melted, landing in a soggy pile on the bottom stair.

Milo pointed an immediate finger at Maggie. Maggie said, “Nuh-uh!”

“It is difficult to say,” the General added, regarding the magic. “I am inclined to blame Mr. Rose’s sloppy construction, but I cannot prove it. I believe we must consider them jointly responsible.”

“They are equally responsible,” a higher authority opined. Bathrobe-clad Barnaby leaned out of his open attic window. “Which may seem the same thing, but, I assure you, is not. Five points Rose, four points D’Iver. Rose wins, on a technicality. Whoever could have foreseen such a thing?”

Hyacinth planted both hands on her hips and smirked. “All right, where is it?”

“Under the railing above the third stair down.”

Hyacinth removed a folded piece of notepaper, which had been soft-stuck. A water-stained pencil message informed her: Rose — 5, D’Iver — 4, on a technicality. Where is my lunch?

“It’s theoretical lunch,” Hyacinth replied, showing the note around.

“Actualize it for me, won’t you, Alice? I know…”

“My name is not Alice!”

“Indeed.” He replaced the broken-bottle window in its frame.

Maggie peered at the baseball and folded her arms. “I’m satisfied.” She smiled at Milo. “You better learn countermagic somewhere, because I’m half your age and I’m going to grow up. We have a deal. If you can’t take me out, you can’t hold up your end.”

He nodded, grinning. Calliope had already given him Lucy and was using her free arms to hug them both. Don’t care. I won something. I’m awesome.

“Totally awesome,” Calliope agreed.

Maggie handed Erik his soggy baseball. She leaned in and whispered, “This looks an awful lot like how you melt the butter for sauces. ‘You guys are gonna,’ you still need a verbal trigger.”

He lowered his voice, “I’ll chip in a third of it if you and Milo do, too, and don’t tell my uncle.”

“Deal.”

“As your dictator,” said Hyacinth. “I declare my republic shall now continue to lunch, or a snack, as needed, with no hard feelings. And also tonight, in lieu of dessert, all citizens shall have a second, smaller dinner, with sugar in it. No need to thank me, just applaud and give me all your metal.”

Calliope clapped for her, at least.

“Thank gods that’s over, with no casualties,” Mordecai muttered. “No real casualties.” He cast a narrow glance at Magnificent’s head.

Erik pouted. “You barely played with Milo at all and my arm still hurts.”

“Well, we can’t play with that, dear one. What do you want to do?” He meant it rhetorically, but he regretted it before he even finished saying it.

Erik smiled at him. “I have a football!”