When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears: The Goblin Wars, Book Three (21 page)

“That would be great.” Teagan took as many as she thought reasonable—Grizabella and Grendal both needed treating—and then said goodbye to Agnes, who didn’t look up from her computer screen.

Next, she went to the private entrance at the back of the primate house. She felt the iron around her the moment she stepped inside. It made it a little hard to breathe.

Cindy was lying listlessly in her swing, one arm hanging in the air. Her eyes were open and turned toward the door. Her food bowl didn’t look like it had been touched all day.

“Cindy.” Teagan said it and signed it at the same time. The chimp sat up, then jumped out of her swing and came as close as possible.

Cindy’s boy
, she signed.
Bad man, bad man, Cindy’s boy
.

Teagan swallowed. The bad men had taken Oscar, Cindy’s boy.

“Sorry,” Teagan signed. “I’m so sorry, Cindy.”

When she turned to leave, Cindy went wild, screaming and bashing herself against the Plexiglas wall of the viewing area.

Teagan stepped out of the building, pulled the door shut behind her, and leaned her head on the wall. She could hear Cindy’s screams through the door. If trees could cry out to the Creator of Creation, surely apes could, too. Cindy was crying out with every fiber of her being.

Oak leaves whispered on the pavement around her feet, stirred by the wind.
Send someone
.

Sarcoptic mange mites she could cure. But she had no way to fight techie goblins.

Think like a Highborn
. Teagan straightened up and looked at the Burr Oak leaves.
Send someone
.

She
couldn’t fight goblins in cyberspace. But she knew someone who could.

Nineteen

“E
LL-OH
?”

It wasn’t Thomas who picked up this time. It was Roisin.

“Is Abby there?”

“Here,” Roisin agreed.

“Okay, it’s me now,” Abby said. Things must have slowed down at the shop. “I’m teaching Roisin life skills. She’s really sharp, you know? So, what do you need?”

“Jing.” She glanced at the Burr Oak as she walked past it. The leaves were completely still. “Abby? Are you there?”

“Yeah.” Abby’s voice was tight. “He’s smart, you’re smart. You’re, like, in all the same classes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s, like, the school hero, you’re, like . . .
Teagan
. I’ve always known this was going to happen.”

“You think I—” Teagan shook her head. “Abby. Nothing like that is
ever
going to happen.”

More silence.

“What’s wrong with Jing?”

“My best friend likes him, for one.”

“Yeah.” Abby’s voice was weak. “I do. So—”

“I need you to call Jing because I need a hacker.”

Ten seconds of silence this time.

“That’s it? That’s all?”

“That’s it. Oscar’s life is on the line.”

“The monkey?”

Ape
. Teagan didn’t even bother to correct her. “Kyle said he found my friends through Facebook, so I know he used the Internet. He either paid a hacker or there’s a goblin out there who is very good with computers. They arranged to have Oscar picked up, then diverted the shipment. He’s locked in a box somewhere, and we don’t know where he is.”

“What, like the Ark of the Covenant when they put it in that warehouse? They just
stuck
him somewhere?”

“I hope not,” Teagan said.
Oh, God, I hope not
. “I need Jing to find him fast.”

“Jing could totally do that.”

“He has to understand—this is dangerous. He’ll be messing with the kind of creatures that sliced Cade open.”

“I’ll call him. You need him at your house, or what? He could pick us up here. I’m
so
done with this for today.”

“If he’s willing to help. Don’t pressure him.”

“He’s
Jing
, Tea. The Mighty Khan. What do you think? He’s going to walk away when somebody’s in trouble? HEY!” Teagan jerked the phone away from her ear. Abby never warned her when she was going to start yelling. “YOU GUYS COULD TAKE THE BUS HOME, RIGHT?”

Teagan put the phone back to her ear. “I’ve got to go meet a patient,” she said. “I’ll meet you—and Jing, if he’ll come—at home.”

She’d reached the zoo gate. At first she thought Grizabella had left, but then the
cat-sídhe
came around the sign, scratching at her side. When she saw Teagan’s look, she stopped scratching and put both hands behind her back.

“You can fix me?”

“Yes,” Teagan said. “You have mange.”

“What’sss
mange
?”

“Spiders”—she was pretty sure she wouldn’t know what an arachnid was—“living in your skin.”

Grizabella looked down at her belly. “Nope,” she said.

“They are too small to see,” Teagan told her. “Invisible spiders.”

“Invisible spiders.”
The
cat-sídhe
clawed wildly at her belly.
“Eeeeeeeeeee!”

“Stop.” Teagan knelt down and caught her paws. “Stop it. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Invisible is
scary!
” Grizabella’s voice squeaked on the word.

“If you scratch, you’re going to give yourself infections. Like Bill Bailey did.”

“Ssswellings? Dead skin?”

“Yes. That’s what killed him. So
don’t scratch
.”

Grizabella put her hands behind her back again.

Teagan showed her the medication, and then squeezed it onto her back between her shoulder blades.

“No washing,” Teagan said.

“Wassshing?”

Of course she wasn’t going to wash. She was a
cat-sídhe
. “Stay out of the rain. And don’t sleep anywhere you’ve slept before. Don’t touch other
cat-sídhe
. Not until you’re better.”

“The spiders will crawl on them?”

“Yes. This is just the first treatment. You are going to need at least three more, so you have to come find me.”

“You touched me,” Grizabella said. “With your handsss. Will the hssspiders jump on you?”

“If they do, I’ll use medicine.” Teagan struggled against an almost irresistible urge to scratch. She clenched her teeth, fighting to keep in her own
Eeeeeeee
welling up inside.

“Sleep warm, Teagan.”

“Sleep warm.” Teagan waited until she was sure Grizabella wasn’t looking before she poured on hand sanitizer and started scratching. Psychosomatic. But still. Her skin felt
crawly
all over.

At the next stop she saw six
cat-sídhe
riding on top of a bus headed in the opposite direction. One was gleefully plucking the feathers from a struggling pigeon, tossing them into the air to flutter into the traffic behind the bus.
Had they manipulated some poor street person into tossing them up one by one onto the top of the bus? Dropped like rotten apples from a tree? Or did they have friends in the city?

Jing’s Mustang was just pulling up to the curb when she arrived. Teagan saw Mrs. Santini’s curtain twitch as he got out and opened the car door for Abby. Score one for Jing.

“Thomas and Roisin are taking the bus home,” Abby said. “They didn’t mind.”

Jing reached into the back seat and took out a metal briefcase.

“His kit,” Abby explained. “You know, like the stuff Finn carries? Only better.”

“Everything a hacker needs to survive in hostile territory,” Jing said.

“What have you told him, Abby?” Teagan asked.

“Everything.” Abby flushed. “He asks really good questions, Tea. He listens good, too.”

Jing looked down at her. Way down. He was six-four and “totally Italian,” as Abby would say, even though he had no Italian ancestry whatsoever. That just meant he could have posed for Michelangelo’s sculptures. Or competed in the original Olympic Games in ancient Greece. And won.

“So Abby tells me you’re not human, Tea,” he said.

“Do you believe her?”

Jing grinned. “I’ve suspected it for years. I have an
effect
on human females. And yet here we are. Friends. Just friends, after all the time we’ve spent together.”

“You mean all the time in psychology and political science classes?”

“At the top of the class . . . and it’s lonely at the top.”

“Lonelier now,” Teagan said. “Molly was up there with us. This is serious, Jing.”

He lost his grin. “I know it. I just met your cousin, remember? I held my man Cade in my arms until the ambulance arrived.”

“But you’re still willing to help. To risk facing . . . all that, to save an ape?”

“‘When bad men combine, the good must as-so-ci-
ate
,’”— Jing sounded as if he were speaking from a pulpit—“‘else they will fall one by one, an un-pitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’”

“Oh, god,” Abby said. “That’s not from an old book, is it?”

“Worse.” Jing took her elbow. “From a political philosopher. Edmund Burke.”

“If you quote him to my grandmother,” Teagan said, “she’ll love you forever. She’s proud of the old Irish philosophers.”

“She’d know Burke?”

“She knows of every important Irishman who ever drew a breath. Civilization rested on the shoulders of the Irish, didn’t you know?”

“I believe you’ll find that Chinese culture predates the Celtic world.”

“I wouldn’t mention that to Mamieo,” Teagan said.

“You’re totally going to get along with Mr. Wylltson, though.” Abby waved at Mrs. Santini, who was still peeking through the curtains. “I’m going to go tell Zia that I’m bringing you over after you’re done at Tea’s, before she starts mak- ing calls, you know what I mean?”

Jing watched Abby cross the street.

“I am not just a good
man
, Tea. I am a
good
man. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell Abby that.”

“Tell her yourself. Or better yet, show her. And I’d start by stopping flirting with other girls. Like me.”

“You know I’m not serious.”

“
I
know it. But
I’m
not the one you’re trying to impress. Finn has a killer smile, and when he uses it on other girls, I feel like strangling someone.”

“A gentle little thing like you?”

“You have no idea.”

Jing looked after Abby, his brows knit.

“Jing, if you are just here to get close to Abby, you should walk across the street right now and forget the rest of it. Go impress Zia Sophia, and you’ll be getting somewhere.”

“I said I was a
good man
, little girl. Good men don’t walk away when their friends are in trouble.”

“They don’t call their friends
little girl
, either,” Teagan said pointedly.

“Whoa.” Jing took a step back. “When did you get the scary-chick thing going on? All I meant was that you are short. You can’t deny it. Stop looking at me like that. Abby’s coming back—she’ll think I did something wrong.”

Abby was clearly relieved by whatever Mrs. Santini had said. “We’ve got an hour. After that, Zia expects us in her kitchen. She’s going to feed you.”

“That’s good?”

“That’s good,” Abby said.

Teagan caught Jing’s sleeve. “Even good men walk away sometimes. I need you to think about Molly and Cade before you get in any deeper. This is for real, and it can kill you.”

“We’re born with the knowledge that there is something out there,” Jing said. “We hope and pray that it’s all friendly. But deep down, we know it’s not. Something really bad is out there. I just got a good look at one of the bastards. Whatever’s happening, I’m in.”

“But there’s good things out there, too, right?” Abby countered. “Like Tea and Dumpster Boy.” It was the first time Teagan had heard her say anything positive about Finn. “They’re, like,
created
to fight the bad guys.”

Teagan nodded. If she and Finn were the good guys, they’d better step up their game. So far the good guys had barely managed to stay alive.

“Speaking of, Thomas and Roisin were having issues, Tea,” Abby went on. “I told them to walk by the lake before they came home. I gave Thomas my phone, in case they needed to call the angel.” She looked at Jing. “The one I told you about. He can go
nuclear
if he has to.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting this nuclear angel,” Jing said.

“About that.” Abby pushed the door open. “He’s not really much to look at.” Raynor was sitting in the living room.

“Where’s Dad?” Teagan asked. She knew Mamieo and Aiden were still at school.

“I believe he stepped over to the Santinis’,” Raynor said.

“And Finn?”

“He moved his bed into the basement. He’s asleep down there. He was out most of the night, after all.”

Teagan frowned.
Finn had been out all night? Hunting the Dump Dogs, no doubt. And he’d left her sleeping, safe in her bed
. She’d have to convince him that wasn’t a good idea.

“Who’s not much to look at?” Raynor asked.

“The angel you have living here,” Jing said.

“That would be me.” Raynor stood up.

Jing extended his hand. “I thought you’d be taller.”

“I can see why you would,” Raynor said, craning his neck to look at him. “And you are . . . ?”

“The Mighty Khan, Abby’s main man.”

“He wants to be my main man,” Abby said. “I haven’t said he could.”

“So, you are applying for the position? And this”—Raynor motioned to the briefcase—“is your resume?”

“Something like that.” Jing grinned. “I’m a white hat. I’m here to do some good in the ’hood.”

“A white hat?”

“If you’re an angel, you should have heard of us. The good guys on the World Wide Web? Today, I’m going to be a knight in shining armor.”

Raynor rubbed his nose. “So you’re rescuing a damsel in distress?”

“An ape, actually. But I’m hoping my damsel will appreciate it.”

“Don’t hope too much,” Abby said. “If I appreciate, I appreciate from a distance. If you’re so good, why’d you get caught in the school computers? Zia’s going to want to know that. My family don’t like publicity.”

“Connections,” Jing said. “I wanted to be on the right people’s radar. I made the news and they started calling, just to find out who I was.”