I looked at her. She gazed back miserably. “You’re telling me—” I stopped, needing a moment. “How many times have you guys actually been in the dead zones?”
“We . . . haven’t ever . . . actually . . .” she trailed off.
I stared at her.
“One,” Ranbir said, tossing his last empty onto the little pile he’d made. “The number you’re looking for is one. This one.”
Chapter Forty
Dory, Hong Kong
Half an hour later, things had not improved.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Jason, the girl’s brother, had woken up with a typical potion’s headache, and was nursing it with the last of my beer. Louis-Cesare had finally managed to free Tomas, and taken a right hook for his trouble. They were currently glaring at each other, or at least, I assumed so. That’s how they’d been when I left, as persuading Tomas to help out wasn’t going well.
Of course, neither was this.
“You’re going to spook him,” Ranbir said. “You need to get the blindfold on him first.”
I paused, partway out of the purse, to glare down at him.
“He’ll see me and bolt.”
“If you do it fast enough, he won’t see anything. That’s rather the point.”
“You want to come do this?” I whispered.
“No.”
“Then shut up.”
He shut up, but his expression was eloquent.
I ignored him and concentrated on the task at hand. Problem number one was that the horn was really long, and right between the beast’s eyes. The purse had therefore been messing with its vision and bopping its muzzle whenever it moved, much less galloped. That had panicked it, because horses were not the brightest of animals, and the sparkly unicorn version was no better.
Problem number two was that, if I emerged too far from the purse, I’d get caught by the portal. That was how portals worked; you were either in or you were out, and if I fell out, this thing was going to go ballistic. But right now, I was no heavier than the purse itself, still technically being in non-space, and it was ignoring me. Even better, it had stopped to explore something on the side of the road, meaning that the horn was almost horizontal.
The idea was for me to jump, jump, jump in little motions, until the straps hopped off the end of the horn . . .
Without doing that, I thought, as one strap broke free while the other stayed put, tipping me too far out, and ca
using the portal to grab me—
And dump me right in front of a pissed off unicorn.
Shit, I thought, as it reared up on two legs, bright gold hooves waving.
I rolled out of the way—fast—but this unicorn had a ‘tude and followed. I dodged behind an abandoned minibus, which was promptly a very holey minibus, as the horn went to work trying to skewer me. It appeared to be made of some diamond hard substance that treated the minivan’s metal sides like they were made out of aluminum . . . foil.
Shit, I thought, as glass shattered, seats were slashed, and metal separations were ripped through as if they were nothing. I need a sword made out of that stuff, I thought, as three heads popped out of the purse. And were slammed into the bus’s remaining windows, more than once.
Ranbir, Louis-Cesare, and Tomas glared at me.
“Do you want that blindfold now?” Ranbir asked.
“Just snap the straps,” Tomas said, and reached for them.
“No!” Three of us said, simultaneously.