The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

He was staring up at a tall, ghostly white woman with no eyes, mouth, nose, or hair. She had hands like flippers.

Mack blinked.

It was a mannequin.

A mannequin wearing a green dress and standing beside another mannequin wearing a purple dress.

Xiao was sprawled across a table piled with sweaters.

Dietmar stood nearby, blinking at the same mannequin as Mack.

Jarrah was still staring at her phone.

The four of them were in a department store. The women’s department.

Xiao quickly resumed her human form.

The store did not seem to be open. There were no customers. No clerks. And the lights were low.

It would take some time for them to figure out what had happened. The short version is: it’s best not to use magic words you don’t know very well.

Because what Jarrah had asked her mother for were the words to say “Restore my friend,” meaning “Return Stefan to his normal size.” That would have been Arb harut-ma.

Whereas harid is the Vargran word for store. Not re-store. Just store.

And of course, since she’d yelled at her mother that she had to go, her mother had texted back the word fie-ma, which as we all know is the Vargran form of the verb “to go.”

So what she had said in effect was “Friend store go!”

Her friend was now, in fact, in a store. All her friends were. They were all in a large London department store called Harrods. Which, to be fair, did sound a lot like harid.

We can’t really blame Vargran for any of this. And on the plus side, the proper Vargran words, properly pronounced, did restore Stefan to normal size.

With two careful, delicate fingers, Jarrah drew a butterfly-sized Stefan from her pocket and set him atop a soft silk scarf.

She dialed her mother back and said, “One more time, eh?”

Once the store opened, they were able to buy a shirt for the newly normal-sized Stefan.

Mack’s phone chirped for a text. He read,

Mack, what should I wear?

Mack frowned and said, “What?” Then he texted,

What?

And then the golem texted back the words that would strike terror into Mack’s heart even from a distance of five thousand miles, and even after all he had endured.

Camaro asked me if I know how to dance. I do know how to dance. All golems can dance. On the floor. On the walls. On the ceiling. In fact, we can detach our legs and let them dance all by themselves. I said, “Yes.” So she said, “Then you’re going to dance your feet off. Saturday night.” This worried me because as I mentioned earlier, I got into trouble when I came to school without feet. I decided to call Mack, but he didn’t answer. So I sent him a text.

2 the dance w/ Camaro. It’s Friday night and I don’t know what 2 wear.

Camaro wasn’t making the golem dance. She had asked him to a dance. Camaro had always thought Mack was cute, and now . . .

“Mack, you look pale,” Jarrah said.

“I’m dating Camaro,” Mack said with a whimper. “She . . . she’s built like Thor.”