Morgan laughed, and my parents were shocked. “Feisty one, isn’t he?”
“My apologies, Lord Morgan,” my father said in a rush.
“Lord?” I said loudly. “You’re a lord?”
He put a finger in Nox’s stone mouth to touch his tongue. “I suppose I am.”
I gaped at him. “You’re Morgan of Shadows!”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Oh, sweet mercy!” I cried at him. “Please don’t make my nipples explode!”
His bushy eyebrows went almost up to his hairline. “I wish I could say I’ve never heard that one before, but strangely enough, that’s likely the sixth time someone has said that to me in the last week.”
“Wow,” I said excitedly. “I started that rumor like three weeks ago! And you’ve heard it six times already? I am awesome.”
“Sam,” both my parents said in that tone of voice that said I was in the most trouble I’d ever been in in the history of my life.
“My lord,” my father said. “Please excuse my idiot child. He was dropped on his head repeatedly when he was a baby.”
“Hey!” I growled at him. “You said you only did that twice. What do you mean repeatedly?”
“It would certainly explain a lot,” Morgan said. “Does he ever stop talking?”
“No,” my mother said. “Never.”
“Hey!”
They all looked at me.
I was suddenly nervous because I remembered that this was Morgan of Shadows, and while most of the stuff said about him was probably crap, there had to be truth in there somewhere, and I didn’t want to be murdered by having my spleen removed with a magical knife or whatever he supposedly did to bad guys.
“I’m not a bad guy,” I said to him, trying to reassure him. Or me. Or the both of us.
Pete, my sweet guardian guard said, “Well, not all the time.”
I glared at him. He stuck his tongue out at me.
“Did you do this?” Morgan asked. “Turned these boys to stone?”
I wrung my hands together. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how it happened. I was running from them and they chased me and then bam. They were all rock people.”
“Why were you running from them?” he asked.
“They stole Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s bag of cloth,” I said. “She’s old and doesn’t have a lot but she likes to make things like ugly mittens and pants for obese people and it wasn’t right. They shouldn’t steal from nice old ladies who make big pants so I went and took them back so people could eat all the food they want and still have clothes to wear.”
They all stared at me.
“Well! It’s true! And they chased me down this alley and were going to punch me in the throat so I turned to take it like a man because that’s what my dad taught me. That you should never run away from your problems if you don’t have to. Or don’t want to. Or if you’re trapped by a dead end.”
My father looked down at me with such fierce pride on his face that my heart stuttered in my chest.
Morgan frowned. “And then they just turned to stone?”
I shrugged. “Yes?”
“Okay, then,” he said, clapping his hands in front of him just once. “Turn them back.”