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About an hour later the tunnel ended and we entered the ho a home I just assumed he wandered the world, always on the move, in search of bloodshed and chaos But, now that I considered it, I realized every monster needs a den to call its own, and Mr Tiny’s had to be the strangest of thee ¨C and I mean HUGE &u as far ahead as I could mites and stalactites, waterfalls, beautifully weird rock colours and formations But rand old cars fro in the air overhead At first I thought they were attached to the ceiling by wires, but they were in constantaround like planes, and not a wire in sight

There were mannequins all over the place, dressed in costumes from every century and continent, froeous modern fashion accessories Their blank eyes unsettledto life at Mr Tiny’s command and leap upon me

There orks of art and sculpture, sonized them ¨C the Mona Lisa, The Thinker, The Last SupperMixed in with them, displayed like art exhibits, were dozens of brains preserved in glass cases I read a few of the labels &uave one to a school named after Mahler!)

"Our father loves music," Evanna whispered "Where huramophone records-" She obviously hadn’t heard about CDs yet! " -he collects brains of co the with many they never coet them from?" I asked

"He travels to the past when they have just died and robs their graves," she said, as though it was thethe right and wrong of sohtier issues to deal with, so I let it slide

"He likes art too, I take it," I said, nodding at a flowery Van Gogh

"Iinals of course ¨C he doesn’t bother with copies"

"Nonsense!" I snorted "These can’t be real I’ve seen soht of my human Dad as my real father, and alould " -took me to see the Mona Lisa in the Loo once"

"The Louvre," Evanna corrected me "That is a copy Some of our father’s Little People are created from the souls of artists They make perfect copies of pieces he especially admires Then he slips back to the past and swaps the copy for the original In most cases even the actual artist cannot tell the difference"

"You’re telling me the Mona Lisa in Paris is a fake?" I asked sceptically

"Yes" Evanna laughed at my expression "Our father is a selfish man He always keeps the best for himself What he wants, he takes &u Except books" Her voice beca about his attitude towards books "Desmond never reads works of fiction He doesn’t collect books or pay any attention to authors Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Twain ¨C all have passed him by unmarked He doesn’t care what they have to say He has nothing to do with the world of literature It’s as if it exists in a separate universe froart fan, but even I was impressed by this display It was the ulti a slice of pretty ination

There was far too much for any one person to take in Weapons, jewellery, toys, tools, albus, grandfather clocks, suites of furniture, thrones of kings and queens A lot of it was precious, but there were plenty of worthless iteht Mr Tiny’s fancy, such as bottle tops, oddly shaped balloons, digital watches, a collection of empty ice-cream tubs, thousands of whistles, hundreds of thousands of coins (old ones mixed in with brand new ones), and so on The treasure cave in Aladdin seeh the cave was packed with all manner of wonders and oddities, it didn’t feel cluttered There was plenty of space to walk about and explore We wound our way through the various collections and artefacts, Evanna pausing occasionally to point out a particularly interesting piece ¨C the charred stake on which Joan Of Arc was burnt, the pistol which had been used to shoot Lincoln, the very first wheel

"Historians would go crazy in this place," I noted "Does Mr Tiny ever bring anybody here?"

"Almost never," Evanna said "This is his private sanctuary I’ve only been here a handful of times myself The exceptions are those he pulls out of the Lake of Souls He has to bring them here to turn them into Little People"

I stopped when she said that I’d had a sudden prean, but she shook her head

"Ask no more questions," she said "Des now"

Minutes later we reached what felt like the centre of the cave There was a s beside theh the lenses of his thick glasses

"Well, well," he drawled, hooking his thuin the Lake of Souls?"

"Ignore him," Evanna said out of the side of her mouth

Mr Tiny waddled forward and stopped a few metres shy of me His eyes seemed to dance with fire this close up "If I’d knohat a nuisance you were going to be, I’d never have spawned you," he hissed

"Too late now," I jeered

"No it isn’t," he said "I could go back and erase you from the past, make it so you never lived The universe would replace you Soest ever Vampire Prince, hunt for the Vampaneze Lord, etc ¨C but you would never have existed Your soul wouldn’t just be destroyed ¨C it would be unly, "you know you aren’t going to do that"