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The scene was right out of a slapstick comedy I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Keystone Kops had shown up to stop the riot And the Baptists used to accuse the Methodists back horin At least we’d never had a food fight in the fellowship hall Well, not when it was anyone other than the kids involved I decided that Jaht idea, so I moved to the far side of the rooh to the door that I could escape if I needed to

Then while I was still fighting back giggles, the sense of rabbed me froht it en, having made it safely out from under the table and ready to ly as he pulledlot outside But then he didn’t releaseI kicked my captor in the shin and pulled away

It was my old friend Mr Bones, one of Idris’s cronies, and noas absolutely certain that it was the sauy I’d seen in that office He had a bunch of his goons lined up, surroundingwould do no good The noise fro lot One more female scream wouldn’t stand out in all that Instead, I did what I did best I bent down and scooped up a handful of slushy snow, packed it into a ball, and threw it I needed to coh spot, but I had a good arht as well stick hat I knew for the tis settled down some at work

The snowball hit Mr Bones square in the face and some of the slush trickled into his eye socket, which couldn’t have felt good While he was still reacting, I eneral direction of the other goons I’d been in all of two snowball fights in h snow to make snowballs back home in Texas, so I didn’t have a lot of practice with this The goons were closing in, and it was harder and harder to keep the came out of the sky, and I instinctively ducked It had been s could coh, it looked like the air force was friendly Two unfa theoons and me "You’d better make a run for it, ot a lot in the way of attackanimated takes a lot out of us," the other said

"Bein’ a gargoyle ain’t easy," the first one said

"Watch it, you idiot!" the other called out when they almost collided in hed so hard they aloyles were keeping the goons fro to argoyles could hold theoon that was between ap in that circle and make a break for it, I was sure I’d be safe inside, surrounded by Owen, Gloria, Jaical people I could even kill two birds with one snowball by creating a distraction to break up the fight inside and rescue Owen fro mamas

Then the church hall doors flew open and a lone figure tore outside like the hounds of hell were on his heels It en, and just as I recognized hi, but not before the goons had forgotten about me and turned their attention to Owen I wondered if that had been the plan all along, to use me as bait to capture hih he was pretty powerful with ic as they threw spells at hi a fewto create a distraction, but it was still h Oasn’t going to get away frory daughters spilled out of the hall, in search of their quarry I wasn’t sure what they thought was going on in the parking lot, but they reacted as though yet another party was trying to steal Owen frouys Mr Bones found his A few of the woh confusion for Owen to get away from the attackers and catch my arm as we ran for James and Gloria’s car