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He started to get up, but one of the over him She put a foot on his chest and pushed him over backward; it didn’t take much Quentin looked at the foot It was an ordinary foot, a woman’s foot, leather sandal, definitely human

There were seven or eight of theood read in the dimness Another woman stepped up to the case Out of nowhere Pushkar popped up behind her and belted her in the back of the head with a pool cue, or he tried to: the cue snapped like balsa wood, like he’d hit a marble statue, and the one who had her foot on Quentin uncorked some spell one-handed that made him freeze and fall down flat, stiff as a board

Ignoring the action around her, the woht of her hands her face looked mildly amused She picked it up and tossed it aside, then she spoke a feords over the case in a businesslike tone—she could have been ordering a pizza There was so weirdly familiar about the way she talked She pulled the suitcase loose, just like that—there was a ripping sound, exactly as if it had been held down by nothing more than Velcro, then it came free She tucked it under her arm

These people were thieves, like theuys and take out the security, then they walked in and robbed the robbery In his concussed, addled state Quentin mostly felt adood job

Moving in sync they backed away toward the s, a coordinated withdrawal, each one keeping one of the opposition well covered Quentin got his elbows under hi not to pose a threat to anybody They were organized as hell, whoever they were Two of the it flat onto the air outside

“No!” Betsy said “You can’t!”

She was handling this way better than Quentin was Already she was back on her feet and walking toward the and then fire flowing froht But three of the robed people had joined hands to create a defensive barrier, and her ainst it Quentin sat up all the way now His head was clearing She was right: this was their job That case was theirs Those people had no right to it He got to one knee

Now he knehy theira distorted kind of archaic German, which he happened to knoell, because it was the sae from the Neitherlands ritten in

The last one climbed out onto the stolen carpet

“Stop!” Betsy shrieked

She ran to theas they slid away The bird hopped out from under the pool table

“They cannot open it,” it said, maybe to itself “They still cannot open the case”

Quentin staggered to the s, but he could only send a futile, fugitive heat ray after theht back off their shield and burned a scribble on the wall of the house next to hi off the spell that dropped hi spacily at the floor

The banging on the door started again, uy on the couch, the one Betsy had shut doas stirring But Quentin felt only calone, he’d lost track of the yet They were going to finish this thing if he had to do it himself

“Pushkar” His voice sounded weird and distant in his bruised ears He cleared the dust out of his throat “Pushkar Is there anything here that can fly?”

Still leaning heavily on the pool table, Pushkar looked around the room

“Yes,” he said

CHAPTER 14

They swarry bees out of a hive Plum and Stoppard rode leather club chairs; Betsy had a s that had been in front of the fireplace, which she handled standing up, surfboard-style; Quentin got the penny-farthing bicycle Pushkar hi with Lionel and the bird, had taken command of the enorht had turned out to be surprisingly ahtly wider than theframe, but it bashed its way out anyway in an explosion of brick and plaster dust, shedding a stream of multicolored billiard balls from its innards

The sun was setting, and it ilight at ground level, but as they surged up above the tree line the sunset picked the blue air, up into the early evening sky, accelerating as they went, up and to the west, chasing the dwindling speck of the fleeing carpet

Pushkar’s spellas —Quentin had done a little flying on his own, but this was totally different Already the house was shrinking behind thears can’t be choosers At least it wasn’t the double bass He wondered if it would go faster if he pedaled

Quentin stuck close to the pool table, drafting off it Through it all Lionel had e clamped under his arm No one spoke, they just bent over theirall the speed out of the, her short hair blown straight back fro fiercely ahead like a ski jumper in mid-jump

Foot by foot they began to overhaul the carpet, reeling it in The thieves—the other thieves—were using Pushkar’s spells too, but he hadn’t set the carpet up for speed Whatever the hell was in that case, they were going to take it back Mile after mile of Connecticut woods rolled by underneath them; maybe they were already out of state, he couldn’t even tell The carpet dove, skimmed the treetops, rolled and turned, then clawed back the altitude Quentin shadowed it