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As far as I could tell, it had been halfway through a leap and now was stuck there as time literally stopped all around it. Except for me. I was left panting and slumped against the side of the tub, because time stoppages might not work on me, but they were still a bitch! And then slowly climbing to my feet and wading over to a towel rack, grabbing one, and wrapping it around me.
And going to see what this latest threat was.
I still wasn’t sure. It was frozen solid, I could tell that much from the power loss alone, as well as the line of suds, hovering like a small cloud in the middle of the room. I tried throwing some more up there, but they didn’t help all that much. I got a watery, soapy outline that was vaguely humanoid, but that was it.
So I went and got some body powder instead.
Halfway through shooting bursts of talcum everywhere, I started frowning. An expression that was a full-on scowl by the time I finished plastering what looked like a human-shaped statue, if a lumpy and rather streaky one. Not to mention wobbly, as my spell started to unravel.
My hands were shaking from the power loss by then, so I fished a little potion bottle out of my makeup bag, downed about a third of it, and felt ease and calm flood back through my system. And herbs scrape my tongue, because the stuff was nasty. I returned the bottle and brushed my teeth to get the taste out of my mouth, and because some people around here were nosy. Then came back over, sat on the edge of the tub, and waited.
It didn’t take long.
The long legs started flailing, the equally elongated arms started windmilling, and the momentum the body had had before time literally stopped around it suddenly carried it forward—straight into the tub.
It—or rather, he—hit down, half-in and half-out of the large basin, with his head underneath the water. He came up, gasping and shrieking, and then choking, because I guess something went down the wrong way. Until one of the long legs scrabbling for purchase on the water-slick floor slipped, and he ended up getting dunked again.
He finally got two hands on the side of the tub and pushed up, popping his head out. Or I guess he did. The water had washed off the powder, making him invisible again from the chest up.
But I still had enough indicators to get the broken end of the bath brush under what I guessed was a chin. And it must have been close enough. Because the invisible man suddenly decided to become visible again.
Leaving me looking into the bug-eyed, terrified face of—
“Augustine?” I’d strongly suspected it was him, but I was still pissed.
“Aughhh!”
“Augustine!”
“Aughhh!”
“Stop shrieking!”
“Well, stop . . . wheeze . . . threatening me . . . wheeze . . . you psycho!”
I stared at him. I was the psycho? “What are you doing in here?”
He looked cross-eyed at the loofah stick and seemed to be having trouble breathing. Probably because his solar plexis had taken a hit when he slammed into the tub. “I had . . . to talk . . . to you—”
“Right now?”
“Yes, now! Now! It’s important.” He grabbed his chest. “What did you . . . wheeze . . . do to me?”
“Nothing permanent, although you’re lucky I didn’t kill you! What the hell were you jumping at me for?”
“I was afraid . . . that you were about . . . to scream. I didn’t want . . . to have to deal . . . with that overgrown gorilla.” He looked around, I guess noticing the fact that we were alone. “Where is he, anyway?”
“If you mean Marco, probably in the common rooms somewhere. The consul had a silence spell woven around the bedroom.”
“Gods be praised!” Augustine tried getting up, only to slide back down onto his ass again.
I grabbed his arm, pulled him up, and slapped a towel onto his chest. “What did you do? And why didn’t they see you sneaking in here?”
He rolled his eyes and disappeared again. For a second, I thought that was partly due to my stinging, blurry eyesight, because some soap had dripped from my hair into my face and screwed with my vision. And because no glamourie was that good. I was at point-blank range, and I still couldn’t see him. But when I reached out a hand—
He was standing there, solid under my palm.
Son of a bitch.
