Page 51 of Signed in Incubus

“You’remylittle spoon. He can be yours.”

Her face lit up. “Yes!”

We walked out of the gift shop with the nearly life-sized Fin Diesel plushy and matching t-shirts with a cartoon of Fin eating sushi.

“Speaking of sushi, how about we grab some now?”

She laughed. “That’s perfect.”

The stench hit me first as we stepped out the double doors of the aquarium and onto the street.

Troll!

“Prax?” Her happy smile faded, and she went white.

She peered around nervously, looking for the source of the smell. The troll showed itself moments later, stomping into view from an alleyway across the street. His eyes landed on Penny immediately.

“Mine!” he roared.

The troll tromped across the street with no regard for traffic. Cars screeched to a halt, and the creature easily shoved a vehicle aside as he made his way toward us.

“Oh no! The concealment spell. I fell asleep last night and forgot to cast it.”

“I can fight it,” I said. I didn’t have a handicap this time.

“No! There are people around. Someone might get injured. And I don’t want to alert the EA. You know a fight in broad daylight is going to end up all over the news.”

She had a point.

Her magical bindings were still around me, and while they weren’t particularly visible unless you really looked, I didn’t want her to get in trouble if the EA found out. Also, they might blame her if they knew she was the one who cast the spell thatbrought the troll to this dimension to look for her in the first place.

“Then we run.”

I handed her the bag with the souvenir t-shirts, then picked her up and started down the street, moving much faster than she could on her own. She clung to me with one arm and squashed the stuffed Fin Diesel to her side with the other.

“Can you cast the concealment spell once we lose him?”

“I don’t have it memorized. The book is on the coffee table at home. I haven’t returned it to Griselda yet.”

“We can’t lead the troll back to our home.” I looked behind me. The troll was on the other side of the street now, solemnly trudging toward us.

“I have my clutch with me,” Penny said. “It’s in my backpack, front pocket. Leave me somewhere hard for the troll to get to, pop home, and put the spell book in the bedside table, top drawer. Then pop back.”

That would work. The book was small, like a travel guidebook. It would fit through the clutch opening no problem.

“Got it.” I scanned the urban landscape, trying to find somewhere to put her that the troll couldn’t reach.

My first thought was somewhere up high. I started to climb with Penny clinging on to me but then realized that the troll couldclimb just as well as I could. I could float Penny a few feet off the ground but not all the way up the side of a building.

“New plan,” I said. “We’re going to drive out of here.”

I looped around the building to where I’d parked Penny’s BMW. The garage had found a location tag attached to the underside of the chassis, and they’d sent it to the police. The car was now officially bug-free. Since Penny didn’t particularly enjoy driving, and I loved it, she let me drive whenever we went out.

We quickly got inside, and I silently prayed for good traffic as I turned onto the street, away from our stinky tail.

We had a good headstart until we were stopped by a red light. Unable to move over to the right lane so I could make a turn and keep moving, we were sitting ducks as the troll came closer and closer. He was right behind us when the lights turned green.

“Come on! Come on! Go! Go!Go!” she urged the cars in front of us.

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