"Tomorrow, then. You get it up and bring it over here, we can fly it from our yard."
"If he's not blind," added Piotr.
Terrel seemed excited. "Any chance of that?"
"Don't get too thrilled about the idea," said Vanya dryly. "Blind people are only interesting for the first ten minutes."
"He's joking," said Esther.
"So was I," said Terrel. "I better go now. And, uh... thanks." He took the kite and trotted out of the yard.
When he was gone, they were silent for a few moments, until Piotr set down the dog's corpse. Then he sighed. "Well, that's one less yipping pest."
"That dog died for me," said Vanya. "Speak no ill of him."
"He was talking about Terrel," said Esther. "And it wasn't a nice thing to say."
"Maybe I was talking about Ruthie," said Piotr.
"Oh," said Esther.
"I think my eyes are OK now," said Vanya. "Hose down those brownies. Dilute them into the lawn."
"It's going to be a bad day for the earthworms," said Piotr.
"Was it the Bitch Widow who put her up to it?" Vanya asked in proto-Slavonic.
"I think she lied to Ruthie about what the potions would do. The chicken was obviously supposed to be a love potion."
"What about the wasp?" asked Vanya.
"The Widow's familiar," said Esther.
"So is she dead now?"
"The wasp is. But the Widow is still ruining perfectly good air by breathing it."
Piotr brandished the can. "Your magic may be good for some things, but it was Johnson and I who stopped the wasp."
Esther hugged him. "Even though you don't understand all that we do, Piotr, you stood beside us when it counted."
"I feel like I just won a joust," said Piotr.
"Good lance work," said Ivan.
"I can't believe she found a way in," said Katerina.
"There's always a way in," said Esther. "Always."
"I hope so," said Vanya. "Because somehow we've got to return the favor and get past her defenses."
"You'll do it, too," said Esther. "But the picnic strategy is out."
They laughed. Nervously.
Baba Yaga
That afternoon in Tantalus the fire department was called out seven times, and not one of the fires was a false alarm. No one died, but five houses, a gas station, and a barn were lost. Every one of the fires was obviously arson, even without the presence of detectable accelerants, because they started in such impossible places. But no one saw anything suspicious before or after the fires, and after this one night of rage, the arsonist never struck again in Tantalus.
Chapter 14
Fireworks
Katerina could hardly bring herself to eat supper that night. Not that she wasn't hungry - she was. But they had come so close to dying. The food here was already strange. None of it looked like anything. Everything was flavored with something else, so nothing tasted like itself. She hadn't really had much appetite since she left Sophia's house. And now Baba Yaga had found a way to get curses past the perfect protection of Ivan's mother's house.
Using Ruthie wouldn't be tried again. But Baba Yaga would find someone else. That boy, for instance. He was seething with resentments. Right now he seemed to like Ivan and his parents, but that could change, if Baba Yaga enticed him the right way, or fooled him about what he was doing, the way Ruthie was deceived. Or it might be Piotr himself, or Mother; every day they left the house to work, to shop, to run errands. Who knew what they might bring back with them? What familiar? What curse concealed in papers in Piotr's briefcase? Or in the grocery bags that Ivan helped Mother bring in from the car?
It was just a matter of time.
What was this food? Mother said it was potatoes, sliced thin, with a cheese sauce. But nothing looked or tasted like cheese, and she had no idea what potatoes were. Everything felt strange in her mouth.
She ate it anyway, chewing methodically. When one is at war with Baba Yaga, it's good to do it on a full stomach. You never know when the crisis might come, and you have to be at full strength.
But what strength did they have? All these tasks that Ivan had been working on, the gunpowder, the alcohol, the bombs, the Molotov cocktails - what good would such mechanical things do against magic? Yet Mother had such faith in them that Katerina went along.
And... there was the killing of the wasp today. That stream of liquid, and the wasp went down and died. A creature sustained as a familiar was very hard to kill. So maybe there