had explained that all the air in the house moved toward Dr. Prolix, sucking her ancient germs away from us and down into a big, germ-killing furnace. She was immune to all her own diseases, being infected like the rest of the angels, but we'd be dead meat if we got too close. Even Cal and Lace kept away from the line. Didn't want their fexcellent ninja suits burned, I guess.
I stayed against the back wall, as far away as I could get. Not just to stay away from the Plague Lady but to be farther from the weird old dolls that lined the shelves of her office. Real-looking hair sprouted from their crumbling heads, and all their faces were painted with smiles.
Kids in the old days must have loved nightmares or something.
"You're the one who sings," Dr. Prolix said, her gaze dismissing the rest of us and locking onto Minerva. Her voice was dry and raspy, like two sheets of paper rubbing together. Her unwrinkled face didn't look that old, except for the thinness of her skin and the stiffness of her smile. She looked like one of her own dolls, decorated with glowing human eyes.
"Yeah, that's me," Minerva said in a small voice.
"And where did you learn these songs, young woman?"
"When I first got sick, I felt something down in my basement calling me, making me sort of..." She let out a giggle.
"Sexually aroused?" Dr. Prolix asked.
Chapter 20
"Yeah, I guess. When I went there in my fevers, I could hear whispering from the cracks." Minerva shrugged. "So I started writing down what they said."
I swallowed. I'd never really thought about where her lyrics had come from, but then, Minerva had never mentioned that they'd bubbled up from underground. That seemed like the kind of thing you might mention.
"Perhaps I might hear a few words?" Dr. Prolix said.
"Um, is that a good idea?" Pearl asked softly.
"Don't sing, dear," the old woman said. "Just speak them."
Minerva paused a moment, then cleared her throat.
A few syllables came from her mouth, at first halting and tangled, like someone trying to imitate the sound of a sink gurgling. But then she started speaking in rhythm, and the weird sounds smoothed into words.
Then Minerva fell into the verses and choruses Pearl had built around the nonsense syllables, pitching her voice in a singsong way. I recognized a few phrases from Piece Two, and my fingers moved half-consciously, playing the bass line in the air, so I didn't notice when she started singing.
Maybe the floor trembled a little.
"Stop that!" Dr. Prolix snapped.
Minerva came to a halt, shaking her head as though she were snapping out of a daydream. Then she shrugged. "Sorry."
"I always wondered how that worked," Dr. Prolix said softly from behind her desk.
"How what worked?" Cal said. "What is that?"
"The last time the enemy came was seven hundred years ago, before I was born. But the Night Mayor was born toward the end of those times."
I blinked. Okay, this woman was talking about centuries - about being alive for centuries. I felt my brain trying to switch off, like when a crazy person is ranting on the subway and you totally don't want to hear it, but you can't stop listening.
Dr. Prolix spread her hand on her desk. "Have you ever considered, Cal, how the previous invasions were dealt with? Without seismographs? Without walkie-talkies and cell phones?"
"Um... I thought maybe they didn't deal so well?" he said. "Of course, they didn't have Homeland Security in the way, making it hard to move medicine into regions suffering outbreaks, and there weren't any subway tunnels for the enemy to slide around in. But it must have been hard. What did they lose last time? Two hundred million people?"
"And yet humanity survived." She folded her hands. "Legend has it that they didn't have to wait for the worms to come up. Certain peeps, called 'singers,' were able to bring them forth. So the Watch set traps and ambushes and killed the enemy at will."
Cal breathed out a little sigh. "And we believe this?"
Dr. Prolix nodded. "The Night Mayor saw it happen when he was a child. He saw a woman call up a worm." Her glowing eyes swept across the rest of us. "Along with fifteen drummers and bell-ringers and a man with a conch horn, with a great throng watching, waiting for the kill."
Conch horn? I thought. Oh, great. I was going to have to switch instruments again.
"Dude," Lace said, punching Cal in the shoulder.