by Paul Tobin
Oh yeah.
Friends.
I was holding a friend ray.
“Hah!” I said, shooting the friend ray into the huge swarm of bees that was descending on the yard, the one that was cutting off Bosper’s escape routes, narrowing the areas where he could run. The colors from the friend ray permeated the entire swarm, washing over them, the colors flickering over each of their little insect bodies.
“Hah!” I said again, because I was certain the tide of the battle would change, now that I had about twenty million new friends.
A bee stung me.
I said, “Hrrgggh!” And then, “Hey! Friends shouldn’t do that!” I was outraged at the bee.
Luria asked, “Did you use the friend ray on the bees? Really? Did you think that would work?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “Again, I thought that would work.”
“What a foolish girl. I confess that it was clever to use the oscillations of that robot’s voice to rob my bees of their flight by vibrating at the same frequency as their wings, thereby canceling the lift and causing them to plummet to the ground, but—”
“Oh. That’s what happened?”
“Yes. That’s what happened. One of Nate’s ideas, then? That boy is a genius. He would never be so foolish as to believe that a friend ray would work on me. Or on my personal swarms of bees.”
“I am exactly that foolish,” I admitted. “Why wouldn’t it work?”
Luria was walking closer. Bosper was near her, ready to bite at a moment’s notice. We all stared at one another in menacing fashion, ready for the fight to break out again, but taking a short break when Maryrose, carrying a basket of freshly picked carrots and sweet peas, walked past us to the house.
Luria said, “A friend ray won’t work on me because I would never be friends with you. We’re too different. You stand against everything I believe in.”
“Really? Piffle. You must suck.” A bit harsh, but I was telling the truth. If she was against everything I believed in, then she was against cake, and science fiction movies, and comic books. Of course I already knew that she was against being friends with Nate, and that’s one of my favorite things in my life.
Luria said, “And since Nate’s friend ray works by establishing a rapport, an empathy, between each side, of course it failed.” She was getting closer. About ten feet away. Easy shooting range. Bosper was growling at her, standing in front of her, backing up with every step she took.
“But why wouldn’t it work on the bees?” I asked. I’d really thought it would work. That said, there was a little buzzing in my brain, telling me I was forgetting something.
“Easy,” Luria said. “Their insect minds are too foreign. Again, no link could be established. You might be able to turn bees when I’m not nearby to guide them, but these bees”—she gestured to the millions of bees—“are too well trained. By my chemicals. They’re beyond your power to control. They’re my robotic slaves, and they will never be your friends.”
“Oh,” I said. “So you’re just too horrible to be friends with, and the bees are too alien, meaning I would either need to use the ray to make you friends with somebody else that was horrible . . .” My words trailed off. There was that buzzing in my brain again. Right at the back of my head. There was an idea forming. But . . . having Luria become friends with another horrible person would be . . . even more horrible. Then they’d just be horrible together, against me.
“Bzzz,” went my brain.
I said, “Or . . . couldn’t I have the bees, the millions of bumblebees, be friends with somebody who I’m already friends with?” Even as I spoke, my brain was going off like a buzzer. Like I’d hit on the right answer.
“Hah,” Luria laughed. “That’s absurd. You’re an idiot, Delphine Cooper. Do you happen to be friends with any insects?” She was taunting me. Laughing. And then I realized the buzzing in my brain was . . . not in my brain.
It was in my hair, actually.
It was Melville.
She flew out from my hair.
Luria’s eyes narrowed in concern, then went wide as I said, “Remember Melville? She’s my friend.”
Then, before Luria could do anything, I bathed the huge swarm of bumblebees with the friend ray again, but this time I included Melville in the color bath, so that I wasn’t trying to be friends with the bees, but rather making Melville friends with each and every last one of them.
And you know what they say about “the friend of a friend.”
The bees all pivoted in the air.
Hovering in precise formation.
Staring at Luria.
Bosper said, “Oh boy!”
Luria said, “Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Get her, girls.”
The roaring sound of the swarming bumblebees rose to unimaginable levels. The leaves in the trees were whipping about, like during the heaviest of storms. Even the trees themselves were shaking. The house was shaking. The very ground was shaking. There were so many millions of bees. So many friends . . . of Melville.
Melville zoomed forward and stung Luria, setting an example.
“Grgargh!” Luria screamed. And then she looked up to the darkening sky, and she said, “No. Oh. Oh no.”
And the swarm descended.
We took it easy on Luria.
I mean, sure, the bumblebees stung her a couple of hundred times on her arm so that she’d drop the pistol. And they stung her maybe a hundred times on her left leg, because she kept trying to do some martial arts moves and she actually managed to smack Melville at one point, momentarily dazing my bee and incensing all of her friends, so that the bees stung Luria on her back, and on her butt, and . . . well . . . they stung her everywhere, I guess.
Come to think of it, we really didn’t take it easy on her.
Bosper and I ran into the house.
And left the door open.
There were two members of the Red Death Tea Society just inside the door, near the stairs to the second floor. One was going up the stairs, and the other was using a wall socket to charge one of the bizarre glass handguns. They both looked up when I entered, first to me, and then to Bosper. They smiled, but they did not look nice.
“Hello,” I said.
“I’ll take the dog,” the man on the stairs said. He was ridiculously huge, maybe seven feet tall, dressed in the suit that the Red Death Tea Society favors, red with black trim. He had a full beard. Massive arms. A cup of tea in his large hands.
“That leaves the girl for me,” said the other man, unplugging his handgun from the wall socket, keeping it pointed at me the whole time. He was dressed in a similar suit, but with the addition of a red baseball cap. He wasn’t nearly as tall as the other man and not as muscular, but he had a wiry athletic quality about him, and a cup of tea in one hand. I couldn’t help but admire how, despite quickly turning to me, he maintained his balance so perfectly that he didn’t spill a drop.
“Hello,” I said again. Neither of the men had bothered to respond the first time I’d said hello, which is rude, especially if you’re an uninvited guest in somebody’s house.
“Good-bye,” the shorter man said, obviously about to pull the trigger.
“Hello,” I said yet again, but this time I wasn’t speaking to the assassins, I was speaking to approximately twenty million bees.
That’s why I’d left the door open.
To let them in.
Melville was in the lead, and she was the first to sting the men, both of whom quickly vanished under the great roaring wave of my invited guests. By that time I was already running into the kitchen, where two women in tracksuits were setting up some sort of strange device on the table. It looked like a laptop computer with miniature satellite dishes and a holographic display of numbers floating above. Also, it had a cup holder, suitable for cups of tea.
The women weren’t alone in the kitchen. Maryrose was there, too. She had a paring knife and, completely unaware of the others in the kitchen, was slicing off the tops of the ca
rrots she’d picked from the garden.
“She’s a good person,” I said, pointing to Maryrose.
“But they’re bad,” I said, pointing to the two women setting up the strange device, the ones who were looking up to me in shock, possibly because I’m so incredibly awe inspiring, or perhaps because I was accompanied by a few million bees that were swarming into the kitchen, bees that were pausing, listening to what I had to say, and then choosing their victims accordingly.
“Bosper!” I said, pointing to the device on the kitchen table. “Chew on that until it breaks!”
“Good boy gets to chew?” he said. His voice was full of anticipation. Nate doesn’t usually let him chew on things.
“Go ahead!” I said. “Chomp, even!”
“Oh boy, chomping!” Bosper said, jumping up onto the table. I was already running into the hall, where Nate’s dad, Algie, was walking along, carrying a skateboard, spinning one of the wheels, checking to make sure it was properly aligned.
“Oh hi, Delphine,” he said. “You looking for Nate? I’ll tell him you’re here.”
“Good guy,” I whispered to the bees. They looked to Melville for confirmation. I assume she nodded. Anyway, the bees didn’t attack Algie, not even when he yelled, “Nate! Delph’s here!” at the top of his lungs. Then he patted my shoulder and said, “Help yourself to some sandwiches if you like. They’re in the refrigerator. Door’s been sticking today, though.”
With that, Algie turned and went up the stairs, accidentally tripping on the huge man writhing at the bottom of the steps, the one who was still half-covered in bees.
“Why am I so clumsy today?” I heard Algie muttering as he walked up the stairs, but by that time I was already on my way through the rest of the house.
There were five members of the Red Death Tea Society in the living room.
“All bad guys,” I said, waving my hands at the men. The assassins frowned, then their eyes went wide when they saw the bees. I left a fair number of the bumblebees behind, and continued on.
There were three members of the Red Death Tea Society in Nate’s parents’ bedroom.
“Bad guys,” I said. The bees went in.
The door to the downstairs bathroom was closed. I knew Maryrose was in the kitchen, and Algie was upstairs, and Nate was somewhere below the house, hopefully well on his way to diffusing a nuclear bomb. I knocked on the bathroom door.
“Occupied!” a man’s voice responded.
“We’re serving tea,” I said. It was a test.
“Oh! Excellent! Be out in a second!”
“Ahhh, sorry about this,” I said. He’d failed the test.
“Sorry about what?” he asked.
But by that time I’d pointed to the crack at the bottom of the door, the crack that was easily large enough for bumblebees to crawl under, and I said, “Bad guy.”
Probably a few thousand bees snuck under the door. And then I could hear the man yelling and, honestly, I really did feel bad about it, but . . . more work to be done!
There was a man in the laundry room. I set the bees on him.
There was a man searching through a closet in the hallway.
More bees.
And so we moved through the house, uncovering the various members of the Red Death Tea Society and stinging them a few thousand times each, stinging the man in Maryrose’s computer room, the woman in the spare bedroom, the four men searching Nate’s room, and all the rest of the assassins who were all over the house.
The bumblebees seemed to be enjoying themselves.
The assassins were not.
As for me, I was decidedly enjoying myself, at least as much as you can enjoy yourself when you’re standing atop a nuclear bomb that’s set to explode in the next few minutes, because such things are well known to put a damper on even the best of all parties.
“Bosper has been biting!” the terrier said, bouncing along next to me as I pointed out a few more people for the bees to sting. He had a shred of red cloth hanging from one of his teeth.
“The dog enjoys the biting!” he added. Then, realization hit him. His tail went lower, and he could barely look at me. “The dog is not supposed to be biting,” he said. “The dog has gone bad.”
“No worries,” I said. “Dogs are supposed to bite bad guys. Go ahead and keep biting!”
“Good boy!” Bosper said, brightening immediately. He went bounding off down the hall while I checked my cell phone for the time. It was 5:17, meaning it was fifty-seven minutes since Nate had asked me to hold off the entirety of a deadly secret society for an hour. I’d almost made it! But . . . then . . . I started to hear a strange noise.
The bees.
The bumblebees.
They had been making a sound like buzzz buzzz buzzz, but now they were going brrrz brrrz bruzz. Entirely different. This new sound was uneasy, full of tension.
“What’s going on?” I asked Melville.
“Bzzz?” she said. She didn’t know. But then, only a moment later, she made a little coughing noise and . . .
. . . she flew out the window.
Leaving me behind.
The other bees quickly followed.
All of them.
Millions of bees went rushing out of the house as quickly as possible, funneling through the windows and doors. I hurried to look out the window, and with all the bumblebees rushing past me it felt like I was in a windstorm full of fluffy sand. Horrified, I watched as my bumblebee bodyguards flew high up into the sky, far, far away, disappearing into the distance. One after another, millions after millions, they all flew away.
Leaving me alone.
“Delphine Cooper,” I heard a voice say behind me.
Meaning, as I expected, I wasn’t exactly alone.
Also as expected, the voice sounded a lot like that of Maculte, the man in charge of the super-secret society bent on world destruction, the man who was not afraid to make his enemies disappear by means of . . . well, death. Death is, after all, right there in their name: it’s the Red Death Tea Society, not the Red Ask-You-Nicely-to-Go-Away Tea Society.
So I turned around, and, yes, it was Maculte. He was standing in the middle of the hallway dressed in his immaculate suit and carrying the finest of tea sets atop a silver serving tray.
“I have enough tea for two,” he said.
“Piffle,” I squeaked.
Maculte was eerily calm. My heart was thumping like a train engine, and it didn’t help when every single one of the doors in the hall suddenly slammed shut, as if enraged ghosts were at work.
“Did that scare you?” Maculte said. “I was hoping it would. I’ve hacked into Nathan’s controls for the house. But, far more importantly, would you like tea?”
“I—”
“I had to send your friends away, Delphine. All those bees. It was simple enough to induce an overwhelming fear into their primitive minds. Speaking of minds, it was quite admirable how you managed to outwit Luria. She’s livid. Furious. I’ve promised she can have you. For experimentations.”
“That’s—”
“Do you know the proper components of a tea set?” Maculte asked. He held out the serving tray, smiling at me. He did not have a particularly winning smile, not unless the competition was for Smile Most Likely to Spell Doom for Sunshine, Puppies, and Red-Headed Sixth Grade Girls.
I said, “Uhh—”
“First, you want the dishes to be made of bone china. Do you know what bone china is made of?” He was stepping closer. I began stepping backward down the hall, wishing I was small enough to squeeze under the doors, like the bees had done.
I said, “Bone?”
“Correct,” Maculte said. “But whose bones?” There was that smile again. I reached out and tried one of the doors in the hall, the one that led to Nate’s library. It wouldn’t budge.
“They’re really made of bones?” I said, continuing my backward walk down the hallway. “You’re not just saying that the way an evil guy says things?” I could hear B
osper on the other side of a door, scratching and barking, saying, “Door? Could door open? Delphine needs the dog!”
“They really are made of bone,” Maculte said. He took a sip of his tea. Sighed. His eyes closed in pleasure. I tried another door in the hall. It wouldn’t budge.
“They won’t open, Delphine,” Maculte said. “You’re trapped. But at least you’re learning about tea sets. Here, this is the teapot.” He pointed to the teapot. “They should be short, but stout. The tea leaves need room to expand in order to properly flavor the hot water.”
“That’s—”
“And here’s a tea caddy for holding the leaves before they’re brewed. And a sugar bowl for those who want their tea sweetened. And here’s a waste bowl, for depositing the used tea leaves. Do you know why the tea leaves are thrown away?”
“Because—”
Maculte grabbed my hair and slammed me back against the wall so hard that the paintings on the wall jiggled and I lost my breath. He leaned in closer, staring me in the face. His eyes seemed black. His teeth were stained a horrible yellow, and his breath was that of rotten tea and burnt honey.
“Because although the tea leaves brought flavor to the drink, we don’t need them anymore. And what we do not need, we remove. We eliminate. Do you understand?” Still holding my hair, Maculte put the tray down on a small display table in the hall, the one where Maryrose always has dried gourds and pictures of Nate with his friends. Well, with his friend. With me. Singular. Everybody else in school thinks he’s too weird.
There was a syringe on the tea tray. Maculte picked it up, smiled at it, and slightly depressed the plunger. A bead of dark liquid formed at the end.
“Tea,” he said, tapping a finger on the syringe. “My own brew. I call it Maculte’s Finale. An acquired taste, I admit. I find it delicious. Deadly delectable. You will likely only find it . . . deadly.”
The needle moved closer to my arm.
I said, “I . . . I thought you promised Luria she could have me?” I didn’t really want to be given over for experimentation, but considering the alternative . . . ? Best to stall for time.