This entire escapade was breaking several rules of life in the mortal world, chief among them the injunction to never, ever go out in public without wearing a human disguise. I was still wearing my illusions. Dianda and the Goblins, on the other hand, were totally exposed. There wasn’t time to worry about it. Hopefully, anyone who saw a woman riding a screaming mermaid in a wheelchair down Leavenworth at fifteen minutes to five o’clock in the morning would just think they’d had too much to drink.
We were still accelerating. Gasping, I managed to ask, “Is this a good time for that visit?” Dianda stared at me, eyes widening in understanding, before she nodded.
We were almost to the bottom of the hill when I fumbled the scale out of my pocket and shoved it into my mouth. It dissolved like spun sugar, leaving my tongue coated in a gummy-tasting film. A taxi blared by, horn blazing as we hit the dock, shooting forward. Dianda screamed again, the sound magnified by proximity to my ears, and I heard a crossbow bolt whiz by as I yanked the pin from the lining of my jacket and jammed it into the meaty part of my right thigh with all the force I could muster.
Then we hit the water, and everything went black.
Late Eclipses Page 36