Free Jinx On The Divide by Elizabeth Kay Page A

its own and insisted on rocking him like a baby until it occurred to him to tell it to stop.
    The next morning, it had taken him a moment or two to remember where he was. He got up and went to the bathroom. After he'd attended to all the things you attend to first thing in the morning, the mirror suddenly turned itself into a window, and he'd had the most bizarre conversation with Felix, who no longer appeared to be in Wimbledon. Although Felix had asked him where he was, he hadn't let on, and after communication was abruptly terminated, he smiled to himself. Felix would never find him -- and even if he did, he couldn't force him to go back. Who was at the top of the class now?
    Then a white-robed lickit arrived with his breakfast, and after that, a japegrin summoned him downstairs for another audience with Squill.
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    Rhino had always had a picture in his head of what he'd be like when he grew up. The picture had changed as the years went by -- he no longer wanted to be an astronaut or a paratrooper. Most recently, he'd seen himself leaning on the hood of a Ferrari, wearing a sharp suit and shades and talking to someone on the other side of the world on his cell phone. Exactly how he would become that wealthy wasn't quite clear to him.
    His new situation changed everything. There weren't any Ferraris here. There weren't any sharp suits or shades, either. What did he really want from life? It sounded like the kind of question a teacher asked when telling you off. He'd never answered, of course -- he did sullen pretty well -- but if he had deigned to reply, he'd have given a cool answer. The one that sprang to mind was the third wish he'd requested from the brandee: "A bit of respect, man."
    They reached the foot of the stairs, and then they were outside Squill's office. The japegrin knocked on the door and then opened it with a flourish, bowing low and waving Rhino through. Rhino smiled. His wish had obviously been granted. He had plenty of respect here.
    Squill looked up. "Good morning, Professor Rheinhart," he said. "I trust you slept well?"
    "Yeah, fine. Did you know Felix Sanders is over here, too?"
    Squill looked surprised. "No," he said. "I have encountered him once before, at a dance festival. I was Snakeweed's
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    advertising director in those days." He laughed. "Then I became chief prosecutor to Fleabane, the president of Andria, and when Andria became a tangle-town again, I was sent here. And, as you can see, I've made a success of it. Yes, I remember Felix. What a little troublemaker he was."
    "He's trying to get me to go back to my own world," said Rhino. "And neither of us wants that, do we?"
    "Well, if we catch him, we could charge him with trespassing," said Squill. "He'd be a popular choice for an execution. We'd get a good audience for him -- he's a name, as well as a mythical being."
    Execution? It had never entered Rhino's head that the death penalty might be an everyday occurrence here. Had he heard right? Did they give it for impersonating a scientist?
    "We could burn him at the stake." Squill smiled. "Now, then. On to other matters. I'm making inquiries about getting hold of the Divide spell so that we can go back to your world and get the recipe for that icing you were telling me about. The one that doesn't break teeth."
    "Royal icing," guessed Rhino, but his mind was racing. He could remember every little detail about his encounter with Felix, including the way to make gunpowder.
    "Royal icing," said Squill. "How lovely. I've been thinking lately that king sounds much nicer than thane."
    "If we can get hold of a supply of sulfur," said Rhino, feeling that Squill needed to be distracted from the idea of a trip
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    to London, "I can make you as much gunpowder as you'll ever need."
    "Sulfur?"
    "Yellow stuff. It comes from volcanoes."
    "Volcanoes?"
    Rhino gritted his teeth. "Mountain, him spit fire," he said.
    "Oh," said Squill. "Spitfire mountains. Yes, we've got plenty of those, although ours are all