THE next day, still bloated from chocolate cake and champagne carbonation, Ember struggled with lifting the wheelbarrow and pushing it across the sun-warmed cement toward the stinky, sea serpent-infested fountain.
A long box balanced across the body of the wheelbarrow. The casino had ordered two hundred pounds of fish in fifty-pound boxes to feed the sea serpents. With the ice inside to keep the fish cool, each box weighed more than seventy pounds. One at a time was all she could manage. She was careful to lift from her legs and not tweak her back as she staggered across the courtyard to the fountain.
The courtyard had looked so small when she’d been thinking about this plan. After all, the courtyard was meant to entice people walking down the Strip to go into the casino, not appear to be a long hike that deterred foot-sore pedestrians.
Yet, now that she was out there, the enormous expanse of concrete stretched in all directions as if the fountain were receding into the distance.
Ember struggled with the wheelbarrow. She had to keep tipping one handle or the other to correct for the box sliding with each step.
A large bottle labeled “Sea Serpent Vitamin Potion” stuck out from under the box. Measuring cups rattled around in the basin of the wheelbarrow. Her duffel bag of a purse lopped over the side of the wheelbarrow and swayed like a giant warm trying to sniff the pavement as it went by.
Step, step, side-step. Bobble, drag, grab the box.
Ladies of Magic, she’d almost dumped the fish out on the hot cement.
Walk, walk, stagger, push.
Almost there.
Finally, Ember reached the side of the fountain. She knew better than to slap the cement retaining wall as she sat down, but she did plant her butt on the side of the fountain to rest for a minute.
Behind her, the sea serpents murmured under the water. The water bubbled merrily as the apparitions farted and swam around the pool.
An invisible cloud of sulfurous stink hung over the fountain like someone had pelted it with rotten eggs.
This was just insanity.
But the sea monsters needed to be fed.
Ember aliquoted fifty doses of the Sea Serpent Vitamin Potion into the measuring cups, lined up in two groups of twenty-five each. She sliced open the box and grabbed a fat fish, poured a measure of the fishy vitamin potion down its gullet, and placed the fish on the wide cap of the fountain’s retaining wall. She readied eleven more fish and then turned toward the fountain.
Willow had assured her that the sea serpents were well-trained and used to being hand-fed, but Ember was still a little leery about just how she was going to get the sea monsters to eat the fish.
She held a fish under her arm like a football and slapped the cement retaining wall three times.
Ripples corrugated the water’s surface.
Massive heads broke the mirror-shiny water, racing toward her.
Ember held out the fish. “Nice sea monsters. Nice sea monsters!”
The sea serpents reared up out of the water, towering over her like giant sea snakes, ready to strike.
“Ladies of Magic, preserve us!” Ember hurled the fish she was holding at the snout of the scarlet dragon that snarled at her, spitting in its rage.
The sea serpent snapped the fish out of the air and chugged it down, swallowing it whole.
It could probably swallow Ember the same way.
The other sea serpents dodged with their sinuous necks, angling for where Ember was going to throw the next fish.
The ebony sea serpent, however, noticed the other fish she’d readied lined up on the side of the fountain.
The serpent went for it. He lunged past the other five serpents and leapt face-first at the line of fish. He grabbed the first one and sucked it down. Without even inhaling, the sea serpent gobbled up the next three fish in the row.
Oh, my Ladies, that one was going to eat all the fish, and she wouldn’t have any left for the rest of them. “You, there! Stop that. Stop that!”
She ran at the enormous, fanged sea serpent, waving her hands, before she stopped to think about the stupidity of what she was doing.
The sea monster looked up at her, the surprise in its dark eyes turning to guilt, but it managed to grab three more fish and suck them down before diving back into the water and swimming away as fast as it could.
The others had seen the remaining fish and surged toward them, creating a tidal wave that jumped over the retaining wall, knocking those fish outside.
Ember ran backward, but the stinky water missed her.
Whew. Getting that slop on her would have been nasty. She didn’t even want to think about trying to get her hair back in order after a soaking with that smelly, slimy water.
The other five sea serpents—their shimmering scales of green, blue, gold, and red shining in the sun—stuck their heads out of the fountain, trying and failing to eat the fish lying on the wet cement.
Their noses and hard lips scraped along the concrete, but they couldn’t get their teeth or tongues around the fish to pick them up. It was like they were trying to pick up a coin with chopsticks. Their curving tusks got in the way as they bonked and scraped their noses and chins until they were snapping at each other in frustration.
Ember approached them, her hands up. “Back off, nice sea serpents. I’ll throw them to you if you just go back in the water.”
The red sea dragon growled at her, but it slithered back into the water like a spaghetti noodle being sucked up.
She grabbed one fish by the tail and hurled it above the fountain.
The green one, it’s scales shining like emeralds, snapped it out of the air.
Okay, Willow had been right. Ember would have to hand-feed these beasts, one at a time.
It took only a few minutes to feed them all the fish remaining from that box, and then Ember struggled out with the other three boxes of fish in the wheelbarrow, dosed each one with the vitamin potion while the serpents slither-swam in circles like a feeding frenzy of pissed-off, giant koi, and tossed the fish to them.
After a while, it felt just like throwing bacon treats at a pack of snarling dogs.
After feeding all the sea serpents at least a couple of fish each—she was pretty sure the black one got more than his fair share—she settled down to evaluate the situation.
Even though she’d kinda gotten used to the smell while she was standing there, that fountain stank.
If you could have seen the stench, it would have been a spiked, boiling mess like a soup full of swords. It was so gross that it was aggressively offensive. People might choke on chunks of the smell. The stink stabbed up noses and sliced down throats.
She had to figure out what to do about that. Surely, the casino could not have its gala opening in just under a month if the fountain smelled like a million gallons of bacon, onion, and mayo potato salad, gone very bad.
If she could just look under the surface, to get a little glimpse of what was going on down there, she could plan what to do about the smell much more efficiently. Was it actually the sea serpents tooting? Or was there a more microbiological problem, perhaps an algae that could be killed with an appropriate application of herbicide or bleach?
So, once again, Ember opened her purse and pawed through the bottles, vials, aspirin containers, emergency snacks, and outdated phone chargers to find the particular bottle of the elemental she wanted.
The vial she held was a frosted glass, iridescent black bottle slightly larger than her hand. The stopper was a pretty bulb with ruby-glass accents. She warmed the glass in her hand, and the elemental sloshed happily inside.
Something in the back of her mind said, This is a bad idea.
The voices that said that in Ember’s head sounded suspiciously like Willow and Bethany.
The voices of Bethany and Willow whispered in Ember’s head that she should absolutely not release a water elemental out here, right off the Las Vegas Strip and in the full view of the crowd walking by and the VIPs who filled the casino and hotel who were probably all looking out their windows right at her, and she certainly shouldn’t do it for such a frivolous reason as looking underneath the water to make sure that the sea serpents were farting.
The dark, iridescent glass glowed in the desert sunlight.
Ember uncorked the bottle.
She really did need to see what was making the smell if she was going to be able to figure out whether she could do anything about it.
She wasn’t using Jumpy this time, though. Jumpy was a cute little elemental who did inadvisable things like drilling through oil layers, and Jumpy probably would have rebelled if she tried to send him back into the nasty water, anyway. He really hadn’t liked that fountain. The sea monsters had frightened him.
No, this water elemental was much bigger. Swishy wouldn’t be afraid of those sea serpents.
And, come to think of it, Willow had put some sort of an oil slick potion over the fountain to keep the smell in. Maybe a water elemental could contain the gas better, without upsetting the serpents.
Maybe Swishy could just float on the water in the fountain and hold the noxious fart-gas in.
Ember whispered an incantation over the bottle as pixie dust fell from her fingertips, settling on the glass.
A column of water shot from the vial, leaping into the sky like a javelin.
Yeah, Swishy could handle those sea monsters. They couldn’t hurt a water elemental, anyway. If they chomped her, it would be like fighting a firehose shooting sea water, and she would reform on the other side and kick them in their heads.
Swishy swirled into the air, a vibrant waterspout come to life, and she popped and rained down on the fountain’s basin, soaking through the water.
Ember quieted her mind, listening for Swishy’s vibrations.
The blast front hit Ember’s face: Get out! Bad! Bad-bad-bad! Yucky stinky snakes!
The water in the fountain boiled—the whole thing, all at once, in a violent, spitting, frothing boil that slopped at the retaining wall—and the serpents reared out of the fountain, snapping at the water.
People walking on the Strip beyond the fluttering construction tape stopped and stared.
Globs of water jumped out of the fountain and smashed back down, becoming bigger with every splash, and smacked the sea serpents in their faces like a water balloon fight.
The sea monsters shook off each hit and dove back into the water, bursting forth snapping and flailing their tails like frenzied sharks.
“Swishy!” Ember yelled. “Swishy, come back!”
Blobs of water sprang out of the fountain and sped toward Ember.
She held the bottle with the open end out and ducked, but she wasn’t fast enough.
The water elemental coalesced, the separate globules of water smashing together and becoming a torrent lancing through the air.
Swishy barreled into the bottle.
But the stinky water that she’d brought with her drenched Ember.
Fart-saturated water.
Oh my Ladies, her clothes and her skin and her hair were soaked, and she reeked.
The bottle in her hand jiggled. Close it up. Very bad snakes.
Ember plugged the top of the bottle with the stopper and held her arms away from her body, confused as to how she should stand to get away from the rotten-egg water that saturated her clothes.
A puddle of the stinky water was forming around her shoes as she dripped.
Slimy moisture slipped off the ends of her hair, slithering down her back and neck.
Standing like a menacing koala bear was not working to either dry herself or reduce the stink, so she rummaged around in her purse that had also been splashed by the sulfurous water until she found Jumpy’s bottle.
Ember unstoppered the bottle. “Jumpy, baby, I just need some help. I need you to rinse me and my purse off a little, okay?”
A little bubble of water poked its head out, sniffing her. Nasty.
The water elemental sank back into its bottle.
“Hey! Jumpy, you come out here and help me out.”
The bottle swiveled, shaking its head no.
People out on the Strip had stopped and were staring at her.
Jeez, Cai might be watching her stinky humiliation from one of the million windows on the casino. At least some VIP guests certainly were watching her.
Ember shook the bottle upside-down. “Come out, you damp jerk, and hose me off!”
Jumpy squeaked over and over as Ember tried to sling her out of the bottle like she was trying to shake ketchup loose. No no no nasty nasty no no no.
“Come out, you little twerp!”
Another bottle had rolled out of Ember’s purse, and she didn’t notice that she’d kicked its stopper out.
An enormous air elemental zoomed out of the open bottle, twenty feet of swirling, righteous anger that sucked up the dust in the courtyard into a furious dust devil and swirled the paper wrappers and plastic cups lying on the ground.
“Oh, crap!” Ember cried. “Blowhard, no!”
But it was too late.
Blowhard sucked in a tremendous breath of air and bellowed, creating a mighty wind of the dry, hot desert air that sprayed Ember with a fine grit and a light pelting of gravel even as it whipped her clothes against her body.
And then she was dry.
But she wasn’t clean.
No, a thin crust of sulfurous residue and yellow dirt that coated every inch of her body because Swishy’s noxious water had saturated her clothes.
Ember tried to catch her breath, but she gasped and trembled.
When she blinked, her yellow eyelashes blotted out the fountain for a second.
Blowhard huffed and jumped back into her bottle, pointy-end first.
Leaving Ember standing there, weaving in her shock, filthy and still stinky.
When she moved, the crust on her skin flaked and fell off like full-body, yellow dandruff.
Her hair—each strand encased in a shell of grit and blown-dry so that each hair was repelled by static electricity and trying to fly away from every other one of her hairs—waved in the breeze like a dandelion poof.
Oh, crap. That was going to take gallons of silicone hair treatment and hours with a flatiron to fix.
This was so bad.
Her arms and legs and clothes were coated with an even layer of the yellow-brown dust. She must look like a child-drawn stick figure of a person, scrawled with a stick of yellow chalk.
She didn’t want to touch herself. She didn’t want to be herself.
She wanted to crumble into disgusting dust right there and blow away and never be whole again.
Anything to avoid moving.
But she had to get home to shower this crap off of herself.
Ember shifted one leg forward.
The crap was stiff on her thigh and knee.
Her rigid clothes pushed back when she tried to walk.
Somewhere behind her, Cai’s voice called, “Ember! I wanted to talk to you about yesterday. I am sorry about that. Did you like the—”
She turned.
Cai was a lot closer than she’d thought.
Indeed, he was standing right in front of her.
Cai Wyvern stared at her, his eyes flowing with green fire. “What happened to you?”
Ember grabbed her befouled purse and ran, shuffling stupidly, to her car and drove home.
It took hours in the shower to get every last stinky grain of sand off of her skin and scalp.