Geeks and the Holy Grail Page 8

  Suddenly Ashley pushed past her, leaning down and scooping Spike up in her arms. “Come on, you stubborn thing,” she scolded, petting the dragon on his little head. She glanced over at the security agent. “He’s super sweet, but super shy.”

  “What kind of dog is that?” the agent asked as Ashley waltzed through the X-ray machine. As if it was totally no big deal to be carrying a baby dragon dressed in a bright red Christmas sweater through airport security in the middle of March. Sophie had to admit, her future stepsister had guts.

  “Oh! He’s a rare breed,” Ashley informed him, giving the gate agent her best fake smile. “A designer dog, imported from Tibet. In fact, he’s one of a kind.”

  The agent’s eyes locked on the dragon, his eyebrows furrowed. As if he were thinking really hard. Sophie sucked in a breath, adrenaline firing on all cylinders.

  “Tibet, you say?” he asked, stepping closer. “Funny, I used to live there. I don’t remember any dogs looking like that.”

  Uh-oh.

  He didn’t believe them. He didn’t believe them and he was about to bust them. It would be game over. Mission failure. With possible world-ending consequences. What if the authorities took Spike away? What if they brought him to a government lab and wanted to do tests on him? Sophie and the others would never be able to get him back.

  Sophie balled her hands into fists. No. She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t! But what could she do?

  It was then that she saw Stu, waving at her and Ashley on the other side of the metal detector. No. Not waving exactly. But making weird gestures with his hands, like he was playing charades. If Sophie didn’t know better, she’d think he was miming pulling a rabbit from a hat. What on earth—? She shook her head at him, not understanding. He groaned.

  “Wow!” he said overly loud. “This place is magical. I’ve never seen such a magical-looking airport before….” Several people turned to stare at him, but he kept his eyes locked on Sophie.

  Suddenly it hit her. Right! Her mother’s magic. Of course! It had gotten them out of worse squeezes than this in the past. Maybe it could work now.

  She turned back to the agent, drawing in a breath.

  This is a dog, she pushed at him silently. Only a dog.

  Suddenly her body prickled with electricity. The hairs on her arms stood on end. She shivered as magic seemed to rise up from inside her like water being drawn from a well. Would it work? Could she really change his mind?

  It is not a dragon, she pushed again. It’s just a dog that looks like a dragon.

  She opened her eyes, scanning the agent’s face. For a moment, he just stared back at her blankly. Then his frown vanished, replaced by a huge smile.

  “Wow,” he said. “That dog sure looks like a dragon! How cool is that?”

  Sophie unclenched her fists, relieved. “I know, right?” she managed to squeak out. “People say that all the time!”

  “Can I pet him?”

  “Uh…”

  Not waiting for an answer, the agent reached out to stroke Spike’s head. Sophie bit her tongue, praying the little dragon wouldn’t freak out and belch fire in the guy’s face.

  But thankfully Spike seemed to have calmed down now that he was in Ashley’s arms. And he actually started purring as the man stroked his head. Sophie sighed. Seriously, did Spike like everyone on the planet more than he liked her?

  Whatever. Spike could declare himself this guy’s BFF for all she cared. As long it got them through security.

  “He’s very cool,” the agent pronounced, thankfully backing away. He smiled at the girls. “You have a nice flight, okay?”

  “Thanks!” Sophie cried. “You too!” She couldn’t believe they had pulled this off. Between her magic and Ashley’s fast talking they’d actually—

  “Guys? Come with me.”

  She looked up. A third security agent had stepped into their path. Sophie’s heart sank again.

  “What is it, Officer?” she asked. “Did you…want to pet Spike, too?”

  But the agent shook his head. “We need to check this bag,” he said, holding up Ashley’s overly bedazzled backpack.

  Sophie frowned. “What did you put in there?” she hissed at her almost stepsister as they followed the agent to the bag-check area.

  “Nothing!” Ashley insisted as Spike licked her hand. “Just…stuff I needed for the trip.”

  The agent put on a pair of clear plastic gloves before unzipping Ashley’s backpack and rummaging through. Meanwhile Stu finally got through the metal detector and caught up to them, plucking Spike out of Ashley’s arms. Time to get him back in his carrier.

  “What’s this?” the agent demanded, holding out an orange prescription bottle.

  Ashley made a face. “Oh, geez. Those are my mother’s antibiotics,” she said with a groan. “She must have used my bag yesterday and left them in there. She’s always borrowing my stuff. It’s soooo annoying.”

  The agent tossed the pill bottle back into the backpack and resumed his search. Sophie turned her attention to Stu as he tried to wrangle Spike into his carrier. Unfortunately, it appeared the dragon was less than willing to go back behind bars. And the more Stu tugged on his collar, the more Spike planted his feet and refused to budge. It was then Sophie noticed his belly was starting to rumble. Uh-oh.

  Please don’t burp fire in front of security, she prayed. Please, please, please!

  She’d already used her mother’s magic. She wouldn’t be able to recharge for hours. Which meant if the agents took a closer look at the dragon, they’d realize what he was. And they would all be—

  The agent straightened as he pulled yet another item from Ashley’s backpack. A full-sized bottle of what appeared to be glitter shampoo.

  Sophie face-palmed.

  “What?” Ashley asked defensively. “We’re going to Vegas! A girl’s got to look good when she goes to Vegas!”

  “I’m sorry, but it is not permissible on a flight,” the agent told them. “We only allow liquids of three ounces or less.”

  “But it is three ounces or less!” Ashley argued, unable to let it go. “I mean, look! There’s barely anything left in the bottle. I practically used all of it last winter for the Snowflake Ball. I was going to be crowned Snowflake Queen, you know? And the Snowflake Queen has to have good hair. I’m pretty sure it’s, like, a law or something.”

  Spike hiccuped. A spark of fire bounced off the floor.

  Sophie leaped in front of the dragon, trying to hide him from the agent’s view. Then she grabbed Ashley’s arm, giving her a hard pinch.

  “Ow!” Ashley cried, shooting her a dirty look. “What’s your problem?”

  “Come on, sis,” Sophie ground out through clenched teeth. “You can buy new shampoo when we get there.”

  “This isn’t just any shampoo! This is totally imported. Mail ordered. I can’t just—”

  Spike hiccuped again. This time the spark hit Sophie directly in the back of her calf. She bit down on her tongue to keep from screaming in pain and hopped on one foot.

  “Are you okay?” The agent stared at her suspiciously.

  “Totally fine!” she managed to squeak. She poked Ashley in the ribs. Hard. “Come on, Elsa. Let it go.”

  “Oh, fine!” Ashley pouted. “But if my hair is frizzy when we get to Vegas? I’m totally writing a letter to your boss!” She gave the agent an affronted look, grabbed the backpack from the counter, and stormed off in the direction of their gate. Sophie and Stu ran after her, dragging the carrier and Spike along with them.

  Once they had turned the corner, Ashley stopped, turning to the two of them, her face lighting up with excitement. “We did it!” she squealed. “We totally tricked them!”

  “Dude, you almost got us busted for shampoo!” Sophie protested.

  “Yeah, but she did get us past the ID guy,” Stu interjected. He turned to Ashley. “That was really cool, by the way.”

  Ashley beamed. “And I walked Spike through the metal detector t
hing, don’t forget.”

  “Totally. I should have thought of that myself!” Stu raised his hand for a high five. Ashley slapped it with her own. “Go, Team Dragon!” he cheered.

  “Don’t forget my magic!” Sophie added, feeling a little left out.

  “Your what?” Ashley turned, confused.

  “Didn’t you know?” Stu asked. “Sophie here is a powerful sorceress.”

  “That might be overstating it a bit,” Sophie said, blushing.

  “Please,” Stu declared. “Don’t be so modest.” He turned to Ashley. “She helped me pull the sword from the stone. Defeat an evil knight. Now she’s single-handedly taken on the TSA!” He grinned. “Honestly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she started leaping tall buildings in a single bound at this point.”

  “Um, why would she want to do that?” Ashley asked, clearly missing the Superman joke. Because, of course.

  “What I want to do is to get to our airplane,” Sophie broke in. “We don’t have much time before boarding.”

  Stu hedged. “About that,” he said. “I was thinking…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe we need to put Spike to sleep. Hook him up with some Benadryl from the gift shop or whatever. Just for the flight. He still seems a little nervous. And we do not need him setting our plane on fire.”

  “Oh my gosh, I said the exact same thing,” Ashley replied. “But Sophie didn’t want to do it.”

  “Really?” Stu looked at Sophie, surprised. “I mean, wouldn’t it be safer that way? Even for Spike?”

  Sophie shook her head. “We have no idea how he’s going to react to Benadryl. Or what dosage to give. We can’t risk it.”

  “What we can’t risk is bringing a fire-breathing dragon on an airplane,” Stu replied. He scratched his head. “Do you have a spell that might work?”

  “If I did, I couldn’t use it. I burned myself out back at security, getting the guy to believe Spike was a rare Tibetan dragon dog. I’m on magic time-out for at least another hour or two.”

  “Good thing you don’t have to leap over any buildings right now,” Ashley pointed out.

  Stu’s shoulders slumped. “What should we do?”

  For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then Ashley squealed excitedly. “I know! I’ve got just the thing.” She started rummaging through her bag. “It’s somewhere in here….”

  “Of course it is.” At this point Sophie wouldn’t have been shocked if she pulled out the entire land of Narnia from her sack.

  Instead Ashley produced a single hair band. “Ta-da!”

  “Um, we need him to stop breathing fire, Ashley,” Sophie groaned. “Not get him ready for a beauty pageant.” Seriously, if Spike had sported any sort of hair, he’d probably already have been doused with glitter shampoo.

  Ashley waved her off, opening the pet carrier door and slipping the band over Spike’s mouth. Sophie’s eyes widened. Oh! That was actually a good idea.

  “Sorry, little guy,” Ashley cooed at the dragon. “But it’s just temporary, okay?”

  “Do you think it will hold?” Stu asked.

  “It will if dragons are like other reptiles,” Sophie mused. “Remember what that reptile guy showed us when he came to our school last year?”

  “Oh yeah!” Stu snapped his fingers. “He said you can hold a crocodile’s mouth shut with your bare hands.”

  “Right. All their strength is for snapping down. Not opening back up.”

  “And Spike’s really little,” added Ashley. “So I bet an elastic band will do it.”

  They looked down at the dragon. Sure enough, the elastic band was still intact. Spike glared down his snout at it, looking annoyed. He pawed at the elastic for a moment, then seemed to give up. He settled back down in his carrier with a sigh.

  “We’ll just have to check on him every so often,” Ashley pronounced. “Make sure it’s still on. In fact, I’ll put a couple more bands on, just to be safe.”

  “Perfect,” Stu declared. “I gotta say, the three of us make a good team.” He held out both hands this time—for a double high five. Sophie and Ashley rolled their eyes in unison.

  “If you suggest a group hug, I am going to smack you,” Sophie declared. “Now come on. We need to catch our plane.”

  “Wind and Rain, it is freezing out here!” Nimue declared, rubbing her hands together as she sank down on a nearby log. She and Emrys had been traveling all day on the road to Camelot and every bone in her body was aching with a mixture of exhaustion and cold.

  The going had been slow without horses, not to mention the time it took to hide from view every time they heard another traveler approach from behind. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had told Emrys the roads were filled with thieves and cutthroats and they couldn’t take a chance of running into either. Not if they wanted to make it to Arthur alive.

  Nimue blew on her icy hands, a vain attempt to warm them. “I don’t suppose Merlin has a fire spell in that strange pad of his, does he?” She really wished she hadn’t left her own spell book behind.

  “I can look,” Emrys said. He reached into his satchel and pulled out the book without pages. Nimue watched, anxious, as he pressed on the glass. But nothing seemed to happen.

  “That’s odd,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “It doesn’t seem to be turning on.”

  With effort, Nimue rose to her feet, her sore muscles straining. She limped over to Emrys and tapped the glass with her own finger. The screen blinked once, a little white box flashing on the glass. Then it faded away and the glass was blank again.

  “Is it broken?” she asked worriedly. That would be just their luck.

  Emrys scratched his head. “I think it needs…energy?”

  “Energy?”

  “You know. Like after you’ve cast a lot of spells. Your magic depletes. You cannot cast again until after you rest.”

  Nimue nodded. She was well aware of that feeling.

  “Well, the iPad is similar,” Emrys explained. “Except instead of rest, it needs to be charged. Which can only be done by attaching it to Merlin’s magic box.”

  “Well, that doesn’t help us!” she cried, frustration rising inside her. “For Merlin’s box is back at his cave.” She glared at the useless iPad. “Why doesn’t your master use a spell book like everyone else?”

  “Merlin is not like everyone else.”

  Nimue shivered under her thin cloak. She sank back down onto the log, scrubbing her face with her hands. “What do you suggest we do, then?”

  “I don’t know. I’m new at this, remember?”

  “As if I could forget,” she muttered.

  “Look,” he said, his voice tightening. “It is you who asked me to come along. And here I am. What more do you want from me?”

  “A fire, to start. So we don’t freeze to death,” Nimue retorted. “I don’t think that’s all that unreasonable….”

  She trailed off as she caught the look on his face. Like that of a scolded dog. She sighed, pushing down her anger and frustration. It wasn’t Emrys’s fault they were in this situation, she reminded herself. And she couldn’t expect him to fulfill her every need on demand.

  She straightened her shoulders, firming her resolve. It wasn’t as if she was some damsel in distress. She had been trained by the best druids in Avalon. And while she no longer had her spell book, she did have her training.

  “Right,” she said. “Well, then, I suppose we should try this the old way.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll gather some sticks and logs.”

  “I can help,” Emrys replied eagerly, looking relieved to discover a task he could actually complete. Nimue was tempted to tell him she didn’t need his help—that she could do this all on her own—but in the end she decided against it. Together they could get the job done twice as fast—and that was worth more than her pride.

  And so they wandered through the dark forest, collecting wood as they went. Some of the logs were far too damp from
an earlier rain, but other pieces, found buried under thick piles of leaves, seemed to have potential. Nimue stacked the wood in her arms as high as she could before heading back to camp. There, she found Emrys had also returned, with a stack slightly taller than hers.

  She nodded her approval. “Good. Now get me some small twigs and leaves and we’ll see what I can do.”

  As Emrys went to do her bidding, she crouched by the log, creating a small fire pit with stones she’d found nearby. When he returned, she instructed him to dump the sticks into the middle of the circle. Then, finding two flat stones, she struck them together, working to create a spark. It took a few tries, but eventually they had a small fire going. Emrys gave a low whistle of approval.

  “Very nice,” he pronounced.

  Nimue felt a smile flutter across her lips, pleased by the compliment. She straightened up and held her hands out to the fire. “At Avalon we are required to learn all sorts of skills,” she told him proudly. “They say magic is only one branch in the tree of knowledge.”

  She thought back to those long, cold nights she’d endured with her fellow apprentices out in the woods when she was younger. They’d been dropped off by the elders with no supplies, no food, and no fire. They would either work together to find a way to survive, the elders told them, or they would perish in the cold.

  At the time Nimue had thought the lesson ridiculous. After all, they had magic, why did they need anything else? But now she was grateful to her elders for having the foresight to teach them practical skills as well as the knowledge found in books.

  “What made you want to become a druid, anyway?” Emrys asked, sitting down next to her in front of the now-roaring fire.

  She shrugged. “I had very little choice in the matter,” she admitted. “I was abandoned as a baby on the banks of a lake. Lady Vivianne found me when she came down to bathe. She asked around in the nearby villages but no one claimed me as their own, so she took me back to Avalon to foster me in her own house.”

  “That was nice of her.”

  “She was always kind,” Nimue agreed. “As were my new sisters. And over the years we became as close as any true family.” She poked the fire with a stick. “Though I still wonder, sometimes, where I came from. Who left me all alone by the lake? Did they want me to die there? Or did they hope someone would find me? Did I ever have a family who loved me?”