Have either of you seen Sam? Brianna can’t find him.”
Albert sighed. “He’s out of town.”
Edilio felt the blood drain out of his face. “He’s what?”
Astrid arrived, coldly furious. “I’m not on the council anymore. You have no right—”
“Shut up, Astrid,” Edilio said.
Astrid, Albert, and Howard all stared. Edilio was as amazed as any of them. He considered apologizing—he had never spoken to Astrid that way. He’d never spoken to anyone that way.
The truth was he was scared. Sam was out of town? With Drake running loose?
“What makes you think Sam is out of town?” Edilio asked Albert.
“I sent him,” Albert said. “Him and Dekka. Taylor and Jack, too. They’re looking for water.”
“They’re what?”
“Looking for water.

I don’t guess you can outrun an explosion, right?” Sam asked doubtfully.
Jack rolled his eyes and sighed his condescending geek sigh. “Seriously? Brianna runs in miles per hour. Explosions happen in feet per second. Don’t believe what you see in movies.”
“Yeah, Sam,” Dekka said.
“In the old days I always had Astrid around to humiliate me when I asked a stupid question,” Sam said. “It’s good to have Jack to take over that job.”
He’d said it lightheartedly, but the mention of Astrid left an awkward hole in the conversation.
Brianna said, “I can’t outrun an explosion, but I’ll tie the string around the wire.”
She zipped over to the wire and zipped back holding the loose end. “Who gets to yank the string?”
“She who ties the string pulls it,” Sam said. “But first—”
BOOOOM!
The containers, the sand, pieces of driftwood, bushes on the bluff all erupted in a fireball. Sam felt a blast of heat on his face. His ears rang. His eyes scrunched on sand.
Debris seemed to take a long time to fall back down to earth.
In the eventual silence Sam said, “I was going to say first we should all lie flat so we didn’t get blown up. But I guess that was good, too, Breeze.

Astrid and Taylor didn’t like each other much. But Taylor was an extremely valuable person to have around. She had the ability to instantly transport herself from place to place. To “bounce,” as she called it.
The enmity between them went back to Astrid’s belief that Taylor had a crush of major proportions on Sam. No doubt Taylor would figure she had a golden opportunity now.
Not Sam’s type, Astrid told herself. Taylor was pretty but a bit younger, and not nearly tough enough for Sam, who, despite what he might be thinking right now, liked strong, independent girls.
Brianna would be more Sam’s style, probably. Or maybe Dekka, if she were straight.
Astrid shoved the list away irritably. Why was she torturing herself like this? Sam was a jerk. But he would come around. He would realize sooner or later that Astrid was right. He would apologize. And he’d move back in.

What happened?” Albert asked.
Taylor looked at Sam. Sam said nothing. He stared. First at his own light, hovering in the air. Then at Taylor. He looked pale and almost frail. Like he was suddenly a much, much older person.
“Kid was whipped,” Taylor said. “It looked like what happened to Sam.”
Sam lowered his head and wrapped his hands behind his neck. He seemed to be trying to hold on to his head, pressing it hard like it might explode.

Where’s Sam?” Brianna asked.
“He’s out. So is Edilio,” Dekka said. “You going to tell us what’s in the bag or do we have to guess?”
Brianna stopped. She was disappointed. In her imagination the big revelation would have been to an admiring Sam Temple. He was the one she wanted to impress. Failing that, Edilio, who was generally warm and sweet to her.
But she was tired and wanted to put the bag down. Also, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer.
She climbed nimbly up to the top deck of the boat, grinned, and said, “Is it anyone’s birthday? Because I have a present.”
“Breeze,” Dekka warned.
So Brianna opened the bag. Dekka looked inside. “What is it?”
So Brianna upended the bag. Dead lizards, broken eggs, and Drake’s head landed on the antiskid flooring.
“Ahhhh!” Astrid screamed.
“Ah, Jesus!” Dekka yelled.
“I know,” Brianna said proudly.
What lay there was something to strike envy into the heart of a horror movie special-effects expert. The two halves of Drake’s head had started to rejoin. But because the halves had been tossed wildly together, the process was very incomplete. Very.
In fact at the moment the halves were backward, so that the left half was looking one direction and the right half another. Sections of neck and spine stuck both up and down. The part that held most of Drake’s mouth was stuffed with hair from the back of his head.
And, somehow, bits of dead lizard were squeezed in between. But the dead lizards thus incorporated were no longer dead. And there was egg white smeared across one eye.
The mouth was trying to speak and not managing it.
A lizard tail whipped one eye—hard to tell if it was left or right—a parody of Drake’s whip arm.
The three of them stared: Astrid with blue eyes wide, hand over mouth; Dekka with mouth wide open and brow furrowed; Brianna like a proud school kid showing off her art project.
“Ta-da!” Brianna said.

Sam always felt like a fool in this room. He sat in a too-big chair at one end of the table. Astrid was at the other. Her hands were on the table, slender fingers flat on the surface.
Dekka sat scowling, irritated, though Sam wasn’t sure at whom she was directing her dark mood. A piece of something blue was stuck in one of her tight cornrows—not that anyone was foolish enough to point it out or laugh.
Dekka was a freak, the only one besides Sam in this room. She had the power to temporarily cancel gravity in small areas. Sam counted her as an ally. Dekka was not about talking without end and getting nothing done.
Albert was the best-dressed person in the room, wearing an amazingly clean and seemingly un-salty polo shirt and relatively unwrinkled slacks. He looked like a very young businessman who had stopped by on his way to a round of golf.
Albert was a normal, though he seemed nevertheless to have an almost supernatural ability to organize, to make things happen, to do business. Looking at the group through hooded eyes, Sam knew Albert was probably the most powerful person in the room. Albert, more than any other person, had kept Perdido Beach from starving.
Edilio slumped, holding his head with both hands and not making eye contact with anyone. He had a submachine gun propped against his chair, a sight that had become all too normal.
Edilio was officially town marshal. Probably the mildest, most modest and least-assuming person in the council, he was in charge of enforcing whatever rules the council created. If they ever got around to actually creating any.
Howard was the wild card in the group. Sam still wasn’t sure how he had managed to talk his way onto the council. No one doubted that Howard was smart. But no one thought he had an honest or ethical bone in his body. Howard was chief toady to Orc, the glowering, drunken-boy-turned-monster who had fought on the right side a couple of times when it had really counted.
The youngest member was a sweet-faced boy named John Terrafino. He was a normal, too—Mary’s little brother. He seldom had much to say and mostly listened. Everyone assumed he voted however Mary told him to. Mary would have been there, but she was simultaneously indispensable and fragile.
Seven council members. Astrid as chairperson. Five normals, two freaks.