I vaguely wondered where he was taking me, though it didn't seem like such a big deal. That was probably part of the hypothermia too, I stopped caring about stuff. That was fine. Peaceful, really. So far, when it came to near death encounters, hypothermia was streets ahead. Number one, most recommended.
I snuggled deeper into his pocket. I didn't know what fancy rich person material this coat was made from but boy was it soft and nice.
You're probably not supposed to fall asleep with hypothermia. That seemed like a thing. Or maybe that was concussion. Whatever. Sleep was warm and nice and awake was the opposite. Awake was not my friend.
Shouting woke me up. I was so toasty warm though not pocket warm but blanket warm. I cracked open an eye to look around. Clearly, I had not died. And I hadn't been taken to some torture dungeon or laboratory or anything. It seemed like I was in the common area of the Golden House, especially judging from the shouts.
"She's fine," said Tennyson Wilde. He wasn't shouting. He sounded bored. "It was never a danger."
"She's not fine, she's the size of my finger!" That was Sam. He was shouting. "My pinky finger!"
That made me sit up. He wasn't usually the type to get angry, he was gentle and kind. But ever since the whole werewolf thing, he'd been unpredictable.
They were standing on the other side of the room to me, facing each other. They couldn't have looked more different. Tennyson stood by the fireplace, an elbow propped nonchalantly on the mantle. Sam loomed over him, tense and ready to spring. I was nestled into a blanket on a chair in the corner, though I noticed something had been put up as a barrier so that I couldn't fall off while I slept.
"Are you finally going to stop blaming her for everything then, Tennyson?" Althea asked, sounding amused. "I highly doubt she shrank herself."
"Never underestimate these people," Tennyson said. "You don't think they are capable of doing this to send her in as a spy?"
"She almost died of hypothermia!" Sam said.
"It wasn't hypothermia; she was just a bit cold. Most likely they knew I would sense the magic and investigate before she was in serious danger." He shrugged. "Or perhaps she is expendable to them. Perhaps she does not even know she is being used, like the teacher last time."
"Perhaps she's awake and listening to everything you say," said Nikolai, from where he sat over in the corner, typing on his phone. He looked over at me and winked.
Sam started in surprise and began to move toward me, but Tennyson put out an arm to stop him. They muttered to each other, too quietly for me to hear, and then I was shocked to see Tennyson Wilde break out into a smile. I hadn't thought him capable, he was always so surly and grr and big furrowed eyebrows. It made him look like a completely different person, at least 20% less of a jerk. Sam smiled back and patted Tennyson on the shoulder, then moved away from him to come and crouch in front of my chair.
"Hey," he said quietly. "Is my voice too loud?"
I shook my head. "It's normal. Do I sound all squeaky?" It was surprising he could hear me at all, actually, even with the super hearing.
"You're fine," he said. "It must be part of the magic. Are you warm enough? Do you feel okay?"
I nodded, then sat down cross-legged and stared at him. His face was so huge.
"Am I the only one?" I asked. The thought of everyone who had chased me into the bamboo forest all being shrunk and running around like manic pixies was more than a little funny and would cheer me up to no end.
He nodded. "Nobody else even saw the spell. Tennyson sensed it and was just headed to the spot the last spell happened when he found you. Were you really trying to ride a rat?"
"I was trying not to get eaten," I said loftily. "And not to freeze to death. It is a harsh, harsh world when you are a tiny person, you know. You shouldn't judge."
"That's hardly what's important here," said Tennyson Wilde. He still stood by the mantel and was obviously trying to look uninterested, flipping through a book and not looking at us. "What details do you remember from the spell?"
I told them what had happened, what little there was, but that seemed to bother all four of them.
"Surely you're forgetting something," Tennyson said.
Althea and Nikolai exchanged unreadable looks and Sam's claws were digging into his leg.
"Why's it such a big deal?" I asked. "Maybe whoever it is just couldn't be bothered with all the fancy stuff. Maybe they just wanted to get to some food. You know it was mini pastries today." I sighed. What a regretful life this was, with no mini pastries.
"You're hungry?" Sam asked. He reached over to the table and picked up a plate. "It's not mini pastries but these aren't too bad."
He sat the plate down on my chair beside me and I stood up to get a better look. Giant sandwiches! They were big enough to feed a family of five for a year! Well, the bread would obviously go stale, but you could probably freeze them. I climbed up onto the plate to start nibbling at a ham and cheese one. I wondered if maybe I could get the rest of my family shrunk as well. Our living expenses would be literally nothing if we were all tiny.
"There are rituals that have to be obeyed with this sort of thing," Tennyson was saying. "You can't just wave a magic wand and shrink people. Try to remember!"
Oh, he was talking to me. I looked up at him over a chunk of Jarlsberg cheese the size of my head. It had always been my life's dream to have a whole wheel of Jarlsberg cheese, I used to stare at them all bright and beautiful through the window of the local deli, imagining the luxury of having such an abundance of cheese all to myself. This was even bigger than a wheel of Jarlsberg and I was not going to let Tennyson Wilde ruin it for me.
"Don't get all mad at me," I said. "This is your fault. You're the one who couldn't even look after a stupid little magic ball." I clutched my cheese and turned my back on him.
"She's not wrong," Nikolai muttered, cutting of Tennyson's reply. "That shouldn't have happened. I know it wasn't your fault but how did they get through our security."
"Whoever is behind this is stronger than we thought," said Althea.
"And they're targeting Lucy."
Targeting me into cheese heaven, maybe, I thought. Now that I was out of the cold, getting shrunk seemed like maybe the best thing ever. The bullies couldn't hurt me now; they couldn't even find me. I mean, in the long term things like going to class or walking up a flight of stairs might be difficult, but people lived with disabilities every day in this world, much worse things than just being a bit short. I wasn't going to let it get me down.
Tennyson and Althea decided to do some research and Nikolai had plans, so when I finished my sandwiches, Sam put out his hand for me to climb into and he took me up to his room.
"You're not shoving me in a shoebox with just some holes in the top," I said. "I remember those crickets you caught and their untimely demise."
He placed me carefully on his pillow and then moved across the room to look through his drawers.
His room was so different to the last time I'd been there. Last time, Sam had been having some emotional problems and the room was a wreck. It had been put back together now, and although it was simple, I found it really nice, comfortingly Sam. The stone walls were bare, with a big bed in the middle of the room and a window seat full of cushions opposite the door. There was a desk and a bookcase and some cupboards, and a blue rug on the floor.
"Hopefully the spell won't last very long," he said. "But without knowing anything about who cast it or why, it's impossible to tell. We should probably be prepared for the worst."
"The worst being that I stay tiny?"
"You know you'll get sick of it after a while."
He came back over to the bed with a box of tissues that he'd fashioned into a sort of bed and placed it on the nightstand. Even though I'd seemed to have done nothing but sleep all day, when I saw it, I realized I was still super tired.
"We'll get some proper things for you tomorrow," he said. "Unless you get big again overnight."
I doubted it. Last time, the spell had just gotten worse and worse before I'd put a stop to it. I had no energy to think about it though, no energy to try to figure out who had done this to me and why and how I would stop it.
I was almost asleep when Sam spoke again.
"I'm sorry this happened to you," he said, so quietly I was sure I wasn't supposed to hear. I almost pretended that I didn't. I was sleepy and conversations like that made me uncomfortable. Still, I couldn't have him walking around thinking this was his fault, he already carried too much guilt for things he hadn't been to blame for.