The apprentice looked at her, bored. “No. By frogs. Hop, hop? Frogs. Lao Tsung lived in Golden Gate Park, and he was discovered this morning covered by small golden frogs. The frogs hopped away, and no one tried to stop them—we assume they are poisonous. There are frogs in the rain forests venomous enough to kill a hundred men.”
“What, they bite? I didn’t even know frogs had teeth.”
“No, they are just filled with poison, and sometimes their bodies sweat poison. The natives use frog venom to poison their spears, and have done so for centuries. But to find so many frogs, so virulently poisonous, here, in this climate, where it is far too cold and dry for them to live long…” The apprentice shook her head. “It is a mystery.” She finished counting the money, and swept all the cash into a single pile and put it under the counter. “My master is an expert on toxicology, among other things, and we have been commissioned by certain parties to determine the nature of Lao Tsung’s death, and to discover if it was the work of another sorcerer or simply a strange happening.”
“I want to see his body,” Marla said. If Lao Tsung’s body was here, haruspexy wouldn’t have worked—places like this, in folded space, tended to scramble the effectiveness of divination. Which made her wonder what her divination had been pointing toward. There must be something else, or someone else, with big magic nearby.
The master spoke briefly in Chinese, and the apprentice nodded. “I will show you his body,” she said.
Marla chewed her lip. The master seemed cowed, but he could still be dangerous. It couldn’t hurt to separate him from his apprentice. “Rondeau, keep an eye on the old guy. And I mean it. Watch him.”
Rondeau sighed and nodded. “Listen, sir, I don’t want to hurt you, but I’ve got this knife, and if it comes down to it, I have other resources, too. But I’d rather we just chatted while they’re in the back, you know? I’ve never been here before, so I want to know about good restaurants and sightseeing, stuff like that. And if you decide you don’t want to speak English anymore, we can take turns making comical animal noises at each other.”
The old man just stared, expressionless.
Marla let the apprentice lead the way into the back room, where the dead body that used to be her friend Lao Tsung lay on a table. He didn’t look any older than forty, his black hair in a long ponytail, his body lean and sinewy. Killed by a swarm of frogs. Swarm? Herd? “What do you call a bunch of frogs?” Marla asked. “It’s a murder of crows, a pod of whales, like that, so what are frogs?”
“A colony,” the apprentice said. “Sometimes a knot. Sometimes an army. I think, in this case, an army. You may examine the body—you may do anything you wish, you’ve made that clear—but I would advise you not to touch it with your bare hands. We do not know the exact nature or the extent of the poison.”
Marla nodded and stepped closer to Lao Tsung. What a way to die. At least it was unusual.
Then Lao Tsung’s mouth opened.
A tiny golden frog, no more than an inch and a half long, hopped out of Lao Tsung’s mouth, and sat on his chest. It was a beautiful little frog—black eyes, skin almost shiny. Lao Tsung’s flesh began to turn red, until the place where the frog sat sported a welt as big as the others on his body.
Then the frog jumped.
After standing in silence for a while, and not hearing anything much from the back room, Rondeau said, “So is the Alcatraz tour worth doing? Marla says it’s probably ghost-choked and psychically unsettling, but I think it’d be interesting. You ever been there? Or are you like those New Yorkers who’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty, you don’t do the tourist thing?”
The master turned, slightly, and glanced toward the door to the back room. Rondeau waved his knife around a bit. “Hey, eyes front.”
“Help me,” the master whispered. “Please.”
Rondeau narrowed his eyes. “There’s no point in trying to mind-fuck me. I don’t have any authority. I’m just here to carry stuff around, run errands, and keep Marla company.”
“I am not the master,” the master said. He trembled. “I am the apprentice. My master told me I would be his successor, heir to all his treasures, but it was a cruel joke. He stole my body, and trapped my mind in his own. In this.” He raised his arms in disgust, then let them drop.
“Ah, shit,” Rondeau said. “He pulled a Thing on the Doorstep trick on you, that’s what you’re telling me?”