Day 9 -- 6099 words (93,433 total)

Good day, despite everything. The story is rushing toward the end, already over what I thought it would be and still a few good things to come.

And today's snippet:

Tim watched her go, and then looked at me with another frown. I held up my hand and he kept quiet as we headed back into the building -- and well behind that little barrier of snow and magic that would help shield anything I said.

George met us on the inside.

"If I could have gotten the door open, I would have gone out and bit her ankles," he said.

I gave him a little smile. Shakespeare came and landed on Tim's shoulder, startling him for a moment. The bird obviously knew that something was going on. I spread a little more magic so that we would be left alone for a couple minutes. It even sent the little humans charging off in other directions. How could they have so much energy?

"I'm going to go meet Aletta at noon," I said. "Up in the park."

"You know she's lying to you," Tim said. He looked more intrigued now. "How are you going to use it against her?"

"She's obviously setting a trap. We just need to be trickier than she is." I looked at Tim and let the worry come to my face now. "I don't know quite what we're going to do, but we have a couple hours to figure something out. We have to come up with something, Tim. I have to. This is my job, and right now all I see is that a large number of humans are going to probably die if I don't get some control here."

He looked around and then back at me. He nodded and didn't argue this time.

"I'm open to ideas, guys."

"I take it you're really desperate, right?" George asked looking up at me.

And I knew I wasn't going to really like what he said... but I listened anyway.