Huffathon Part the First

“Careful!” chided Baklava as Andrew accidentally smeared some nail polish on the flesh of her big toe.

“Sorry! Sorry!”

“Larry,” said Baklava, “go peel me some grapes.”

“Yes of course at once.” said Lessig with alacrity, hurrying out of the room.

“Disgusting.” said Cinnamon, staring at the scene from behind the grate where we were secretly observing the action in Baklava’s chamber, “pathetic.”

“Men,” agreed Kathy, “can’t live with them.”

She didn’t finish the other half of the truism.

“Oh c’mon,” I snorted with disgust, “you only think it’s disgusting because they’re not fawning all over you!”

“What does that mean?” asked Cinnamon turning to me.

“you didn’t mind it one bit when he was chasing you across Asia!”

“Ridiculous.”

“The only thing that I think is ridiculous,” said Cumin, biting her lower lip like a child denied cookies and staring fixedly at Andrew, “is how he’s still completely dressed.”

“I’ll admit that men have their place,” said Kathy to me, “and I’d say fawning over me is definitely about 80% of it. Who else would you want them to fawn over? Life is like a well-danced foxtrot. You need a man to set the tempo and provide the framework within which you can look fabulous.”

“Your life philosophy is derived from foxtrot?” I asked incredulously.

“Well what’s yours derived from?” she said, looking me up and down contemptuously, “Whalerider?”

“Keisha Castle-Hughes deserves that Oscar…” I began heatedly, but I suddenly found myself doubling over in pain as a flash of something white and razor sharp slashed through my head.

“Anne – ” said Cinnamon, coming to my side.

“She doesn’t look very well.” said Cumin, putting her hand on my forehead.

“I feel fine,” I said weakly, standing and wiping the sweat from my brow.

“Well we’ve got to get some help for you and soon. You can’t hold off the blood magic forever.” said Kathy, “Cumin – what’s going on here?”

“Elvira, Baklava, and I share quarters here in the harem. Baklava is some sort of gypsy seductress type – men follow her like bees to honey. I think it’s a relatively simple enchantment actually. She keeps on promising to show it to me but never does. Elvira is more formidable. Quite the raving berserker Scandinavian that one. But as I said before, if we can get to her grimoire we can make Anne and her friends right in no time.”

“Well we should free Andrew first.” said Cinnamon determinedly.

We all turned to look at her.

“And Lessig.” she added, “Andrew and Lessig. Lessig and Andrew. Because we need help. More help. In order, uh, to save the others.”

Cumin smiled and tousled Cinnamon’s hair.

“Despite her remarkable aptitude for lethal violence, sis really does have a heart of gold.”

“That’s a pity,” said Kathy, “I was just getting to like her. Now – what’s the plan?”

* * *

“Are you sure this is going to work?” I whispered to Cumin as we hid behind a curtain so gaudy that it looked like it belong in a harem, and thus matched the rest of the decor perfectly.

“It’s simple,” said Cumin, “Baklava can only enthrall her victims until they’re exposed to something that they care about more than her. That’s why she keeps them in the harem – it would be quite messy indeed if they came across any loved ones. It’s really the most craven of enchantments.”

“I think this entire thing is ridiculous,” whispered Cinnamon, fidgeting in the middle of the room, “I mean,” she said, blanching, “what if he doesn’t really like me?”

“Wow,” said Kathy, “and I thought I had vulnerability issues.”

“Ssshhh!” whispered Cumin.

We fell silent from our places behind the curtain as Andrew entered the room, whistling merrily and carrying a small plate with a jar full of color that was, I imagined, the nineteenth-century Central Asian equivalent of toenail polish. Cinnamon stood squarely in the middle of the room facing him.

“Cinnamon,” said Andrew, eyebrows furrowing, “what are you doing here?”

“Oh, uh, nothing.” she said,

“I see… I mean, I’ve got to go!” said Andrew, as if suddenly remembering something, “Baklava told me to tell her at once if I saw you!”

He turned on his heel and made for the doorway he had just come through.

“No wait – ” said Cinnamon. Andrew turned around slowly and watched her curiously.

“Uh, I mean, actually I, uh…”

“Good god woman, out with it!” moaned Kathy under her breath.

“I mean, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Ask me something?” said Andrew uncertainly, “Well, I don’t know… I’m supposed to be turning you in right now…”

“Well uh,” said Cinnamon, tracing a nervous pattern on the table next to her with one finger and scrutinizing it intensely to avoid looking at Andrew, “well, remember when I assassinated that army general in Dunhuang? Well, I stopped by the cave temples afterwards and took a few rubbings before I moved on. And, er, a lot of them were in devanagari and I really only know Sino-Tibetan languages and so…”

“Has she really never done this before?” Kathy asked Cumin incredulously.

“Well,” admitted Cumin, “she does rather tend to rely on the ‘remarkable aptitude for level violence’ thing in dealing with others, to be perfectly honest.”

“Devanagari? That’s most unusual.” said Andrew, oblivious to our presence, as he stepped forward and away from the door.

“So I thought, you know, maybe some time if you were free or something, we could maybe as it were, get together and maybe, uh, you know, go over some of the epigraphy or something.” said Cinnamon in a halting manner that was half torrent of words and half uneasy silence.

“I mean, if you’re not, uh, busy or anything.” she ended, lamely.

Kathy was so disgusted she had covered her eyes and had a pained expression on her face. Cumin was nodding vigorously in unseen encouragement for her sister. Personally, I thought it was about the cutest thing I had ever seen in an unbelievably awkward way.

The expression in Andrew’s eyes seemed to clarify as he stepped towards her.

“Yeah sure, I mean, it’s not like it would be a date or anything,” he said.

“No! I mean, of course not. Just, you know, epigraphy.” replied Cinnamon, smiling a little shyly.

“Good lord!” said Andrew, looking in surprise at the plate he held in his hands, “why in God’s name would I want to paint Baklava Kerpushkin’s toe nails?”