Hydra shouted from the back. “I know a good divorce demon.”
“No. It was a trap. It’s…really confusing.” I had no idea how to explain it coherently. It was still jumbled up in my own brain. “The demon puppies were there. And Verte and Rexi were there, but I don’t think it was really them. I just don’t know who’s who anymore.”
I let my head hit the table with a bonk.
“Ain’t really that confusing. You was at the home of the Mimicman.” Hydra emerged from the back holding a black raven’s wing and held it up against Kato’s body. “Nope, too small.” She headed back into the storeroom to try again.
“No, I was at the Ivory Tower with Mick, the Wizard of Is.” Exhaling loudly, I rolled my head so that my cheek rested on the cold metal table.
Hydra stuck her head back out. “Pish, is that what he’s calling himself now? Bah, he got more names than I got fleas. But ever since he turned human, he’s been the Mimicman, master of illusions. He can cast a few parlor spells, but his only real source of power is shape-shifting himself into anybody.”
Turned human? Not sure I wanted to know exactly what kind of thing he’d been before that. I thought back to the scene in the blasted tower. “So he pretended to be Verte and my parents.”
This time, Hydra came back out with a much bigger white wing. “Yes, ain’t that great?” she said, chipper, and held the wing up against Kato’s body again. “Right size, wrong color. Oh well, it’ll have to do. Hold this.” She shoved the wing in my face.
I spit out the feathers that got stuck between my lips. “Why is that great?”
Hydra rummaged around in a drawer that was full to bursting, tossing random junk over her shoulder until she found what she was looking for. “Aha!” she exclaimed, holding up a jar of spider glue. She went over to Kato and slathered it on the raw part of his shoulder where the wing was destroyed. “Because the Mimicman can only mimic what is, what exists in this world. He don’t got no form of his own anymore, and you cain’t imitate death, so any shape he takes—”
“Has to be alive,” I finished. “So my parents and Verte are alive and well somewhere.” Hydra took the wing from me before I dropped it as I jumped up and down with excitement.
Rexi poked me. “I told you he looked like the guy from the cover of Sorcery Illustrated.” She smiled just a little, like she was testing the water with a big toe to see if I were a ticking crocodile that would bite.
Still aligning the wing, Hydra perked her head up. “The Fourteenth Swimsuit Edition?” Rexi nodded, and Hydra’s face brightened with an expression of nostalgia. “Yeah, that one were pretty yummy. But just to clarify an earlier point—hold his wing in place please—your people is alive somewhere. I ain’t say a thing about them being well.”
Hope is like a balloon. It seems like it swells up just so someone else can pop it in your face. I would have smacked my head again, but I was busy holding the wing in place so the glue could dry. Oh well, alive was good, and I would take what I could get at this point. But something still bugged me. “So best guess is that the McWizard made Griz a Rexi suit. Right?”
Hydra shooed my hands and moved the wing up and down to check its range of motion. “Or she done made it herself. Were the Fake Rexi wearing an opal necklace, by chance?”
My insides shuddered just thinking about her and her horrible fashion sense. “Yes, and it did not match her tacky silver dress.”
“Were it a black opal or a fire opal?”
I thought back. “Fire. Why does her bad taste in jewelry matter?”
Hydra sat back in the chair next to the table. “Because a fire opal holds someone else’s life essence. She done gone used their life to power her spells and do the replication.”
“That’s horrible.” Rexi turned pale and green again. “Is there any way to give it back to the person it belongs to?”
“Nope. Once it’s agone to a new vessel, no exchanges, no returns. Then it’s only matter o’ time afore it’s used up.” Hydra nodded to me. “Your emerald flame is the exception. The more yous usin’ it, the more you gots to be rechargin’ it. ’Cuz each time you is chuckin’ fire, it sucks your life instead of someone else’s.”
Now it was my chance to turn pale and slightly green. At my wedding—and how surreal is that to say?—I had been in a blind rage, ready to burn down the world because it deserved to fall to ashes. I hadn’t yet come to terms with how much I had used the flames or how much I enjoyed it. Worse, I was afraid I already knew how to recharge the life magic.
“So if Griz was pretending to be you, Rexi, what the pix happened to you?”
Rexi busied herself checking the new wing. “I waited for you outside the study. Then the cover model clone came out and said he had something to show me, said he knew how to spin straw into licorice. I touched the spinning wheel and…”