“Or two. Two is good.”
“Two.”
“And easy it is, sir, easy it is. Just take these,” the carny slid three spiky balls across the counter. “Fix ’em to the back wall there, just anywhere you please. Black circles get you a fine key chain, hand carved by some of the locals—truly stunning work. The purple areas get you a premium box of candy for the lady here,” he smirked at me. “And the green circles, well, those’ll get you one of these fine, handcrafted—”
“And the pink. Those are for the bears, yes?” Louis-Cesare asked.
“Uh, yes. Yes, indeed.” The carny broke off his spiel to nod at three tiny, bright pink circles amid the busy backdrop, which won the top prize. Still, the game didn’t look too hard to me. Both the balls and the backdrop were covered in a bunch of Velcro-looking stuff, and ought to stick together nicely—if you weren’t a troll with lousy eyesight. I glanced at Olga, who had started ambling this way, and wondered how many we could win before—
Pop!
Something went off like a gunshot, loud enough to make me jump. And then blink and do a double take, because the nearest little whatever was little no longer. In a split second, the spriggan had blown up to the circumference of an oversized beach ball. And in the middle of the stretched, mottled, knobby-looking hide resided a single off-white ball.
Okay, maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought.
“Olga’s coming,” I told Louis-Cesare, who had acquired a small frown in between his eyebrows.
“This will not take a moment,” he told me, and threw the remaining balls.
Pop! Pop!
More frowning.
“We can come back later,” I offered, as Olga came up behind.
“What you do?”
“Winning a bear.”
“Not here,” she said, chewing on something with tiny trailing feet and a tail. “He cheats.”
“I do no such thing!” The carny looked offended. “This is a game of skill, plain and simple.”
“Not with them,” Olga said placidly, as the little things watched her with shiny black eyes.
“He’s a vampire,” the carny said, passing over more balls. “With reflexes far faster than they’re used to. It’s more than fair—”
Pop! Pop! Pop!
“—why, it’s the easiest game anywhere!”
“You know, honestly,” I said, starting to wish I hadn’t brought it up. Because I’d been watching those little beggars, and they moved like lightning. And whenever they weren’t sure they’d be fast enough, they blew up like balloons, instantly covering so much space that there was literally no way to win. “It’s fine. Really.”
But Louis-Cesare was looking at me again, and he had that expression in his eyes. The one that said we weren’t going anywhere. “Three more,” he told the man.
“We could be here all night, and we have a match to—”
And then a bunch of things happened at once. The man handed over three more fool’s bets; a bunch of coins suddenly flashed in the air, a glittering wave not of silver but of gold, pure and shiny and gleaming under the lights; and a bunch of crusty beach balls deflated and scrambled like mad for the surprise treasure.
And three little Velcro balls landed in three little circles, each one smack-dab in the middle.
I stared at them.
And then at the ground, where the crazed somethings were scrapping and clawing and scuffling in the dirt.
And back up at Louis-Cesare, who was looking smug. “You just spent like . . .” I didn’t even know. “A couple thousand dollars on a bear.”
“Three bears,” he said complaisantly, and pulled them down from the row above our heads.