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play their chosen instruments better than they have
any right to.
    “I still think you people are out of your goddamn minds,” she muttered.
    “And you’re still not wrong,” said Andy amiably. He was wearing
headphones as a precaution against her song. They were tuned to a white noise
station that should keep the effects of her story to a minimum. We hoped. Like
I said, fairy tales are not an exact science.
    Demi shook her head, closed her eyes, and began to play.
    It was a light, frothy classical piece—something that sounded like it
should be accompanied by harps and followed by polite applause. Instead, it was
accompanied by the manholes on the sides of the road beginning to rock in their
sockets, and the sound of Sloane’s shrill, indignant scream.
    And the rats came.
    The manhole covers were shoved aside as a flood of gray and brown bodies
boiled up from the sewers, surging seamlessly into the streams of rats pouring
similarly out of the alleys on every side. Sloane’s scream was repeated, just
before a pack of squirrels came stampeding from the direction of the park,
joining their cousins in the assault on the hospital. Even a few of the local
pigeons got into the act, making up the aerial branch of the vermin assault
force. The blended mass of squirrels, rats, and pigeons slammed into the
hospital’s automatic doors, overwhelming the sensors and stampeding,
scampering, and soaring their way inside.
    Demi’s playing had stopped somewhere in the middle of the onslaught, her
flute dangling forgotten in her hands as she stared at the hospital doors. It
didn’t matter whether she played or not; at this point, she’d given the
instructions to her army of vermin, and they were going to do what she told
them to do.
    “I always knew pigeons were just rats with wings,” commented Andy.
Sloane—stomping up with scratches on her cheeks and forehead, probably from
standing in the path of the squirrels—just glared at him.
    “Did I do that?” asked Demi, sounding stunned.
    The van door slammed open and Jeff emerged, grinning so broadly that I
could practically count his fillings. “You did it!” he said, jumping down to
the street and running over to take her by the elbow. “Come on. I’ve figured
out the best musical selection for you to use when you’re piping the virus into
the rats, and from there, it’s a pretty standard descending trill to get them
to commit mass suicide. You’re doing great so far. I’ll get you another soda,
and we can go over the sheet music—” Still talking, he led the unresisting
two-eighty away.
    I stayed where I was, watching the hospital doors. Rats and pigeons
occasionally flashed by in the lobby, briefly visible through the glass. Andy
touched my shoulder.
    “They’ll wake her up,” he said. “No Prince. No kiss. Just a disease scare
and a major reduction in local pest control business for a while.”
    “I know.”
    “She’ll probably never even know what happened.”
    “I know.”
    Sloane interjected sourly, “But we’re going to have to figure out what
the hell to do with a live Piper. She’s started her story now. Either we defuse
her or we bury her in a shallow grave somewhere off the interstate.”
    “I know which one you’re voting for, and the answer is no,” I said, and
turned away from the modern-day castle where a silly little girl who’d pricked
her finger on something she shouldn’t have been touching was sleeping through
the day that she’d been born for. “Besides, there’s a third option.”
    “What’s that?”
    “We hire her.” I smiled a little, without amusement. “Who doesn’t dream
about fairy tales coming true?”
    Sloane eyed me with something close to respect. “Sometimes I think they
got our Index numbers reversed,” she said.
    “Sometimes, so do I,” I replied, and turned to follow Jeff’s route to the
control center, where our little two-eighty would be preparing for the
performance of a lifetime. There’s one thing