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thing to life, right? So let’s see if we can turn off its power!” I said.
    Jinx gave me one of his disturbingly too-wide grins. He pulled the ring apart, and it immediately fell slack. Then he wrapped it around Beanzilla’s tentacle, the metal stretching to encompass the tentacle’s girth. He then touched the ends together, and the ring stiffened and fastened itself tight to the tentacle’s polished steel surface. For an instant, the ring glimmered with a sheen of multicolored light, which quickly faded.
    I wasn’t sure, but it looked as if the tentacle drooped a bit, and the coils around Jinx loosened a touch. And did Beanzilla slow down a little? I thought it did.
    I caught up with the walking sculpture and as one of its legs came down, I jumped and wrapped my arms around it. Then I held on as the leg rose into the air again, this time carrying me with it. I caught a disorienting glimpse of myself reflected in the mirrored surface of Beanzilla’s body, and a wave of vertigo hit me.
    I looked away from the image and reached into my pocket and removed a second chain. I wrapped it around the leg, doing my best to ignore the nauseating sensation in my stomach as the leg carried me downward, and tried to touch the ends together. But even though the chain stretched, the leg was too wide. I pulled out the second chain, attached it to the first, and that did the trick. The ends met, snicked closed, drew tight to the leg’s surface, and then shone with a glimmer of multicolored light that lasted only a second or two.
    Nothing happened right away, and I feared my hastily improvised plan had failed, but then Beanzilla began to slow down. I felt its leg begin to shudder, and I knew the negators were working.
    Negators prevent Incubi from accessing Maelstrom energy, thereby nullifying their abilities and rendering them, if not exactly powerless, no more of a threat than an average human being.
    I heard Jinx yell, “Geronimo!” and an instant later, I saw him land on the ground in a crouching position. He immediately rolled out of the way of a severed tentacle that slammed into the spot where he’d landed. It looked like his acid had finally done its work.
    He came up on his absurdly large feet and jogged over to where I still clutched Beanzilla’s leg. The creature had stopped walking, but the leg I held onto had frozen at its highest position, stranding me almost thirty feet in the air. From where I was, I couldn’t see Quietus, and I had no idea if he was still caught in the tentacle that had grabbed him or if, like Jinx, he had managed to get free. If Quietus was still trapped, I knew he wouldn’t be for long.
    Jinx stood beneath me, arms out.
    “Jump!” he said. “I’ll catch you!” He paused a beat. “And this time, I mean it!”
    “Like you meant it when you promised you’d give up using acid?”
    Still, I didn’t see that I had any other choice. So I closed my eyes, let go, and dropped. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself looking up at Jinx’s face. I expected him to make some sort of smartass comment, or maybe make one of his scary faces – bulging eyes, too-wide smile, sharp teeth. But his normally ice-blue eyes were warm, and the expression on his face might almost have been one of tenderness.
    But then he grinned and dropped me on my ass. I said a word that I’d learned from my mother – Lord, can that woman swear! – and then Jinx offered me his hand to help me up.
    “Joy buzzer,” I said as I rose to my feet.
    He grinned wider and showed me the metal device concealed in his palm.
    The Bean was no longer alive – if indeed it ever truly had been – but it still had its legs and tentacles. Well, almost all its tentacles. The M-gineers were going to have their hands full with this cleanup job.
    I looked at Jinx. “Quietus?”
    He pointed skyward and took a step back just as the assassin landed in front of me, a pair of dark shards in his hands. The assassin lunged toward me, but before