Tjan snorted out his nose, but she was so solemn that the rest kept quiet. Ada matched Lyenitchka's critical posture and then nodded authoritatively. "Sure thing, partner." "It's a date," Perry said. "We're gonna head home and put down our suitcases and come back and open the ride if it's ready. It's time Lester got some time off. I'm sure Suzanne will appreciate having him back again." Another silence fell over the group, tense as a piano wire. Perry looked from Lester to Suzanne and saw in a second what was up. He had time to notice that his first emotional response was to be intrigued, not sorry or scared. Only after a moment did he have the reaction he thought he should have -- a mixture of sadness for his friend and irritation that they had yet another thing to deal with in the middle of a hundred other crises. Hilda broke the tension -- "It was great to meet you all. Dinner tonight, right?" "Absolutely," Kettlewell said, seizing on this. "Leave it to us -- we'll book someplace just great and have a great dinner to welcome you guys back." Eva took his arm. "That's right," she said. "I'll get the girls to pick it out." The little girls jumped up and down with excitement at this, and the baby brothers caught their excitement and made happy kid-screeches that got everyone smiling again. Perry gave Lester a solemn, supportive hug, kissed Suzanne and Eva on the cheeks (Suzanne smelled good, something like sandalwood), shook hands with Tjan and Kettlewell and tousled all four kids before lighting out for the ride, gasping out a breath as they stepped into the open air. # Death Waits regained consciousness several times over the next week, aware each time that he was waking up in a hospital bed on a crowded ward, that he'd woken here before, and that he hurt and couldn't remember much after the beating had started. But after a week or so, he found himself awake and aware -- he still hurt all over, a dull and distant stoned ache that he could tell was being kept at bay by powerful painkillers. There was someone waiting for him. "Hello, Darren," the man said. "I'm an attorney working for your friends at the ride. My name is Tom Levine. We're suing Disney and we wanted to gather some evidence from you." Death didn't like being called Darren, and he didn't want to talk to this dork. He'd woken up with a profound sense of anger, remembering the dead-eyed guy shouting about Disney while bouncing his head off the ground, knowing that Sammy had done this, wanting nothing more than to get ahold of Sammy and, and... That's where he ran out of imagination. He was perfectly happy drawing medieval-style torture chambers and vampires in his sketch book, but he didn't actually have much stomach for, you know, *violence*. Per se. "Can we do this some other time?" His mouth hurt. He'd lost four teeth and had bitten his tongue hard enough to need stitches. He could barely understand his own words.