Working for Bigfoot Read Free Page B

tormentors from the corner of my eye. The two bullies never took their eyes off Irwin, even while talking and joking with their group.
    I recognized that behavior, though I’d never seen it in a child before; only in hunting cats, vampires, and sundry monsters.
    The two kids were predators.
    Young and inexperienced, maybe. But predators.
    For the first time, I thought that Bigfoot Irwin might be in real trouble.
    I went back to my own tray and wolfed down the “food” on it. I wanted to keep a closer eye on Irwin.
     

     
    Being a wizard is all about being prepared. Well, that and magic, obviously. While I could do a few things in a hurry, most magic takes long moments or hours to arrange, and that means you have to know what’s coming. I’d brought a few things with me, but I needed more information before I could act decisively on the kid’s behalf.
    I kept track of Irwin after he left the cafeteria. It wasn’t hard. His face was down, his eyes on his book, and even though he was one of the younger kids in the school, he stood out, tall and gangly. I contrived to go past his classroom several times in the next hour. It was trig, which I knew, except I’d been doing it in high school.
    Irwin was the youngest kid in the class. He was also evidently the smartest. He never looked up from his book. Several times the teacher tried to catch him out, asking him questions. Irwin put his finger on the place in his book, glanced up at the blackboard, and answered them with barely a pause. I found myself grinning.
    Next I tracked down Irwin’s tormentors. They weren’t hard to find, either, since they both sat in the chairs closest to the exit, as though they couldn’t wait to go off and be delinquent the instant school was out. They sat in class with impatient, sullen expressions. They looked like they were in the grip of agonizing boredom, but they didn’t seem to be preparing to murder a teacher or anything.
    I had a hunch that something about Irwin was drawing a predatory reaction from those two kids. And Coach Vogon had arrived on the scene pretty damned quickly—too much so for coincidence, maybe.
    “Maybe Bigfoot Irwin isn’t the only scion at this school,” I muttered to myself.
    And maybe I wasn’t the only one looking out for the interests of a child born with one foot in this world and one in another.
     

     
    I was standing outside the gymnasium as the last class of the day let out, leaning against the wall on my elbows, my feet crossed at the heels, my head hanging down, my wheeled bucket and mop standing unused a good seven feet away—pretty much the picture of an industrious janitor. The kids went hurrying by in a rowdy herd, with Irwin’s tormentors being the last to leave the gym. I felt their eyes on me as they went past, but I didn’t react to them.
    Coach Vogon came out last, flicking out the banks of fluorescent lights as he went, his footsteps brisk and heavy. He came to a dead stop as he came out of the door and found me waiting for him.
    There was a long moment of silence while he sized me up. I let him. I wasn’t looking for a fight, and I had taken the deliberately relaxed and nonconfrontational stance I was in to convey that concept to him. I figured he was connected to the supernatural world, but I didn’t know how connected he might be. Hell, I didn’t even know if he was human.
    Yet.
    “Don’t you have work to do?” he demanded.
    “Doing it,” I said. “I mean, obviously.”
    I couldn’t actually hear his eyes narrow, but I was pretty sure they did. “You got a lot of nerve, buddy, talking to an instructor like that.”
    “If there weren’t all these kids around, I might have said another syllable or two,” I drawled. “Coach Vogon.”
    “You’re about to lose your job, buddy. Get to work or I’ll report you for malingering.”
    “Malingering,” I said. “Four whole syllables. You’re good.”
    He rolled another step toward me and jabbed a finger into my chest.