Dom had been too busy disarming traps to deal with the puzzle pieces until they’d cleared the third maze level and encountered the odd room full of doors, vaulted ceilings, and a puzzle Dom hadn’t seen before. He’d never had the time to get this deep into the trapped mazes. He’d thought for sure that there couldn’t be more than three or four of them. After all, they were obviously reject levels or the dungeon would have opened them to the public. Then again, Dom was starting to think that the dungeon masters had been smarter than he’d given them credit for. He’d been thinking that they were close to the control rooms, until Cadd had marched in and started slinging open doors.

  “Hey boss,” Goth sidled up next to where Dom was sliding puzzle pieces together. “Cadd is calling through the rubble for your head.”

  “Cadd can wait,” Dom flipped a piece and put it next to the previous one.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll say we didn’t hear him,” Goth plopped down next to him. “What is that anyway?”

  “A puzzle,” Dom deadpanned.

  “I can see that, but what kind of puzzle?” Goth bumped his shoulder, and he thought he resisted rolling his eyes.

  “I believe it is simply a taunt,” Dom answered. “The pictures are arranged in a way so that I can sound them out into a sentence, phrase or whatever. See this first part?”

  “Yeah,” Goth leaned over the puzzle.

  “The sheep stands for the word You,” he explained, his mind not on the conversation at all.

  “You? How does a sheep stand for you?” she asked.

  “A female sheep is called an ewe,” and he spelled it out for her, “but it’s pronounced the same as you. Then the r stands for are.”

  “Oh,” she got it quickly now that he’d explained it, not that the next part had taken much to figure out. “That part is a screw plus a D for screwed. That does sound like a taunt.”

  “Yes, but the rest is trickier,” he admitted. “I thought I’d put the jigsaw part together correctly, but it’s on both sides and I’m not sure if this one is supposed to be part of the front or back. If this is part of the back…”

  “Does that say, wash, rinse three times?” she pushed the puzzle piece over a little. “Like wash, rinse, repeat?”

  “I guess it could,” Dom quickly turned the pieces over again to look at the other side’s puzzle. The first side had the “you are screwed” message and the “wash, rinse” stuff, while the other side had an arm and what he hoped wasn’t roman numerals at the bottom. “I think this part is arm plus E for army, but I’m stuck on the scales.”

  “It’s not pointing at the scales,” Goth pointed at the arrows. “It’s pointing at the big and little weights.”

  “Weights,” he mused it over. “Waits!”

  “Army waits!” Goth got excited with him.

  “B plus switch, probably on, so be plus on plus D,” he worked it out aloud with Goth. “But what does the present stand for?”

  “Um, ribbon,” Goth began to throw out words, “or gift, or I guess it’s wrapped, or birthday?”

  “T plus wrapped could be trapped,” Dom stared at the 2 sleeping Ms and his mind caught it just as Goth did.

  “Army waits beyond trapped mazes!” they said at together, Goth lifting a hand for a high five as Dom’s face fell.

  “Army waits beyond trapped mazes,” he breathed out. “Wash, rinse, repeated three times.”

  “What are the three Ms at the bottom?” Goth asked as he turned it back over again.

  “I thought they might be roman numerals, but that would be 3,000 and that can’t be right,” Dom scooped the puzzle pieces back up into the bag she’d handed him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because that would mean that they have an army of 3,000 monsters just waiting on the other side of the trapped mazes,” Dom’s mind was working fast.

  “Why can’t that be right?”

  “Why wouldn’t they have thrown an army like that at us before now?” Dom whispered.

  “Because we’re not dicks,” came a voice and Dom’s closed his eyes and shook his head. His closed eyes didn’t hide the fact that he was rolling them.

  “You didn’t,” Kat was laughing again.

  “I did,” Colt bragged. Lacey listened to Colt telling Kat the whole story again, but she was busy ordering Spunks around to delicately change the trajectory of the last few swinging obstacles in the Manchester room, while Rejects shuffled the creatures behind the doors.

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  “The first Manchester room and he’s sucking air,” Kat crowed.

  “We shelved the room as too dangerous after two full party wipes in it,” Colt admitted.

  “That was the Manchester room?” Bernard broke into the conversation, less tickled and more interested in the facts. Still, he was smiling, just like the rest of them were, even Lacey. Lacey was just happy that they’d had the time to rest some of the elements of the next Manchester room. “I’m reluctantly impressed that any of them survived.”

  “Don’t be,” Kat snarked. “He’s had a lot of practice at dungeons. Even more than I have. He and my mom used to farm dungeons for enough experience to take over this crazy system.”

  “Your mom was an adventurer?” Colt asked, his smile slipping. “I thought she was like the goddess of this place.”

  “More like the owner than a goddess,” Kat explained. “We inherited it from an asshole that was sucking people into a novel-writing machine for kicks and giggles. It’s still a work in progress.”

  “Not your dad, the asshole?” Bernard’s question had Lacey holding her breath. They just didn’t know enough about the whole behind-the-scenes stuff. She was glad that Bernard had been the one to ask. Even Colt’s grin slipped a tiny bit as he also waited for the answer in silence.

  “No,” Kat responded as if totally unconcerned with her deity family history. “My dad’s a jerk, but Fizzy-baby was a total and complete asshat of nuclear proportions. He makes my dad look like an angel.”

  “What happened to him?” Colt dared to ask into the tense silence Kat didn’t seem to notice.

  “Mom and Dad totally kicked his ass and then took over the whole system,” Kat answered glibly. “We’re still working out the kinks, but Mom has dreams of expanding it to take in…” Kat seemed to notice the focus for the first time and her voice trailed off.

  “What?” Colt pressed and he and Lacey sat on the edge of their seats.

  “I uh,” Kat hedged, coughing to clear her throat. “I’m probably not supposed to talk about that stuff. It uh, breaks immersion or some such. Another mystery to me, but some folks like it okay and some don’t.”

  “We don’t mind,” Lacey tried to assure Kat.

  “It’s not you guys,” Kat explained. “It’s uh, well, other stuff that is or isn’t… It’s hard to explain.”

  “Yes, well,” Bernard saved her with a gruff tone.

  “So is Dad an asshole or not?” Colt pressed over Bernard’s aborted attempt to change the subject.

  “Well, yeah, he’s an asshole, but,” Kat insisted.

  “Is he an asshole or just a protective father?” Lacey could tell that Bernard was frowning as he said it. He had that stern-dad voice.

  “I’m not 16, Bernard,” Kat protested, and she got hot with it. “I just look this age. I’m not only an adult in the real world, but I’ve lived time-compressed years in a world just like this and he’s been chasing down my boyfriends all that time.”

  “Why?” Lacey put in.

  “He doesn’t like me dating NPCs!” Kat fumed, her anger palpable even from half a dungeon away. “I told him I was just practicing on them, but he’s like,” and her voice changed to imitate what could have been her dad, “you shouldn’t base normal guy stuff on what an NPC does, so it doesn’t count. And then we just start arguing, and he then kills off the NPC I’m dating! It’s stupid and it’s my life anyway!”

  “But I’m not an NPC,” Colt protested.

  “Which is why I don’t get why he’s so obsessed!” Kat stomped and flailed her arms about. “Now I’m dating someone who’s from the real world and he still refuses to stay out of my life! I came to the new server to get away from his overbearing need to control me. For the first time, he’s actually at a level that I can kick his ass, and I can’t even seem to find him to do it. I don’t know what’s more frustrating! Always being a few levels below him so that I can never quite defeat him, or finally being in charge only to not be able to find his ass to beat it!

  “Which is why I really do hope he gets all the way down here alive!” Kat ranted on through clenched teeth. “I don’t care if you wipe out everyone else, but I am going to kick his ass all the way out of the dungeon until he promises to stay out of my love life forever.”

  Colt flicked off his intercom, so Lacey did the same so the sound wouldn’t bleed over.

  “Whatcha’ thinking?” Lacey prompted him when he didn’t immediately talk.

  “Am I just a chew toy?” he blurted out, leaning back but no tipping his chair.

  “I don’t think so, Colt,” Lacey scanned her screens to make sure that the Spunks and Rejects were still progressing the way she wanted and then narrowed her attention onto Colt.

  “I want to think that she likes me for me, but I just don’t understand this family feud thing,” Colt spread his hands on his desk and blew out a breath.

  “Her dad didn’t show up right away,” Lacey tried to reason with him, using the conversation as an excuse to get up for a snack and soda. “She was falling for you before he ever showed up.”

  “Didn’t look like it to me,” Colt pushed against his desk until it scooted away from him and then pulled it back to himself.

  “You didn’t see how she was trying to resist that Colt-charm!” Lacey chided him gently. “When she looked at you, she was cool, but as soon as you did your walk-away routine, she was panting like she was in heat.”

  Colt winced at the analogy. “I don’t think she’d like being compared to a dog.”

  “Probably not, and if you tell her I told you any of that, I’ll deny it to my grave,” Lacey paused on the way to the treat cabinet to give Spark a scritch. “Still, she was falling for you hard on day one.”

  “Really?” and he got a dopey look that made Lacey regret saying it.

  “And that was why she was resisting,” Lacey mumbled under her breath.

  “Yeah, whatever,” he waved her off.

  Lacey grabbed and tossed treats for both Spark and Beka, then ordered pizza rolls for herself before heading back to her desk balancing her treat and her soda. “My dad didn’t care and yours is practically a saint. Even with the crazy ex-girlfriends you’ve had, you haven’t had to deal with a dad like this.”

  “Not sure anyone can say that they have,” Colt frowned, eyeing her pizza rolls even as she blew on them to cool them down from lava-hot.

  “Get your own,” Lacey waved at the kitchen with an arced brow.

  “Okay,” he groused, but he got up to repeat Lacey’s movements. “But I doubt anyone’s had this kind of dating dilemma. I’m dating…” he paused, at a loss for words, and probably trying not to be insulting.

  “The boss’s daughter?” Lacey filled in the blank.

  “When you put it that way it sounds normal, but I doubt most guys dating the boss’s daughter didn’t have to worry about the boss showing up and killing them in their sleep,” Colt gave the pets another round of treats, and Lacey wondered if they were setting a bad precedent. Then again, if she and Colt weren’t becoming fat toads, their pets probably wouldn’t either.

  “Mob boss’s daughter?” Lacey teased him, popping the roll in her mouth and then trying to cool it between her teeth rather than have it burn her tongue.

  “Closer,” Colt laughed.

  “Still, not completely without precedent,” Lacey gave him a look that was totally lost behind the image of her juggling the next pizza roll like a hot potato.