The next plague called for killing their livestock, but that was too easy. Instead, he hypnotized one of the monks into believing all of their cattle and goats were demons, then sat back and watched as he took their lives. Dai She’s pet, a king vulture named Viktor, ate well that night.

Plague number six—boils—was the most fun of all. Dai She took immense pleasure in causing others physical pain. A few boils—red, pimplelike abscesses of the skin—could be manageable, but Dai She left no room for comfort. He made them erupt on the bottoms of the monks’ feet and completely covered their torsos … especially their backsides. There was no relief. The monks could not comfortably stand, sit, kneel, or lie down.

The plague of hail covered the ground three feet thick and partially collapsed their roof.

The few crops that survived the storm were wiped out when he released millions of hungry locusts for plague number eight.

If he were following the plagues by the book, number nine should have been three days of darkness. But Dai She was so sad that there was only one plague to go that he hid the sun from them for a month. And in the meantime, he took the opportunity for a nice vacation at a villa in Italy, resting up for the grand finale.

According to the Old Testament, the tenth plague had been the deaths of the firstborn. Dai She was stumped. What if all the monks were themselves firstborn? He didn’t particularly want them to die, just to suffer as long as humanly possible.

He was still pondering his dilemma when he returned to the monastery and heard the wailing. As it turned out, he’d needed only nine plagues. The monks had gone stark raving mad.

Dai She simply waltzed in and took the map while whistling a happy tune.

Chapter Eleven

Cold, damp, and miserable—three words that could have described either the weather or the person in it.

Gretchen had tried to offer Coralis advice on what to expect with modern-day travel. “I read newspapers!” she had scolded. He should have paid closer attention. The last time he had reluctantly flown in an airplane, it had had propellers, and he had entered it via a portable staircase on the runway tarmac.

Today, just the process of going through security was a nightmare. A uniformed woman with a badge had even made him remove his coat. Of all the nerve! But he got the last laugh when their so-called X-ray machine failed to penetrate the invisibility shield that protected his wands.