Waxillium looked up with a start, realizing that the dying Tillaume was fiddling with the basket he’d brought in—the man reached a bloodied hand into it and pulled on something.

“Wayne!” Waxillium cried. “Bubble. Now!”

Tillaume fell back. The basket erupted in a blossoming ball of fire.

And then froze.

“Aw, hell,” Wayne said, rolling over to look at the explosion in progress. “I warned you. I said things are always blowing up around you.”

“I refuse to take responsibility for this one.”

“He’s your butler,” Wayne said, coughing and crawling to his knees. “Blarek! It wasn’t even good tea.”

“It’s getting bigger!” Marasi said, alarmed as she pointed at the explosion.

The fire blast had vaporized the basket before Wayne got his bubble up. The blast wave was slowly expanding outward, burning away the carpet, destroying the doorframe and the bookshelves. The butler himself had already been engulfed.

“Damn,” Wayne said. “That’s a big one.”

“Probably meant to look like an accident with my metallurgy equipment,” Waxillium said. “Burning our bodies, covering the murder.”

“Shall we go out the windows, then?”

“That blast is going to be hard to outrun,” Waxillium said thoughtfully.

“You could do it. Just gotta Push hard enough.”

“Against what, Wayne? I don’t see any good anchors in that direction. Besides, if I launch us backward that fast, going out the window is going to shred us and rip our bodies apart.”

“Gentlemen,” Marasi said, voice growing frantic, “it’s getting bigger.”

“Wayne can’t stop time,” Waxillium said. “Just slow it greatly. And he can’t move the bubble once he’s made it.”

“Look,” Wayne said. “Just blow the wall out. Push against the nails in the window frames and blast open the side of the building. Then you can shoot us out that direction without us running into anything.”

“Do you even listen to yourself when you say these things?” Waxillium asked, hands on hips as he regarded his friend. “That’s brick and stone. If I Push too hard, I’ll just throw myself backward into the explosion.”

“It’s getting really, really close!” Marasi said.

“So make yourself heavier,” Wayne said.

“Heavy enough so that I don’t move when an entire wall—a well-built, extremely heavy one—is ripped off a building?”

“Sure.”

“The floor would never be able to take it,” Waxillium said. “It would shatter, and…”

He trailed off.

Both of them looked down.

Snapping into motion, Waxillium grabbed Marasi, pulling her over with a yelp. He rolled onto his back, holding her tightly atop him.

The explosion was taking up most of their field of vision now, having consumed a large portion of the room. It swelled closer and closer, glowing with angry yellow light, like a bubbling, bursting pastry expanding in an enormous oven.