Chapter 5

He pushed ineffectually at the elastic walls. Through the translucent membrane he saw Bab looking up at him with an impish smile on her full lips.

You really walked into this one, Jackson thought.

The bubble continued to float up higher. Jackson's options at this point were rather limited, imprisoned as he was within the sphere. A hamster in one of those plastic balls could at least pick a direction to run in. All Jackson could do was push his hands out against the rubbery membrane like a convict clutching bars.

Bab gave him a little wave and walked back up the curved staircase. Jackson floated up with her on the other side of the room. The bubble followed a preset path and rose up past a balcony and into what looked like a sumptuous bedchamber. Really fancy. Like something out of a period drama--all frills and elegant furnishings.

Apart from the arcade cabinet standing against a wall with its electronic guts strewn out of one of the side panels. That didn't belong at all. Naked girls with scales, wings and a tail were not exactly a regular sight in Downton Abbey either.

Bab sat at a fancy white Regency table and nonchalantly filed a nail. Or rather claw. She held up a stiletto-tipped finger and blew on the nail. If this had been a cartoon Jackson suspected there'd have been an exaggerated glint of light to emphasise the pointyness. Bab looked over her shoulder at him and smiled.

Jackson didn't like that smile at all.

He struggled in another ineffectual attempt to burst out of the bubble. It drifted slowly across the bedroom, about five or six feet off the ground. Bab stood up and walked over to meet the bubble in the centre of the room. Still smiling that impish smile, she held up a single pointed fingernail and let the bubble drift into it.

The bubble popped.

Jackson somersaulted out of the popped bubble as if flung by catapult. The world shifted again, only this time it felt like he'd had lost a dimension rather than the world around him. He felt like he was a paper cut-out. And blue, oddly. Blue like a cartoon character coming out of a frozen lake, although he didn't feel any cold.

He ricocheted off the walls and ceiling. Bab tracked his progress as he bounced around the room. She bent down and blew another bubble, orange this time. Jackson's spinning form fell into the bubble and it flattened out like one of those airbags movie stuntmen dive off buildings into.

Ugh. Jackson felt proper sick. He felt like he'd experienced every ride at Alton Towers simultaneously. His stomach was not in a happy place.

It wasn't the only part of him struggling. He lifted up his arms and saw he was flickering in and out of existence like a hologram with a faulty battery.

Worrying.

Bab's smiling face and expressive wide eyes appeared over the side of airbag bubble.

Even more worrying.

She reached over and buried a claw-tipped hand right into his flickering chest.

Let's just say the mercury had burst right out of the top of the worry thermometer on that one.

There wasn't any pain, which was really surprising as her hand had vanished up to past the wrist and was rummaging around inside his rib cage. Jackson was fairly sure that should at least sting, but he couldn't feel a thing. Bab continued to grope around as if rooting for treasure.

And treasure she found. Jackson's eyes widened as she pulled a handful of gold coins out of his chest. Where the hell had they come from?