“I know what that is,” Gus said. “That’s a dog. A vicious, angry, bloodthirsty guard dog.”

“Why would there be a guard dog out here?”

“I don’t know,” Gus said. “Maybe to guard the place?”

“From us? We’re invited guests.”

“Maybe you can show Fido our invitation before he rips our throats out.”

“Good thinking.” Shawn pulled a printed card out of his shirt pocket. Across the top, bloodred letters read ONE LAST NIGHT OF LIFE-JOIN THE WAKE AT THE FORTRESS OF MAGIC. Shawn knelt down to read the invitation in the glow of the path lights.

“Uh-oh,” Shawn said.

“Uh-oh?” Gus said. “ Uh-oh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a common expression of concern, generally uttered on the discovery of information that presages disaster.”

“I know what it means,” Gus said.

“Then why did you ask?”

There was a snarl from the hill to the left of the path. Gus desperately tried to shift his eyes to night-vision mode, just in case he was actually an android sent from the robot-ruled future to hunt down and kill the future mother of the leader of the human resistance and he’d simply forgotten about that. But his nonbionic eyes refused to illuminate the hillside in a green glow.

“Because I want to know what disaster you were presaging,” Gus said. “And since when did you start using words like ‘presaging,’ anyway?”

“I thought ‘augur’ would seem pretentious,” Shawn said. “Am I wrong?”

There was another growl, this time from the right. “Maybe we can find out when they put it on our grave-stones,” Gus said.

“In that case, I’d definitely go with ‘augur,’ ” Shawn said. “Those chiselers charge by the letter. In fact, we’d probably want to switch to ‘bode’ and save a couple of bucks.”

“Shawn!”