Book Five: Chapter 2

Jenny’s face was the placid smile of a thrift shop horror, but Reggie the rat king wore an expression of doubt. Mike paused to see what they were looking at, and realized that the two of them were playing Battleship.

“Problem?” he asked.

“I am fairly certain she is cheating,” Reggie said. The empty plates on the table rattled threateningly, but Reggie had long ago stopped letting the haunted doll intimidate him. The rat king and Jenny, once enemies, had apparently worked past many of their differences, and it said quite a lot about their relationship that Jenny didn’t actually attempt to hurt him. “I have yet to figure out how.”

“Hmm.” From where he stood, Mike had a great view of Jenny’s board. She had snapped the boats into pieces and scattered them about. As far as he knew, the rules didn’t explicitly state that was forbidden, which would probably be argued about later. It wouldn’t be the first banned game in the house as a result of rule-breaking. “Well,