Chapter One

The desert was empty, as though a great drain had sucked the world underground. Every color, every sound had vanished, leaving nothing but flat sand and silence.
Except for the ruby palace. If you were blasting down the highway in the middle of the night, somewhere near Dust Creek, you probably wouldn't even see it. Or just blackness, a red flash in the distance, and then nothing. It was tucked away behind the mountains, alone and nearly forgotten, the old house of Lily Larouche.

From the highway the ruby palace sparkled silently. Come a couple of miles closer, though, and you could hear the buzz of voices-closer, and squeals of laughter, snatches of music, raucous shouts-Lily Larouche was throwing a party.

The last hundred yards and suddenly the ruby palace loomed all around, slumping and sprawling over acres of sand and weeds like a monstrous, glittering cake. Its garden swarmed with exotic flowers, vegetables of startling colors, and dark ponds with fat, ill-tempered toads; strings of lights were flung throughout the crooked trees, twinkling like fireflies, and torches flickered all along the stacked and twisting terraces.

Strange shapes moved in the shadows. A man dressed as an astronaut chatted with a devil. A gang of cavemen sipped fizzing cocktails. A Chinese emperor flirted with a robot, a pirate arm-wrestled a dinosaur, a giant worm danced with a refrigerator-it was Lily Larouche's Christmas costume party, and all her old friends had come.
A blossoming bush grew on the garden patio. At first the bush seemed ordinary; but then two green eyes flashed inside it, and stared. It was a thirteen-year-old girl, small and thin, with brown skin and black bobbe