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Ignacio shrugged, totally unbothered, and bounced over to inspect the movies. "I dunno," he offered in the most unhelpful manner. "Something with lots of action and no kissing."

Glancing at Shade in a meaningful way, Jack motioned for the other man to follow him towards the kitchen. They were going to have to have a Talk about dealing with would-be home-invaders and it would probably include a complete rundown of his best friend's neuroses. Just to drive the point home.

Fairly grudgingly - but at least she wasn't home with her - with M.B., and ricotta and apple slices and being the second-best child all the time and all the arguing - Jace slumped down with Iggy and Antony. The Holy Grail movie was totally weird and she didn't understand it at first, and was pretty ready to sneer at Antony and demand they put on something actually cool when they met the Black Knight and the decapitation scene happened. Then Jace laughed so hard that she nearly slid off the couch, holding her sides to try to combat the stitch.

Okay, living with Antony and Shade and Uncle Jack was going to be great. The only movies she got to see at home were ones that her mom deemed to have some kind of edutainment value. Even Wisp was starting to rebel against seeing endless science shows and, for some reason, the first season of Captain Planet (Bea was totally lost as to what children should be allowed to watch, and slightly stuck in the nineties as far as the moral of the day was concerned). This was hysterical. Any slights she had been thinking up about Antony's taste in movies were totally gone.

"Not that I know of," Antony admitted. "But they've got others! That one's just my favorite. Now let's watch Young Frankenstein!" He had obviously forgotten that Jace wasn't supposed to be there.

Even as he nodded eagerly, though, Iggy had a strange expression on his brown face. If someone didn't know him, they would have sworn he was thinking very, very hard. Quietly, he picked up the case for The Holy Grain and studied it. Then he flipped it over and squinted at the back. His finger traced a line or two before he turned it over once more to stare at the front.

"Y'know," he said slowly, carefully, "I bet we could find this thing. I mean, if we wanted to." He looked up at the others to guage their reactions. "And we wouldn't be as silly about it. Dad's taught me lots of things about things and I bet you guys know all sorts of stuff."

Who cared if the Holy Grail existed or didn't? Frankly, it sounded like an adventure just getting it. And if it did exist... well, M.B. couldn't sneeze at a daughter who brought back the friggin' Holy Grail. "I bet Uncle Jack'd know if it existed or not," she said. "But it's probably in like... Egypt or Ethiopia or something. Or we could look on the Internet. I mean, it's not like anyone's found it yet so it's probably still out there."

"But wouldn't it have been found if it was on the internet?" Antony asked, already heading for his laptop even as he asked the questions. His dad had bought it from another planet, and he still wasn't sure he wanted to know where he had gotten the money from.

He opened the laptop and headed for Google to look it up.

Ignacio laughed and pushed himself up onto all fours. He walked that way for a few steps and then bounced his upper body so he could pull himself fully upright. He grinned whitely. "Normal's boring," he announced. "Normal means that Big Foot doesn't exist and there's no Loch Ness Monster and... And..." He paused, struggling to think of something else. Finally, his face lit up. "And King Arthur was just some stor, right? Normal's really boring."

"Ea-sy," said Jace disdainfully: she was not the child of a researcher for nothing. "Skim'n dump the ones that look the stupidest, split it between us three ways - maybe get it down to a hundred - that way there's thirty-three and a little bit pages for us to go through" (in her excitement, Jacoba had forgotten that ever demonstrating any mathematical knowledge was a terrible thing to do) "and then when Uncle Jack or M.B. aren't looking I can steal one of their books too. And see if there's a reward for finding the Grail, 'cos then we can split that."