I stretched for the rod, felt the smooth roundness of it on my fingertips, and then there was another scuttling sound and the scorpion came at my back.
The rod squirted out from beneath my grasping fingers and rolled away, out of reach.
I didn't have time for a spell, but I grabbed at the middle drawer of my desk, jerked it all the way out of its frame and barely managed to shove it between the scorpion and myself.
There was a hiss of air and a smacking sound of breaking wood. The scorpion's stinger plunged through the bottom of the desk drawer and stuck fast.
A crab-claw pincer gouged a hole through my sweatpants and into my leg.
I screamed and hurled the drawer away. The scorpion, its tail still stuck, went with it, and they both landed in a heap a few feet away.
"Won't do you any good, Banks," Ericson moaned incoherently.
She must have been too far gone from the poison to understand what was going on.
