"  I motioned at Frank’s clipboard with a chunk of pita bread. “Gimme the skinny.”

  “Well, nothing they’re asking for is too crazy. Basic needs stuff. Though they asked for access to some TV time, a communal computer so they can e-mail—”

  “Gnomes e-mail?” Ramon sounded both amused and skeptical.

  “Yeah, but I think the computer request was mostly from the Minotaur. The gladiators just wanted to use it to check hockey scores and stuff.”

  “Anyone else think it’s funny that what Frank just said didn’t seem weird at all?” Ramon asked.

  Brooke rested her chin in her hands. “Nothing seems weird to me anymore.” Ramon reached over and hugged her to him, kissing her cheek. She gave a little half smile and leaned into it.

  “I was too busy trying to figure out why the gladiators wanted to check hockey scores, which just goes to show you how skewed my sense of strange has become,” I said.

  Frank shrugged, not looking up from the clipboard. “They’re Canadian.”

  I swallowed my vitamin as quickly as possible, grimacing from the aftertaste. “But they’re gladiators. Wouldn’t that make them Roman or Greek or something?”

  “I asked them the same thing. I guess the marble they’re carved from comes from Canada. You can kind of tell if you talk to them long enough. They say ‘eh’ a lot. They don’t seem to have spent much time in their homeland, so I think they are basing most of their culture on stereotypes.”

  “Maybe we should hold a Canada party or something,” I said. “Like a little cultural festival. Then we should hold one for the gnomes, because they just boggle me entirely.”

  Frank snickered. “No kidding "

― Lish McBride , Necromancing the Stone (Necromancer, #2)