Mikael's Umbrella: Chapter 5

 Chapter 3 changed. Read it before you read this.

 The strange man put the bones on the table.
"Come here," he intoned. His voice was low and husky.
Mariah surfaced. She'd been doing the breast stroke at the deep end. The man, she noticed, was looking warily at the water and had taken a table near the shallow end. Maybe he is aqua phobic, she decided, and dismissed the thought.
"Come here," the man said again.
Mariah did the butterfly over to the shallow end and got out, dripping wet. The man hustled away from her.
"Careful, careful," he warned, but it was too late. Mariah dripped water on one of the bones. It sizzled and disintegrated into dust.
"Then we'll only work with fifteen," the man said, but Mariah detected a faint smile in his thin lips. Her mom liked to call her the "Human Lie Detector," and she was right. Most times, Mariah could accurately detect a lie, and this man was definitely smiling.
The man crossed his hands and said, "Let us do this the simple way." He paused and snapped his fingers. The bones moved into a strange formation. Five bones made a square with a vertical one in the center, another 5 made the same but with the middle bone being horizontal, and the last 5's middle bone was from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.
"Take away six but leave ten," the man said.
Mariah thought. It seemed impossible. But what if...
"Ohhhh, I get it," she said, and dried her hands off on a hotel bunch of towels tied neatly with a pink ribbon. She took some bones away. First were the bottom three of the first five. Next, the one to the far right. Finally, the ones on the top and bottom. Mariah threw the unused bones on the hotel towels.
The remaining bones spelled out "TEN."