Wondrous Strange

“I was. She’s quick.” He shrugged. “And anyway, you should’ve stayed veiled.”

Sonny stared in the direction the girl had gone. “I’m not sure it would have made any difference.”

“Why not?”

“She saw me. Standing onstage-she saw me. Through the veil. Did you…see her?” Sonny turned and grabbed his friend’s shoulder, hard. “I mean-just now-did you see what happened to her?”

Maddox’s expression was closed, inscrutable. The rain was lessening, but water still ran down both their faces. Neither of them noticed.

“I saw…something,” Maddox said. His voice was flat, carefully stripped of audible emotion. But his next words made his feelings perfectly clear. “I’m pretty sure it scared the hell out of me.”

“We should follow her.”

Maddox was already vigorously shaking his head. “Oh, no. No no no. You just promised you wouldn’t follow her. I’d think twice before breaking a promise to a sweet, pretty, incredibly scary kid like that. Especially when she can effortlessly toss you around in an alley.”

“Look, I got nothing but vague, somewhat dire warnings about the kelpie from the boucca. But that ‘sweet, pretty kid’ knows more about what happened at the Lake than she’s telling, and I think we should find out what that is.” Sonny didn’t bother to mention that Bob had also told him to “take care of her.”

“Let it go, Sonn,” Maddox said, and turned to walk in the opposite direction from where the girl had run. “I know trouble when I see it, and so do you. Put her out of your mind.”

Sonny did know trouble. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Maddox was right. He followed reluctantly in the other Janus’s wake, looking back over his shoulder as he went. In that moment, putting her out of his mind seemed like the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.

XIII

Standing before her apartment door, Kelley took a deep breath and turned her key in the lock.

“Tyff?” she called out tentatively. “Um…I’m home-and-really-sorry…”

Silence.

“Tyff?”

“He ate my soap.” Tyff walked slowly out of the bathroom, arms folded across her chest, the tone of her voice pleasantly conversational. “My eighty-dollar bar of hand-milled Japanese herbal complexion soap. From Japan. He ate it.”

“Oh…”

“He also ate your two-dollar bar of Irish Spring. I let him eat that one.”

“Tyff, I’m really, really sorry-”

“Actually, I gave it to him to eat.” Tyff smiled sweetly. After a moment of staring honeyed daggers at Kelley, she frowned and said, “Did you know you’re soaking wet?”

“I kinda got caught out in the rain…”

“Go put on a robe or something before you warp the floor, will you?”

Kelley looked down at her feet and saw that there was a puddle forming around her. She scooted past Tyff, who stood in the bathroom doorway, shaking her head. Kelley heard a whinnied greeting from over Tyff’s shoulder.

Stripping off her jacket and jeans, she slipped into her big fluffy bathrobe, thinking how much she was not enjoying coming home soaking wet twice in a row. A cup of tea would be nice-and give her an excuse to avoid the bathroom while she put the kettle on.

“Did…um…did he eat the oats?” she asked, smiling tentatively at Tyff as she edged past. “You know…after the soap?”

“He did not.” Tyff followed her into the tiny kitchen. “However, in an effort to avoid the further consumption of toiletries, I tried giving him some of your ridiculous kiddie cereal.” She waved at a box of Lucky Charms that was sitting open on the counter. “That seemed to go over well. So did scratching him behind his left ear.”

Kelley glanced at her roommate, extremely surprised by how well Tyff was taking all of this.

“Not that I’m becoming attached or anything!” Tyff said. “Because I’m not.”

“Okay…”

“I mean-even though he’s been a very well-behaved horsie so far and hasn’t even made a horsie mess-” Tyff stopped suddenly, realizing that Kelley was staring at her. “Never mind.”

“Okay…,” Kelley said again. She turned to make the tea.

Tyff was silent for a moment. “Winslow…what happened to you today?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look kind of…spooked. Wiggy. And it’s not because there’s a soap-devouring pony in the apartment. What’s wrong with you?”

Kelley bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling. Now that she was home safe in her own apartment, the thought of what had happened in the alley came rushing back. She suddenly realized what a very scary situation she had been in.

“Kelley?”

“There was this guy in the park yesterday. I’ve never seen him before, but he gave me a rose and…well…then he just sort of disappeared.”

“So? What about him?”

“I think he might be…following me.”

“Okay,” Tyff said slowly. “I know you’re new to the big city and all but, see, that’s not a good thing, Kelley.”

“He was in the alley outside the theater this afternoon.”

“An alley? Oh, even better! Did you call the police?”

“No, but I told him to stop following me.”

“Oh, good-you talked to him,” Tyff said sarcastically. “That’s nice and safe!”

“I know, I know…” Kelley stirred distractedly at her tea. “But he had a lot of opportunity to hurt me if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t. He said I should trust him.”

“What? Trust him? He’s not some guy your wacko aunt hired to follow you around or something, is he?”

“Like a detective?” Kelley blinked away the sting of unshed tears. It hurt her somehow to know that the random act of kindness he’d presented her with in the form of that beautiful flower might, in fact, have been just a calculated move to get close to her. It had seemed such a lovely gesture at the time.

“Yeah, or some kind of bodyguard,” Tyff said. “We all know how deeply unenthusiastic dear old Auntie Em was about you moving here.”

Kelley thought about that for a moment. “Maybe…,” she said. Emma could be freakishly overprotective.

Tyff sighed, checking the time on her watch. “I have to go. I have a date and, thanks to your heroic horse- rescue efforts, I’m going to have to shower at the gym. Are you going to be okay by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine,” Kelley said. She was feeling a bit better now that she was home and had told someone about her encounter. It didn’t seem quite like such a big deal anymore. Just Big City Weirdness, and she could handle that.

“Look-just do me a favor and don’t do anything stupid?” Tyff said, swinging a pashmina over her shoulders and heading for the door. “Our little buddy in there might be well-behaved, but so far, he hasn’t contributed to the rent, so I still need you around.”

Kelley grinned and nodded. She couldn’t believe how understanding Tyff had been so far, but she was grateful.