“Do you have a job?” she asked. She had suddenly realized she might have to support me. Janice wouldn’t do that!
I shook my head.
“What can you do?”
“Handle horses,” I said.
“Nobody’s going to hire you for that, at your age.” The words were a sneer. Janice was sounding more like herself.
I nodded, telling her I knew, thinking of Wellingford. “I managed an estate for a family for a while.”
“If you could get references, that might be useful.”
“I met Dorothy at college. We were both studying the same things. I’m a fair Latinist.”
“Maybe we can find something academic. Through the network.”
She meant the comebacks’ forgery network that provided social security cards, birth certificates, educational documentation, and even jobs for returnees. What I really wanted to do was find Jaybee and follow him around, until I knew what he was doing, what his vulnerabilities were. That might have to wait.
Janice was still crying, wiping her eyes. “What happened to Bill? To his body?”
I tried to tell her and I choked. It was as if it had happened yesterday, rather than a year, two years ago. I finally got it out, about Jaybee having carried his body away.
“That bastard,” she whispered again. “Oh, that rotten bastard.” Then she wiped her eyes and said firmly, “When the day of judgement comes, he’ll be among the damned.” Then she went out, shutting the door behind her, leaving me alone.
I lay down on my own bed next to the cat, so tired it was hard to think, hard to move. I was old. Funny, I didn’t know where my youth had gone, but I was old. When I looked in the mirror, I expected to see someone else, that younger face, that smooth skin, that unlined brow. Mama was still young. I should be still young. Instead, there was this thin, slightly wrinkled woman with flyaway gray hair who had to lean close to the mirror to see because she was nearsighted. I sat up and stared in the mirror, squinting my eyes as Thomas the Rhymer had taught me, wishing to see true.
It reminded me of one of the songs they had sung in Faery, in Oberon’s court. “Lovely the days of your youth, and fleeting as grass. Stay with me forever in Faery, my golden-haired lass.…”
And that reminded me of Puck and Fenoderee, my only friends. I said their names, wishing they were with me.
“Yes?” said Puck. He came out from the wall, from the bookcase, from somewhere near there. Grumpkin opened his eyes for a moment, yawned, then went back to sleep. He wasn’t impressed by half-naked Bogles appearing out of the walls. Puck said, “I came to tell you Elladine is back in Faery.”
I felt my heart thudding, like a weary hammer. “Is she angry at me?”
“Why should she be angry at you?”
“Because I ran off.” I felt guilty about that, had felt guilty ever since I’d done it.
“I ran you off,” he said. “Elladine is of Faery, and she’s old in years. Age is a powerful protection against such as he. He’s not really interested in those of Faery, so he let her go. He wouldn’t have let you go.”
“Still …” I said, tears in my eyes.
“Still, nothing. She risked your life taking you on that Halloween ride. It was sheer arrogance, too. Elladine is arrogant where humans are concerned. All that lot are.”
I thought it must be true. “She never comes to me, even though I know she can!” I cried. “She never came to me when I was a child. The only time she came was after the Curse, to move my body, and it wasn’t even me!”
What I felt was the same longing I had felt ever since I was a child. I needed someone to care about me. Stubbornly, I could not stop seeking love. I wanted Elladine to love me.
“Beauty, you’re such a child,” he laughed at me. “Why don’t you take affection from those who’d give it to you gladly? Me, for instance.” He made a languishing face at me, enough to make me laugh.
“Elladine told me you’re trying to be an angel,” I said. “Is that why you’re here, looking after me? And how come you never came before when I was here?”
He chuckled ruefully. “I was here before. As soon as Carabosse let me come. Who do you think pushed those boots into your hands when that man was coming after you?”
“I didn’t see you.”
He shrugged. “I know. Carabosse thought it was dangerous for me to show up, in the flesh, so to speak. You knew nothing about Faery then, and she thought you might go silly.”
“I wouldn’t have,” I said indignantly. “If I could get dragged from the fourteenth to the twenty-first, and then back here, if I could go through all that with Jaybee without going silly, why would I go silly seeing you?”
“Magic’s thin on the ground here,” he said. “She thought perhaps you’d stopped believing in it.”
I sniffed to verify the fact. “I can hardly smell it at all. If I put on my cloak in full sunlight, people can almost see me.”
“So, don’t put
