It’s been known to happen, pointed out my superego.
Not to me, it hadn’t.
“That doesn’t sound like Peter,” I said, looking down at my toes. Something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know if it was Mrs. Faa, or my own faulty judgment.
“Child, do not allow yourself to be swayed by a handsome face. Oh, yes,” she said when I glanced up in surprise. “I’ve seen Peter Faa. He is very handsome. It is true that he takes after my Piotr, for whom he was named. He has the same eyes. But he is not a member of the family despite this. He rejected us, Kiya. He made the choice to remain with his mother, a mortal, rather than to be brought into the family to learn the ways of our people.” Her eyelids flickered down for a few seconds. “Just as you have been isolated from your family, so has he chosen to be from his.”
“That’s not quite what he says happened.” Honestly, who was I supposed to believe? They each said something different, and yet, I heard the ring of truth in both their voices.
Her head snapped back. “You had words with him about us? What exactly did he say?”
“He said that he was mahrime, and that he’s tracking down a murderer.” I clamped my lips together for a few seconds, damning myself for admitting that last bit. I didn’t want to blow his cover and alert the family to the fact that he was on to one of them. On the other hand, what if he was persecuting them unfairly? The family members might not win any awards for hospitality, but they didn’t seem like murderers.
“He has said that before,” she answered, her eyes closing as she leaned back. “My son, Peter’s father, has told me that we have long been the target of his persecution.”
“Peter doesn’t at all strike me as the persecuting type…. Wait—his father?” I glanced around the camp, wondering who—
“Vilem is the father of Peter Faa.”
“Holy great big piles of cow crap!”
Her eyes opened as the exclamation escaped from me.
“I mean…um…wow. William? Are you sure?” She continued to look at me as if I was an idiot, which made me blush with embarrassment. “Sorry. Of course you’re sure. It’s just that William is so…and Peter is nice, and…yeah, there’s no way I can end this that’s not going to be more insulting, so I’ll just stop.”
She closed her eyes again and waved a dismissive hand. “You will tell me what it was that Peter Faa said to you.”
No, I don’t think I will, I thought to myself. My id cheered. Ego and superego were less pleased with that decision.
“I think if you want to know what was said between us, you should ask Peter himself,” I said after some minutes’ thought. “I’m really not comfortable repeating the conversation.”
She waved her hand again. “If he wishes to beg my pardon for spurning his family, and for the persecution of his father and myself, then I am willing to hear him. Otherwise, I have nothing to say.”
Obstinate old…I bit off that thought before it could even really get going, feeling that when it came to my employer, it was better to keep a civil tongue in my mind. So to speak.
“Would you like me to take the dogs for their evening walk now?” I asked, rising and looking as helpful as I could.
“You may take them to the lake. All but Maureen. She is not feeling well, and will remain here with me. My darlings will like to play in the water a bit, and then you will dry them off and bring them home for their supper.”
“Aye, aye,” I said, saluting, and went off to gather up leashes, poop bags, and the towels that Mrs. Faa had indicated were reserved for the use of the aquatic pugs.
Two hours later, and we returned, although I wondered as I unloaded the dogs if the smell of damp fur would ever leave Eloise. It seemed the predominant note, and one that was reluctant to fade away. “Still, you all had a good time. Especially you, Terrance.”
The amorous little pug looked up at me, tongue lolling, as he trotted alongside. He had a smile on his face, blast him.
I knocked on Mrs. Faa’s RV door, opened it up to let the dogs scamper up the stairs, and leaned in to call, “The dogs had a great time at the lake, although you might be contacted by a vacationing lawyer about paternity tests and puppy support. Terrance took advantage of me rescuing Jacques from a large bullfrog to seduce the lawyer’s fox terrier. I’ll get their dinner going now.”
I ducked out before Mrs. Faa could respond, hoping I wasn’t going to be the one to pay for the puppy support since it was on my watch that Terrance went straying.
It wasn’t until the dogs had been fed and had a long après-supper stroll in the woods, and I helped Mrs. Faa brush them all so they’d look nice for their respective anal squeezing and spa treatments, that I returned to my tent.
Someone had been in it.
I stood just inside the door of the tent, my eyes scanning the few things scattered in the tent…the air mattress and accompanying foot pump, a duffel bag with the few pieces of clothing I’d brought with me to watch Lily’s trees, and a box of nonperishable foodstuffs.
The duffel bag had been shifted slightly from where I’d left it. I knew that because I had been using it as a pillow, and now it was moved slightly off center of the mattress.
“Dammit, I just know it was that creepy William. He probably fondled my underwear.” I shuddered as I opened the duffel bag. Luckily, my undergarments weren’t on top, so if he had been in my things, at least I didn’t feel like I had to burn them. Everything in the bag looked fine, nothing missing, and nothing added. “Not that I’d know what someone would put in there unless they were trying to plant drugs or something on me. And there’s no reason to do that, because if Mrs. Faa wanted me to leave, she’d just fire me. Hmm.”
The few other possessions I had in the tent had been moved ever so slightly, but otherwise not disturbed. I “Hmm”-ed again, and sat back on my heels in thought until hunger overcame me. I consulted my box of canned goods, thought about how good a nice juicy hamburger would taste, then thought about how much better Peter would taste, and, finally, considered the idea of eating the nice, juicy hamburger on Peter.
I positively drooled at the last thought.
“That does it,” I snarled to myself, and gathered up all the silver dollars and half-dollars that had magically appeared in my pockets in payment for my stolen time. “If the man is going to insist on filling my every thought, then he can just feed me. Or let me eat off his lovely warm, muscled chest. Whichever comes first.”
It took some coaxing to get Eloise to start—she likes to let her engine rest at least twelve hours—but at last I managed it, and with nary a glare directed at William’s RV, I drove into town and went straight to the motel.
Luck favored me in two ways: the honeymoon suite was so marked, and the brazen hussy who ran the place wasn’t in sight, although I could hear sounds of a TV from the balcony that overlooked a small dining area.
I tapped on the door to the honeymoon suite, but no one opened the door.
“Hell’s toasted bells,” I swore to myself as I left the motel. “I guess I can stop feeling noble because I came to see Peter before I went to the hamburger joint.”
My stomach growled its unhappiness at such a thought, and I was about to give in and go to the mom-and-pop hamburger place at the other end of town when I remembered the other door into the suite. Unfortunately, it was locked, as well. “Rotten policemen and their safety-conscious selves. Well. Where does that leave me?”
I sat on a white resin lawn chair that was placed next to the window of Peter’s room (also locked), and considered my options.
The most obvious option was to break into the room. “Oh, that’s not going to work,” I told my feet. “Even if I knew how to jimmy a lock—and I don’t—I’m just not the breaking-and-entering sort of person.”
I could bribe the motel hussy to let me into Peter’s room. “I don’t have the money to do that, and if I did, I wouldn’t give it to her. She’d just use it to seduce innocent men. No. That’s not an option. Maybe I cou
ld steal a room key from her without her knowing?”
My feet wiggled nervously at that thought. I won’t go into what my ego and superego had to say on the idea of me stealing things.
“Hey…stealing things.” I sat up straight and looked out into the trees. “Peter and Mrs. Faa say I’m a Traveller. Which means I must be able to steal time. If I could locate where the hussy kept her keys, I could steal just enough time from her to get them. Somehow. Maybe.”
The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. Oh, sure, there was the whole repercussion thing that both Peter and Mrs. Faa had mentioned, but neither Peter nor any of the others who’d taken a few seconds from me had suffered any calamity.
“Oh, money!” I said suddenly, remembering that payment was an important part of the whole process. I scrabbled around in my pocket until I came up with forty-seven cents. “The silver dollars I need for sustenance. I don’t know what the going rate for time is these days, but this should cover a couple of seconds, surely.”
With my payment tucked away in my shirt pocket, I steeled my nerve.
“It makes sense,” I argued to my psyche as I marched around the motel to the entrance. “It’ll let me get in contact with Peter—and possibly save him from encountering his murderous family—and yet it won’t require me to do anything really reprehensible, like smash a window to get in. Or bash the hussy over the head to take her keys. This way, I’ll just take a couple of seconds of time from her when she’s looking the other way, and snag the keys.”
My egos were yammering away and waving their hands around while going on about what a bad idea that was, but my id approved. I’d always liked her. She saw big-picture things better.
“Just shut up and leave me alone,” I told the hand-waving egos as I entered the motel. A man was about to reach for the door when I opened it, giving both of us a start. He was about twenty, skinny, and had the pale skin of the die-hard basement-dwelling gamer who seldom saw the light of day. He was also clad all in black, and had dyed black hair, and a thick ring of eyeliner around each eye.
“Sorry?” he said, looking startled.
“No, my fault. I wasn’t actually telling you to shut up. Just the voices in my head. Wow. That sounds really bad. I don’t mean it like crazy talking voices. Not voices telling me to kill people. They’re actually my ego and superego and id, which are all quite sane. Most of the time. Everyone has them, even you.”
I tried smiling at the man, but he just looked even more startled, and edged around me to the door. I figured I’d better stop before he ran to the police about the deranged voice-in-head woman wandering the halls of his motel, so I said nothing more.
The Peter-ogling woman wasn’t in the darkened area under the balcony, but she did emerge from a room upstairs when I clumped my way up the spiral stairs. The sounds of a TV came from the room, as well as a warm glow that cast a pool of amber light on the small desk I remembered from the previous visit the night before.
“Hi, can I help—oh. It’s you.” Her eyes narrowed on me. “What do you want?”
I pulled out a key that I had detached from my key chain. It was the key to an apartment that I no longer rented, but which I’d forgotten for two years to remove from the chain. “Good evening. I was here to visit my friend Peter, but he doesn’t seem to be in.”
A little smile curled the edges of her lips. “Oh? Too bad.”
“Yes, isn’t it? However, I did find this key lying on the carpet just below us, and wondered if it was one of the housekeeping keys.” I held it out.
She frowned at it for a minute, then pulled open a desk drawer and removed a bulky circle of keys. She counted silently until she found one she liked, and then looked up and shook her head. “No, all of my keys are accounted for. I’ll put it in the lost and found in case someone dropped their car key.”
“Sure thing.” I handed over the key, and smiled in a friendly manner when she tucked the keys away back into the drawer. The one that she had stopped at had a dab of red fingernail polish painted on the end to differentiate it from the others, which would make it easy to pick it out from its brothers. “Guess I’ll be going, then. Bye.”
“Good-bye.”
She sat down at the desk. I trotted down the stairs, and slunk into the dark dining area to lurk unseen. After a few minutes, I heard her moving around. “OK,” I whispered to myself. “All you have to do is steal a few seconds so that you’re sure she’s in her room and not out and about, and you can nab the keys. Let’s get to it.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to steal time before, but I didn’t find it at all an easy thing. I crept back up the staircase in my stocking feet, careful not to make it thump and squeak as I did so, and stood hiding in the shadows while the motel woman wandered around in her room, pondering how one went about stealing time.
“How do you steal time?” I remembered asking Peter.
“Just like you steal anything else,” had been the answer. And then he distracted me, and whammo, it was stolen.
The door to the woman’s room was ajar, no doubt so she could hear anyone who wanted a room or needed assistance. I jerked back when she headed toward the door in her circuit around the room, but luckily, she didn’t do more than glance out the door before returning to the room’s interior. Still, she wasn’t settled as she had been before I marched loudly up the stairs to give her my key, and I worried that she might pop out and see me were I merely to steal the keys.
Feeling carefully in my pocket, I fingered one of the two pennies that was part of the time payment, and swiftly threw it over her head so that it hit the wall beyond her, opposite the door.
She turned to look at what made the noise, and took a few steps in that direction. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and imagined myself lifting a handful of nothingness from her. Only that nothingness was really time.
The TV began the same commercial that I had heard a few seconds before. I didn’t wait to do a little dance of success; instead, I clung to the walls, then the balcony railing until I was past her door and at the little desk. Thirty seconds later I was hotfooting it down the stairs. Thirty-two seconds later I was bolting back up the stairs—silently and stealthily—to deposit the forty-six cents on the reception table, and a minute after that, I let myself into Peter’s honeymoon suite.
TEN
I wilted against the door to Peter’s room as I closed it behind me, my heart racing like crazy, but a strange sense of elation filling me.
I had stolen time! “I am so good at this,” I told the room, which was dark and empty of handsome violet-eyed men. “Boy howdy, that could get to be addicting. I can see why people get into trouble doing it. Well, now. That’s done. What next?”
I turned on the light nearest the bed and looked around the room.
“Why, oh, why didn’t I get your cell phone number?” I asked, and plopped myself down on the end of the bed. Any hope that Peter might have left a handy “How to contact me in an emergency” list lying around was dashed.
“Great. He’s probably back at the camp harassing Andrew and Gregory. Or Mrs. Faa.” I gnawed on a hangnail as I considered my options. “One, I can stay here in hopes he’s just out getting some dinner. Downside is I may starve to death waiting for him. Two, I can go back to camp and see if he made good his threat. Downside: Eloise won’t want to come back to town if he’s not, and I don’t really want a can of spaghetti for dinner. Three, I can find a way to call him and tell him that I need to talk to him. Downside of that is…hmm. No real downside, except I will have to come up with something to tell him that would be worth his while to return here. Plus, I don’t know how to get his number. Hmm again. I guess I wait.”
Something on my head tickled. I scratched it, and with the absent thought that I needed to wash my hair came the realization that I was in a motel room. “One with running hot water!” I ran for the door to the little room attached to the main room, and sighed at the sight of a bathtub. “A bath. Dear god
, how I’ve missed you. I wonder if Peter would mind if I had a quick soak?”
I gnawed my fingernail a bit more, and then decided to throw caution to the wind. The worst he could do was yell at me, and at least I’d have had a bath and washed my hair in something other than a bucket filled with cold water.
The water was as hot as I could stand it, and I sighed with bliss as I sank into it, mentally rehearsing any number of apologies that I’d offer if Peter came into the room while I was still bathing. Luckily, I didn’t need to use any of them. A half hour of wonderful soak time later, I utilized the complimentary hair dryer, tidied up the towels I had used, and was dressed, feeling much more human.
“So. Now I wait. Unless I can think of something…ow. What the hell?”
Something was wrong with my mouth. All of a sudden my lips felt sore and hot and tight, as if a bee had stung them. I touched my upper lip, and dashed to the mirror, horrified by the massive protuberance that I had felt.
“Oh mah goh,” I said as my tongue joined my lips in swelling up to a hideous, repulsively shiny red state. “Whah happen? What ih goin’ on?”
Was it the soap? The water? Something in the tub?
Behind me, in the main room, the door closed with a solid thunk.
“Freeze!” a masculine voice called out from behind me. I spun around to find Peter standing in the doorway in a classic shooter’s stance, his gun pointed at me. He blinked twice at the sight of me.
“Who is the intruder? Is it one of your cousins come to stab you again? I will fling myself into their eyes so that you might arrest—oooh. It is the popsy. With bulbous lips. Something is not right here, Peter-ji.” The golden ball of light that was Sunil bobbed in front of my face.
“Peher!” I wailed, ignoring Sunil’s tuts of sympathy, tears spilling down my cheeks to my massive, bulging lips. “Somehing wrong wif me!”