Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (12 page)

A few seconds later the old woman was still wailing and squirming facedown on the floor, and Reggie began to wonder if he’d made a mistake.

In his hotel room now, he realized that this had not been the first time he’d seen something that wasn’t there. Granted, it had been a while. How old had he been? Six? Seven? Young.

“Goodco is in Goodborough, right? In New Jersey?”

“… Yes,” said Angela. “But they don’t want you in New Jersey. They want you on a soundstage in Burbank.”

Maybe we could change their minds about that
, Reggie thought. He was fogging up the windowpane. He wiped it clear with his sleeve and discovered that the protesters and press were already gone.

“I need to see my kids,” he said.

It turns out that it’s impossible to concentrate on breakfast when there’s a two-foot-tall Irishman standing under the table. Scott buttered his fruit and poured orange juice on his waffle, and Mom had to make him another.

“What’s with you this morning?” she asked as she poured the batter.

“Sorry,” said Scott. “Still sleepy.” He passed a piece of buttered pear under the table to Mick, who made a disgusted sort of noise in his throat.

“What was that?” asked Polly, so that Scott was forced to clear his own throat several times as cover. He sounded like he was trying to start a lawn mower.

He wolfed down his new waffle, and when the time came for Scott and Polly to clean up, Scott offered to do it by himself. Polly squinted at him as if he was up to something, which of course he was.

“Why? Why do you want to do it by yourself?”

“Can’t I just do something nice for you for no reason?” Scott asked, feeling Mick’s presence like a pebble in his shoe.

“I guess I always figured you
could
; you just never wanted to.”

“Let me do it. You won’t owe me anything.”

“I won’t owe you anything?”

“No.”

After a moment Polly shrugged and went off to do whatever seven-year-old girls do. Scott filled the sink with dishes.

“Want help?” asked the two-foot-tall Irishman under the table.

“No.”

“This is undignified,” said Mick from inside Scott’s backpack. After the dishwasher was filled and he could sneak the little man outside, Scott headed vaguely toward the park with a squirmy yellow schoolbag over his shoulders.

“What did you say before?” Scott asked. “I’m one of the Good Folk? One of Queen Titanium’s court?”

“Titania. And I’m sayin’
maybe
. Maybe it’s why yeh can see me. Yeh ever see anythin’ else yeh can’t explain?”

Every week, practically
, thought Scott. “Yesterday I saw two different kinds of animals with a horn on their heads.”

“Sure,” Mick said. “What sort? Unirat? Uniraccoon?”

“What? No—”

“Unipossum? Uniturtle?”

“Are those really … no, one of them was just a regular unicorn,” said Scott, and he marveled that such a phrase had stormed its way into his vocabulary. “The other was a unicat. And before that I saw a rabbit-headed man.”

The squirming stopped. “A rabbit-headed man?” said Mick. “Wha’ did he look like?”

He looked like a rabbit-headed man
thought Scott.
Is that seriously not a good enough description?
“He was wearing a blue tie and a shirt and pants. No shoes.”

“Like the rabbit on Honey Frosted Snox?”

Scott frowned. The Snox Rabbit was just a simple cartoon drawing, and when you meet an actual clothes-wearing rabbit-man, it turns out you don’t really make the connection; but yes, Scott said, he did sort of look like the rabbit on Honey Frosted Snox.

“Poor Harvey.” Mick sighed. “Where did yeh see him?”

“Right about here, actually,” said Scott. They were near the storm drain.

“Let me out.”

“Are you … are you sure? Someone might see—”

“I’ll risk it—mostly folks see wha’ they expect to see: a dog in a pet carrier, a chicken in a chicken coop. Mostly
they expect to see nothin’ at all, an’ they’d never look for me here.”

Scott grunted and eased his bag down to the ground. “
Who’d
never look for you here?” he said. “Are you in trouble?”

Mick pushed the zippers apart with his fingers and stepped free, and ignored the question.

“Now, where did yeh see Harvey?”

“The rabbit-guy? Back there, by that pipe. It didn’t have all that police caution tape before.”

Mick perked up at this and began scanning the horizon. “Goodco might’ve marked it off like that. When a spot has seen a lot of the Good Folk, it becomes special, an’ more Fay are likely to turn up there. Glamour attracts glamour.”

“Goodco…” Scott looked into Mick’s dried-apple face and something clicked. “I just remembered where I’ve seen you before.”

“Is it New York? ’Cause I remember that too.”

“It was in a commercial. At the Goodco factory a few weeks ago.”

“Ugh,” said Mick. “My distinguished actin’ days. Back when I still had enough glamour to appear on camera. Which one was it?”

“I don’t know—I wasn’t paying much attention. It was
my first day at school, so I was mostly checking out the other kids and feeling weird.”

“Did I seem just annoyed or was I actually abusive?”

“More annoyed, I think.”

“’Twas one o’ the early ones then. They quit usin’ me when I ran low on magic an’ kept makin’ the kids cry.”

“Uh-huh. So what is it,” said Scott, “to be one of the Good Folk? What does that even mean?”

“Aw, nothin’,” said Mick. “It probably just means you’re part fairy is all.”

Scott gave Mick a sour look, but the elf wasn’t paying attention. “That’s hate speech. You’re ignorant, and I feel sorry for you,” he finished, reciting something his mom had always told him to say in these situations.

Mick was distracted, still looking for some sign of his friend. “What? Who’s ignorant?”

“Just because he … dresses in weird costumes during his concerts and he’s an actor and all doesn’t mean you should call him a fairy,” Scott finished, his face a little hot.

Mick squinted up at him. “What are yeh talking about, son?”

“My dad. Sir Reggie Dwight. He’s a movie star, and a recording artist and stuff.”

“
I’m
talking about the Fair Folk, the daoine sídhe. The Seelie Court. Brownies an’ elves an’ those goblins that
can keep from stabbing everything an’ sit still a minute. Fairies.”

Scott’s stomach settled. “Oh. Like you, ’cause you’re a leprechaun.”

“Clurichaun.
Clur
ichaun. But yes. Sure an’ your great-great-granddaddy was a changeling or your grandmom a banshee or something similar. It happens.”

Scott thought. Maybe it was his paternal grandmother. That woman was nuts.

“Your da’s a knight?” asked Mick.

“Yeah. His real name’s John. Reggie Dwight is his stage name.”

“I knew some good knights back in the day,” Mick mused as he returned to his inspection of the crime scene. “Course, nowadays knights are all lawyers an’ actors an’ writers and such. Useless people.”

“So what happens now?”

“Happens?” said Mick. His mind was clearly still on his rabbit friend, though he’d narrowed his search to looking for clues in and around the drainpipe. He picked up a stone and sniffed it.

Scott would not be discouraged—he read a lot, and he knew how these things worked. “Yeah, like, do I have magic powers? Do you teach me how to use them or do I go to a special school?”

Mick put the stone down where he’d found it, then very slowly and deliberately turned to stare at Scott in wonder. It made Scott feel suddenly fidgety and donkey headed.

“No … no magic powers?” he stammered.

Mick shrugged graciously. “Yeh may have a tarnished glamour about yeh, sure. Like a celebrity’s daughter,” he said, and Scott bristled. “Maybe folks don’t pay much attention to yeh unless yeh want to be noticed? Maybe when yeh do, you’re all they can look at? You’re the golden boy.”

Scott couldn’t remember ever being the golden boy, but he’d never actually made much of an effort there. “Is that it?”

Mick mused. “’S hard to keep one of the Good Neighbors out when they want in. Maybe you’re good with locks. Or, if yeh prefer, maybe when yeh decide to get around a lock, yeh find the locker forgot to lock it in the first place. Though that’s gettin’ into quantum physics and isn’t really my area.”

“Are
you
good with locks? You couldn’t even get out of those handcuffs, which still doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Mick chewed on his lip. “There was magic in play there. That young constable put on the cuffs an’ read me my rights, an’ they were like a spell coming out of his mouth. I doubt he knew he was doing anythin’ unusual. But we know he was a changeling’s boy too or he wouldna seen me in the first place.”

Scott sat heavily on the grass and immediately regretted it, as the damp seeped through the seat of his pants. Perfect. “So that’s it. I find out I’m magic, but all I can do is sneak around good and unlock things. Gosh, I wonder what I’m going to be when
I
grow up?”

“Don’t be shirty; it don’t suit you. So—to answer your question from before: what happens now. Now I stay with yeh until I can repay your kindness in New York, with interest.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that—”

“I do if ever I want to get my glamour back. Gotta play by the rules.”

“Your … glamour?” asked Scott. “You keep saying that—do you mean your magic? It’s gone?”

“I’m dry as turnips.”

Scott didn’t think that was an actual expression, but he let it go.

“An’ maybe…,” Mick continued, wincing. “Maybe in the meantime yeh can help me find Harvey. That pooka never could take care o’ himself.”

Scott thought. Helping a little elf-man find a big rabbit-man sounded better than whatever he would have done today otherwise. “Okay. Won’t that be another favor you owe me?”

“Sure an’ it would.” Mick sighed.

They started back the way they’d come. Scott considered how someone like Mick might end up repaying him.

“Sooo … clurichauns aren’t like leprechauns in a pots-o’-gold kind of way, are they?”

“Yeh kidding me? I don’t even have a change o’ clothes.”

They had to take a city bus and transfer twice. Scott pulled his scarf tighter and squinted at the expanse of empty grass. This was Avalon Park: four thousand acres of lawn and old-growth trees that the Goodborough town council had created when they were competing to host the World’s Fair of 1893. The town lost to Chicago, but it was still a nice park. Scott didn’t really understand what he and Mick were doing in it.

“If I was a rabbit-man and
I
had escaped from Goodco, I wouldn’t stay in Goodborough,” he told the elf. “I’d get out of town.”

“You an’ me both,” said Mick. “I usually head straight for Ireland. Had two good years in the north o’ Dublin before they caught me this last time. Shipped me back to the States in a pet carrier.”

“How’d you end up in the Port Authority?”

“’Twas the airline, bless ’em. They mixed me up wi’ a Pekingese, sent me to New York instead o’ Philadelphia. A lady came an’ picked up my carrier, certain I was her little Sweetums or whoever. Let me out to stretch my legs in the bus station, an’ you know the rest.”

“I guess.”

“But Harvey’s a bit of a coward, an’ he knows they’ll be watching the borders.
All
the borders,” Mick added with mysterious emphasis.

Scott stifled a yawn and thought,
How about the border of Dullsville? Because we crossed that back by the Porta-Potties
.

They had been walking for three hours, crisscrossing the park through its trails and abandoned pavilions. They’d passed the same statue of Zachariah T. Goode twice. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and everybody was probably warm at home with their families. Nobody came here when the weather got cold.

Actually, there
were
two people, far across the field by a ring of thick trees. They looked like men from where Scott stood, but it was impossible to tell much else.

“Harvey’s a weird name for him, isn’t it?”

“It’s not his True Name. Yeh think Mick is
my
True Name?”

On the bus ride over they’d talked about Goodco, and what the last hundred years of Mick’s life had been like. Which meant, of course, that to the few other passengers
on the bus Scott had appeared to be whispering to his backpack, but he’d ridden enough public transportation to know that a person talking to a backpack wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary.

“My mom didn’t know anything about it,” Scott said now. “About you and your friend being held prisoner and … tested on or whatever. A lot of good people work at Goodco.” He realized he was sounding defensive. He’d felt defensive all morning, ever since Mick explained how he and Harvey had been treated.

“We weren’t bein’ tested on. I told yeh. They were stealing our magic. Bleedin’ us dry. That an’ using us as bait.”