Yarrow (20 page)

"Well?" she asked again.

"She's not mad." He looked up, searching her face as though he expected to find an explanation there.

"You're kidding."

"No. She sounded… embarrassed. She apologized for, and I quote, 'acting like an ass,' end of quote."

Hoo-ha, Debbie thought. This Stella is one bizarre lady.

"And that's not all," Rick added. "She wants us—
both
of us— over for a drink after work tonight."

Debbie shook her head. "No thanks. The thought of getting caught up in the middle of a lover's spat is not my idea of having a good time."

Rick didn't even seem to hear her. "She said going for a threesome sounded like a good idea," he added.

"Now you've got to be kidding."

"I swear I'm not, Debbie."

"What's she like?" Debbie asked. "I mean, she's not… psychotic or anything, is she?"

"What?"

"Hang on. Don't get your back all up. It just seems weird, that's all. I mean, last night…" She shrugged.

"Maybe she thought about it when she got home last night and the idea of it turned her on."

"Maybe it did."

Debbie had to admit to herself that the whole situation had a certain implausible quality to it that appealed to her. She could see that, for all his surprise, the idea had more than a little appeal for Rick as well. She tried to remember what Stella looked like. Not quite model-slim, but an attractive lady nonetheless.

"What's she like in bed?" Debbie asked.

"Very… energetic."

Debbie nodded, remembering his drunken comment last night about Stella "humping like a bunny." She wondered how he'd describe her own performance, then had to ask herself— did she really want to get involved in this kind of thing? She'd never had any particular leanings toward other women, at least not of a sexual nature. On the other hand, it would certainly be something different. If you didn't try it, how would you know if you liked it or not?

"Will you pick me up after work?" she asked.

Rick nodded. The silly grin plastered on his face made Debbie laugh. Tonight, she thought, could prove to be a ver-ry interesting experience.

After fleeing the dream thief, Tiddy Mun had run as far and fast as he could, his heart pounding in his tiny chest, his big eyes wider than ever. Wherever he turned in this world, there was noise and rush. Iron dragons roaring along stone avenues. Towers of metal and glass and stone that stood taller than any tree in Mynfel's wood, taller than anything he'd ever seen before in his life, taller than the sky itself, it seemed.

The darkness hid him as he fled, but when dawn came he took the shape of a big orange tomcat and searched for shadows, for someplace to hide where a tallfolk wouldn't find him and hurt him, where the dream thief couldn't touch his soul with his eyes like hot ice.

The cat shape was the only form he could take, but it served him well in this world. He was a friend to cats, and to his tallfolk Cat in particular. He whispered her secret name to himself and for a moment he felt safe, but then the fear returned, stronger than before.

He wanted to go home, but he didn't know the way. He'd been in Cat's world before, but never so
truly
in it. Always before it had been a shadowy place, its strangeness hazy and ill-defined. Always before he'd had half a foot in the Other-world. Always before he was near Cat, where it was safe, teasing her and ready to flee into his own world if something startled him.

But now he was lost— had been since he'd been drawn into this world with Cat two nights past— and now he had to spend a second day shivering and hiding, always afraid, afraid of everything, but especially afraid of the evil stalking his friend Cat and spreading its shadow through the Otherworld.

He burrowed amidst the refuse of an alleyway in his cat shape, filled with a jitter of tangled nerves. He had never been much of a thinker. He always took his little problems to Kothlen or to Cat. But now… Now he must think on his own, make a plan of some sort. But he was as hopelessly lost amidst the fears that battered at his mind as he was in this strange and dangerous world.

He longed for the comfort of Cat's arms, for her to make the decisions for both of them, but the evil was too close to her. It swallowed her house, dogged her footsteps when she left. It was too dangerous to go to her.

He remembered the men outside her house then. They had faced up to the dream thief. They hadn't been afraid. Especially the one with the banded hair and the sharp knife with the iron in its edge. Maybe if he found that man, he would be willing to help a Redcap Hill gnome, lost and alone. Maybe he would help Tiddy Mun return to Cat.

He knew the taste of that man— his smell, his look, the essence that set him apart from other tallfolk. In fact he knew each of Cat's three tallfolk friends now. If he couldn't find the one with the curious hair, he would look for one of the others. But first he would look for the knife wielder, because he had been the least afraid, and Tiddy Mun needed to be with someone brave now.

His decision pleased him and helped hold he terrors at bay. He would wait for dark, for the safety of shadows. And if the Horned Lady meant him well, he would find his way home again.

Peter had unlocked the front door of the store and was by the window turning the "CLOSED" sign to "OPEN" when he saw Ben's cab pull up across the street. He went into the back room, plugged in the kettle, and pulled out the visitor's chair.

"Morning, Peter!" Ben called as he came in.

"Morning, Ben. What's doing?"

"Not much." Ben settled in the chair and picked up a book, idly flipping its pages before setting it down again. "I had some trouble sleeping last night, but I don't feel all that tired," he said. "You?"

Peter shrugged.

"How's Cat?"

"She was sleeping when I left. We talked some after you guys left last night, and she wasn't feeling too happy." An uncomfortable smile touched his lips. "Hell, who is? But she's got some crazy ideas about her prowler, and having you and Mick go on about vampires didn't exactly help."

"Yeah, well… I never told you about what happened the first time I ran into the Dude, did I?"

"Only that you'd seen him in Central Park, back of your place."

Ben nodded. "I was sitting in the grass and fell asleep while I was reading. Funny thing is, it was Cat's new book I was reading. Talk about omens, will you?"

Peter remembered something then. "You want to hear something even funnier?" He told Ben about the copy of
The Sleeping Warrior
that had seemed to leap from his bookshelf the night before Cat came into the store with her troubles.

"Weird," Ben said. "It's like we're all tied into this somehow."

"I didn't mean that there was anything supernatural about—"

"Let me finish," Ben said. "When I woke up in the park, the Dude was standing about the length of this room from me— maybe a little more— just staring."

"Ben—"

"No. Listen to me. I thought he was putting the make on me, you know? But after he was gone, I had this empty, sort of drained feeling inside. And a headache. Now I didn't put it together at the time, but after last night I—"

"Oh, come
on,
Ben."

"Okay. It sounds crazy. But what happened last night was crazy too. What if this guy
is
some kind of… I don't know…"

"Psychic vampire?"

"Yeah!"

"Jesus, Ben. You sound just like Cat. She thinks your Dude's the reason she hasn't been dreaming lately. She says he feeds on her dreams."

"What?"

Ben sat up straight, and Peter stifled a groan. What had possessed him to come out with that? He wanted to just cut the conversation there, but Ben was waiting expectantly for an explanation. If he cut things off now, he might be killing the relationship he was hoping would develop between the two of them, the relationship that might well solve all of Cat's problems. He decided that Ben could keep what he heard to himself. Besides, Ben was trying to help Cat as well. If he and Mick hadn't shown up last night when they did, who knows what the Dude would have done?

"The reason Cat's not writing," he said, "is that she's stopped dreaming. She thinks she goes… someplace else when she sleeps. It's a place like out of one of her books, I think, complete with elves and gnomes…." Tiddy Mun's features reared in his mind— Go away! he told it. "An Other-world. The people there— she calls them her ghosts— are who she gets her stories from. They tell them to her and she fills them out when she writes them down."

"No shit?"

"She goes to the same place, meets the same ghosts, every night. She's been doing it since she was a kid— or at least up to about three months ago. Then the dreams stopped and her writing dried up and here we are now."

"You don't believe her, do you?" Ben asked.

"Christ, Ben. I don't know what to think."

Again he pushed away the memory of Tiddy Mun's features. He looked at Ben and thought, Cat, you picked the wrong person to come to with your problems. Here's the man you want. Ben was wearing a thoughtful expression with nothing skeptical about it.

"I believe that
she
thinks it's true," Peter added. "It's just that…"

"It doesn't fit into the way you see things, so you'd rather not have to think about it."

Peter nodded. "That's about it."

They were both quiet then, each following his own train of thought. The kettle started to boil. Peter got up, made them their coffees, and returned to the cash area.

"What if it's true?" Ben asked.

"That's supposing a lot."

Ben shook his head. "What the hell do we really know about the human mind anyway? What about people who claim to astral travel when they're supposed to be sleeping?"

"Those people," Peter said, "claim to astral travel in the world we know, not some place chock full of gremlins and the like."

"Uh-uh. They go to spirit realms— or at least some of them do. Like the Indians down in New Mexico or South America. And what about all the weird shit that goes down that there isn't any explanation for— at least no explanation that fits into the scheme of the world as we see it? I mean, there are enough cases of documented paranormal activity to fill this store, Peter."

"Yeah. Except not one of them stands up to scientific scrutiny. Not one of them can be duplicated in a laboratory."

"Maybe things like Cat's ghosts don't like the sterile atmosphere of a lab."

"Maybe the moon's made of green cheese and the moon-landing we all saw on TV was just another Hollywood special effect." Peter shook his head. "That argument doesn't cut it, Ben."

"Okay." Ben sighed. "But I have to consider how I'd feel if that sort of thing was happening to me— was real for me— and I couldn't share it with anybody else because they'd either laugh or have me committed. I'd feel really… lonely. I wonder how many unreported occurrences there are, simply because no one wants to get lumped together with the people who talk to Elvis Presley's ghost."

That hit home. Peter thought of Cat living with her secret for so many years, alienated because of it, because it made her different, but knowing if she tried to speak of it to anyone it would only broaden the gap she already felt between herself and the rest of the world. He was the first person she'd told, and while he hadn't exactly laughed at her, he hadn't been very sympathetic either. He believed that she believed, but he'd made it clear that he couldn't accept it as real. That wasn't being exactly supportive. And then there were the things that he
had
seen. Or thought he'd seen. Like Tiddy Mun.

He told Ben everything then, from when Cat came into the store, straight through to when they finally went to their separate beds last night.

"She needs someone like you, Ben," he said.

Ben shook his head. "I don't know. I always wanted to know her. To be her friend. But I never took it any further— not seriously. I mean, what would she see in a guy like me?" But he remembered her touch on his arm last night, and the look in her eyes. He could feel a flush start up at the back of his neck. "Let's talk about something else," he said.

"Like what?"

"How about this Tiddy Mun you think you saw."

Peter sighed. "Right. But I didn't just imagine it— I did see something."

"Oh, sure."

"I just don't know if it was real or not."

"You're the one that's acting nuts now, you know that?" Ben said.

"Yeah. That's what I've been thinking. Only…"

Peter's voice trailed off. Only what? He had to be missing a wire or two because just talking about Cat's gnome again brought those strange features back into his mind's eye. They seemed so real— as though the creature actually existed. He glanced at Ben, feeling a certain resentment. Jesus, he thought. Ben was the one who was willing to accept it all a few minutes ago, and now… Then he caught Ben's smile.

"See how it feels?" Ben said. "And you're not even a true believer. Did you never think that Cat must wonder how sane
she
is at times?"

Peter shook his head. "I never thought of it that way. But what about you? How can you accept this all so easily?"

"I didn't say that I did. But I'm willing to allow that it's possible. Did I ever tell you about my aunt who reads tea leaves?"

"Yeah."

"It was scary how dead-on she could be. She gave it up because she just couldn't handle the way that what she saw in the bottom of a teacup became real."

"That's not really the same thing as we've got here."

"No," Ben agreed. "What's scary here is, if Cat's dreams
are
real, then maybe the Dude really is feeding on them."

Peter sighed. "So what do we do?"

"I don't know. We've got to watch out for her. Maybe try to track the Dude down. The trouble is, we don't really know what we're dealing with. It's easy in the movies. You just look for a castle on a hill and the guy in the black cape with the long fangs— well, he's your man. But if the Dude is some kind of vampire, he's not like any I've ever heard of." Ben's hand went to his neck. "He doesn't even bite."