“Hi, darling!” I called out. Landen sto
pped his typing and came out of the office to give me a hug.
“How was work?” he asked.
I thought of what I’d been doing that day. Of firing and not firing my drippy alter ego, of a Superreader loose somewhere in the BookWorld, of Goliath’s unwelcome intrusion and of Mycroft as a ghost. Then there was the return of Felix8, the Minotaur, and my bag of Welsh cash. The time for truth was now. I had to tell him.
“I…I had to do a stair carpet over in Baydon. Hell on earth; the treads were all squiffy, none of the stair rods would fit, and Spike and I spent the whole afternoon on it—how’s the book going?”
He kissed me on the forehead and tousled Tuesday’s hair affectionately, then took me by the hand and led me into the kitchen, where there was a stew on the stove.
“Kind of okay, I guess,” he replied, stirring the dinner, “but nothing really spectacular.”
“No ideas?” I prompted. “An odd character, perhaps?”
“No—I was mostly working on pace and atmosphere.”
This was strange. I’d specifically told Scampton-Tappett to do his best. I had a sudden thought.
“What book are you working on, sweetheart?”
“The Mews of Doom.”
Aha.
“I thought you said you’d be rewriting Bananas for Edward?”
“I got bored with it. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Where’s Friday?”
“In his room. I made him have a shower, so he’s in a bit of a snot.”
“Plock.”
“A clean snot is better than a dirty snot I suppose. And Jenny?”
“Watching TV.”
I called out, “Hey, Jenny!” but there was no answer.
“Plock.”
“She’s upstairs in her room.”
I looked at the hall clock. We still had a half hour until we had to go to the ChronoGuard’s career-advisory presentation.
“PLOCK!”
“Yes, yes, hello, Pickwick—how’s this?”
I showed her the finished blue-and-white sweater, and before she could even think of complaining, I had slipped it over her featherless body. Landen and I stared at her this way and that, trying to figure out if it was for the better or the worse.
“It makes her look like something out of the Cornish Blue pottery catalog,” said Landen at last.
“Or a very large licorice allsort,” I added.
Pickwick glared at us sullenly, then realized she was a good deal warmer and hopped off the kitchen table and trotted down the corridor to try to look in the mirror, which was unfortunately just too high, so she spent the next half hour jumping up and down trying to catch a glimpse of herself.