“I liked her,” I say. “Lady Salisbury.”
“You like anyone who feeds you.”
“I don’t think she’s barmy . . .”
“No.” Baz shakes his head. “Me neither. What do you want to do about it?”
“Well, we’re going to have to meet the new Chosen One, aren’t we?”
He looks at me for a moment, then nods. “I suppose we are.”
30
PENELOPE
The sign over the door says the whistling ogre.
“Right in plain sight,” I say.
Shepard just grins at me. I swear, he’sexcited.I thought it would take days of detective work to find a place like this, but Shepard assured me it wouldn’t take long.“I’ll sniff one out. Just wait until it gets dark. The sort of Maybes we’re looking for don’t truck with daylight.”
“Maybes.” As in magickal beings.
I wasn’t sure what to wear. None of my clothes scream “dark creature pub night.” I don’t even likeordinarypubs. I don’t drink, and I don’t smoke. And I don’t play darts. So going to the pub means watching other people drink and smoke and play darts. Secondhand darts—what an abject waste of time.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I say. “I’m going to stand out like a sore thumb.”
“Trust me,” Shepard says, “everyone in there will be minding their own business.”
“Not you. You never mind your own business.”
“That’s one of my unique charms, Penelope.”
I roll my eyes and let his “unique charms” go without comment. “They’re going to see that we’re not creatures,” I say instead.
Shepard has done nothing to alter his appearance. He’s really walking into a dark creature hangout with a never sass a sasquatch badge on his jacket and smelling like patchouli. “I told you,” he says, standing close to me and talking under his breath, “they’ll assume we’re something else in disguise.”
“All right,” I say, “what am I, then, what’s my backstory?”
He laughs. “Do you need to get intocharacter?”
“Shepard.”
“Okay, okay, um . . .” He raises his narrow shoulders and bites his lip for a second, like he’s thinking. “You’re a muskrat maiden.”
“What the hell is amuskrat maiden? Did you just make them up?”
“No! Muskrat maidens trick human beings into trapping them, and then they trade skins.”
“Do people trap muskrats?”
“Well, not so much anymore. These are lean times for muskrat maidens.”
“We don’t even have muskrats in England.”
“See,” he smiles, “that’s good, that means no one will see the holes in your story.”
“Shepard.”
