“Called?”
“We’re in the phone book!” he said, and slammed one down on the wood in front of me.
I blinked at it, cross-eyed. “Under what? Gods and demons?”
“The only demon is the one you brought with you,” he said, transferring the scowl to Pritkin.
And okay, I thought. It looked like Mom was home. Because I didn’t think her . . . lover? friend? pet? . . . was likely to have figured out what Pritkin was that fast. He’d barely laid eyes on the guy, and Pritkin looked like a human.
Well, usually. At the moment he looked more like a corpse. I got up with the vague idea of doing something, only my legs vetoed that plan halfway through the motion, which left me stumbling awkwardly into the table.
It hurt. A lot. My knee came into painful contact with one of the table’s sturdy legs, and the table won. I backed off, to the accompaniment of Roger cursing a string worthy of a war mage I knew.
“Sit down before you fall down!”
“Too late,” I mumbled, but my butt somehow found the chair again anyway. He slammed the basin down on the tabletop and muttered some more, while cleaning off Pritkin like he was going to die of dirt or something. I kind of thought if that was the case, we’d both be goners, since we’d passed filthy a while ago. But on the plus side, I didn’t look so improper anymore, being decently covered in mud.
Silver lining, I thought, and sprawled there, watching the robot try to fix its wonky eyelash.
It kind of looked like it had had a hard night.
I could relate.
“What is that?” I asked, after a few minutes.
Roger looked up from checking Pritkin for damage. “Is that what you came here to ask?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t need to know, do you?” he snapped, and slammed out.
I stared after him for a moment. And then I managed to get up and check on Pritkin, too, who was a good deal cleaner but no more conscious than he’d ever been. I felt my stomach fall, since my first-aid training hadn’t included what to do for magical pranks or man-eating forests or attacks by supernatural robots.
I put a hand on his cheek, and his skin felt clammy. Or maybe it was just that it was chilly in here, too. His face turned into my palm, his breath warm on my skin, a gentle, reassuring caress.
Until it suddenly stopped.
I grabbed and shook him, which didn’t make much of a difference because I didn’t have much strength. And then, about the time the room was starting to collapse in on me, and the light was graying out and I was contemplating a heart attack to go with my stroke, he gave a loud snort. Followed by what, even charitably, could only be called a snore.
I sat down abruptly, trying to decide between bursting into tears and passing out. But neither sounded all that great. So I finally settled for just listening to him breathe for a while.
And the man upstairs knock about angrily.
“I don’t think he’s happy to see me,” I told Pritkin, who failed to have an opinion on the matter.
But somebody else did.
“Oh no, it’s not like—” someone said, and then cut off with a little “eep.”
I frowned. I was exhausted and freaked out and possibly edging up on crazy, but I wasn’t quite there yet. And I was pretty sure that had come from the robot thing. And since it didn’t have a mouth, that was . .
Well, that was interesting.
I got up again.
The poking had suspiciously stopped, with the creature’s hands lying demurely in its lap. A lap that I only just noticed was covered by a frilly half apron. It was green, too, with white gingham checks and an eyelet ruffle.
Nothing like color coordination, I thought, and edged closer.
The creature didn’t move.
I stopped in front of it.
It just sat there.
I bent over and reached out a hand, which I admit was trembling a little. But that was probably a result of the evening’s entertainment. Because whether due to the apron or the eyelashes or the fact that I was high as hell, I wasn’t . . . actually . .
“Oh, thank you!” someone said brightly as the eyelash slid back into place, and I snatched my hand back.
Someone else cursed, “Damn it, woman!”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” the first voice asked. It was female, and she sounded peevish. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She can obviously hear us.”
“Yes, of course she can!” the man said. “That’s the point!”
“Well, I wasn’t going to be rude, what with her hurt and scared and nobody even getting the dear any dry clothes. . . . She could catch her death.”
“Then she’d fit in here just fine,” the male voice grumbled.
And okay. I might not be the world’s greatest warrior. Or, you know, anywhere on the list. But there was one thing I did know. One thing I knew very . . . damned . . . well . .
I bent closer. And in the shiny white surface of the bucket I saw the reflection of the light over the table, a blurry impression of an old pie safe, and the long rectangle serving as the stairwell. And a pair of big blue eyes, beaming back at me—from inside the plastic.
“Caught me,” the woman said cheerily. “Look at you!”
I stood up, swaying a little, but managed to point a finger. “You. You’re not a homun—humunk—whatever,” I said accusingly. “You’re a ghost.”
A pleasant, lined face with a mop of gray hair popped up over top of the bucket, letting off a bit of green steam into the dark room. “Right in one,” she said, apparently thrilled.
“No, she isn’t!” the other voice crabbed. And an old gent in a blue uniform with swaying gold epaulettes poked partway out of the clock. “We’re both. And the word is homunculus,” he told me, officiously.
“It means ‘little man’ in Latin,” the woman added. “Although I always thought that was awfully sexist. After all, I’m better at it than him.” And she jerked a metal thumb at the male ghost.
“You are not!” His great gray sideburns quivered indignantly.
“Am, too,” she said complaisantly. “That’s why I get the good hands.” She flexed one ostentatiously. And smiled at me. “He can’t handle them.”
“You can’t even get an eyelash back on, woman!”
“I can so. I was trying to be subtle.”
“Subtle? You’re five hundred pounds and built like a tank!”
She rolled her eyes. “I bet you used to get all the girls.”
I sat down again.
“What are you?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “If you’re ghosts, why are you in . . . that?” I gestured at her metal hulk of a body.
She looked down. “It’s not very pretty, is it?”
“It gets the job done,” the old man told her severely.
“Well, yes, but . . ” She looked back up at me. “I wanted bosoms, you know.”
“All right, that’s enough,” my host’s irritated voice came from behind me.
I turned around slowly, because too-fast movements weren’t working so well for me lately, and found him holding another pan of water. Or maybe the same one, only it had been washed out and a towel was draped over his arm. He thrust them at me, along with a bar of rose-scented soap.
“In case you want to clean up,” he said stiffly.
I felt like pointing out that it would take more than a pan of water for that, like maybe a river. But I didn’t. Because he hadn’t had to bring it, and just getting my face clean would be nice.
Of course, I could have done that at the sink, just like he could have emptied the pan there. Maybe he was fastidious, and didn’t want to wash off forest gunk in the same sink he prepared food over. But I was betting on another reason.
I deliberately didn’t look at the stairs. “Thank you,” I said, and sat at the table again.