"His intramural team," Applecore whispered loudly. "From his residence hall."
"But you don't have a sword," Theo pointed out.
Rufinus smiled so happily that for a moment Theo almost liked him. "Ah — so you believe, my mortal friend. But look here." And he lifted his valise and tugged something out of the bottom. As it slid out, Theo saw that it was either a short sword or an extremely long knife — the blade seemed a good half a foot longer than the width of the valise.
God help us, he's one of those guys who thinks he'd be good in a fight. Now Theo was beginning to feel really, really nervous. He had been in just enough serious combat himself, mostly because of playing music in nasty little dives, to know that not only wasn't he any good in fights, but that being good just made it more likely someone would bust a pool cue across the back of your head when you weren't looking.
"So let's finish our refreshments, shall we?" said Rufinus. "We have the best part of an hour until the train leaves."
Theo forced himself to sit still and drink his tea. There was nothing he could do to get home any faster or any more safely. It was like being in trouble up on top of a Himalayan mountain: you could moan and scream about it all you wanted, but ultimately you still had to find your way down.
"Goodness, two cups of Gossamer Hills has gone right through me," weft-Daisy declared, pushing back his chair. "But there should be plenty of time for me to take a little walk and find the first-class lounge — so much nicer than using the facilities on the train."
Theo had still not entirely got used to the idea of fairies urinating, but it was growing clear to him that within their own world, or universe, or dimension — whatever the hell this place was — they were just as physical as humans on Earth. "So should I just wait for you here?"
"No, I think you should go to the train, Theo," Applecore said firmly before Rufinus could speak. "Don't want to cut it too close. I'll help him find the track," she told the fairy lord. "Then you can just meet him there."
"Ah, very kind of you. Well, if you'll excuse me." He started away across the restaurant, then came back for his valise. "Wouldn't do to leave this behind, would it?"
Tansy's cousin had only just disappeared from sight when something yanked hard on Theo's earlobe.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing? That hurt!"
"Come on. You're not going to sit here, and you're not going to sit on the platform, either."
"What are you talking about?"
"I saw those three fellas who were watching you and they weren't nice. Do you trust me?"
"More than anyone else I've met here, yeah."
She wrinkled her tiny nose for a moment, weighing the remark. "Well, that's as much as I can expect, I's'pose. Anyway, I think Tansy's lad is a bit of a dobber, and I think you need to be watching out for yourself."
"That makes sense to me."
"Good. Then we're going out of here through the back door and see if we can't find a bit less obvious way to get you on the train. That's one of the reasons I didn't try to hurry you lot out of here. Just as well to wait 'til just before the train goes out to board. Follow me." She rose into the air and led him down the aisle toward the employees-only section of the tea shop.
"What are we doing?"
"Nipping out the back, like I said. It'll be easier to get across the station without attracting attention if we just go round that way, where they dump the rubbish and all."
She led him through the kitchen, where two fat little manlike creatures, both smoking clay pipes — he guessed they were what Applecore called "bogles" — stood on stools that raised them to the necessary height to do their work. One of them was tending the fry basket, the other lifting and inspecting pastries in the open oven with a long-handled paddle.
"Whither goest, tinyfry?" the bogle by the oven asked Applecore lazily. He sounded like a Shakespearean comic rustic, with a broad accent that sounded vaguely northern England to Theo, who didn't know much about English regional accents beyond the Beatles. He still couldn't figure out why fairies should sound like British and Irish folk, anyway.
"Out the back, you great ball of guts," Applecore said. "It's lucky you're good-looking, because you'll never be a cook — your millefois tastes like shoe leather."
As the fry cook laughed, the oven-bogle grinned. "And it's lucky for you that you're such a sweet-talker," he said, "because you're going to need to be able to make new chums — your boyfriend just stepped into the walk-in refrigerator."
Theo heard this last just as the door swung shut behind him with a resounding ka-chunk. He was suddenly very, very cold.
But I didn't touch the damn thing, he told himself. It just closed, like… magic.
Shit.
He had to stand, shivering, as Applecore argued with the cooks about opening the door. He heard her call the bogles lots of names, which made him feel a little better, but unlikely as it seemed, there were moments when she seemed to be laughing as she did it.
His teeth were chattering pretty hard when the door finally popped open again.
"What use dating a petalhead such as yon when he can't even muster a cantrip for latchlifting?" the fry cook chuckled as he beckoned Theo out. "Come out, our frosty master. Else we might mistake you for something edible and put you in a stew, then go up before the Assizes for floricide."
"Sass," said Applecore, but Theo didn't think she looked very indignant on his behalf.
"If thou shouldst grow bored and pissed off with petalheads, small nifty, and return to dating your own social equals," grinned the fat oven-bogle as he waved good-bye, "you'll know where I might be found."
"Yeah and some verily," said the other. "Up to his overworked mouth in flour, as always. Door to the service corridor's that way."
"Nice enough fellas," said Applecore as they made their way down the narrow hallway that ran behind the row of shops.
Theo had a feeling that if Rufinus had made that comment, he would have automatically added, "for bogles."
"They liked you," he told Applecore.
"Get away with you."
"Oh, they didn't? So why are you blushing?"
"Am not. Shut your gob."
As they reached the last door in the corridor, Applecore flew up close to his face. "Now, when we step out, don't look around — that's the kind of thing people notice. Remember, you've just been doing something you're supposed to do and now you're on your way to do something else you're supposed to do. Don't look around. That's what guilty people do."
"Wow. You're pretty impressive. Like a miniature John LeCarré out of a box of Cracker Jacks."
"I don't even know what that means, but I'm sure it won't keep me from kicking you in your earhole. Now shut up and push the door open."
He wondered briefly how people Applecore's size opened doors like this when there weren't people Theo's size around, then they were out and walking past the ladies' room for another station restaurant. At least, he assumed it was the ladies' room, since one of the several silhouettes on it looked humanoid and female, although most of the other silhouettes looked more like vacuum cleaner attachments. Theo decided it didn't bear too much thinking about.
The business was a book and magazine store full of browsing travelers. The place was festooned with harvest-holiday decorations, sprays of leaves and piles of produce on almost every surface and stylized moons hanging from the rafters. At least he assumed they were decorations — it was hard to tell, here in Faerie, what might be just the normal weirdness. As he followed Applecore down the rows of glossy magazines, he experienced the strange cognitive dissonance again: he could understand everything written on them without understanding a word of the language or script. "Making Oak Blight Work for You!" trumpeted something on the cover of one that his brain translated as Roots — the Dryad Magazine. There were dozens of others, all equally unlikely — it was like walking through the set of some expensive Hollywood comedy: Wingspan — for Working Mothers with articles like "Forget Your Frost-Charms — A Fresh Mabon Feast in Minutes!" and newspapers called The Trooping News and The Arden Intelligencer with headlines proclaiming "Coextensives Fighing to Hold Coalition Power" and "Holly's Generator Outages Blamed on Worker Morale."