He started to raise an argument, but he knew Applecore was right. "So when do we get out?"
"Now. We can get a bus anywhere around here."
"A bus? My God, trains are weird enough. There are buses in Fairyland, too?"
"Shut it, you! Do you want to give yourself away completely? Now tell her. And don't go looking to me to fix it, or to make you look like a nice fella." She lifted off his shoulder and flew over to sit on the door handle at the far side of the car, fitting her back into the curve of the padded handle with her wings on either side. "Go on," she said loudly.
Poppy opened her eyes. "Sorry," she said. "This is just so much nicer than that old train. Father's factor will have a fit, of course — he's one of those old-school hobbanies who acts like every penny you spend is a hair plucked out of his own backside." She giggled. "My, Theo, you must think I'm a foulmouthed creature."
"Poppy…" Theo hated being a bad guy. He tried to think of a half-truth, but could not ignore the fierce attention of Applecore, watching him from the door handle with her arms folded across her chest. "Poppy, we can't go all the way into the middle of the City with you. You have to let us out here."
"What do you mean?" She looked from him to Applecore; the sprite shrugged. "Where are you going?"
"We… we have lots of places to go. You're in danger now just for knowing us, for helping us. We don't want to make it any worse."
"But… but I thought…" Her expression hardened. "You used me."
"No! No, Poppy, I swear…"
"You don't really care about me at all. You just acted that way so you could get a ride into the City. I should have let the constables take you away." In the dim light of the backseat, she seemed to have gone chalky white except for her staring eyes and the dark line of her mouth, which quivered. "You probably are murderers. No, that would at least mean you were really desperate. You're probably just thieves, just petty, nasty little thieves." She pounded on the partition that separated them from the driver. "Stop the coach!"
"Pardon, Mistress?" asked the doonie's disembodied voice.
"Stop the coach. These people are getting out."
The car pulled smoothly out of the slow traffic and over to the curb. The door swung open without a sound, Applecore still clinging to the handle. Outside, a sign advertising some kind of gambling parlor splashed shuddering blue-gray light all over the pavement.
"Look, Poppy, we're very grateful — I'm very grateful," Theo began, "— and I really do like you. I think you're…"
"You think I'm stupid. You think I'm a stupid child. Get out. Go to the Well, for all I care."
Applecore, ever the pragmatist, was already out and hovering above the sidewalk. A trio of husky young ogres slowed down to peer inside the limousine.
"Hello, seedling!" one of them said to Poppy, bending his immense form almost double to get his huge head into the open car door. He had fists like Virginia hams and he smelled like something sluiced out of factories in big pipes. "Looking for fun? Come down from the pollen palaces for a little of the gray stuff?"
"If you touch my coach," Poppy snarled at him, "— if you even breathe on the windows, I won't bother to have you killed, I'll have your family killed instead. Every one of them." The young ogre blinked at her. "Then you can explain to the neighbors that Mumsy and Daddy and your brothers and sisters are all dead because you were thinking with your knob when you should have been minding your own business. Now, consider the whole thing carefully before you decide, Gray Stuff — do you really want to fuck around with Thornapple House?"
The ogre had time only for one more dumbfounded blink, then his two companions grabbed him by the arms and pulled him away with a force that would have easily yanked a normal-sized person into pieces.
"Wow," Theo said as he watched them hurry away. "You're tough…"
"Get out of my coach!"
He turned. There were tears in her eyes, which made him feel like one of the lowest life-forms imaginable, but there was also something in her face that made him shut his mouth again without the protest of regret and innocence that was halfway up his throat and rising. Instead he turned and scrambled out onto the sidewalk. The door scraped his ankle as it slammed closed. A second later the limousine pulled back into traffic, which parted for it as though it were a dynamite wagon.
"You certainly can pick 'em," Applecore observed.
"Shut up." He didn't really want to alienate the sprite as well, his only friend, but he was too full of boiling misery to keep his mouth shut. It didn't matter, though: he couldn't think of anything else to say.
He followed Applecore down the sidewalk in a daze, trying to sort out his feelings, all but oblivious now to even the strangest surroundings and most unusual life-forms, glad only that the night skies were clear so he didn't have to add wading through puddles in a driving rain to his list of miseries.
The thing was, he felt bad because he hated being misunderstood, but there was more to it than that: he had genuinely liked Poppy Thornapple. In the midst of all that had happened, it had been lovely to have a few hours of nearly innocent flirtation, the cheerful companionship of an attractive young woman who also liked him. And there had been something about her, a what-the-hell quality, that he had found fascinating. "What did I do wrong?"
Applecore, who was doing her best to find the right sort of bus stop, ignored him until he asked again. "What do you mean, wrong?" she said.
"I didn't lie to her. I didn't promise her anything!"
Applecore shook her head. "We don't really have time to talk about this now, Vilmos. And you probably don't want to hear what I have to say, anyway."
"But I don't get it. I was really careful…"
The sprite dropped onto his shoulder, grabbed his earlobe, and leaned out in front of his face. "By the Trees, fella, have you ever actually had a girlfriend?"
"What the hell does that mean? Lots."
"Then you must have worked really hard not to learn anything about women. Is that why you had so many? Easier just to dump 'em when they started making sense?" She snorted and sat down on his shoulder.
Theo groaned. "My life sucked already, and now I'm getting lectured about my relationships by a fairy the size of a dog's chew toy. Perfect."
She didn't say anything for a long moment, didn't even move. When she spoke, even with her head so close to his ear, he could barely hear her over the noise of the traffic. "I'm going to give you one chance to apologize."
"What?"
"You heard me."
"What did I say? I'm sorry!" He was turning his head so sharply trying to make eye contact that he had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk. A two-way procession out of an illustrated children's book eddied around him. "Applecore, please don't leave me. I said something stupid — okay, I'm sorry. But I don't even know what it was."
"Theo," she said after a pause, "almost everything you say is stupid."
"Probably," he said, relieved. Her voice had sounded almost normal again. "And you shouldn't pass up an opportunity to kick me when I'm down, anyway — you might not get another one for at least ten minutes. But I really don't know what I said."
"Do you think my size makes me stupid?"
"No!"
"And do you think I'm a woman?"
"Of course I do…" He swallowed down the "I guess," reasoning that it might muddy the situation.
"And the problem you're snivelin' about — would that be a problem with a woman?"
"Yeah, but…"
"So why would I not be qualified to give you the benefit of my experience, being as I'm a member of that particular sex?"