The others wished he wouldn’t keep putting it like that. Scott glanced at Emily. Emily shared a look with John. Scott and Erno and Emily and Merle were all a little cramped in this limousine seat, sitting backward, facing John and Polly and Sir Richard. They’d hired the limo to collect the famous drummer at his home in London and bring him here, and it was the biggest car they could get without renting another party bus.
Sir Richard was bearded, bald, wearing tinted glasses that made it hard to read his face. His hands were burled with thick gold rings, and he clacked these together.
“They’ll only be invisible if they want to be,” John explained. “Which they probably won’t. It’s like a … pride thing. Or something.”
“But those fairy friends you mentioned … they were both invisible?” said Sir Richard.
Scott felt the conversation slipping away. “Mick—” he said. “That’s the leprechaun—Mick is out of glamour.”
“Out of glamour.”
“Out of … magic. So he can’t turn visible. And the rabbit-man is just a jerk,” Scott added under his breath.
“Why can’t Sir Richard see them anyway?” Erno whispered to Merle. “He’s a knight.”
“Yeah, but he’s not a changeling like Scott and Polly and John. Or an invasion baby like me.”
“So he’s magic enough to slay a dragon but not magic enough to see fairies?”
Merle shrugged.
“You couldn’t see Mick and Harvey,” John explained to Richard. “So they left to look for four-leaf clovers.”
“Four-leaf clovers,” repeated Sir Richard. Scott thought he could tell how badly things were going based entirely on how often Sir Richard repeated things.
John nodded. “Apparently we need them for a … thingy.”
“Potion,” said Erno.
“Potion,” said Sir Richard.
“Come to think of it,” said John, “we should have asked the finch to stay. Everyone sees the finch, for some reason.”
“I saw that,” Sir Richard agreed, brightening. “I saw it earlier.”
“It breathes fire,” Erno told him. This was followed by kind of a longish silence.
“Maybe one of us should fetch Fi,” said Scott.
“No,” Polly flatly answered.
“And so the cereal company …,” said Richard.
“Which is run by a fairy queen,” John interjected.
“… is rubbing out Knights Bachelor because we can kill dragons?”
Emily leaned forward and handed Sir Richard a piece of paper. He flinched as if expecting it to fold itself into something dangerous.
“This is a list of Knights Bachelor who have died in the last five years,” Emily lectured, “categorized according to cause of death. Note the high number of accidents and sudden declines in health. Knights Bachelor have been seven times more likely to die during this period than an average Englishman of similar age.”
Sir Richard studied the list, and his eyebrows lifted.
“I know it’s a lot to swallow, Richard,” John added.
Sir Richard frowned. “Your behavior has been so … uncharacteristic lately. I’ve seen the news.”
“That isn’t me. That Reggie Dwight is an impostor. These people will all corroborate that I’ve only just returned to England this morning.”
Everyone nodded.
Sir Richard frowned and sucked on one of his rings.
“You don’t have to believe all of it, Sir Richard,” said Scott. “But … you’re not safe. You need to believe that.”
Richard thought for a moment. “Well. I guess it can’t hurt to go away for a while.”
“There you are.” John smiled.
“What are you lot going to do?”
“John’s going to trade places with the fake Reggie so he can meet with the queen and expose her,” said Erno. “She’s a fake, too.”
Scott sucked air through his teeth. He wouldn’t personally have volunteered this information.
“I see,” said Sir Richard. The car was fidgety for a moment.
“The whole world will know what’s going on,” stressed John. “Soon. I swear. I just need you to trust me, Richard.”
“I do.” Sir Richard smiled and slapped his knees. “God help me, I do. But if it turns out you’re wrong, I’m going to tell everyone I haven’t seen you since the Grammys.”
John laughed, and a pall lifted. “If I’m wrong, you can claim we’ve never even met.”
Everyone smiled. Even Emily smiled. “So,” Erno said. “You’re a famous drummer.”
Sir Richard beamed. “I was with the Quarrymen, a lifetime ago. You’ve heard our music?”
“No,” Erno admitted.
Mick watched the car doors open, and everyone get out. He couldn’t tell if Harvey had been looking at the car. He didn’t know what the pooka was looking at.
Mick squinted back across the field of clover for a minute, then sighed.
“Why don’t yeh go ahead an’ insult me, Harv,” he said.
Harvey slapped his hand over his eyes, bent over, and plucked a sprig at random. “Here ya go,” he said.
Mick stared at the four-leafed clover for a moment, then put it in his pocket.
CHAPTER 10
A makeup girl cried on the London set of Salamander Hamilton and the Three Ghosts of Christmas. A production assistant cleaned what appeared to be vomit off what appeared to be Winston Churchill. Reggie Dwight loudly explained how neither thing was directly his fault. The assistant director sighed to the second assistant director. “Forty-three takes and his scene still isn’t in the can,” she said. “And he’s supposed to record something for the soundtrack this afternoon.”
The goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight faked a tantrum and locked themselves in his trailer for two hours, just so they could shed their Reggie skin and breathe awhile. One goblin napped while the other insulted people on the internet. When time came to return to the studio, they hid away their old skin with the others and grew a new one—you couldn’t reuse them. If anyone decided to look inside the trailer’s back closet they were going to wish they hadn’t.
The goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight ate three sandwiches from the catering table, more quickly than Reggie was really able, so when they choked they did it in an entertaining way. Because they were entertainers. Afterward they got into a shoving match with an assistant who tried to give them what they later learned was the Heimlich maneuver. The goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight asked the assistant’s forgiveness with a hug that went on just long enough to be uncomfortable. Then they went into the recording booth with pickle on their chin to see how long it would take someone to tell them.
At the piano, the goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight announced that they would not be performing “The Little Drummer Boy,” as previously discussed, but would instead sing a new song they had themselves composed only that morning during toilet time. The assembled assistants and sound engineers all looked at one another and shrugged. It actually made a sound, so many people shrugging. Goblin Reggie played a chord and sang,
“I didn’t mean …”
He closed his eyes and leaned into the next chord.
“I didn’t mean to punch the queen.”
The assistants and sound engineers looked at one another a little more pointedly.
“I didn’t plan to greet Her Grace ’n’
Sit for lunch ’n’ punch her face in.
Such a scene.
I didn’t mean to punch the queen.”
Goblin Reggie sighed wistfully.
“I didn’t mean to spook the duke.
Oh, whoah whoah WHOAH …
I didn’t mean to spook the duke.
I guess I should have thought of that
before I swung the cricket bat.
It was a fluke.
I didn’t mean to spook the duke.”
Between that verse and the next, there was a ninety-second whistling solo. Then,
“Oooooh,
I didn’t mean to grope the pope—”
“Uh, Reggie?” coughed some human in the sound booth. “Reggie? Hi. I think maybe that’s enough for today.”
The goblins thanked everyone for their good work and stepped into their private car. “Won’t be back tomorrow, though!” they called. “Have a secret meeting! An ecret-say eeting-may with the Queen of England-way! Okay, bye-bye.”
“Home, sir?” asked the driver.
“Yes, Jeeves,” they told the driver, whose name was Michaels. “I’m going to fill a big bath and soak in it until my skin puckers and falls off.”
“Sir,” Michaels answered. He drove them to Reggie’s home in St. John’s Wood in the north of London. The gate opened onto a three-story stone house surrounded by trees, and Michaels edged the car up the drive.
“You should join me, Jeeves,” said goblin Reggie. “It’s a big bathtub.”
“Thank you, sir, no.”
The goblins dismissed Michaels and let themselves into the dark, empty house. They pulled the door shut behind them and paused. Centuries of being the things that creep in darkness had given them some insight into unlit houses. The darkness here was most certainly alive. They could sense it without knowing just exactly what it was, and for a moment it made them afraid. They smiled.
“So that’s what that feels like,” they said, just before they were jumped from all sides.
CHAPTER 11
“JACKIE IS A PUNK! JUDY IS A RUNT! THEY BOTH WENT DOWN TO BERLIN, JOINED THE ICE CAPADES! AND OH I DON’T KNOW WHY! OH I DON’T KNOW WHY! PERHAPS THEY’LL DIIIIIIEE, OH YEAH! PERHAPS THEY’LL DIE!” sang the goblin Reggie Dwight, tied to a banister. “THIRD VERSE! DIFFERENT FROM THE FIRST! JACKIE IS A PUNK! JUDY IS A RUNT—”
“Can’t we gag them?” asked John, his fingers in his ears.
“They’re two goblins inna suit,” said Mick. “The singin’ isn’t even technic’ly comin’ from their mouth.”
“Well, then can we at least make them stop looking like me while they do it?”
“That we can,” Mick answered, and trotted off toward the kitchen.
Polly came to a stop near her father. “This is a nice house,” she said. She’d spent the last ten minutes running all over it with Erno. “He has this big cabinet full of gold records and awards and things in the bathroom,” she told Scott.
“VERSE EIGHT! I AM REALLY GREAT! JACKIE IS A PUNK—”
“In the bathroom?”
John smiled sheepishly. “So I can display them while pretending I don’t care if they’re displayed or not.”
“Uh-huh,” Scott said, turning to wince at his father’s duplicate. The goblins were bound to the iron staircase with iron chains festooned with horseshoes. Biggs kept them under close watch. Prince Fi menaced them with his sword, for all the good it did. Scott didn’t know the song the goblins were singing, but he doubted it had as many verses as they were currently claiming.
“VERSE TWELVE! WORD THAT RHYMES WITH TWELVE! REGGIE IS A—”
Mick returned from the kitchen with a pot of tea. “Helped myself,” he told John. “Hope yeh don’t mind.”
“Of course not. Why …?”
“Yeh’ll see.” Mick lifted the lid of the pot and dropped a four-leaf clover and a little yellow primrose into the steaming tea and swished it around. “Hey, fellas,” he said to the goblin Reggie. “Yis want a cuppa?”
“NONE FOR ME, THANKS.”
“Biggsie?”
Biggs took the teapot from Mick and opened the goblin Reggie’s jaw like a change purse. The goblins gargled and growled. Then Biggs poured a stream of scalding tea down the passable replica they’d made of Reggie’s throat.
They sputtered. They cursed in dead languages. Then they shuddered and rattled and their Reggie skin peeled like a banana.
“Yeesh,” said Merle.
“That’s what we’re going to do to the queen?” said Scott.
“She’s not the queen,” said Emily from her corner of the sofa. “And if she is, it’ll just be tea with some yard clippings in it.”
The goblins, now laid bare, tried to wriggle out of their chains. Biggs pulled them tighter. One goblin sat atop the other’s shoulders. They were wearing familiar little suits.
“This isn’t Pigg and Poke, is it?” said Scott.
“The same.” Pigg grinned.
“Cretinous hobgoblins!”
“Yis two really get around,” said Mick. “Who’s ’mpersonatin’ the queen, then?”
“Misters Katt and Bagg,” said Poke. “Took over for us after we got demoted to permanent Reggie duty.”
“And where’re yis supposed t’ meet wi’ them? Where was fake Reggie gonna meet wi’ the fake queen?”
“Ah, you know about that, eh?” said Pigg.
“They’re clever, Mister Pigg,” said Poke. “There’s no gettin’ around it.”
“The royals’re sending a car tomorrow mornin’,” said Pigg. “Location TBD, though I unnerstand it’ll probably be the British Museum.”
“They’re being awfully helpful all the sudden,” said Emily.
“Maybe it’s the horseshoes and clovers and such,” said Poke. “Makin’ us help.”
“Or maybe we’re secretly wonderful people,” said Pigg.
“Everyone except Biggs, upstairs,” Emily ordered. She started up the spiral staircase past the goblins, and the others dutifully followed. Finally the goblins were left alone with Biggs. They jiggled their chains.
“Left behind.” Poke smiled sadly at Biggs. “They don’t trust you.”
“Trust me to do muh job,” Biggs replied, staring over their heads.
“What’s your job, big feller?” sighed Pigg.
“Peel your skins again if yuh try to ’scape.”
And now the goblins were still.
“Our group should leave right away for Somerset,” Scott whispered as soon as they were upstairs. “It’ll take a couple hours just to get there, and we’re not even sure what we’re looking for exactly. Apart from the Queen of England.”
“The Freemen files definitely didn’t say anything specific except that she’s being held in Avalon?” Merle asked Emily. She closed her eyes.
“I … I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
Emily scrunched up her face. “I don’t remember! Why are you asking me? Ask the owl! I told him everything I learned.”
Archimedes turned his head and whistled, and Merle looked at his watch.
“‘In a secure location in Avalon,’” he read. “I guess that’s all the Freemen knew.”
They reviewed their plans for the next day, such as they were, and separated. Scott, Merle, and Mick left for Somerset in the poppadum truck. Erno scooched up to Emily with Mr. Wilson’s poem.
“Wanna work on this?”
“I just want to go to bed,” she replied, and no wonder—she looked tired. “You know that kind of headache where it feels like someone’s rummaging through your brain?”
“… Nnnnno.”
“Good night, Erno.”
She left him alone in an odd little room that didn’t look like it got much use. It was snugly fitted with furniture that was better to look at than sit in, and shelves lined with matching spines of the sort of classics of Western literature that you could buy by the yard. He reread the poem:
The new year has a week to wait till waking.
The water’s almost frozen in the well.
The hours of the day
pass swiftly by, then drift away,
and yet there’s nothing, less than nothing left to tell.
Soon the final days are numbered, then forgotten,
and the new year’s hardly worth the time it’s taken.
By degrees the hourglass reckons
all the minutes, all the seconds,
and the next year still has weeks to wait to waken.
The unicat brushed up against his shins, stabbing him lightly in the leg.
“The new
year has a week to wait,” he told it. “Christmas Eve is a week before the end of the year. I wonder if that’s important.” In the margins he wrote Christmas, Xmas, eve, 12/24. “I guess it’s about winter? Or time? Half the words are about either time or temperature.”
He puzzled over the poem as the house slept around him.
CHAPTER 12
“Tired,” said Merle, hunched over the wheel of the poppadum truck.
“I’d drive if I could,” said Mick.
“You could teach me,” Scott offered. He felt wired. “It’s left brake, right accelerator, right?”
“Maybe you should just concentrate on keeping me awake.”
“Tell us more about the good ol’ days,” said Mick. “The good ol’ days that haven’t happened yet, in your case. If yeh stop talkin’ we’ll give yeh a shove.”
“Well …,” Merle began, hesitant, feeling his way back into the story. “I kept working on the time-travel question. I knew I could send things like Archimedes to the future, maybe even people to the future, but travel to the past seemed really impossible.”
“You weren’t sure you could send people to the future?” asked Scott.
“I hadn’t tried it yet.”
Scott huffed. “I would have tried it right away.”
“Would you?” Merle asked, turning. “Are you sure? You’d really be in a hurry to be the first human in all creation to try that, to have all your atoms taken apart and put back together again?”
Scott saw his point.
“Besides, I wasn’t prepared to explain to everyone why I’d disappeared for a whole year. But word must have gotten out about my little trick with Archie, and soon the Fay showed up to ruin everything, like they always do. No offense, Mick.”