“Familiar as in you might have seen him around, or he looks like someone you do know?”
“A little of both.”
“So go ask him,” Kathy said, ever the pragmatist.
“I would, except I can never seem to get near to him. Whenever I try, that’s exactly the moment somebody comes up to me and asks me something and the next thing I know he’s gone.”
“Allow me to investigate this phenomenon,” Kathy said loftily, beginning to rise to her feet.
Isabelle pulled at the sleeve of Kathy’s sweater, making her sit down again. “Too late. He’s gone again.”
It was true. The place where he’d been standing was now occupied by two women having an animated conversation. Isabelle knew that the Oriental woman was a performance artist, but she couldn’t remember her name. The other woman was a complete stranger to her.
“Now I’m intrigued,” Kathy said. She turned, suddenly. “You don’t think it was one of your numena?”
Mostly Isabelle had gotten used to life without her otherwordly friends. She still painted an occasional gateway painting and she kept all of them safely stored away, but it was starting to get to the point when their existence seemed to be nothing more than a dream—a fading memory from the past that she wasn’t sure had ever actually been real. But then something would remind her of them and the memories would tumble back into her mind along with a blazing shock of realization that couldn’t be denied. They had been real. And she missed them terribly.
Kathy’s casual mention of her numena reawoke all those old memories and feelings. Isabelle felt a sudden tightening in her chest, but she forced herself to remain calm, to not let the memories take hold and spoil her mood.
“If he is,” she said after a moment, “he’s not one of mine.”
“Hmm.” Kathy gave her a quick smile. “I wonder if that new protege of Rushkin’s has come far enough along in her studies to bring them across. Maybe she’ll paint the perfect companion for me.”
“Oh, please.”
“Well, you won’t.”
“Trust the voice of experience,” Isabelle said. “It doesn’t work out.”
Kathy shook her head. “Sorry, but I don’t buy it. The next thing you’ll tell me is that if your relationship with the first boyfriend you ever have falls through, then you might as well just give up on ever finding another one.”
“You could be right.”
“Oh, poo. You’re far too young and attractive to become a hermit—which is what’s basically happening to you. You do know that, don’t you?”
“This from the woman who hasn’t had a steady boyfriend for as long as I’ve known her?”
“That’s different,” Kathy told her. “I’m just waiting for you to bring across the perfect numena.”
Isabelle sighed with mild exasperation.
“So until then,” Kathy added, “we’re stuck with each other.”
“That I can handle.”
“Hey, Izzy!” someone called.
Isabelle turned to see an indistinct figure approaching them. It wasn’t until she stepped into the light cast by the fire that Isabelle recognized her as Nora. With her spiky brown hair standing at attention and her baggy jacket and jeans hanging loose on her slender frame, she looked like a gamine set loose from a Dickens or Hugo novel and gone feral in this setting.
‘jack’s here with the Maypole,” Nora said when she reached them, “except he doesn’t know where you want it.”
Initially Isabelle had planned to put it in the field behind them, but it was so full of tents by now that she couldn’t see how it would fit.
“Why don’t we do put it up in that meadow you took me to this morning?” Kathy said. “The one that had all those yellow fish flowers in it.”
“Trout lilies,” Isabelle explained for Nora.
“They didn’t look anything like trout to me,” Kathy said.
“They’re called that because of their speckled leaves.”
Nora nodded. “My grandmother’s got those in her garden except she calls them adder’s-tongue.”
“An even more apt description,” Kathy said wryly. “Anyway, I think it’d be the perfect spot.”
Isabelle agreed. “I’ll come show you where it is.”
“You’ll have to show Jack yourself,” Nora said. “I think I’ve had one glass of wine too many to go traipsing off into the woods about now.”
In the end, Isabelle and Kathy both went along to help. Isabelle had to grab Kathy’s arm for a second when she first stood up, because everything went spinning.
“Are you okay?” Kathy asked.
“Too much mystery punch,” Isabelle explained.
Kathy laughed. “Too much vodka in the mystery punch is more like it.”
Jack Crow was the last person Isabelle would have approached to help her with the Maypole. He worked in a tattoo parlor and looked more like a biker, with his leathers and all his tattoos, than someone who would have gone out with Sophie for a few months. But Jilly had assured her he’d be perfect, and now that Isabelle could see his work—albeit in the light cast by a couple of flashlights—she had to agree that he’d done a wonderful job. There seemed to be hundreds of streamers of colored cloth, wrapped around the pole to transport it, each one a different color and breadth, complementary colors vibrating against each other so that the entire length of the pole appeared to pulse. Looking at the pattern they produced made Isabelle think of the cloth bracelets she’d made from Paddyjack’s ribbons. Without thinking of it, her hand strayed to her wrist, but the bracelet wasn’t there. She’d stopped wearing it a long time ago and kept it tacked to the wall of her studio. She hadn’t thought of it in months, but for some reason she missed it now.
It took them a half hour to get the Maypole to the meadow Kathy had suggested and then set it up.
The last thing they did was unwrap the streamers. A light breeze plucked at them, making them whirl and dance. Isabelle watched them, mesmerized. It seemed as though the streamers all had afterimages that pulsed and throbbed with as much energy as the streamers themselves, making a whirling kaleidoscope of moon-drenched color. For a moment she thought she could hear a rhythmic tappa-tap-tap, but it was only in her memory.
“This’ll be so perfect,” Kathy said as they stood back to admire their handiwork. “When the sun comes up to hit all those streamers, it’s going to look seriously gorgeous.”
Isabelle couldn’t imagine it looking any more magnificent than it already did.
“I hope somebody brought a camera,” Kathy added.
“I saw Meg earlier,” Isabelle assured her when she was finally able to tear her gaze from the light show of the streamers.
Meg Mullally was a photographer friend of theirs who never went anywhere without a camera or two slung over her shoulder. What with Kathy’s surname being Mully, Alan used to kid them that they had to be related somewhere back in the dim corridors of antiquity.
“I know there’s tons of people here tonight,” Jack said as they started back, “and they’re probably all over the place by now, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s somebody else out here with us as well.”
“What kind of somebody?” Kathy asked, obviously intrigued.
“I don’t know. Somebody old and mysterious.” Isabelle could hear the embarrassment in his voice.
“Maybe ...” He cleared his throat. “Maybe, you know ... not quite human. It’s like I can feel somebody watching me, but whenever I turn around, there’s no one there. No one that I can see, at least. But I can still feel them there, watching me.”
He was sensing her numena, Isabelle realized. Time to change the subject. But before she could, Kathy piped up, her voice pitched low and serious.