"Cold," I said, settling the pack Marjorie had given me on the floor of the car. "We uh. Well, it was...educational?"
"Oh? See those museums they have?"
"No, we mostly just visited," I said, and decided to forestall further questions. "How's Low Ferry?"
"Oh, getting on. You left your lights on in the shop, by the way – Paula ran over last night and closed it down for you."
"I'll have to thank her," I murmured.
"I told him you went to Chicago to get your hand looked at," the boy piped up, but there was a note in his voice that said he was trying to tell me something.
"Yes! I trust it's nothing serious," Charles said.
"No, just a dog bite," I said.
"Not one of ours?"
"A stray," I said quietly. Lucas was very still in the front seat, staring out the window.
"Well, I'll take you back to your place first," Charles assured me. "I can drop you off on the way to The Pines," he added to the boy.
"I'll walk home. I gotta talk to Mr. Dusk," the boy said.
"Long way home for you, though?" Charles said.
"Not so far, I'll cut across a few fields," the boy answered.
"As the crow flies," Charles smiled. "The only way to go around here. Which reminds me, Leon's on the warpath about his foxes again..."
He chattered about Leon's problems and Jacob's and Old Harrison's thoughts on the matter of foxes until we pulled up outside Dusk Books a few minutes later. The boy climbed out after me and knocked on Lucas's window to make him roll it down.
"Look after yourself," Lucas said, reaching out to disorder the boy's neat blond hair.
"Course," the boy said. "See you soon?"
"I hope so."
"Take care, Lucas," I added. "Thanks, Charles!"
Charles gave me a wave as Lucas rolled the window back up, and they pulled away while I opened the shop and followed the boy inside. Across the street, Carmen waved at me from the cafe and then almost dropped the tray she was carrying when she saw the bandage on my hand. I waggled my fingers – I'm fine, nothing to worry about – and closed the door. The boy was sitting on my counter, legs swinging.
"You didn't tell Charles what happened," I said to him. He shrugged.
"Not my place," he said. He had that same look about him that he'd had when he told me to find Lucas – not quite authority, not quite age, but something that said this was not going to be a conversation with a child. Maybe not even with an equal. "Lucas can tell if he wants."
"And calling the hospital?" I asked. "With the telephone out?"
He shrugged. "Must've been working for him. It's cold in here."
"I usually start a fire in the morning. What would have happened if Lucas had died?" I demanded.
"But he didn't."
"He could have."
"No. You saved him," he said with a smile.
"And how'd you know to come get me so I could?"
He leaned back, heels drumming gently on the counterfront. "The Friendly said he might. Christopher the storyteller said he had the melancholy."
"He didn't tell me that."
"Maybe he didn't have time."
I rested my arm on the cash register, staring at him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I didn't know he'd do it any sooner."
"Goddammit!" I shouted. "Give me a straight answer!"
He widened his eyes, innocently. "What straight answer do you want? All the things you've seen, you still don't see there aren't any?"
"He's my friend," I said through gritted teeth.
"Oh?" he tilted his head. "That what he is?"
"I would have helped him."
"You would have tried. He had to see. Now you have to see," he said, and held out his hand. I stared at it. "Lemme see your bite."
"No," I said, pulling my left arm against my chest.
"Then what will you do now?" he asked. "How are you going to help him?"
"I don't know! It's not my job to fix people," I said. "It's not my job – "
" -- to put a collar on Lucas?"
"Nameless," I said, before I thought about it. He laughed and I wanted to hit him, but – he was just a kid. He looked like one, anyway.
"What did you want to say to me?" I asked coldly. He twitched his fingers, still outstretched for my hand. I hesitated, but it was obvious he wasn't going to move or speak until I did what he wanted. I stretched our my arm and put my wrist into his hand. He turned it over, studying the bandage across my palm.
"Lucas is a mystic," he said, tracing the fingers of his other hand in the air above mine, not touching, following the lines of the bandage. "But you don't believe."
"I believe what he's done is real," I protested.
"Only 'cause you've seen it. You make an exception. Doesn't matter, I guess," he added thoughtfully. "That kind of thing...it's not just believers. You can touch it too."
"I don't want to," I said, scared now.
"You will," he said confidently. "Let me give you something," and he pressed his hand flat over my palm. Under the bandages, my skin tingled.
"You don't have to believe. But you do have to care," he said. He let go of my hand and slid off the counter, walking around me to the door. I turned, but only in time to see the door close. When I looked out the window I didn't see him at all.
I stood there for a while, the palm of my left hand still extended and upturned, then closed my fingers as far as they would go and rested the knuckles on the counter.
I left the lights out in the shop, though dark was falling on Low Ferry pretty quickly. I didn't want to answer the same questions over and over, not until I'd had a good night's sleep, and I thought – hoped – that Charles had warned people to leave me alone for the evening. Eventually I walked into the back storage room and leaned against a bookshelf, forehead and nose pressed against an uneven series of book-spines, smelling of binding glue and paper. It felt like I'd been gone for weeks instead of a single day.