“Well, maybe she was worried, and then she asked some questions, and the answers put her mind at ease,” Lute said. “You ever think about that?”
“You can’t be serious,” Sawyer said.
Lute just sighed.
That was troublesome. Sawyer knew that things weren’t right between him and Lute, but that shouldn’t affect the way that Lute saw Owen.
“Why are you saying that?” said Sawyer.
“I’m just… We should consider other options,” said Lute. “Maybe there aren’t shape shifters running around, you know. Maybe everything really is as it seems.”
“So, what? Nora is suddenly in love with Owen?” said Sawyer.
“They do have a history,” said Lute.
“No,” said Sawyer. “No way.”
“Okay, then, I’m wrong,” said Lute. “But it’s an option, you know.”
“If you aren’t with us on this—”
“Hey,” said Maddie. “We’re getting off topic.” Her voice got gentler. “You two can work on whatever it is that’s going on between you later.”
Work on it, huh? Sawyer felt his stomach sink. Were things really that bad? If so, it was all his fault. He valued Lute, and he needed to let the other muse know that. He just didn’t know how he could possibly focus on any of that when Nora was very possibly sleeping with Owen. That seemed to fracture the universe with its wrongness.
“Look, we need to find out what it was that Phoebe was asking about,” Agler said.
“How are we going to do that?” Maddie said. “You said your friend didn’t know.”
“Fairies are worse than muses when it comes to serious things like threats and danger,” Agler said. “They like to play all the time. They like to play tricks and do mischief. That’s all they care about. They don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the big picture. So, Ridian didn’t pay it any mind.”
“Well, we’ll have to talk to a fairy that knows, then,” said Sawyer.
“Why don’t we just talk to Phoebe?” said Agler. “Maybe she’ll tell us about it.”
“She’ll lie,” said Maddie. “She doesn’t want us to know.”
“She probably won’t know a thing about it,” said Sawyer. “Because she’s not actually Phoebe. She’s just something that looks like her.”
“But what if she will tell us?” Agler said. “Maybe if we let her know how serious we are about getting to the bottom of all of this, she’ll let us know what’s going on. Maybe she has a perfectly good explanation for everything.”
Both Sawyer and Maddie gave him identical skeptical expressions.
“Okay, well, probably not,” said Agler. “But it doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?”
* * *
Phoebe raised her eyebrows. She was sitting outside her tent in a folding chair, holding a glass of something containing crushed mint leaves. “Agler Thorn?”
Agler couldn’t be sure what the drink was. But it looked like something alcoholic. That meant that Phoebe was having some hair of the dog the afternoon after the May Day celebration. He smiled at her. “Hi there.”
“Do you need something?” Clearly, she wasn’t exactly in the mood to chat.
“So, um, did you have a nice time at the May Day celebration yesterday?” Agler grinned at her.
She did not grin back. “Do you want something?”
“Can’t I just come by and make small talk with the head of the council, who I deeply admire?”
“You never make small talk with me,” Phoebe said. “And furthermore, no one comes to make small talk with me. If people come to see me, it’s because they want something. What do you want? Cut to the chase.”
“It’s not like that,” Agler said. “Honestly, I’m not here to try to get you to do any favors for me or anything.”
“Well, that’s a good thing.” Phoebe took a long swig of her drink. “Because I’m not really inclined to do favors right now. I did happen to have a very nice time celebrating last night, and now I am relaxing. And I’m not in any mood to do anything at all.”
In other words, she was hungover. Agler got the message. The older muses weren’t part of the tweens and rebels enclave anymore, but that didn’t mean that they stopped acting like tweens. Not entirely, anyway. They still partied pretty hard. Maybe they weren’t all forgetting where they fell asleep the night before or anything like that…
“Agler, spit out whatever it is you wanted to say to me, or get lost.”
Agler pointed out a chair that was empty. “Can I sit down?”
“No.”
Agler absorbed that. “Well, okay. Here’s the thing. Last night, I happened to run into my friend Ridian, who’s a fairy. And he mentioned having seen you in the fairy dimension last fall. He said you were there asking questions about Owen Asher. Now, I know the we’re not supposed to say anything about Owen’s being here anymore, but I was wondering if you could tell me what exactly it was you were doing in the fairy dimension—”
“I wasn’t in the fairy dimension last fall,” Phoebe said.
“You weren’t? Because Ridian said that you were.”
“Well, he was wrong.” She made a motion with her hand to shoo him away. “Now if that’s all—”
“No, that’s not all,” Agler said. “Because, maybe you just forgot about it? I don’t think Ridian would lie to me about this.”
“I didn’t say that he was lying,” Phoebe said. “What I said was that he’s mistaken.”
Agler took a deep breath, surveying Phoebe. She was lying to him. He couldn’t believe it.
“You know,” Phoebe said, “it’s probably better if you keep your distance from Owen, anyway. You and he don’t exactly get along, do you?”
Agler let out a long, slow breath. “That’s it? That’s all you’ll tell me?”
“Nothing to tell.” Phoebe picked up her drink. “It’s been nice talking to you, Agler.”
Agler could tell that he was being dismissed.
* * *
“Look, it’s Hamlet,” Nora said, slapping down the flyer in front of Owen.
The two were sitting in the dining room in the food enclave. It was late afternoon, but they had come looking for a snack. Well, truth be told, Owen had come looking for a snack. Nora had magically found her way to the food enclave and found him. He specifically hadn’t told her that he was leaving, or where he was going. But she was just… there, the way she always was. It was starting to drive him insane.
“It’s not Hamlet.” Owen peered at the flyer. “It doesn’t even say Hamlet.”
“Well, they wouldn’t do Hamlet,” Nora said. “Hamlet was written by Shakespeare. Shakespeare is not a muse. They never do a play that, you know, isn’t written specifically by someone in the writing enclave. But this.” She tapped the flyer. “This is the source material for Hamlet.”
“Source material?” Owen gave her a blank look. What was she going on about? Why did she think he cared?
“Did you ever pay attention in English class?”
Owen shook his head. “I didn’t need to pay attention in school. I just charmed people into giving me the grades that I wanted. And then I dropped out.”
Nora sighed. She sat down next to him. “Okay, well, Shakespeare never made up any of his stories. Okay, I guess he made up the stories in the comedies. But in the tragedies, and histories of course, he was working from sources. They were stories that people had already heard before. There were other plays about them. Like how, in the mundane world, every couple years they’ll just remake old horror movies and superhero stories.”
Owen couldn’t believe that he was still paying attention to what she was saying. “Okay, so this is like the remake of Hamlet?”
She shook her head. “No, Hamlet is the remake of this.”
Owen furrowed his brow. “How can Hamlet be the remake of this, when this is happening now, and Shakespeare was writing hundreds of years ago?”
Nora sighed. “Well it’s… you know when they redid Nos
feratu? Because they went back to the original source material and got it the way that—”
“You know what?” Owen said. “Never mind. The fact of the matter is, I don’t care.”
For one second, Nora actually looked hurt. Then she shook it off, as was the way with her these days. He couldn’t get to her no matter what he did.
“Of course you don’t care,” she said. “But I think it would be fun if we were in the play.”
“You think what?”
“Usually, they don’t even let the tweens try out for the play,” Nora said. “But look.” She tapped the flyer again. “It specifically says the tweens are welcome to try out. It would be fun. Haven’t you wanted to be in a play before?”
“No,” Owen said. “No, I honestly haven’t.”
“Oh, come on. Of course you have. You’re always acting. You’re always trying to fool people.”
He shook his head. “I’m always trying to get things from people. If I have to fool them in order to get what I want, then fine.”
Nora sighed. “I still think we should do it.”
“No,” Owen said. But then he realized that he shouldn’t be too harsh on her for wanting to do the play. He forced himself to smile. “But you know what? It sounds as if you’d have a lot of fun doing it.”
“I would.”
“So, you should do it.”
“What do you mean? You just said we shouldn’t do it.”
“I think you should do it by yourself,” Owen said. “Honestly, I’ll probably be too busy anyway.”
“Busy? Doing what? You do nothing.”
He only did nothing because he couldn’t get anything accomplished with her sticking her nose into his business twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Trying to shake her was like trying to shake the plague. But there was no point in her knowing that. He shrugged. “Well, it’s hard work being this lazy.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re just a waste of space.”
He laughed. “Oh, if I’m a waste of space, why do you spend so much time being near me?”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Because I can’t get enough of you, Owen.”
He smirked at her. “You light up my life as well, darling.”
They glared at each other.
“So,” he said, “you’ll do the play, then?”
She shook her head. “Nah. Doesn’t sound like much fun after all. I’d rather spend all of my time with you.”
He gritted his teeth. He needed to get rid of her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“So, Phoebe didn’t tell you anything,” Sawyer was saying. “I hate to say I told you so—”
“So don’t,” Agler said. “I had to try, didn’t I? I really think she was lying to me.”
“Or maybe she had no idea what you’re talking about, because she’s not the real Phoebe,” Sawyer said.
“I don’t think there’s any evidence that these people are shape shifters,” Lute said. “Can we seriously drop that?”
“They might be shape shifters,” Maddie said. “I tried to ask Nora about the first time that she met me. And she totally sidestepped answering the question.”
“See?” Sawyer was triumphant. “Shape shifters.”
“You haven’t found them anywhere,” Lute said. “You said that if they were shape shifters that the real Nora and Phoebe would be stashed in the woods somewhere. And you have searched every inch of the woods in this entire realm, and you’ve found nothing.”
Sawyer nodded. “That’s true. But maybe he’s keeping them in the mundane world or something.”
“If that was the case,” Maddie said, “then he would have to leave and go to the mundane world and tend to them.”
“Unless…” Agler made a face. “Unless they’re…”
Sawyer shook his head. “Don’t say it. They’re alive.”
“They’re not shape shifters,” Lute said.
“Then why didn’t the potion work on them?” Sawyer said. “If they’re not shape shifters, then they must be under a spell.”
“We can debate this again,” Agler said, “or we can figure out what we’re going to do to find out what it was that Phoebe was saying to the fairies last fall.”
They all nodded.
“So,” Agler said, “if we can’t talk to Phoebe, then I think we have to talk to the fairies.”
“Well, how will we do that?” Maddie said. “Because we can’t just send them a letter or something. They live in a completely different dimension.”
“So, we’ll go there,” Sawyer said. He turned to Agler. “Right?”
Agler nodded. “I think so. I think we have to.”
Lute spoke up. “Go there? Just pop over into another dimension? How are we supposed to do that, unless we wait until the next cross-quarter day, which isn’t until Halloween?”
“Well,” Agler said, “there’s the dimension device.”
“There are actually two dimension devices, now,” Sawyer said. “Because the one that Owen stole has been returned.”
“I still don’t know why he gave it back,” Agler said. “It’s completely unlike him.”
“He was trying to make everyone think that he was trustworthy,” Maddie said.
“Well, maybe it isn’t a real dimension device,” Sawyer said. “Has anyone tested it?”
“Yeah, Coeus did,” Agler said. “People kept saying the same thing in the council meetings last winter. So Coeus tested it, and it’s legit.”
“So, we’ve got to get the dimension device,” Sawyer said.
“You mean you’ve got to steal the dimension device,” Lute said. “Because don’t they have it locked up in the engineering enclave?”
“Yeah,” said Sawyer. “They do. So, we will have to get it somehow.”
“We’ll need a plan,” Maddie said.
“We’ll need a distraction,” Agler said.
* * *
Sawyer found himself designated the distraction. He’d lobbied for Maddie to do it, but she’d resisted, demanding to know why she was being singled out. “It’s because I’m the only girl, isn’t it?” she’d said. “Gods, I miss Nora.”
Anyway, since no one else was keen on being the distraction, Sawyer found the job fell to him. He had put on the most ridiculous outfit he could put together—a purple skirt with a tight shirt that bared his navel—and now he was prancing around in the engineering enclave, loudly asking if anyone had seen Daryl.
Lucien Bear, who was apparently supposed to be guarding the tent where the dimension device was being kept, yelled over to him. Sawyer could tell he was the guard because he was wearing a badge that said “guard.” This was something that had been discussed in the council meetings at the beginning of the year. The muses were worried that someone would steal the dimension device again. Owen had stolen it before, and Sawyer, Nora, and Maddie had also taken it. Anyway, the council wanted to make sure that it stayed secure, so they had voted in a motion that the device needed to be in a guarded tent.
“Daryl’s part of the muse police,” said Lucien. “He’s not an engineering muse.”
Sawyer knew that, but he thought that making Lucien infuriated would help in extending the entire conversation, thus providing a better distraction. He positioned himself about ten feet from the entrance to the tent where Lucien stood, hoping that he could lead him away. “Oh, sure he is. Aren’t you guys the same thing?”
“No,” said Lucien. “We are not the same thing.”
“But,” said Sawyer, “you’re always doing the same stuff. You’re always working with their enclave to clean stuff and set up tables and things.”
“No, we’re not.” Lucien was staying firmly put in his post, even though he was looking more and more pissed.
Damn it. Sawyer had hoped this would be enough to get him to move away. He was trying to play stupid, because that was the only way it would make sense that he was here, but he was aware that his stupidity was simply provoking Lucien.
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“What do you want with Daryl anyway?” asked Lucien.
“Oh, I needed his help,” said Sawyer, “but I thought he was an engineering muse. I guess if he’s not an engineering muse, then I need your help.”
“I can’t help you, I’m a guard.” Lucien pointed at his badge. “Can’t leave my post.”
Man, he was really intent on that, wasn’t he? Sawyer really wished that he were an actual girl at this moment, because then he might be able to try flirting and have a snowball’s chance of it actually working. “Oh, well, I guess I’ll just go back home then.” Sawyer turned, doing his best to look dejected.
A heavy sigh from behind him. “What do you need?”
Sawyer turned, smiling. “Can you come with me? I’ll show you.”
“I told you, I can’t leave my post,” Lucien said.
“It’ll only take a minute,” said Sawyer. “It’s right around the corner here.”
“What’s right around the corner?”
“The thing I need you to fix,” said Sawyer, although he was jumping ahead in the plan quite a bit. If things had worked well, he would have gotten Lucien away from the door already, and Agler could have sneaked inside.
Agler was doing this mission solo, because it seemed to be better for him to be hanging out in the engineering enclave. He spent most of his time in the philosophy enclave, it was true, but he still hadn’t really decided where he belonged, and he flitted around most everywhere. He would have an excuse for being there. Maddie or Lute would have stuck out like a sore thumb, the way Sawyer was doing.
Sawyer could see Agler out of the corner of his eye. He was watching the exchange between Lucien and Sawyer, but also fiddling around with a yo-yo so that it wasn’t obvious he was engaged.
Anyway, getting Lucien around the corner was the thing Sawyer was supposed to do later, giving Agler as much time as it took to find the dimension device and get it out of there. The device was supposedly locked up, so Agler was going to have to smash the lock as well. All of that was going to take time.
But Sawyer had to get Lucien away from the opening of the tent, didn’t he?
So, he beckoned. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
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