Page 42 of Search for the Lost

But all she did was give a small smile and hand him a Kleenex from gods knew where. “I’m not precisely her, but I am… a replica? I’m the same Puppet, just not the same. Do you understand?”

Leo took a few seconds to blow his nose and then was mildly squicked when she took the used tissue from him. Normally he wouldn’t have even thought to care, but now it seemed disorderly. And gross. “You’re a copy-paste of my mom,” he finally said.

She patted his head. “Exactly! So I can state with perfect confidence how she felt. Being your parent was a joy for her, however long it lasted. Just as it’s a joy for me, and my lifespan will be only a few days.”

While Mom II beamed at him, Leo stopped crying, but only because he was having trouble breathing. This was horrible. What was the goal of all this?

He tried to pull himself together. “Why are you here? And who put you here?”

Before she could answer, Crispin sat up. His eyes were at half-mast and his breath was awful. Leo made a mental note to never get drunk if that was what he’d end up like. But Crispin belched, reached for the remaining half-glass of fog juice, and gulped it down. “I know who, if not why.” He was slurring badly, as if his tongue had tripled in size and was staging a revolution. “I know who,” he repeated.

“Crispin—”

“My mother, of course.”

Crispin belched again and then collapsed against Leo’s shoulder.

15

Crispin

Crispin swam in a fog brew–induced… well, fog. His brain was too foggy to come up with a suitable alternative to the word fog, so he just kept thinking fog fog fog fog….

He blinked, trying to clear the… fog, but his brain remained stubbornly fogged in by the foggy fog fog.

He could feel Leo and his mother-puppet staring at him, waiting for him to go on, to explain himself.

What were we talking about?

He’d drunk half a dozen of the prized concoctions before, at one of his mother’s many court events, and hadn’t been nearly as fogged in—foggy fog fog, what a cute word that is—as he was now. So what was different this time?

Leo’s body. It was made of chaos… right? But it felt human, and humans got really drunk. That sounded right.

Someone shoved another glass into his hand.

“Oh no, thank you. I am enough in fogged… fogged enough in… oh sordid heavens.” He tried to push away the glass—which was moving around and fading in and out of existence in a most unglasslike manner—but it advanced on him again, piercing the veil of fog that surrounded him.

“Drink this. You’ll feel better.” A woman’s voice. Who was that again? “Mother?”

It couldn’t be. She was lost, or something. I think? Or maybe just busy, like she had always been too busy for him, but never for Aspin. Story of my life.

“Crispy… drink it. Please.”

He knew that voice. His beloved Leopold. Leo. Leee-oh. “All right. If you say so.” He took the cup and chugged it in a manner most unbefitting of a fae, let alone the temporarily King Fae.

Warmth surged through him like sunlight, spreading out from his stomach and into his arms and legs and up into his head, where it encountered the annoyingly persistent bank of fog.

That damp, puffy cloudlet erupted into pyrotechnics, lightning and thunder, dropping a couple inches of rain inside Crispin’s already soggy mind. But after a long interregnum of single fireworks punctuated by crescendos, the sun finally won out. The fog burned off, and he could think again.

And be angry again.

But first he wanted a cookie. Just one. Fog juice always gave him the munchies.

He sat up and straightened out his Leo clothes, which refused to ever be anything but rumpled. “May I?” He gestured at the plate of cookies.

The Shadow-Puppet nodded. “It’s uncanny, seeing you in my son’s body.”

“You’re not my mom.” Leo sat back on the aggressively brown-plaid couch and crossed his arms, glaring at the floor.