Page 47 of Search for the Lost

“Thea,” he said to the phone as calmly as possible, “Crispin’s not well. He learned that the escaped Chaos—me—hurt him back at the beginning, and now he’s had some sort of relapse. How do I help him?”

After a pause, Thea played a familiar three-note tone and in a tinny voice said, “The number you have tried to reach has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”

“Cut it out, Thea. I really need your help. Please.”

“I’m your only hope, princess?”

Leo placed Thea on the couch cushion so he wouldn’t be tempted to throw her at the wall. “This isn’t the time to joke. Don’t you care about him?” Gods, was Crispin even paler and colder now? Was his breathing worse?

Thea emitted a series of bleep-blip noises, like R2-D2 on a bender, and then fell silent.

“Yo, blondie! She can’t help you here, honey.”

It took a moment before Leo understood where that voice was coming from: the television. The drag performer had stopped lip-syncing and dancing and now stood fairly close to the camera, looking straight out of the TV screen at him. Her hair was flame orange, with a pair of shiny black horns peeking through; the end of her sequined devil’s tail hung over one arm.

“Uh… hello?” said Leo. Since people on TV had conversed with him in the past, he wasn’t exactly shocked at this turn of events.

She gave a princess wave. The color of her pointed nails matched her hair. “Hey, darling. I’m Vexx Riott—that’s double-x, double-t, double-G.” She gave her impressive boobs a quick squeeze. “That gadget won’t work in the green room.”

“Oh.” Leo sat carefully next to Crispin, feeling wilted.

“What’s with you and your boy, huh? You two got some kinda Freaky Friday shit going on?”

“Something like that.” Leo gently stroked Crispin’s hair, which probably didn’t help Crispin but also didn’t make matters any worse. If Crispin had any awareness of what was going on, maybe he drew some comfort from it. “But that’s not the problem at the moment.”

“So tell Miss Vexxy: what is the problem?”

She listened carefully while Leo gave as concise a summary as he could. Aspin, who’d perked up a little and was now sitting instead of kneeling, added a few details too. Including that when Chaos-Leo had escaped, Crispin had languished for weeks. Minkis interjected once or twice too, but in Squirrelese. Leo didn’t know if Vexx understood that, but he sure as heck didn’t.

“Okay, okay,” Vexx said when they were done. “I think I see the picture. You boys have landed in a heap of trouble. But you know what? Last episode, right before the runway walk, one of my heels snapped clean off and I got a sudden allergic reaction to my foundation. My cheeks puffed up so much I could barely see! But you know what I did?”

“Hmmm.” Leo didn’t want a pep talk right now. “Consulted an allergist?”

She rolled her eyes. “Honey, I kicked off both shoes and strutted my stuff. Didn’t need good vision for that—I just needed to make sure the judges had good enough vision to appreciate me to my fullest.” She gave a little hip wiggle. “And I won that competition.”

“Of course you did. You’re beautiful.” That was Aspin, who had apparently recovered from some of his fraternal grief.

Vexx blew him a kiss.

But Leo had had just about enough. “Congratulations. That’s great. But this isn’t a footwear mishap. Crispin’s really sick. And I love him, and there’s nothing I can do.” He had to swallow hard to keep from bursting into tears.

“Tsk. Of course there’s something you can do.”

Hopeless, Leo kept petting Crispin’s hair. Nobody else in the room seemed to have any solutions, and Vexx walked offscreen.

She returned a few seconds later, dragging a tall stool that she set down with a clang and then sat, legs crossed and tail hanging down. “You know, I wasn’t always Vexx Riot. Once upon a time, I was Dwight Triggs, assistant manager at a pizza place in Wichita. And it wasn’t even good pizza. We used premade frozen crusts and cheap cheese. And I used to get called every ugly name you can think of. I felt like I was a nobody. Useless.”

Leo could empathize with this, although he’d never managed to rise to the lofty heights of assistant manager. “Is this going to be relevant to Crispin somehow?”

“Just hush up. I was an unhappy man. But sometimes when I was at home, I’d put on a pretty dress and some makeup, and I’d dance around my apartment, and that would cheer me up. Eventually, I started doing full drag, but just for myself, behind closed doors. Vexx was born. And honey, when I transformed into Vexx, I felt so much more powerful! I still hated my job, people still called me names, but that stopped mattering so much. Now hold on!” She held up a hand. “I’m not going to say that your boy here doesn’t matter. Obviously, he means the world to you.”

“Several worlds, really,” Leo said with a sigh.

“What I want to say is that all that other crap stopped mattering so much because I was beginning to believe in myself. Didn’t matter what people said or how I paid the rent. Then I met someone good, someone who deserves me. I introduced him to Vexx. He told me Vexx ought to go public. He said that the world was missing out by not knowing about Vexx Riott. And honey, I believed him.”

Mom II was making aww noises and Aspin looked completely rapt, like a kindergartner at story time. Even Minkis was listening closely. But Crispin wasn’t improving.

“Fine,” Leo said. “So you became a famous drag performer, and⁠—”