Page 88 of Search for the Lost

Leo laughed. “Deal.” He spit on his palm and shook Aspin’s hand.

Aspin pulled it back and stared at the slick wet palm before wiping it on the red-and-white-check tablecloth.

Crispin frowned. “How are we going to find out where my mother is? The witch is dead!” Leo’s trick had worked too well. Despair welled inside of him, or maybe it was just the aftereffects of gorging himself past all reason.

“Um, fellow journeymen?” Dietrich’s voice trembled. “What’s that?”

Crispin followed his gaze and then pushed his chair back from the table with a loud screech.

The pile of rags was moving.

“I thought she was dead?” Cypher was trembling.

Crispin gripped Leo’s hand. His beloved was shaking. He supposed they were all suffering from post-traumatic eating disorder and were afraid they would be forced to do it all again. If he never saw another piece of pie….

Dave and his friends were unfazed. The WOLF-mice hopped down from the table to investigate, sniffing at the moving pile.

WOLFs—even WOLFs in the form of mice—were fearless.

I need to take a lesson from them. Crispin peered over Leo’s shoulder to see what was going on. Leo put a hand on Crispin’s.

The clothing shifted and fell away to reveal a young girl sitting there. She looked somehow familiar. Her dark hair was pulled back from her forehead and tied into two rather severe braids. She was wearing a white cotton blouse and some kind of sundress, a blue-and-white-checkered affair that went with the tablecloth’s red-and-white pattern quite nicely. Her shoes were sparkly and silver, and her skin was a warm sepia brown, offset by bright blue eyes that matched the dress. “Hello, good sirs. You’ve freed me from the clutches of the witch, for which I am most thankful.”

Leo leapt up to help her to her feet. “Leopold Lane. Happy to be at your service.”

She flashed him a grateful smile. “I’m Dorothy. Dorothy Gale. And I just want to go home.”

30

Leopold

Well, of course it was her. Or it was she? Leo’s grasp of proper grammar was shaky at best. And that was probably not especially important at the moment, when Dorothy-frigging-Gale herself stood before him, looking sweet and innocent and adorable. Although she looked more like Dorothy from The Wiz than from the original MGM production. But did that matter?

“Where’s Toto?” he asked.

She frowned. “Toto? I don’t know who….” Before she could finish, all four WOLF-mice leapt at her, scampered up her dress, and perched on her shoulders. Instead of screeching, which would have been a perfectly reasonable reaction under the circumstances—even if she thought they were just ordinary rodents—Dorothy dimpled and made a lot of aww sounds. “WOLFs! How cute and wonderful!” The WOLFs preened a little, and to be honest, Leo was just a teensy bit jealous because these were his WOLFs. Mice. WOLF-mice.

On the other hand, he already had two fae, a faun of betrayal, a squirrel, and a whatever Dietrich was to worry about. Maybe it was best if the WOLFs found a new BFF. “That’s Spike, Dweezil, Hindie, and Dave,” he said. “They’re great. They love cookies. But where’s your home?”

She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Why, Kansas, of course.”

“Oh, good. Maybe it’s nearby. We’re just across the border, in Kansas City.”

She clapped her hands. “Wonderful! Then I can….” But her face fell and her shoulders sagged. “What if they’re still there?”

“Who?” Crispin asked sharply.

“Those horrible men.” She looked on the verge of tears.

But Crispin was relentless. “Were there five of them?”

“Y-yes. All in those horrible red clothes.”

Crispin turned to Leo. “The Red Dukes of Vespertine. It must be them.”

That seemed like a bit of a leap since other groups of five men also existed. The Jackson 5 and the Dave Clark Five, for instance, along with a whole slew of boy bands. Basketball teams had five players on the court. The Breakfast Club had five protagonists, although only three of them were male. But Crispin looked both convinced and desperate, and now so did Aspin, and meanwhile Dorothy was cooing sadly at the WOLFs.

“We’ll take care of it if they are,” Leo assured her.