Oakleaf pressed his palms and forehead against the rough bark, extending his mind towards the energy of the tree.
“Hello, little one,” soughed the lime. “What is your soul seeking today?”
“Hello, cousin,” the wood elf thought back. “May I ask for a favour?”
“Certainly, dear friend. What is it you need?”
“I’m not asking for myself. I’m asking for a guest who is also a neighbour.”
He gestured for Ingrid to step forward and place a hand on the trunk.
“Our visitor is a moon squirrel, but she is far from her own tree. Will you welcome her under your crown?”
“I don’t know her kind. What use would I be?”
“Without branches to climb, she can’t be herself. She would visit often so that her heart can sing.”
“Will she treat me with kindness? Will she respect the little lives in my leaves, on my twigs? Will she stay away when her were-nature wakes?”
Oakleaf relayed these house rules to his visitor, who nodded in assent.
“She will. And she is grateful.”
“So be it,” the big lime rustled. “But may I ask for a treat in return?”
“Of course,” Oakleaf replied. “What use can we be?”
Turns out trees like to hear stories about trees. Happy ones, mind.
***
“What on earth are they doing?” Josse and Adelphine were updating their to-do lists in their favourite corner of the warehouse café when something caught his eye.
Adelphine looked up from her clipboard and followed his gaze. On the far side of the room, on the booster platform they used for added visibility on the stage, the lutins were striking poses and prancing around. Several were attempting to manage improvised skirts.
“You know how you asked them to inspect the back wall?”
“Yes? And?”
“I think they found a hole. They were babbling about missing bricks and secret passages the other day.”
“On the cabaret side? Or on the steel door showroom side?”
“What do you think?”
The spontaneous spectacle now involved three tiny rascals lip-synching to a song only they could hear. They didn’t seem to have picked the same one.
“Well, this is new,” Josse concluded as he returned his attention to the preparations for the impending visit of the leak detection expert.
“I’ll have a word with Chlurp about hiding the craft,” he said. “And could you try to make the loft units look lived in? We don’t want any questions about what they’re for.”
Adelphine was about to suggest more refinements when Azélie walked into the warehouse and headed straight for their table.
“I followed the guy back to his office,” she reported as she joined them for a quick chat. “He did drive, but the traffic was so bad that I was faster on foot.”
“Good move. Didn’t he see you, though?” She was noticeable enough even without the bat-eared hood she was wearing when she left in the man’s wake, Josse thought. It just boggled his mind how anyone could fail to spot her. Even at forty paces in a rear-view mirror.
“Absolutely no situational awareness,” Azélie replied.
Luckily, Mr Obnoxious was fairly conspicuous himself – the bright-red city car with the personalised number plate had been easy to tail. It had eventually parked in front of a ground-floor office in a converted maison de maître, on a reserved space next to a luxury sedan with very similar plates.
“He stayed there until half past four, and then he left in his other car. I lost him near Schuman, going down Avenue de Cortenbergh. I guess he was heading for the motorway.”
Adelphine pictured a four-bathroom property in an affluent village just outside Brussels. A resigned wife and two unimpressed kids. More cars than household members; a large, expensively manicured garden that nobody used.
“Thanks, Azélie,” Josse said. “He did give us his card, but it doesn’t actually list a street address.”
She held out a hand, then studied her prey’s particulars while she sucked cherry cola through a pink cardboard straw.
“Give me the details,” said Minuit, who was listening in from the windowsill where he sat soaking up sunshine. “Maybe I can find mmm-ore … i-nformaysh-sh-sh-on…”
Azélie gawped at the AI cat from the side of their seating cluster that the pale rays didn’t reach. Daylight wasn’t her friend, and covering up would mess with her Victory Rolls.
Not the cable again, Josse thought – but then the AI cat’s glitch seemed to resolve.
“…nnnn online. Sorry,” it said. “I had this wave of happiness suddenly hogging my bandwidth. Very distracting.”
“Like that surge of sadness that came through the other day? You’re actually still having these episodes?”
“Not sure that’s what I’d call them. But yes.”
In fact, the interference was getting stronger, the cat added. Flashes of colour were now coming through as well, but the origin remained unclear.
“Should we worry?”
“How would that help?”
***
On the other side of the party wall, Cara was addressing an empty dressing room.
“Montrez-vous. Ça commence à bien faire, ces cachotteries.”
She arranged half a dozen of chocolate chip cookies on a plate as she spoke.
“Je suis certaine qu’on peut s’entendre, mais je veux qu’on me laisse travailler en paix.”
On a whim, she added a pair of fake lashes that she no longer liked, and a tube of orange mascara that hadn’t lived up to its promise.
“Ce qu’il y a sur l’assiette, vous pouvez l’avoir. Le reste, c’est pas touche. Et pas question d’effrayer ma collègue, fichez-lui la paix.”
I just hope it’s not a poltergeist, she thought as she placed her offerings on a candy-striped hatbox behind the racks.