"Well, hello, sleepyhead," said the girl sitting on the mall bench.
Tristan jumped, startled out of deep thought-He had emerged from the darkness about fifteen minutes before and immediately tracked Ivy to her job at Tis the Season. For the last few minutes he'd been trying to piece together the fragments of Ivy's dream and what those pieces meant, but his mind still felt dark and muddled. Lacey laughed at him. "Know what day it is?" "Uh, Monday."
"Brrtt." She did her obnoxious imitation of a game-show buzzer, then gestured to the seat next to her.
Tristan sat down. "It's Monday," he insisted. "When I came into the mall, I checked a newspaper, just like you told me to do," "Maybe you should have checked the latest one," Lacey observed. "It's Tuesday, and nearly one o'clock. Ivy should be taking her break soon."
He looked across the mall toward the shop. Ivy was busy with two customers, a bald old man trying on a Superman cape and a grandmotherly type holding a pink basket and wearing bunny ears. He knew that Tis the Season sold costumes and holiday items — most of which were out of season. But the recent darkness, the two customers in their odd outfits, and the presence of a very large woman carrying a bagel and coffee who had just sat down on Tristan made it all very confusing.
Lacey patted his arm. "I told you that you were too tired. I warned you."
"Move over," he grunted. He couldn't feel the woman's weight, but it seemed a little weird having her wide, striped dress flowing over him.
Lacey slid down a little and said, "I have something to tell you. While you were in the darkness, I've been busy."
"I already know."
The Monday paper had caught his attention because of an article on people gathering to pray in Times Square after an image of Barbra Streisand, projected on an electronic billboard, grew a chubby, pink angel body and flitted around.
"Does this have anything to do with the traffic jams on Forty-second Street?" he asked.
She dismissed the event with a wave of her hand.
"I read something about Streisand considering a lawsuit, and how the New York cabbies—" "Barbra should never have said I honked like a goose. Not that I couldn't have used a few more voice lessons—" "Lacey, how are you ever going to complete your mission?"
"My mission? Today I'm helping you with yours," she said, then sprang up from the bench.
Tristan shook his head and followed her.
"I went to the cemetery Sunday to pay a visit to Gregory's mother," Lacey said as they walked along with the shoppers. "While I was there, somebody came by, a tall, thin guy, dark-haired. About forty, I think.
He left Caroline some flowers."
"He's been. there before," Tristan said. "I saw him the day we were in the chapel." He remembered watching the visitor from behind, mistaking him for Gregory until he turned around. He could still see the man's face, full of anguish.
"What's his name?" she asked.
"I don't know."
They were heading away from Tis the Season. Tristan looked back longingly at Ivy, but Lacey marched on.
"We should find out. He might be able to help us."
"Help us what?" Tristan asked.
"Figure out what happened the night Caroline died."
They stopped by the fountain to watch cascades of water fall in pink and blue drops. One day, when nobody was looking, Tristan had made a wish here, a wish that Ivy would be his.
"I looked up Caroline's address in the phone book," Lacey went on. "Five twenty-eight Willow. Her date of death was written on her tombstone. I came here this morning to check out the shop records for that day." She paused and looked at Tristan expectantly.
When he didn't say anything, she said, "What an angel you are, Lacey, helping me out like this."
"What did you find out?" he asked, ignoring her sarcasm.
'"For one thing, that Lillian and her sister haven't a clue about how to keep business books. But after- a lot of hunting and squinting I did find it: a delivery on May twenty-eighth to a Mrs. Abromaitis on Willow Street — no house number given. I looked it up in the phone book. Guess what? Five thirty Willow."
"Right next door," Tristan said, his voice a whisper, his mind prickling with fear. "I knew it. Ivy saw something."
"Looks that way," Lacey agreed. She caught a coin that a woman had tossed toward the fountain and flipped it back at her. The woman stared down at it, then stuck the unlucky penny in a pot of ferns.
"Ivy saw something at Caroline's," Tristan said, "and it wasn't a suicide."
"We can't assume that," Lacey replied. "Caroline still could have killed herself, and someone could have been there afterward, taking something or hiding something. I mean, there are a lot of things Ivy could have seen—" "That she shouldn't have," Tristan finished Lacey´s sentence. "I have to reach her, Lacey!"
"I thought we should check out the house today."
"I have to warn her now!"
"I remember how we did a search on Perry Mason," Lacey said. She started pulling Tristan toward the mall exit, but he was intent on heading back to 'Tis the Season, and he was stronger. "Tristan, listen to me! There's nothing you can do to protect Ivy. You and I weren't given that kind of power. The best you can do is combine the powers you do have with someone else and make that person stronger. But you yourself can't stop anyone who wants to harm her."
Tristan stood still. He had never feared for his own life the way he now feared for Ivy's.
"As long as she's in a crowd, she's safe," Lacey added. "So let's check out the house and—" "As soon as she gets in her car tonight, she'll be alone," Tristan pointed out. "As soon as she goes for a walk, as soon as she goes up to her music room, she'll be in danger."
"There are other people at home with her," Lacey pointed out. "She's probably safe there. So let's find out who she has to watch out for and then—" But Lacey was left to talk to herself. Beth and Suzanne had just entered the mall. Spotting them, Tristan turned quickly and began to walk with them. He figured they were meeting Ivy for lunch. This time he would get through.
Ivy was standing by the shop entrance, and for a moment Tristan forgot she was seeing only the girls.
When he saw the look of welcome on her face, he hurried toward her, only to find she was now looking past him at Suzanne and Beth. It never got easier — the pain of being close to her, but far away, never seemed to lessen.
"Now, take your time over lunch," Lillian was saying to the girls. "It's a slow day, so do a little shopping.
Be sure to take a peek in that new gift shop. I'll bet they don't have glow-in-the-dark wind chimes."
"Not in the shape of leprechauns and fairies," Beth said. Whenever she came to the shop, she got a look of total wonder on her face. Suzanne had to reach back and pull her out the door.
Tristan followed the girls through the mall. They stopped at one store window after another, and he began to grow impatient. He wanted Beth to sit down right away and start scribbling in her notebook.
He thought they'd never get out of the Beautiful You shop, with all those bottles and tubes and little pots of color.
He began to pace from one side of the store to the other and ran head-on into Lacey. He hadn't realized that she had come along.
"Chill out, Tristan," Lacey said. "Ivy's safe for now, unless someone runs her through with a nail file."
Then she wandered off to a corner, as mesmerized as the others by the hundreds of colors— which all looked pretty much like red and pink to him. Tristan wondered whether, if he ever made it to the next realm, some mysteries about girls would be explained.