“Such a square, big man,” Lucy muttered, but he knocked his shoulder against Linus’s hip, as if to show he didn’t mean it.
* * *
At half past two, they met the others in front of the ice cream parlor. People were giving them a wide berth and staring openly, but none of the children seemed to notice. They were listening to Chauncey, who appeared to be wearing a different hat than he’d been before. He was flailing excitedly while Zoe and Arthur watched him, looking amused.
“There they are!” Chauncey exclaimed. “Lucy! Talia! You’ll never believe what happened! Look what I got.” He lifted the hat off his head, stalks stretching excitedly as his eyes rose. In his tentacles, he held a familiar cap that looked like—
“He gave it to me,” Chauncey cried. “I didn’t have to ask! All I did was tell the bellhop I thought he was the greatest man who ever lived and that when I grew up, I wanted to be just like him, and he gave it to me. Can you believe that?” He set it back on his head. “How does it look?”
“Quite dashing,” Linus said. “I almost wish I had a suitcase so I could hand it off to you to carry for me.”
Chauncey squealed. “You mean it? You really think so?”
“It looks good,” Lucy said, patting the top of the hat. “Maybe we can figure out how to make a matching coat for it. I think I like it better than your other hat, though that one is good too.”
“Thanks, Lucy! Always at your service!”
“And just what do you have?” Arthur asked, squatting down as Talia and Lucy showed him their treasures. “Ah! What a lovely spade. And those records! We’ll have to listen to them as soon as we get back to the island.”
“Everything all right?” Zoe asked quietly, while the children were distracted.
“If you’re asking if any felonies were committed … sort of. But nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“Anything we need to worry about?”
Linus shook his head. “We’ll talk about it more once there aren’t so many little ears around. I don’t think they need to know what Lucy—”
“I threw a square named Marty against a wall after he tried to exorcise me in a small locked room! And then I got the records for free from J-Bone! Isn’t that righteous?”
“Oooh,” the rest of the children said.
Linus sighed.
“I think it’s time for ice cream,” Arthur said.
* * *
The ice cream parlor was cheerfully old-fashioned. There were red plastic swivel seats lining the front of the counter, and Little Richard was wailing overhead about a girl named Sue, tutti frutti, oh Rudy. It was brightly lit, the walls painted candy red and pink. A bell tinkled as they walked through the door.
A man was facing away from them, bent over a counter behind rows of tubs of ice cream in various colors and consistencies. He turned, a smile already growing on his face and said, “Welcome! What can I—” The smile faded. His eyes widened.
The children pressed their hands against the glass, looking down at the ice cream. “Whoa,” Phee said. “I’m going to get every kind at once. I’m going to get absolutely sick of ice cream.”
“You can pick out two flavors,” Arthur told her. “Nothing more. You don’t want to spoil your appetite for dinner.”
“Yes, I do,” she assured him. “I want to spoil it so bad.”
“You’re—you—” the man behind the counter sputtered.
“Yes,” Linus said. “I am me. Thank you for noticing. Children, please form a line. One at a time, so the gentleman isn’t overwhelmed—”
“No,” the man said, shaking his head furiously. “Absolutely not. You need to leave.”
The children fell quiet.
Before Linus could speak, dread beginning to flood through him, Arthur beat him to it. “Come again?”
The man was turning red. A vein throbbed in his forehead. “I don’t serve your kind here.”
Zoe blinked. “Excuse me?”
The man pointed at a wall. There, ever present, was a familiar poster. SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING!
“I reserve the right to refuse service,” the man said. “To anyone I choose. I see something, I say something. And I’m saying there is no way you’re getting anything from me.” He glared at Theodore, sitting on Sal’s shoulder. “You aren’t welcome in my shop. You aren’t welcome in this village. I don’t care how much we’re paid to keep quiet. Go back to your damn island.”
“You shut your flapping mouth!” Linus snapped. “You don’t get to—”
“I do,” the man retorted, slamming his hands on top of the counter. It echoed loudly around them and—
Theodore squawked angrily as his perch suddenly vanished. The clothes Sal had been in suddenly collapsed as he shifted into a Pomeranian. Linus remembered the first time he’d done that, when Linus had first arrived on the island. It had been done out of fear.
This man had scared Sal so much, he’d turned into a dog.
There were pitiful yips coming from the pile of clothes as Sal struggled to get free. Phee and Talia bent over to help him as Theodore flew over to Zoe. Chauncey moved to hide behind Linus, peeking out from around his legs, his new cap almost falling to the ground.
Lucy looked down at Sal, whose front paws were caught in his shirt. Phee and Talia were whispering quietly to him, telling him it was all right, to stop moving so they could get him free. Lucy turned back toward the man behind the counter. “You shouldn’t have scared my brother,” he said in a flat voice. “I can make you do things. Bad things.”
The man opened his mouth to snarl, but was interrupted when Arthur Parnassus said, “Lucy.”
Linus had never heard Arthur sound the way he did right then. It was cold and harsh, and though it was just a single word, it felt like it was grating against Linus’s skin. He looked over to see Arthur staring at the man behind the counter, eyes narrowed, hands flexing at his sides.
The man behind the counter didn’t seem to be afraid of the children.
But he was afraid of Arthur.
“How dare you?” Arthur said quietly, and Linus thought of a tiger hunting. “How dare you speak to them that way? They’re children.”
“I don’t care,” the man said, taking a step back. “They’re abominations. I know what their kind is capable of—”
Arthur took a step forward. “You should be more worried about what I’m capable of.”
The room felt warmer than it’d been just moments before.
Much warmer.
“Arthur, no,” Zoe said. “Not here. Not in front of the children. You need to think this through.”
Arthur ignored her. “All they wanted was ice cream. That’s it. We would’ve paid and they would have been happy, and then we would have left. How dare you, sir!”
Linus stepped forward in front of Arthur. He turned away from the man behind the counter to look up. He took Arthur’s face in his hands. He felt like he was burning from the inside out. “This isn’t the right way to go about this.”