“No,” he says. “Should I be?” He looks thoughtful. “Maybe I should be …
but it’s not like I can get more cursed…” He shakes his head. “Anyway, no, I’m not afraid. We aren’t even summoning it today.” He looks at me and suddenly seems very afraid indeed. “You weren’t planning on summoning it today, were you?”
“Morgana, no,” I say. “I’m not cold-calling a demon. Let’s figure out the details of the curse first. Hopefully Kipper’s mother can read your arms— and hopefully they say something useful. What if, after all this, the tattoos are just decorative?”
I keep saying “hopefully,” but I’m not feeling especially hopeful about this trip. Kipper didn’t give us any reason to be optimistic last night. Once she got over the shock of seeing Shepard’s arms, she basically told him what he already knew: that he’s up the River Styx without a paddle.
But she clearly liked him. （Everyone likes him.） She invited him, a perfect and obviously cursed stranger, to come to her family home in Croydon this morning, so her mum can take a look. Apparently forging and translation is a family business, and Kipper’s mother is more fluent in Demonic languages than she is.
I think Kipper just wanted to see Shepard again.
（Merlin, am I jealous? Because some rando and her mother might help Shepard when my own mother wouldn’t? Or is it because Kipper has cool purple hair and a beautiful delphinium tattoo on her wrist that she probably drew herself…） （I could have purple hair. It’s a simple enough spell.） I hope Shepard isn’t planning on adding Kipper’s family to his collection of interesting magickal friends. Not with me involved. I don’t need new friends. Like, ever. But especially not amongst strange magickal creatures who live in Croydon. I don’t want to end this day with more problems than we started with.
“When we get there…” Shepard says carefully.
Could we actually be on the same track for once? “We’ll be in information-gathering mode,” I say, “not information- sharing mode.”
“Right, but—”
“No ‘but’s, Shepard. No extraneous words at all. The fact that you’re cursed is already too much information. They don’t need to know your life story—or mine.”
“It doesn’t hurt to be sociable, Penelope.”
I grab his tattooed forearm. “It literally does.”
“I just don’t think Kipper’s mother is going to be dangerous…”
“Do you ever?”
“All right. Fine.” He’s not smiling. He rubs one eye, under his glasses.
“Ten-four, Debbie.”
“‘Ten four.’ What’s that?”
“It means—I’ve got it. Copy. Roger that. Message received. No being sociable.”
“‘Impenetrable,’ that’s just what my friend Ken said. Ken’s a giant. There aren’t too many giants in the Midwest. I’ve never met any in Omaha. That’s where I’m from—Nebraska, right in the heart of America.”
We’re sitting in a kitchen with Old Kipper and her mother, who is indeed named Debbie, and Debbie’s boyfriend, who is literally a fox. （Maybe a fox spirit? Maybe something disguised as a fox? I’m waiting for Shepard to ask an impertinent question that will shed some more light on the subject.） At the moment, Shepard’s sitting on a stool with his jacket off and his T-shirt sleeves pushed up, while Debbie and Jeremey （the fox） shake their heads over his tattoos. Debbie has her reading glasses on. She has eight eyes when she wants, but she only wears glasses over one set of them. （ Eight eyes. And at least thirty fingers! Shepard didn’t even flinch when she unveiled an extra hand to poke at him.）
“Bloody impenetrable,” Debbie says again.
“So it’s not a Demonic language?” Kipper asks, craning her head over her mother’s shoulder.
“No, it is,” Debbie says. “But it’s legalese. You don’t need a translator— you need a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” I’m on Shepard’s other side, at the table. “For a curse?”
“For a contract,” Debbie says. “It’s as bad as he told Kipper—”
“Where did you learn Demonic languages, Debbie?” Shepard cuts in.
“Did you go to school for it?” He’s sitting there, perfectly at home, drinking a cup of Yorkshire tea. He’s already eaten half a packet of biscuits—it’s no wonder he’s been trapped by so many fairies.