Page 23 of Office of the Lost

“Four….”

The water flashed black, and then golden, the color of sunrise on half a dozen worlds Crispin had visited.

“Three….”

“This is the best trip I’ve ever been on.”Leo took his hand again and squeezed it.

“Two….”

Maybe things were about to get back on track.Maybe Thea was working again, and he’d be back in the Office in a couple more seconds, none the worse for wear, his perfecality score intact—or at least only slightly dinged up.A fae can hope.

“One.”Thea’s voice changed, becoming deeper, somehow ominous.She continued:

One lethéd hour that duty never brings,

Oh!one dim hour to drift, Moth Moon, with thee!*

Then three things happened at once.

The Dome of Order that had been protecting them flashed and disappeared, letting the smoke in.

Someone screamed.It might have been him.

And the world dropped away from under their feet, leaving them in free fall.

* From the poem “Moth Moon” by Florence Ripley Mastin, public domain

https://poets.org/poem/moth-moon

10

Leopold

Wings.

Enormous and white, glittering as if set with millions of tiny diamonds, as delicate-looking and translucent as gossamer silk yet somehow tremendously strong.

“Ooh.”Leopold reached out to touch, because who wouldn’t want to touch them, who wouldn’t want to stroke and see whether they were as soft as they looked, whether they would caress his skin and?—

“Hey!No grabbing!”Crispin stepped back angrily.

Leopold blinked and realized they weren’t in the Pond of Disappointment.In fact, they weren’t even damp.Instead, they stood in a vast meadow of green grass that he felt no desire to munch on.Overhead in the twilit sky hung three moons of varying sizes.He wondered idly if any were made of cheese.

Crispin was gazing around too and looked disappointed.“This isn’t the Hall of Mirrors.”That seemed fairly obvious due the absence of bothhallandmirrors.Maybe the pond water had gotten to him.

“Then where the hell are we?Did you really expect everything to work right when we were at a frigging disappointment pond?What was the deal with that Chaos Cloud thing and why is it trying to get us?How are you gonna get me home?How can I—” Leopold stopped as a revelation hit him.“Dude.You havewings.”

The fur, antlers, long muzzle, and hoofs were gone, and now Crispin looked pretty much like a regular person with fairly pointy ears.He wore a sleeveless knitted bodysuit that ended at the knees.It had navy and white stripes and reminded Leopold of a Victorian bathing costume.

Crispin was slowly waving his wings, which were almost as big as he was.“Leo,” he said sternly, “will you kindly try to focus?”

“But… wings.”

“Yes, of course.You have them too.”

“I….What?”Leopold craned his neck to look behind him, and sure enough, a pair of wings had sprouted from his back as well.They weren’t the feathery kind like birds have, but were instead diaphanous and double-lobed like a butterfly’s.And he couldflutterthem, which felt amazing, sort of like a really good back stretch.“I have wings!”

Leopold was also wearing a close-fitting bathing-costume thing, only his was made of spandex—or something like it—patterned with random splotches in 1980s neon hues.It could have been sort of embarrassing because his body had none of Crispin’s slim strength and because the tight fabric leftverylittle to the imagination, but he hadwings, godsdammit, and that was awesome.

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