Page 6 of Office of the Lost

Crispin dove for Leopold out of instinct, holding out Thea, his portable transport device and friendly companion—who had decided to be a phone in this gods-forsaken world—and landed in a sprawl across the surprised man.

Leopold sputtered, scrambling away from him.“What, are you crazy?Get off of me.”Then a look of horror crossed his face.

Crispin looked over his shoulder at the ceiling.Something dark and foul was growing there, as the shadows bubbled up from behind the cold box that had housed the Zima.He caught a hint of a gaping jaw full of dark sharp teeth and a whiff of something that smelled like the grave, at which point the lights flickered out for good.What in the fells of Hargsmarsh?“We have to go!”

Leopold made a strangled sound in the dark.

“Thea, take us back to OotL.Now.”

The phone’s screen lit up, and for a second Crispin wished it hadn’t.Tentacles with sharp claws on the tips were reaching for them from the small kitchen in the horrid little flat Leopold called home.

Then the phone’s light expanded, and he and his charge were sucked into it.

One of the tentacles had wrapped around his leg—and it was oh, socold—but then the creature was gone.

Crispin blinked, looking around anxiously.Something wasn’t right.

They should be in the Hall of Mirrors, his mission accomplished.Instead he was all alone, still surrounded by the sparkly blackness of the Un-Place, relieved only by a slight glow from the device in his hand.

He pried a severed tentacle off of his leg and tossed it aside.It sizzled into nothing.

“Leo?”Remembering his manners, he tried again.“Leopold?”

Nothing.

He lifted his mirror.Thea was still shaped like a phone, but her screen was cracked.“Thea?”

In response, she played a line fromThe Lost Snork’s Lament.“No one knows where the blind man goes….”

“Come on, Thea, talk to me… where are we?”

The screen flashed, sending a kaleidoscope of lights and a drunk-sounding hiccup.

“Did the dark cloud do something to you?”He looked around.“DidLeodo something?Where has he?—?”

The rest of his words were cut off as he landed face-first in a mound of grass.

He pushed himself up and scrambled backward spitting out a few purple blades and managing to sit up and look around.He was in a forest, a very purple forest, and something was howling in the distance.Damnable grass will probably stain my….But his tweedy jacket was gone, replaced by downy fur, and he seemed to have… antlers?

He was distracted from that revelation by a voice.“What the hell did you do to me, Crispy?And where the hell are we?”

Crispin turned to find his charge, at least he assumed it was still Leopold, staring at him and looking really annoyed.The human also had brown fur—except for a rather fetching white patch on his chest—a pair of short antlers, humanlike hands, and an elongated snout.

He looked just like a….

“Oh crap.”

4

Leopold

Purple.That was Leopold’s first impression, and it didn’t make any sense.But then again, neither did the sudden attack of vertigo and accompanying nausea, or the weird heavy feeling in his head, or his general sense of…wrong.

In fact, he was fairly used to disasters springing up around him, so much so that he became suspicious when life seemed to be going too smoothly.But he’d never felt so disoriented, so certain that his existence had just taken the wrong exit off the freeway.Wrong.That word again.

He staggered around for a few moments, trying desperately not to puke, and wasn’t sure whether to be relieved when he heard a familiar voice.It was that bizarre man, the one who claimed to be collecting him, although Leopold still didn’t understand why.Crispin Something.And when Leopold lurched around a large tree—a largeviolettree—there Crispin was, his back to Leopold and his smartphone held high.

“What the hell, Crispy?”

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