Page 35 of The Bad Weather Friend

“Craggle,” he said.

“Spell that.” He spelled it, and she said, “Spike Craggle.”

He corrected her. “Spike the craggle. It’s not a last name. It’s like saying, Benjamin the human.” Focusing on Benny, he produced a terrifying smile. “I am your craggle, your bodyguard, lifeguard, paladin, defender. Many of your friends will be fair-weather friends, Benjamin, but I will be there in bad weather, in worse weather, in any weather.”

(This book was originally titledSpike the Craggle. No one in the marketing department was enthusiastic about that. I am pleased to be able to say that Spike made no attempt to intimidate me into calling itSpike the Craggleanyway. He’s not that kind of entity.)

So then ...

ON THE ROAD

So then they were aboard the Explorer. They had been standing in Benny’s white-on-white living room, and he had blinked, and in the fraction of a second that his eyelids were closed, the three of them had been transferred into his SUV. They were cruising down the hill from Cameo Highlands to Pacific Coast Highway, Spike driving, Benny riding shotgun, the sky ablaze with stars, the moon full, the coastline bejeweled with lights.

From the back seat, Harper said, “The fun keeps on coming.”

Once he was free from Briarbush Academy and disentangled from everyone who remained in his dysfunctional family, a new spiritual buoyance had swelled in Benny. Since then, he’d thought of himself as a fun guy, not a raucous party guy swilling champagne and shaking his booty on a dance floor, but a guy with a keen sense of humor and a positive attitude and a heck of a lot of interesting life stories to tell. He knew what fun was, and he was always up for fun, but—with all due respect to Harper—this wasn’t it.

“How’d you do that?” Benny asked.

Spike turned his head to look at him, both eyes inserted where they should be. “Do what?”

“We were there. Now we’re here.”

“Just a time thing.”

“What time thing?”

“Sort of an origami time-fold trick.”

“Clear as mud.”

“That’s all I can say. It’s a craggle secret.”

The giant hulked so large that it didn’t seem possible he could fit in the driver’s seat, but there he was, hunched over the wheelso that the top of his shaved head wouldn’t be pressed against the roof. Although he hadn’t hitched himself into his safety harness, the Explorer wasn’t warning him, either with a strident tone or a flashing instrument-panel symbol, that he was breaking the law; it didn’t dare.

Harper said, “Okay, so what’s a craggle?”

“Me,” said Spike.

“Could you be more specific?”

“That’s about as specific as it gets, little lady.”

“Are you from another planet?” Harper asked.

Spike laughed and laughed as he pulled to a stop at Pacific Coast Highway and waited for the traffic light to change. He had a husky, whiskey-soaked kind of laugh that Benny would have found contagious under other circumstances. Then he said, “Why would you think I’m an alien?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Harper said, “maybe the eye thing and the time-fold trick.”

“Just standard craggle tactics.”

“Where do craggles come from?” Benny asked, feeling as if he were trapped in a collaboration between J.K. Rowling and Monty Python.

“Where does anything come from?” Spike said, obviously taking pleasure in being obscure. “It’s all a mystery, isn’t it? Mysteries within mysteries.”

Harper said, “How many craggles are there?”

“At all times, there are as many craggles as the world needs. Actually, quite a few at the moment. The world is currently in a most sorry condition. So many urgent missions to be undertaken.”

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