Annie C


Deliah had borrowed a Center van to pick up Annie and her entourage, so there was plenty of room to include Nolan and Kerri. She took Denise into the back seat to show her the sylph accommodations, while Ray and Nolan stowed the luggage.

By the time the men got into their seats, Pet was moving from row to row, trying out every single seat. It was a common reaction, Deliah explained to Denise.

Sylphs usually find one or two seats and maybe a table set aside for them, even at the classiest restaurants. There’s never a sylph-chair in a car, bus, train.

The center’s vans had ten rows of ten seats. It would take Pet a while to try them all, but she was moving diligently, with a big smile.

Annie was seated next to Kerri in the front row. Kerri had just knuckled her way to the closest seat from wherever she’d been put down, and gotten dressed. It was her fifth time in a van like this. She was over the novelty.

For her part, Annie decided to affect a nonchalant attitude, accepting the seating as her due. Also, Pet was excited enough for both of them.

Ray sat by Denise, Nolan got in front, next to the driver. Deliah started to tell everyone about all the sylph celebrities that were going to be at the center this weekend. She glanced back to Kerri. “Other celebrities, that is.”

“What are the chances of meeting Electra?” Denise asked.

“You’ll be at the show,” Deliah promised. “I got the tickets from Sam and Amelia. And there’s a form to fill out.”

“Form?” Ray asked with obvious interest.

“Down, Ray,” Annie shouted. “It’ll be a personality profile, not story problems.”

Deliah laughed. “That’s exactly right, Annie. She has these ideas for her show. I’m not sure what all, but from the forms, I’d guess she wants to have one guest who remembers The Day, someone who was born a sylph, someone who’s lived in the wild… Stuff like that.” She eased into traffic.

Of course, in DC, ‘easing’ into traffic meant flooring the gas pedal and committing one’s soul to the divine. Everyone held their armrests tightly.

“I’d better fill out Annie’s form,” Ray said after a moment. “Else she’ll concoct a story about smuggling sylphs out of some tiny African nation, or searching a Florida swamp for Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth.”

“It could happen,” Annie protested.

“I would believe it,” Kerri told her, patting the sylph’s shoulder. She shouted to the driver, “So when’s my and Electra’s dance number?”

“Right after your walk on the tightrope,” Nolan told her.

“It could happen,” Kerri said softly.

“I believe in you!” Annie told her.

“ME, TOO!” Pet cried, running up from the last seat to hug Kerri. “You’d just have to go slow, and hand-over-hand, or I’d guess you’d be under the tightrope, so would that be hand under hand?”

“Kerri can be pretty underhanded,” Nolan mused.

Kerri ignored him and pulled Pet down into a tight hug. “Thanks,” she said. She grabbed Annie’s hand in a tight fist.

“Actually,” Nolan said, scratching his chin. “It would probably be as much work as the path you climb to go from your bed to the nightstand to my alarm clock.”

“What do you do to his alarm clock?” Annie asked.

“I ring the bell when it’s time to get up,” Kerri said. She pat the seat beside her and Pet sat there.

“No,” Nolan said, “she hammers the bell half an hour before it’s time to get up, because she thinks it’s time to be fed.”

“Ray!” Annie called. “You need to get a different sort of alarm clock!”

“I like the digital one, Annie,” he said.

“But I have this idea!” Annie insisted.

“I see you two haven’t changed,” Deliah said.

“Want them back?” Denise asked.



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Index

106. Electra B

108. Electra C