The House in the Cerulean Sea(87)

“You shut your flapping mouth!” Linus snapped. “You don’t get to—”

“I do,” the man retorted, slamming his hands on top of the counter. It echoed loudly around them and—

Theodore squawked angrily as his perch suddenly vanished. The clothes Sal had been in suddenly collapsed as he shifted into a Pomeranian. Linus remembered the first time he’d done that, when Linus had first arrived on the island. It had been done out of fear.

This man had scared Sal so much, he’d turned into a dog.

There were pitiful yips coming from the pile of clothes as Sal struggled to get free. Phee and Talia bent over to help him as Theodore flew over to Zoe. Chauncey moved to hide behind Linus, peeking out from around his legs, his new cap almost falling to the ground.

Lucy looked down at Sal, whose front paws were caught in his shirt. Phee and Talia were whispering quietly to him, telling him it was all right, to stop moving so they could get him free. Lucy turned back toward the man behind the counter. “You shouldn’t have scared my brother,” he said in a flat voice. “I can make you do things. Bad things.”

The man opened his mouth to snarl, but was interrupted when Arthur Parnassus said, “Lucy.”

Linus had never heard Arthur sound the way he did right then. It was cold and harsh, and though it was just a single word, it felt like it was grating against Linus’s skin. He looked over to see Arthur staring at the man behind the counter, eyes narrowed, hands flexing at his sides.

The man behind the counter didn’t seem to be afraid of the children.

But he was afraid of Arthur.

“How dare you?” Arthur said quietly, and Linus thought of a tiger hunting. “How dare you speak to them that way? They’re children.”

“I don’t care,” the man said, taking a step back. “They’re abominations. I know what their kind is capable of—”

Arthur took a step forward. “You should be more worried about what I’m capable of.”

The room felt warmer than it’d been just moments before.

Much warmer.

“Arthur, no,” Zoe said. “Not here. Not in front of the children. You need to think this through.”

Arthur ignored her. “All they wanted was ice cream. That’s it. We would’ve paid and they would have been happy, and then we would have left. How dare you, sir!”

Linus stepped forward in front of Arthur. He turned away from the man behind the counter to look up. He took Arthur’s face in his hands. He felt like he was burning from the inside out. “This isn’t the right way to go about this.”

Arthur tried to jerk his face away, but Linus held on. “He can’t—”

“He can,” Linus said quietly. “And it’s not fair. At all. But you need to remember your position. You need to remember who looks up to you. Who you care for. And what they’ll think. Because what you do here, now, will stay with them forever.”

Arthur’s eyes flashed again before he slumped. He tried for a smile, and mostly made it. “You’re right, of course. It’s not—”

The bell above the door tinkled again. “What’s going on here?”

Linus dropped his hands and stepped back.

“Helen!” the man behind the counter cried. “These—these things won’t leave!”

“Well. They don’t appear to have gotten their ice cream yet, Norman, so I should expect not.”

It was the squat woman from the hardware store. She still had the smudge of dirt on her forehead, though she’d divested herself of her gardening gloves. She didn’t look pleased. Linus hoped they weren’t going to have more trouble.

“I’m not serving them,” Norman growled. “I won’t.”

The woman—Helen—sniffed daintily. “That’s not up to you to decide. I would hate to bring up at the next council meeting how you’re turning away potential customers. Your lease is coming up for review after the new year, isn’t it? It’d be a shame if it wasn’t renewed.”

Linus thought the vein in Norman’s forehead was about to burst. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Helen arched an eyebrow. “Do you really want to find out?”

“I won’t do it!”

“Then go into the back and I’ll handle it.”

“But—”

“Norman.”

Linus thought Norman was going to argue further. Instead, he glared at the children and Arthur again before he spun on his heels and stomped through a swinging door. It slammed against the wall.

Helen sighed. “What a daft little bitch.”

“I want to be just like you when I grow up,” Talia breathed in awe. Phee stood next to her, nodding in agreement. She held Sal in her arms, his face pressed against her neck.

Helen winced. “Oh. Ignore me. I shouldn’t have said that. Never curse, children. Understood?”

They nodded, but Linus could already see Lucy mouthing daft little bitch in glee.

“Who are you?” Zoe asked suspiciously.

She smiled at her. “I own the hardware store. I had the most delightful discussion with Talia here about gardens earlier today. She was most knowledgeable.”

“Helen is also the mayor of Marsyas,” Arthur said. Whatever had been burning within him appeared to have subsided. He had his composure back and once again looked calm.