He stumbled into the road, hurt and confused, as the old lady stormed back up her garden path. The front door slammed shut with a dreadful finality.
As the shock of his abrupt expulsion subsided, a potent sense of injustice welled up like an oil strike. After being scratched by a foul-mouthed cat, strangled by a sheet, and attacked by half a dozen domestic appliances, he had now been wrongly condemned in absentia as some form of moral leper – it was utterly outrageous. Who was this woman Leggett anyway? And what right did she have to go passing judgement on him?
Then, in the midst of his righteous seething, the face from the old lady's mirror winked at him and green saliva trickled over its lascivious, leering lips. Loofah shuddered. No, he wasn't like that, he wasn't like that at all, he thought, nervously fingering his nose. Miss Leggett must have made a mistake, she must be confusing him with someone – . His brain stopped dead. 'I've already told you,' whispered a voice in his head and he shivered with a strange dread.
Something in his hand wriggled through his distraction – he was still holding one of the pegs.
'She Who Is Two, She Who Is Two,' it squawked, fixing him with its black bead of an eye.
'Unh? What about her?'
'You're The Seeker – you must find her!' And with that, it clamped itself viciously around his forefinger.
'Ow! You bloody thing!' Loofah cried, wrenching the peg off and then hurling it – squawking furiously – onto its mistress's front lawn.
As he set off up the road clutching his throbbing finger, he heard a car approach from behind, although this time with an assured purr rather than a bellicose roar. He stepped onto the verge out of its way, but instead of driving past, it pulled up alongside him. It was the emblem on the front door that Loofah noticed first: a victor's laurel wreath embracing a large ornate 'S', all in glittering gold leaf. And below this, in neat official lettering, were the words: 'The Company – courtesy vehicle'.
The One Who Is Two (Book 1 of White Rabbit) Page 22
