Poison by Molly Cochran

journey.”
    “Whatever. Barbie goes metaphysical.”
    “Who are you calling Barbie?” I demanded, sitting up.
    “You,” she said, looking at me levelly. “Because nobody rescued you. You went into the tankard, and you came out, all on your own power. You didn’t need a guy to make it okay.”
    “I needed someone to tell me how to get back,” I said angrily. “It sure wasn’t you.”
    “Oh?”
    “Peter told me to use the ring. Otherwise I’d never have known how to leave that place.”
    “What ring?”
    “The ring you gave me. It’s a magic ring, isn’t it?” I sounded like an interrogator.
    “Of course it isn’t. Going into that tankard must have burned up some of your brain cells.”
    “How else was I supposed to get out?” I shouted.
    “How would I know?” she shouted back at me. “You’re the one with the gift.”
    I was so frustrated, I crammed another cookie into my mouth. “These suck,” I mumbled, spitting into a napkin.
    “Okay,” she said. “Let’s be reasonable. Call Peter. He’ll tell you if he was there or not.” She handed me a phone.
    “Good idea.” I dialed his number. If he didn’t answer, I’dtake that as a sign that he was still at the lake. Or in it , I thought with a frisson of horror.
    “Hello?” Peter mumbled on the other end.
    “Where are you?”
    Smacking of lips. “I’m back in the limo,” he said with a yawn. “What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing. What are you doing?”
    Silence. Finally a sigh. “I’m sitting here,” he said. “I’m going home. To bed. Because it’s late, Katy. Any other questions?”
    “Oh,” I said. “Then you weren’t . . . somewhere else?”
    “I might have been,” he said patiently. “Can you give me a clue as to where?”
    “Like in a lake? Rescuing me from drowning?”
    “Is this some kind of prank?” he asked crankily. “I think you pretty much know everywhere I’ve been, since you’ve called me just about every hour on the hour since I left.”
    That hurt. I’d called only three times. “Okay,” I said contritely. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I really am.”
    “Hey, sorry. It’s just been a long and boring day,” he said, his voice softening. “You never bother me.” I could hear the sleepy smile in his voice. “How about breakfast tomorrow?”
    I laughed. We were both scheduled to work the six a.m. shift at Hattie’s. “Sure,” I said, and hung up.
    “I owe you an apology,” I said to Morgan.
    She arched an eyebrow. “So Peter wasn’t your knight in shining armor, huh?”
    I shook my head. “He was in New York. Actually, I knew that, but everything just seemed so . . . ” I caught myself. “I was going to say ‘real,’ but . . . ”
    She laughed. “I know. Who’s to say what’s real and what’s not?”
    “Especially here.”
    “Especially,” she agreed.
    “I guess I wanted Peter to rescue me,” I admitted. “I wanted him to . . . ”
    “To care?”
    “Yeah,” I said hoarsely. I was ready for her to make fun of me, call me a Barbie again or worse, but she didn’t. Instead she took a scarf off one of the display tables and wrapped it around my neck. “We all want that,” she said. “Sometimes it happens, and someone does care. But when it doesn’t, we have to be enough for ourselves. Do you get it?”
    I nodded. “Be my own hero,” I whispered.
    “Yeah, baby. Shoot, you’re the Mistress of Real Things, aren’t you?”
    “Damn right,” I said, although I didn’t feel as cocky as I tried to sound. I looked over at the tankard and shuddered. I could still feel that brackish water flooding into my lungs.
    “You okay?”
    I took the scarf off and gave it back to her. “I’m fine,” I said.
    She wrapped the scarf around her own shoulders. The moon shone through the skylight above and lit her face. I thought of the little filigree bird with the living eyes.

PART TWO
T HE M ISTRESS OF R EAL T HINGS

C HAPTER
    •
SIXTEEN

    I moved back to my dorm room