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"Timey wimey," Modesty said with a straight face and a raised eyebrow. "You don't say."
"Well, you know, it's, um, complicated?" The trench-coated man with the engaging grin wilted a bit under her severe look, but she didn't relent.
"Complicated," she said carefully, "is when you have to navigate between two rival spy services. I think that people with purple blood trying to infiltrate my home are slightly more than that." Crossing her arms, she waited.
"It has to do with something you did. Well, something you're going to have done. Right after you do it, their tyrannical leader will lose his job. And his life. Although I didn't have anything to do with that bit." A bit of his grin came back. "I can explain more if you like."
With a sigh, Modesty threw her hands in the air. "If I hadn't seen them for myself, I'd be calling for you to be fitted with a straitjacket. But I did and you will live to babble freely another day."
The grin came back full force. "Ms. Blaise, I can say with no reservations that it has been a pleasure. And it will be again."
Not giving him a chance to escape, Modesty grabbed the coat's collar and gave him a kiss on the cheek. His eyes went wide and she let go. "That," she said, "was for saving my life." And then she smacked his forehead with enough force to rock him back a step. "And that was for thinking Willie was one of those creatures. You scared me enough to take a year off my life."
His startled look faded and he smiled at her, more gently than his previous grin, and with a tinge of sadness. "It's good to have a companion, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is." Modesty watched him walk toward his police call box and wondered what had happened to his Willie Garvin.
--end--