"Who sent you, Visitor?"
"It's my turn to ask the question" it snaps. Indignant, it sits bolt straight, clenching Jessica's fists. Then falters and blinks like something just wakened. "Sorry about that. Mad little cow's got this real sense of fair. Justice, sort of. Ironic, what with all the murder and all… Better watch yourself, Doctor."
"Oh, I'm quite capable," I tell it.
"Really?" It brings up Jessica's right arm, pointing straight at me. On instinct, I duck away across the room, expecting the stake again. Nothing happens, though. No little wood-and-metal noise. The Visitor starts to laugh, then realizes this fact. "What the hell?"
"What are you doing?" I balk at it. About five seconds too late to look cool, I remember to take my arms down from protecting my head.
"Trying to figure out how the weapons system works!" It tries picking at the scab, looking underneath for the ends, but apparently it feels Jessica's pain as well as her sense of right and wrong and it stops. Sighs, "Try again later."
It will and all, I'll make sure of it. And it had better get the bloody hang of it. "You had a question, Visitor of Mine?"
It stops poking at Jessica's arms and stops, blank-faced, forgetting. "Sorry, you'll have to give me a second. I've left it around here somewhere." All of a sudden my mental image is of some tiny little visitor running around the immense and almost certainly chaotic office of Jessica's mind. That, of course, isn't what's happening, but that's how I'm thinking of it. "Oh, yes!" it cries, and claps, the eyes alight and the smile open and genuine. Then sinks back again, "Christ Jesus, she's an excitable little thing… Yeah, what size are your shoes?"
"I beg your pardon?"
It's staring, too, and looking mildly, morbidly fascinated, at my feet. Which I've never really been quite so aware of as I am at this moment. That gaze makes me want to take them off and put them away in a cupboard somewhere. This not being an option, I edge behind the coffee table so it can't see anymore. "It's a standard question, Doctor. Usually I'd just guess, but… I'm not comfortable guessing anything above a ten."
"I'm a twelve," I answer. I am surprised, on looking down, to find that I am rather fussily holding the neck of my dressing gown closed.
"Don't get embarrassed," it says. And it is, almost believably, sweet and kind. Leans forward, and doesn't quite look at me, as if suddenly aware that it's made me self-conscious. "Big feet are cool. Make you stable. You'd look stupid with smaller feet." All of this is very nearly comforting, very nearly nice-of-it-to-say-so. It's just that I wonder why it said it all at all. And it knows that. "I'm not trying to trick you, Doctor. It was just a question."
No it wasn't. No way that was just a question; it was too surreal not to mean anything. Too random to be random. Now it's my turn to question and the overwhelming desire is to ask it what it's up to, what the question meant. But that would waste a question, wouldn't it?
Instead I ask it, "Who sent you here?"
"Nobody sent me. I was called."
"By who?"
"Ah-ah-ah! Quid pro quo, Doctor."
"Nobody called you, Visitor. I was speaking to Jessica and you gate-crashed."
Its gaze turns inward, and then the eyes close. Bringing Jessica's hands to rest on its stomach. "She goes all fluttery when him not calls her Little Ghost anymore. She doesn't know what to call it. I know you told me not to leave anything behind while I'm in here, but can I teach her the word 'happy'? Please?"
"You need to explain what you said, Visitor."
"Because she was always told that no matter what she did, however closely she followed the rules, that the Twohearts would know her. And that she would have to kill them first, because they only ever thought of her one way and that was as pending-dead. And now you're calling her by a people-name and everything. She's loving it."
That wasn't what I meant. The Visitor very probably knows that. I meant for it to explain about somebody calling it here, of course. It knew that was what I meant and didn't want to tell me. So it told me rule number four instead. And now it is lying on the couch with the notepad propped up against its knees, adding it to the list. It must always wear its mask and never hear a sound and never speak a word and none of it will do any good anyway. The Visitor knew I'd push it for more, and decided instead to leave me speechless.
"You haven't tried to kill her," it finishes, "and for that you have her eternal loyalty and gratitude."
By accident, I meet the Visitor's eye, a dark and shifting something behind Jessica's. We're thinking, I know by its expression, the self-same thing; what kind of life is that?
That's when I remember that I can't afford to fall into this trap. And it is, by the way, a trap. I don't know what the Visitor wants, but it is far more likely to get it if I'm sitting here thinking that it's not all bad, that it understands me, that we're building a rapport of some kind.
"Can I ask you, Doctor?" it says, widening Jessica's huge eyes, sticking out her lower lip, "Can I make it my next question-"
"No, because you haven't finished answering mine yet-"
"I was quite done, thank you very much," she snaps, a blink-and-miss betrayal of that nasty little play at being sweet and sad. "But can I ask you, in light of all this, what your favourite colour is?" Slowly, sweet and sad disappears in a mad cat of a grin. If ever I had wanted to trust it, that is over now.
"Blue," I tell it. "Now, my dear Visitor, if you want to go on I'm afraid I need more from you than a couple of questions answered."
It tosses Jessica's head with low, long groans of boredom, throws the arms and legs out long and limp. "This could be so easy! Answer me and I go and then you can talk to whoever you want!"
"Oh, right, so you can't leave until I answer you then?" It claps a hand to Jessica's forehead and swears under her breath. I almost tell her off for language before I remember who I'm really talking to. "Good to know, Visitor of Mine."
"What do you want?" it sighs.
"I want to know that the people outside the door are alive." And I want to see how the Visitor moves, how it got into this room and into Jessica, how it intends to get out again. But I don't tell it that. It might suspect there was some trick going on, some kind of foul play.
In truth, that's not my plan, and nothing to do with it, but I don't need it getting suspicious of me.
It eyes me like it knows that.
"Yeah," it smiles, "all right."