pickup on mean street - 4. in the shadows

by bofa xesjum

part four of 16

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ali sat in the shadow of the warehouse and watched as the bus pulled out onto the road. were the magician and the man in the brown hat still on it? she did not know. she had not seen them get off, but they might have in the time she had taken to hop down the street to the warehouse. if the magician had been on the bus, going who knew where, how, she wondered, would she ever get back to being a human and not a rabbit. and, even worse, that left her with no way to recover the envelope which had been entrusted tp her. did she dare go back to the station? perhaps in the confusion of her being changed into a rabbit, the envelope had fallen on the floor of the station and was still sitting there. she decided to risk it. what choice did she have? the town seemed to be closing down. it seemed darker than when she had first escaped from the magician’s pocket and the station. the station itself did not seem as brightly lit. there was only one bus left in a dock. even as ali watched, the last bus pulled out, and lights were turned out in the station itself. then the station went completely dark. and a few minutes after that a man wearing a bright green baseball cap - the ticket seller? - came out a side door and began walking briskly away in the opposite direction from the warehouse. it was now or never! ali hopped back to the station. could she get back into it? the front door was a revolving door. she pushed against it, still in her rabbit body, and was able to slowly squeeze her way into it. whew! that was the hard part. she looked around. a tiny light was on behind the ticket counter, so faint she had not been able to see it from outside. she saw a gleam of white under one of the benches. the white thing under the bench was a piece of paper. there was writing on the paper. ali wondered if she would be able to read it with her rabbit brain, but her fears proved to be misplaced. the writing said - take this paper to aunt amelia and good things will happen to you. when you take it to her, do not forget to wear a nice hat because aunt amelia likes nice hats. ali sighed inwardly. this was not very helpful. in the first place, who might aunt amelia be? and where might she be found? even if this problem were solved, how was ali to reach her in her rabbit body? and how was she to carry the piece of paper? in her mouth? thousands of miles to alaska or china or egypt? and all this about a nice hat? a nice hat by whose definition? and could ali get the nice hat on her rabbit head? next