Her own heart skipped a beat and her snowy thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice, one that had haunted her dreams for a short interval in what seemed like years ago. It was Palette (there no mistaking the Zoroark with the globs of paint always trickling from her hair), and she immediately cut off her chatter when PK looked up. Devonshire was directly in front of her, with his back turned to PK, and apparently she had been conversing with him moments ago. PK knew that Palette was actually alive and had known ever since that exhausting morning when Shroomsworth had told her such. Told PK that her death count (or rather, murder count? if not, then perhaps assisted murder count?) was still at one, and had narrowly avoided becoming two. So was it really any wonder at all that PK’s body went numb and her legs started to liquefy in the face of these two?

Devonshire turned toward the Merchant’s hut and its owner, revealing a perfectly stoic expression. It was always so hard to tell what he was thinking, which was a big part of why she never wanted to deal with him. A customer you can’t read is a customer who might be taking as he pleases and giving away no evidence of his misdeeds. That’s what her dad always said, and her dad never liked doing business with this fellow. She also hated it, herself, though she didn’t particularly fear him. Ghosts had never much bothered or startled her, and Devonshire was no exception.

His eyes shone for a moment. “Miss PK, I have a proposition for you. I encourage you to hear me out before declining,” he said without so much as opening his mouth. “Dear Palette here is without a home, you see, and I think it would be very much in your interests to allot a plot of land for her.” He motioned to Palette, both drawing attention to her and causing her to avert her gaze from PK.

Well, that wasn’t so bad. There was plenty of land out near the forest that she could spare, and that would be fine if--

“In the village itself,” he added.

She was dumbfounded, and besides that, she was trapped. She wanted to protest, wanted to personally control any building that was going to be set up in the heart of her village, but knew this was an argument she wasn’t really going to win.

“But not without compensation, of course,” he further continued. “I do understand that you have a business to run and cannot just hand over valuable pieces of land.” He laughed. “I understand that very well!” He surely must have been referring to the fact that he actually owned his building and a bit of land in a small circumference around it. It was a deal that had been made over a century ago, before her grandparents had been born even, with the first Kecleon to settle the land. There had been no other deal quite like it until PK had sold Chill only the biggest tree in the village, not the land around it. Well, there was also the whole mess where half of the village had been controlled by Twigs’s family at one point... but that wasn’t quite the same as the deal currently being proposed.

PK wasn’t in a spot to refuse Devonshire and he knew it. Knew it quite well. And still, he was offering to pay a nice penny, despite that he easily could have gotten away without doing so. After all, that had been one of the (very, very few) things she regretted -- accusing an innocent Palette. It had inspired mixed reactions, from fear of having Devonshire’s gaze fall upon unsuspecting victims, to anger at PK for causing such an untimely fate to befall the painter. She had not a clue that Palette couldn’t have been the Zoroark that had caused the brief troubles; PK could only recall her anger from a couple years ago at the illusions Palette had used to try to con her out of money. Palette was just unfortunately the first illusionist to come to mind. PK had no idea that Devonshire had a much better grasp of the overall cause and of the culprits than she, nor was he really willing to share that knowledge until it befit him. It finally had, and he had spoken to her a little of it during their walk back to Tao after the disaster.

The bottom line was simply that Devonshire could have arranged for Palette to have a choice home for free, if he had really wanted to. There was certainly enough sympathy and empathy flowing for the poor girl that it would have drowned PK had she let it. She would not, however, and she would give Palette her stupid house.

PK found the strength in her legs alongside the resolve to end this quickly and get back to work. “I get it. There’s no more room inside my planned moat area, but there’s space just outside of it. That’ll have to do,” she said. “That’s as much as I can spare.”

This was enough for Devonshire. He broke into one of his infamous grins. “It’s all very well then. Either you can come to my office later, or I can return here to work out details. Sooner, rather than later. Time’s very short right now, and who knows when it shall run out?” he said, taking some horrid delight in such an ominous phrase. Even if Devonshire was being fair in offering her any money at all in exchange for the plot, this didn’t make him any less creepy than he always had been, intentional or not. She would stop by later, go over the paperwork, be done with it.

“I’ll swing by later,” PK said. “I need to take care of a couple of things first.”

He shrugged and left the area with the not-so-dead Palette. PK exhaled relief. Palette made her extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t often that a supposedly dead “criminal” returned fully alive and completely innocent. Usually it was either one or the other--or neither-- as Gnasher had proven. But, even Gnasher had apologized for things he did... PK had heard as much from Rhodes. Even that despicable guy had tried to put his past behind him and make better of himself. It was incredible. No, like, actually incredible--in the sense that PK didn’t believe it for a moment until she talked to Gnasher herself.

...only to find out that he really did seem as sorry as was feasible for such an arrogant ghost. It was quite a wonder, and with a pang of sorrow in her heart, wished Shroomsworth could see the change for himself.

She pondered this for several more minutes before the call of Malt’s voice rang through to her. She decided that he could wait, and walked off toward where Palette disappeared to go apologize herself.

====

Part 19 of "The Dates"

Prev:
Next: