"Can you see anything, Jessica," a voice asked.
"I think they've gone around the corner," a second voice replied from further away. "But I can still hear them. Something about a plant pot."
Jo put a hand to the side of his head. Full-beam vehicles, bag-swinging and nocturnal altercations. What else could happen, apart from a tap on the shoulder that made him almost shie like a tile-prancing horse.
"What the pippy-kins was that for?" he snap-whispered.
"We need to get away," Jay whispered back. "And what's with the pippy-kins."
"Are you really going to start up about exclamations with the mini-dictionary you have been coming out wi-there; I can see her."
"Halfway down the Avenue? That's good she's had a change of mind and is heading home."
"You wish. She's past the Veil."
"Wha-" Jay began then almost spun himself into the tree as he looked past the archway or tunnel of trees further up the next stretch to a figure moving in the light of the stretch after.
"She's up...there..."
"I know," said Jo, glancing to the right, scampering across the road, then bursting into two or three rectangle bounds. Although he eased off as he passed the section between the boundary wall of an open-starred garden/cloister and a carriage shelter; just as the pale shorts, jacket and triple-scarfed form of Jay burst past on the road-side of the carriage shelter as if he were in the midst of two-hundred-metre sprint.
"I'm taking care," Jo growled, more to himself than to the accelerator, who would have to ease off for the next crossing of the entrance to the next avenue by the name of Plenum Caeruleum.
"Same here," Jay replied, not slowing down, but coursing up into a full stride leap that carried him from lowered pavement to lowered pavement.
"That's decoration," said Jo, glancing down the moving carriageless length of the brighter and more open Caeruleum Avenue; complete with a named and crested house plaque; and accelerating across it. To which he did not receive the almost tennis return reply; instead, catching the sight of a now-easing-off and triumphant-spring Jay as he well-nigh jogged toward the figure of Suzé near a garden-side plume tree.
"That's right," he heard Jay pant. "Slow down because we've almost got-"
Jo's feet seemed to decelerate of their own accord. Especially as his mind was trying to take in what his eyes were seeing. Not the turned-around form of Suzé, but a raised eyebrows man.
"Oh, I didn't..." Jo breathed.
"Looks like you did," Jay replied between gasps.
"Care to enlighten?" the man asked, looking at the approaching Jo, then at Jay.
"Our apologies," said Jo. "He thought you were someone else."
"At his suggestion," said Jay.
"Hence the apology," answered Jo.
"Easy mistake at this hour," the man smiled, clear, even in the tree shadow and streetlight, like the gentle shimmer of his knee-length coat. "Perhaps your quarry is the figure yonder?"
Jo frowned towards the top of the gentle rise they were on. A figure, under the sharp glare of a streetlight, and approaching yet another one of the Avenues. Probably Miss K, if the street label of the one the man was near the edge of was indeed Feeber's.
"Let's hope so," he said, turning back to the man, and not taking in Jay's glare.
"Goodnight, or should I say morning to you both," the former said, turning the corner into the avenue that was indeed Feeber's.
"That was very sporting of you," Jay said as he drew alongside Jo. "Say 'our' apologies when it's all on you."
"He was where she should be if she had a head start."
"It's not even the same texture of coat. Plus, when was the last time that you heard someone say yonder?"
"What's yonder got to do with anything?" Jo said as he looked at the receding form of the stranger along the avenue; coat more like a tailed suit jacket than Suzé's; and at no stage had he ever seen any of her garments have the gleaming electric blue arms of a clock striking one.
"That's - not - right..." he said, taking in the glacial crescent moon that hovered above the glowing arms and the matching snow-lunar numeral that represented the same time as the clock.
"None of this is right," said Jay. "I should be asleep."
"His back," said Jo. "Can you see the symbol on the back of his coat?" almost stepping back as an azure fire now seemed to curl around the shapes. "It's...burning..."
"I can't see anything other than it looks like a jet twinkle fish has been draped over his shoulders. Plus, he's almost halfway along the street whilst you've had me staring at him."
Jo looked again, to be met by a cape- no coat - with the light-twinkling effect of fish or indeed, reptilian scales. "... Can't be," he began, turning back to Jay and catching sight of the other figure crossing the next avenue.
"Add it to the list of unusualities and figments of imagination," said Jay, launching into a sprint.
"Can't even shout at her because it'd wake this bunch up."