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it,” Al reminded her, reaching down to pat Ajax on the head.
    To my surprise, Ajax tilted his head sideways so Al could scratch behind his ears. If he’d been a cat, I’m sure he would have purred.
    I scowled at him. Apparently, I was the only human he didn’t care for.
    “We’ll be back soon, Betty,” Al promised as he bundled me and Ajax out the door and into his truck. “Good thing I didn’t have to work today after all, kiddo,” he said as the truck engine rumbled to life. “Now we can talk!”
    I tensed immediately.
    “You’ve impressed me, Sydney.” He nodded thoughtfully, pulling out of the driveway. “You see what everyone else ignores. You’ve a real head on your shoulders, and I’d say a knack for detective work. But there’s one thing we have to discuss, kiddo.”
    Apprehension flooded me. Al knew Rafael and Jareth were aliens. He was going to ask me about it. What was I going to say? Could I lie to him? I was a terrible liar.
    “People like you have a responsibility!” Al blithely continued, speeding down the road towards the shopping center. “And it’s people like us who uncover the truth. The real truth. And that requires us to keep the truth protected, Sydney! And to protect that truth, you must always remember the most important thing!”
    He paused dramatically.
    I waited with a rising sense of panic.
    “You’ve got to uphold the laws of our country!” he said, touching his hand to his cap in a salute.
    Nervous, I began babbling, “About that phone call, Al. It was Harmony, pretending to be me.” Harmony hadn’t known the Mackenzie Covert Code Phrase when I’d been trapped in Avalon with Rafael and she’d tried to impersonate me. Surely, not knowing the code had tipped Al off. “I couldn’t answer the phone, because … because…” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’d been in Avalon, the land of the Fae. I just didn’t see Al believing in fairies.
    Al’s face grew serious all at once. “Betty and I figured it out, Sydney.” He drew his brows together in a line. “But you don’t have to hide from us, kiddo. Rafael’s a different kind of kid, but he’s a decent one. I knew that the day he saved Tigger. We don’t mind you dating him.”
    “Huh?” I blinked.
    “It’s that Marquis we’ve got to watch. I’m sure Rafael doesn’t have a clue that his dad’s up to no good.” Al pulled into the busy parking lot, turned off the engine, and dropped his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “At first, I thought it was just drugs. Why else would a rock star hang around that house so much? But then Jack brought up another possibility.”
    I remembered Jack, the janitor in the air force base in Arizona who had sent the alien detection kit and how it had shrieked the instant Marquis and Rafael had arrived for Thanksgiving dinner.
    “We could be dealing with something out of the ordinary here, Sydney,” Al informed me seriously.
    I couldn’t stop myself. “You mean like fairies and lizard people?”
    To his credit, he gave it due consideration before shaking his head. “I don’t think it’s your aliens this time, kiddo. Let’s look at the facts. Marquis didn’t know who Yoda was.” Al held up his fingers and began ticking off items one at a time. “He’s never had a good, old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner. That means he’s a foreigner. And he was messing around with that laser tube in the trunk of his car. That had to be high-grade military equipment there.”
    I wanted to point out that the military equipment was actually a Tulpa cultivated by the lizard people, but Al seemed to be shying away from the paranormal and delving into governmental conspiracies. “But how do you explain the alien detection kit going off at Thanksgiving?” I couldn’t resist asking.
    “Jack says high-grade military equipment would’ve set it off.” Al was noticeably enjoying himself. “I have to admit, I was right there with you in thinking