“How did you know?” began Kelpie and then stopped. The others were chuckling as at a great joke. Alex had put the blight of ridicule on her story—though it was at least half true. And now no one would ever be believing it at all!
“Beast!” she spat. “It is true!”
“As ever was!” agreed Alex jauntily and ducked her angry fist. Then he caught her wrist, put it firmly in her lap, and sat grinning at her. “You’re a wonderful wee liar, aren’t you just?” he observed admiringly.
“Ou, aye,” admitted Kelpie a trifle smugly before she realized that he had tricked her again. “But this time,” she pointed out with indignation, “I am not lying.”
“And would you not be saying the same thing if you were lying?” he persisted.
This time Kelpie saw the trap, but she was already in it. “Of course,” she admitted with forthright logic. “For what would be the good of lying if you did not say it was the truth? But”—she bristled, slanted brows scrambling themselves darkly above her short nose—“this time it is true!”
Alex laughed.
Kelpie tried for at least the twentieth time to put the Evil Eye on him. The result was a poisonous look, if not a blighting one. “Wicked, evil-minded beast!” she told him earnestly.
Ian looked at Alex judiciously. “Och, no; not wicked,” he said. “He’s a bit evil-minded, ’tis true, and surely daft.”
Kelpie blinked.