Colm blinked, a little taken aback as the girl sat down across from him and began a relentless stream of commentary and questions. A bit startled at being shaken out of his reverie, he looked around the room. The girl seemed pretty young to be traveling alone. Was her mother or father along with her? Not to mention being addressed as "Tall, Dark, and Handsome" by a girl who looked no older than eighteen made him feel distinctly uncomfortable.

A shadow seemed to move outside one of the windows, gone by the time he looked fully at it. His jaw tightened. Was he being visited by the Great Mouse Detective? In broad daylight and a public place? Where was it going to stop?

Colm forced himself to the present, and forced a smile on his face as well as the young lady extended her hand and introduced herself as Tallah. "Uh, Malcolm," he said, giving her hand a quick pump. "Just call me Colm. And yeah, the food here's real good. Heads and tails over other hotels. You know, it's weird, there was a guy just now. Real weird-looking guy. And he kept talking about the food in this town. I thought he was a little touched in the head, but now that I've had some of these eggs I see where he's coming from." Colm gave a smile at that, trying to seem light and at ease. But he was having difficulty focusing on Tallah, instead looking over her shoulder, out a window looking out into a small grassy courtyard.

It was there.

The leather jacket, the tie, the peaked hat. And below, where there should be a face, just dozens of mice piled together, crawling over one another and sniffing at the air, but always maintaining the same general shape of a human head. The clothing sometimes bulged, stretched, receded, and Colm could only guess that there were hundreds more mice underneath that coat. It stood in the courtyard, leaning casually against an ash tree, looking towards the window. Did anyone else see it? Could anyone else see it? He had never really dealt with it with other people around, aside from Maureen, of course. This was a first.

He took a long, desperate sip from his coffee, trying to hide his discomfort. He wasn't going to draw attention to it, he decided. If someone else noticed, great. But he wasn't going to say anything.

"So," Colm said, maybe a little too cheerfully. "Where you headed, Tallah?"