Weston smiled. “To see you.”
“Why? You haven’t come to see me before.”
“Then maybe it is the right time.”
“Why here? Why now?”
“This is where you are. If I wanted to see you, then this is the place to come.” He rolled his eyes at the mortal’s dimness.
“It is difficult for humans to understand,” Harrison explained to Weston. “Their understanding of time and space is so limited.”
On one hand, Reg wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to learn more about the immortals, and Weston in particular. But she remembered the difficulties they’d had with Weston and the Witch Doctor before him. Considering all of Francesca’s warnings about not having anything to do with the immortals, she knew it was probably wiser to either get them to leave, or to leave herself.
But she wanted to eat and wondered where her food was.
Harrison motioned to the table in front of her, and Reg looked down to see the burger she had ordered. She was pretty sure she hadn’t missed the waitress delivering it.
But she was hungry and didn’t care where it came from. She picked it up and took a bite. “Why do you want to see me?”
“Ah.” Weston tapped the table thoughtfully. “You are in the Everglades.”
“Yes.”
He nodded as if that were his answer.
“You’re here because I’m in the Everglades? But why?”
“You will have to ask your companions if you do not know. I would also like to know why.”
Reg tried to follow his meaning. “You want to know why I’m in the Everglades?”
He raised his brows and nodded. Reg looked at Corvin, sitting against the aquarium but no longer interested in the mermaid show.
She didn’t ask him what she should say in so many words, knowing that Harrison and probably Weston too could read at least some of her thoughts.
Corvin gave a slight shake of his head. Reg looked back at Weston and didn’t tell him why she was in the Everglades.
“It’s been an interesting trip so far,” she said. “Have you ever been here before?”
“Of course. I have been many places.”
She studied his face and tried to read him. Immortals were more difficult. It was like reading another species without conscious human-like thought. Like when she had reached out to the panther. Immortals’ consciousness felt more scattered. Operating on another plane.
“Why have you been here before? To watch the mermaids?”
“Humans are much more amusing than mermaids.”
“So, you came to watch humans?”
His eyes slid over to Harrison. “There are no rules about watching humans,” he said. Even without inflection, she knew it was a question. Making sure he hadn’t broken immortal rules before telling Reg anything about it.
Harrison spread his hands. “Watching, no. As long as you’re not producing progeny.”
Weston chuckled. “Their males are too delicate to incubate offspring.”
Males. So he hadn’t been there to watch a woman or a group, but a specific man.
“Who? What man?”
“I did not ask his name. Humans, like immortals, can go by many names. I did not need to know.”
Reg rolled her eyes, frustrated. She dug into her hamburger, taking a bite that was much too big and required plenty of chewing and straining to swallow it down. Reg chased it with several swallows of her drink.
The waitress returned, carrying a platter with their meals on it, and looked at the plate already on Reg’s table in consternation. She served Corvin his meal and looked at Reg, not sure what to say.
“Uh… did someone else bring this?”
“Yes.”
Reg didn’t give the waitress any details, and she apparently wasn’t sure how to pursue it. She looked at Harrison and Weston.
“And… did you gentlemen want anything?”
“I am here to see Reg Rawlins,” Weston said, nodding toward Reg.
“Uh… okay. And you…?”
“I would like that one,” Harrison pointed at one of the mermaids in the aquarium.
The waitress’s jaw dropped. She looked into Harrison’s face, trying to understand the joke. “Ha… ah, I mean, do you want something to eat. Something on the menu.”
“Do you have chocolate cake?”
Reg remembered Harrison devouring a black forest cake he had made appear in her cottage.
“Yes,” the waitress agreed “Nothing for an entrée?”
“Just cake.”
She nodded. “Okay. I’ll bring that to you shortly.”
The poor waitress returned to the kitchen with the burger she had brought out for Reg.
Reg was getting tired of trying to find any logic in Weston’s appearance. He wanted to see her because she was in the Everglades. It didn’t make a lot of sense. As far as she could tell, he didn’t have any special connection to the Everglades. He had been there before, but apparently didn’t remember much about it. Maybe he was just sightseeing. Curious as to what she was up to. Since he had been released, she had always been in Black Sands. Perhaps just the fact that she had left Black Sands had drawn him to check on her.
“So you just wanted to see me?”
Weston looked at her, but his eyes were distant, as though his thoughts were far away. “Eh? What’s that?”
“You just wanted to see me. That’s why you came here.”
“I want many things.”
Reg didn’t know how that could be true. He could, seemingly, go wherever he wanted and have whatever he wanted. How could he want for anything?
She had seen in people before, though, the tendency to want more, the wealthier they got. A poor, struggling person wanted food in her belly and a roof overhead. Her wants were dictated by what her body needed. A wealthy person, who had everything his body required, had lists of material possessions he wanted and was never satisfied with what he had. Maybe it was that many times magnified for Harrison. He could have anything, so he wanted everything.
“Do you remember Lethe?” Weston said suddenly.
“Lethe?” Reg shook her head, wondering if that was a person’s name and how Reg was supposed to know her. “I don’t know who that is.”
Maybe someone she had known as a child? A friend of her mother’s? A neighbor who had taken care of her when her mother was passed out? The neighborhood cat?
“Who!” Weston chuckled, sharing the joke with Harrison. “Not a who.”
“Do you mean the river Lethe?” Corvin asked.
Weston looked over at Corvin, surprised, as if he hadn’t even been aware before that someone was sitting next to him. “The river Lethe, yes.”
Corvin nodded and looked at Reg. “It is from ancient Greek mythology. A river that flowed through the underworld. Drinking its waters would make you forget.”
“Forget what?”
“Forget everything. Your pains. How you got there. Your past life. So that you were just… present. No past.”
Reg shuddered. The past was something that she wanted to leave behind. She didn’t want it to control her life. But she wouldn’t want to forget everything, either. Her past was a vital part of her. The part that kept her anchored and able to remember the things that were important.
“Nothing? Why would you not want to remember anything?”
“Perhaps the people in the underworld were tortured by what had happened in their lives, what things had brought them there. Isn’t it better to forget than to remember a life full of pain and misdeeds?”
Reg wasn’t sure of that. She looked at Weston to see what his answer was.
Weston’s eyes glittered. Reg didn’t like his being there or not knowing what his motivations were. The one time he had met her before, he had wanted to be with her mother. To change the past so that Norma Jean didn’t die. Reg and Corvin had been able to fight him off, to balance his power, so that he had departed. She didn’t know where he had gone or when h
e had gone to. He hadn’t, as far as she knew, gone back to see Norma Jean again. Maybe it was enough for him that he had saved her from death.
Reg looked back at Weston. “Why did you ask about Lethe? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Lethe is here. In this bog.”
“The river Lethe is in the Everglades?”
He nodded.
“How could it be?” Reg demanded. “It was in ancient Greece. Or in the underworld. Neither one is anywhere near the Everglades.”
“Many things happened when humans changed the flows of the waters in this country,” Weston said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. Reg looked at Corvin, sure that he wouldn’t be able to make any more sense of this than Reg. But he just shrugged as if he accepted Weston’s explanation.
Men draining the swamps in the Everglades couldn’t have anything to do with a mythological river being moved around the world.
“It could explain so many people being lost here, or so many strange things happening,” Corvin said.
“So could swamp goblins,” Reg snapped. “You didn’t see Tybalt’s storeroom.”
He raised an eyebrow questioningly.
“Trust me. He was the cause of a lot of those disappearances.”
Corvin nodded slowly. “I won’t argue with you, Regina. You are the one who was there. You saw what you saw.”
“I did. He had… this room was full of skulls. Row upon row of human skulls. Trophies.”
“How quaint,” Harrison put in.
Reg glared at him. “It was not quaint,” she snarled.
“Oh.” He modified his expression accordingly. “No, of course not.”
The waitress returned with Harrison’s chocolate cake. She was looking nervous, as if she expected there to be more people at the table or that Harrison might already have a piece of chocolate cake. He did things like that, after all, so she was right to expect something else unusual to happen.
“Here you are, sir,” she put the plate of cake down in front of Harrison. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
Harrison opened his mouth to answer, but Reg beat him to it. “No, nothing else.”
Harrison looked disappointed. The waitress left. Reg looked at Harrison. “She wasn’t asking if you wanted anything else. Just coffee or something like that.” She pushed cutlery toward him as he dipped one finger into the chocolate icing. “You use the fork. Not your fingers.”
Harrison sighed and unwrapped the cutlery from the napkin. “Humans are so picky about things that are thoroughly unimportant.”
“Yes, we are. I don’t want people here to see you eating food with your fingers like a three-year-old. And I don’t want you appearing and disappearing out of thin air. Or stealing mermaids.”
He rolled his eyes and began to eat the cake with his fork. “These things would only matter to a race confined to linear time.”
“Well, we are. So get used to it.”
He took a few more bites. “Where is the cat?”
“I didn’t bring Starlight with me. He’s at home. We didn’t think that the Everglades were a safe place for a cat.”
“Such as he?” Harrison snorted. “He would not be hurt by the swamp.”
Reg didn’t argue. She tried not to think of Starlight, afraid that if she let him enter her thoughts, Harrison would decide that she wanted him there and would bring him to her by magic. Something else that would be out of place and difficult to explain. How did a woman with a cat in her arms happen to get into the restaurant?
Reg turned her head to speak to Weston, but his seat was empty. She turned back to Harrison to find out where Weston had gone, but Harrison’s seat, too, was empty.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Charming,” Corvin said dryly. He slid back along the bench seat to take the position he had been in before Weston’s appearance. “Your friends need to learn manners, Regina.”
“Well, at least they didn’t blow anyone up or make anyone disappear,” Reg said, shaking her head. She looked into the aquarium just to be sure that he hadn’t taken one or more of the mermaids with him. There didn’t appear to be any swimmers missing or anyone upset by a friend’s sudden disappearance. “Sheesh. I don’t know how you teach an immortal the proper way to behave.”
“They are too non-linear.”
Reg just shook her head. She took a few more bites of her hamburger and was close to finishing it. She eyed what was left of Harrison’s cake. She wasn’t going to let that go to waste either. She’d had enough exercise and skipped meals over the past day or two that she didn’t have to feel guilty about the extra calories and how her skirts were getting tighter around her waist. She wasn’t fat; she’d been too skinny before. But she could only tell herself that for so long.
“Perhaps we should make some plans for tomorrow,” Corvin suggested. “Am I to assume that you are going to stay in the Everglades and continue with the search?”
“Why would you assume that?”
“Because I don’t think you’re the type who likes to give up on a mystery before it is solved.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t want to be the type who is eaten by a swamp goblin, either.”
“I think you’re safe in that regard. Well, are you, or are you not?”
“I shouldn’t. Not when he lied to me to get me involved and sent us all on a wild goose chase.”
“He’s young. He’s still learning.”
“He’s older than me. I don’t know how old, exactly. The way you warlocks age doesn’t make it easy to tell.”
Reg thought about it. What was she going to do? Go home or stay and continue the search?
They didn’t have a lot of time for the search anyway. They had to have the wizard back to the Spring Games in short order if he were going to get properly registered and ready for the games. She’d never been to the Spring Games before and had no idea what witches and warlocks had to do to ready themselves.
“I suppose we don’t have much longer.”
“No. A day or two at most. I’m surprised that Damon would even make an attempt. But I suppose he is tempted by the reward money.”
“Yeah, he is.” Reg frowned. “How is there a prize for finding a guy who disappeared decades ago?”
“It was first instituted when he disappeared. The prize monies have been invested ever since then, growing due to interest and other investments. Since it has been fifty years, they are talking about dissolving the fund and disbursing the monies to some other project. This may be the last year that it is offered.”
“So it’s Damon’s last chance.”
“Yes.”
Reg blew out her breath.
“You knew about this? That he’d been missing for fifty years?”
Corvin nodded. He shrugged uncomfortably. “I wasn’t as interested in Damon’s search as in coming to the Everglades. I didn’t realize… that he’d misled you about how long Wilson has been missing.”
Reg licked the last of the ketchup off of her fingers and pulled Harrison’s remaining cake over to her. She took a couple of bites of it and sighed.
“I suppose I’ll stay and help, since it’s the last chance.”
Corvin nodded as if he had fully expected this. “So then, we should start on a plan.”
“Shouldn’t we include Damon in that discussion?”
“Perhaps. But there’s no reason we can’t discuss preliminaries now.”
“Okay. Maybe it’s better that way, since he’s been sending me in the wrong direction. Where would you go if you were looking for this guy?”
Corvin considered, tapping the pads of his fingers on the table. “Where would I look? I might start somewhere that magical powers were more concentrated. Like the Lost Village.”
“Damon mentioned the Lost Village before. Or maybe it was Tybalt. But I don’t know anything about it. Why is it lost?”
“Well, it isn’t… it’s more of a ghost town. Its former residents disappeared.”
> “Disappeared where?”
“That’s the mystery.”
“And you think that since they all disappeared, maybe Wilson’s disappearance had something to do with the Lost Village too? That there’s some kind of magical force at work there?”
Corvin shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time that a rift had opened up, causing a series of disappearances or other strange happenings. You know how some places are thought to be cursed after a string of bad luck.”
“Yeah. I guess. So how long would it take us to get to the Lost Village?”
“It’s not far from here, but we’ll have to go through some pretty dense vegetation to get there. If you don’t have a good guide, you can wander out there for days.”
“Yeah, well, our last guide didn’t turn out so good. So what are you going to do this time? Just go out and get some random guide?”
“I’ll ask around tonight. The locals should have some recommendations. Then we’ll get started early, and maybe by the end of the day we’ll have a lead.”
“Do you think so?”
His lips pressed together. “No, I doubt it. But I doubt if young Damon has a better plan.”
Reg felt like she had barely closed her eyes when someone was shaking her awake. She squinted in the dim light of her hotel room, trying to make out the shape hovering over her.
“What…? Who’s there? What’s wrong?”
“Reg, we need to get an early start,” it was Damon’s voice. “I know you’re not normally up at this time, but…”
Reg turned her head to look toward the window and the clock. The window was still dark. Maybe a little lighter than it had been when she went to bed, but not by much. It certainly wasn’t morning yet.
“It’s not even daylight.”
“I know. But it will be soon.”
Reg sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Why exactly do we have to get up before dawn?”
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