“Yes, there was,” Corvin agreed. “The first deceiver. There are snakes bound up in many creation myths. People throughout the ages must have been quite mystified by them, seeing in them the power of creation out of nothingness.”
“But you can’t make something out of nothing,” Reg said. She remembered something that Julian had said when talking with Harrison. “It’s a law or something.”
“The law of conservation,” Corvin agreed. “But it’s a theory rather than a rule—something we have observed but can’t exactly explain. We can convert energy into matter, and who knows what other possibilities there are. Does magic ever break the law of conservation? We don’t really know since we can’t see or measure magic.”
“But the whole world? You couldn’t create the whole world out of nothing. Something little, maybe, but the whole thing?”
“Then where do you propose it came from?” Corvin asked, a smile in his voice. “Has it always been here? Forever? We can observe the universe expanding and, from that, we extrapolate the birth of the universe.”
“And it didn’t come from nothing, did it?” Reg challenged.
“No…”
“And a snake didn’t make it.”
He laughed. “Not as far as I know. But you might have to ask the immortals about that. They are much better at the whole creation myth thing than I am. They might give you a version that actually makes sense.”
“I doubt it,” Reg disagreed, “They can never answer any other question in a way that makes sense to me.”
“Then maybe it is inexplicable.”
“Yeah. I guess so. And nothing to do with snakes, so we’re getting off topic.” But getting him off topic was what she had wanted to do, wasn’t it? Reg gave her head a shake. Maybe she was getting tired. Her thought processes were getting muddled.
“Perhaps I can come over tomorrow and we can discuss it some more,” Corvin suggested.
Reg yawned. She squeezed her jaws closed again and murmured an apology. “We can talk some more,” she said, though she thought better of it. “But don’t come over.”
“Ah, Reg. You could make things so much easier for yourself.”
“For you, you mean.”
“Yes, for me too,” he agreed with a snort.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Something spoke to Reg in her dream. Was the whispering in her ear a snake hissing? Or was it a person? Her mind conjured up images like Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies, hissing to his snake Nagini in her own language. Harry could do that too, if she remembered right. But it wasn’t as spooky when he did it.
Nagini. What was the name of the troll who died? It was something like that. Nagendra?
She tried to listen closely to the words of the snake in her ear. If she could just understand, it would unlock the door. It would be the last piece of the puzzle she had been trying to put together. Or maybe the first piece of the puzzle, she didn’t have a lot of it put together yet. Or maybe none of it.
She listened to the hissing and thought that she had heard it before. Maybe she’d had other dreams about the snake and hadn’t remembered. A snake-whisperer. Was that someone who talked to snakes or who could understand them? Or just someone who could make them listen to him. Wasn’t there a myth about that, too? The Pied Piper? Or St. Patrick? Someone had called all of the snakes to himself.
She would hate that. She wouldn’t do anything that would bring them all closer to her. Surrounded by piles of slithery snakes? No thanks.
“Who are you?” the snake in her ear demanded. “Why have you taken memories from me?”
Memories? Reg was the one who had lost memories, not the snake. She had lost powers and memories and maybe a little bit of her sanity since she had started seeing snakes. And apparently, the snakes were so real she actually smelled like them.
Reg wasn’t the one who was crazy. She wasn’t the one who could smell the scent of something she’d never even touched coming out of the pores of her skin. That was crazy.
“Who are you?” she returned. “Why do you keep hissing at me?”
She could feel him. Not outside of her, whispering in her ear. He was already in her brain. Coiling around, trying to establish himself and to read her mind. Trying to build a picture out of what she thought so that he could see her. Know who she was.
“I’m not trying to read your mind,” Reg told it, “I just want you to go away. Go away and stop bothering me.”
“You are here in my brain,” the hissing voice objected. “You are the one who is where you should not be. You withdraw and leave my mind, and we will forget all about it.”
Reg rubbed her head and tried to focus on what the words meant. She had not entered anyone else’s mind. The whisperer had invaded her dreams, not the other way around.
“You’re wrong,” she insisted. “I never came to you. You came to me. And I don’t want to see or touch any more snakes. I don’t even like snakes. You keep them for yourself.”
“You think you can take them away from me?” the whisper demanded, as if Reg had said the opposite. “The snakes are mine. I need them to accomplish my goals. You cannot touch the king of snakes.”
“King snake?” Reg wondered. Her mind drifted to Ilka. The empress. Who was her king? Was he a snake? A snake man? A man snake? Her thoughts were slippery and disconnected.
“The king of snakes,” the voice said harshly, some power behind the whisper. “The basilisk.”
“Basilisk.” Reg remembered there was a basilisk in one of the Harry Potter movies. A huge thing. She didn’t want anything to do with a monster like that. “Why would I want a basilisk? Ew.”
“The basilisk can kill, or it can confer immortality,” the voice told her. It was beginning to sound familiar. As if she might know the person behind it. She tried to place it but could not. Who would want snakes? And why did he think that she had invaded his mind?
When Reg awoke, her sheets were all over the place, wrapped around her body and spilling onto the floor, all damp and soggy with sweat. The sun was shining in her window, heating up the room and making it muggy. Her air conditioning must not be working.
She looked around the room, unsticking her tongue from the roof of her mouth and trying to remember everything that had happened the past few days and the details of her dreams.
The memory blanks were still there. No new ones, she didn’t think. If she walked out to the kitchen and found out that it was days or months later than she thought it was, then she would be proven wrong.
She ran her fingers through her braids, then forced herself to get out of bed and head to the bathroom.
She hadn’t even bothered to look at her phone, but she had a pretty good idea it was too early for her to be fully awake yet. She had needed to catch up on her sleep and instead had fallen even further behind. She used the facilities and patted cold water onto her face, trying to wake herself up enough to make the decision whether to go back to bed or to have a cup of coffee and try to stay awake. Eventually, the lack of sleep would catch up to her and she would fall deeply asleep instead of having restless, disrupted cycles of wake and sleep.
Reg wandered into the kitchen preparation area, rubbing her eyes. She could hear breathing, and looked around, startled. After dreaming about that snake-like whisper in her ear half the night, she panicked at the idea of another presence in her cottage.
But when she turned and looked, she saw it was just Etienne. He was sitting up in his wooden chair, eyes closed, breath moving in and out very slowly. Asleep? Meditating? Reg didn’t know whether to talk to him or sneak back to her room until he was up and around. She should serve her guest if he were awake, but if he were asleep, it wouldn’t hurt anything to sneak back into bed.
Reg decided to make coffee. By the time it finished brewing, she should have a better idea of whether Etienne was awake or asleep. She was sure he must be awake. He was one of those early-riser types. But he didn’t even twitch, breathing deeply and evenly in and out.
A good facsimile of sleep if he wasn’t actually in dreamland.
Reg prepared the coffee and watched it drip into the pot. Starlight meowed loudly for his food and Reg looked over at Etienne. Still not a twitch.
She looked through the fridge and found a partial can of cat food that hadn’t been used up yet, and spooned some of the gelatinous contents into Starlight’s dish amid his meowing demands for her to work faster and give it to him. She looked at the color and sniffed at it uncertainly. How long had it been in the fridge?
She placed it on the floor for him and watched the last few drips from the coffee machine. Good.
“Do you want coffee?” she asked Etienne in a normal voice.
He opened his eyes. “Yes, please.”
Reg looked for her largest mug and poured his before hers. Etienne stood up and joined her at the kitchen island. It was dwarfed by his height. He must have had to crouch down to use it when he cooked. Reg hadn’t noticed that before. She’d been too focused on her own issues.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked him.
“It was restless,” Etienne admitted. He didn’t criticize the sleeping accommodations—how could he, when he had known that if he stayed there instead of with Ilka or at another hotel, he would not have a bed to lie down in? “I had much to think about, and my brain did not want to quiet for sleep.”
“Been there, done that,” Reg said. “Oh boy, have I done that.”
Etienne nodded and sipped the coffee.
“How did things go with James last night?” Reg asked. She had given Etienne her phone for a while, but had not asked him at the time how things had turned out. She had been too tired of Bigfoot problems to care anymore. But now that she’d had some sleep and didn’t want to share her own issues, she turned back to them.
“James has some concerns,” Etienne admitted. “As does Ilka’s father. Both families are in favor of a union, but we cannot completely ignore the traditional rites and requirements.”
“It seems like you worry a lot about what your families say. What about how the two of you feel? Do you think you’re ready? You’re compatible?”
“Ilka would like to join our families immediately, without waiting for the usual negotiations and rituals. But I am not in quite as much of a hurry. I would like to spend more time together… but that is difficult when she does not have a place to stay near my home and neither of us has a home here. One cannot stay in a hotel for more than a few days. Especially not… our people. We attract too much unwanted attention.”
Reg nodded. She had seen how people watched them, tried to see their faces and get more information about them when they clearly did not want to be seen.
“Ilka… at the hotel, they called her the empress.” Reg raised an eyebrow at Etienne. “Is she… royalty?”
Etienne sighed. “Yes. We are not… equals. And she is used to getting her own way. It makes things… challenging.”
“Is that why her father is not sure about the two of you getting together?”
“No. He is quite happy to have her join with… a common man. But I think he believes she is too young to know her own mind yet and is worried she will change her mind later. Our people… mate for life. There is no rite for divorce or remarriage, as there is in your culture. If she were to change her mind later… it would bring great shame upon her entire family.”
“Do you think she might change her mind?”
“I hope not… but her father knows her well. We have only just met in person for the first time. She has already broken with many of our practices by coming here on her own. That could bring scandal upon her family even without any further breaches.” Etienne pondered. “I like her very much, and I think our families will come to terms.”
“And you’ll go ahead if they say yes?”
He was still for a few long moments, then nodded.
“Even though you think she might change her mind down the line?”
“Perhaps she will only be with me for a short time.” Etienne took a long drink of his coffee, draining the mug. “For me, that is better than not at all.”
“Even though you wouldn’t be able to marry again?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
It was agreed that Reg would go back to the hotel with Etienne so that he and Ilka could talk and the negotiations between their families continue. Reg was walking ahead of Etienne to the front of the house where her car was parked. As soon as she crossed the border between the back yard and the front, she stopped. She could feel a difference between the protected space she had been in and the front sidewalk and yard. She and Sarah had set the wards in the back to block malevolent witches from approaching Reg’s cottage to vandalize it or harass her, but they had set them only in the back.
Etienne stopped behind her, waiting. She could hear him sniffing the breeze and wondered what his very sensitive scent organ could detect. She had to rely on her eyes. She saw a car parked close to hers that didn’t belong on the street. There were shadowy figures inside. There was no legitimate reason Reg could think of for two people to be sitting on the road in front of the house. It wasn’t the kind of place where people just pulled over to take in the view. It wasn’t a car she recognized, and no one got out to go to the door of any of the nearby houses. They just sat there.
“Stay here,” Reg ordered. “Unless I call you.”
Etienne breathed quietly, saying nothing. He was used to hiding from observers and searchers. He knew how to keep quiet and not give himself away. The magical protections would help keep him hidden from outside eyes.
Reg walked closer to the vehicle. She was almost right up to it when the doors popped open and the two occupants stepped out. Reg had seen both of them before. Detective Marta Jessup, who could sometimes be called a friend, and her partner. Devaughn, Reg reminded herself, looking at his name bar.
“What are you two doing here?” Reg asked, not being terribly polite.
“We wanted to talk to you,” Jessup said. “We had some more questions for you. Would you mind coming in to the police station, please?”
“Why would I want to go to the police station again? I already told you everything I could, which is nothing. I didn’t know the guy. I never met him before. I don’t know anything about how he died, other than from what you’ve told me.”
“We would still like to talk with you.”
Reg could have tried inviting them to the cottage to talk, but she didn’t want to put Etienne into an awkward position. And the other times when she’d had a couple of cops in her house, things had not turned out well. She could refuse to go with them or she could agree. If she refused, there might be consequences. They might come back with a warrant to search her house and they might arrest her. They didn’t have enough information to arrest her—she was pretty sure of that—but sometimes cops didn’t exactly follow all the rules. Some of them were prone to doing an end-run around procedures if they thought they could get away with it. Devaughn was there to babysit Jessup and make sure she didn’t break any rules, but Reg didn’t know anything about him. He might be the type who could be talked into things.
“I don’t have anything else to tell you,” she tried again.
“Maybe we have some things to tell you.”
Reg studied Jessup, trying to figure out what she was getting at. What would they have to tell Reg? Police didn’t share information. They gathered it and they kept what they gathered close to the chest. Though Jessup had already told Reg several things about the investigation that she probably shouldn’t have, to see if Reg could make any connections. No one believed that Reg could have just stumbled over the body by accident. Even if she hadn’t known anything about it ahead of time, something had led Reg there.
Only Reg had no idea what it was, and neither did anyone else.
“Why don’t you just tell me about it here,” Reg suggested.
“We would like you to come to the police station.” Jessup raised one eyebrow and looked at Reg intently. Tr
ying to tell her something, to give her a signal, but Reg had no idea what it was. She and Jessup were rarely on the same wavelength. Reading her took a lot of effort, and Reg needed her strength and brainpower to get through the day if she had to go to the police station for questioning.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Etienne knew Sarah. So he could go to her for help. Reg didn’t need to feel guilty about leaving him behind. She was protecting him. By leaving with the police, she made it possible for him to still go and meet with Ilka unmolested. Of course, he might feel differently if he had Sarah drive him to the hotel. He would be taking his life in his hands. Or putting it into Sarah’s. He might have preferred facing the police.
Hopefully, he would just get an Uber, having seen how that worked the day before. He didn’t have a cell phone of his own, but Sarah could order a car for him. By the time he was ready to leave the hotel, Reg would be finished at the police station and could arrange to pick him up.
“I’ll take my own car,” Reg said firmly. “I’m not going in yours.”
“You’ll come to the station?” Jessup asked.
Reg nodded. “Yes… for a little while. But I can leave whenever I want.”
“You are not under arrest,” Devaughn agreed. He had remained quiet, letting Jessup make the request.
“I’ll come in my car,” Reg reiterated.
Jessup nodded. “We’ll see you there, then.”
They climbed back into their car, but they didn’t pull out. They stayed behind Reg’s car until she pulled away from the curb, then followed. They stayed right on her tail all the way to the police station. It was a good thing Reg didn’t need to stop for gas. They might have rear-ended her.
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