by Maria Lima
“Who? What?” My thought process couldn’t grasp what he’d said. Who was he talking about?
“Them.” He waved the dangling gardening glove toward the tilting headstones. “The dead.”
What the hell was the old man talking about? Had the heat parched his brains?
A low rumble sounded in the far distance. Was that thunder, finally? Were we getting rain? I tilted my head to the sky, trying to make out clouds.
The man chuckled and wiped his brow.
“Après la sécheresse, le déluge…” I muttered, modifying the famous Louis XV quote. After the drought, the deluge.
“Perhaps you mean, après vous?” The man turned his attention to me. “Though that noise was not thunder but a dump truck. There is a facility a few hundred yards or so over the ridge. Acoustics around here are funny sometimes.”
“I’m no duc d’Anjou,” I retorted, trying to grasp the idea of a gardener, a manual laborer, recognizing both the language and the mangled quotation.
“Nor is your man Madame de Pompadour,” he returned drily.
I stepped back. This was not computing. Not at all. Who was this man?
As if he heard my thoughts, he pulled his straw hat off his head to reveal a tonsure and swept the hat before him in a near-formal courtly bow. “Señora, Fray Antonio de Olivares, a su servicio.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“If there were no ministers and no priests, how long would there be any churches?”
—Lemuel K. Washburn
What the…?
“You’re a priest?”
Yeah, way to state the obvious, Keira.
“The priest,” he said, “if you wish to be precise… and I believe you do.” He gave me an odd look, coy, yet at the same time, quizzical as if he were trying to figure me out. “You are meeting in my church.”
Okay, was not expecting that. “Your church? You mean the old chapel in the basement?”
The priest raked a bit of the ground. “Yes, well, once my church. Now, abandoned.”
I opened my mouth then shut it again. No point in mentioning that I knew it was no longer consecrated. “I rather got the impression that chapel hasn’t been in use for a very long time,” I ventured.
“You are correct,” he said with a small smile. “Parts of the inn were built back in the early days when the city was no more than a fort. One of the earliest masses was held right here.” He pointed to a marker just a few paces from where I stood. I leaned over as the stone wasn’t meant to be read standing up. This wasn’t a gravestone, but a block of marble, carved into a squarish three-foot-by-two-foot block and set into the ground. Ornate leaves and vines intertwined two numbers: seventeen and ninety-five, carved praying hands between them—meant to be a year, I thought. A stylized carving of some female saint or another dominated the middle of the block. At the saint’s feet, the legend: La primera misa se dijo aquí Fr. Justicio de la Reyna. 2 de Marzo de 1795. Señora, ora pro nobis. Latin. Pray for us. I may not be great at Spanish, but I did know some Latin. Part of my recent training. Why? Because Gigi insisted I learn something of the tongue, even though it wasn’t at all part of my heritage.
“Many of our people came from Spain, France, other parts of the world,” she’d said. “Knowing your mother tongue, English, French, and that bastardized version—”
“Joual,” I’d put in, just to mess with her.
“Is all fine, but you need to learn the basis of the Romance languages,” she’d continued, insistent that I concentrate. I’d laughed, but listened.
I was now beginning to understand that three months hadn’t been near enough. I’d learned some protocols, a ton of physical strength and spell moves, plus some language and history. I was still only an egg. But she’d wanted me to go, to claim my rule alongside Adam, to train on the job, as it were.
“The first something,” I did my best to translate the Spanish part of the inscription. “Mass?”
“Yes. The first mass in the area was said here, on this spot.” The old man squatted, leaning on his rake, a brown spotted and wrinkled hand passing lovingly along the letters, the carved decorations. “The chapel and the Rose Inn were built a little later. Mass was held here, outside, in the sight of God and nature.”
“I thought your God could see all and everything. So wouldn’t indoors be just as good?”
His hand stilled. “Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes, I just prefer to be outside without impediment. I’m sure you understand.”
I squatted in front of him and examined the carving. “Tonight? Yes. Fresh air is good. Though still too hot.”
He reached down and picked up some dirt, rubbing it between his fingers. “This piece of land has always been barren,” he said. “Back before humans settled there; before the Canary Islanders came to the fort of San Antonio de Bexar.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
“Then good thing you built here,” I said. “Not good for farmland.”
“Perhaps.” He brushed his hand against his pants and touched the carving of the saint, a fond look on his face. “We dedicated it to Our Lady,” he said. “Nuestra Señora de los Dolores.”
“Our Lady of Sorrows?” I knew that name. There was a church in another part of San Antonio called that. Used to amuse me, as they had a “fun and food fest” every year in the spring. The signs always cracked me up: “Our Lady of Sorrows Fun & Food Fest.” Did no one else notice the irony? But then again, I knew so little of modern Catholicism, only vague recall from reading and, well, from being friends with Bea. “This church is called that, too?”
“Yes. Though the other one in town was built and named after this one.”
“Can you do that?” I asked, intrigued.
“Use the same name?” He chuckled. “My little church never meant much to those with money,” he said. “It was always the church of the poor, the servants. I don’t suppose they cared. Nor do I think that is an issue with the Holy See. There is a church by this name in Mexico.”
My initial guess was right, this cemetery had been for servants and the poor. A wisp of cloud slid past the now risen moon and I shivered. Something was off here. Why was this man, a priest, tending to a cemetery at night? Or in early afternoon, for that matter—when I’d seen him from the upstairs window.
The breeze brought the sound of crickets and cicadas to my ears, the scent of dry dust. The cloud passed and the moon once again shone on us. To me, the yard was near as bright as day, though the lines were softer, the shadows hid more. Night never held terror for me, nor did it frighten me. Nowadays, I lived in the night, slept during the day for the most part. The dark held potential, anticipation of time spent with those I loved. But for humans, it was not the same. I stood and wiped my sweaty hands on my shorts.
“So, Fray Antonio, what brings you out tonight?”
His shrewd eyes glittered in the moonlight as he looked up at me from his squatting position. His right hand still caressed the smooth stone, fingers following the carved lines of the image of Mary, the saint carving now identified. “I tend to the last resting places,” he said. “Someone must… I must.”
He struggled to stand, using the rake to help him. I could almost hear his old joints creaking. I wanted to offer a hand, but something stopped me. Sure, my shields were at maximum, but skin to skin contact… no, not yet. “I have tended this land for a long time. I chose… I chose perhaps unwisely once,” he said. “Thus I remain.”
“Chose unwisely?” I prompted.
He stretched and put a hand to his lower back, hissing a little. “I am sorry. My back.”
“Shall we go inside and sit somewhere comfortable? I’m sure we can get something cold to drink and you can rest a little. Surely your duties can wait.” I couldn’t imagine how long this poor man’s day could be if he was still tending to the cemetery this late at night.
The moon went behind another cloud. This time, when I looked up, the sky was far less clear. Dark patches obscured bo
th moon and stars. I tried to adjust my sight to compensate. Shadows danced in the breeze, seemed to swirl around the tombstones. Few of them were more than crude rocks hewn from limestone and other native materials, carved with no finesse. Such a difference from the cemetery at the Wild Moon, which was the resting place of the ranchers who settled the area.
Another shiver down my sweaty back. My feet began to itch as if I were standing on an ant mound. I looked down, but saw nothing but darkness. Fog? No, couldn’t be, the air was too dry. We’d had no rain for weeks. Maybe just an optical illusion… maybe not. My skin crawled just a little, as if tiny pricks of insect feet poked it. I shivered again. Damn it, what was that? I’d once felt something similar, a long time ago as a child. We’d gone on a family trip, driving across country, learning of the historic places of the country we’d claimed as home. I hadn’t realized then that the trip was mostly for me, to experience new people, new places, to learn. I was nine or so at the time? We’d visited so many places, so many monuments, museums, historic buildings. I’d been fascinated, only two years out from Underhill. I’d soaked it all up. Then we’d gone to Gettysburg. I’d been fine in the museum, but then we walked out on the parkland itself. Less than five minutes in, I’d started screaming, feeling the death of all those soldiers buried beneath my feet. Tucker had to carry me off the field and drive me back to our hotel. They said it took more than two hours to calm me down.
Okay, enough, I was out of here. This place may be no Gettysburg, no Culloden moor, but something happened here, something not so good and not so normal. I wasn’t up to exploring it now, not by myself with a human beside me. This called for company of my own sort… and maybe even daylight.
“Come, let’s go inside. You can get comfortable. You’re obviously in pain.” I used the excuse in hope that the priest would join me… or not, really. I wanted to talk to him. He seemed to have been there a long time, perhaps he knew enough of the history of this place that I could determine why I felt so uncomfortable. But if he preferred not to, I was fine with that, too. There had to be information elsewhere, or I could track him down in the daytime and perhaps convince him to go somewhere for a coffee.
“Pain, yes, well.” He rubbed at his back again and looked toward the back door of the inn. “I’d rather not discuss this inside there.”
“Why, don’t you trust me?”
“It is not you that I don’t trust.”
“The sisters?”
“Perhaps. There is more there than meets the eye.”
“I know that,” I said, frustrated at his hints. “Look, let’s not play around, okay? I get cranky when people start playing games with me. I’m perfectly well aware that this isn’t your standard old house, old chapel, old cemetery. Just tell me what you know.”
He set his hat back on his head with a pat. “Yes, answers. I know them,” he said. “I will be happy to speak with you. Would you accompany me to the church?”
“But you said you didn’t want to go inside?” I was now officially confused.
“Ah, well, yes, my church, the chapel,” he said. “No, I didn’t mean that one.” He pointed behind us. “Over that small ridge, behind the stand of trees. There’s a small limestone building I use as a church now. It serves its purpose. The older ladies of the neighborhood still come.”
“Neighborhood?”
“It’s not close, but this is the closest church where they can still hear Mass said in Latin.”
“I thought the Catholic Church stopped doing that decades ago.”
“They did. But I did not. It comforts my parishioners.”
“I had assumed you were retired,” I said, indicating his rake.
“Retired?” He snorted a bitter-sounding laugh. “No, retirement is a luxury for those who are not me. Come, we can sit, I can get you a cool drink when we get there. It’s not far.”
Should I? I did have my phone and no doubt Adam, Tucker, and Niko could be there faster than one small human could do anything. But no, wait, church. Still in use. Damn.
“We can speak here,” I began, trying to figure out how to explain when a buzz followed by Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” interrupted us. I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
“Dad?” I answered, wondering why he’d be calling us now.
“Keira, we’ve got a problem. Minerva’s missing.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Never give up, never surrender.”
—Jason Nesmith in Galaxy Quest
“Missing? What?” I scrambled away from the cemetery, striding toward the kitchen door of the inn. “Father, sorry, I need to—”
The old man nodded and turned to walk away.
“Father? Since when do you call me that?” My own father sounded perplexed.
“No, sorry, not you, Dad. I was talking to a priest.”
“I don’t think I’m going to ask,” he said.
“More later,” I answered. “Let me get inside so everyone can hear, hang on, okay?”
I ran up the small set of steps, absently noting that neither of the sisters was in the kitchen. With as much speed as I could, I practically flew down the stairs to the basement, silently thanking my training as I leaped over four pews that had been stacked across the bottom of the staircase.
“Crap, Keira, sorry.” Tucker rose with a sheepish look. “I didn’t—”
“Hush, listen.” I held the phone in my palm, thumbing on the face-to-face software. “Missing, Dad? You said Gigi’d gone to do research. What makes you think she’s missing?”
Gasps from Tucker and Niko. Adam made no sound, but rose to join me. The other two flanked us.
Dad shook his head. “She left me a message on my phone,” he said. “Time stamp was earlier today. For some strange reason, I didn’t get it until a few minutes ago.”
“Cause for concern?” Adam asked.
“Yes, a lot,” Dad replied. “She wanted me to call her. She said, and I quote: ‘Huw, I’m going to be gone for a bit, but just thought of something. Give me a call would you?’ And that’s it.” He scratched his head with his free hand. “I called her phone several times, getting nothing but voice mail. Called the guys, too. Same thing.”
By “the guys,” I knew Dad meant her two Protectors. “Why do you think she’s missing? It’s not as if she’s never ignored a phone call,” I asked.
“Something about the tone of her voice,” Dad said. “Made me worry, so I used that ‘find my phone’ feature. We’ve installed it on all the phones here.”
A sinking feeling permeated my body. “No, don’t tell me. You found the phone, but no Gigi.”
“Exactly. The phone, along with the phones of both her Protectors, were in a hotel room in downtown Vancouver. No sign of any of them. All their toiletries, their clothes, everything was still there. Duncan and I talked to the hotel staff, none of whom remember seeing her leave.”
I passed the phone to Tucker and paced away from the group, my fists tight and tense as the rest of my body. What in the name of all that’s brilliant was happening? Where did she go?
“There were no signs of struggle,” I heard my dad saying. “I called in Gareth.” Good move since Gareth was not only Rhys’s son, but was stationed in Vancouver as part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “He found nothing. I even tapped a few of our seers,” he continued. “None of them could See her. At all.”
I flew back to the group and grabbed the phone. “At all? That’s impossible.”
“I know. Which is why I called you. You’re her heir. Maybe you can try?”
“Explain,” Adam demanded. “Why is this impossible? Don’t seers only see possible futures?”
“Mostly,” I said, “but these seers, family seers, can always see our chieftain. It’s a way to keep tabs, in case—”
“In case of something just like this,” Tucker added. “There’s a blood connection with them, literally. Seers share blood with our leader so that they can reach her in times of trouble.”
“As
with our bond,” Adam said. “I understand. Did you do this as well?” he asked me.
“No, not as the heir,” I said. “That bond would have interfered with ours, so I asked that we postpone it until Gigi stepped down—centuries from now.”
“Wait, Keira, I’m getting a notification that someone’s trying to call.”
The screen went dark as my dad answered his other call. I bit my lip, clutching the phone as if it were a lifeline. I wanted the caller to be Gigi. Wanted her to say she’d just been shopping, had left the phone behind.
“Could she just have left the phones behind?” Niko asked, echoing my thoughts.
“Not in a million years,” Tucker said.
“Not even. She might be the chieftain, our leader, but she never, ever leaves no way to contact her,” I said. A thought occurred to me. “Adam, the Batphone, is that to her normal phone?”
“I don’t know.” He strode over to the table and picked it up, pushing the programmed shortcut. “Worth a try.”
As the first ring sounded, I grabbed onto Tucker’s arm. She had to answer. That’s why she didn’t have her regular phone, right? Because she had the other phone?
“Keira, sorry,” Dad’s face came back onto my own phone. “That was your brother Duncan. He went to see one of the cousins, to see if they could help out at the hotel room by casting a location spell. Only that didn’t work, either.”
“Hang on, Dad,” I said. “Adam’s trying the Bat-phone.”
“The what?”
“Sorry, it’s a phone Gigi gave him a while back,” I explained. “Programmed with speed dial to her. Like the Batphone, she always answers if the call is from this phone.”
“Except for now,” Adam said. “It’s rung four times and went to voice mail.” He spoke into the phone he was holding. “Minerva, it’s Adam. No one can find you. If you get this message, please call us.” He disconnected the call.
“It’s not ringing her regular phone,” Dad said. “I’ve got that one here.” He waved it in front of the camera lens on his phone. “It’s on and charged. I was hoping that someone would call her that could shed some light on this.”