Moon In The Mirror: A Tess Noncoire Adventure

by P. R. Frost

  “I’ve been through a traumatic experience,” she whined. “It’s like . . . like battle fatigue. Or that Stockholm Syndrome or something.”

  “We call it posttraumatic stress syndrome now. And you need to talk about it. To me, to a social worker, to a psychiatrist. To MoonFeather. Someone.”

  “No one would believe me.” She pouted prettily.

  I was getting tired of that expression. On her. On my mother. Even Donovan looked like he’d practiced it.

  “Try me. I’ve had some pretty weird experiences. I doubt even you could top them for strangeness.”

  “My coven was kidnapped to Faery. They have so many impossible rules no one could learn them in a hundred years. They threw me in prison with trolls as guards, and I escaped.” She threw out the explanation as if it was a fast ball.

  Was that movement outside the window? Like a face peering in, then ducking down?

  I chilled, waiting for the wind to howl like a Windago.

  Nothing. The weather remained calm. Cold, but calm.

  “I know some of what happened. Gollum and I talked about it last night. I’ve fought your prison guards and killed a couple of them. They wounded MoonFeather. She’s my aunt and a dear friend. What I don’t know is which rule you broke to send you to cosmic prison.” I threw the ball right back to her. “It must have been a bad one.”

  “You know?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Because I am a Warrior of the Celestial Blade. It’s my business to know. And I have to fight your prison warden again for your freedom tomorrow at noon. A fight that may cost me my life, and Gollum’s as well if he helps me. So you might think about giving me a damn good reason why I should take on that horde or I just might let him have you.”

  “You . . . you can’t do that.” She looked truly frightened now.

  “I can and I will if you don’t come up with some explanations. ”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  Before she could come up with another excuse, Donovan walked in without knocking. WindScribe took one look at his scowl (or was that the infamous pout) and fled.

  We had only washed half the dishes.

  “There’s a reporter skulking about outside. I evicted him. Forcibly,” he reported.

  “Make yourself useful.” I tossed Donovan the dish towel.

  “Look, I . . .”

  “You don’t have a choice. If you stay one more moment without helping, you are out of here. Permanently. ” I applied my emotions to scrubbing an already clean skillet.

  Donovan rolled his eyes and wiped the oversized fruit bowl that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher. We endured several moments of silence that became almost companionable.

  “I like this,” he said quietly while pouring soap in the dishwasher. “Domestic cooperation.”

  “It’s nice to have help. For a change,” I replied noncommittally. I tucked the last of the juice glasses into the rack. Dried tomato juice coated the sides. It looked like blood. Darren had drunk from that glass. The rest of us had OJ, including Scrap. Only the imp’s glass was half beer.

  Should I set the glass aside and have the crime lab test it? What if he’d tapped one of Mom’s veins for it?

  No. I’d poured the tomato juice myself. I was overreacting.

  “Why are you here, Donovan?” I was so tired of waltzing around half statements; not saying what I knew about him; not getting answers.

  “Because you are in danger and I worry about you.” He draped the towel over his shoulder and grasped my arms, turning me to face him. He didn’t turn on the magic mojo, but he was still a damned attractive man.

  “Not good enough.” I looked up into his eyes, trying to force the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth out of him. “I’ve been in danger before. Scrap and I came through it okay.”

  “D will suck you dry and spit you out into the garbage heap of the universes if I don’t do something. He tried with me, but I escaped him.” His eyes burned with an intensity that frightened me. I had no idea how deep or dangerous his anger was. I did know that, when enraged on the fencing strip, he could knock me flat, disarm me, and then laugh about it as if breaking rules and codes of honor was just a joke.

  “I’ve already told him he can’t have what he’s looking for.” I gave him my own version of an intense gaze. He needed to know I was serious about this.

  “Which is?”

  I held my tongue. I could play this game of secrets as well as he.

  “I should know what he wants, why he came here. But I don’t. I’m not in the loop like I was last year.” He shook his head and looked away.

  I’d won that staring contest at least.

  “And which loop is that?”

  Silence.

  I wrenched myself out of his grasp and began scrubbing the now empty counters.

  “Tess, I’ve never made any secret of how attractive I find you.” He touched my shoulder gently.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ve also told you that I’ve never met another woman I’d be willing to settle down with, have children with. Our babies would be beautiful, filled with strength and talents way beyond that of normal humans. We aren’t normal, Tess. Neither of us could be happy with a mundane human. We belong together. We owe it to the future of all the races to have children that will carry on our legacies.” He dropped his head as if to kiss me.

  I backed up a step, putting as much psychic distance between us as physical.

  Though I wanted to kiss him. I longed to hold him close and just feel good for a change.

  I held off. He’d tasted my blood. Savored it.

  “That’s all? You want me to be your brood mare. No ring, no marriage, no honesty. No communication. Just go to bed with you and push out a dozen brats for posterity! No, thank you. You’ve said your piece, now get out. I have work to do and a battle to prepare for.”

  “Tess, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Well that’s the way I interpreted your half truths. Now get out. Just get the hell out of my house and out of my life.” I instantly regretted my words. A vast lonely gulf opened up in my heart. But I wouldn’t take it back. I couldn’t. Not until he told me everything.

  Including why it was so important to create a homeland for half-blood demons that he’d mortgaged his entire financial empire for it. He’d lost everything when we destroyed his casino in order to close a rogue demon portal. Yet as far as I knew he hadn’t given up on that homeland.

  For the Mike Gionellis of this world, I could understand. He seemed like a good guy despite his demon heritage.

  But he just wanted to fit in with humans, not separate himself in a halfling homeland.

  So the great project was to create a halfway house for Donovan and Darren as much as the lumbering Sasquatch and other uncivilized beasties who couldn’t just get along.

  What about the Windago and whatever else was out there? What did they want besides my blood?

  In the nook Dill silently applauded me. “He’s not good enough for you, Tess. Besides, you still belong to me.”

  “You can get lost, too, Dillwyn Bailey Cooper.”

  “He’s here?” Donovan’s beautiful brown eyes opened wide. Panic flashed across his face before he mastered the errant emotion.

  “Yeah, the ghost of my husband still haunts me. You’ll have to stand in line with all the other supernatural beings who want a piece of me.” Disgusted with them both as well as myself, I threw the sponge into the sink and nearly ran back to the sanctuary of my office.

  I passed WindScribe at the far end of the butler’s pantry. As I wound through the dining room I heard her say, “I’ll have your babies, Donovan Estevez.”

  Chapter 26

  "SCRAP!” TESS CALLED me.

  I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was not happy.

  “Cellar. Now. Work out.”

  Oh, boy, she is not happy. I can smell her anger even over the cat, and . . . is that jeal
ousy oozing out of her skin? Crap. I’m in for a tough time as she flings the Celestial Blade around. She gets so erratic she has no control when she’s this mad.

  I follow her down the steep steps to the cellar. Her sandy-blonde corkscrew curls bounce and fly about as if attached to her head by small rubber bands. I reach out and tweak one, trying to lighten the mood.

  My babe just snarls at me. Then she flings herself off the last three steps, bracing on the banister and landing neatly in a tight turn next to the armory door beneath the stairs.

  Oops! I forgot to tell her when she was awake about the faulty latch and the nosey cat trying to get in there. It’s not my fault. I got caught up in keeping that horrible cat in his own domain and out of mine. I have a job to do, too! Besides, I had to cover the scratches on my tail with iodine, like Tess told me to. And a little red paint here led to a little more there, and so on and so forth.

  It’s not my fault.

  Well, mostly not.

  Maybe partly.

  “Babe?” I probe delicately.

  She mumbles something even I can’t decipher as she fumbles inside her sweatshirt for the key.

  No light shows around the doorway. I breathe a big sigh of relief. The cat probably pushed the door closed while it was playing with the latch. Or the ghost did. I’m safe from a tongue-lashing at least

  But not safe from the replica blade. Tess reaches into the armory and grabs it without looking. She’s on me in less than a heartbeat, swinging the twin moon blades right and left, up and down, circling, twisting.

  “Maybe you should try meditation,” I suggest. Then I have to jump hither, thither, and yon trying to stay above her, below her, just out of reach. She can’t hurt me. Much. I’m only partially in this dimension. But the blade is made from my essence. It is an exact replica of me when I transform. A part of me had to go into the crafting of that blade. I don’t know what will happen if she actually connects with me on the cutting edge of one of those blades.

  Too close. She snags my tail in the tines of the left-hand blade and flings me in a dizzying circle.

  I pop out of this dimension and back again behind her in half a breath. I tweak one of her curls. “The Sisterhood might have some information on WindScribe and the Orculli trolls.”

  “I called, they didn’t answer.” Another vicious slash with the blade.

  I jump high and cling to a ceiling beam while I take a breath. “You could try reaching out to them from a deep meditative trance. You’ve done it before,” I say.

  The blade comes back over the top of her head and nearly cleaves me in two.

  Pop out and then in again, this time in front of her. My stubby little wings fight the air keeping me aloft. I’m getting tired.

  But so is Tess. She has burned too much energy out of anger and not spared enough for calculation. When she fences, she thinks. Now she is just reacting.

  I can use this. I fly right high, left low. She follows me with wild and wide swings of the blade. I flit back to the middle, then, just as she rears back for a hard blow, I dart high left and she misses. When she recovers, I’m already at the low left and tying the end of my pink boa around her knee.

  She sees my decoration and begins to laugh. Hysterical, high-pitched gales of laughter. She is out of control.

  I’m worried.

  “Is something wrong, Tess?” Gollum asks from the bottom of the stairs. We’d been so preoccupied neither of us noticed him come in.

  Bad move. We have a battle to fight tomorrow. One moment of inattention will be the death of both of us. If I die, she dies. If she dies, I die. For imps, there is no ghostly half life like Dillwyn Bailey Cooper has. No afterlife with a benign deity. Nothing. Death is the end. I do not wish that to happen.

  A Sister at the Citadel—Jenny, I think—lingered in a wasting half death for nearly six months after her imp, Tulip, got tagged by a demon claw. Jenny clung to life; so did her imp. Until they were both bare shadows. I had to do something, I couldn’t let their torture go on.

  I gave them both mercy.

  Tess was there. She knows how horrible that time was for Jenny and Tulip. She didn’t argue with me. She just held Jenny’s hand at the end, letting her know she wasn’t alone. If that’s not faith, I don’t know what is.

  We both mourned them.

  Neither of them came back to haunt us. Tulip can’t. He’s dead and gone for good. Sister Jenny is at peace.

  If Tess dies tomorrow, neither one of us will have peace.

  I choked on my own laughter at the sight of Gollum appearing so suddenly in my cellar. How did he open the door and get down the stairs without either me or Scrap noticing?

  Three deep gulps of air and I thought I had my breathing under control again. I’d worked off a goodly portion of the steaming anger that drove me. Now I had only aching shoulders and cramping fingers where I gripped the blade too tightly. White knuckles and trembling knees betrayed my weaknesses.

  “What’s wrong, Tess?” he asked again. “You usually fight with more . . . aplomb than brute force reaction.”

  “What’s wrong?” I hate it when I parrot back a question to avoid answering it. Kids used to do that to me all the time in the classroom.

  Remembering why I still boiled, Donovan’s arrogant assumption that I’d be willing to become his brood mare without a thought for why I resisted a relationship with him sent new waves of adrenaline through my body. And this time my brain received some of it, too.

  Faster than thought I whipped the blade up to his throat, spun him around, and pinned him to the door of the armory with the shaft across his throat.

  “Don’t suppose you want to talk about this?” he asked in a choked gargle.

  “No, I don’t want to talk. I want to fight. I want to kill that little bastard of an Orculli so that I can kick a dozen people out of my house and take a much needed vacation in Mexico.” I pressed harder against the shaft of my weapon.

  Gollum’s face turned a little purple. He inched his hands up to grasp the staff and lever it away so he could breathe.

  His strength and coolheadedness surprised me. I was dealing with Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe the nerdy scholar, wasn’t I?

  Wasn’t I?

  Something in his eyes sent frissons of alarm up my spine.

  Before I could register the emotion, I found myself propelled backward and pinned to the opposite wall in the same manner I’d imprisoned him. Shelves pressed awkwardly into my spine.

  Gulp.

  And Scrap had the nerve to roll on the floor in a fit of giggles.

  “You do more than a tai chi regimen every morning.”

  “I have studied a number of martial arts. You’d be surprised and horrified at what I can do.” He eased up on me a little. His face went blank, telling me more than he wanted to.