He took the birth certificate from me and tucked it away in the box with the other two. “I think, perhaps, this has nothing to do with your mother’s weekend in Heidelberg.”
“Even if she was sixteen, and it doesn’t look like she was married to this guy, did she think I’d judge her for that? I have a half sister out there who I didn’t even know existed.” The idea was so strange, I had a hard time processing it. I won’t deny there wasn’t a bit of hurt with the realization that my mother kept something so important from me, but I was more confused than anything else.
“Fran.”
“Hmm?” I realized what he said. “Oh. Yeah, you’re right. This is something I’ll have to talk to her about once I find her. It’s just . . . I never knew. I don’t understand why she would hide this from me. And speaking of that, just where is this Petra person?”
“Perhaps she did not survive?” Peter said, his expression sympathetic as he patted my arm. “I think we’ve pried enough. You will talk to your mother about this later, yes?”
“She must have been ashamed, but . . .” I couldn’t imagine my mother being ashamed of having a baby, even an illegitimate one. “Yeah, I guess it’s not really of vital importance right now. I’ll have to visit the police, though, since there was nothing in the trailer to show us where she’s gone. I’ll drop in on them and see what they have to say.”
“If you insist. How long will you be with us?” He walked with me to the trailer door. “That sounded rude, didn’t it? I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that your mother’s booth was always very popular, and if you were going to be around for a while . . .”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” I said carefully. “My plans have kind of changed.”
“Ah?” He gave me a long look, then nodded. “Naomi.”
“Yes.” I examined my gloves, biting down hard on my lip to keep the tears from burning in my eyes again.
“It was a mistake to hire her, but we were short-handed, and Benedikt swore she would fit in well.”
“Ben got her the job?” I asked, the tiny little atoms of my heart crumbling even further.
Peter looked embarrassed, his gaze dropping as he fidgeted with the doorknob. “I had no idea that he . . . that they . . .”
“It’s all right.” I dredged up a ghost of a smile. “It’s likely I’ll be around for a bit, so I can run Mom’s booth while I’m here if you like. Although I really can only sell the things she already has made up—I can’t make any more.”
“No, no, of course not. But you know the things to say to customers, and you are familiar with Miranda’s stock. It would be a great help. The opera contest that is going on in town has brought in a tremendous number of people to the area, and the Faire, and I hate to waste the opportunity. I don’t like to ask you to tie up your evenings, but perhaps if you could see to her booth every other night? I will pay you, naturally.”
He looked so hopeful, I agreed, but declined the offer of payment.
“She would want her booth open.” My throat closed for a moment on a painful lump. “I just need to know Mom’s okay. If Loki hurt her—”
Peter patted my arm when I couldn’t finish the sentence. “She is strong.”
“I know, but she can still be hurt.”
“Not easily.” He looked thoughtfully at me for a moment before adding slowly, “I would not suggest this in normal circumstances, because Absinthe does not like it to be known, but she might be able to help you.”
“Absinthe?” I swallowed the painful lump of tears in my throat and tried to figure out how a mind reader could help me. “You mean like find out who’s taken Mom?”
“No. She would need a subject for that. She has lately started studying with a diviner.”
“A who now?”
“Diviner. They see things, you know? Tiny things, little bits of a bigger picture, Absinthe says. I don’t really understand it too well, but she has learned much in the last three years.”
“And she could tell me where Mom is!” I said, hope filling me. “I could kiss you, Peter! What a brilliant idea!”
“No, no, do not kiss me yet. I am not that brilliant. Absinthe is not learned enough to locate your mother, but she might be able to see if she has been . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Harmed,” I said, filling in the word he clearly didn’t want to say.
He nodded.
“I’ll take it.”
“It isn’t much, and I can’t guarantee that Absinthe will be able to tell you anything—”
“I’ll take it,” I repeated. “Is she here now?”
“Yes. I believe I saw Kurt about this morning.”
I hesitated for a few seconds. Part of me wanted to run to Absinthe and beg her to tell me how my mother was. But even as that thought ran through my brain, the word “beg” reverberated with ominous portent. Absinthe was someone who viewed every interaction on a credit and debit scale. Asking her to divine my mother’s state of health, and possibly location, would mean I placed myself in debt to her. And Absinthe had very inventive ways of making people pay their debts.
“Would you like me to ask Absinthe for you?” Peter asked, knowing his sister well enough to see my dilemma.
“No.” I straightened my shoulders. “I appreciate the offer, though. I’ll just go see if she’s awake.”
She was. She was also in a pretty foul mood, sitting in a garish orange and green chair in a pink track suit that matched her hair, sipping a latte and glaring at me with red-rimmed eyes. Kurt puttered in the background, which left me wondering if Absinthe had settled down to just one of the brothers.
“So you want me to divine for you, eh?” Her eyes narrowed as she raked me over with a look that snapped with irritation. “The so-sensitive Fran needs my help, does she?”
I held on to my temper, keeping a firm smile on my lips. “Yes, I do. I would be very grateful for it, as a matter of fact. I’m worried about my mother.”
She made a tsk sound, sliding Kurt a glance from the corner of her eyes before leaning forward, both hands on the table that sat between us. “And what payment do you have to offer?”
“Well, I have a little set aside for emergencies,” I said slowly, wondering what was the going rate for an apprentice diviner’s services.
“It is not money I wish,” she said, waving her hand. I was surprised to see that her nails were bitten. In the past, Absinthe had seemed to me to be a very with-it woman, almost scary in the control she exercised on others. But control freaks did not bite their nails, and the proof that she was, after all, human helped me to relax. “What I want is you.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Not sexually,” she said, her lip curling in disgust. “Why would I want you when I have Kurt and Karl? No, it is your services I desire.”
I had a feeling my touchy-feely abilities were going to enter into the negotiations. “When and where and for how long?” I asked, settling back to haggle over the details.
“I do not know. But it will be a debt of honor, you understand? I will do this thing for you now, and you will owe me.”
I was vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of such a debt hanging over my head, but the thought of my mother in pain made that concern pale. “Deal. Can you tell me where she is?”
She shrugged, and rose to dig around in a drawer under the couch. “I do not know until I try. Kurt, the incense. No, not that one, the clarity incense.”
I watched with interest as Absinthe and Kurt set up the round table for divination purposes. Absinthe laid a scarlet red and gold cloth on the table, smoothing it out before placing on it a long incense holder shaped like a dragon. My nose wrinkled at the sharp acidic tang of the incense—a blend that had a lot of rosemary in it—but to my surprise she didn’t bring out a crystal ball or even a scrying bowl. She just sat at the table, her fingers tracing the gold embroidered design on the cloth, her eyes unfocused.
“What is it you seek to know?” she asked after a
few minutes.
“How my mother is. If she’s hurt or scared or . . . worse.”
“She is happy.”
I felt my jaw sag at that. “Happy?”
“She is wrapped in love. She is happy where she is at.”
Dear goddess, had Loki done something bizarre to my mother, like make her fall in love with him? “Where is she? Is she near here?”
Absinthe studied the cloth for the count of five before shaking her head. “I cannot see that. I sense only that she is happy where she is.”
“Is she with a man? Does he have red hair? Is he a Norse god?”
“I cannot see who else is with her, although I sense the presence of another person. Only faint glimpses are available to me . . . No, I see a shadow of someone. The person hands Miranda a glass of wine. She blows a kiss in return.”
“Holy hobgoblins.” Peter was right! She had run off with a man! My mother!
I blinked wildly at the thought as I tried to wrap my brain around it.
Absinthe looked up from the table as she sank back into the chair. “I cannot hold the connection anymore. It is gone.”
“I see. Well . . . thank you,” I said, getting to my feet.
Her pencil-thin eyebrows rose. “You do not look pleased to know your mother is well and happy.”
“I am pleased. Relieved, too, since I had imagined the worst. But this is just so . . . unexpected. It’s not like her to take off without telling anyone.”
She shrugged. “She is getting old. She sees a man and he wants her, and she knows she cannot play coy. So she runs away with him. There is nothing unexpected in that at all.”
I bit my tongue in order to refrain from telling her that my mother simply did not act that way. It was obvious that she did. But it still went against her personality.
Inner Fran pointed out that the same thing could be said about her hiding the existence of my half sister.
I thanked Absinthe again, nodding when she reminded me that I was in her debt, and quickly escaped from the overpowering rosemary-scented trailer. Although the burden of rescuing my mother from a dangerous situation had been lifted, curiosity wasn’t going to let me leave things alone. I was going to have to find her, if for no other reason than to see who it was who would tear her away from her beloved GothFaire.
It took me a while to walk into town, long enough that I mulled over the strange fact that there were facets to my mother I’d never known existed. By the time I worked through that and set it aside to be worried over later, made a mental note to take down the number of the local cab company, considered—and ultimately rejected—the idea of setting the police on Mom’s trail, I was hot, melancholy, and possessed of no fewer than seven flyers directing me to various events that were intended to show the competition judges that Brustwarze was the best candidate.
“Thank you. I already have a bunch of flyers,” I told the man in a long white robe and knee-length white beard who tried to press yet another flyer on me. I waved my handful at him.
“Mine is better,” he said, taking my handful and tossing them into the trash before shoving his piece of glossy paper into my hands. “You take. Party tonight. Will be fun.”
I was about to tell him I would be busy looking for my mother, but before I could do so, he stepped out into the street, right in front of three women on bikes who had on long streaming green wigs and grayish brown gowns with sleeves that would have touched the ground had they not been knotted up. One of the women yelled at the man and made a rude gesture. I grabbed him and pulled him back onto the sidewalk as he shook his fist at them.
“You have to watch where you’re going,” I told him.
“Valkyries. Is everywhere,” he grumbled, straightening his robe and beard, which had been tugged askew. “You go,” he repeated to me, nodding to the flyer, then headed off to tackle the next unwary person.
“Valkyries, huh?” I looked at the women as they rode away from me, a memory making me smile. I had once seen real Valkyries, and they were nothing like the robed, long-haired women depicted here.
The Vikings were nowhere in evidence, so I wandered around the town for a bit, aimless and restless. The sunlight was starting to fade, and my stomach was rumbling despite the fact that my heart had been smashed to smithereens, when suddenly the pain that I’d kept at bay for the last couple of hours lanced me with a sharpness that took away my breath. I wanted to crumple into a little ball and just let the world wash past me, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life doesn’t let you off so easy.
Evening commuters rushed past me in varying costumes, everything from briefcase-toting knights in chain mail to begowned and bewigged women (and some men) adorned with breastplates, backpacks, and cloth shopping bags filled with the makings for dinner.
I’d never felt so alone in my life. For one moment, for one tiny little moment, I unguarded my mind and reached out to see if Ben was there, but before I could find him, I withdrew. What if he was with Naomi at that moment? What if he was feeding from her, or worse? Dark Ones and their Beloveds shared a unique mental bond that sometimes allowed more than just the sharing of thoughts—and I knew for a fact that had I let him, I would feel both Ben’s emotions at that moment and the sensations of whatever he was doing.
“I won’t let this destroy me,” I swore to myself as I turned into the flow of traffic and let it carry me along to the center square in town, where I had earlier seen several cafés. My stomach growled loudly at the thought.
Hungry?
“Sorry. I haven’t eaten all day—” I stopped as soon as I realized that the voice that spoke wasn’t from the man walking nearest me. No. I will not do this.
Francesca, don’t shut—
I closed my mind against him, against the agony of hearing his velvety voice in my brain after so many years. I stood with my arms wrapped around myself for a few minutes, struggling to keep from crying, fighting to keep control. Just as I did so, a voice pierced my awareness.
“Virgin goddess!”
I looked up to see Finnvid standing next to an outdoor café table. He waved and yelled again, “Virgin goddess! Isleif is getting our ale, and Eirik is using the privy, but he will return soon, unless his guts are bound up again. If that is the case, then he may need to purge his arse. You will have ale with us?”
Several pairs of heads swiveled from Finnvid to me. I tried to smile. I think it came out pretty bad because the people averted their gazes quickly.
“I swear,” I muttered under my breath as I made my way over to the Vikings. “One of these days, I’m going to beg Freya to take them back. . . . Hello, Finnvid. I’m pretty sure people would be grateful if you didn’t yell details about constipation while you’re at a café.”
He looked curious as I pulled out one of the white metal chairs that sat around a table littered with shopping bags. “Why? Do your guts not get bound up occasionally?”
“Item number—what are we up to now, fifteen thousand?—on the ‘things we don’t discuss’ list is constipation, unless there is a pressing medical reason to do so. What in the name of the goddess’s ten little toes have you been buying?”
“Many things.” He patted a couple of the bags with satisfaction. “Ninja things.”
“Yeah? Like what?” I tried to peek in one of the white plastic carrier bags, but he slapped my hands away.
“Eirik said we are not to talk to you about it. But we did bring you an offering.” He rustled around in the bags, muttering to himself as Isleif returned with three gigantic beer steins filled to the brim with frothy ale.
“Why aren’t you supposed to talk to me about what you bought?” I asked, suspicion making me suddenly very wary.
“Virgin goddess!” Isleif shoved aside some of the bags in order to set down the steins. “Eirik is emptying his bowels. You would like ale? I will get one for you.”
“No, thank you. I think I’d be comatose if I drank that much,” I answered, eyeing the massive steins. I sw
ear they were just pitchers shaped like traditional beer steins. “I wouldn’t mind some food, but before that, I’d like to know just what it is you bought that Eirik doesn’t want you to talk about.”
Isleif said something that sounded very rude and punched Finnvid in the arm as the latter was taking a swig of beer. “Do you have no brains? You do not tell the virgin goddess that we are not to talk about the weapons! You know how she is about them!”
“What weapons?” I reached for a bag, but both Finnvid and Isleif pulled them back out of my reach. “Something other than the knives we agreed you could buy here, even though you’re not going to be able to take them back to the U.S.?”
“You agreed—we did not. We told you that no Viking would be caught dead without a sword and ax! It is like being naked.” Isleif plumped down in a chair with a disgruntled look.
“Worse,” Finnvid said. “If you are naked with a sword and ax, you can still kill. I have done so many times.”
“In many ways, I prefer to fight naked, like the berserkers. The blood does not stain your armor that way,” Isleif said and nodded.
“Aye, that is true. I can’t tell you the number of times I’d return home after a successful pillage, and my wife would complain about having to clean the caked blood and brains from my tunic.”
The people nearest us rose suddenly, tossed a few coins on the table, and hurried off. I sighed to myself and wondered which was worse—Ben’s betrayal, or time spent with the Vikings.
“Virgin goddess!” Eirik’s voice was naturally deep, but I hadn’t realized until he bellowed it across the outdoor café area just how carrying it was. “You have found us!”
I ignored the curious looks of the people who hadn’t heard the other two Vikings earlier. “Yes, I have.”
“There is Eirik,” Finnvid said happily. “Are your bowels running again?”
“Aye, they are. I had to use three handfuls of leaves they moved with such vigor.”
The people on the other side of Finnvid scurried off with bowed heads and expressions of horror.
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