“There are loose ends that need attending,” Lelani said, beside him, as though reading his mind.
“How the hell am I going to explain all this to the brass?” Cal said.
Erin was dead. His home was in shambles. Cal realized he would be at the station house for hours as Internal Affairs debriefed him. If he left now, he could at least prevent them from coming up and having to explain why the apartment looked like a war zone. The mission ahead was full of travels, perhaps even a retreat into the remotest parts of the world. He needed to stay mobile and in the law’s good graces. If only the boy was still alive …
“What will you do while I’m at the precinct?” he asked Lelani.
“Seth and I can address the damage to your home and other matters,” she said, looking down at the dead pet. “We—I will guard your family. Although, I am fairly certain no other attempt will be made. Only a fool attacks a sorcerer without backup, and I wounded theirs severely at the tenement.”
“About your remark earlier … the one about obligations…”
“I meant only your obligations to Duke Athelstan. Whatever your commitment to your betrothed, it is your concern. The boy’s survival is important to my race. That is my concern. Everything I do, I do for my people.”
“I am in a pickle, though, aren’t I?”
“Pickle? A flip description. Your family’s reputation is in jeopardy. And I doubt Chryslantha’s father will let the matter go without reparations. His pride is at stake.”
“You’re assuming Cat will choose to come back with me.”
“You are the victim of your own good judgment, Lord MacDonnell. If your wife were of lesser character, the decision would be easier. However, she is brave and will follow you to the ends of the earth … and farther. You will eventually have to make a decision. Whatever you choose does not change the fact that you took a mate and sired a child. Your honor will not allow you to keep this news from Lady Chryslantha. Consider this, though—if Athelstan’s son is lost, even if we retake Aandor, the duke will be merciless in his judgment. He can use those reparations to Lord Godwynn as his vehicle to strip your family of titles and lands.”
Cal pondered the ramifications. He had found his soul mate on two different worlds. How could a man so lucky be so cursed at the same time?
“Of course the stakes are much higher than your complicated betrothal,” Lelani continued. “Farrenheil will strip Aandor of everything decent. They will force its lords, including your father, to fealty, and those who do not submit will be publicly executed. Our citizens will be sold into slavery, our women carted off and raped. Scholars, clerics, and any other perceived threats will ‘disappear’ as agents of their secret guilds drag us out of our homes in the middle of night without a writ, and the last beacon of hope, prosperity, and fair rule in our world will be gone.
“And we have not even touched upon the dangers to this world should we not get on top of the situation,” Lelani continued.
“This world?” Cal asked. “You mean the other guardians in our party?”
“They, too, are in mortal danger, but I actually meant the people of this world. Lord Dorn is as reckless as he is remorseless. You have no idea how many times he’s been reprimanded by the Council of Wizards for engaging in the darkest arts—forbidden magicks that could lay waste to entire regions in a single stroke. There are no councils here to hold him in check. We’re fortunate that magical energy is in short supply, but he will eventually find what he needs. Even if we find the prince and regroup the guardians, out of desperation, Dorn could resort to outlawed spells and kill tens of thousands here while trying to defeat us.”
These revelations overwhelmed Cal. He thought about the line cops often used to avoid responsibility for FUBAR scenarios … It’s above my pay grade. But that wasn’t even the case here. In Aandor, these types of responsibilities were exactly his pay grade. Three thousand men served under him, helping him keep order in the grandest city on his world.
The buzzer rang.
One problem at a time, Cal thought. “I’m going down to the station to get my interrogation over with.”
“Wait,” she said. Lelani delved into her satchel and pulled out a lapel pin that looked like a small silver flower. “Wear this somewhere in view of the people questioning you.”
“What is it?”
“The pin is endowed with a credibility enchantment. As long as the person questioning you is in view of this pin, they will be more apt to believe your stories.”
“I can tell them anything?”
“No. Try to make your explanation as realistic as possible. This is not strong magic. I confiscated this one from a novitiate who used it to bed tavern wenches in Aandor. If you told someone you were a cricket, they would get a terrible migraine trying to reject that lie. But if you told them you were five foot eight inches tall, they would accept that. The enchantment gives your own creativity an added edge.”
Cal was grateful for the gift. He could paint Dorn’s men as gangsters who kidnapped him from the scene and attacked the cruiser outside … that they didn’t expect Cat to have a weapon much less be proficient with it, and with that distraction, he freed himself of his bonds and helped get the jump on them. He could put out an all-points bulletin on them as well. That would make it hard for them to travel in public, especially Hesz.
The buzzer rang again.
“Will they insist on coming up?” Lelani asked, worried about her appearance.
“No. I’ll tell them Cat is having a fit. Her temper is legendary at the precinct. ‘She’s in a mood, hates the NYPD at the moment, and they risk having a coffeepot thrown at them.’ They won’t come up.”
It was a stretch, but Cal had to keep the investigation in check. His original mission was the most important charge of his life. He had to resume it as soon as possible.
“I’ll be back in a few hours. Try to formulate a plan of action. Take care of them. And keep an eye on Seth. I can’t tell you how he did it yet, but my gut tells me he’s the reason everything went to hell.”
2
Seth entered the apartment with all the finesse of a drunken Marx brother. The wooden planks he carried caught on the door frame, and he slammed into them hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. He startled the young girl who sat on the living room window seat vigilantly watching for her dad. She looked exhausted.
“Sorry,” Seth said to the girl.
Everyone had an assigned task to kill time until Cal returned. Seth’s job was to raid the apartment being renovated upstairs for tools and materials to patch the bedroom windows that had been damaged during the fight. Cat was on the phone, telling her construction contractors to take the day off.
Lelani quietly came out of the girl’s bedroom with the dog wrapped in bedsheets. A limp paw stuck out of one corner, an unfortunate oversight. The corners of the young girl’s mouth drew down and began to tremble. She fell into another fit and buried her teary eyes on her forearm against the sill.
“She was engrossed with the view from the window only a moment ago,” Lelani whispered. “I checked before coming out.”
“My bad,” Seth said.
Lelani hurried out of the apartment.
Seth looked toward Cat to tell her the girl was upset again.
“A family emergency, yes,” Cat said into the phone. She was spinning around the kitchen, putting away candles and incense and doing other chores as she talked. “A death in the family,” she continued. “And tomorrow, too. No, I’m not sure how long. You will definitely get paid for both days. No … I’ll have to talk to my husband about that. I’ll have to … Look, I don’t know the answer to that right now.”
The girl cried so hard she quivered. She soon developed the hiccups. Seth tried to break into Cat’s phone conversation, but she was in her “zone” and the rest of the world didn’t exist.
“I just don’t know at the moment,” Cat continued on the phone. “I’ll call you as soon as I do. Yes, I know many
people want to hire you, Mr. Pellegrini—you were highly recommended by the Kramers, but…”
Seth dropped the planks by the couch and gingerly approached the girl.
“Hi,” he said. He was no better at starting a conversation with a five-year-old than a twenty-five-year-old. He realized how much of a crutch the porn gig had been.
The girl looked up. Her expression said You’re not my daddy.
Seth already thought this was a bad idea right after “hi,” but he couldn’t abandon her now.
“I’m Seth. I’m a—friend—of your dad.” Seth spotted a box of Kleenex on the end table and pulled a few tissues for her. “Here, for your eyes,” he said with a smile.
She hiccupped, took the tissues, and honked a glob of snot into the pile. Then she held it out for Seth to take back.
“Uh—why don’t you hold on to it,” he said. “Just in case. So your name is … Britney?”
She gave him a quizzical look, the type with a pout. “Brianna.” Hiccup. “Are you sure you’re a friend of my daddy’s? He tells all of his friends about me. They know my name.”
“Maybe ‘friend’ wasn’t the right word. Anyway, I noticed you were sad. Thought maybe you’d like some company.”
Bree shook her head.
“You’re sad because of your pet,” Seth continued.
Bree nodded.
“I have a pet, too. She never saved my life, though.”
“Maggie loved me.” Hiccup. “The bad man hurt her because she tried to help me.”
“That’s what dogs do. They protect the people they love.”
“But, I miss her.” Brianna started to tear up again. “I didn’t want her to die.”
Seth pulled out a fresh tissue for her.
“Maggie was a good dog,” he said. “I know that she’s in heaven right now looking down at you and she’s very happy that you’re okay. I think God gives dogs a special cookie when they save their masters. Sets them up in a doghouse as big as a barn; makes them the alpha dog in their pack in heaven.”
“What’s an alfafa dog?”
“The boss. The big dog who takes care of all the rest.”
Bree nodded. She liked the sound of that.
“What kind of dog do you have?” she asked.
“I have a cat. Her name is Hoshi. It means ‘star’ in Japanese. She sits on my head in the mornings because I won’t turn off the alarm clock. When bad men come after me, she runs under the bed and meows at them, but very angrily.”
Bree smiled.
“It’s true,” Seth said with mock sincerity. “She says things—in cat language of course—like, ‘Leave the food guy alone, you ugly wonk. He hasn’t filled my dish yet.’ Or, ‘Get away from the food guy, you repulsive mooch, my litter needs cleaning.’”
“I’d like to meet Hoshi,” Bree said.
“Sure. I’ll have you up one day.”
It took Seth a moment to realize there was nowhere to have her up to—he was homeless. He forced a smile. The talk of Hoshi chastising men who were after him also reminded Seth that Carmine wanted his kneecaps for wall trophies. Besides the freak show, there were normal everyday humans out for his head as well. He wasn’t sure which set of goons were worse.
“Plumbers are the worst,” Cat said, slamming the phone into its cradle.
“Excuse me?” Seth jumped.
“Plumbers. To get a good one, you have to book them months in advance and then you have a prima donna with butt crack to deal with.”
“Right.”
“Is the…” Cat made hand motions to signify the dog being out of the child’s room.
“Yeah. Lelani took care of it.”
“Poor thing.”
“She was a brave dog.”
“No, I mean Bree,” she said pointing.
The girl was asleep on the window seat. Cat took the tissues from her hand and covered her baby with a quilt.
“Seth, please fix my bedroom window. Then I can put her down in there.”
“Yeah.” He picked up the planks and resumed his march toward the back.
3
Cat watched from her kitchen window as Lelani buried the dog under the small plot of grass behind the building. The patio umbrella was strategically positioned over her to block the centaur from the only other building with a bird’s-eye view of the backyard. She was a beautiful woman in a turtleneck knit, with the ass end of a horse where her legs should have been. Her tail, which was also scarlet, was neatly banded by three gold ringlets one foot apart, forming spheres of hair with a tassel at the end. The fence and bushes around the backyard were high, but still, Cat wanted the horse-girl back inside as soon as possible. Things were already hard enough to explain without the neighbors spotting Lelani.
Seth made several phone attempts to get his photography career back. Someone named Carmine, with a cruel voice that the little plastic earpiece could not contain, made it clear that Seth would not only never work again, but that there were men combing the five boroughs ready to serve him his knees on a platter plus a court summons for breach of contract. To take his mind off his troubles, Seth tried boarding up the bedroom windows. He did everything badly.
Cat finished calling the contractors, then vacuumed for an hour, picking up glass and other debris from the fight. Bree was sleeping off the aftermath of her outbursts over Maggie’s death. They all needed a time-out from life until everything was back to normal. Would anything ever be normal again? Cat wondered. How would this genie go back into the bottle? In all the years she pondered her husband’s origin, nothing like this had crossed her mind. Was Cal really a knight, just like in the storybooks? A member of his country’s nobility, heir to lands and a fortune? Did that make her Lady MacDonnell? She chuckled at the notion. No one ever mistook her for a lady. She soaped up a sponge and began washing the dishes.
When Cat was a little girl, she beat up boys, climbed trees, and spat farther than a camel. Her older sister Vanessa dressed in Barbie pink and pretended the decrepit jungle gym in the backyard was a castle tower from which a mysterious prince would rescue her. Vanessa ended up with Vinnie, an electrician from Fort Lee and her first child six months after the wedding. Cat allowed herself a second chuckle. Turned out she was getting the castle. Life was full of little ironies.
“Cut that out,” she whispered to herself. “There’s no castle. You need a reality check.”
The monotony of the dishes caused her mind to wander, and she considered the lives of Cal’s mother and sisters. Would it be like the movies—long gowns for the ladies and chivalry coming from every sword-wielding dork? A million rules of etiquette for every function: how to curtsy, present oneself to those of higher rank, where to sit at a table, how to hold in a fart and scratch one’s ass properly. Cat did not know the first thing about being an aristocrat, nor did she want to. Cat avoided caviar, ballroom dancing, and hobnobbing with the pretentiously dull. She struggled to remember which side of the plate the utensils were set on when she had her own guests for dinner. She couldn’t imagine putting Bree through all that.
“Ow!” she yelped, nicking herself on a chipped glass. “Serves me right for thinking nonsense.”
She rinsed the cut in cold water and wrapped a paper towel around it. She went to the bathroom to find a Band-Aid and spotted the pregnancy test dissolving in a puddle in the tub. She’d forgotten it in the excitement. The result was ruined. Cat felt ready to vomit, but she didn’t know if it was the cut, morning sickness, or the realization that Cal now had a family she’d have to meet—a family who had never gotten the chance to approve of her—that lived in a castle, had its own crest, traced its lineage for generations and had never heard of the Equal Rights Amendment. My God, she realized. They’re Republicans!
“Excuse me, my lady…”
Lelani startled her. For a four-footed being, the horse-girl was surprisingly silent. Cat was also jumpier than usual. It would be some time before her nerves settled.
“Please, don’t call me t
hat,” Cat said.
“How should I address you?”
“‘Cat’ is fine.”
Lelani looked uncomfortable with the notion but pushed on regardless. “I was curious as to the duration of the captain’s interrogation?”
“A few hours. It doesn’t get more serious than a dead cop. He has to explain how and why he left the scene, without implicating you or Seth. He has to convince them that he was dazed and injured. That he got the jump on his assailants, but was too injured to pursue or radio for help. Otherwise there’ll be disciplinary action.”
“I see.”
Cat found the centaur hard to read; she was so guarded with her emotions. She thought the girl might be judging Cal. “He’ll bend the truth to its limits,” Cat added, defensively. “It’s not in his nature to lie outright.”
“I know,” the centaur responded.
Again, Cat couldn’t make heads or tails of Lelani’s enigmatic responses. She went to the kitchen and put a pot of water on the burner. This time Cat could hear soft clopping on the hardwood as Lelani followed her. For a large creature, the centaur was amazingly graceful navigating the cramped living space of bipedal humans. She wasn’t as big as an actual horse, but big enough to have caused Cat some concern when Cal left her behind in their home. She had yet to knock over a lamp or break a piece of furniture. Cat wished she could say the same for the other one, as something, probably porcelain, just hit the ground and shattered in her bedroom. A weak, “Sorry!” emanated from the back of her apartment.
“Some tea?” Cat asked Lelani.
“Yes, thank you,” the centaur responded. This time, Cat noted a smidgeon of pleasure in her response.
The horse-girl—horse-woman—was very polite. For some reason, Cat expected someone who was half horse to behave more like an animal. Was it even housebroken? Where would she do her business? Cat took out a few days’ worth of old newspaper from the recycling bin and placed it on the kitchen table, just in case. There were a million questions Cat wanted to ask but didn’t know how to begin. She prepared the tea and brought it into the living room on a tray with biscuits. She sat on the couch while Lelani lowered herself on the floor next to the coffee table. Folding her legs beneath her, the centaur still came up to eye level. If Cat concentrated on the woman’s chest and up, she looked like any other gorgeous redhead in an olive-green turtleneck knit.
Awakenings Page 14