by Jill Morrow
“I’m ready,” she said. “Tell me what to do. Give me the strength to do it.”
The bars against her back grew warm. She thought she felt a soft kiss upon her forehead, but to ponder it would draw her out of this protected moment.
A clear little voice rang through her head, despite the fact that she’d assumed herself quite alone.
“I can help you,” it said. “I am of the light. You and I fight together.”
Francesca raised an eyebrow but kept her eyes closed, unwilling to break communion with this unknown personality.
“Who are you?” she asked.
A little laugh scattered raindrops of light before her eyes. “Does it matter? Isn’t it enough to know that I am born of the light and will return to the light? Besides, my dearest Francesca, your heart and soul know me so very well. Only your mind requires an introduction.”
Francesca recognized some truth in this. She paused a second to concentrate on the sound of her own measured breathing. She’d almost allowed physical reality far more credibility than it deserved.
“So much better.” The voice felt golden with approval. “Try to remember, Francesca. You’ve never fought alone. You had help last time. You always have help.”
“God helped me last time,” Francesca said.
“Obviously. That’s a given. And if I recall, our Creator used that standard practice of letting the light flow through other people. After all, Francesca, you certainly didn’t arrive at this priory on your own.”
Of course she hadn’t. Her mind quickly reviewed her last image of the twenty-first century. The cathedral. Kat staring down at her shoes, her watch, barely containing her annoyance. Stephen seated beside her, actually trying to pray.
Stephen.
Fifteen years ago, Stephen had been the viaduct, the channel for information despite his own reluctance.
“Yes,” said the voice, and Francesca sensed a smile behind the words. Whoever this was, he or she was propelled by joy. She didn’t quite understand that. Didn’t this being realize the great danger they faced?
Earth to Stephen, she thought, dragging her focus back to the matter at hand. She subdued a chuckle. She was not a particularly amusing person, so this small attempt at humor startled her. Something about her companion seemed to inspire mirth.
Not earth to Stephen. It was far more than that. Dancing, light-filled energy surrounded her. She pictured it as a long, glowing stream connecting her to her nephew. The light danced before her, dazzling in its intensity.
“Let your words flow through it,” the helpful voice suggested.
“Come in, Stephen,” Francesca whispered, but the words no longer seemed funny. “Apparently, this is meant to be a collaborative effort. Please, open Stephen’s heart to this.”
It felt good to pray. Perhaps she’d allowed fear more access than she’d originally supposed.
“Open Stephen and bless this channel,” she continued.
The response seemed to come from far away, like the whistle of a train rounding the bend of a miles-off mountain. Francesca’s eyes flew open at the unexpected message: Julia is coming.
Julia?
“There.” The original voice, more childish than before, sounded almost smug. “See? There is the next step.”
“But Julia can’t come here!” Her great-niece knew so little about matters of spirit. She was totally unprepared. Bringing her here was like sending a firefighter into the heart of a fire with no protective gear.
The presence she’d felt so strongly was already fading away.
“Wait.” Francesca spoke out loud. “Don’t leave me. I need more information.”
A smattering of laughter answered her plea. “Oh, Francesca, I couldn’t leave you if I tried.”
Realization struck her full force.
“I know who you are!” she cried. “You’re the child of light!”
But even the laughter had vanished, leaving only sparkling shadows behind.
Francesca returned her concentration to the ribbon of light that connected her to Stephen. She could almost envision him now, a definitely masculine form encased in shining armor.
“Julia is coming,” he said again. “Take care of her, Frannie.”
He raised the sword he held in his left hand and vanished, leaving Francesca alone by the priory gate.
Not really alone. She remembered her own spiritual armor and wondered briefly how she could have forgotten it. She quickly drew it on: truth buckled around the waist, integrity as a breastplate, salvation as a helmet, the shield of faith to keep away the burning arrows of evil. The sword in her hand glowed white. Spiritual battle required spiritual weaponry.
Enough whining and worrying. She was ready.
Kat awoke to find moonlight flooding her bedroom and her husband staring down at her, head propped on one hand.
“What?” She bolted upright, just missing his head with her own.
“I have a message for you,” Stephen said, running his free hand through her sleek hair.
She blinked, wondering if she had fully awakened. She hadn’t heard these words from her husband in fifteen years. Even then he’d swatted them away like uninvited flies at a picnic. The man before her seemed downright serene, an adjective she’d never been able to apply to him.
“Stephen. Are you okay?”
He leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips. “Put on your armor, Katerina.”
She drew back with a gasp. Only Aunt Frannie called her Katerina. “What are you talking about?”
“Those are the words I heard, and I’m sticking to them. Something is about to begin, Kat. We can’t afford fear or doubt right now. Put on your armor and stay close. Okay?”
Kat sank back into the comforting warmth of her bed. Even Stephen’s newfound air of confidence would not calm the sickness she felt churning in the pit of her stomach.
24
KAT FORCED HERSELF TO STAY IN BED UNTIL SIX-THIRTY THE next morning. By then it was obvious that she’d never fall back to sleep. She was entirely too restless. Her down quilt, usually so snug and comfortable, seemed filled with pebbles instead of feathers. Even the pillows beneath her head felt hard.
With a groan, she sat and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She stepped carefully onto the cold wood floor, cringing in anticipation of her body’s daily mutiny. Headaches and stomachaches had become as predictable a part of her morning as daylight. Hmmm. Not bad. Her toes uncurled a bit. She actually felt okay…maybe even good.
A strong arm landed around her waist.
“Come back,” Stephen said, dragging her into the depths of their bed.
Kat took in his rumpled hair and crooked grin. He looked positively boyish. Still, she placed a firm hand on each of his shoulders and pushed.
“You’re cute, Stephen Carmichael, but I’m getting up anyway.”
“Why?” His grip tightened. “Something I said?”
“You look too relaxed for a man in the midst of a supernatural disaster. It’s disturbing. Besides, I need coffee.”
His eyebrows rose. “Coffee? I haven’t heard you even breathe that word these past few days.”
“I know. I think I’m finally starting to feel better.”
“And not a minute too soon. I need you.”
Kat kissed him on his stubbly cheek. “You don’t need me. Not really. You did okay yesterday filling Julia in on the weird pieces of our past.”
Stephen flopped back against his pillows, arm flung across his eyes. “Oh, yes, I was wonderful. I especially liked the part where our daughter stared at me like I was nuts and said that she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Well, what did you expect?” Kat hoisted herself from the bed and padded across the floor to fetch her bathrobe. “Adolescence is hard enough without hearing scary stories about how your parents once battled evil spirits—including the one currently out to get you.”
“Ouch.” Stephen remained motionless. “I don’t know, Kat. It�
�s starting to look as if Frannie was right.”
Kat slid her feet into her slippers. “About what?”
“We never gave our kids any spiritual weapons, did we?”
She leaned against the closet door to study him. She’d been willing to chalk up their middle-of-the-night conversation as a dream born of stress, but there was something different about her husband this morning, something she couldn’t quite identify. For Stephen to even speak in terms of spirit struck her as odd, almost as if he’d opened his mouth and spouted Hindustani.
“What’s happened to you while I’ve been under the weather?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
He turned to face her, forehead puckered in thought. “I’m not sure. Why?”
She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. There was no way to describe how she felt without sounding stupid. Her husband had somehow acquired a new facet, an overlay of assured strength that had not been with him last night. How to explain that to a man who had done little more that morning than simply wake up?
She pushed her hair behind her ears and aimed for flippancy. “I don’t know what’s different. I guess you’re just not the man I married.”
“Hmm.” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe I am the man you married. Maybe that distracted other guy was the intruder.”
Kat shuddered. “Too deep, too early. I need caffeine. Are you coming, or will I have to grind the coffee beans myself?”
“I’m coming. We need to talk.”
We need to talk. Was there anyone on earth who welcomed that phrase? It always sounded ominous, no matter what the intention. Stephen seemed to realize that as he yanked on his sweats and combed his fingers through his hair.
“It’s not as if everything is business as usual around here,” he offered as an explanation. “We need to discuss the next step.”
She gave a curt nod. “I leave that to you, sir. After your three-in-the-morning revelation about my armor, I assume you have a pipeline of sorts attached to a spiritual advice line.”
He frowned. “Don’t go cynical on me, Kat. Now isn’t the time. And the armor message wasn’t anything you didn’t already know.”
“That’s just it, Stephen. Sure, I knew it. I just can’t pull it up when I need it. This stuff sticks with you. It takes a while for anything esoteric to penetrate your credibility, but once it does, you seem to have no trouble using it. Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I stop doubting it all? Why don’t I believe like you believe?”
He stared at her, genuinely surprised. “But you do believe. You’re a fighter, Kat. You always have been.”
“Maybe. I believe in God, of course. And I recognize that what’s happening to us has nothing to do with the tangible world everybody else sees. But apparently I’m too cynical to get directions. I never know what to do.”
“You do know what to do,” he insisted. “It’s just that you’re a lawyer. You question everything.”
“And you’re a businessman,” she shot back. “You focus on the bottom line. Why you, Stephen?”
He shook his head. She read the slight hurt in his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know, either.” She wished she could make her tone less clipped. “None of this makes sense. I need it to make sense, or I can’t fix it. How can anyone…or anything…expect me to fight effectively without facts?”
“There aren’t any,” he started, but she turned and left the room before he could add anything else. He winced at the ramrod set of her back, then followed her.
He caught her at the foot of the stairs, spinning her to face him with a deft tug on her bathrobe cord.
“Hey,” he said. “Kat. We’re in this together. It’s going to take both of us to bring Frannie back and to keep our girls safe.”
She sighed, then allowed herself to slump into him. “I know, Stephen. I’m sorry. It’s just very hard when I have no clue about what comes next. It’s like traveling through a dense fog. I know that something horrible and unavoidable is out there, but I can’t see well enough to know exactly what it is, let alone handle it.”
“Well.” He managed a twisted smile. “I guess we’ll figure it out when we ram into it.”
A rustle from the family room caught their attention.
“We are not alone,” Stephen commented. “It’s ridiculously early. Which kid, do you think?”
“Oh, Julia. Hands down. Claire couldn’t be that quiet if she tried. I’ll go to her. You start the coffee.”
“Sure thing.” He headed down the hall to the kitchen entrance. The kitchen and the family room actually formed a large ell, but it seemed somehow prudent to let Kat start this conversation alone.
Julia sat in front of the fireplace, crumpling newspaper to place beneath the logs she’d laid on the grate. She looked up as her mother entered the room.
“Hi, Mom. Do you mind if I make a fire?”
“Looks like you already did.” Kat walked over to the loveseat beneath the window and sank into the soft cushions.
For once Julia did not roll her eyes at her mother’s comment. She looked pale. The circles beneath her eyes told all about the kind of night she’d had.
“Julia, sweetie, how long have you been awake?”
“Um…off and on all night, I guess. I only came downstairs about fifteen minutes ago. May I light the fire?”
“Sure.” Kat reached for the afghan at the end of the loveseat. The whir of the coffee grinder filled the room as she pulled the warm blanket up around her knees.
Julia’s head turned instinctively toward the kitchen.
“Dad’s awake, too,” Kat said. She thought that Julia brightened a bit, but it was hard to tell. She watched as her daughter struck a match and lit the corner of the newspaper. Julia built good fires. The flame spread quickly, catching the dried kindling and sending eager tongues flickering upward.
“I’m sorry you had a rough night,” Kat said. “I can certainly understand why.”
“Yeah.” Julia licked her lips, then cast a quick glance toward the kitchen. “Is Dad on his way to the restaurant?”
“No. Actually, I think he’s going to put up the coffee and then come in to enjoy your fire.”
“Oh. Okay.” Once again, the odd expression crossed Julia’s face. Kat couldn’t tell whether her daughter wanted Stephen to join them or whether the idea upset her.
She didn’t have long to ponder it. Stephen joined them, stopping to plant a kiss on Julia’s head before sliding next to his wife on the loveseat.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he said.
Kat observed Julia closely. The girl stared at her father, swallowed hard, and then locked her gaze onto the dancing fingers of flame. Even Stephen, normally so obtuse, picked up the sudden change in the air.
“What is it?” he asked flatly. “No more secrets, Julia.”
“You’ll probably think I’m crazy, Dad.”
“With a past like mine? I doubt it. I do know that time’s running short.”
Julia turned beseeching eyes his way. “I had a dream last night.”
Kat immediately tensed. What if it hadn’t been a dream at all? What if Julia had once again been transported into Asteroth’s orbit? A sense of urgency raced through her as she leaned forward to speak. The warning press of Stephen’s hand on her knee stopped her. She glanced at him. He remained relaxed, long legs stretched across the coffee table, arm resting against the back of the couch.
“Oh?” he said, tone casual. “Scary or helpful?”
“I’m not sure. Weird.” She tucked her knees up beneath her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs.
“Mom and I are pretty good at interpreting this stuff,” Stephen said. “Go ahead.”
“Okay. I guess I’d been asleep for a while, because I knew that the moon was high and that everything was very still. I saw the man and the girl again.”
“That would be Asteroth and Isobel.” Stephen was so calm that Kat had to wonder how he did it.
; “I wasn’t too afraid,” Julia continued. “They were far away. It was as if I was watching them through the trees of a forest. They didn’t even know I was there.”
“Where were they?” Kat asked, unable to wait quietly on the sidelines.
“They were in a clearing, I think. They had lit a fire, although I could see that the man was sweating. He said something…that they were to find stones. Smooth, white stones. He’d brought a branch of rosemary and stuck it into the ground near the fire, like a little tree. Then he told Isobel that it was nearly time.”
Julia paused. The information seemed so empty, so lacking in anything of importance. Kat wanted to urge her daughter forward, to press her to remember any small detail that might explain their next step. But once again, Stephen’s fingers pressed into her knee. She recognized the warning for patience. Julia glanced up at her parents. Apparently satisfied that they were still listening, she went on. “So they started searching for stones. It was so dumb. The man kept closing his eyes, reaching out his hand over leaves and parts of the ground as if he was trying to feel where stones might be hiding. It was like a creepy horror flick.”
Kat had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting out that Julia was more correct than she knew.
“What happened then?” Stephen asked.
“Well, the girl started walking toward my hiding place. I didn’t want her to find me, so I turned and ran away through the woods. Then it was like I wasn’t running anymore. I was floating, then flying, and I…I saw Aunt Frannie.”
“Where was she?”
“She was standing by a fence, near a gate. And, Dad, she was…glowing. I know this sounds totally stupid, but it looked like she was wearing light.”
“It’s not stupid, Julie. That’s her armor. Remember? We talked about spiritual armor yesterday. We all have it. Frannie’s armor doesn’t look like what we think of as armor. It’s like dots of light all over her body.”
“That’s it, Dad. That’s exactly it.”
Kat’s brow furrowed as she tried to process the information flowing between them. Julia had actually straightened, as if she understood exactly what Stephen was talking about. The look on her face could only be called relief.