One Way Fare

by Barbara Taub

  Thomas and Leila explored London, and he spent the afternoons annoying Max’s cook until she finally told them she was taking a month’s vacation. A delighted Thomas assumed ownership of the kitchen.

  Then came the morning Gaby saw the reference to a ranch in eastern Washington. A ranch called St. Helens.

  “You can’t go.” Leila held up a hand as Gaby opened her mouth to protest.

  “But I remember Harry saying something about a ranch.” Gaby smiled at the memory. “He was going to make Carrie eat vegetables there.”

  “Not until after my birth day.” Leila looked cautiously at Max. “And you promised to talk at Max’s Nephilim meeting about whether they should support Gifts or Haven.”

  Max watched Gaby’s face. “I can send a team out to Washington to gather intelligence.”

  She shook her head. “No, that might scare them off.” She walked over and gazed out the window. But when she turned back, her shoulders were back, her chin held high. “I’ll go out there after I give my presentation at the Convocation tomorrow. My talk is almost ready. What should I wear?”

  Max’s eyes lit up. “Now that I can help you with.” An hour later, they were ensconced in a Knightsbridge boutique with saleswomen parading a bewildering assortment of dresses in front of her. Gaby looked at Leila and mouthed, help me.

  “I should tell you this is all your own fault.” Leila put two fingers to her mouth and blew the earsplitting whistle that would one day bring opposing softball teams to a dead halt. “But I am a better person than that, so it’s WWMD time.” Facing the startled sales staff, she clapped her hands sharply. “Listen up, people. Please bring my friend here a plain, classic Dior or Chanel, preferably at least one in a suit. She will try on no more than five items, so make sure you get it right. Also, she’ll need matching coat, shoes, and handbag. You have only twenty minutes because that’s how long it will be before one of us throws up.”

  Leila made shooing motions at the frozen saleswomen. “Is there part of twenty-minutes-till-pukeage that you didn’t get?”

  It was actually a little over thirty minutes before they walked out of the store, but that was only because Max kept trying to buy Gaby the red cocktail dress he’d seen her eyeing.

  “That was worse than Hell, and I should know.” Gaby still looked shaken. “Leila, you have to promise me, after we save the world, I’ll get to wear jeans.”

  “You and me both.”

  Thomas and Max sighed.

  When she came downstairs the next evening with her hair brushed down around her shoulders, Gaby was wearing the perfect Dior suit along with the terrifying heels, bright lipstick, and subtle eyeliner Leila had deemed essential for 1994.

  Max framed her cheeks in his hands. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Tell me again why I agreed to do this tonight?”

  She laughed. “I’ll tell you when we get back.”

  Gaby was unprepared for the huge ballroom crowded with Nephilim. Max shrugged and explained that there were too many for the Metro to handle. Thomas nodded. “Plus the food is probably better in London than in Between.” Leila snorted.

  When Max led Gaby to the stage and introduced her to the sea of Nephilim facing her, she stood for a moment in silence. Quietly, Leila and Thomas moved to either side of her, each taking one of her hands. She heard Leila murmur, “Next-thing…”

  So, shaking her head at the neatly stacked cards containing the speech she’d prepared so carefully, Gaby took a breath and just told them. She spoke of her childhood in Null City, talked about her parents and her brother and sister. At the end, she paused and looked out at the silent audience, ignoring the tears slipping down her cheeks. “I’m not here today to ask you to support Gifts or Haven. I’m asking you to help end the war. I’m demanding that you save the families of Null City. You can make sure no more babies are taken from their parents.” She put an arm around Leila. “No more brothers have to watch their families die in explosions.” Her other arm circled Thomas. “No other girls have to hear their parents are killed trying to get them birthday presents. And most of all, I’m asking you to look at your own families and decide if you’re ready to spend the rest of your lives wondering if they are alive or dead.” The great hall was completely silent as she dropped Thomas’ and Leila’s hand and left the stage.

  To Gaby’s surprise, for almost the first time since she’d said good-bye to the twins at the Metro, she was free of the crushing weight of guilt over her parents’ murders, her failure to return to her siblings, and even her own death. With her challenge to the Nephilim to help end the war, she’d finally accomplished something important. She grabbed a glass of champagne from a tray and smiled at the crowd of tall, handsome Nephilim surrounding her and praising her speech.

  Gaby saw Max’s frowning face look over every time her laugh rang out. By her third glass of champagne, she thought that was hysterically funny. Finally, Max made his way over to her during the brief flurry while everyone found seats for the dinner. “What did you say to all of them?”

  “I asked them to tell me about their first car. There isn’t a man alive who can resist that one. Have the leaders decided anything yet?”

  “No. But I’ve decided that I’d rather talk to you than play politics with them.”

  She opened her mouth but stopped in frustration when an announcement came asking the leaders to return to the head table and the rest of the guests to be seated for dinner. Thomas dragged Leila over to meet some of his fellow soldiers from Watcher Court, and Max turned toward the head table. But as he left, he bent to her ear and whispered, “My first car was incredible. Bigger than any of theirs.” Her laughter followed him as he moved toward the head table, and she found an empty chair at a nearby table. She looked at the man taking the chair next to her and all thought stopped. It was Luic.

  “Gaby-mine.” His dark magic voice whispered to her. Max looked up sharply from his table.

  Gaby couldn’t speak. She was pretty sure she wasn’t breathing, either.

  “You have to get out of here and stay away,” he said. But all she heard was the velvet of his voice saying words that made no sense.

  “Gabrielle! Do you remember where we meet after dances?”

  She nodded numbly.

  “Be there tomorrow at noon. Alone.”

  Then he was gone. She had not said a word.

  Without speaking to anyone, she left the ballroom and took a taxi back to Chapel House. She asked the driver if he knew where St. Helens was. He thought for a moment. “Were you wanting St. Helens Church in Bishopsgate?”

  She went inside and turned to go upstairs.

  “Gaby.” Max’s strained voice came from behind her. “I heard him.”

  Suddenly she was shaking so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. His arms surrounded her as he carried her over to a chair and sat down with her on his lap. Leila and Thomas stood staring from the doorway.

  Max’s bleak eyes met Leila’s over Gaby’s bent head. “It was Luic. He wants Gaby to meet him tomorrow.”

  For early April in London, Gaby thought vaguely, the sun was pretty warm. She sat on a wooden bench in the little plaza outside of St. Helens Church. She should probably be exhausted because the four of them had stayed up all night arguing about what to do. Well, the other three had argued. She heard their voices carrying to her, but dimly, as if they were at the end of a long tunnel.

  Finally, as dawn was breaking, she told them she wouldn’t reveal where she was meeting Luic, and they were not to follow her. Then she said she was going upstairs for a nap and to wake her at ten. She took a shower and changed into jeans and a hooded sweatshirt before letting herself out the back window of her room.

  A shadow fell over her face, and Gaby felt him sit down next to her. She opened her eyes. In all the times she had imagined seeing Luic again, there were so many things she’d pictured herself saying. But in the end, there was only one word. “Why?”

  He was different, she realized
. It wasn’t that he looked older: neither of them did. It wasn’t even that his hair was short and the beard and mustache she’d found so sexy were gone. He was dressed like a tourist, with jeans and a casual sweater. But the Mask stared at her. It wasn’t something he put on for protection anymore because now it was the essence of the man. None of that made any difference. She would have known him—she did know him—with her eyes closed.

  “Gabrielle,” he began, his beautiful voice strained and painful. He took another breath.

  “Did you hate me?” she asked. “Did you join Haven for revenge against me?”

  “Hate you?” His eyes closed. “I hated myself. My fault for calling you a liar. My fault I wasn’t there when you were kidnapped. My fault you died. And then on the Metro when I had a choice of where to go, I thought you would be in Heaven or the nearest thing to that, so I picked the Watchers Court. But you weren’t there. ”

  His eyes opened and blue eyes stared searchingly into brown. “When you came for me in that bar in Seattle, you said you would always come back for me. And I remembered you saying you loved me. But you never came, and I never got the chance to tell you… So I knew I had to find a way to wait for you. The Watchers were training for the potential battle, and I volunteered for that. It was the hardest work I’d ever done because everyone else there was Nephilim and had been used to their abilities since birth. But it felt good to have to work so hard because then I didn’t have to think.”

  She nodded. She knew about not thinking.

  “And then one day Harry was there. Or at least, he told me he was what Harry had been before he became human. He said the pivot point was important, but for now there was something else I needed to do. Harry asked me to infiltrate Haven. He said the humans were our greatest responsibility, and if I could bring Gifts and Haven together, it would save so many lives. And Gaby-mine, I have lived it forward for the past hundred years. One. Hundred. Years.”

  Luic paused, and for a moment the mask wavered. His eyebrow went up, and the old Luic looked at her with the arrogant charm she’d found so irresistible all those years ago. “Gabrielle, you know me. I spent whole years trying to let go of your memory, using anything and anyone I could find. But you wouldn’t let me forget, and I kept coming back to working toward this. Maybe I thought somehow it would make up for what I did to you, or maybe I just wanted to do something.”

  Luic leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and spoke to the ground between his spread feet. “The hardest part was in the sixties, and it wasn’t just that people kept telling me I looked like that American rock star. I knew you would be alive in Seattle, but you wouldn’t know me. I used to lie awake and wonder what would happen if I just showed up and tried to warn you. Harry told me I wouldn’t be able to change anything, but I couldn’t help trying. I worked my way up high enough in Haven to cancel any orders for assassinations, so I made sure nobody ordered your parents’ deaths. Gaby, those murders were never approved by Haven. They occurred anyway.”

  He turned to face her. “People I met in Haven told the same stories you did. Family members and friends killed, no way to know what the other side was after. They just knew they were in a war for survival where their families and their own lives were the stakes. I’ve worked on forming my own team, all good people I care about. We’re getting close to making a bid for control of Haven. If that happens, Gaby, we could reach out to the Gifts and end the war. Maybe even expose whoever is setting up both sides.”

  “Luic,” she whispered. Then again, stronger. “Luic. This can’t be the right pattern. I don’t know why, but either that wasn’t really Harry or he was using you. Maybe he has been all along. You have to come away with me now. I’ve remembered about Harry’s ranch, and I found a mention of St. Helen’s Ranch in the Haven records. You can come with me, and we can find out what’s happened to Harry and the twins. And we can try again to capture the pivot point.”

  “I can’t.” His voice was emotionless as he looked beyond her toward a bleak vision. But then his voice filled with wonder and the mask slipped again as he smiled faintly into her eyes. “Last night I saw you there with your hair down, and I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

  Max said that too, she remembered. The most beautiful thing.

  “Gaby-mine, I have to stay and you can’t stay with me. You’d only be killed, and I know I can’t live—or die—with that again. So I’m giving back your promise to return to me. You have to go and not come back. But I’m so grateful I got to see you again so I can tell you how sorry I am. About everything.”

  She closed her eyes and waited. Love. But he didn’t say it. She opened her eyes when his shadow fell across her face again. His hand brushed her cheek, and he turned. She watched him walk away.

  Gaby didn’t know how long she’d been sitting, frozen in place, when the other end of the bench dipped. Again, she didn’t have to look up to know who it was.

  “You followed me, Max?”

  “Of course I did.” He let a silent minute go by. “When I saw Casablanca, I always identified with Humphrey Bogart. But now I’m just hoping to be Paul Henreid.”

  She looked up at him.

  “He ended up with the beautiful girl, and all Bogey got was Claude Rains.”

  “You had Luic followed when he left here.”

  “Of course I did,” he repeated. “They won’t be able to hang onto him. Luic has a hundred years of practice.” He hesitated. “But you know why I followed you, don’t you?” He sat absolutely still, but the look in his eyes was a prayer. Please, it said, please…

  “I know.” She took his hand. Then she paused and he froze. She took a deep breath and looked up at him with a small smile that was a present just for him. “Hey, wait just a minute there, buster. You were doing Chapel-ears? You heard it all? We’re going to have a long talk about respect for privacy and personal space.”

  He laughed, put both arms around her, and drew her to her feet. Then he wrapped his jacket around her shoulders and his arm around her waist. She put her arm around him and leaned in as they walked.

  From the shadows of the wall behind the bench, Luic’s blue eyes watched steadily. He didn’t move until they had been out of sight for a long time.

  Gaby came down the stairs of Chapel house and shamelessly eavesdropped outside the little parlor where Max was talking to Thomas and Leila. He had just finished describing the meeting with Luic. “Poor Gaby…” Leila looked up at Max. “So, what’s the next-thing?”

  “Today there is no next-thing. Gaby is exhausted, and she needs a day off from world-saving. She’s upstairs taking a nap, and then we’re all going to give her the one thing she’s always wanted.”

  Leila looked like she’d smelled something bad. “You don’t mean…”

  “Yes.” Max was firm. “We’re going to have a normal night if it kills us.”

  “What do normal people do?” Thomas looked intrigued.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” admitted Max. “But I’m thinking something along the lines of a casual dinner and a movie.”

  “Lion King.” Leila looked at their faces. “What? Who wouldn’t want that? I’m sure lots of normal people go to that movie.”

  “Interview With a Vampire?” Thomas suggested.

  “Forrest Gump. Four tickets.” Max was on the phone with his secretary. He looked back at them. “I have it on good authority it’s very normal.”

  “For your information…” Gaby strolled into the room and went to Max’s side. “Normal people stay home, eat pizza, and watch a Monty Python video.”

  “Pizza is good,” admitted Leila.

  “Normal people sound brilliant,” agreed Thomas.

  “Max, I’ve got to warn you,” Leila said. “Apparently normal people then quote the lines. Over and over.”

  “She turned me into a newt!” said Thomas.

  “I got better,” Gaby replied promptly. They smiled at each other.

  Max looked worried.


  “Max, I’ll tell you something else normal people do.” Gaby whispered in his ear.

  Thomas’ cheeks exploded red. “Normal people do not say that to my … gah! Leila, get your coat. I’m taking you to Lion King. We’re closing this door very tightly behind us, and I don’t want to hear a sound from either of you before we get out of the house.”

  Max and Gaby ignored them. He tucked her hair behind her ears and cupped her face with his hands. “Gaby, you’ve had a tough day.”

  She put a finger against his lips and stretched up to replace it with her own lips. “My normal night isn’t over yet,” she whispered against his mouth. “You haven’t told me about your first car. I really want to know just how big it was…”

  The next morning saw them gathered around the table in Max’s sunny kitchen. Leila looked at Max and frowned. “If you two can manage to tone down the smile wattage, we need to think about the next-thing. Thomas and I talked about it last night, and we think we should tell Max everything going on as long as we don’t talk about things that are going to happen to him or to his family.”

  “My family?” His eyes narrowed on Leila. “What’s going to happen to my family?”

  “Maaaaxxxx!” Leila glared at him.

  “Sorry.” Despite his stiff apology, the frown remained.

  Thomas explained about the pivot point and followed with a highly-edited version of what had happened so far, avoiding any mention of his family or what was going to happen to Suzanne.

  “So.” Leila nodded decisively. “All we have to do now is get the jewelry to Suzanne, get the Metro to take us back to the 1890s, figure out a way to reformat the Book, and capture the pivot point. Oh, and live it forward for another 125 years until we get back to 2012 and I can figure out a way to tell my parents they raised a demon and introduce them to my boyfriend, the half-angel. Any questions?”