Heart Secret

by Robin D. Owens

  Is Me,

  Home, Home, Home

  For the right Family

  Us

  Garrett had expected a cheerful little jingle. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I wrote it,” TQ said with dignity. “I like it.”

  “It makes sense to him,” the Healer murmured.

  “Yes, Artemisia,” TQ said.

  Softly, repeating the emphasis exactly as TQ had, she said the spell.

  The carpet and floor lifted straight up, the rectangle attached to the ceiling, then illusion covered it.

  Illusion on the floor, too, as if the carpet remained. The spot rippled, and Garrett figured if TQ didn’t want them to see that warning, he wouldn’t have. “Good safety measures. Even if someone knows the words, they won’t see the opening unless you allow them.”

  “That is correct,” TQ said.

  The Healer stepped forward, frowned as she peered down. Garrett came up until his body almost touched hers, looked to the floor—and beyond to a dark hole. “Light?” he prompted.

  It shot in spears from the opening. The walls of the very steep stairway—large enough for a big man—were painted pale yellow.

  “I should go first, in case you fall,” Garrett said.

  “I do not let anyone fall on my staircase,” TQ said.

  “By accident,” Artemisia said.

  “By accident,” TQ agreed.

  Without a glance at Garrett, the Healer began descending.

  “These are my only stairs. I was very young when the HouseHeart was made,” TQ said.

  “And that was?” Garrett asked. The stair treads were only a centimeter or so larger than his feet. The steps themselves angled around corners and he couldn’t see Artemisia. That twanged his nerves, because they were HeartMates. But right now he didn’t care that the bond between them was strengthening; he wanted her in sight. He picked up his pace.

  “The HouseHeart was made fifteen years ago,” TQ said. The House had actually given him information.

  “Nice,” she said, farther down.

  “Thank you,” TQ said.

  Garrett jumped the last stairs and found himself in an oval natural cave with rocky ground ringed by stalagmites. A couple of huge stalactites descended from the ceiling that TQ could drop on unexpected visitors. Maybe use as missiles. “Excellent defense.”

  “Thank you. This space is such that people can teleport into it, as long as I don’t change the light or my rocks.”

  “I don’t see a door.”

  “Touch the point of the lowest stalagmite,” TQ said.

  “A challenge and a riddle.” He scanned the room for the lowest upthrust rock. The smallest reached his shin and he touched the top. The point fell off; a grinding echoed. One of the large stalactites moved into the ceiling, the illusion of rock behind it shimmered, then dissipated. A turquoise pointed-arched door with black hardware and surrounded by dressed stone appeared.

  “Lovely.” The Healer strode to it, touched the latch. A spark arced and she yelped, shaking her fingers. “Don’t you think this security is a little excessive?”

  “No,” TQ and Garrett said together.

  “I am the best-known House-becoming-a-Residence and famous. I don’t often have a greatly Flaired person living within my walls. I need all my shields.”

  “All right,” she soothed.

  Garrett eyed the door. “Good spellshields there.”

  “Yes, needing spell Words. Palms on the door,” TQ instructed.

  Garrett slapped his palms on a smooth surface that felt like metal. TQ could run electrical current through the door. “What’re the spell Words?”

  “Together we weather,” TQ said.

  A quick image of sleet hitting the windshield of the quarantine bus, the frigid cold around him, as he slogged through the storm to check on the vehicle flashed before Garrett. He shuddered.

  Then there was the scent of summer and sweet woman and mysteries beside him. If he opened his lashes that he’d clenched shut, he could look down on her head. But it would be a dark head instead of blonde.

  Lord and Lady, this whole situation stirred up grief at losing his Dinni.

  “Together we weather,” the woman said with a thickness to her voice indicating her own tough memories.

  The door slid into the wall and the HouseHeart beckoned.

  Seven

  Wonderful smells and sounds wafted from the HouseHeart, teasing Garrett—cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, burning wood.

  “I have flatsweets on the table by the fire,” TQ said.

  Garrett couldn’t move. The woman was too close, the dim chamber beyond stirred a great yearning inside him, as if he knew once he set foot in it, the true essence of home would seep into his bones and he’d never get it out of them and forever miss it.

  Ignore that.

  Artemisia entered first. Keeping his steps light—he’d wanted to leave something of himself here in TQ’s HouseHeart, not have something imprinted upon himself forever—Garrett walked into the room.

  It had brackets near the top of the walls with spell-lights that looked like flames. The door slid shut. On this side it appeared to be a seamless wall covered with pale yellow paper with red and blue flourishes. Artemisia stooped. “What a lovely cat!”

  “I made her and am making her and she is becoming. She can move her tail, look!”

  The painting of the gray and black tabby cat—who also had red and blue flowers tinted on her—moved. The round tip of her gray and black tail extruded from the wall, flicked, then disappeared again.

  Meewww. Tiny, as if it took great effort.

  “How do we feed her?” Artemisia asked.

  “I can draw the Flair and energy you naturally emit throughout the day, like body heat, to her,” TQ said.

  “Hmm.” The woman sat with crossed legs, stroked the cat’s painted forehead, then left her hand there. Closing her eyes, she stilled. Garrett sensed her gathering Flair.

  Her full breasts rose as she took a deep breath, the cloth of her tunic shaping over them. As she exhaled, golden motes of Flair-magic spun around her.

  “What’s she doing?” Garrett asked.

  “She’s sending love to my cat!” whispered TQ.

  Garrett wasn’t sure how that worked.

  “You know Fam animals,” TQ said.

  Garrett did. They were drawn to him, maybe because he could speak to them all, and sometimes they had plenty to say.

  “Think how you feel about them,” Artemisia said. “How you care, and send that feeling to them. When you do that, you send love. As I do to this cat who belongs to TQ and herself.”

  Garrett watched Artemisia breathe deeply a few more times. He should have been examining the first HouseHeart he’d ever been in but couldn’t take his gaze off the woman.

  MEEWWW. The sound was stronger and followed by a short and rumbling purr.

  Artemisia smiled at the cat. A damned painted, mostly inanimate and unalive cat, and Garrett’s heart wanted that smile for himself.

  She rose smoothly and glanced around. “A truly lovely chamber.”

  “I am modern and have much Flair and have had many Flaired people giving me energy and I have the newest Flair tech,” TQ boasted.

  “Um-hmm,” Artemisia said neutrally. She crossed to the mural on the north wall. It was a jungle scene with a small round turquoise pool. People moved through the tree shadows. With a little shock, Garrett recognized Tinne Holly and his wife.

  Artemisia tilted her head. “These are your former inhabitants?”

  “All of them,” TQ said proudly. “Even the ones that I didn’t like much and didn’t allow to stay long. They remain mostly behind the trees.”

  Garrett’s breath caugh
t as he stared.

  “Will we be there?” Artemisia asked.

  “Perhaps you. Garrett has a home in MidClass Lodge,” TQ said.

  And it wasn’t nearly as homey as this. This was a HouseHeart and special, but if this reflected how the House above had looked when it had been furnished, he’d never had a home like the one TQ had provided his tenants. The thought jolted that Garrett had never made a home for himself after Dinni had rejected him so long ago. He’d drifted and stayed in places, but he hadn’t had or made a home.

  Artemisia Mugwort Panax looked completely at ease in the surroundings, a woman who knew about offering comfort and making a home.

  No, he wouldn’t let himself yearn for her or what they could have together.

  Garrett’s throat was clogged but he wouldn’t clear it. His voice rasped. “What do you need us to do, TQ?”

  Flames in the huge fireplace faded and so did the scent of coal and wood burning, the crackle of fire, even the smoke and heat vanished. All fake.

  “Helluva illusion,” Garrett said.

  The House chuckled like settling stone. “My kind of sleight of hand.”

  Artemisia went to the fireplace and sat on the high hearthstone, held her hands over the bottom of the fireplace. “It’s cool.”

  There was the scrape of stone and inside the slab tilted up. “My HouseStones,” the Turquoise House whispered.

  Artemisia’s breath was quick and hard.

  Garrett couldn’t keep himself from lunging to see the rare sight. In a small shallow depression were five glowing pebbles and a chunk of obsidian. How could something as large as a Residence have such a small brain? “Wow.”

  TQ said, “They need to be moved, rearranged. Also . . .”

  Several heartbeats of tension strung silence no one broke.

  Finally, hand stroking the fireplace wall as if she might calm TQ, Artemisia said, “Also?”

  A shower of soot had them coughing. Garrett wiped his nose and mouth on his sleeve; Artemisia pulled softleaves from her long-sleeve pocket and handed one to Garrett.

  One good cough to clear his lungs and Garrett said, “Not very good punctuation, House.”

  “Sorry,” TQ mumbled. “I did not think. My HouseStones are bare and vulnerable.”

  “And we’re torturing them so badly,” Artemisia said with faint irritation. Soot smudged her light complexion.

  “Sor-ry!” TQ repeated.

  “Do you have a design you want us to put your stones in?” Artemisia asked.

  “I want the obsidian one out of the center and to the northwest. It will catch better vibrations from the starship Nuada’s Sword,” TQ said.

  The Ship was several kilometers away. Garrett would’ve denied feeling anything from it, but when TQ had mentioned vibrations, he’d felt a tiny pressure against his skin.

  Artemisia lifted the pyramidical piece of obsidian from the center of the stones and it slipped from her grasp, slicing her hand, falling. She cried out. Garrett snatched at the rock, caught it, and swallowed a curse as a sharp edge cut him, too. With great precision he put the obsidian in the northwest point of the depression and withdrew his hand.

  Blood from his fingers and from Artemisia’s hands dripped on the HeartStones.

  TQ gurgled.

  “Eww,” exclaimed Artemisia. She grasped his hand in hers and Healed his cuts.

  Not before Garrett felt some of her blood invade his, whisk through him, strengthen their bond.

  She wiped her hands on the softleaf, but blood welled from the fleshy side of her hand. Clasping her hands together, she Healed her own injury.

  “Thank you!” TQ sang.

  “Not sure that you’re welcome,” Garrett muttered.

  Artemisia huffed. “What else, TQ?”

  Garrett was tired of playing by the house rules. He stuck his hand into the depression and rolled the stones together, flicked and flipped them around until they felt right in a now-they’re-here, now-they’re-gone gesture, then rolled them out.

  “Ooooh,” TQ said. “Very nice. I never would have considered that arrangement.” Then the House purred like its cat. “I like this. Well done, Garrett!”

  “What else?” asked Artemisia.

  “I request you bring me a stone or a rock from your homes.”

  “MidClass Lodge? They only have rock paths,” Garrett said.

  Artemisia rolled her eyes. “And native rock in the garden soil.”

  “Yeah.” The woman was too close. He could smell her skin and her innate scent and blood and breath. Restless, he moved away. “You want me to get something from T’Hawthorn estate, too?” he asked sarcastically.

  “I will scry that Residence immediately and ask it and T’Hawthorn himself!” TQ exclaimed.

  Artemisia chuckled and stood. She waved her softleaf and the bloodstains and soot vanished, then picked up the one Garrett had dropped and tucked them into her sleeve pocket.

  Foolish to have wanted to keep it because it was hers. Her nearness made him revert to a boy with a crush.

  “T’Hawthorn Residence and GreatLord Laev T’Hawthorn say they would be honored to provide one of my HouseStones!” TQ announced. “They are choosing one right now.”

  “I will bring a stone from my home’s oldest and most sacred grove,” Artemisia said.

  “Thank you! You can both teleport from here.”

  “All right.” Garrett crossed to the west to examine the fountain. He wouldn’t be the first to leave.

  Artemisia stared at him. Then she tidied her clothes, counted down three teleportation beats, and vanished.

  “This has been interesting,” Garrett said, “but I don’t like being manipulated.”

  “You like to do that yourself?” shot back TQ.

  Garrett shrugged. TQ must have a scrystone here, maybe even a camera. “Maybe.”

  “Thank you for helping me, and for your blood. It will always be a part of my essence.”

  Garrett jerked. TQ was observant, had winnowed out something it had taken him a couple of years to understand. One thing he wanted deeply was to leave an important legacy. He’d lost so much in that mountain clinic—his lover, his hope, the identity of the man he’d been.

  Even then, his parents had been long dead. He needed to know something would outlast him. Now the Turquoise House had given this to him and he’d been ungracious. But he’d been manipulated into giving himself.

  “The blood must hold surprise at being shed,” TQ said softly.

  “Anything else?”

  In that same tone, TQ said, “I want you to call Artemisia by her given name.”

  Garrett stiffened and his hand swept into the cool and jasmine-smelling water of the fountain. He grimaced. “Or else?”

  “What?” asked TQ.

  “Aren’t you going to add a threat? You want me to call her by name, or else.”

  “You do not strike me as a man who responds well to threats.”

  “Got that right.” Well, he’d already made his mark on TQ. And his case for Laev T’Hawthorn wouldn’t be forgotten soon, and Garrett definitely had had a hand in an exceedingly strange death that Flair scholars were still discussing. So those were ways that he’d be remembered, too. Three stories with his name attached that would live on. Would that be sufficient?

  Inner hollowness still echoed. He didn’t think so. This project would do it. But he didn’t want to be recalled for his blood, for the worst part of his life. Humans were definitely contrary creatures, himself included.

  TQ said, “It strikes me that refusing to be courteous to Artemisia within my walls, something I deplore, will become more evident and rouse more questions than not.”

  Garrett flung up a hand as if a fencer had scored a hit against him. “All right.”


  “And as for the or else . . . if you aren’t nice to her within my walls, your avatar will probably spend time hidden in the trees of my mural.” Humor in the House’s voice now.

  “Like I care about an avatar.”

  “I will be disappointed in you. You will not be the man I thought you to be, the courageous and compassionate man who volunteered for this project.”

  “Like I care about that, either.”

  “I won’t ever let you come back, especially here. Which I anticipate you might need after your ordeal.”

  “A bribe?”

  “A reward. You live in a busy lodge and share your office building, yet I believe you are a man who treasures being alone. How often do you get to be completely private?”

  “Anytime I take off out of Druida and spend some time in the countryside—on a beach or walking in woods.” Never hiking in mountains. “You do have another point.”

  “The countryside is not as secure or as fascinating as my HouseHeart. I will have my person, my couple who will be the start of my Family, within three years.”

  “An interesting notion.” One that had Garrett’s curiosity throbbing again.

  “Will you treat Artemisia well? Like she is a partner?”

  “She’s a Healer,” Garrett said drily. “And there will be other Healers. I doubt any want to interact with me other than professionally.”

  “Artemisia has a tender heart,” TQ stated. The House knew her better than Garrett had thought. “Her blood pressure rises, her breath comes quicker, and she shows signs of sexual arousal when you and she are together. So do you.”

  “You keep track of such things?” Not hard to put appalled in his own voice.

  “I got new medical spells and was shown how to use them as soon as I heard the Healers might need a venue. Be glad the T’Blackthorn garden shed isn’t being readied.”

  “Thrilled.” Garrett ran his coin through his fingers. “Believe me, House, neither your tenants nor your Family will welcome hearing such bits of information about themselves.”

  “You think not?” TQ asked in surprise.

  “I’ll be back in a while.”

  “T’Hawthorn Residence has agreed to return you here by one of the Family gliders.”