“What if I can't stand getting to know someone else? What then?”
Mordon sighed and rested his forehead against mine. “If you can't do it, we can find an alternative.”
I bit my inner cheek, not liking his tone. “You know what they are.”
“Your alternatives aren't pretty. I wouldn't be able to watch you go through it. But nor would I let you do it without support.”
With a heavy sigh, I said, “You're asking me not to take a shortcut. To fall in love with another guy.”
“I am.”
“What could be so bad about the shortcut?”
Mordon's brow furrowed and he ran his jeweled fingers through his hair. Then he started to re-stack his pile of papers before giving up and slumping back onto the chair behind the counter. “They're approximately all the same, slight deviations in methods. It involves peeling off your skin and disenchanting all tissues in both your hands. It's usually reserved for torture or as a way to sterilize dangerous sorcerers so they can't spellcast with their hands any longer.”
“Oh.”
I glanced down at my hands with one ring each.
Mordon was rubbing the back of his neck, not looking at me.
“I guess I don't want to go through that, if I can avoid it.”
“Thank you.” Mordon ran his hands through his hair again, disturbing its waves into frizziness. “As for the usual way, you'll find the owner of the ring again, in its own time and its own way. After all, you found me.”
I rolled my eyes at the memory. “Yeah, and you were super pouty about it.”
“I remember a different set of emotions, but I was not gracious about the ring, no.”
Mordon was now stroking his nonexistent beard, not asking me anything. Was I better to interrupt him so I could get into his head, or was it better to let him think things through and ask him his opinions later? I never knew what to do with him. So I decided to let him be, for now, and went back to matching typefaces with pages to books.
I felt the way the shop was shell-shocked. There was a hint of its former personality still hanging around, but it didn't want to step out in the open. Though the grotesque was gone and had been gone for a time, there was a sense of foreboding. That the shop had seen a parade of people sifting through contents and wards had been necessary, but what a way it left the shop and keeper feeling. As though they were the ones being violated and blamed for what had been done to them. Mordon would never say so much, but I knew that was how he felt, because it had been how I'd felt myself.
He was turning his rings around his fingers when I next returned to him.
“We will get through this,” I said.
“Never had a doubt.”
“Not much we can do to keep life from changing.”
Mordon got to his feet and cocked his head at me, pondering my mood, most likely, and he said nothing.
“Where's Anna?”
He pointed to a basket where a pink face slept in a bundle of blue blankets, the carrying wrap folded beside her. Then he asked, “What is on your mind?”
What was on my mind? I didn't know, not really. But I tucked my hands in my pockets and gave it some thought, letting the pieces fall into place before I spoke again.
Shelly Johnson had reminded me of all the accounts I'd read of civil unrest and ethnic slaughter. Intolerance and inequality were natural to society, no matter the time period nor the people involved, but scary things happened when people like her spearheaded campaigns like Safe Streets. The polarizing division between people like my parents and Gregor Cole was going to get worse as mildly-opinionated people became stressed into joining one side or the other. Too many lies, too little truth, and no media darlings to set the facts straight. Death and the Immortal, they were the kings in this game. And if it didn't end soon, it would end in tragedy.
That's what I thought, but what came out of my mouth was, “There's a war coming, and dark times.”
I expected him to ask how I knew, or to dismiss it as crazy talk. But this was Mordon, and he did not handle conversation the way a normal person would. He just nodded once and surveyed his shop, the way it used to be, the way it was now. Then he said, “Has anyone ever told you that I was named after one of the ancient elders?”
“No, though I'd suspected that others had had your name before you.” The news had me intrigued. Unfortunately, the drakes didn't like to keep a written record of their past, and they kept it alive with appointed historians. The best person to ask was right in front of me, but I didn't know if he'd tell me the tale. “Who were you named after?”
“Mordon.”
He said it seriously, and for an instant I was taken aback, then I felt myself blush angrily. He laughed and said, “None of that, now, I'll tell you everything later. But for the time being, all I can say is that I'm the third. And that the first one brought a period of peace and prosperity. The other enabled the spread of the Black Death.”
“Oh.”
There wasn't much else to say to that. Even in the normal world, people think long and hard about naming their kids, and they take into account who is associated with the name and how strangers will react to their child. Certain names had been largely left for history books, names like Adolf. That there had only been two other Mordons meant that it was on the drake's do-not-call-your-kid-this list. No wonder his name inspired instant recognition in so many people.
“And what bearing does this have on my comment?” I asked.
“We've known there's going to be a war since I was born. Why do you think the colony is so cautious about who I accept as my mate?”
I started to say something, a partially formed question about their naming practices, then changed my mind. “This does explain a few things. Is that also why you're taking your time with me?”
Mordon would have answered, but there came a hard, rapid knock. And when he rounded on the door with a scowl, it opened without his permission and in came Uncle Don and both my parents.
Chapter Seventeen
As crazy as it seemed, I had taken the lack of response to my letter to mean that my parents were either uninterested in anything I was up to—disowning me by silence, if you will—or that they were so furious they hadn't finished writing their letter yet. That they would come to Merlyn's Market in order to visit me had never once cropped into mind. Mother's distaste for crowds often meant that she didn't so much as go into grocery stores if she could help it. From Uncle Don I'd expected letters. But to have them all bust down the door of King's Ransom? Not expected.
A steady rain slapped the glass roof, the only noise following their entrance. Bursts of wind howled at the door as Father shut it. I stroked my hair back off my face and just gaped at the two stocky men in front of me, men built like mountains and with the strength of them. Mother had chosen a frilly dress in orange and purple, her slim body lost in the ruffles. They all spent a while staring at the disorder in the shop, the evident gouges in the floor and walls, the destruction wrought by the grotesque, then one by one their eyes found me. Thunder rumbled.
There was a gurgling noise and something let out a shriek from the floor. Mordon bent over and picked up a now-awake Anna. A face full of furrows and displeasure blinked up at us.
With that simple movement the stunned silence was banished. All three of them spoke at once, their words bouncing off one another and meaning nothing. My stomach knotted itself. This was going to take a while to sort through.
“Uncle Don, this is Mordon Meadows, my fiance. Mordon, that's my Uncle Don, and you already know my parents. How about we all go upstairs and I'll get some brew started? Tea for you, Mother?”
Mother was on an intercept course, so I took her hands and pulled her along behind me. “You got my letter then?”
She nodded, then jumped when a section of the wainscoting pulled open to reveal a staircase.
“Mordon,” Father said, to which Mordon replied, “Magnus.”
“My brother Donald.”
“Odd name.”
“Fits in better with the sort of people I work with,” Uncle Don said, his voice fading as I ascended the stairs and made a beeline for the kitchen.
Mother followed me in there, and it was another minute or two before the softly-talking mass had found the breakfast table and situated themselves around it. When I came to them with a few steaming cups, I saw Anna in the middle of the table, all trussed up in her blanket and a little hat worn on her feet like the end-caps to a Thanksgiving turkey.
“We going to eat her?” I asked.
“Magnus wanted to see her. It seems you did not explain things very well in your letter to them.”
Was Mordon hinting that I should have told them everything which had happened? “I don't even remember what I wrote. It was after she'd kept me awake all night.”
The talk was an exhausting one. What everyone said was hard to remember and full of so many backtracks and side tracks and miscommunication that it took all I had to not scream. If it wasn't for Anna blowing slobber bubbles in apparent bliss, utterly ignorant of what was happening around her, I probably would have yelled out my frustration. By the time the drinks were cold and the seats uncomfortable, Mordon and I had the whole of events relayed to them. I was ready to hide in my bed and not come out until it was all over.
“Have you any idea what she is? Do you know if she's human or creature?” Uncle Don asked.
“I haven't run any spells on her yet. The damage of the grotesque would be enough to keep me busy, even without it being linked to a newborn and her pursuers. But I would like an answer to that question as well,” Mordon said.
This surprised me. I'd never thought of Mordon, or Uncle Don, or my parents, as even caring if someone was creature or human. It was true that if she was human that meant Josephina had been cursed. All of my effort so far had been taken up with living in the moment, not unraveling the questions I had. It was a good thing that my parents had come.
“Do you think you can determine her bloodline?” I asked Father.
“We can, but only because we came prepared for it.”
I put a hand on my hip. “Right. What else did you come prepared for? Is that a club I see over your shoulder to drag me back to the hut in the woods?”
Alright, so it wasn't a nice thing to say, but neither had it been nice for them to corral me into a life of their own making. And they hadn't apologized. So neither did I when my father hissed an angry sigh and Mother put a hand to her head. It took Uncle Don's hand on mine to draw me back from bickering.
“Think we can work together on the task at hand?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Good. Now is there a place we can set up a small ward to contain the spell-making within a defined area? A cleansed spot free from interferences?”
I considered for a few seconds if they were better here or in my place, then decided on here. I nodded and motioned for them to help.
Beneath the wall-to-wall rug in the sitting area was painted on the wooden sub-floor an even, perfect circle. Various other points and markings also crisscrossed, but it meant nothing, really. They were disenchanted guidelines which had been laid down expressly for my benefit, as my drawing skills still left a bit to be desired. However, everyone used the marks, tracing over the top, being lazy. After every session we did a purification ritual to keep the space clean. It still smelled of rosemary and lemons, even though the rug itself coated my hands in a fine dusty powder which begged for a vacuum.
Father got started on the drawings, using the white and yellow chalk sticks Mordon provided him with. Father said, “We were wondering when you'd send word.”
“It would have been even later if it wasn't for Anna,” I said as I rearranged the couch against the wall. Mordon and Uncle Don relieved me of the duty and moved on to the other things to do, such as rolling up the rug neatly or lining the chairs and end tables alongside the couch. They oh so thoughtfully left me to talking with my father.
“Do you remember Maria Powell?”
The reference to my adolescence made me think, to try to remember if she was the one who was always starting parties while the homeowners were on vacation—no, that was Maria Pomerell, not Powell.
“Yes, she was the one who hanged herself.”
“Yes. Do you know why?” Father fastened me to the spot with a serious stare.
“Because she refused treatment for depression.”
There was that hiss of disapproval, a half sigh, as though I was intentionally being contradictory. “Because she wouldn't talk to anyone.”
“Maybe. But maybe no one who talked to her stopped talking to listen to what she had to say.”
Now Father was angry, I knew by the way he put the chalk down and eased back on his knees. Anyone who didn't know him wouldn't have a clue.
“You never tell us anything, Feraline.”
I gasped, laughing somehow at the same time. “I talk, just because I don't talk forever like Leazar doesn't mean I don't talk. Besides, what good does it do to tell you anything of importance when you and Mother are going to argue with me about it?”
“We're giving advice.”
“See? Right now, I'm telling you why I don't tell you anything to do with my decisions, and you're already arguing with me.”
“I'm not arguing. We care about you, that is all.”
Biting the tip of my tongue, I refused to start arguing with him about whether or not we were arguing. Return to the original topic. “Point being, I do talk to you. You just don't like what I have to say, so you try to talk me into doing what you want me to do. But I don't want to do it, and I'm set on doing my thing, but you're set on me doing what you want me to do. And we're both too stubborn to give in to the other, so I avoid fighting and wasting a lot of time by telling you about it after I've done whatever it is I'm going to do. Because it takes a lot less time to listen to your scolding than to hold an argument with you.”
He rolled his eyes at me. How many times had Leazar done that to him, only to have our parents threaten to wash his mouth out? Guess the habit must have rubbed off on Father after all. For a time he did not say a thing to me, neither did he put chalk back to the floor. It was me staring at him staring at me. At a younger age, I'd been afraid of a confrontation like this. Now I was angry, old enough to wonder if this was bullying of some kind. Definitely wise enough to know it was no conversation, not even a debate.
“Communication has always gone one-way between us. Started with you guys telling me. Now I'm telling you. And that's not any better, is it?” I crossed my arms and forbid my eyes from stinging. “I'm marrying Mordon. If we break it off, that's between us, you're not involved. I don't want to hide away in the forest. I have my own resources if I want to use them, so don't you think he's twisting my arm somehow. I don't want to join the Hunters.”
“But you've always wanted to. Before.”
Before you met him hung unsaid in the air between us, but I knew the words were there.
“I used to want to, but I didn't like the way they treated me. I won't forget it. I'm not saying I won't forgive them, but I won't join them.”
“Fera,” Mother said. “They'd treat you differently now.”
“Everyone treats me differently now. Except Aunt Linnia. Don't you understand that's what's wrong?”
I shook my head, my eyes burning and embarrassing me. Tired. I was tired and exhausted, that was all, I told myself. But I still wouldn't stand to be in the center of attention any longer. I'd been on display in front of everyone, even Uncle Don, for way too long, couldn't believe that father would start that topic with everyone watching. Even Mordon.
I broke nimbly out of the room, whisked through the french doors, and paused at the threshold. Anna. But, no, there were four capable adults—more capable than I was, as Father had just been pointing out over and over again—to watch after her for a few minutes while I gained a measure of control again.
A hand grasped my arm, spun me ar
ound, startling me. From the force, I expected to come face to face with Mordon, but it was Father instead. This was a double-surprise. He wasn't the sort to touch me, not that I could recall.
“This isn't about that.”
Glaring at him, I could only think that this was about that. What it was that snapped inside my head, I couldn't be sure, but it was something. All emotions were gone in an instant. “Fine,” I said. “Have you said what you wanted to say?”
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