by Horn, J. D.
“Have you spoken to them yet?”
“No, not yet. I came directly from the airport. I wanted to talk to you first.” She leaned back in her chair, stretching into a relaxed and nonthreatening position.
“Who else from the families is coming?”
“No one else. Just me. I insisted it would be better for me to come alone, rather than dozens of us showing up like the Spanish Inquisition. Now tell me what happened last night. What did you all do to set the line clanking like a firehouse bell?”
I sat, trying to gain a little time to get my thoughts together.
“Mrs. Levi, Mercy has been dealing with a lot of stress. It isn’t good for her or our baby. I don’t want her to relive any of what happened. We’re moving on, putting the bad things behind us.”
“Again, call me Rivkah, and don’t you worry about this young woman of yours or your child. They are both much more resilient than you could begin to imagine.”
“All the same—”
“Peter,” she interrupted him, reaching out and patting his hand. “Why don’t you go out for a little bit and take a walk. Enjoy this lovely evening while Mercy and I have a chat.”
“This is my house.”
“And it is adorable.” She held up both hands, palms up, motioning around the room as if she were a game show hostess. She smiled and nodded, her dark curls bouncing. “We don’t need long. Take a spin up to that sweet park I passed on the way here. Daffin, isn’t it? We’ll be all finished by the time you return.”
Peter had to be the most good-natured guy I knew, but even he got a bit peeved when he was ejected from his own home. He looked at me for guidance, and I nodded, doing my best to apologize with my eyes.
He stood. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he said and gave Rivkah a stern glance.
“That’s a good boy,” Rivkah said. “Oh, Mercy, you two are going to have such a beautiful child.”
Peter frowned, but he headed obediently to the door. “Twenty minutes,” he said and headed out the door.
After the door closed behind him, Rivkah reached out and took my hand. “He loves you very much—you know that, right?”
I nodded. “Yes. I’m very lucky to have him.”
“And he you,” she said and then let go of me. She took another sip of wine. “So Emily has come home.” She waited for my reaction, but I remained silent. “It must have been a terrible shock for you and your family.”
How could I answer that? Seeing the dream of having my mother returned to me changed, bastardized into a bloody nightmare. “How did you know?”
“Emmet,” she said. “He came home to me, to his mama.”
“Mama?”
“Well, I was the only woman involved in his creation, so if that doesn’t make me his mother, I don’t know what else I’d be to him.” She tilted her head and seemed to be taking a moment to consider me. “He’s totally besotted with you as well. You’ve broken his heart.”
“I am truly sorry for hurting him.” I had found myself using variations on that phrase a lot lately. “I didn’t mean to.” Yep. That one too. I wondered if I should aim for the trifecta with “I had no choice.” I decided instead to just stop talking.
Rivkah shrugged. “Well, he’s alive now, and getting your heart broken is part of being alive. You did the right thing in sending him away. Clean breaks heal the quickest. He’ll mend.” She paused. “Now back to business. Maybe it’s your own fault for naming the boy ‘Emmet,’ but he isn’t gifted at dissimulation. He knows you are in over your head, so he shared with me the truth of what happened last night. The whole story. The complete story. Now I am going to tell you the version that I will share with the families when I make my report to them, so you listen up.” She leaned forward on the table and folded her hands.
“Your mother—”
“Please don’t call her that.”
Rivkah nodded, understanding my horror of the woman. “Emily and this Josef fellow kidnapped your Aunt Ellen and forced you to come to this gathering of theirs. Then they trapped you so that they could attempt to use your power and your connection to the line to complete the Babel spell. You opened yourself up, unwittingly exposing the line, in your attempt to escape. This had been Emily’s goal all along. Your Peter stumbled in and forced you and Emmet apart, breaking the hold Emily had on you two.” She paused. “How did Peter know to come when he did? Oliver and Iris obviously would sense the disturbance of the line, but him?”
“His mother.” I came up with the lie on the spot. I could not let Rivkah know of the connection he shared with the baby. I could not let her learn that Peter was Fae. “Claire has the sight. She told him she sensed I was in trouble. That he should come.”
Rivkah nodded. “Good. You think well on your feet. That’s the story we’ll go with.” So Emmet had shared the entire truth with her, including Peter’s true identity. It felt odd that rather than lying to her as I’d intended, I was colluding with her.
“Why are you doing this? Covering for us? For me?”
“Well, my dear, there has been a lot of talk, foolish and reactionary talk, floating around the families since the line selected you. Some of those speaking most loudly and most foolishly are your own cousins. A few of the Ryans have been campaigning against you. Against your whole immediate family even. They want the Savannah Taylors laid low. I, on the other hand, have always felt a strong affection for your family. At least you keep things interesting.”
“Are they all against us?”
“Oh, no, darling. You have many vocal proponents. Especially that charming Taylor woman, oh, what is her name? Abby.”
“She always calls herself a white-trash Taylor,” I said and smiled in spite of my growing sense of apprehension.
Rivkah laughed. “Well, the ‘white-trash’ Taylors are all strongly in your corner. However, the fact that Emily Taylor faked her own death and aligned herself with the three rebel families may give even your staunchest supporters pause when the story gets around.”
“What can I do?”
“There now,” she said and smiled at me approvingly. “That’s a good girl, because it really all does come down to you now. Your next few steps are critical, if you want to protect your family and yourself. The first thing you will need to do is make a public abjuration of your mother. Express your horror about her actions and the choices she has made.”
“Easy enough.”
“Yes, easy perhaps, but still painful. You can handle it. The next step is going to come harder to you. You need to knuckle down. Submit yourself to the will of the other anchors. Be humble. Do as they tell you. Focus on what they feel you have to learn. They have been carrying your weight for long enough. You must thank them and apologize for having been so headstrong.” She raised her hand to prevent any protest. “And ‘headstrong’ is a generous way of putting it. You did put the line at risk last night.”
I nodded to acknowledge this truth. “For my family,” and by that I also meant the man I would soon marry and the child to whom I would give birth in some months, “I can do this.”
“Good. They will also want you to go away for a while, to a place where you can’t interfere with the line. They’ll want you to train directly under Gudrun.”
“No. That I cannot do.” I couldn’t spend time anywhere near Gudrun, the woman who had worked alongside Maria, the conduit, if not the source, of the darkness that had claimed my mother and taken my sister.
“I am afraid you won’t have a choice. If you resist, they will consider a binding. Nobody wants that, especially the other anchors. Show them that you can be reasonable. Besides, the more willingly you submit to the inevitable, the better the impression you will make. I do think we can put this off until after your wedding, though, as long as you lie low and don’t make any more waves.”
“What about the baby? I won’t do anything that will harm
him.”
“Nor would I ask you to. He’ll continue to develop normally while you are with Gudrun. I will personally insist that you are allowed to return home before he’s born. At least temporarily.” She smiled and wagged a finger at me. “This will constitute the first time in the history of the line that an anchor gets maternity leave. You might have to spend a little time separated from each other, but from his perspective, he’ll only be without his mama for a few days.” She lifted her glass and polished it off. “Now, I need to know. Are you on board with this?”
I nodded my head just as Peter knocked on his own door, then opened it. “Perfect timing, Mr. Tierney. Now, where are we going for dinner? If I don’t eat soon, I’m going to challish.”
THIRTY-SIX
Dinner with Rivkah ran late, and Peter reluctantly brought me home rather than to his place after we dropped her off at her hotel. I needed sleep. The baby needed sleep. But before slipping between the sheets, I went to my jewelry box and pulled out the ring Peter had given me. I placed it once and forever on my finger, then went directly to bed, drifting off within moments.
I felt more annoyed than worried when the sound of pecking against my window woke me. I stayed still, thinking that it must have been a bug or an insomniac bird, but another strike against the glass sounded, and then a third. I sat upright in bed. A blissful second or two passed during which I thought I must be asleep and dreaming. Joe stood directly in front of me, and instead of opening out to our side yard, my window framed another room, an enormous stone room ripped from the pages of a fairy tale. Joe held his index finger up before his slyly curled lips, warning me to keep silent, and then tugged savagely on a rope he held in his left hand. I barely had time to register that the rope glowed a sickly green and couldn’t possibly have been composed of ordinary fiber before Adam Cook’s battered face banged on the other side of the glass. The rope Joe held was connected to a noose around the detective’s neck. Adam’s eyes were bruised and largely swollen shut. His lower lip had been busted. His nose was broken and twisted crooked on his face.
Joe pressed the long, thin fingers of his free hand against the window casing and started to slide the window up and open. Even though I still couldn’t help hoping this was a dream, I wanted to yell, to call out to my family, but I couldn’t produce a sound. Joe tugged again on his unwholesome lasso, and then both he and Adam disappeared from sight. A sleek and well-fed rat with a human face, just like the vermin I’d set alight at the bar, crawled up over the window ledge and insinuated its body and pink tail through the opening Joe had made. I shuddered, still unable to produce a sound, as it scurried across the floor and up onto my bed. It crept up closer to me, its beady red eyes glinting up from its miniature human face. “Your mother seeks armistice,” it said. I grabbed a pillow and swatted at the creature. It dove from my bed and returned to the windowsill, where it stopped and turned to face me. “I am to tell you that you will follow me,” it said, “or my brethren and I will eat your ape friend’s flesh.”
I found my voice. “He is not an ape. He’s a man.”
“Ah, but then his flesh will taste twice as sweet,” it said and rubbed its tiny, nearly human hands together.
“I’m coming. Don’t do anything more to Adam.” Jumping out of bed, I crossed over to the window.
The creature looked up at me, the pouting of its lower lip showing its disappointment that I hadn’t refused. “Very well. Follow.” It slid through the opening, its tail disappearing over the ledge last. When I reached the window, I saw the creature waiting for me on the other side, sitting on its hind legs, grooming itself by licking its hands and running them over its head. My repulsion grew so strong that I felt small flames form on my fingertips, yearning to fly from my hand and devour the abomination. It was only his role as my guide that kept me from doing it. I had to save Adam.
I slid the window far enough open to climb out, carefully putting my foot down on the stone floor to confirm its solidity before hefting my full weight over the sill and into open air. I held on to the window’s ledge, ensuring that the ground beneath was solid and not merely a mirage before letting go. As I did, my window disappeared, only to be replaced by a stone-block wall. I struck at one of the blocks with the side of my fist. It was as hard as the floor beneath my feet. The exit was gone.
“She is waiting,” the rodent guide said. “Her patience is not without bounds.”
What I wouldn’t have given at the moment for a visit from Jilo’s three-legged cat. “And neither is mine,” I said, the flame flaring up on the tip of my index finger.
I felt sickened when its face crumpled in fear, and it bowed to me. I loathed the creature, but I hated myself for my readiness to dispose of it. “Forgive me, miss,” it said, prostrating itself at my feet.
“Let’s go,” I said. It rose, its sharp claws clicking across the stones as it moved. It paused every so often to make sure I still followed. We had been walking down the hall for several minutes, and I began to feel like I was on a treadmill. Even though we were maintaining a steady pace, we never seemed to grow closer to the light at the far end of the hall. “How much farther?” I demanded. “I mean, have we even moved?”
It turned and looked up over its hairy back at me. “We have traveled many miles. I do not know how much farther. It is different each time.”
We carried on in silence for a while longer. Stone floors, stone walls, and a stone roof above. Light seemed to be held at a premium in this place—there was always a spare circle of it overhead, but it lent little clarity to what came ahead, and what lay behind us was swallowed up in shadow. I sensed something circling us a little beyond the edge of the light. I stopped for a moment, narrowing in on the sound . . . a growling noise, but not from a dog. Eyes came close enough to reflect the dim light. I looked away and hurried forward to catch up to the rodent chimera, its pink tail swishing back and forth as it moved before me. At the sound of my quickened steps, it stopped and looked back at me. Again its face sickened me, and I had to fight the urge to destroy it out of revulsion. Reassured that I was following, it turned and picked up its pace as well. As we continued down the seemingly endless hall, a question needled at me. Finally I had to know. “Did she do this to you?”
It stopped in its tracks and turned to face me. “Do what to me, miss?”
“Did my moth— Did Emily create you?”
“Oh, no, miss,” it responded with a slight bob of its revolting head. “The other witches, they made me.”
“The rebel families?” I asked feeling the pulse in my neck as my anger grew. She may not have been directly responsible, but how could Emily bind herself to the families who would create such a creature? Its very existence seemed an affront to nature.
“Oh, no, miss. The witches who hold the line, they made me.” It turned before it could witness my mouth falling wide open. I was still trying to collect myself when we finally arrived at the end of the hall. An archway separated it from the next room. Blue light, not the brilliant cyan I had grown to associate with Jilo, but a dim and bruised blue, spilled out through the doorway.
“You owe my daughter a debt of gratitude, detective,” Emily said as I followed the rodent into the chamber. Adam sat slumped over on a straight-backed wooden chair, barely holding on to consciousness. Taking someone I cared about had been Emily’s way of ensuring I would come. I knew that picking Adam as that someone had been her way of punishing Oliver for rejecting her. Adam lifted his head and tried to look at me through his swollen eyes. I ran toward him, inadvertently kicking the rat. It squealed in indignation and skittered behind Emily, seeking shelter from its mistress.
The creature that had been circling me lunged out from the shadows and blocked my access to Adam. I registered that it was a wolf, snarling and snapping at me. I jumped, but managed to regain control and stand my ground. Lifting its head to howl, the wolf let loose with a human laugh. I watched as it crou
ched on its haunches and began shaking head to tail. The gray fur slid off, the creature shedding its pelt as if it were a cloak. “Not yet, princess,” said Joe, still sitting in a crouched position. I noticed that his backwoods twang had totally evaporated, replaced with a foreign, slightly Germanic intonation. He smiled widely and stood, bowing as if he were actually greeting royalty. Then he scooped up the wolfskin cape and tossed it back into the shadows.
“You are a skin-walker,” I said.
Joe tilted his head, stretching his limbs like he was trying to reacclimatize himself to his human form. “Among other things.” He turned from me and approached Adam. He took Adam’s head between his hands, tilting it up so that Adam would be forced to look into his eyes. Then he tightened his grip, slowly turning Adam’s head from side to side.
“Take your hands off him.” My voice quivered, and Joe turned to me, his eyes wide in mock terror. All the same, he did unhand Adam. “Let him go,” I said, turning toward Emily.
“Oh, indeed, we will,” Joe answered for her. “He has served his purpose. Your concern for this ape brought you here.”
“He isn’t an ape. He’s a man, and Oliver loves him.”
“Oh, God, men in love with each other, don’t get me started on that,” Emily said, rolling her eyes. “I had hoped Oliver would grow past that phase, but if my little brother is so enamored of the detective, he should have taken better care not to leave his toy out where anyone could snatch it.”
“The sooner he’s gone, the better. I cannot stand the smell of him,” Joe said.
“Okay, who the hell are you?” I spun back around to him. “You show up like some hayseed with Ryder and Birdy, and now I find you here with my . . . her?” I had almost referred to Emily as my mother, remembering in time that regardless of whether I shared her DNA, she was not my mother.
“This is Josef, darling,” Emily said. “He has been the most valuable ally I have had in trying to pull you to the right side of history. To the right side of evolution.”