Impervious (City of Eldrich Book 1)

by Laura Kirwan

  John turned away from Emily and addressed Meaghan. “I know why they took Jamie. We don’t need her. We will go to Fahraya. Tonight. Before they hurt him too much.” He looked down at his feet, his face red. “Like they hurt me.”

  Meaghan felt her gut flutter. No, no, she told herself. This is no time to be crushing on the former king. “Okay.” She called out to the witches. “I assume there will need to be magic done to make it happen. Get on it.”

  Sarah crept down the stairs with the tea and the tissues. “What did I miss?”

  “Cruella’s got a backstory and Meaghan and John are going to Fahraya,” Natalie said. “Now we need to figure out exactly how my mom shrank Meaghan’s dad to Fahrayan size back in the day and find John some tiny clothes.”

  Emily sobbed quietly, forgotten, while Meaghan, John, and most of the witches scrambled up the stairs. Meaghan stopped halfway up and turned back to Sarah. “Clean her up a little, will you? But don’t untie her. I think Jamie’s wife wants a word.”

  Emily cried louder.

  “Okay,” said Sarah. “What’s she going to do? Fire me?”

  Chapter 34

  One of the witches was assigned the task of making something for John to wear after he took off his amulet. Meaghan didn’t need tiny clothes because they were shrinking the space around her.

  She didn’t understand this at all. They couldn’t shrink Meaghan, because magic didn’t affect her, but somehow they could hex the space around her and create a bubble, as Natalie described it, of this world’s reality to surround her.

  This being witchcraft, a funky crystal amulet was required to maintain the bubble.

  “So, what happens if I take the amulet off over there?” she asked Natalie. “I get big? I’m a giant? Then I could swat the little bastards out of the sky. Right?”

  Natalie shook her head. “Wrong. You’ll be a giant crater. Or at least that’s what you’ll create.” She held the crystal between her palms and mumbled something, then turned her attention back to Meaghan. “You’ll actually be all the tiny human bits surrounding the giant crater.”

  “I’ll explode?” Meaghan’s voice grew louder. “I’ll blow up?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Natalie said. “Big time.”

  “I thought magic didn’t affect me. How can it make me explode?”

  Natalie sighed in an annoyed way. “Okay, fine, technically, I suppose, it doesn’t make you explode. Only the space around you. It’s that explosion that makes you explode.”

  “Why? Why does anything have to explode?” Meaghan asked in a strangled voice.

  “Big thing suddenly occupying tiny space, weird physics, wonky magic?” Natalie shook her head. “Hell, I don’t know how it works. Just trust me on this. Little Meaghan becoming big Meaghan means cat-food Meaghan.”

  Meaghan shook her head. “This day gets better and better. Make sure you hang that thing on something sturdy.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll put some big magic on it. It’ll only come off if you take it off.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Yes,” Natalie agreed. “Let’s hope.”

  Trying not to think of the nuclear option that would soon be hanging from her neck, Meaghan went to find Melanie. She had homework to do.

  Melanie and Sid were still in her room sifting through boxes. Melanie looked up. “There isn’t much.” She pointed at the table, on which sat a manila folder, a small scroll of some sort, and a narrow cardboard gift box about the right size for a watch or bracelet. “The treaty and some Fahrayan weapons John gave to your father soon after they met.”

  Meaghan picked up the box and lifted the lid. Inside she saw a tiny stone knife and spear.

  “Be careful,” Melanie said. “Those are very sharp.” She held up a small blue finger wrapped in a Band-Aid. “Even after all this time.”

  Meaghan put the box down and poked at the scroll with her index finger. “What is this? Parchment?”

  “Dried snakeskin,” Sid piped up from the floor, where he was looking through a file box. “It’s written in blood.”

  Meaghan pulled her finger away from the scroll like she’d been burned.

  Sid laughed. “You can always count on Fahrayans to bring the grrrr.” He pantomimed a slashing claw. “No medium bond recycled for those guys.”

  “Blood on snakeskin? How big are the damn snakes?”

  “Oh, you know, regular sized,” Sid said casually. He waited a beat for effect. “For this world.”

  Meaghan did a quick mental calculation. “Holy hell. So, let me get this straight. I’m walking into a power struggle between warring brothers in a brutal Stone Age world full of giant freaking snakes and flying badass warriors with razor-sharp weapons who write their treaties in blood, wearing a necklace that will turn me into a nuclear bomb if I take it off?” In the company of an alcoholic man I’m crushing on hard and shouldn’t be, she added to herself.

  “Um, yeah,” Sid said nodding. “That kind of sums it up.”

  “And you still want to come along?” Meaghan asked.

  Sid swallowed hard, his bravado faltering a bit. “Well, the way you describe it, maybe not so much.” He took a deep breath and the resolve returned to his small blue face. “But I’m going anyway. You need me. Jamie needs me.”

  “You aren’t wrong about that.” She stared at the scroll, puzzled. “Is that our size or their size?”

  “They split the difference,” Melanie answered. “They made a large ceremonial version they gave to Matthew that’s big enough to handle in our world. Quite like a billboard actually. Took several of them working together to roll it up and fly it through the gateway. There’s a typed translation in the folder. The blood came from the signatories, including Matthew. Although as I recall, much of it was John’s. From where they took his wings.”

  Meaghan bent over and peered at the scroll but couldn’t bring herself to touch it. “That’s . . . beyond horrible. We don’t need to take it with us, do we?”

  Melanie shook her head. “I cut a tiny strip for John to carry with him. For totemic effect, I suppose. To remind V’hren what he agreed to.”

  “No journals?” Meaghan asked.

  “Not that I could find in these boxes. I know Matthew made notes about what happened over there, but I don’t know what he did with them. We can check over in his office but it will take some time. He wasn’t great at filing.”

  “Time we don’t have.” Meaghan sighed. Of course there aren’t any notes, she thought. That would make things too easy.

  “John and I can both give you some background on Fahraya if that will help.”

  “It will.” Meaghan fought back the panic that was trying to take her. Too much, she thought. It’s too much too soon. Damn it, Dad. I need your notes. I can’t do this alone. “Let me look at the treaty first.”

  “There’s not much to it. Technically you and John will be breaking the treaty simply by entering the gateway, but considering the circumstances, I think it’s safe to say that V’hren broke it first.” Melanie grimaced. “Assuming V’hren still honors the treaty.”

  Sid appeared engrossed by something he’d found in one of the boxes. Taking advantage of his distraction, Meaghan leaned closer to Melanie and whispered, “I’ll do my best to take care of Sid and bring him home safe.”

  Melanie took Meaghan’s hand and squeezed it. “I know you will,” she whispered back. “If I keep Sid from going, he’ll never forgive me. If he gets hurt, I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive myself.” Melanie’s small orange eyes filled with tears and she turned away.

  That makes two of us, Meaghan thought. She picked up the manila folder, but before she could open it, she heard shouting. She didn’t know the words, but she recognized the inflection. John was swearing at the top of his lungs in what had to be Fahrayan.

  Still holding the folder, Meaghan ran into the hallway, her heart pounding. Lynette stood in front of the bathroom door, holding a towel and laughing. She saw
Meaghan’s stricken look and smiled at her. “It’s fine. Just a little magical cleanse.” To the bathroom door she said, “Better now?”

  John stumbled out of the bathroom, wet and naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist. He saw Meaghan, turned bright red, and shoved past Lynette into the guest bedroom across the hall.

  “Lynette,” Meaghan said, voice shaking. “What the hell? I thought he was being killed in there.”

  Lynette shook her head. “Relax. We only pulled the alcohol out of him. Freshened him up a bit so he can function over there.”

  “You . . . he’s . . . cured?” Meaghan’s gut fluttered. If he wasn’t a drunk anymore, they could— she cut off that line of thought before it got any further.

  Lynette brought her right back to the ground. “No, he’s not cured. Not in the least. We merely did a very rapid detox to get rid of his current physical need for alcohol. The emotional need hasn’t gone away. But this way at least you won’t have to tote a bottle of gin with you to keep him from seeing hairy monsters. Other than the hairy monsters that are already there.”

  “You mean other than the giant snakes?” Meaghan asked, her voice pitched much higher than she intended. Snakes—normal sized snakes, at least—didn’t really bother her, but she could do without giant ones. And spiders. She didn’t like spiders. The only things worse than spiders were scorpions.

  John appeared in the guest room doorway, wearing jeans but no shirt, and rubbing his hair with a towel.

  Meaghan tried not to notice his bare chest. For an aging alcoholic, he was remarkably fit. She flashed on the memory of Jamie naked. Something deep in her brain wondered if the size of certain body parts was a family trait.

  She felt her ears and cheeks grow hot and knew she was blushing. His face, she thought, keep your eyes on his face.

  Lynette shifted her gaze back and forth between the two of them like she was watching a tennis match. She wore a small knowing smile.

  Meaghan shoved her attention back to the matter at hand. She held up the folder. “I need to read this. Alone. Once I do, John, I need to talk to you.”

  John nodded.

  Meaghan desperately wanted to shift attention from whatever was going on between her and John. “Lynette, I . . . maybe . . . do you still feel Jamie?”

  Lynette nodded. “I do. Loud and clear. He’s scared but defiant. Some pain but not too bad yet.”

  “Can you make that connection go back the other way? Can you send him a message?”

  Lynette tilted her head to one side and frowned, staring at the ceiling. “That’s an interesting question. Let me think about that. Do your reading and I’ll go talk to Natalie.”

  “I’ll go downstairs and see the babies and Patrice for now, okay?” John gave Meaghan his shy smile. “While you read?”

  Meaghan softened. That smile got her every time. “Okay. I’ll find you when I need you.” She smiled back. “They’re nice kids.”

  John nodded and turned back into the guest room to grab the T-shirt lying on the bed.

  Lynette grinned again, in that knowing way. “He’s quite a man,” she said in a low voice so John couldn’t hear.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Meaghan said, blushing again, as she turned and fled back to her bedroom.

  Chapter 35

  Melanie and Sid went downstairs and Meaghan was finally alone. She shut the bedroom door and leaned against it with her eyes shut. This was the first moment she’d had all morning to catch her breath and think about the task ahead.

  “What am I supposed to do?” she asked the empty room. “How am I supposed to fix this?” Meaghan had never felt so outmatched in her entire life. She felt the tears well up. Then her body decided that tears took too long and she had to run for the toilet to keep from vomiting on the floor.

  After what felt like a very long time, Meaghan’s gut was empty. She flushed the toilet, then leaned back against the bathtub, the porcelain cool on the back of her neck. She felt so shaky she didn’t trust her legs to support her.

  Meaghan had no idea how she was going to rescue Jamie. No idea what she was going to say or do. The risk was huge, the likelihood of success minimal. I don’t have a chance in hell, she thought. If I fail, he’s going to die and me along with him.

  But there was nothing to be done about that. She was the only one who could save him. If she left him there to die, in agony, far from home and surrounded by enemies, she’d be as good as dead anyway. She could see no way forward from such a cowardly act, other than crawling into a liquor bottle and drinking herself to death. Like John had been trying to do for the last eighteen years.

  In that moment, Meaghan grasped the brutal simplicity of the task before her. Get Jamie home or die trying. Perversely comforted by her limited options, she got up from the bathroom floor and brushed her teeth.

  Meaghan picked up the folder from the bed where she’d dropped it in her dash to the bathroom. She sat at the table, where Melanie had left the treaty scroll. She shoved the dreadful scroll aside with a grimace. Snakeskin and blood. She shook her head in disgust. But even if she wasn’t repulsed by it, the scroll was in Fahrayan and she couldn’t read it anyway.

  She opened the folder. It contained two typed single-sided sheets of white paper, probably written on a manual typewriter judging by the bumps she could feel on the back of each page.

  It was more a list of bullet points than a formal legal document. The Fahrayans, as far as she knew, didn’t have a legal system, at least not a very sophisticated one based on John’s grisly comments about Patrice hanging Emily’s severed head from her door. So, if it wasn’t legally binding in the sense Meaghan understood, was there something magical about the use of the snakeskin or the blood? Or were there so many giant snakes and bleeding bodies lying around that it was easier than rustling up paper and ink?

  Ugh. More questions for John. Read, she thought. Quit thinking and read.

  There wasn’t much to the treaty. V’hren was declared the rightful ruler of Fahraya. John was ordered into exile and agreed to never return or attempt to avenge his losses. Jamie wasn’t even mentioned by name, only as “heir or issue” of John. There was no specific ban she could find on John or Jamie changing into their Fahrayan form so long as they didn’t do it in Fahraya.

  Okay, she thought. There was something to work with. Emily made it sound like the Order was relying on Jamie’s forced change as the grounds for dragging him back. But merely changing into his Fahrayan form wasn’t enough to violate the treaty unless done for the purpose of returning from exile.

  Jamie only entered Fahraya because V’hren sent hired wizards to kidnap him and physically shove him through the gateway. There was no intent by Jamie to return. Jamie was only in Fahraya because V’hren had brought him there.

  It couldn’t be that easy. Could it?

  Probably not in Fahraya where justice was dispensed with a sharp knife. V’hren had gone to a lot of trouble to bring Jamie back for public execution. Meaghan doubted that he would simply give up because she pointed out that he had violated his own treaty to do it.

  She kept reading. V’hren’s responsibilities were simple. Leave John and Jamie alone and continue to punish any attempts by his people to enter the human world.

  So, that must have still been going on, she thought, even though John’s father killed the raiders who attacked Emily’s adoptive brother. Had that been the source of friction between John and V’hren? That V’hren supported raiding and John didn’t? That was probably part of it, but being brothers, John and V’hren were likely acting out a whole bunch of crap going back to childhood.

  This treaty wasn’t going to help her. And there was no time to hunt through Matthew’s office to find his missing journal. She needed the details from someone who was there.

  She wished she could talk to her father. But she knew she couldn’t unless he was having one of his rare lucid moments and even then he got dates and people confused.

  So, Matthew was out.
That left John and . . . who else would have been around? Vivian was dead. Lynette had mentioned cleaning up John when he first got here, so she might know something, but she couldn’t have been in Fahraya.

  But there would have been a translator. Melanie, Meaghan thought. Maybe Melanie was there. If Meaghan was right, Melanie was the only person actually present during the treaty negotiations who had not been undergoing torture and who was not now dead, demented, or kidnapped. Maybe she could give Meaghan some solid details instead of merely background information.

  Feeling a flicker of hope, Meaghan shoved the treaty back into the folder and headed for the kitchen. It was crowded with people. Waiting for her, she realized. For her orders. The panic began to bubble again. The house was too full of people watching her every move. She needed a little distance.

  “Melanie, let’s talk,” she said. “In Matthew’s office. Russ, you got the key?”

  Standing at the stove, Russ dug in his pocket and held out his key ring. “The padlock key. It’s pretty stuffy in there. Open the windows and air it out a little.”

  She nodded as she took the keys.

  “Take the pitcher of lemonade in the fridge with you so you can start replacing all those fluids you just lost.”

  Meaghan sighed. “You heard?”

  “We all heard,” Russ said. “Sounded like you were barfing up a lung. Ready to eat yet?”

  Her stomach growled, right on cue.

  “I’ll bring something over in a minute,” Russ said before she could argue.

  “Where’s Lynette?” she asked.

  “Out on the porch with John, Patrice, and the children,” Melanie said.

  “And Natalie? Please tell me she’s not in the basement tormenting Emily.”

  Russ said, “I could, but I’d be lying.”

  “Natalie,” Meagan shouted. “Get up here. I need to talk to you.” She turned back to Russ. “Where’s Caleb?”

  “Sarah and Marnie took him to the movies to get him out of the way.”

  Meaghan raised an eyebrow. “He was okay with that?”

  “It was his idea,” Melanie said. “He thought it would be safer for all concerned to remove himself from the situation. Until we know more about what the Order may have done to him.”