by R. L. Naquin
In fact, Pansy was the reason Maurice had broken up with Stacy all those years ago. Stacy was kooky and sometimes a little much to take, but she was beautiful and kind. Okay, beautiful in a monster way, but beautiful, all the same.
Boys were so dumb.
Pansy’s breathing changed. The movement in her chest sped up, but she kept her head down.
Darius had gone for water. I suspected that meant the hose, rather than a glass, but it was probably too soon to threaten her with a cold shower. No reason to wait for him. She was faking.
I nudged her with my foot. “I know you’re awake, Pansy. Sit up.”
She raised her head and shot a hateful look at me. “Lenticular relapse.”
Maurice sucked in his breath as if he’d been slapped. “Don’t you dare say that to her. Don’t you ever!”
I debated whether I wanted to know what she’d said, then decided it didn’t matter. “Look, Pansy. I don’t like you. You don’t like me. We both have our reasons—though personally, I think my reasons are far more compelling than yours.”
She muttered something I couldn’t quite hear and certainly wouldn’t have understood if I had, and Maurice took a fuming step toward her, fists clenched.
I held my hand up. “Let it go, Maurice. She doesn’t much matter to either of us. Her only value now is information. Isn’t that right, Riley?”
Riley had placed himself behind Pansy, where she couldn’t see him. “That’s right. And if she cooperates, she can keep her soul.” He was totally bluffing, of course. The only person in the room comfortable with torture of any kind was Darius, and we’d stopped him the last time he tried it. Still, as long as Riley was out of her line of vision she might believe him—without screaming or losing consciousness.
At the sound of Riley’s reaper voice, Pansy stiffened and her breath shook. “Tangerine mothballs furnished the cage.”
Maurice’s eyes grew wide. “She says she’s afraid to talk to us. If she says anything, he’ll find out and come back for her.”
I took a step toward her. “Who are you talking about?”
She frowned and shook her head.
Maurice knelt beside her and placed a gentle hand on her knee. “Look. No one can get to you here. And we’re not going to hurt you, either. But we have to know. For once, do the right thing. Please?”
Her expression softened, and for a moment, I could see a little of what Maurice must have seen in her once. She opened her mouth to say something, then clapped her lips together with the clatter of a rock dropping against a boulder.
Maurice sighed. “How about this. I’ll ask you questions and you can answer yes or no. You don’t have to say anything.”
She appeared to think about it, then nodded once. We all relaxed a little. Maybe this wouldn’t be a wasted effort after all.
Maurice looked at me for directions, and I gestured for him to proceed. He’d gotten her this far. The rest of us were likely to make her hostile again.
I’d thought Maurice’s bias would be a hindrance. Instead, he was the one best equipped to handle his ex-wife.
Riley was the fear inducement. Darius was the muscle.
And I settled in to be the lie detector.
Very little emotion was allowed to come through my filters when I was at home. For one thing, feeling the emotions of others was exhausting, so I needed a break. For another, I didn’t like to eavesdrop on the feelings of my friends and family. That wasn’t cool.
But the feelings of a woman more than likely related to the Aegis killings, and certainly a part of the cult that kept trespassing on my property—she was fair game.
I opened my filters wider and envisioned a cone, wide at my end and narrowing as it grew closer to her. This would ensure I could pinpoint Pansy’s emotions and not pick up residual feelings from the guys around me. Maurice, especially, was probably feeling some powerful emotions under the circumstances. I didn’t want to muddy my perceptions with his baggage.
I had enough baggage of my own with Riley standing there.
Maurice took a deep breath and let it out. “Let’s start with some simple ones. Are you with that group of people they took away?”
Pansy remained silent, but bobbed her head. Since we knew she’d been with them—hell, it looked as if she were leading them—this gave me a baseline so I knew what she felt like when she told the truth.
“Are you all from the Church of Hidden Wisdom?”
She hesitated, then nodded. Truth, though not all of the truth.
Maurice frowned. “The church, but not the church?”
Pansy wrinkled her stony face, confused about how to answer.
I wasn’t sure how Maurice could get an explanation out of her if she wasn’t going to answer in words. But he used to live with her, and he was a pretty good body-language reader.
“A group within the Church of Hidden Wisdom?”
Her eyes brightened and she smiled. Her pride was a thick perfume wafting through my narrow beacon. She seemed to think being a member of some secret society within an archaic, mostly forgotten church was an enormous honor.
We knew she was telling the truth. It meshed with what the church’s pastor had hinted at when I’d gone to see him several months back—Pansy’s group was working outside the parameters of the official church.
“Did your group open the portals to the demon and vampire worlds?” His face was nearly as hardened as hers—not easy when his was made of flesh and hers of granite.
She snorted and looked away. Riley nudged her shoulder, reminding her of his presence. The gargoyle went rigid, then shook her head. I tasted truth from her but, again, not the full truth. My best guess was that Pansy wanted to open the portals but couldn’t.
Maurice squeezed Pansy’s knee and softened his voice. “Pansy, was your group responsible for the aswangs? Were you trying to kill Zoey and her mom?”
Pansy sniffed and looked at me from the corner of her eye. Anger boiled toward me in orange waves, then crashed as they were overtaken by shame when we made eye contact. Pansy dropped her head and wouldn’t look at either Maurice or me.
I signaled to Riley, and he untied the gargoyle’s hands. Maurice held them and helped her rub the circulation into her fingers. “Honey, I need you to tell me who’s opening the portals. Who gives you your orders?”
She shook her head. “My ballroom is full of Siamese porcupines and Portobello mushrooms. Farmland isn’t cheap.”
On the bright side, she was speaking again. And whatever she said didn’t feel like a lie.
I touched Maurice’s sleeve. “What did she say?”
He sighed. “Their leader always wore a hood and met with them at night, in shadows. She doesn’t think he even had anything to do with the church.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought it was a religious thing.”
Maurice clutched Pansy’s hands, patience and kindness pulsing from his body. “Why did you do it?”
She glanced at me, this time with more sadness than animosity. “Sometimes the wombat loses. Homeruns are inevitable.” A muddy tear slid down her cheek.
Maurice, whose emotions were always on the surface, looked crushed. “Honey, you know that’s not true. You kicked me out. You had the affair. I came here because you gave me no place else to go.” He wiped away her tears. “I would have stayed forever.”
Pansy sniffed, nodded, then wrapped her arms around Maurice. The rest of us averted our eyes to give them privacy. They whispered together for some time, and the emotions Pansy gave off were nothing like what she’d had before.
Regret.
Sorrow.
Shame.
I signaled to Riley and Darius to follow me, and we moved away so the two could talk.
When they parted, Maurice called us back, and Pansy gave us all a watery smile. “Anchovies live in a box of marshmallow pops. Parliament.”
Maurice pulled himself to his feet. “She says she’s very sorry. She didn’t mean for things
to get so out of hand and hopes someday you’ll forgive her.” He glanced at her and she nodded permission for him to tell us more.
“She said their leader made promises of a better future—a new world where Hidden could go where they pleased without the threat of human discovery. She was angry with me for leaving and blamed Zoey for taking me away.”
Heaven help me, I felt sorry for the little thing. In a way, she’d been a victim in all this. I wasn’t ready to hug her and tell her she was a good person, but I wasn’t as angry with her anymore. Everyone had a story about what made them. For all we knew, Pansy had a terrible childhood or some sort of tragedy in her past.
She touched Maurice’s sleeve with a tentative hand. “Anyone can build a snowshoe from a garden hose.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Fermentation isn’t the only horse in town.”
Maurice patted her hand and nodded. “The leader recruited them all from an anger management group the church was hosting in the basement. She’d been trying to get help, but he showed up one day and offered another solution.”
“Don’t get mad, get even,” Riley said in a low voice. “Nice.”
Again, I felt no lies from Pansy. She was sincere. But I didn’t know what to do with her, either. The rest of her group was locked up, so shouldn’t she be under arrest too? And more importantly, who would be after her now that she’d talked to us?
“Are you in danger, Pansy?” I asked. “We have room for you here.”
Pansy’s eyes widened and puddled with fresh tears. Guilt blew in again like a fog. She glanced at Maurice, then looked away, as if ashamed to meet his eyes. “My symbiotic rock hopper plays the cello with plastic cheese slices.” She stared at her hands.
Maurice swallowed hard. Whatever she said was difficult for him to hear. I felt his heart hurting without focusing on him. “Go,” he whispered. “Get as far away as you can.”
Darius took a step forward to object, but I shook my head. If Maurice wanted to let her go, I wasn’t going to argue. Something in Pansy had changed. I felt it. And I trusted Maurice.
Pansy rose from her chair and walked toward the door. She stopped and turned to look at Maurice over her shoulder, then made her way out into the predawn. Her wings scraped together, then spread from her shoulders. She leaped into the air and was gone.
I walked past the gargoyle’s recently vacated chair and held Maurice’s hand. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “I’m fine. I have closure now. I finished crying over her a long time ago.”
Darius growled. I’d never heard him make that noise before. “I can’t believe you let her go.”
Riley patted Maurice on the back.
“She thought I stole you from her,” I said.
“Yes.” Maurice sniffed. “She was angry and wanted to hurt us. She’s not mad now.”
Darius folded his arms across his broad chest. “What makes you think she’s not lying so she can go back to chanting at aswangs?”
“You can’t lie to an empath,” Riley said. His voice was quiet. Sad.
I slammed my filters shut before I caught any emotions I’d regret feeling.
Maurice rubbed his arms, as if chilled. “She had to go back home. She’s afraid someone may go after her...boyfriend.” He winced. “She’s going to grab a bag and get out of town with him. Try to keep themselves safe.”
I gestured for the guys to head out of the garage so I could turn off the light. “She should have brought him back here where it’s safe.”
Darius snorted. “She was trying to get you killed here. I don’t think she’s got a lot of faith in the security of this place.”
I shrugged. “I wish her luck, then.”
“So do I,” Maurice whispered. “So do I.”
* * *
We’d all been up since three in the morning. Some, like Maurice and Darius, didn’t need much sleep anyway. The rest of us went back to bed for a few hours. Riley stayed, dozing on the couch. I pictured him keeping one eye open on the window into the front yard, in case another portal popped up.
As far as we knew, the folks responsible for calling forth aswang assassins in our area were all locked up in a cell in Petaluma. We had to hope that was all of them, anyway.
But whoever kept opening the portals was still out there somewhere.
Six Aegises left in all the world. Things weren’t looking good for the home team.
During a late communal breakfast, I announced my plans. “I’m spending the day at Aggie’s to research the feathers we found. And I need to know what the voice meant by curator.”
Riley tensed across the table. “I’m going with you, then.”
I ignored the nervous flutter in my stomach while I buttered my third flaky biscuit and smothered it in honey. “Her cottage is inside the fairy ring. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m still your guardian, Zoey, whatever else happened between us. You’re not going anywhere alone. Not anymore.” His voice was firm.
I started to object, but looked up before I spoke. The set of his jaw and the worry in his eyes were too much to ignore. This whole thing was every bit as difficult on him as it was on me.
Breaking up with him started to seem like a waste of time and emotional pain. We were still having the same arguments, but now we couldn’t kiss and make up afterward.
So much for saving ourselves heartbreak.
“Okay.” I tried to get the word out without choking on it, but Maurice must’ve heard the pain in my voice. He reached under the table and patted my leg.
Mom wiped her mouth on a napkin. “I’m going too. We can search more books that way.”
My eyebrows rose in surprise. Mom had been going over to Aggie’s to have tea with her every afternoon until the portals started turning up. Since then, she hadn’t gone more than a few yards from the house.
Having her there to help me research would make things so much easier. Half the books in Aggie’s library belonged to my mother.
I nodded. “Good. After breakfast, we’ll take a walk over and spend the day with our noses in dusty books.” The more I thought about it, the more I warmed to the idea. After the events of the previous night, it sounded relaxing and kind of fun.
So, my lone journey across my yard and through the woods became a four-person expedition, since Mom never went anywhere without Darius when he was around. On our way out, we spotted Rick heading up the driveway. Panicked, I checked to see that nothing bizarre was obvious to human eyes. No chupacabras hanging from trees, no harpies on my roof and no centaurs sunbathing in the grass. Small movements in the shadows under the front porch made me squint to try to make out the mysterious gnomes living under there, but they went still as Rick approached.
“Morning, folks!” He grinned and hopped out of his truck. “Got a package here I need you to sign for.”
I frowned, taking the box and examining the return address. Lebanon, Kansas.
Riley peered over my shoulder. “Were you expecting anything from headquarters?”
“No. Maybe Bernice brought back a souvenir from England.” I signed my name on the slip of paper and handed it back. “Thanks for bringing it up here.”
Rick beamed at me and hopped into his truck. The dimples in his cheeks reminded me of my ex-husband, Brad—same sort of charm but without the ulterior motives. “My pleasure. You folks have a terrific day!”
He turned around in the driveway and drove off, a cloud of dust in his wake.
“That man is entirely too chipper for a postal worker.” I went to sit on the porch steps to examine the package. It was rectangular, like a shoebox, though much smaller, and it was wrapped in brown paper. My name and address were printed in neat handwriting.
I shook the box, and something rattled around inside. “She’s never sent me anything before. How weird.” I tore open the paper and popped open the lid.
The inside was filled with shredded newspaper as packing material, though considering the contents of the box, it seemed more like the litter peopl
e sometimes put in the bottom of a cage.
A tiny wooden man with eyes of chipped turquoise sat up and smiled. “Ah, it’s good to be home!”
I stared in horror. “Oh my God, Gris! She mailed you here? What was she thinking?”
He shrugged and climbed out of the box onto the porch railing. “You know Mother. She was thinking I’m a golem and a freak, and mailing made perfect sense.”
I rubbed my finger over the spot between my eyes, feeling tension building. Bernice’s particular forte was the ability to create lifelike golems—people she controlled. They had no awareness of their own, no souls, no consciousness.
Gris had been a miniature, practice model. She’d never animated him, but he’d caught years and years of residual magic on her workshop shelf, and had eventually become self-aware. Bernice had no control over him and couldn’t explain how he came to be.
He thought of her as his mother.
She tried not to think about him at all.
After Gris had traveled with us and had helped me defeat my mother’s kidnapper, he became part of the family. The only reason he’d been back at headquarters was to help Art run the place while Bernice was away. I was supposed to pick him up on the way back, but I’d kind of taken a shortcut with Wiggy.
For some reason, I’d figured Gris would come home on a bus or something. I hadn’t thought it through. Too much had been going on. If anything, I’d figured he’d stay put until things settled down.
“I’m glad you’re home, Gris.” I smiled. I really was glad. He’d weirded me out when we first met. I wasn’t a huge fan of Bernice’s soulless golems made to replace people on the Board who had died. Gris was a tiny version, created as a practice golem Bernice had never meant to bring to life. After traveling and getting to know him, I saw him differently. Unlike Bernice’s big golems, he had emotions of his own. At the last, he’d sacrificed himself to save my life, and I’d given him a piece of myself to bring him back. We were connected now.