When Marlin floated into view, she had to put a hand to her mouth so she wouldn’t wake Jim. “I didn’t realize you were going on a camping excursion,” he said.
“The carpet got shot down.”
“Shot down? By what?”
“Anti-aircraft guns.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“Resting for the night.” She looked around the forest. “Can you see if there’s a road nearby?”
“I’m not the bloody roadside service people.”
“Could you do it? I need to know how close we are.”
“Fine.” Emma waited while the ghost floated off; the only sound came from the crackling of branches on the fire. She tossed a few more on; the wood hissed from the moisture still in it. This all would have been much easier with Aggie along; the witch could have vanished them to Bykov’s estate. But Emma couldn’t ask Aggie to leave while her niece was in such a sorry condition. It was too bad Sylvia had died or she might have taken them, not to mention she could have brought along an arsenal of weapons to help liberate Louise.
Emma was still mired in these gloomy thoughts when Marlin reappeared. “Looks like you’ve got a road about a mile to the east.”
“Great. I don’t suppose you saw any bears nearby?”
“Bears? Are you going hunting now? The Sword of Justice isn’t to be used for sport.”
“Never mind. How are things back in the city?”
“Your brilliant plan seems to be on schedule.”
“That’s good. There hasn’t been any blowback yet?”
“Not yet. I’m sure there will be. Especially after this Jimenez bloke cracks.”
“Donovan did get him, right?”
“Yes, her and your friend Officer Murdoch.”
“Oh.” Emma hadn’t wanted to involve Amanda in any of this, but as chance had it, her patrol car had been the nearest one to the scene. The Scarlet Knight of course didn’t care about Amanda. Besides, Amanda was one of the few honest cops who could be trusted to bring Don Vendetta to the station. “That’s good, I guess.”
“Yes, well, let’s hope you’re back before all the shit hits the fan.”
“I’m trying.” She looked at her watch; there were still a couple of hours before she was supposed to wake Jim up. “Keep an eye on things in the city. Help Aggie however you can.”
“I think the old bat has all the help she needs with that niece of hers.”
“You’re probably right.”
“You realize I can’t go back until the armor does, right?”
“That’s true,” she said. She resisted the urge to sigh; she didn’t really want to have a conversation with the ghost at the moment.
Perhaps he sensed this, as he said, “I’m going to see what I can see. Haven’t been around these parts in almost three hundred years. Trees were a lot bigger then.”
The ghost didn’t return until it was time for Emma to wake Jim. She passed the time by trying to imagine what Louise would be doing. She imagined her daughter in her crib, flat on her stomach and sucking on her thumb. When this wasn’t enough, she imagined details of the room, from the stuffed animals in the crib—a brown teddy bear like the one that had visited their campsite—to the pastel shade of pink on the walls. If she closed her eyes tightly enough, she could picture herself beside the crib; she reached inside to brush a tangled tress of hair away from Louise’s cheek. She could lean down—
“Boo,” Marlin said. When her eyes flashed open, he shook his head. “Falling asleep on the job now. How disappointing.”
“My shift was ending anyway.” She crawled over to the carpet and groped around to find the edge of the cape and slip beneath it. Jim was curled up into almost a ball, which was the way he always slept, something he’d probably learned from his rat friends. He looked so peaceful that she didn’t want to wake him up.
His eyes opened on their own. “It time?” he asked.
“Yes. But if you’re tired—”
“No, you sleep now. You need it. Big day ahead.”
She was about to argue, but he’d already rolled out from beneath the cape. She wanted to say something, but her eyes were already closed. He was right; a few minutes of sleep would be good.
She awoke to Jim shaking her. She brushed back the golden cape and saw it was dawn. From her watch, she saw she’d been asleep for four hours, more than she usually got back in Rampart City. “Why’d you let me sleep so long?” she asked.
“You look happy.”
“Oh. Thanks.” She had been happy; she had dreamed she held Louise in her arms and rocked her like Akako did with Renee. Though she supposed at two years old Louise would be too big for that, not to mention Louise wouldn’t have any idea who Emma was.
Jim held out a stick with something that looked like a rat carcass at the end, only with its fur scorched and innards removed. “I make you breakfast,” he said.
“How thoughtful. What is it?”
“Squirrel.”
“My favorite.” She took a bite of the squirrel meat and decided it wasn’t all that bad. A little overcooked and stringy, but it was better than a mouthful of snow, which was all they had since the bear had ransacked their supplies. As she finished the squirrel, she said, “Marlin says there should be a road a mile to the east.”
“Ghost is here?”
“Not at the moment.” She reached out for Jim’s arm. “He comes with the armor. He’ll go back once I put everything back and it returns to Rampart City.”
“Good.”
They finished packing up their campsite and snuffed out the fire that had kept them from freezing to death. Then they set out towards the rising sun, where they hoped to find a road. Emma had put the cape and Sword of Justice back, though she’d been tempted to keep the latter. In the end she’d decided that a golden sword might be a little too conspicuous.
It didn’t turn out to be much of a road. It was more like a muddy trail. At least their feet didn’t get quite as wet or cold as they tramped along the road. “We still far from her?” Jim asked.
“I think so. At this rate she’ll be a grown-up before we get there.”
Not long after she said this, Emma heard the growl of a truck like the answer to her prayers. She planted herself in the middle of the road and frantically waved her arms. The truck was a pickup most likely from the Soviet era and its driver even older. The old man squinted at her as she came around to his side to beg for a ride.
“You! If I’d known I would not have stopped.”
Emma’s jaw dropped as she realized she knew the old man. He had shot her as she ran into his field while she tried to escape from Bykov’s estate. He and his wife had then helped Emma; they’d given her a place to stay and hidden her from Bykov’s goons. The last time she’d seen him was at a train station, when he had given her his life savings so she could buy a ticket and start her journey home to America.
“You have to help me—again,” she said in Russian. “It’s a matter of life or death.”
The old man glared at her for a moment and then nodded. “Fine. Get in.”
***
As they headed back to his farmhouse, Emma decided the old man and Marlin would get along famously. “What sort of trouble are you in now?” the old man asked her less than a minute after they’d gotten underway with her in the middle of the bench seat and Jim pressed up against the passenger’s side door.
“The Wolf has my daughter,” she said, remembering the old man’s name for Bykov. She indicated Jim with a nod. “Our daughter.”
“This man is your husband? He looks like a vagrant.”
“We’re not married.”
“So you live in sin? Like a whore?”
“No! It’s not like that. It’s—complicated.”
“We should not have trusted you. You have done nothing for us but cause trouble.”
“I’m sorry. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t.�
�� She looked down at the rusty floor as she said this; her cheeks burned with heat. She had made a couple of half-hearted attempts to stop Bykov, but the old man was right: she hadn’t really done anything to stop him.
“You Americans always promise more than you can deliver. You promise freedom and peace, but you do nothing while the Wolf runs rampant. Then you only come back when he steals your child from you.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Your sorry means nothing to me! Where were you when the Wolf’s men killed a busload of people, including my wife? You were lying in your cozy bed in your big house, eating your fast food and watching your television.”
“Your wife is dead? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Why should you know? You care nothing for us. You care nothing about the Russian people. You only care about colonizing the desert.” The old man snorted and then shook his head. “Fools, all of you.”
Jim watched the conversation, though he had no idea what they said. “He not want to help?” Jim whispered into her ear.
“No, I don’t think he does. He’s angry with me.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story. I tried to help him last time I was here but I couldn’t.”
“He not like Bykov either?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“Then you tell him we get rid of Bykov. He never hurt no one again.”
She repeated this to the old man, but he only snorted again. “You? A foolish girl and a man who smells like garbage? What will you do to the Wolf?”
“You’d be surprised,” Emma said. She took a deep breath and then said, “All we need is shelter until nightfall. Then we’ll be gone and you never have to see us again.”
The old man grunted, but said nothing. He remained steadfastly silent on the remainder of the long, bumpy ride back to his farm. Emma leaned against Jim and rested her head on his shoulder; her stomach felt queasy from the bumpy roads and the squirrel she’d eaten for breakfast. Jim kept an arm around her shoulders and occasionally glared at the old man.
The farm looked the same as Emma remembered, only now the fields were barren and covered with snow. Jim helped her out of the truck; he stood aside just in time as she dropped to her knees and threw up. When she looked up, she saw the old man glaring at her. “You and your lover can stay in the barn. I will bring food to you later, if you get hungry.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. She relayed the old man’s message to Jim, who didn’t have any problem with this. He took her hand to help her to the barn.
There was only one scrawny horse in the barn. Emma wondered how much longer it would be before the old man joined his wife. She tried to push this thought aside as she climbed up the ladder to the hayloft; Jim followed her to make sure she didn’t fall.
She collapsed in the hay, but didn’t feel well enough for another proverbial roll in the hay with Jim. As she lay in the hay, she could feel something stir. Jim called out a greeting in ratspeak to introduce himself as a chief of a distant tribe. She watched with fascination as a rat’s head peeked out from beneath the hay a few inches from her feet.
The rat wasn’t more than a few inches long, just an ordinary rat, not like Pepe and some of the others back in the Rampart City sewers. The rat tentatively approached Jim; its snout sniffed at him. He held out a hand and Emma watched in awe as the rat climbed up his sleeve like a trained pet. The creature squeaked and shrieked its own greeting in ratspeak. This varied a little from what Emma had learned in the sewers, but she could understand enough of it to learn the rat welcomed them to his tribe’s nest.
“We honored to be here,” Jim said in ratspeak. “We tell others of your hospitality.”
The rat squeaked a thank you and then hopped down to disappear into the hay again. Emma smiled at Jim and said, “I guess you made some new friends.”
“Yes. They help us find Louise.”
“Maybe,” Emma said, though she didn’t know how. She reached out to take Jim’s arm and then pull him into the hay beside her. He started to unzip his pants, but she stopped him. “Just hold me.”
Another man might have gotten angry at this, but Jim loved her too much for that. He only nodded and put his arm around her to keep her close to his body. She closed her eyes to once more immerse herself in sleep and dreams of Louise.
Chapter 11
During the first leg of the journey, Renee cried almost nonstop, even after Akako checked the girl’s diaper, fed her, and tried to sing to her. She finally wore herself out as they reached the Azores and fell into a deep sleep. Akako was such an old hand with the carpet that she could change Renee’s soiled diaper while they coasted over Spain.
“Is something wrong?” she asked while she worked on the diaper.
“Of course something’s wrong. We have trained assassins wanting to kidnap our daughter.”
“I meant besides that.”
“I don’t know. I suppose I was wondering why these Heretics want Renee. We’re not really all that different, are we?”
“Only in how you use your power.”
“So how can they do this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re angry at the coven for not accepting them.”
“I would have accepted them if I’d known they existed. Why did Glenda keep this from us all these years?”
“She probably had a good reason. She usually does.”
“Usually.” Aggie shook her head. Glenda had known about Cecelia and all the other Heretics but hadn’t said anything until they nearly killed Cecelia and threatened to come after Renee. Even then it wasn’t until Aggie confronted her about it that she said anything. “I can’t imagine what her excuse is this time.”
“Maybe she wanted to protect you.”
“Protect us? We’re not children.”
“To her you are. She’s a lot older than all of you.”
“There’s another question. How has she lived all this time and no one else has?”
“She’s a good survivor.”
“Good at looking after her own neck you mean.”
“Agnes, what’s wrong? I’ve never heard you talk like this before. You love Glenda.”
“She doesn’t love us. You know what she calls Renee.”
“She’ll get used to Renee. They all will.”
“Or they’ll kill her before the Heretics can have her.”
“Agnes—”
“I wish there were something else we could do, someplace else we could take her where she’d be safe.” Aggie stroked Renee’s soft brown hair. The baby stirred but continued to sleep against her mother’s breast.
“We could go anywhere you want.”
“But nowhere safe. Not from them.”
“Then we’ll have to go there and hope for the best.”
“Are you willing to risk your life—and hers—on that?”
“I don’t see where we have a choice.”
Aggie considered this for a moment and then nodded. “I don’t either.”
The carpet drifted over the lights of Paris. In Aggie’s day those lights had been from torches and later gas lamps. Now they were electric lights that made the whole city seem to glow. When Renee stirred again, Akako turned the baby so she could see the lights. “You see that?” she asked, pointing to the Eiffel Tower. “Isn’t that pretty?”
“Purty,” Renee chirped.
“That’s right, sweetie. It’s pretty, like you.”
Aggie watched this in silence and felt once again like the third wheel, like at Renee’s birthday party. She wondered if Renee would even notice her father was gone once they reached the school. So often it seemed as if Akako and Renee were happy enough on their own, that she was an intruder in their lives. Provided they survived this, what would Renee think of her father as she got older? Would she come to love Aggie or would she look at her like a stranger? Would she always be “Agga” or at some point would she become “Daddy?”
Paris slipped away beneath the blanket.
Renee fell back to sleep to cuddle up against Akako—against her mother, while Aggie was left to face the cold and darkness alone.
***
The Milton School for Girls, one of the oldest continuously-operating boarding schools in the world, had initially come about as a front to give novice witches and their teachers a place to work together without arousing suspicion from any mortals. It had been founded in the mid-18th Century by Regina Milton, whose stated specialty was to make charms, though in reality her primary skill was bureaucracy. While the school had begun as a front, it soon enough became a real institution—in large part because it generated quite a bit of money, as well as there were never more than two or three novice witches at a time—with several older witches who worked as teachers while Regina was given the lofty title of headmistress.
Headmistress. That was who Cecelia had said ran the Heretics, the ones who wanted to kidnap Renee. Of course it would be far too obvious for Regina Milton to use that codename. Besides, Regina was far too proper for that.
She certainly had the headmistress look down, Aggie had to admit as she sat across from Regina at her desk. The reading glasses, the gray hair pulled back severely into a bun, and the dowdy purple suit all gave her the air of authority. Aggie tried not to squirm in her chair like one of Regina’s students.
“This is most irregular,” Regina said. “We are an institution of learning for young women, not a nursery for babies.”
“I know that. Renee won’t get in the way. We’ll keep her in one of the dorms.”
“Where her bawling can disturb the other girls? I think not.”
“She’ll be quiet. She’s very well-behaved.” Aggie wanted to add, “So long as her mother is around.” She decided this wouldn’t help her case any.
“Nevertheless, our students have exams to prepare for. They need peace and quiet for their studies.”
Aggie resisted the urge to snort derisively at this. A bunch of rich, spoiled teenage girls probably had a lot of other things on their minds besides exams. “Glenda told us you would find a place for her.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 117