“I don’t want to talk about it now.”
“I understand. We’ll talk later. Try to get some rest.” Dr. Earl backed away.
Joanna heard a tiny voice ask, “Mommy, what’s wrong with her?”
“Her mommy went up to Heaven, baby.”
“That’s why she’s sad?”
“Yes. Come on, sweetheart, let’s leave her alone for a while.”
Joanna waited until she was sure everyone was gone before she peeked out of the fort’s doorway. By then it was evening, the sun going down over a horizon no longer darkened by Isis’s magic. The others had built more fire pits, enough to accommodate all of the Reds. In the morning Joanna would have to start to send them home to their families, to their children and grandchildren while she would be alone.
Dr. Earl sat at a pit off to the side. Akako and Agnes sat next to her; Akako cradled Renee in her arms while the baby suckled at Akako’s breast. Across the pit, Tim Cooper tended to a sleeping woman, her leg wrapped in heavy bandages. A little girl cuddled next to Dr. Earl the way Joanna no longer could with Mommy. Dr. Earl gently stroked the little girl’s tangled hair; she said nothing as she stared into the fire. Joanna knew the little girl was Dr. Earl’s daughter.
Joanna watched the gentle way Dr. Earl treated her daughter for a while, the love in Dr. Earl’s eyes. Mommy had asked Dr. Earl to take care of her; as she watched mother and daughter by the fire, Joanna began to understand why. Dr. Earl was a nice woman, about as close to Mommy as anyone could get. Mommy had known this; she had known Dr. Earl would treat Joanna kindly and not be afraid of her because of her power. And Mommy had known Dr. Earl had a little girl, a younger sister for Joanna, who had always wanted one.
She looked down at her feet as she crossed the campsite to sit down between Dr. Earl and Akako. She silently put her head against Dr. Earl’s side the way her daughter was on the other side. She saw Dr. Earl smile a little and then put an arm on her shoulder to hold her close.
When she closed her eyes, Joanna felt home again.
***
The ashes of the fire pits had all turned cold when Tim finally said goodbye. The Reds had already gone back to their homes—all except Akako—thanks to Joanna. The little girl now rested in her fort, Louise curled up beside her. They seemed to have taken quickly to the idea of being sisters; they had even bickered over who got the last spoonful of beans at breakfast.
Emma shook her head. “To think a week ago I didn’t have any kids. Now I have two.”
“I’m sure you’re going to be a great mom,” Tim said.
“I hope so. I just keep thinking it should have been me on that Pegasus. It was my job to kill Isis, not hers.”
“Maybe she knew you’re not a killer.”
“Maybe.” Emma sighed and then turned to where Sylvia lay. She had woke up briefly during the night, just long enough for Tim to give her a dart in the neck to keep her unconscious so she wouldn’t run off again. “How’s she doing?”
“Agnes says her leg should heal fine. It doesn’t look infected at least.”
“That’s good news.”
“I could have crippled her.”
“But you didn’t.”
“That doesn’t really make me feel better.”
“It should. You saved her from Isis. You should be proud.”
“Maybe.” He looked down at her again. All night he had watched over her. He thought of what he had told her in Robinson Tower, that they were meant to be together. This still seemed true to him. “I was thinking that when I take her back, I might stick around for a while. To make sure she’s all right. Plus I could use Renee’s help to make some adjustments to the suit—”
“You don’t have to explain it to me. I understand. Take as long as you want.”
“I really do appreciate how you stuck up for me. You’ve been a great friend.”
“So have you.” She gave him a hug. “Just remember we’ll still be here if you want to come back.”
“I will.”
Akako was the next one he said goodbye to before he left. She of course understood his reasons for leaving; it was the same reason she had left her world. “It’ll be an adjustment, but I’m sure you can do it,” she said.
“I wanted to thank you for your help. If you hadn’t dropped out of the sky, I don’t think I could ever have done anything.”
“It was my pleasure.” She also gave Tim a hug. “Say hi to Renee for me. And keep her out of trouble.”
“I’ll try.”
Lastly he found Old Coyote, whose truck had miraculously reappeared at the campsite after Isis’s defeat. The load he had been delivering had even shown up in the truck, despite that most of it was still scattered around the camp. No one bothered to question it; it was probably something quantum.
The old trucker leaned against the truck and smoked a cigarette. “I guess we won’t have time for that drink, will we?”
“I guess not. Someone needs to take Sylvia back and make sure she pulls through.”
“Reckon that should be you, right?”
“Who better?”
Old Coyote smiled at him. “I’m rattling your chain, son. Just make sure when you go back there that you don’t let her go.”
“I won’t,” Tim said. Not this time, he added to himself. He held out his hand for the trucker to shake. “I’m really glad you picked me up that morning. Otherwise I’d still probably be trying to get here.”
“Shoot, son, I should be thanking you. Never thought I’d get wrapped up in something like this.” Old Coyote shook his head. “Too bad I can’t tell no one about it or they’d throw me in the loony bin.”
“You can always talk to Akako about it. She likes you.”
“But not as much as she likes her husband.”
“Can’t blame the woman for having standards.”
Old Coyote stared at him for a moment before he grinned. “You’re all right, kid. You ever need a ride again, you give me a call.”
“I will. Thanks.” They shook hands again. With that, it was time for Tim to go. He donned his suit of armor; Emma used hers to help him. Once this was done, he scooped Sylvia up as gently as he could. She moaned a little, but didn’t wake up.
He marched over to a bare patch of ground far away from the others. Akako joined him and held on to the scroll. “You’re sure about this?” she asked.
“Positive.”
“Then good luck.” She threw the scroll onto the ground. It exploded in a flash of purple light, to form the gateway that had taken him to Sylvia’s world. He took a deep breath and then looked back at Akako, Emma, Agnes, and Old Coyote—his friends. They waved to him as he stepped into the gateway—
—On the other side he fell to his knees, but managed to keep Sylvia from hitting the ground. The shriek of a cat greeted him, accompanied by a far more beautiful sound: that of a violin. Renee sat on a stool, her back turned to him as she played the instrument he had given her. He recognized it as Mozart, though he forgot exactly which piece. For a minute Tim squatted on the floor, to let the music wash over him. He thought of that other Renee Kim, the one from his world; maybe they were more alike than he had thought.
Renee finished playing and only then did she turn around to see him there. She made a far less musical sound as she squealed with delight. She bounded towards him, Day-Glo orange pigtails bobbing as she ran. “You’re back!” she shouted.
He carefully set Sylvia on the floor so Renee could leap into his arms and wrap her arms around him. She peppered the visor of his helmet with kisses. “I thought you’d never come back,” she said. “I kept checking here every day just in case you did.”
He looked around the factory; it seemed about the same as when he’d left. “How long have I been gone?”
“A week.”
“That long?”
“I know, it felt like forever.”
He touched one of her pigtails. “That’s different.”
“I know, isn’t it cute?”
“What happened to turquoise?”
“Whenever I saw it I thought of you, so I decided to change it.” For the first time Renee seemed to notice Sylvia on the floor. “What happened to her?”
“I cut her with a saw.”
“A saw? Why’d you do that?”
“It’s a long story.” He eased her to the floor and then stood up. “Would you mind if I changed? Then we need to get her to the hospital.”
“Oh, sure. Aggie will be glad to see her. Her mom’s been going nuts. No one knew what happened to her. They even asked me about it.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said Erik the Red’s goons probably threw her into the harbor.”
“Renee—”
“What? I was throwing them off the scent. What’d you want me to say: she went through a creepy dimensional gateway?”
“No, I guess not.”
Tim found a secluded part of the factory and then began to take off the armor. Renee chattered about everything that had happened in the last week, most of which concerned her application to MIT to study mechanical engineering. “I thought I’d done such a good job with your suit that maybe I could do other stuff too.”
“Looks like you got pretty good at the violin too.”
“I know! It’s so weird, I picked it up and it was like I had been playing it my whole life. I played it for Aggie over the phone and she thought I was playing a CD—”
As Renee continued to talk, Tim smiled. This would definitely be an adjustment. But as he looked over at Renee and then Sylvia, he knew it would be worth it.
***
The first thing Emma knew she would need was a car. The motorcycle would still be handy for the Scarlet Knight, but as Mommy to two little girls, she needed something that could hold them all. For the moment, though, she used Becky’s car. There wasn’t a car seat for Louise—who didn’t think she needed one in any case—or a booster seat for Joanna—who similarly thought she was too grown-up for such things—so Emma had to make do as best she could by driving more cautiously than usual.
She carried Louise into the hospital despite the little girl’s insistence she could walk as well as her sister. “I’m not a baby!” Louise yelled loud enough that a nurse glared at them.
“I know you’re not a baby, but my legs are longer than yours,” Emma said, just as she had in the Latvian forest when they had been escaping Bykov’s goons. “This will be faster.”
Louise huffed, but she settled into a comfortable position against Emma’s shoulder. Moments like that made Emma smile, though a wave of sadness soon followed as she wished Jim could get the chance to hold his daughter like this. “Are you all right, Mommy?” Joanna asked, perceptive as always.
“I’m fine. Hospitals aren’t my favorite place.”
“Mine either,” Joanna said.
“It smells funny,” Louise said.
“It certainly does, baby.”
They took the elevator up to the floor where Becky was still recovering from her gunshot wound. Emma’s grip on Louise weakened for a moment as she saw Dan outside. His eyes widened behind his glasses as he saw her and her daughters. “Wow,” he said. “You’ve certainly made some changes.”
“You could say that,” she said. She patted Louise’s back. “This is my daughter Louise and this is my other daughter Joanna. Girls, this is Dr. Dreyfus. He’s a friend of Mommy’s.”
“Hi,” Louise said. She pressed herself tighter against Emma and turned her face away. For the first time, Emma saw her little girl blush.
“She’s feeling a little shy,” Emma said. “It’s been quite an adjustment—for all of us.”
Joanna didn’t share her adopted sibling’s shyness, though she did squeeze Emma’s hand a bit harder as Dan knelt down in front of her. “Hi there,” he said. “You are just the spitting image of your mom, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Joanna said. Her lower lip trembled, as she no doubt thought of her real mother.
“Is Becky awake?” Emma asked.
“She was a couple minutes ago.”
“How’s she feeling?”
“A little down, but I’m sure she’ll feel a lot better now that you’re back.”
“I hope so.”
Emma went over to the row of chairs and then pried Louise from her shoulder. “Mommy, don’t go,” Louise said with a whimper.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She looked Louise in the eye. “You stay right here with your big sister, all right?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Good girl. I promise I’ll be back in a few minutes. Until then Dr. Dreyfus will make sure nothing bad happens to you. When I get back you can both meet Aunt Becky.”
“Yes, Mommy,” both girls said in unison. No matter how many times Louise and Joanna said this, Emma felt a surge of joy at it. She hadn’t asked Joanna to call her “Mommy;” the little girl had done it on her own their first night at home. Emma had shown her to the guest room and then tucked her into bed. She decided against kissing Joanna; she hadn’t earned the right to do so yet. She simply smiled and nodded to her. “Goodnight,” she had said. “G’night, Mommy,” Joanna said and then rolled over to sleep.
They still had a long way to go, though. Not only Joanna but Louise as well. For one thing, as became obvious the first night, Emma’s house was not set up to accommodate children, especially two very curious, very precocious children. After she put Louise into the crib Becky had given her—which had brought on their first fight as Louise insisted she wasn’t a baby and didn’t need a crib while Emma insisted it would only be for one night—Emma spent all night checking the cupboards and cabinets; she moved dangerous chemicals and sharp objects out of reach.
“How are you supposed to get any work done with two rugrats biting at your ankles all the time?” Marlin had asked.
“Well hello to you too,” she said. “You finally got tired of Beaux’s cooking?”
“Someone has to look after you. Look what happens when I’m not around? You start getting domestic.”
Though the ghost was being his usual sarcastic self, Emma knew he had a point. How was she supposed to continue being the Scarlet Knight while she mothered two children? It wasn’t Joanna she worried about so much as Louise, who was still a baby whether she wanted to admit it or not. After so much effort to get Louise back, she couldn’t very well abandon her to go out and beat up purse-snatchers.
That partially necessitated her visit to the hospital. The other part was of course that Becky was her friend and Emma hadn’t gotten a chance to see her since she’d been shot. From Dr. Pavelski, Emma had learned Becky’s uterus was still permanently damaged, which meant she would be unable to have her own children. Dr. Pavelski had saved some of Becky’s eggs so they could potentially be fertilized in a lab and implanted into a surrogate mother. Emma would have gladly volunteered for this, but now she wasn’t so sure that she could.
She stepped into Becky’s room to find her friend staring blankly at a soap opera on TV. “Hi,” Emma said.
Becky touched the button to move her bed up a little, just enough so she wouldn’t aggravate her incision. “Hi, yourself. Look at you. Don’t tell me you finally broke down and dyed it, did you?”
Emma patted her hair, which had gone entirely back to its natural copper red. Though she hadn’t really minded the white hair, after everything that happened, it had been nice to look into a mirror and see herself again. “Not yet,” she said.
“You must have found Louise then.”
“She’s in the waiting room. I thought I’d make sure you were feeling up to seeing her.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s just that Dr. Pavelski said—”
“Just because I can’t have kids doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to see yours.”
Emma nodded and then sat down beside the bed. She had a flashback of Joanna in the hospital; she had looked as brave as Becky did right now. “I’m sorry.”
“About what? You didn’t shoot me.”
“I should have been there to stop it.”
“You can’t be everywhere.”
“Maybe if I hadn’t been so gung-ho about getting Don Vendetta, you wouldn’t have gotten shot.” Captain Donovan would probably also be alive, another fact Emma had learned after Isis’s defeat. To lose her only ally on the police force—and the most honest cop in the Rampart City Police Department—would make the Scarlet Knight’s life even more difficult.
“Come on, kid, stop beating yourself up over every little thing. Shit happens.”
“Becky—”
“I don’t want you to feel guilty for me, Emma. I threw myself in front of that bullet. It was my decision. Case closed.”
“Becky—”
“There’s something I need to tell you. Something important.”
“What is it?”
“After I got shot, Napier offered me a job working for her nephew. He’s running for Congress. If he wins, he’d probably want me to go with him.”
“That’s great, Becky. You’ve always wanted to work in Washington.”
“I told them no.”
“You did? Why?”
“Well, I was going to do it and then I started having these weird dreams. In one we were kids again, living in that first shitty apartment. You remember the one in the Trenches with the bean bag chairs?”
“Yes. It wasn’t so bad.”
“Yeah, right. Anyway, in this dream I was waiting tables and you were some kind of messed-up junkie working at the Plaine Museum gift shop.”
“Really? That’s weird,” Emma said with a hollow laugh. She hoped Becky didn’t realize she was lying or else Emma might have to explain the dream had really happened. “So what else?”
“You started making up this stupid story about being a vampire and I was a real bitch about it to you. I threw you out on the street.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Right, but it gets weirder. In this other dream, I’m three years old and I’m in this nursery with all these other kids. Except a lot of the kids are people we know: Agnes, Louise, Megan, Sylvia, and even Akako showed up for a little while.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 184