by Jenn Bennett
Lon gripped my chin and got in my face, anger blazing in his eyes. “No,” he barked. “You are not like them. Hear me?”
“What do I do?” I whispered.
His face softened as he slowly shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”
Of course he couldn’t. I quickly sobered. This was my problem, not his. My responsibility. And there was no returning from this. My parents weren’t just sick, they were beyond salvaging. No doctor would be able to rehabilitate them; they’d only escape. Hurt anybody who got in their way. The decision clutched my heart and wrung it dry, but I knew it was what had to be done.
“Magus Zorn,” I asked as a swell of tears blurred my vision, “will the other orders consider their debt paid if I let the demon take them?”
“Yes, I will see to it,” he said. “All blood debts will be void.”
“Nivella the White,” I shouted, “You can take the couple along with Frater Blue back to the Æthyr as payment on the condition that you consider the debt paid. Do we have a deal?”
Frater Blue squawked a protest and tried to bolt, but Lon grabbed him and forced him to the ground with my mother.
“What about my talon?” Nivella said.
“I’ll keep it for now,” I decided. If I had the talon, no one else could summon her; I reasoned that it was probably safer this way. “Do we have a deal?”
She paused for a long moment, considering, then nodded her head. “You have my word. Unbind me now and let me take what is mine.”
Not really knowing if it would work, I willed the blue binding to break. Nothing happened at first; but after I strained harder, it finally loosened and disappeared, leaving behind the summoning seal.
Nivella’s long white legs ghosted over the ground as she strode toward my mother’s waking form. Lon bent down, unzipped my mother’s robe, and unceremoniously wrenched it down over her shoulders, tugging it off her body. “She won’t be needing this,” he said, bringing it back to me. My mother groaned and protested groggily as Nivella picked up her nude body with all four arms and slung her over a broad, white shoulder. Lon whispered something to Frater Blue, who whimpered and went limp as Nivella grabbed him. I watched as the demon lugged them both back to my blue seal and tossed them inside one at a time. Then I had to look away.
Lon touched my elbow and held the robe out. My mother’s scent lingered on the fabric, but it wasn’t comforting, it was foreign. A stranger’s scent.
“How did you find me?” I whispered as he helped me step into the robe.
“I lied. I had a dream last night. Your memories. I knew you wouldn’t believe me until you saw it yourself, but I didn’t know it would go this far.”
I zipped up the robe and nodded.
“And like I told you this morning, Five is a much faster drive,” he elaborated, with a weary grin.
As Nivella approached, the caliph and Magus Zorn both jumped off my father. The coward tried to get up and run, but the demon snagged him by the legs and dragged him toward the seal. She continued to hold onto him once she’d stepped inside.
She turned in my direction. “Summon me when you are ready to return my talon, Mother.”
“Seléne!” my father screamed, his eyes crazed and filled with hate.
“My name is Arcadia now.”
“We created you—you belong to us!”
“Not anymore,” I murmured.
And with those words standing as my good-bye, I shouted a banishing spell.
Everything in the circle disappeared: the elementals, my parents, Frater Blue, and the white beast. All that was left behind was a cloud of shimmering blue light that fell to the ground like the last firework on the Fourth of July.
39
“What’s that one there?”
“Which one?”
Jupe sighed impatiently, lying in the grass to my left. “Can’t you see where I’m pointing? The one that goes in a straight line right there.” His bent knee knocked against my leg, keeping time with his restless energy.
“That’s part of Orion. She already told you that twice. You’d better be paying more attention in school than you are out here,” Lon complained in the grass to my right. His bent leg, calm and still, pressed firmly against mine. His arm was also spread out beneath my neck, serving as a pillow. The three of us lay together in Lon’s backyard at the edge of their rustic garden of Eden, looking out over the ocean.
Jupe reached over me to sucker-punch Lon in the gut. Retaliation came as a swift, fat pinch on Jupe’s chest. He yowled and buckled, then snickered.
“Boys!” I chastised, grabbing both their arms. “Don’t make me break this up or you’ll be sorry.”
“Pfft. I’m sorry already,” Jupe said, grinning.
“Where’s Mr. Piggy?” I asked.
“Oh, shit. I mean shoot. Wait, here he is.” Jupe sat up and reached down by his feet, picking up the hedgehog and placing him on his chest after he lay back down. Foxglove moved so that she could better watch the hedgehog; she was awfully suspicious of the miniature visitor on her turf. “Hey, do you think Mr. Piggy would be stupid enough to fall off the cliff if we just let him roam around out here?”
“Yeah, I do, and if I find out he’s committed hedgie suicide, I’ll be really angry and blame it on you.”
Jupe lay his head on my shoulder as he moved Mr. Piggy closer to his face. “Calm down, woman. No need to get hysterical. I’m watching him.”
I wrapped my arm around his head and smacked his forehead lightly. He giggled as I pushed his thick curls out of my face, combing them back with my fingers. I held one curl out—it tripled in length—then let it spring back into place.
“Why don’t you just leave him here?” Jupe suggested. “He can stay in my room. I’ll keep the door shut so he can’t escape.”
“No,” Lon and I said together. Visions of Mr. Piggy being trampled under Jupe’s dirty laundry filled my head.
“Go put him up in his crate,” Lon said, checking his watch. “It’s ten thirty. Why don’t you get ready for bed?”
“Can he spend the night in my room if I promise not to let him out of his crate?”
“Okay,” I agreed, “but just tonight. I’m taking him back home with me tomorrow.”
Jupe stood and held Mr. Piggy in his hand. He rocketed toward the deck, clicking his tongue at Foxglove to follow.
“Don’t run with him, Jupe. It makes him dizzy.”
“Oops.” He slowed and climbed the stairs, pausing midway. “Hey, are you coming up to watch the late shows?”
“Just until midnight.” I stretched my legs out in front of me. “But only if you brush your teeth. Your breath smells like a sewer.”
He laughed and headed inside.
Lon rolled to his side, grunting, and threw his free arm around my middle, his leg over my thighs. “You working a full shift tomorrow?”
“Yeah. For the next three nights. Did you take that shoot in Phoenix?”
“Hmm-mmm. I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I’ll be gone two nights. If you could call and check in on Jupe after school, he’d appreciate it.”
“Yep.”
“Oh, and Mrs. Holiday has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Can you take Jupe to school in the morning?”
“Christ, can’t the boy get to school on his own?”
“The buses won’t come up here. The city says the main road is dangerous. One stops at a house at the base of the cliff to pick up two other kids. You can drop him off there if you’re willing to listen to Jupe bitch and whine.”
“Not cool enough?”
“Only losers ride the bus, apparently. One week early this year I made him walk down the cliff to catch it as punishment, until I got a call from the principal’s office. Two hours later I found him playing hooky at his friend Jack’s house.”
I pictured this in my mind and laughed.
“Hey, what about if you take him to school, then drop me off at the airport on your way back to your place,” Lon suggested.
“Jeez, all I do these days is cart the two of you back and forth to the city, only to have Jupe complain about the lack of elbow room in my car.”
Lon opened his mouth to smile against my neck.
“But I know what you’re doing,” I said quietly, “and I appreciate it.”
“Do you?”
“You’re trying to keep my mind off things by forcing me to help out with Jupe.”
“Is it working?”
He knew it was.
It had been two weeks since San Diego. I’d like to pretend that I was over the whole mess, but, like Lon told me, I’d probably never be done with it completely. It probably wasn’t fair of me, but during my darker moments I harbored an angry resentment toward other people who’d lost their parents in normal ways like car accidents or illness; at least the survivors knew that their parents had loved them. I didn’t even have that. Sometimes I told myself that they might’ve loved me once, before they went crazy, but that was more painful than comforting.
Still, I didn’t have any right to fall to pieces, and no one gave me time to do that anyway. Apart from Lon keeping me busy, there was work. I sat down with Kar Yee and Amanda after San Diego and told them more of the truth than I had before. I didn’t reveal my real identity, but I admitted that I’d lied about my parents being dead before, and reported that they’d died when I went to San Diego. True enough.
I told the same story to Father Carrow. I’d already been harboring more than a little guilt about lying to him in the first place, and this was less of a lie, if not quite honest. I’m pretty sure he knew that, but he never held it against me. He brought me dinner a couple times when I wasn’t staying with Lon and told me he prayed for me every night. I had my doubts regarding the amount of enthusiasm with which God received those requests, but, strange as it might sound, it gave me some amount of comfort.
Caliph Superior called me just about every day to check on me. He offered to visit and help me work on using my Moonchild ability. Said he’d send me everything he could find about it in the main lodge’s library. But I was wary about using it. There were too many bad feelings associated with it, and, sure, maybe I was a little bit chicken. Wouldn’t you be?
The caliph also told me that the Luxe Order had officially gone on record as maintaining a neutral relationship with our order again. Their leader, Magus Zorn, had told me after I’d banished Nivella in San Diego that he forgave me for what I did to Riley. Lon told him that he forgave Riley for what she did to Jupe, and that kind of shut Magus Zorn up. I think he was pretty damn scared of Lon, to be honest. Perhaps scared of me, too.
And he wasn’t the only one. The head of the Hellfire Club, Mr. Dare, wanted to meet me. Through Lon, he’d sent a promise to have both David and Spooner punished; maybe they’d lose a turn with a succubus or be forced to fight it out in the demon ring. Mr. Dare also sent me a lovely hand-carved thirteenth-century caduceus. Impressive. Nothing says peace offering like a priceless medieval occult item, I supposed.
“Hey,” I said to Lon, suddenly remembering, “the caliph told me today that you’ve refused the money he tried to give you for the talon.”
“Mmm.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It just feels wrong. We’ve got the talon, so if I take his money, it’s like I’ve sold it to him. And that makes me no better than Spooner. So let’s just keep the damn thing locked up and call it even.”
All right, then. I knew the caliph would keep hounding me, but whatever. I couldn’t force Lon to take the money.
A long moment stretched out between us. I listened to the waves breaking against the rocks below until Lon finally spoke again.
“I haven’t been asking you to haul Jupe around for grief therapy, you know,” he said in a soft voice.
“Huh?”
“It’s for my benefit too.”
“Free babysitting?”
“No … familiarity creates bonds.”
“Is that so?”
He nodded against my neck. “He grows on you. Right?”
“Like mold.”
Lon chuckled deep and low, his chest vibrating against my shoulder. “Yeah, like mold.”
An unseasonably cool ocean breeze fluttered our hair and seeped into my bones. I shivered and wedged myself further under him. He gathered me closer, kissed my neck, then spoke in a low voice next to my ear. “I figure, see, if you find yourself getting more attached to the two of us than you planned, maybe you won’t think about picking up and leaving to start another life somewhere else.”
“I haven’t thought too much about that, not in the last few days,” I admitted after a time.
“But you did at first—right after. I could hear it, you know.” He fingers brushed over my clavicle, tracing the bone to my shoulder.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I understand, but if you did want to do that, I hope you’d be honest and tell me. I might try to talk you out of it, but I wouldn’t stop you. I’m here for you … unconditionally.”
Sadness crept over me. I tried to push it back, but it was persistent. “No one can be there unconditionally for someone else, Lon. There’s no such thing.”
“Sure there is.”
“I gave my support to my parents unconditionally, and look where it got me.”
“That’s true, but it doesn’t mean you should just give up on the whole damn concept. Believe me, I know a thing or two about pain and grief. I could be bitter at this point in my life and unwilling to trust anyone, but I’m not.”
“Hmph.”
“I’m older and wiser,” he teased. “You should listen to me.”
I laughed as the patio glass door slid open behind us. A frenzied rush of dog feet clamored down the redwood stairs. Foxglove whooshed by us, barking madly.
The sheen of black fur and fluorescent purple collar blurred past the edge of the cliff and into the adjacent woods where a narrow, dirt back road teetered down the mountain toward the rocky beach.
“What the hell?” I murmured as we sat up in the grass and watched her bound away.
Jupe stomped across the deck in pursuit. “It’s that mermaid ghost,” he explained, breathless. “Below the sea stack. Can you see her? Foxglove always knows when she’s down there.”
We stood up, brushing off our clothes, and ambled across the yard together toward the cliff’s rocky edge. Lon’s “moat” lay at my feet: the circular house ward. Like the one he’d helped erect back at my house, it dimly glowed with charged Heka. I stood behind it like a bowler avoiding the foul line and peered over the cliff at the dark bit of rocky land jutting out from the Pacific. “Hmm … I don’t see anything.”
“Me neither,” Lon agreed.
“Look, I know you both think I’m stupid and that neither of you believe in ghosts, but I know she’s there. It’s not an imp.” Jupe padded up behind us in his pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and bare feet. “I bet if we went down there right now, Foxglove would lead us straight to her.”
I laughed. “There is no way in hell I’m walking down there right now. It’s a twenty-minute walk down the side of the cliff.”
“Not to mention the walk back up,” Lon added. “Inside. Now.” He loosely gripped the back of my neck and prodded me forward. “You too.”
Jupe looked at me. “Will you come up and watch TV in my room?” He shivered once, wrapping his arms around his chest.
“Ye-e-e-s,” I drawled, “for Pete’s sake, I already told you I would five minutes ago.”
“Just checking,” he mumbled, grinning sheepishly.
I winked at him.
“Make sure the dog door is unlatched so Foxglove can get back in,” Lon said.
As we climbed the stairs toward the house, I took one last look down at Mermaid Point, straining my eyes across the beach to the sea stack. Maybe it was just a trick of the moonlight or maybe Jupe was right, but I could’ve sworn I saw something. For a split second, I considered using my new ability to
be sure; if there really was something out there, surely I’d be able to see it better in the black void that my power conjured up. Then I changed my mind—not because I was afraid that if I started using it I’d turn into my parents. But if I used my ability and discovered that there wasn’t any-thing there, then Jupe would lose his ghost, and I didn’t want to take that away from him.
Besides, maybe he wasn’t wrong. God knows I’d run into plenty of strange things that most people wouldn’t believe existed. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Acknowledgments
My thanks and gratitude to:
Laura Bradford (the Dorothy Parker of literary agents), who believed in my voice long before I did, and who laughed—not winced—when I sent her a framed packet of Cock Soup;
Jennifer Heddle (the George Lucas of editors), who liked Arcadia enough to take a chance on her, and quietly made this book far better than it originally was;
Tony Mauro (the Tony Mauro of fantasy art), who graciously listened to my tedious vision of Arcadia and the Tambuku Tiki Lounge, and created a cover that is both gritty and beautiful;
Brian (the Mark Mothersbaugh of creative partners), whose cognitive skills are the stuff of legend. He let me bounce ideas off him, helped brainstorm plot solutions, and warned me when I was heading into Baroque Nightmare (a place all my books go sooner or later). But mostly he just told me to keep going when I didn’t think I could. I love you dearly.
Additional thanks to my support teams: the Skunk Girls; the Bradford Babes (especially Jedi Master Ann); my lovely family (hands down, the nicest conservatives I know); my beautiful in-laws, who’ve always made me feel like a super-star; Bill Skeel, who volunteered to take photos of the least photogenic person in the world; and the generous people in the online writing/reading community, who befriended me without knowing what kind of writer I really am (I hope you’re not sorry).