by Elle Cross
Maybe...he might have known my dad? From Before? Or even now?
No, it was silly to think that. That would be the biggest coincidence.
But how many word mages were there really? Preachers?
He led me to the rooftop entrance. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the raven. So that wasn't him.
"How?" I asked again.
Something else caught my eye. Movement in the tree line below. He didn't seem concerned, and the ones that were there weren't making a move closer, so I felt okay with it.
He started talking again, and I sort of tuned him out, paying attention to others. Even if he was leading me to safety, I still didn't trust him. Then I tuned in when he said preacher.
"A loophole? What was that?" What the hell? My dad would never leave anything out in his preaching. His words were tight, like basket woven so that even a drip couldn’t escape from it. "He wouldn't leave an opening for a loophole."
He smiled, revealing some fang. "He didn't leave an opening, ramina. He allowed for it. It was on purpose."
I slid over what that implied, what with the talk of love and protection. Dread upset my stomach. I hated to think that my dad had been making contingency plans. Like he had known that he wouldn't be around, and not just because of some accidental snatching or killing. Like he had planned to leave.
I refused to acknowledge that.
'Sides, he had come back, hadn't he? Left me that book, before darting away? And then coming back again so that he was now resting in the church, the safest place for him to be, except for here?
So many questions, but I was comforted by reminding myself of the facts. He was back. He had made provisions. He was just being safe and proactive and looking to the future. Not trying to leave me.
There was no hint of him facing the Long Walk, and that reassured me even more. .
I slipped as we reached the opening, then gained footing on the top of the ladder. I hesitated and looked up at the one waiting there. Creed. That was his name, right?
"Hey. I know that if you wanted to kill me you could have. So thanks for not killing me."
He barked a laugh that seemed to surprise him more than me. "You're most welcome, ramina."
I cocked my brow and wondered if I was going insane. Probably. But he hadn't tried to kill me and he knew about my father, even if it was in a vague kind of way. "Look, I don't invite anyone in. No one. Mostly because, well, no one could ever make it up this way." Which was on purpose. "If I invite you in, would you tell me about my father? And maybe how you were able to come here at all?"
Tiny mercurial shifts of emotion flickered over his face and I suddenly felt this need to draw what I'd seen there. My mother had the gift for drawing, and even conjuring what she'd drawn sometimes, but his face made me want to try harder at my sketches.
"Yes," he finally breathed, as if he waited to say that his entire life. "I would do anything you asked, ramina."
I had started to step down, but paused.
"Yeah, let's add this as part of the condition. My name is Soleil. You may call me that or Soli or some other variation of Sun like everyone else. That is what I will respond to. Got it?"
The corner of his mouth quirked up. "Everyone calls you Soli?"
I blinked at the shift of his mood. This one was lighter, less intense, and he did it with such ease. I nodded. "Yup."
"Then I will call you Soleil."
A riot of pinpricks scoured down my skin at the sound of my given name in his voice. I cleared my throat. "Well. Good. Awesome. Let's get going then."
I descended the ladder and hoped that I hadn't just invited trouble into my home.
I had to adjust to the fact that there was this other presence in my house. A presence that wasn't my dad.
My mother had a glowy persona about her. Her presence was like the after burn of an image—the kind you got if you stared at something bright too long and then blinked.
My dad...he was like a fragrance that lingered, like the scent of banked ashes in the fireplace, where the embers are still a little warm.
This one? This Creed? He was something else.
He liked to stay slightly out of reach and just outside my periphery. I was cool with that. I didn't need him crowding me.
He ranged into the kitchen after we had descended the stairs. He’d insisted on going down first. I just gestured to him to go right ahead. He had already told me that my dad's wards were safe and secure. But this way I could keep an eye on him.
I was also able to see that just above his collar, where his neck met his shoulders, was that tattoo. I tried to read it, but Creed turned his head slightly.
"Those outside are just my men." He said it as if he answered a question I’d asked.
Or was that his way of asking them to be invited? "Okay?" I said hesitantly. I wasn't about to add an invitation when there wasn't one. I didn't play those games and he was a grown man. He could ask when and if he wanted to.
He didn't pursue the line of thought though, quietly moving from window to window in the small kitchen.
There were the remains of my dinner on the stove, as well as the stew that I'd cooked for the town. I felt kind of guilty. In a day and age like this, food was hard to come by, I imagined, especially if they lived in the forest.
"Were you hungry? I just packed some of this stew up for the town and to save for later. But it would be easy enough to heat up."
He blinked as if he didn't understand my words. "Thank you," he said gravely, as if I'd given him something valuable like a firstborn child or something. "I won't eat unless the rest are fed."
I shrugged. "Well, it's there whenever. I'll be heating up my tea, then."
I didn't need it to wake me up. He was more than enough for that. But this way I was closer to the knives. It was always better to be close to a weapon and my rifle wouldn't be good at close range.
I kept it slung on my shoulder. I usually kept it in the attic so I could grab it easily as I went to the rooftop for sniping, but it had felt right to hold on to it. Plus, this was the first time I had let someone in, so carrying a weapon seemed appropriate.
So I made the tea as he wandered from window to window. I made up a tray so that I could get back to the dining table and the words.
I placed the tray on a sideboard, away from the table. The tea was too hot to hold anyway.
Creed walked over and circled the table as he had the kitchen. It was in ever tightening circles until he was able to get close enough. He looked like he wanted to ask me a question. When he did, it was not what I expected.
"How long ago did your mother die?"
It was a question that sliced straight into my heart. "I think the deal was that you would tell me information, not the other way around."
I was happy to note that I had kept the emotion from overtaking my voice and that I had delivered the response without wavering.
He seemed chastised. "I didn't mean anything by it, ramina, I swear. I was just curious."
"Annnd, you're calling me that again, so you're batting zero for now, buddy."
He snorted. "A momentary lapse, to be sure." And then something wicked gleamed in his eyes. "Also, I'm not your buddy."
I raised my eyebrow at that, but didn't pursue that line though it was there dangling like bait. "My mother walked out into darkness about two years ago. I haven't seen her since."
To his credit, he nodded but made no other comment.
I gestured to the table. "Well, here are my parents' books. This is my dad's scriptures. Handed down to him from generation to generation, as he liked to say. I believe he came from a long line of preachers the way he talks about them, though he doesn't really talk much about his past. Just the present. Makes a habit of it. Ma was the same way. Only ever talked about the now. She was an herb witch and this here's her book, mainly. Though my dad also took to drawing in it after Ma walked."
I touched it and turned to a page my dad had drawn in, versus the herbs that
my mom drew. Then I flipped to the page that had been torn. "This here was a fresh tear, and I hadn't noticed it until the other day. Then my dad finally showed back up yesterday, and if the townsfolk were to be believed, it was like he was running one moment and then bam, stopped suddenly as if he'd been struck. From dead run to dead stop." The look on his face before Ms. Zorah put her hand upon it bloomed fresh in my mind. I shook it from my memory.
"So," I said, leaning my hip against the sideboard. My tea was finally cool enough to pick up. "Whatcha got?"
He smiled. "It's almost like a challenge." His eyes shone again, in that peculiar prismatic way like rainbows in captured moonbeams.
"How come I get the feeling that you tend to win against any challenge set in front of you?"
He just kept smiling and I ignored how that made my heart hammer in my chest.
"The way of it is that your dad, the preacher, would often take treks into the mountain. A little bit of a mission, so to speak, for him."
That was news to me. "He did what?"
Creed nodded. "Yes. At least once a month. He went out into the hill country and mountain basin to trade for supplies, get information, but mainly, to talk to the elders."
I blinked, processing that information. "So he was there recently, wasn't he? That's how you knew to come here?"
"Yes, he was there. He mentioned something to the elders and then things got very heated. But your dad left more'n a week ago. Something must have happened if he didn’t arrive back until now." Something about that made him growl in the back of his throat. I didn't have anything to fear from him, I could tell. But it did give me a glimpse of something. Like I didn't want to make him angry.
If he was what I thought he was, it wouldn't do anyone any good to make him angry.
I swallowed the tea to cover up my nerves. "So I don't want to beat around the bush, but you were talking about the hill country and the mountain basin and all that." I took a deep breath. "You're one of the wolves, aren't you? The real ones?"
A sheen clouded his eyes, and I swore there was a hint of gold in them now. Wolf's eyes.
"Yes." I didn't miss the growl in that, the bite.
"Look, I ain't judging. Just saying so we know what's what and are clear with who is who. And making sure I didn't have to worry that there was some enclave in the mountains starving to death or something like that."
I finished off my tea with a flourish.
He looked a bit humbled. "It means a lot that you thought of that."
I shrugged. "The townsfolk were sort of taken care of and my dad preached away the Hellfire every month or so and strengthened their walls with words of scripture. It's good to know that he went up into the hill country too, even if I didn't know about it."
The not knowing was going to gnaw at me. He didn't mind me knowing about the ways of the townsfolk, though he rarely wanted to mingle with them, of course, and frankly neither did I. But the fact that he never even thought to tell me about the hill country? Let alone the mountain basin? That was disturbing.
I nodded at the book and the piece of paper. "Anyhow, I found this crumpled in his hand. No one else knows, of course. I felt the need to keep it from the prying eyes of the townsfolk especially. Don't ask me why I felt the need to do that and yet I'm blathering on about it now."
I uncurled the piece of paper so that Creed could see. He just bent closer to it and didn't make a move to pick it up. In fact, he seemed like he was just sniffing over all the objects, peering close to them.
"Curious. This one has a lot of different scents in it. Of course, yours and your dad's are the most prominent, but there are others that are wholly unfamiliar."
I blinked. Who else would be handling these pages? I zeroed in on what he hadn’t said. "Are there any other scents that are familiar?"
"Well, yes, of course. There are the elders of the mountain basin and the hill country. Faint but there. It's in the type of pine that's present in those forests." He breathed deep. "There's a scent that's familiar to me but I don't recall it, and that will trouble me, of course. And then there are the other scents that I can pick out but I can't place." He straightened. "Does that help you at all, Soleil?"
There was a pause where he would have called me ramina. I appreciated the effort he had gone through to give me what I preferred. Respected it even.
I sighed nonetheless. "Maybe. I honestly don’t know enough context to be sure anymore." I paused and shadows flickered on the porch.
Before I asked, Creed answered. "Those were some from my pack."
I eyeballed him and nodded slowly. I put two and two together, though. There were those of his pack who had fulfilled the requirements of my dad's wards enough to be able to be on this side of the shield of protection. Including him.
I didn't want to think on those things. That kind of information wouldn't help me right now. "Uhm, so you all don't like, hang out like this all the time, right? Like you're off doing your own business and just come around every now and again?"
I met his gaze and his eyes were even more glowy amber than before. "We do have business we attend to, yes."
That was a decidedly political answer. It was something I expected in the towns: an answer that revealed nothing. I was kind of disappointed. My dad was always straightforward with me. Now if only he’d been transparent...
I was going to push for an answer, but I realized that I didn't care that much. They were clearly able to care for themselves, so there was no use in fussing over what they needed to do and why and if they were protected and if they had enough food and what about those horrible things in the woods, like that Skoll I'd outrun.
And not to mention, the...others.
It wasn't my business, right?
“You're right. Not my business."
He just met my gaze and held it.
Whatever he was about to say, I waved it off. "Again, not my business. Tell me what you know of my dad."
"It's a little complicated, because I've been forbidden from discussing matters like that with you, specifically." He looked at me like he was trying to tell me something, but couldn't.
"Okay, well." I shifted so I was no longer leaning. I was done playing these games and I had a cipher to uncode. "Since this—" I waved my finger in the air indicating the both of us— "was contingent on you telling me stuff, I feel like we are at an impasse. And with that, it's like what are we even doing here, you know?"
I sipped my tea. It was the dregs and kind of bitter, but it was worth it for the effect.
He didn't want to be kicked out. His eyes went to the chicken scratches on my sheet of paper. "Look. I think I know how to decode that."
“That” was the series of random letters I came up with after I translated the Morse code. "You do? How?"
He was hesitating again. "Look, can I just say what I think without telling you where I got the information?"
I thought about it. I didn't need to know how, not really. I was just curious and it seemed the thing to ask. "I guess that's fair." What was interesting, though, was knowing that he literally couldn't tell me what I wanted him to.
The wolves were always part of our backdrop, just like other things in nature. It was nice to know certain things about them, but I had been too young to notice and care about how they were portrayed in the news or watch them on television.
But some of the urban legends were true. Something like an elder or a higher-up in the pack had been able to curtail what Creed could say. Interesting.
"Okay, I don't know exactly, this is true, but I do know there was a cipher. Your dad was really close to one of our elders. The elder. And he had a notebook same as this, and I remember them arguing that last night, poring over both of these books."
I bit my inner cheek as I surveyed the mess of letters jumbled together. There was an impossible amount of data there. No way would I be able to just randomly stumble upon the right clue or method.
He pointed. "I'm not saying I know the rest, but
I know that the main clue. The key word? Is Soleil."
Creed
Soleil ran her elegant fingers through her hair. I could watch her move all day. In fact, I'd done so many days in a row, but I didn't think it was wise to tell her that. Though watching and observing were prized in the pack, I had the feeling that she'd think it was...creepy.
"Well, at least we know the key. Unfortunately we don't have the lock. Or is it that we don't have the actual keyhole, since we know the puzzle we need to decode? Whatever, we have something."
I loved how she had taken to saying "we". I wondered if she even realized she said it. She was amusing in the way she spoke out loud. I didn't think she realized how much she actually did that, most likely because she'd been alone for so long, or just with her dad.
The fact that he was alone and virtually unprotected in that town worried me.
~No worries, Boss. Some of the others, they got themselves on the lookout.~
I nodded, even though they wouldn't be able to see me.
She made her way to the living room, where she peered through that peephole on the front door. I found that curious since it would make the most sense to just look outside the front window. It showed everything, including the men already pacing out there.
~She worried? She shouldn't be worried. Tell her we got this.~ Remy said.
~She’s not worried about us anymore, right, Boss? You're inside after all.~ Vin asked hopefully.
~I don't think she's worried about you or about...them. I think she's worried for you.~
~For us? Why?~
~I think she would rather have you indoors and comfortable, with hot food in your stomachs.~
~Well, I mean, if she wishes it—~
I snarled at the window, even as Vin pulled in closer, close enough for me to see the silver shine in his eyes.
Soleil jumped and had her gun out in one hand, blade in the other. I hadn't even seen her move. Pride swelled in my heart. Nice.
"What was that? Did you see something?"