“Are you implying that Nikola
has
done something wrong?” I asked, bristling with indignation at the slur.
It is only a slur if you allow it to be one.
Hush. I’m defending your honor.
I was not aware it needed defending,
he answered, but once again, I felt a sense of astonished gratitude from him that just made me want to simultaneously cry and molest him.
I prefer the molesting.
“From what Ben and Imogen have told me, yes, he is very much in the wrong. He treated them horribly. Ben has every right to—”
“Ben can just stick his attitude up his behind,” I interrupted. It felt good to be the one doing it for a change.
Imogen gasped. “Io!”
“I’m sorry to be rude, but he started it, and to his father yet, a man who was looking forward to seeing how his children had changed since he died. Almost died. Would have died if we hadn’t come through the swirly thing. So you can just stick that in your holier-than-thou pipe and smoke it!”
Ben blinked at me in surprise. Fran looked like she was thinking about decking me. The two guys who got in Nikola’s way moved around to stand behind Fran, one of them saying, “Would you like us to put a scold’s bridle on that female, Goddess Fran? The Dark One might be a bit more difficult, but if Finnvid and I were to summon some of my men, we would be able to take him.”
“You lay one finger on Io”—suddenly, Nikola was in front of me, blocking me from the two other men—“and you will not live to see the sun rise again.”
“We’re ghosts,” the man said with a cocky grin. “We’re already dead.”
Nikola’s sword flashed, and the man suddenly froze, a look of horror on his face. The sword tip was at his crotch, the tip of the blade slipping easily through the fabric of his pants. “Then you will be a gelded ghost.”
“Don’t you dare hurt Eirik!” Fran said, trying to push past the two ghosts—who, I had to say, looked awfully solid and not at all how one imagines a ghost—but Ben pulled her back against him.
“It’s all right, Francesca. He won’t hurt your ghosts.”
“This is your woman?” Nikola asked Ben, nodding toward Fran.
“My Beloved, yes.”
“And his wife. We were married three weeks ago. My mother insisted.” Fran still looked like she wanted to deck me, but at least she stopped looking daggers at Nikola, too.
“Ah,” Nikola said, blinking a couple of times. “I have a daughter-by-marriage.” He turned to me. “My son has married, Io. I suppose he is old enough, although I would have preferred that he discuss the matter with me, first.”
“You were dead, punkin,” I said, patting his arm. “That’s got to limit the amount of father-son communication possible.”
“There is that,” Nikola agreed, and turned back to the group in front of us. He gave the ghost a look that probably would have killed a lesser man. “You will cease making threats against my woman. I will not geld you at this time, but should you think to harm her, you will have me to answer to.”
To my complete surprise, the ghost smiled, and nodded. The other one nodded, as well. “I did not realize that the female was yours,” the ghost said when Nikola dropped the tip of the sword. “The mother-by-marriage of the Goddess Fran must be honored.”
I gawked. “Wait…what? No, we’re not married—”
“I hesitate to interrupt this fascinating conversation, but the mundane police should be arriving shortly if those sirens are anything to go by, and I would advise you to clean up the mess and begin the process of convincing everyone the attack by the liches was part of the show,” the dark-haired woman said, giving me another odd look. “Sir Edward wishes for me to speak with you, child. You will come with me.”
“You know, I think I’m just going to stick with Nikola,” I said, taking his hand. My stomach tightened with pleasure when his fingers wrapped around mine. “Given how rude people are to him, I think it’s best that we stay together.”
“He may join us. In fact, I believe you all should. There is a mystery here that Sir Edward insists must be unraveled,” the woman said, and, turning on her heel, strode to the other end of the fair.
“That is Tallulah,” Imogen said, her expression now bland as she looked from me to Nikola. “She is very wise.”
“What do you think, Nikola?” I asked, nodding toward the receding figure of the woman.
He looked thoughtful. “It is quite evident that something is amiss with your time. If that lady can help clarify what we might do to correct things, then yes, I believe we should accompany her.”
“Benedikt?” Imogen nodded toward the retreating Tallulah, obviously asking him what they should do.
“We’ll clear up the bodies first,” Ben said, stooping to collect the headless corpse in front of him. The ghosts picked up the second body, and the now-unconscious armless man. “We’ll put them in Miranda’s trailer. Imogen, go with…
them
.”
“You needn’t say the word ‘them’ like we’re giant ants about to devour the town,” I said, sniffing loudly, but moving when Nikola tugged on my hand. “Although if I was, I know who’d I’d squash flat first.”
Ahem.
Not literally, of course. Just kind of…er…never mind.
Ten minutes later we were seated around and near a table in a travel trailer that was evidently Tallulah’s home. She sat opposite Nikola and me, while Imogen, Ben, and Fran sat across from us on a cocoa-colored suede couch. The two ghosts—who informed me candidly they were the pride of Valhalla sent to help Fran with some project—lurked at the far end of the trailer in two spinning chairs, which they seemed greatly to enjoy.
“The police are here, but Peter has it under control. Peter is one of the owners of the GothFaire,” Fran explained when she and Ben sat down. “Kurt and Karl got dressed up like the liches and told the police they were part of the show, so I think everything will return to normal. Or as normal as it gets around here. Oh, I guess we should do introductions.” Fran gestured toward the two ghosts. “That’s Eirik Redblood, and his friend Finnvid. They’re Viking ghosts that I inadvertently resurrected in Sweden. The rest of Eirik’s men are in Valhalla. You met Ben and me a few days ago, and this is Tallulah, who is known for her scrying and crystal-reading abilities. Sir Edward is her…er…”
“Boyfriend,” Tallulah said with complacency. Before her, she held a small black mirrored glass bowl, into which she poured a dash of water. “Sir Edward died some two hundred years ago, but we have not allowed that to alter our relationship. He resides in the beyond.”
“Beyond what?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Don’t you think I’m doing really well at not even blinking at the idea of people who have ghosts as boyfriends?
If I died, would you wish to continue a relationship with me?
Nikola asked.
Beneath the cover of the table, I took his hand and squeezed it.
Yes.
“The beyond is the name for that form of reality that lies between this and the next,” Tallulah answered, which didn’t really help me at all, but I decided that it probably wasn’t the best moment to make a fuss about just what exactly she meant.
Nikola, of course, pulled out his notebook and made a few notes.
Imogen made a sound that I could’ve sworn was a giggle, but when I glanced at her, her face was impassive.
“OK. So your ghost friend thinks there’s a mystery surrounding us? Does it have something to do with the swirly time-travel thing, or why Ben is being such a giant ball of snot to his father?”
“That is totally uncalled for,” Fran said loudly.
“Swirly time-travel thing?” Tallulah looked up from her bowl. “Do you mean a portal?”
“That’s what Nikola called it, but I just think of it as the swirly thing. It was almost gone by the time we came through it.”
Her eyes seemed to strip away all my layers of defense, and peer straight into my soul. “I believe before we go any further that we would all benefit from a recap of your experiences with the portal.”
“Sure, but don’t expect us to have many answers. It took me forever to figure out what exactly happened, although Nikola seemed to have coped better with the whole thing. Except the part where he was convinced I was a prostitute.”
“It was understandable given the situation,” he said mildly, squeezing my fingers where they rested on his thigh.
“Several days ago I came to visit the fair with my cousin Gretl.” I settled back and gave a succinct accounting of high points from the last few days, skipping over much of the craziness where I thought I was insane, and focusing on the nefarious plan by Nikola’s brothers to destroy him. When I finished with us arriving back in the present, there was a profound silence for a good minute.
“I don’t know what to think. I knew that my uncles had something to do with Papa severing ties with us, but to plan a scheme to physically harm him…it just seems so wrong.” Imogen finally broke the silence, her gaze moving from Nikola to Ben. “Are you sure about this, Io?”
“Absolutely. Just as I’m sure that in the present before I went through the swirly portal, you told me that your father was dead, and Ben told me he was in South America. It’s clear that although lizards didn’t take over the world because we altered the past, something did change, because you guys are so hostile and mean to Nikola.”
“No,” Imogen said, shaking her head briefly. “Your recollection of that day meshes with mine. Nothing has changed.”
“Then why did you tell Io that I was murdered?” Nikola asked her.
She pleated the material of her dress while she thought for a few seconds. “I—that night when you left the castle, something happened to you. But you weren’t killed. At least, your body wasn’t. But Rolf and Arnulf came to me the next day and said that you had ordered me from the house, and that I wasn’t to return. Ever.”
I looked at Nikola.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but what the hell?
He shook his head.
This does not make sense.
“And you believed them?”
“Not at first. I tried for several days to see you, but you had locked yourself away in your study and refused to see me. At last you had to emerge from your study, and then…” She rubbed her arms. “Then it was like you had died inside. You were cold and cruel and said that Ben and I had betrayed you, and destroyed your heart, and that you would not tolerate vipers in your nest. You cast me out of the house, and cut off funds to Benedikt so that he had to leave university. In vain we protested that we had done nothing to betray you. You would not listen.”
Emotion was so thick in her voice it was impossible not to feel empathy. I turned to Nikola and smacked him on the arm. “What the hell was the matter with you? Your own kids!”
“That cannot be,” he said, frowning. “I would never spurn my children in such a manner.”
“Destroyed your heart,” I repeated, scooting a little closer to him. The pain he felt at Imogen’s words more than exceeded hers. “What does that mean?”
“Papa never said,” Imogen answered sadly. “He did not explain, nor did he answer my pleas to tell me what I had done to harm him.”
“Do you think it meant your late wife?” I asked Nikola. “But she was dead for seven years when we met, and—”
“When we met,”
Nikola said slowly, looking at me with speculation. “Tell me, Imogen, in this past that you remember, was Io in it?”
“Io?” She considered me with a slight pucker between her brows. “No, I don’t think so. It was a very long time ago, but I do not remember Io being the woman with whom you were smitten.”
“But there was one?” Nikola pounced on her words. “There was a woman present at the time?”
“I think so.” She turned to Ben. “You have a better memory than me—do you remember the woman who Papa kept before that horrible day?”
“No. I was away from home.” Ben looked thoughtful. “Although I do remember you writing to me and telling me that you were most pleased because he was interested in a woman again. I don’t remember her name, though.”
“It is possible that there are two planes of time,” Nikola said, sketching something in his notebook. “One is the past that Imogen and Benedikt remember, where I severed relations with them—something I find difficult to believe, but might be explained if for some reason I thought they had destroyed a woman I loved—and the second plane of time, which I remember, and which Io has participated in. It is not beyond reason that the two planes touch at several points, and it is at one of those points that we moved from one time to the other.”
“So you’re saying, what, that in Ben and Imogen’s past, your brothers killed me, or some other woman”—
and buster, it had better not be another woman, because then I really will feel like a tramp
—“and in the past we lived through, they tried to kill you, instead?”
“It is possible, given that my brothers had the desire and ability to kill anyone.” He tapped the end of the pencil against his chin, which just made me want to bite it. His chin, not the pencil.
Something struck me, other than the desire to molest Nikola. I turned to Imogen. “You told me that your uncles had killed your father. Why did you say that if, in your version of the past, Nikola severed ties with you himself?”
She exchanged a glance with Ben. “My uncles and Papa have never been very close. And yet, at the time of his…derangement…they were not only present, but in his confidence where I was not. That was most unusual, and Benedikt and I suspected later that they had done something to Papa, cast some spell upon him, or corrupted his love for us. We had no proof, but it could not be a coincidence that they were present to poison his mind.”
“I do not recall any such thing,” Nikola said, his gaze blind as he sorted through his memories. “They made me an unwelcome visit the day that Io insisted I accompany her through the portal, but we did not spend enough time together for either of them to have any effect on me.”
“That’s because I got you away from them so fast,” I said with a sense of pride that I felt was wholly warranted. “Why did they come to visit you in the first place?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t make any sense of out either of them. Rolf babbled about how someone near me meant ill for me, and Arnulf simply groveled in his usual manner, and echoed Rolf.”