Someplace to Be Flying (50 page)

“But she’s met Margaret, you know,” Zia put in.

“And they like each other fine.”

“We knew they would.”

“That’s why we suggested that Margaret go see her in the desert.”

Sometimes Annie thought she’d go mad trying to sort out any sort of linear sense in a conversation with this pair.

“In what desert?” she asked.

“You know,” Zia said, as though everyone had the same access to what they knew. “For her job.”

Maida pretended she was taking pictures with an invisible camera. When she lost her balance, Annie caught her by the scruff of her collar and pulled her back onto the ledge.

“I can fly,” Maida said.

“I know.”

“Don’t get grouchy,” Zia told Maida. “She was being nice.”

“I wasn’t being grouchy.”

“You were.”

“Well, maybe a very little.” Maida gave Annie a sweet smile. “Thank you for catching me.”

“Do
you
think Lily has the pot?” Annie asked.

“You were supposed to say, ‘You’re welcome,’ ” Maida told her.

“What?”

“When I said, ‘Thank you.’ If you were polite, you’d say, ‘You’re welcome, but it was nothing, really,’ and then I could say, ‘No, really, thank you,’ and we would go on smiling and being polite and not asking boring questions.”

Annie sighed. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Now can we be serious for a moment?”

The crow girls exchanged looks that Annie couldn’t read.

“The pot’s wherever it’s supposed to be,” Zia said then. “That’s how it works.”

“Wherever it’s supposed to be,” Annie repeated.

Maida nodded. “So there’s no point in looking for it, really, unless you’re planning to write a book about it and you have to write down everything it does-you know, where it’s been, who’s been earning it, that sort of thing.”

“You’ve been looking for it,” Annie said.

“But only because you asked us to,” Maida said.

“And we haven’t been looking very hard,” Zia added.

Annie began to speak, but Maida leaned over and put a finger against Annie’s lips, almost losing her balance again in the process.

“Raven understands,” Zia said as Maida regained her perch. “That’s why it doesn’t matter if he goes away inside himself.”

“So everything’ll be okay?” Annie asked. “No one’s going to get hurt?”

The crow girls both frowned.

“We don’t know about that,” Maida said.

Zia gave a slow nod of agreement. “Only the pot knows that.”

“I thought I was the only one to think it has a mind of its own,” Annie said.

“I don’t know if it’s a mind so much,” Zia said. “It’s more like an idea The way a wind or a view is both a thing and an idea.”

“I think it’s more like a storm,” Maida said. “You can’t hold on to it, but you can’t pretend it’s not there.”

“And the only answers you can get from it are what you’d get from a storm.”

Maida nodded. “They wouldn’t make any sense.”

“But …”

“The only way no one gets hurt when the pot’s stirred,” Zia said, “is when whoever’s doing the stirring understands exactly what the pot is and what they’re doing, but that means you have to give up a piece of yourself to it.”

“It’s like trying to break it,” Maida explained.

Zia nodded. “But if you do understand it, you can stir up whatever you want.”

“I don’t understand,” Annie said.

“Most of us don’t.”

“It’s like what happened to Paul,” Maida added.

Annie gave her a sharp look. Paul had died in his sleep, though she’d always suspected that the cuckoos had poisoned him in retaliation for keeping them out of the city. He’d always worked the hardest of all of them to stop them from leaving their eggs in Newford nests or settling in themselves.

“What happened to Paul?” she asked.

“He stirred up a dream in the pot, but he lost himself in it and never came back.”

Annie shivered. “Back from where?”

“The medicine lands.”

“But that’s … impossible, isn’t it? The medicine lands are long gone. They only exist in our memories.”

“That’s why he never came back.”

“I always thought it was the cuckoos,” Annie said. “That they’d poisoned him.”

“Oh, no,” Maida told her.

Zia nodded, a dark look in her eyes. “We always kill cuckoos when they even try to hurt someone we love.”

“Why … why did you never tell me this before?” Annie asked.

“You never asked.”

Annie’s gaze went from Zia to Maida, searching their unfamiliar solemn expressions for a flippancy that wasn’t there.

“No,” she said finally. “I guess I never did.”

Dominique Couteau picked up Raven’s pot as she had dozens of times since she’d finally acquired it this morning. She studied the chalice against the window of her hotel suite, noting the way the light played against the facets of the crystal and the small figure curled up where the stem met the bowl, and was no closer to understanding how it worked or what the figurine was than when she’d first held both in her hands.

Cuckoo lore concerning the pot said nothing about its ability to change into a shape such as this, nor that there would be anything inside it. It frustrated her to no end to know that now she’d have to ask Cody about it. She’d expected Cody to be out of the equation by now. They’d only needed him to find the pot and he hadn’t even been able to manage that, tangling everything up in complicated plans involving far too many others. The corbæ weren’t even supposed to know that her people were in the city, but Cody appeared to have mismanaged that as well. It was no wonder his plans never resolved as he expected them to. The man was a walking advertisement for incompetence.

But audacious, she thought. She’d have to give him that. Cody walked large, with more to him than first met the eye. In that way he was much like this pot of Raven’s. She’d always known it was potent, but who would have thought it could also be such an object of beauty? The only anomaly was the figure curled up in its bottom.

She tipped the chalice, as she had before, but the figurine never shifted. It was the same when she’d tried holding it upside down, tapping the chalice against the suite’s plush carpet, or tried to poke at the figure with the end of a clothes hanger. She hadn’t quite been ready to risk putting her hand inside to try to pluck it out. There was too much enchantment caught up in this pot of Raven’s for her to chance that. All the stories concerning it revolved around one’s stirring it-not with a ladle or any other object. It was always one’s own flesh and bone.

She could be patient, she thought as there came a knock at her door. But not for too much longer.

Setting the chalice down on the mahogany side table once more, she crossed the room and opened the door to find her son Armand in the hall.

“What is it?” she asked, easing the sharpness of her question by patting him lightly on the cheek.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,
Maman,”
he said, “but Gerrard called up to tell me that Cody is in the lobby.”

She sighed. “Ah, Cody.”

“Should we deal with him now?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Dominique told him. “It seems we still have need of his services.”

The disappointment in his features was obvious.

“Oh, don’t look so put out,
mon cher”
she said. “Soon you will be able to have your fun.”

Armand nodded and touched the “Hold” button on his cellular phone. “Send him up,” he said into the speaker. Returning his attention to Dominique, he asked, “Shall I wait in the suite with you,
Maman^

“No. Let him think we still trust him. I have left the connecting door unlocked. And, Armand?” she added as he began to turn away.

“Oui, Maman?”

“What word on the blackbirds?”

“Still nothing.”

“Bon.”

The trick to leadership, she’d long since discovered, was to always appear assured of oneself and in control. So she hid the worry that the corbæ had vet to move against them. So many of her people in their city-when had the crows ever allowed such a thing before? What could they be planning? She was not so foolish as to imagine they weren’t planning something.

She walked back to the table and sat down, gaze drawn back to the chalice.

Or were they still too busy searching for this lovely jewel that she’d managed to pluck from under their beaks?

“It’s open,” she called when there was another knock on the door.

Cody stepped inside, his handsome presence filling the room as it always did. It was easy to see how so many could fall under his spell with no more than a kind word and a smile from him. But she’d taught herself to see through his charm.

“Now’s that really so smart?” he asked as he closed the door behind him, then engaged the lock. “This isn’t New Orleans, darling. You’re sitting in crow city now and nobody’s got any reason to love you here. I’d lock my doors if I were you.”

He leaned with his back against the door, tall in his cowboy boots, coyote grin in the dark eyes that were half-hidden under the brim of his hat.

“I am not unprotected,” she told him, her voice cool.

Her gaze flicked to the door connecting her suite to that of her sons before she could stop herself. She returned her full attention to Cody to find him smiling at her.

“Just so’s you’re playing it safe,” he said.

So he knew, she thought, her features giving nothing away. He’d probably always known that they would turn on him. Fine. She could be patient in dealing with him as well. She would treat him as a trusted ally for as long as it took for him to let down his guard.

So she smiled back at him, guilelessly, as if to say, I know I should consider you my enemy, an ally for only as long as we need to work together, but you’ve charmed me too thoroughly.

“We have reason to celebrate,” she told him.

“That’s nice. About anything in particular?”

She hid her impatience and gestured toward the chalice. “We have it.”

His reaction was nothing like she’d supposed it would be. She’d expected anger, since he’d made it clear when he first approached her that no one was to touch the pot if they managed to find it. It was too dangerous, he’d told her. Only he could handle it safely.

But now Cody merely tipped his hat brim up with the tip of a finger and ambled over to where she was sitting. Taking a chair, he turned it around and sat down, arms folded across the back. His gaze rested for a long moment on the chalice, then finally rose to meet hers.

“And what is it that you think you’ve got?” he asked.

“Don’t play games with me.”

“That works two ways, darling. Why don’t you explain what I’m supposed to be so excited about?”

“The photographer had the pot all along,” she told him. “It was a moment’s work to acquire it from her.”

Cody nodded. “Well, I can see how it would be … considering this isn’t Raven’s pot.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” Cody said with a grin. “Cast-iron, big-bellied, has some weight to it. Not all delicate like this, though I will give you it’s pretty.”

“The pot has never kept to one shape.”

Cody shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s never had something lying at the bottom of it either. What is it you’ve got in there, anyway?”

He leaned closer, then sat back and gave a low whistle.

“Now what?” Dominique asked.

Cody’s dark gaze lifted to settle on her. “You’ve got Jack’s little red-haired girl in there, darling. How’d you manage that?”

“She was there when we acquired it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s true.”

“That’s not going to mean diddly to Jack. I heard he’s been out looking for her and if he finds out you’ve got her, you better pack your bags, darling, and start in on running as far from here as you can.”

“What are you talking about? If you think-“

“You just don’t get it, do you? I was the first one of all of us to wake up in the long ago, but who do you think I saw looking down at me from the trees? corbæ, darling. Not your little rooks and jays and ‘pies, but the big guns: Raven and the crow girls. And old Jack Daw.”

“And your point is?”

“Didn’t you folks learn nothing from what happened in Freakwater Hollow? They don’t just live forever, darling. They can’t die. They’re not like us. You can fire a half-dozen notched slugs into his head and he’s still going to be coming for you.”

Dominique shook her head. “Everybody can die.”

“Then how come all those Morgans are gone and he’s still walking? I heard there were some real crack shots living in the hollow, but they’re all dead and not even you can believe he snuck in and killed them in their sleep.”

“No, but-“

“So the
point,
darling, is you don’t want to piss him off.”

“You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?” Dominique said.

Imagine. Cody as much as admitting to a fear. Who would have thought his bravado would let him even hint at such a thing. But then he surprised her more.

“Damn straight,” he told her. “But the important thing to remember here is, I’ve got no quarrel with him. Never had and don’t plan to.”

He rose from the chair and looked down at her.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d have a real careful think on what you’re doing here.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, darling, call me naive, but I really thought we were working on the same wavelength-you know, we’d get the pot and then I’d give it a stir, return everything back to the way things were before I started screwing it all up. But I can see now you’ve only got a hard-on for some
corbæ
blood, and I don’t want any part of it.”

“You hate them as much as we do.”

“Wrong. We disagree some-I’ll give you that-but I don’t hate them. That’s like saying you hate the moon and stars, things that just are. Things that are bigger than any of us.”

“But you wanted-“

“I was sincere, darling,” Cody told her. “I do want this world to end.”

“But the corbæ-“

“Have nothing to do with how it got screwed up. How can you not get that?”

“Because you’re not making a great deal of sense,” Dominique said.

“That’s because you never made much of an effort to get to know me, darling. See the thing is, I’m tired. Tired of all the pain I hear and see and feel. Tired of being on the road, of having nobody I can call a friend to walk beside me. Tired of people being so damn ugly to each other. It gets to be like broken bottles in my head, grinding away against each other. I’m tired all the time. Tired of trying to help and just making things worse. Tired of the lonesome dark. But mostly I’m tired of the hurt and pain. There’s too much of it and I can’t stop it. I can’t even bear to look at it anymore.”