Authors: Edward Lazellari
Vivian slid into an accusatory tone, implying to her new guests that Cat and Brianna were in danger because of her son-in-law’s choice of vocation. Lelani kept her usual stoic façade, and to his credit, Seth also maintained a neutral mask against the old woman’s criticisms even though the cop had been riding him hard the entire trip north.
Viv never wanted Cat to marry a cop. It was beneath her. Vivian and her husband had groomed Catherine for an educated man—someone who worked in an office, as opposed to being a member of a union and on the streets. They certainly didn’t expect her to fall for someone who didn’t have a family of his own.
Callum maintained a calm indifference against the old woman’s opinions. Her nagging came out of love for her daughter. He could at this point explain that he was a lord of the Order of Aandor, that his family had eight hundred acres, thirty servants, their own regiment, and their own town. Vivian had conveyed her love for Cal on many occasions in better times. He recognized her blithering as nerves—an honest case of the jitters when loved ones were in trouble, so Cal let the old woman burn it off without responding.
Brianna, now in SpongeBob jammers, plopped herself next to Seth on the couch. “Hi,” she said. “Remember me?”
“I never forget a pretty face,” Seth answered. “But do you remember me?”
“You have the star cat,” Brianna answered.
Seth made a face like he swallowed something sour.
“Is something wrong?” Lelani asked him.
Seth said, “I forgot about my cat.”
Vivian tired herself out nattering. She wished everyone a good night, and took Brianna with her to her bedroom. Cal checked his voice mail and cursed softly after the first message. His bosses wanted to see him the next day. The authorities upstate had sent some follow-up forensics to the precinct in care of him, and the brass wanted to know about this independent investigation he was running when he was supposedly on leave for bereavement (and other psychological reasons). Internal Affairs also had further questions for him concerning his partner’s murder. Cal had not been forthcoming on the details. He could claim ignorance because he was not there when it happened, but he knew it was Kraten, the Verakhoon noble who was a childhood friend of Dorn’s. But he couldn’t tell the brass Erin was decapitated by a knight from another universe taking orders from a homicidal sorcerer out to kill a young boy and all his guardians. They’d lock Cal up for his own protection, and the prince would be good as dead. The last message was from his PBA representative asking to see him in the morning before that meeting with the top brass.
“You have to go,” Cat told him.
“I need to get to Maryland,” Cal insisted. “We don’t know what Dretch discovered upstate. He could be in Baltimore at this moment.”
“How can you even think of blowing off IAB?” Cat said. “If you lose your job, your freedom, where will that poor kid be then? Instead of being delayed by a day, you might find yourself tied up for weeks. That badge and gun has been pretty handy so far, but it comes with strings. If you blow them off, you’ll be suspended and they’ll start digging deeper into our business.”
Cat was right, of course, as usual. As long as he was a cop, it would be easier to search for the prince with the goodwill of his superiors. He could access resources from the brotherhood of law enforcement around the country.
“Erin’s funeral is also tomorrow,” Cat added. “Her partner left a dozen message on our home voice mail. I’m surprised she’s even still talking to us. We never sent our condolences.”
“I have to get to Maryland,” he said to Cat.
“After the funeral.”
“Cat … I don’t know how close Dretch is to finding the prince,” he said, stressing each word.
“Damn it, Cal! That woman died because your past caught up with you. Don’t make me go alone. What would I tell Erin’s family?”
Cal did not know what to say. What could he say? Cat put on that disappointed look she always got when Cal missed a fundamental law of etiquette—the one all wives are issued with their marriage licenses to toe the lines of civility and cow their men when confronted with their inner Neanderthal. He hated when they didn’t see eye to eye … she was a force to be reckoned with and often got her way. Cal always told his police buddies they were lucky Cat hadn’t killed anyone yet—mostly him—with her famous temper.
He looked over at Seth on the couch cutting the knots down on his new staff and tossing the wood chips into a two-gallon ziplock bag. Seth was the cause of this entire mess. Thirteen years ago, Seth bungled a vital spell that would have helped the guardians acclimate to this new world. Instead he gave everyone amnesia. Seth caught Callum’s glare and suddenly looked trapped—like a rat.
“Stop blaming Seth,” Cat said, reading Cal’s mind. “He should never have been there in the first place.”
“Life expectancy is forty where we come from,” Cal said. “At fifteen, you can own property, marry, have children, joust in tourneys, and join an army. Youth is not his excuse.”
Seth excused himself to use the bathroom. Lelani moved to the kitchen. Cat picked up the dishes, cups, and utensils around the apartment and followed the centaur into the kitchen. Lelani was forced against the range to make room for her, and Cat still had to squeeze in. Lelani was trapped in the line of fire between the spouses, which motivated her moving to the kitchen in the first place. Cat seemed oblivious to that fact.
“We’ve all lost something because of
his
incompetence,” Cal said.
Cat threw the dishes into the sink, hard. Cal and Lelani winced at the clash. “You don’t even know the half of it, Cal,” his wife said. “Before all this craziness, I had finally decided to get my MBA. I already picked up the applications. Then I realized I might be pregnant, again—and I was going to ask you if we could work out a schedule that would let me still go to grad school. If you said that you wanted me to stay home and raise the baby again, I was
willing
to do that, too, because I love you. How sad is that? I find the one worthy alpha male on earth to share my life with, and I’m willing to sacrifice my own ambitions for him. But it was
my
choice to do it.
“All this shit going on now … where are
my
options, Cal? I’m stuck with your mission to save the damned prince. Your former life has been crammed down my throat! It’s taken over everything! And the way you go at it … to hell with our present life! To hell with our friends, our family, your job!
You’re
going to do it
anyway
! Where’s
my
choice regarding our future?” Cat left the dishes where she dropped them, stormed into the spare bedroom, and shut the door hard.
Seth reentered the room, but had the good sense to keep his yap shut.
Cal was speechless. Catherine’s entire life had been co-opted by his mission—turned upside down worse than if a tornado had blasted through their house. Cal was exhausted trying to hold three families together—he only had two arms. Which would he fumble? The archduke and the prince? His parents and betrothed? His wife and child?
“You must give her time to absorb all this,” Lelani said. She fixed three cups of chamomile tea for them.
“Time is a luxury in short supply right now,” Cal said.
“Catherine is an intelligent woman. She understands the life-or-death ramifications of your task. It is the unknown that frightens her—the secrets. She suspects you are holding back something important.” Lelani shot him an understanding look to imply Chryslantha. “She is frustrated, but still with you.”
“I’m frustrated, too. Why did Galen and Linnea have to die? If they had made it to safety, they would have raised the prince as their own. You never met a more levelheaded man than Galen—and Linnea, the warmest woman on the palace staff. She had her father’s nurturing gift with plants and flowers. Danel would have been safe and happy. How could Galen have driven into a truck with a baby in the car?”
“It may not have been his fault,” Lelani said. “Magnus Proust warned me that some, a small minority, that venture between realities might be susceptible to vibrational changes between universes. A malady of the mind might come over such a person before they succumb to death. It’s similar to pressure changes suffered by the pearl divers of Karakos.”
“I wish Proust would have told me this. Not that it would have made a difference,” he finished, looking accusingly at Seth.
“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” Seth said.
“My whole life is upside down…,” Cal began, but gave up and excused himself to Lelani to join his wife.
“He never cuts me a break,” he heard Seth comment as he shut the bedroom door.
2
Callum tossed and turned throughout the night. His wife slept soundly, having taken one of her mother’s Ambiens. Cal’s mind raced with too many thoughts about the past, present, and future—the possibilities about the mission ahead—strategies, tactics, pitfalls, trying to guess what Dorn and his minions were up to. Would any of the other guardians rise to their responsibilities? Or were they even now gazing at their sleeping spouses and children, choosing to sacrifice the prince and Aandor for the new lives they had built? What if he were alone with only Lelani and the idiot.
After some fleeting bouts of fitful sleep, the sun snuck up like a thief. Callum slid from the bed, with the energy and clarity of a man that had just run a marathon. Cat was still out. He shuffled into the living area to prepare for a day full of bureaucratic headaches. It was quiet. Lelani slept in the corner, but the couch was empty with the blanket neatly folded on top of the pillow. A note was taped to the staff leaning against the couch. A bad feeling crept into Cal’s gut. The note, in Seth’s handwriting, read:
Have loose ends to take care of in the city. Have the new cell phone you gave me. Will meet you later tonight. Seth.
Cal crumpled the note and flung it at the dining room wall with deep growl. Lelani jolted awake, dagger in hand. She looked around, groggily, and then at Cal for an explanation.
“The idiot has gone AWOL,” Cal said.
CHAPTER 12
WALKABOUT
1
Seth waited for the Fidelity Investments branch at 61 Broadway to open for business. His watch read eight thirty—it was his first appointment in what he hoped would be a productive day. His life before Lelani’s arrival dominated Seth’s thoughts—a life like a moth-eaten tapestry, all holes and frayed fringes in need of darning. He had to account for his hurtful actions or he would be stuck in this point in his life forever; no moving forward, no evolution, just weighed down by the past. He was finally in a position to make amends and set up a brighter future—assuming he survived the present.
New Yorkers rushed around, oblivious to the agents from an alternate reality that threatened to infringe on their cynical, hardened, and exhaustive existence. They were a strange lot, all living within a foot and a half of each other at one time or another, according to one gifted writer. They prided themselves on being able to blend the gift of privacy with the excitation of participation. The city was like poetry—compressing life, races, and breeds into music for the greatest human concentrate on earth and for whom the full meaning of the city would always be elusive. A city designed to absorb anything that comes along without inflicting the event on its inhabitants. Despite the incredible pressures of living here, New Yorkers seem to escape hysteria by some tiny margin every time. Seth prayed this would continue … that the rushing masses would stay ignorant of today’s happenings, for their own sake.
Seth needed a shave and change of clothes, but thanks to the likes of Russell Brand and Dave Grohl, investment bankers were wary of turning away the slovenly, lest they be secretly filthy rich. A Fidelity coordinator placed him in a waiting area until a representative became available. The décor was green, white, and shades of tan. Balanced on Seth’s lap was a large plastic envelope that he had purchased at a drugstore upstate. Cat had given him the money for nicotine patches, but the deals he would make today were worth jonesing for. It was typical of Seth’s luck to get saddled with a group of nonsmokers just as his entire life was turning inside out.
He studied the cuts on his hands earned from whittling his staff. It took him a while to get the hang of slicing off the brown and green bark. He found the knots especially difficult to work around. The staff now lay in Vivian’s apartment under an enchantment Lelani cast to dry it out quickly so that the inner bark, which still needed to be shaved off, would reveal itself by changing color.
Seth’s cell phone rang. Not being familiar with the ring tone, it took a moment before he realized it was his—one of the disposables Cal had purchased for the group. The cop was tracking down his wayward soldier. Seth didn’t feel like a soldier, though. Herr MacDonnell thought he was the center of the universe and the boss of everyone.
Fuck him,
Seth thought and muted the call.
He had responsibilities, also—and the adventure upstate had presented him with a unique opportunity; Seth believed it was time he looked after his own interests. MacDonnell should be grateful he at least left a note.
Let Cat deal with Captain Rage.
Cat!
He had forgotten his pet, yet again. Hoshi would soon run out of food and water in Lelani’s rented room. Seth didn’t have time to retrieve her, not if he wanted to get everything done before relinquishing his freedom to the cause again. But to neglect her would only add to the list he was trying to work through. He tried to remember Earl’s number as he punched it into his new phone.
“Hello?”
answered a sleepy voice.
“Earl, it’s Seth.”
“Seth? Seth! We thought you were … Where’ve you been, man?”
“It’s a crazy story…”
“Hey, why didn’t you tell me Joe was dead?
”
Seth didn’t want to start the conversation on the defensive. “Why didn’t you let me stay with you when I told you my house blew up?” he responded.