Though she had no interest in him as sexual partner, she was not so hard-hearted as to be unable to empathize with what he was going through. She’d like to be friends with him. And they could be real friends, too, if he was able to put away his pretenses and simply be himself with her, if they could get past the understanding that their relationship could only be platonic.
She’d like that. If he could deal with it, she’d like it very much. Real friends were too important, too rare, to lose.
She gazed at the forest. Her longing to partake of its mystery, to walk under its cathedraling boughs and let its secrets fill her heart, thrummed like a drumbeat inside her. It called to her and she yearned to answer, but she turned away, back to the House to look for Cal. The door creaked as she opened it and she sensed something stir in the shadows nearby at the sharp sound. Peering more closely, she could just make out a figure standing in the dark, as still and silent as the trees of the forest that encircled the House.
“Who’s there?” she called.
The figure turned slowly in her direction, then stepped out to where the light from a window fell across her features. It was Emma, Julianne realized. Emma Fenn. Blue’s girlfriend.
It was hard to tell for certain in the poor light, but the first impression Julianne got was that Emma seemed only half present, as though her body was going through the motions of being animated, but her spirit had long since gone off rambling on its own. Julianne remembered some odd stories she’d heard about Emma from Ginny, something about how Emma’s spirit had been stolen once before....
She’s put it down to just the odd stories that tended to circulate in a place like Tamson House, such as other ones that said that Ohn was really an ancient bard who’d once been a member of some faerie court, but looking at Emma now, with the forest surrounding the House where the city should have been, that kind of a story didn’t seem odd at all. Worry stole its way inside her, leaving her feeling increasingly uneasy with each soft footstep it took.
“Emma,” she said. “Are you okay?”
For a long moment there was no answer, but then Emma smiled. Her eyes gleamed with sudden life, her features took on a radiance.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Julianne studied her for a long moment. There was no trace of the zombielike look about Emma that had first made her anxious, but the uneasiness that had lodged inside her didn’t fade.
“Would you do me a favor?” Emma asked before Julianne could speak. “Would you tell Blue where I’ve gone? I don’t want him to worry.”
“Gone?” Julianne repeated, “You mean that you’re out here?”
Emma shook her head and pointed away from the House.
“I’m going into the forest,” she said. “It’s calling me and I have to go.”
The forest.
As Emma spoke those simple words, Julianne’s own need to walk and experience its mysteries returned like a sharp ache. She yearned to just go. Close the door, and step away into the wonder that lay hidden beyond those first few trees, but she knew that Cal needed her more right now than she needed the forest. The spark of what she’d experienced, the glowing truth, was hoarded deep inside her and would never go away, while Cal’s shift in perspective could easily leave him embittered if she didn’t go to him now.
Still, she couldn’t escape a sudden stab of envy. Emma had Blue, and now she got the forest, too.... And Julianne couldn’t help but resent the fact that she was the one who’d chanced upon Emma and had to deliver a message to Blue that she knew he wasn’t going to like. They didn’t kill messengers anymore, not like they did in the old days, but who wanted to be the bearer of bad news? If anything happened to Emma... every time Blue looked at her, he’d remember who it was that had first told him....
She tried to put those feelings away before they could take root. They weren’t worthy and they made her feel not just uncomfortable—knowing that they were there in the first place—but unclean as well.
“It’s probably not such a good idea to go off exploring on your own,” she said.
Never mind that she’d been about to do the same thing herself. But there was a difference, she decided. People might think she was a little spacey sometimes, but Emma—Emma didn’t seem to be so much answering the call of the forest that Julianne had heard herself, as being driven to go out into the night. Under the trees. Into the unknown.
From that perspective, it seemed a dangerous, even foolhardy thing to be doing.
“We don’t know what’s out there,” she added, the words sounding lame as she spoke them.
Emma just looked at her for a long moment. Then she said, “You know.”
Julianne fell silent. She did know, didn’t she? She wanted to go, but she felt it was more important to go to Cal right now, to help him get through what was going to be a bad moment for him, to try to make it something he could look back on with wonder, rather than shame.
“What do you know about trees?” Emma asked suddenly.
Julianne gave her a puzzled look. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, you people—Wicca—you worship them, don’t you?”
“Hardly. We respect them.”
Julianne’s gaze traveled past Emma to the awesome forest that lay behind the House. The trees called to her still, a bittersweet air that once again sparked her longing to step under their sweeping boughs and partake of their Mystery.
“We listen to them,” she added, her voice soft.
Emma nodded, obviously understanding the sense of wonder that the forest had woken in Julianne. But of course she would, Julianne thought. She heard the call too, didn’t she?
“So... will you give him my message?” Emma asked.
“But Blue...” Julianne began.
If she had a relationship with a guy like Blue, she’d want to share this with him. The Mystery. The wonder of it. She couldn’t understand that Emma didn’t want to share it.
“When you’re talking to him,” Emma added, “would you also tell him—or Esmeralda, if you see her—that I’ve finally found the answer.” Her eyes took on a dreamy look again. “I’m finally going to find out how to use my gift...”
Julianne wasn’t quite sure what that meant so she simply stored it away and tried again to dissuade Emma.
“I don’t think that’s such a good—”
Julianne broke off as Emma just drifted by her, heading for the forest.
“Emma!”
Emma paused, facing Julianne at the call of her name.
“I’m okay,” Emma said. “Honestly, I am. Just give them my message. Please?”
What do I do now? Julianne thought. Try and stop her from going by force? That just wasn’t her style.
So helplessly, she watched Emma turn again. In moments, Emma was under the first trees and then the forest accepted her and she was lost from sight.
Julianne looked at the trees for a very long time, wanting to go, wishing Emma hadn’t.
“Shit,” she said finally.
Sighing, she went back into the House.
7
“The last time we were here I met this shaman,” Blue was saying. “A guy named Ur’wen’ta. He’s one of Ha’kan’ta’s people—the ones that Sara and Tal are staying with. I think we should try to track him down, or maybe we can find some of the other rath’wen’a. See, this is their turf and if anybody’s going to know what’s going down, I figure they’re the ones to....”
The ballroom had been steadily filling while he, Esmeralda and Judy talked on the small stage. From time to time, Esmeralda woke music from the piano—a few bars of Chopin, one of Michael O’Suilleabhain’s keyboard settings of an Irish air and the like—but her fingers were still more often than not. There were almost thirty people gathered on the dance floor. Ginny and Tim had seen about bringing in chairs and benches for them to sit upon. A part of the wall by the door had been converted into a makeshift kitchen by Ohn with plates of sandwiches, teapots with steam curling from their
spouts and dozens of mismatching teacups and mugs laid out on a pair of folding tables.
An odd calm had come over most of them—even the poet who’d been so shaken at first, though his earlier panic could still be seen in his eyes, just waiting to spill out. From time to time, one or another would drift to the stage where Blue and the others were talking, but most seemed content to wait, sipping tea and talking among themselves.
Esmeralda let Blue finish talking about the rath’wen’a shaman before she spoke. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Blue.”
“Have you got a better one?”
Oh, don’t go all macho on me, Esmeralda thought.
“How would you begin to find him?” she said.
“I’d...”
“There’s not just one Otherworld,” Esmeralda went on, “but so many that they can’t be numbered. They exist on different planes, in different times....”
As she watched his face sag, Esmeralda wished she did have a better idea to offer him, but she knew from her own limited experience how bewildering the Otherworld could be.
Tim came up just then, effectively postponing their discussion.
“It looks like everybody’s here now,” he said. “I think Julianne was the last one we were waiting on.”
Esmeralda looked out over the dance floor and was surprised at how many she didn’t know. She knew the regular residents, of course, and recognized a lot of the other faces, but she didn’t know as many of them as she’d thought she would.
I’ve been doing it again, she thought. Stepping back from life and observing instead of partaking in it. And not even observing it all that well. She should know these people. If they were drawn to the House, then they had something worthwhile to share.
She was disappointed in the realization of how easily she’d fallen back into her old habits. It was so easy to just let her studies swallow all of her time.
“So, are you going to talk to them?” Tim asked.
Esmeralda nodded and turned to Blue.
“You handle this,” she began, but then she realized something.
She scanned the crowd again, not finding the face she was looking for.
“Emma,” she said. She turned to Tim. “Has anyone seen Emma?”
She could sense Blue’s immediate tension.
“Jeez,” Tim said. “Now that you mention it...”
Blue stood up, his chair scraping on the wood floor of the stage. Out on the dance floor, conversation stilled, heads lifted, gazes settled on the group on the stage.
“You said she’d be okay,” Blue began, turning to Esmeralda, features clouding with anger.
Judy rose at his side and put a hand on his arm. “She’s not Emma’s keeper, Blue.”
“But—”
“It’s not Esmeralda you’re mad at,” Judy added.
No, Esmeralda thought. He was mad at himself, frustrated with the ups and downs of his relationship with Emma, confused at the new turn it was taking. She wished there were something she could say to make him feel better, but knew that he and Emma had to work this out on their own.
“She just needs some time to herself,” she told Blue. “We’ll go talk to her after we get done with the business at hand.”
“You might want to prepare yourself for a bit of a trek, then.”
Esmeralda turned to see that one of the resident Wicca had joined Tim where he was leaning on the edge of the stage. It was she who’d just spoken.
“What do you mean?” Blue demanded.
“I’ve seen her,” Julianne said, taking a step back from Blue’s looming presence. “She asked me to pass on a message to you.”
Esmeralda’s spirits dropped lower as she listened to what Julianne had to pass on. Blue slammed his fist down on the top of the piano, awaking a discordant ring from the instrument’s strings. The violent impact startled Esmeralda.
Don’t lose it, she wanted to tell him. Now now. We can’t afford it.
But her throat couldn’t seem to shape the words. She knew the kind of man Blue was—a study in extremes. If you were his friend, you were his friend for life and he’d do anything for you. If you were his enemy, you were unequivocally and forever so. Where he lost it was in the shades of gray: when a friend did something hurtful, or confusing; something that didn’t fit in with Blue’s perceptions of what the person was.
For one moment she was certain that he was going to do some serious damage to the piano, but then he just leaned on it with both hands and bowed his head.
“I just don’t get it,” he said, oblivious to the audience that was watching from the dance floor. His troubled gaze turned to Esmeralda. “Why won’t she talk to me about this kind of thing?”
Esmeralda couldn’t answer that. She was surprised when Julianne spoke up.
“Maybe she doesn’t know how,” Julianne said.
Blue just looked at her for a long moment, then slowly nodded.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Doesn’t make me feel any better, though. She should be able to talk to me about anything—wouldn’t you think?”
“Heads up,” Tim said before Julianne could answer. “Looks like you can ask her yourself.”
He pointed to where the ballroom’s doors opened out onto the garden. The slight figure of a woman stood there, hand raised to knock on one of the leaded panes.
But it wasn’t Emma.
“Sara!” Blue cried.
He was off the stage and halfway across the ballroom floor before Esmeralda had time to register that it really was Sara. A flicker of uneasiness stirred in Esmeralda. She liked Sara, but as she watched Blue embrace her in a bear hug, she couldn’t help but remember the last time she’d seen Jamie’s heir. She’d wished more than once in the year since that afternoon that they hadn’t had that argument.
It had grown partly from Sara’s ambivalent feelings toward Esmeralda—Sara simply couldn’t deal with Jamie’s ghost, living inside the House; the guilt that woke in her had ended up shifting into a resentment toward Esmeralda for the good relationship that Esmeralda herself had with Jamie. They both knew that Esmeralda had taken Sara’s place in the hierarchy of the House—not so much because Esmeralda wanted it, as that Sara didn’t.
Esmeralda wasn’t sure if Sara ever admitted that to herself. What she did know was that Sara perceived the other half of the problem to be Esmeralda’s fault.
“You manipulate people,” Sara told her. “It’s real subtle, but every time I come back I can see it happening. You give one person a little push here, another one a push there, always for ’their own good.’ Maybe they can’t see it happening—they’re too close to the situation or something—but I can see it and I don’t think it’s right.”
“You’re not being entirely fair.”
“Yes I am.”
Esmeralda had shaken her head. “There’s a big difference between giving advice and being manipulative.”
“I agree. But the way you give advice makes it seem like it’s the other’s person’s idea and I’d call that being manipulative.”
“But—”
“I’m not saying that you don’t do good; to be really fair, you’re usually right, but I think it’s the wrong way to go about ’helping’ people. It’s not honest.”
And the way you treat Jamie, Esmeralda had been about to say then. You’d call that honest?
But she’d kept quiet, not wanting to aggravate the situation. Not wanting to talk about it in the House, where Jamie could hear and be hurt by what they all knew was the truth.
“I don’t believe in standing back and seeing my friends hurt themselves,” was what she had said.
“Sometimes people need to make mistakes.”
“I see.”
Sara frowned at her. “Look, all I’m saying is if you’re going to meddle around with people’s heads, at least be up front about it. Give them your advice and then let them decide if they want to take it.”
They’d left the argument on that note, knowi
ng it wasn’t really resolved, but also knowing that any further discussion would merely be repeating things they’d already said.
Remembering the tension that had lain between them when they’d parted, Esmeralda was a little wary as Blue led Sara back to the stage, but Sara just smiled at her as though they’d never had the argument, which made Esmeralda realize that Sara was probably more like Jamie than she’d ever thought. Jamie never held a grudge; once he’d had his say, that was it. Life carried on.
She stepped from the piano bench and sat down on the edge of the stage.
“Hello, Sara,” she said. “You’ve come at an opportune time.”
“I’m not so sure—”
“You’re Sara?” Tim interrupted.
When Sara nodded, he seemed embarrassed for a moment. “I just thought you’d be older,” he added and then realized that he really wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.
“You’re... ?” she asked.
“Tim. Tim Gavin. I never seem to be around when you come by, and I just... I don’t know.... “
Esmeralda laid an arm across his shoulders.
“Tim’s been taking care of the gardens,” she said. “At least he was until all of this started.”
“What is going on?” Sara asked. “I got the weirdest... sending, I suppose you’d call it....”
She took off her pack as she described the hooded man and his message that had brought her back to the House, pulling out the cloak as she spoke.
“That’s my cloak,” Julianne said. “The one that disappeared from my room this morning.”
There was quite a crowd gathering up around the edge of the stage now. Questions started coming at Sara, fast and hard.
“What’s out there?”
“Is the city really gone?”
“Where did you come from?”
Esmeralda waited for a moment, giving Blue, or Sara, the opportunity to take charge, but they both turned to her. Esmeralda sighed and held up her hands.
“Let’s just all slow down a minute,” she said. “Thanks,” she added when she finally had everyone’s attention.
The various residents and House guests waited expectantly for what she had to say, but she turned to Sara first.