“I...” she began. She turned to Jamie. “It’s not fair. You... you’ve already died once...”
Jamie squeezed her shoulder, offering a comfort she couldn’t deal with yet.
“The dead are only those who can’t accept change,” he explained. “They refuse to continue their journey from wheel to wheel and so they haunt the places of their past as ghosts and can’t ever know peace or fulfillment.”
“But—”
“I have to do this, Sairey,” he said. He lowered his head to kiss her brow. “It’s not so much atonement for being the catalyst to this situation, as my time to go on.”
“But the House,” Sara tried. “It’ll need a protector....”
“It will find what it needs, or it will be provided. Its guardian doesn’t have to have stepped from the wheel of life. Remember, when my grandfather first built Tamson House, he was both alive and its spiritual guardian.”
But that hadn’t been Sara’s real concern. It was losing Jamie again. It was guilt for not accepting him when he was part of the House.
“How... how are you supposed to do it?” she asked.
“I only have to touch him.”
Sara swallowed dryly. “Let me do it,” she said. “Let me go instead.”
“I already know the way. You don’t.”
“How hard can it be?” Sara asked. “We must all know it, somewhere inside us, or no one would ever get there.”
“It’s my turn, Sara.”
She turned from the awful sight of the man spinning in his nimbus of light below them and wrapped her arms around Jamie, burrowing her head against his shoulder.
“I... I don’t want you to go,” she said. Her voice was muffled, but she knew he could hear her. “I’ve been such a shit, Jamie. I just want to... make up for hiding from you all these years.”
He disengaged her arms gently and held her at arm’s length.
“There’s nothing to make up for,” he said. “But you can do one thing for me.”
The tears she’d been trying to hold back were swelling up in her eyes, making his face blur in her vision.
“What... what’s that?” she asked.
“Give Esmeralda your support.”
“Esmeralda... ?”
“Your road isn’t mine, Sara. I don’t think it ever was. You need movement and space and journeys and... Tal. Esmeralda’s a lot like me. She needs to get her nose out of her books and involve herself a little more in life, but I think that’s something she’ll learn. She’ll learn it more quickly with your support and affection. I think she’ll make a good guardian.”
But she manipulates people, Sara wanted to say. She thinks she knows the best for everyone, but instead of helping them see their options, she tricks them into doing what she thinks they should.
The argument was there, but she didn’t voice it. Not because she didn’t want to argue with what was, in its own odd way, a dying man’s last wish, but because she realized that Esmeralda really was a lot more like Jamie than she’d ever realized.
Jamie had been a manipulator as well—she just hadn’t seen it because her love for him had clouded her perceptions of that part of him. But what else could explain the way he’d brought out the best in Blue and countless others, including herself? Sometimes people needed that dispassionate outside view to steer them—to use that expression of Ha’kan’ta’s people that Jamie had been using—onto a more appropriate wheel.
It was manipulation, true. But in the end, it was the people themselves who made the real choice. They had the option to just walk away. Maybe so few of them did because they realized that the wheel they’d been shown was what they’d always been looking for.
“I... I’ll try,” she said.
Jamie kissed her again. She plucked at his sleeve as he stepped away and walked to the edge of the mesa.
“I love you, Sairey,” he said.
She blinked back tears. “I love you, too,” she managed.
She didn’t think she could look, but she was at the edge of the mesa in a few quick panicked steps when he stepped off. He didn’t fall so much as float to where the enemy hung in his glow of light. There was an implosion of light when the two figures touched. Everything went black—the nimbus of light, the stars, everything. Then Sara saw a pinprick of a spark that enlarged until it was a small glowing circle the size of a silver dollar.
She could see two small figures in it, walking toward its center-most point. Their backs were toward her, but she could tell which was Jamie by his straight back and sure tread. The other one kept trying to pull away—a small struggling figure, all its stolen power useless because of Jamie’s sacrifice. He was held firm by the grip of Jamie’s hand, but he never stopped struggling, not until they were just tiny specks in the light, and then were gone.
Sara sat on the edge of the mesa as the tunnel of light winked out. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The night sky returned, sprinkled with stars. The Otherworld their enemy had created continued its existence—for such things were always more easily brought into existence than unmade.
She bowed her head and wept for a long time until the sound of faint drumming made her finally lift her head and turn around to find its source.
10
Esmeralda cursed the coyote and his cry that sounded so much like laughter, but his mocking yip, yip, yip awoke another reaction from the shaman and their champion. The drummers’ fingers faltered on their instruments. The drums fell still. The shaman’s dark brown eyes went wide under their animal and feather headdresses, their skin paled. The bison-headed man halted his advance. His penis shrank and fell back against his thigh.
The coyote’s cry sounded again, closer still. Turning, Esmeralda and Emma saw Whiskey Jack come walking out of the ruins of Tamson House. He was dressed the same as he’d been when Esmeralda had seen him earlier, wore the same coyote face in place of human features.
“Who... who’s that?” Emma asked.
“You met him earlier,” Esmeralda said, “when he looked like Jamie Tamson.”
Emma’s gaze shifted from the approaching figure to Esmeralda’s tight features.
“You know him, don’t you?” she said.
Esmeralda nodded. “Remember Jack Wolfe?”
Emma frowned, then said, “He was that guy who had a relationship with you back in the early seventies, wasn’t he? The one who said he fell in love with you as an experiment—he just wanted to know what it would feel like.”
“That’s the one.”
“You never said he wasn’t human.”
“I didn’t know then.”
Whiskey Jack had come up to them by then.
“You knew,” he said. “You knew all along.”
Esmeralda shook her head, the tightness momentarily leaving her features.
“How could I know?” she asked. “I was just a kid.”
“You had your winds—that was never the bounty of a child.”
“It’s old history,” Esmeralda said, though it was obvious from her voice that though the hurt was old, it hadn’t been forgotten. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Whiskey Jack turned to Emma. “I never knew it could hurt so much,” he said.
“What could?”
“Love.”
“So what do you want?” Esmeralda asked, tired of the conversation. She’d been through variations of it almost every time she and Jack met. “Did you come to see the results of your handiwork?”
The coyote eyes blinked in confusion. “My... ?”
Esmeralda waved a hand to where the bison-headed man had withdrawn into the ranks of the shaman. The drums remained silent; the drummers watched, unreadable expressions in their eyes.
“You interrupted their party,” Esmeralda said. “Our friends here were about to deal with the ’daughters of darkness.’”
“You think their enmity is my doing?”
Esmeralda nodded. “Who else could be responsible?”
Whiskey Jack laughed. “But
I’ve come to rescue you.”
Esmeralda could sense Emma relaxing beside her. The next words she spoke were hard to call up.
“No thanks, Jack. I told you before, I’m done with your bargains.”
“Esmeralda!” Emma cried.
Whiskey Jack lifted his hands, spread them palms up. “No bargains, no strings, Westlin Wind.”
Emma gripped Esmeralda’s arm, but Esmeralda’s suspicions weren’t so easily allayed.
“What’s the catch?” she asked.
“Think of it as atonement for past wrongs,” Whiskey Jack said.
“You’re stepping out of character.”
The coyote head grinned. “One thousand and one faces—remember? Even you haven’t seen them all.”
“But—”
“Don’t complicate matters,” Whiskey Jack told her. “Tamson House has been returned to its homeworld and the threat against it has been dealt with. All that remains is your rescue.”
Esmeralda centered in on that one phrase, The threat has been dealt with. Her heart sank. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Jamie...” she said softly.
So Whiskey Jack had found a way to make Jamie pay after all. She knew she should be angry, but all she felt was a deep sorrow to join the hurt Whiskey Jack had put there inside her all those many years ago. She was too worn out to be angry.
“Jamie did what he did of his own free will,” Whiskey Jack said. “I promise you that much.”
“Not without your help he didn’t.”
His gaze rested on her, but he didn’t reply. The familiar mismatched eyes held a sorrow that she had never expected he could know.
“You have let the hurt I caused you so long ago color your life for far too long,” he said finally. “I’ll admit freely that I can never be the most trustworthy friend, but I mean no one real harm. I meant you no harm. Had I known how I would hurt you, I would...”
“You would have what?” Esmeralda asked when his voice trailed off.
“I had to know,” he said simply. “I had to know how such a simple bond between two beings could have such power. Was that so wrong?”
“It was wrong to hurt me the way you did.”
Whiskey Jack nodded. “I know that now. But it was also wrong of you to let the hurt I caused you build a wall between yourself and the rest of the world. You don’t eschew relationships because you’re too busy with your studies, Esmeralda.”
She glared at him, but under his sad gaze, the blue eye and the brown, touched with sorrow and empathy, she couldn’t maintain her anger. It wasn’t just weariness; it was that what he had just said wasn’t a lie.
“I... I know...” Esmeralda murmured.
Her tears could no longer be held back. She wept, not knowing if her tears were for Jamie, for the empty place inside her that she’d been too scared to allow another relationship to fill, or for what she’d had and lost with Whiskey Jack. Perhaps it was a little of all three.
Emma put a comforting arm around her friend. When Esmeralda turned toward her, Emma drew her head down to her shoulder and stroked the long gold and brown hair that stirred restlessly under her fingers, although she could feel no wind touch her own skin. She gazed at Whiskey Jack over Esmeralda’s shoulder.
“You didn’t lie about one thing, that’s for sure,” she said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“No one likes to hear what you have to say.”
He inclined his head in tired agreement. “And yet, they are things that someone must say.”
“I suppose.”
The tableau held for a long moment, but finally Esmeralda stepped back from the circle of Emma’s arms. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. When she sniffled, Whiskey Jack took a red bandanna from his pocket and offered it to her. She regarded it for a long moment, then sighed and accepted it. She blew her nose. She found a halfhearted smile as she started to hand the bandanna back.
“I think I’ll let you keep it,” Whiskey Jack said.
Esmeralda stuffed it into her own pocket. She gave Emma a look of thanks for her comfort, then turned her attention to the shaman and their champion. The drummers had remained in the shadows of the first forest’s tree for all this time, watching, drums silent. The bison-headed man was just an oddly shaped silhouette, deep in the trees.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“I send you home—unless you’re strong enough to go on your own?”
Esmeralda shook her head. “And them? What happens to them and this ghost of the first forest?”
“Our enemy made this Otherworld, but it won’t be unmade. They will remain here, as will the forest, though a finger of it will remain in the House’s garden.”
“There was always a finger of the first forest there.”
Whiskey Jack nodded. “Until the next time we meet, then,” he said.
“Not if I see you first,” Esmeralda said, but she wasn’t sure if she meant it.
“I was speaking to Emma,” Whiskey Jack said. “She and I still have unfinished business—but I will only come,” he added quickly at the flash in Esmeralda’s eyes, “when called. For now, I’ll simply see you home.” He paused, then smiled. “You’ll make a good guardian, Westlin Wind.”
“Guardian?” Emma asked.
But Esmeralda was shaking her head. “You said no bargain, no strings. Who says I even want to be the House’s guardian?”
“It was Jamie’s last request—ask Sara if you don’t believe me.”
Esmeralda sighed. “Oh, I believe you, Jack.”
“And?”
“Just send us home.”
One moment they stood in the shadow of the first forest, the next they were on Patterson Avenue. The forest was gone. The ruins of the otherworldly shell of the House were replaced by the sound structure of the true building. It wasn’t long past dawn, but there was already traffic on Bank Street. After the time they’d spent in the Otherworld, even an early morning in the city seemed filled with noise and unnecessary movement.
“Jesus,” Emma said softly.
Esmeralda nodded. She linked arms with Emma and walked with her toward the nearest door of Tamson House. As she stepped over the threshold, she shivered. The mantle of the House’s guardianship settled upon her, at once both a ponderous weight and an uplifting epiphany. She was simultaneously aware of all that went on inside the building as well as the stimuli caught and gathered by her own senses.
But her gladness at the embrace of the House was quickly tempered by memories too recent to be put aside. Sadness welled inside her. She missed Jamie already. But worse, she also missed Whiskey Jack—just as she always did after seeing him.
“Damn you,” she said softly.
Emma gave her a questioning look, but Esmeralda could only shake her head.
“They’re waiting for us in the Postman’s Room” was all she said.
11
Once Maggie arrived to sit with Sara, Blue and Tucker returned to the upstairs front bedroom. Nothing had changed. The man on the bed still lay in his apparent coma, eyes moving under his closed lids, the blue veins more prominent than ever under his translucent skin. The woman looked up when they entered and regarded them with sardonic good humor.
“She gives me the creeps,” Tucker said, speaking as though she weren’t present.
Blue knew exactly what Tucker meant. Having them here, sitting bound in the chair, didn’t seem to mean a thing to her. It was like she was wired into a whole different reality which, when he thought about it, probably wasn’t that far off the mark.
“But we can’t leave her tied up like that,” Tucker added. At Blue’s questioning glance, Tucker said, “Fercrissakes, what’s she going to do? Jump the pair of us?”
“It’s on your head,” Blue told him.
He crossed the room and took a pocketknife from his jeans with which he cut the ties that held the woman to the chair. Except for rubbing her wrists, she made no other move.
“Thank you,” sh
e said.
Blue looked at Tucker and rolled his eyes. Tucker pulled a chair up to where the woman was sitting. He turned it around and sat down, resting his forearms on its back.
“Keep an eye on our friend in the bed,” he told Blue.
Blue bridled at Tucker’s immediate assumption of his authority, but then shrugged and fetched his rifle from where he’d leaned it up beside the door.
Screw it, he thought. If Tucker wanted to take over, he was welcome to it. If it weren’t for Sara, he’d be just as happy handing the whole mess over to Tucker and bowing out. But there was Sara to think about, not to mention all the people still trapped in the otherworldly incarnation of the House.
He moved closer to the bed, taking up a position from which he could watch both the man on the bed and Tucker’s interrogation. Tucker pulled his billfold from the inner pocket of his sports jacket and flipped it open so that the woman could see his RCMP identification.
“Why don’t you tell me your name,” he said.
“Eleanor Watkins,” she replied promptly.
“And the man on the bed?”
“He’s my husband, Albert.”
Blue shook his head. Albert Watkins. It didn’t have even the vaguest ring of villainy about it. If it weren’t for what had happened to Sara and the icy draft that seemed to emanate from where Watkins lay on the bed—not to mention what happened whenever you tossed something in Watkins’s direction—he could almost think they were in the wrong house.
“Would you like to tell me what’s going on here, Mrs. Watkins?” Tucker was asking.
“We haven’t broken any of your laws.”
“I didn’t say you had.”
“And you have no right to be here in our house. Don’t you need some kind of search warrant to come barging in on a body like this?”
The amicable tone of Tucker’s voice acquired an edge. “Probable cause,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“When we become aware of a situation that appears—”
Blue had been worrying over the implication of the woman’s phrase “your laws”—did that mean she and her husband were from some other country, or some place even more distant?—so he almost missed the change in Watkins. But a glimmer of light caught his peripheral vision. He turned in time to see a glowing aura take shape around Watkins and then the man began to move the way a person will when having a nightmare—his head rocking back and forth, his body twisting, limbs flailing.