I found her a couple aisles over, unpacking one of the large blue plastic bins that stock came in. She sat on the small stool I used to sit on, seeming in her own world as she took boxes of nasal spray from the bin and pushed them into place on the shelf.
For a moment I stood and watched her as she moved methodically but without thought. Her hair was a pale ash-brown color, and again I was struck by how her hair, her skin, and her eyes all seemed so much the same tone as to make her virtually colorless. At first glance, one might not even notice her. But now that I knew her, she seemed lovely, in a quiet, old-fashioned way.
Something made her look up, perhaps just me being all creeper at the end of the aisle. When she saw me, her eyes widened and her mouth opened, but no words came out.
What should I say? One gets so tired of apologizing for being an insensitive ass, doesn’t one?
“Hey,” she said, and stood up.
“Hey” was my witty riposte.
“I haven’t seen you in ages.” She gave a slight smile. “Thought you’d started shopping in Walgreens or something.”
“Heaven forbid,” I said, and she smiled wider. “No—I was… sick for a while, and then I just didn’t need to come to town.”
“I’m glad to see you.” Her simple statement undid me, and with huge relief I hurried to her, surprising both of us with a hug.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” I said. During that awful night with Incy, I’d thought of Meriwether and Dray and realized I would never know what happened to them, wouldn’t see how they turned out, because Incy was going to kill me. Seeing Meriwether today made me extra glad he hadn’t. “Anyway. How have things been?” I tilted my head toward the back of the store.
After a fast, instinctive glance to see if her dad was nearby, Meriwether said, “Well, since that day—he seems like he’s trying to be… less hard, you know? Like he’s trying to mellow out a little. I mean, he’s been sadder but hasn’t been yelling as much.”
“I’m so sorry for the stuff I said,” I told her. “My mouth never waits for my brain to catch up.”
She nodded. “We were both—shocked. But I think what you said—about my mom—maybe made us both think a bit. Like, after my mom and my brother died, Dad had gotten rid of every single picture of them that we had around the house. Like if we couldn’t see them, they hadn’t died or something. But after that day, a couple days later, I saw that he had put one of the pictures back on the wall in the kitchen. One of the four of us.”
“Wow,” I said quietly. “But I’m still sorry. Really.”
“Okay.” Meriwether nodded and glanced around again, then leaned closer to me. “You know, I think Mrs. Philpott has been coming in extra often. Like to talk to Dad.”
“Reeeaallly?” I said. Mrs. Philpott was a local widow who had gone to high school with Old Mac.
Meriwether pressed her lips together, her eyes alight. “I think she comes in just to talk to him.”
“Whoa.” We looked at each other for a few moments, sharing our fascination at this new wrinkle in Old Mac’s life. I really wished I still worked there, and then Meriwether and I could gossip about everything that was happening, like we used to. Instead I’d run off at the mouth and gotten fired. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere. For someone.
“Ah, there you are, Nas.” Lorenz flipped his Italian wool scarf artfully over his shoulder. “And you, miss—could you please tell me where you keep your aspirin? I have a toothache.” He unleashed a smile on Meriwether, and even though it was lopsided, she still blinked like a stunned rabbit under the force of his charm.
After a second she snapped out of it and started to lead him to the other aisle. “If it’s just for a toothache, you should take ibuprofen or Tylenol,” she murmured. “Aspirin thins your blood. People take it to help heart attacks.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Lorenz. “How helpful you are.” Again the smile, the deep gaze of his Mediterranean blue eyes. Coupled with his beautiful light olive skin and black hair, he was stunning, and he knew it. It was actually a source of real pain in his life, and I planned to remind him of that.
“I’ll come back soon,” I said, wishing again that we could just run across the street to a, what? Yes. A cute coffee shop.
“I’d like that,” she said, then blinked at Lorenz’s smile as he said good-bye.
I wanted to skip back to the car. Meriwether didn’t hate me. We might possibly still be friends. She had been glad to see me. I was so, so happy about that.
“Your friend, little… Meriwether, is it?” Lorenz said. “Do you know if she’s eighteen yet? She’s a senior in high school, did I hear you mention that?” He spoke casually as we approached the car, but his words hit me like cold water: Lorenz was barely more than a hundred years old but had already fathered 235 children. Two hundred. And thirty-five. Children. None of whom he was being a father to. Part of why he was at River’s Edge was to figure out (and then, one hopes, end) such criminal irresponsibility.
I stopped in my tracks and after a few steps he turned to me, his smile faltering when he saw my face.
“Lorenz, if you seriously pursue Meriwether, I will cut you off at the knees.”
He started to laugh, thinking I was joking, but I stared lasers at him.
“What? Oh, no. Don’t be silly, Nasya.” He tugged on the car door, but I hadn’t unlocked it yet.
I faced him across the hood of the car. “Lorenz. Listen to me carefully. We all need to deal with our own mistakes. God knows I have a lot on my plate, dealing with mine. But Meriwether is my friend, and if you pursue her, I will make you regret it.” My voice was quiet and serious, all grown-up sounding. It was very unlike me, to speak this way—I usually don’t take care of myself, much less a friend. But Meriwether was different—truly a nice person, with hopes and dreams. She’d been through a lot, and there was no way I was going to let Lorenz make her life harder.
“Please, Nastasya,” he said a little stiffly. “You mistake me.”
I clicked the car doors open, and we got in. He looked huffy and embarrassed and of course guilty, because he was realizing that was exactly what he’d been planning, without even meaning to.
“I do not mistake you, Lorenz.” Starting the engine, I checked behind me and put the car into reverse. I met his eyes again—his were frosty. Mine probably looked like black holes. “I do not mistake you. Are we clear about this? You will not go near Meriwether. Are we absolutely clear?”
He snorted, looking out the window, the image of offended sensibilities.
“I’ll take that as an ‘eff yeah,’ ” I said, and peeled out toward home.
As soon as I walked into the house at River’s Edge, I felt waves of quivering, powerful magick sweeping over me. I looked at Lorenz. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” He was distant, still pissed about what I’d said.
“You don’t feel anything?”
He stopped, a bag of groceries in his hands. After a moment he shook his head. “No, not really. I have a headache. I’m going upstairs.” He set the groceries on the kitchen island and left, while I stood there trying to figure out what I was feeling. Magick reverberated through my chest like heavy music. The only other time I’d felt something like this was that night with Incy, as he wrought huge, dark spells to rip my power from me. But this—today—didn’t exactly feel bad or scary. It didn’t make my stomach roil with nausea. It just felt big.
And I so did not want to be here to find out what it was. I quickly stored the fridge stuff and set out again through the kitchen door. A small white figure sitting in the doorway of the horse barn caught my eye, and I headed toward Dúfa as she stood, her whiplike tail wagging. These days, Dúfa = Reyn.
“Hey, pup,” I said, walking into the dim, horse-smelling warmth. I tried not to glance up at the hayloft, where Reyn and I had fallen prey to our first soul-searing kisses.
The man himself was standing in the middle of the aisle currying Titus, one of the
big workhorses. He hadn’t seen me, and I was able to pause and appreciate the smooth move of flannel-covered muscle, the warrior grace that informed everything he did. He’s been currying horses for more than four hundred years, but each sweep of the brush looked deliberate and full of thought.
When he finally looked up and our eyes met, it was like someone flicked my chest, giving me a small jolt of tingling awareness.
He cocked one eyebrow. “Stalker.”
I was surprised into smiling, and Dúfa trotted around my feet, giving a little yip. “You wish.”
“How was town?”
“Towny. Meriwether doesn’t hate me, so bonus there.”
“Good. Things with her father okay?”
You know, it struck me right then that all those years with Incy, he never asked about anything in my personal life. He was eager to hear all the latest gossip, to know what everyone wore and if any drama had happened. But asking about more serious stuff? Not so much. It was nice that Reyn did. He had actually listened when I’d talked about Meriwether. Add several points to the Sensitivity column.
“She said they’re better. I don’t know. Hey, when I went into the house, a big whoosh of hoodoo practically knocked me down. Where is everyone? What are they doing?”
Reyn frowned at me as he unclipped Titus and led him to his large stall. Titus huffed at Reyn’s head and was given one of the small windfall apples kept in barrels around the barn.
“What do you mean you felt it?” Reyn asked finally.
“The house. It’s full of…” I didn’t know how to describe it. “It feels like people are doing big spells there. I didn’t see anyone. Do you know if something’s going on?”
“This morning River mentioned that she and the teachers, and I guess her brothers, were going to do some scrying,” Reyn said. He went to another stall and led one of the riding horses out into the aisle. “But I’m surprised you felt something. You know Sorrel,” he told me, handing me the horse’s lead.
“Hi, Sorrel,” I said, uncomfortable about being this close to a horse. “Scrying spells for what?”
“I don’t know. Hang on.” He went to the tack room and returned with a small, light saddle, the kind used for jumping. “Hold her.”
He knew I didn’t like being around horses, so he was losing whatever points he had gained in the Sensitivity column.
“Scrying spells for what?” I repeated.
“I really don’t know,” said Reyn, cinching the saddle. “Maybe to see if they can figure out the bigger picture, with Incy and ‘the master’ and all. Okay, here.” He gestured to Sorrel and then interlocked his hands as if to give me a leg up.
I stared at him. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a nice day. Let’s go for a ride. You can have Sorrel.”
“No. Way.”
The look of calm patience that came over his face made me wary, as if I were a village about to be under siege. “I know you know how to ride.”
I rode very well, and used to do it a lot. But having or even riding horses was one of those things that I’d let fall by the wayside over the years, as I (unsuccessfully, of course) tried to limit how many different ways I could get hurt by losing things. It was why I didn’t have pets and why my closest friends had been people who could come and go without either of us feeling pain. Except for Incy.
These days I was uncomfortably aware of the tendrils of caring that were gradually ensnaring me: River and the other people here, Meriwether and Dray, the place itself, Reyn. My amulet. The more things I had to lose, the less safe I was. So far I’d been able to mostly quell the white-knuckled terror I felt at forming these connections, but every once in a while it smacked me upside the head again, full force—like when Reyn offered to let me share Dúfa or now, when he was pushing me to ride.
“I know you know how to break rocks with a hammer, but that doesn’t mean I expect you to do it,” I said.
Anyone, not just me, would have felt uneasy at the calculating glint in his amber eyes. Without a word he turned and got another horse from a stall. This one was almost solid black and larger than Sorrel, but its fine bones announced that it too was for riding and not for pulling a plow.
“I want to go riding with you.” He quickly cinched a bigger, Reyn-size saddle on the black horse.
“I want world peace,” I retorted.
Holding the black horse’s lead, Reyn came to stand close enough to me that I could see the pulse beating at the base of his throat. Moving slowly, as if to give me time to run away like the coward I am, he lifted one hand and cupped my chin gently. My breathing sped up. Tracing one finger down my cheekbone was his next insidious move, and I pressed my lips together so I didn’t humiliate myself with a little whimper. He leaned his head down, and I felt my stone wall of reserve start to wobble.
But he didn’t kiss me. “Let’s go riding, you and me,” he said in a low voice. “Let’s get away from here for a little while.”
The heartless bastard. My worthless, tissue-paper resolve.
Ten minutes later we could no longer see River’s Edge. The brisk air had whipped roses into my cheeks and burned in my lungs, and my legs were already feeling the ache of years spent doing nothing more than walking, shopping, and occasionally dancing.
Sorrel’s tall, alert ears framed my view, and from the top of this low hill I saw splashes of brilliant yellow here and there, as far as I could see.
“Forsythia,” I said, pointing.
“Spring.” Reyn, of course, looked amazing on the back of that beautiful horse, riding effortlessly and with perfect form, reins held loosely in one hand. He’d probably learned to ride as I did, bareback and holding on to nothing more than a mane.
“I didn’t know all these trails were here.” Winding paths that Reyn clearly knew by heart led through acres of trees, gradually taking us uphill until we reached the top and could see for miles around us.
“They’ve been here for ages,” Reyn said, brushing windblown hair out of his face. “They’re pretty, but I wish there were some flat land where we could just tear across, going fast.”
In my mind I saw him bent low over a horse’s outstretched neck as it galloped across the northern steppes. He’d grown up like that, moving with his clan over thousands of miles of flat, treeless plain, shifting their herds from water to grass as the years spun out their cycles.
“It was a freer life.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until he turned and looked at me.
“There’s a small clearing down this way.” He kneed his horse forward, and I followed him, ducking under branches. Here and there I saw the first, tiniest buds of new growth on trees.
For several minutes we rode along a line of fencing, curving back toward River’s Edge, and with a start I suddenly recognized the place where Incy had found me the night I’d run out, run away. Listening, I heard the faint sound of traffic—Incy had parked his car on the road and then searched for me. I’d been huddled, almost frozen, on the ground right by that fence post. It was a painful memory—how broken I’d felt, how without hope. I’d lain there and cried in the winter night until I’d practically made myself sick.
Then Innocencio had found me and plucked me up like a ripe cherry.
“How many times have you been married?” Reyn’s quiet voice carried clearly above the sounds of hooves on leaves.
I blinked in surprise, my mind shying away from the memories of my marriages. But this was Reyn, and it would be more trouble to evade the question than to stumble down bad-memory lane. “Twenty-seven,” I said primly.
“What?” His eyes were wide and startled as he half turned to face me.
“No. Two, actually. Both disasters, in different ways.” Ugh. “How about you?” I asked, just as I realized that I really didn’t want to hear about Reyn being married.
“Three.” He shrugged. “To form alliances among the different tribes on the taiga. I either had to marry them or kill them.”
I started to laugh
and then swallowed it as I grasped that he meant it: He really would have had to kill them. Jeez. No pressure.
“The last one was in 1630 or so,” he said. “Somewhere around there.” He rubbed his chin, looking pensive. “Modern women… don’t seem to think of me as marriage material.” He looked at me and gave a short laugh, as if surprised to say something so personal. “More like a one-night stand. Or one crazy summer. More like that.”
I could understand that. “Taciturn” and “dangerous” were probably not qualities one looked for in a life partner, but I’m just guessing here. Reyn seemed self-conscious, his back straight, and I wondered what had made him reveal so much.
“Well, you can imagine how wifey I come across as,” I said, and checked off flaws on my fingers. “Not domestic, not affectionate, not nurturing, not patient. I could go on all day.”
He gave me such an odd, speculative look that I pretended to suddenly be fascinated with a squirrel that was leaping from branch to branch overhead.
“Through here,” he said. Another minute more and we passed between two large trees, like a gate, and were in the clearing. It was about thirty feet across, vaguely oval; scattered, rotting stumps told me it had once been tree-filled but then cleared for some purpose. To build a log cabin or something.
Reyn swung down smoothly and led his horse to a low-hanging branch. “Good boy, Geoffrey,” he murmured, and smoothed his hand down the horse’s velvety muzzle.
There was a strong possibility that my legs would just buckle under me if I tried to get down, but Reyn came over and took my hand.
“Come on,” he said, with no-nonsense written all over his face.
I got down and stifled a shriek as my muscles straightened out again. “Why did I do this? Tomorrow I won’t be able to walk.”