“Okay, first, it’s a nursing home, not a prison. And second, you are not supposed to steal mortals. Third, and most important of all, you have no right taking this nice old lady from the people who care for her. What if she needs special medicines? Or stuff like adult diapers.” I gave the little old woman a twisted smile. “Sorry, don’t mean to imply you need then. For all I know, your bladder is stronger than my mothers’ is.”
“It’s not,” Mom said with a wry look. “We thought of that, naturally, Gwenny. We’re not monsters, you know. We brought all of her medicines, and bought her a jumbo pack of bladder pants, as well as a pair of really warm wool socks in case her feet get cold at night like Alice’s do.”
“Always had poor circulation,” Mom Two said with a nod. “Got that from my father. He was a mage. Mages are notorious for their cold feet.”
“Regardless,” I said, attempting to keep the conversation from wandering, which I knew full well it would do if I didn’t keep the strictest control over it. “The fact remains that you stole a mortal woman. You can’t keep her, Moms. You have to take her back.”
“We will naturally take the very best care of her—” Mom Two started to say, but I cut her off with a sharp gesture. Mrs. Vanilla made eeping little noises of distress, her hands fluttering like the wings of tiny little doves.
“She is not a pet! She’s a person, a mortal, an innocent woman who needs the care of the people who are paid to take care of her.”
“Pah,” Mom Two said, while my mother added, “We don’t want money to take care of her. We will do it because she is our student, and is in need of help, and the god and goddess have charged us to take care of others whenever possible.”
I took a deep breath. “I know full well what the Wiccan creed is, so don’t try to blow smoke up my ass.”
“Gwen!” my mother said, waving a hand at the old woman. “Not in front of Mrs. Vanilla!”
I glanced at her. She had stopped squeaking, but her hands were still flittering a few inches off her lap, almost as if she was trying to use sign language. “Sorry, ma’am. Mother, might I have a word with you?”
“What do you need?” Mom Two asked the old lady, bending over her to bellow. “Do you need to use the toilet again? No? Paper? You want paper?”
“Gwenny, I think you’re being very closed minded about this whole thing—” my mother started to say when I pulled her a few yards away.
Mom Two was digging through the messenger bag she always had strapped across her torso, pulling out a tattered notebook with pen attached by means of a grubby bit of string. She gave that to Mrs. Vanilla.
“I am through explaining why you can’t kidnap a mortal and keep her. What I need from you and Mom Two is your plan on how to return her. She doesn’t look like the sort of woman who remembers much, so we’ll have to trust that once you get her back, she won’t file a charge with the police. But the fact remains that she has to go back.”
“We can’t take her back,” Mom Two said, moving over to stand with us. The old lady was busily drawing on the notebook, which I gathered was her thing to do in spare moments of time.
“If you’re worried about that video of you and Mom taking Mrs. Vanilla, then you could throw a glamour or something on yourself so that the mortals wouldn’t recognize it was you bringing her back.”
She raised one eyebrow. “I’m surprised to hear you suggest we do something so illegal as to use magic to fool a mortal being, Gwen.”
“Balanced against abduction? Yeah, not such a big worry, especially when it’s done in order to return the old biddy.”
My mother whapped me on the arm. “It’s not nice to refer to the elderly by that term.”
“Kidnapping isn’t nice, either.” I took a deep breath, wondered if I’d be able to change my ticket for one the following day, and said, “Okay, here’s the deal: You guys clearly don’t want to take her back. Yes, I know, you rescued her. That’s not the point. She has to go back to her home, and since you won’t take her, I will. Keys.” I held out my hand.
Mom Two looked mulish for a moment, but dug into her pocket and pulled out a set of car keys. “I do this under protest, Gwen.”
“Duly recorded. Where’d you leave the car?”
She described the parking lot where she had taken the car after dropping off Mom and Mrs. Vanilla at the entrance to the park.
“All righty. I’ll bring the car around to the disabled people’s entrance and will meet you there to pick her up. Once I have her back at her place, I’ll come back for you two. We’ll have to stop by the train station for the luggage I left there, but that shouldn’t take long.”
“And then?” Mom asked, sniffing like I’d said something mean to her.
“And then we’ll find somewhere safe to park both of you while the dust settles.”
“Where, exactly, would that be? Mom Two asked. “We can’t go home, not without the mortal police seeing us. And don’t say that we should wear a glamour for however many months or years it will take the police to forget about us.” She gestured toward my mother. “Mags dislikes glamours. She couldn’t tolerate one for longer than a few hours.”
I slapped my hands on my legs, frustrated, but aware that I owed them some sort of an answer. “Well . . . maybe you could go away. Go to the U.S. with me?”
“We don’t have passports. The authorities want passports nowadays. You remember the trouble we had getting you one?”
“Yes, well, the people at the passport office just don’t expect to see people born in 1888 needing a passport. Besides, we ended up getting me a fake one. We could just do the same for you two.”
“And where are we to stay until that is ready? It took you four months to get one made that would pass scrutiny by mortal security personages,” Mom Two asked.
She had me there. I racked my brain for somewhere that they could lie low, somewhere they would be safe from all contact with the mortal world. “Well . . . I don’t know, exactly.” I bit my lip and tried to think of all the places I’d ever been. I said, with an ironic little laugh that was to come back and haunt me later, “What we need is a place like Anwyn. You could stay there and the mortals couldn’t touch you. I don’t think that even the Watch has jurisdiction there. It would be ideal, except, of course, that you’d have to be dead to go there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom snorted, giving Mrs. Vanilla’s arm a reassuring pat when the old lady started squeaking and drawing sharp little lines on her tablet of paper. “We wouldn’t go to Anwyn. It’s a Welsh afterlife.”
“Mom, you are Welsh, just like me.”
“I’m also a Wiccan, and since your other mother wouldn’t be eligible to rest in Anwyn, not being Welsh by birth, I certainly wouldn’t go there without her. When our time comes to depart for the next stage of our lives, we shall go to Summerland.”
I eyed her, thinking hard. “Can you . . . this is crazy, I know, but needs must and all that . . . can you get into Summerland without being dead?”
“Of course,” she said, murmuring softly to Mrs. Vanilla. “So long as you know where the entrance is, you can enter its domain. Mind, you can’t stay without permission of the lord and lady, but assuming you have that, it’s an easy thing to do.”
“Then that’s our answer!” I said, feeling as if a great weight had been ripped from my shoulders. “You and Mom Two can go to Summerland. You’ll like it there, I’m sure, and I can’t imagine why the lord and lady wouldn’t let you stay there. You’re both super Wiccans.”
“They might grant us permission, but we could never do that,” Mom Two said, and my mother nodded her agreement.
“Why not?”
“Have you not listened to any of our teachings? Summerland is a place of great importance, Gwen. It is a holy place, if you will, one sacred to us. We do not tread its green fields and fertile pastures unless we have been sent
there.”
“But—”
“No,” Mom Two said firmly, giving me a sharp nod that let me know she was done discussing the subject. “We will not go.”
“Well, hell!” I said, doing some more of that hand-thigh slapping thing that I had no doubt looked juvenile, but did so much to release unpleasant emotions. “You can’t go to Anwyn, you won’t go to Summerland . . . where else can you go that would put you out of reach of both the mortal and immortal worlds?”
“We could go to Anwyn if we wanted,” Mom said complacently, glancing in surprise at Mrs. Vanilla when she began to squeak again, shoving the notebook toward me. “What is it you want Gwenny to see, dear? Your lovely drawing?”
“Mom, you just got done saying you couldn’t go to Anwyn because Mom Two isn’t Welsh—”
“That has nothing to do with it,” Mom Two interrupted, leaning forward to see the paper. “We could get in if we wanted.”
“But you were born in Scotland.”
“Location of birth has nothing to do with whether or not Arwyn will allow you to stay in Anwyn.”
“Who’s Arwyn?”
“The king of Anwyn, of course. That’s very interesting, Mrs. Vanilla.”
My mind was a whirl of frustration and worry. “So, if we found the entrance to Anwyn, you’re saying that you would go there?”
Mom Two looked thoughtful for a moment or two, then raised her eyebrows at my mother. “I would have no objection to visiting there, assuming we would be left to our own devices. Mags?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to spend much time there, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt us to drop in and see it. I have one or two friends who might still be there, and it’s always pleasant to renew friendships.”
I got all hopeful for about five seconds, then remembered the snag. “We don’t know where the entrance to Anwyn is. Unless one of you knows how to find it?”
“No, but—”
I mused aloud, worrying the problem like a terrier with a chewy toy. “I didn’t see a door or anything when I was there, and of course, I died to get there, so it’s not like I just walked through an entrance. Damn. It was such a good idea, too.”
“Gwenny, you did not die—” my mother started to say at the same time Mom Two said, “I think you should look at Mrs. Vanilla’s drawing.”
The first of the fireworks went off, dragging my attention from the offered bit of paper to the sky, then down to my watch. We were quickly running out of time. The longer it took me to get the old lady back to her home, the harder it would be for me to explain how I’d found her.
“Later. I’ve got to get moving right now. Stay here, and don’t get into trouble,” I said, grabbing my purse in preparation for heading off to the car park. “I’ll meet you in about ten minutes at the entrance.”
Mom Two straightened up to her full height (about an inch taller than me), and said with injured dignity, “We are not children, Gwenhwyfar. You do not need to speak to us as if we are. Mags, I believe that in view of the evening’s events, we deserve to treat ourselves with an ice cream. You stay here with Mrs. Vanilla, and I’ll fetch us all a cone.”
I bit back the urge to tell them that I’d treat them like adults when they stopped indulging in the most hare-brained (and illegal) plans that threatened to get them banished to the Akasha, or worse, but as I turned around and took a step, I bumped into a large body that had his back to me.
“Woops. Sorry,” I started to apologize to the man, but stopped when he turned to face me. “Oh, it’s . . . uh . . .”
“You!” he said, a smile spreading over his face, going so far as to touch his eyes. Which, as I remembered, were a remarkably clear shade of topaz blue. “Gwen Byron, right? What a surprise meeting you here. A pleasant surprise.”
I stared at him for a few seconds. He was the man I’d met two days before, the one who had wrestled to the ground—and later arrested—the lawyer who had threatened my mother, and incidentally tried to throw me over the edge of a cliff to certain death. My mind, annoyingly, went blank at the partial use of my name, but luckily, before I corrected him, I remembered that in my attempt to hide my relationship with my mom, I had given him only my first and middle names.
“Uh . . .” I felt utterly and completely stupid standing there staring at him. I didn’t know his name, but the one thing I knew for certain now filled me with a spike of pure, adrenaline-fueled fear: He was with the Watch, and my mother was not ten feet behind me, chatting pleasantly to her kidnap victim.
Without thinking of the wisdom of my act, I grabbed his arm and walked past him, forcing him to turn so that his back was to Mom. “Hi!” I tried to think of something to say that wasn’t a shriek of fear, but my brain didn’t appear to be up to the task of witty banter in the face of danger. “I . . . I don’t think I ever got your name.”
“Gregory Faa.” He made a bow, an old fashioned move that was simply elegant on him. But that was no surprise; everything about him was elegant, from dark blond hair that swept back off his forehead to a mobile, sensitive mouth and firm chin, right down to a sapphire blue raw silk shirt and what had to be Italian shoes. He had said something at our only meeting about being born in Romania, which went a long way to explain the polished manners. “I had no idea you were still in the area. But then, I had no idea why you ran away from me so quickly the other day.”
I gave him what I hoped was a placid smile, but which I fear turned out to be more of a grimace, and endeavored not to look over his shoulder at the bench where my mother and Mrs. Vanilla sat. Watch members were notoriously sharp and intelligent, and I was certain that he would notice if I kept looking over his shoulder at the bench.
“I was . . . um . . .”
I focused instead on his chin, but that just filled my mind with wholly inappropriate thoughts about biting it, so instead I stared at his left earlobe. An earlobe would be safe to look at. “I was . . . er . . .”
He wore a sapphire stud earring. It glittered darkly in the torchlight, contrasting pleasantly with the hair that curled around the back of his ear. I had the worst urge to run my fingers through his hair, wondering if it was as silky as it looked. I shifted my gaze to his cheek. The faintest hint of golden stubble was visible in the warm light of the torch. “I was . . . erm . . .”
Dammit! What was wrong with me? I was no stranger to the attraction of a handsome man, but neither was I a giddy young thing who couldn’t talk to a good-looking man without wanting to bite his chin, and run my hands through his hair, and lick his mobile lips.
“Were you, now?” he asked with a little laugh that made the lines around his eyes crinkle up in a way that made my stomach go warm and happy.
“Sorry, I’m an idiot,” I finally said, my brain evidently deciding that I’d had enough time to make a fool out of myself. “Nice to meet you, Gregory. Or do you prefer Greg? Or . . . Rory? That sounds kind of like a long shot, nickname-wise, but sometimes people go that way.”
I was babbling, pure and simple, and for that, I blamed him. If he didn’t look so very . . . golden . . . in the torchlight, I could concentrate and behave in the manner of a normal human being. In desperation, I dragged my gaze away from the stubble that made my fingertips tingle with the need to touch it.
“Gregory is fine. Only my cousin Peter calls me Greg, and usually then it’s to tease me.”
A question rose in my mind, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t just pop out of my mouth even though this man, this golden, crinkly-eyed man was about the most dangerous person I could ever come up against. “Why would calling you Greg be considered teasing?”
“It’s the way he says it,” he answered, smiling again. “He’s around here somewhere with his wife. Perhaps I might introduce you to them.”
Great, just what I needed—a member of the Watch and his family. A little shudder went through me at the thought of what would happen if
Gregory-not-Greg were to turn around and see my mother, the very woman he had been sent out to arrest two days before.
“Sounds lovely,” I lied, and taking his arm, tugged him in the direction opposite Mom.
A look of surprise flitted across his face for a moment, but he walked next to me docilely enough.
“Are you here for the fireworks?”
“Fireworks?” I asked stupidly, my mind busy wondering how I far I could drag him away from the bench before I released him and called my mother to warn her of his presence.
He pointed upward. I looked. A burst of red and silver and green exploded overhead.
“Oh, those. Yeah. We always come to the park for the big festival.”
“We?”
He stopped.
Panic hit me. I moved forward, urging him along with me, needing to put as much space between him and my mother as was humanly possible. “Me. Not we. I meant to say me.”
“Me always come to the park for the big festival?”
“Ha ha ha ha ha!” The braying laughter was of a quality that was well over the border of merry and smack dab in the middle of deranged, but honestly, my brain refused to come up with any sort of an explanation, feeling that laughing it off was the way to go. My brain was wrong. “No, of course I meant to say that I always come to the park.”
The look he gave me was no longer one filled with amusement, and that, for some bizarre reason I didn’t even want to examine, made me sad. “I see. Would you think me boorish if I was to inquire where you’re taking me?”
“Taking you? I’m not taking you anywhere,” I said, pulling on his arm when he tried to stop again. “We’re just out for a little stroll to see the fireworks. Oh! Unless you’re here with someone. Someone female? Or . . . er . . . male?”