Tempest’s Legacy (14 page)

Capitola nodded fiercely at her father’s words, then nodded at me. Again, I felt a wave of confidence shoot through me. We
would
find out who did this and we
would
bring them to justice.

Now if only they would fucking feed me
, my stomach piped up, just as Terk popped in, right in front of us. He was wearing a tiny chef’s hat and apron, and he was carrying a little wooden rolling pin. I giggled at the sight.

Terk offered me one of his six little hands, while prodding at the barghest’s knee with his rolling pin. I laughed,
taking the tiny hand in mine. Just like that, I heard a tremendous cracking noise, everything went black, then we
popped
the short distance into the kitchen. My head swam as I reeled, only to be caught by cool, dark hands.

“Little brownie,” Moo chastised, “stop apparating people without warning. Are you all right, Jane?”

Moo’s beautiful dark eyes met mine, and I saw concern behind her Alfar calm. I thought of her long life and wondered.

What an incredible, dreadful story she must have
, I thought as my world slowly stopped spinning.

“Yes, thanks,” I said after another few seconds. “That was… intense.”

“The first time he apparated Moo she puked all over herself. It was
so
gross,” Shar said as she plopped down at the round kitchen table that had been extended to fit us all.

I took a seat beside the succubus-halfling, and Moo sat to my right, with Julian next to the Alfar-halfling. Cappie sat next to Julian, scrunching his shoulders affectionately in her hands before sitting down, with Anyan next to her. Carl placed a lovely-looking salad and a cutting board that held two warmed loaves of soda bread in the middle of the table, and was about to sit down next to Anyan when he snapped his fingers and headed back into the kitchen.

Please tell me there’s butter and honey
, my stomach prayed as I eyed the soda bread covetously, just as Carl appeared with a dish of butter and a plastic teddy bear full of honey.

Score!

A moment later, Paige walked over and placed a
bubbling Pyrex dish full of shepherd’s pie on the trivet that sat in the center of the table.

She took a seat next to her husband, placing her napkin in her lap. She touched his hand gently with her own and gave him a look of such tender affection, I felt my own heart flutter in response.

I thought of my own father and mother, and everything they’d had for such a brief moment in time. And I thought about how any chance for their reunion was over now.

My mother was dead.

But I was alive, and these kind people had invited me into their home. They’d comforted me and prepared a delicious meal.

So I forced down my emotions, and when Shar nudged me with the salad bowl I held it while she filled her own plate, then passed it to to my right so Moo could do the same.

I’d get through dinner. I could figure out how to get through the rest of my life sometime after dessert.

“Will you be totally offended if I undo my pants?”

Anyan laughed. “Nope, have at it, Jane. With the way you ate, I’m surprised you didn’t just bust out of them at the table.”

We were driving back to the hotel, just the barghest and me. Julian had stayed behind with the girls. If I hadn’t known his sexual preferences, I’d have high-fived him. As it was, I didn’t know what scheme he was cooking up, but I sincerely hoped it was a good one. In the meantime, I might have felt a bit squishy on the inside about being alone with Anyan, but my insides were too full of shepherd’s pie to go squishy at anything, unfortunately.

“Hardy har. You’re hilarious, Anyan Barghest. Wait a minute,” I said, putting on a speculative face. “There’s another film I’ve seen that talks about people like you… Now what was it… There was a man, who was also a dog… I believe they called him a Mog… Ahhh, yes,
Space-balls
! You’re a Mog! Are you related to Barf? I do see the resemblance.”

“Once again, your grasp of classic cinema floors me, Jane.”

“You’re just jealous, you Mog. You wish you could have a giant fire hydrant all to yourself, just like Barf…”

“And the ejector seat is right around here somewhere,” the barghest replied, reaching for the buttons on the dashboard. I giggled.

“Seriously, though. Thanks for inviting me to Carl and Paige’s. They’re amazing.”

“Yeah, they’re a great couple.”

“How long have they been together?”

“Carl met Paige when she was twenty-two. They’ve been together ever since.”

“Wow. When’d they have Capitola?”

“Cappie just turned thirty-five, and they had her about five years after they got together.”

“Well, they’re a stunning family.”

“Yeah, Carl and Paige are totally dedicated to one another.”

Anyan’s voice almost sounded sad when he said that, and I was confused. “Is that a bad thing?” I asked. The barghest only frowned.

Then it hit me.

“He’s cut himself off from his power, hasn’t he?” It made sense. The fact that Carl looked older than most
supes, the way I hadn’t felt him use one iota of power the entire night. “That’s why the brownie’s there. Terk protects the two of them because Carl’s stopped using his magic.”

Anyan nodded. “He did it right before they had Cappie. He cut himself off so they could get pregnant, and then never started again. He wants to die with his wife.”

“Wow,” was all I could say.

“Yup.”

“That’s intense.”

“Yup.”

“It must be really hard not to use your powers, ever, at all. What is Carl, anyway?”

“Nahual.”

“How old is he?”

“A few hundred years. About 225, I think.”

“So he’s old-ish?”

“Yeah.”

“But still. To choose to die with someone…”

Anyan stayed silent.

“That must be hard for you, as his friend.”

Anyan shrugged. The barghest shrugged a lot.

“It’s his choice, Jane. And I care for Paige, as well.”

“But still…”

Anyan smiled a sad smile. “But still, it is difficult to see him age.”

We sat in silence for a while.

“I’m surprised you think Carl’s choice is so radical, after how you reacted to losing Jason,” Anyan said eventually and very carefully.

I thought about that. There was no point in trying to downplay my rather dramatic actions after Jason’s death.
Anyan, after all, had visited me in the hospital. He’d seen me strung out and tied up and bearing the bruises and stitches of all my various suicide attempts.

“I was crazy, first of all,” I replied. Anyan frowned, but I didn’t let him interrupt. “Seriously, Anyan, I was
crazy
. I think Jason’s death was like a dam breaking. His death was bad enough, but Jason had helped me hold everything else together. My feelings for my mom, and about my dad’s illness, and always feeling so out of place, and… everything else. He wasn’t just my friend or my lover, he was like my Prozac. Without him I just… fell.

“So the good thing about everything that’s happened,” I continued, trying to be practical Jane. She was much more fun than “drown yourself in the toilet” Jane. “The good thing is that in spite of everything that’s happened, recently, I haven’t flipped my biscuit. I mean, I did beat up you and Ryu.” The barghest grunted his agreement, causing my lips to quirk up in a smile. “But I didn’t go totally gaga. So that’s good.”

Anyan smiled at me, the streetlights letting me see his strong, crooked profile in detail. His face had so much character that I could watch him watching other things for hours.

“You have been remarkably non-gaga, Jane,” he rumbled eventually. “You have so much strength, you should give yourself more credit.”

I snorted. “Strength is what Carl’s doing. I reacted. He’s making a choice: this big, difficult, all-consuming choice that affects every aspect of his life. That’s strength.”

Anyan didn’t reply for a bit. And when he did, his always rough voice sounded rougher.

“No, that’s what love does. Some of us, it drops from a great height. The rest of us, it merely crushes.”

And with that, he was silent.

I sat there, the admittedly rather-beer-greased wheels of my mind spinning.

What the hell happened to Anyan?
I wondered.
And what does he have against love?

And why do I suddenly want another drink?

I was pondering those mysteries when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked to see who was calling. It was Amy, our local nahual waitress.

“Hey, Amy,” I said, but I was cut off before I could ask her anything else.

“Jane? Iris is missing.”

“What?” I said, sitting up in my seat as a cold blast filtered through my system.

“Iris is missing. She hasn’t been answering her phone for a few days, and so I went out to her apartment. It’s been broken into, and there’s been a fight. And she’s gone.”

“Oh my gods…”

“Can you come home now? Bring Ryu and Anyan?”

“Of course. We’ll come as soon as possible.”

“Good. Jane, I’m so scared…”

“We’ll be there soon. Go to my place. Stay with Nell and my dad.”

“I will. Get here quickly, please.”

“We will. Bye.”

I closed my phone, knowing that Anyan had heard every word with his sharp hearing. His face, when I turned to him, was dark with rage.

I started to shake as I sat there clutching my phone.
Anyan’s only response was to put one big hand on the back of my neck and pull me closer. I cuddled against his solid bulk, unable to comprehend the fact that Iris was missing.

All I could feel was terror.

I
ris’s usually neat, cozy apartment was a shambles. The furniture was overturned, the upholstery shredded. Mage balls had scorched the creamy walls, blackening her large, framed prints of somnolent Pre-Raphaelite women. Dishes had been smashed, trinkets crushed, and houseplants overturned.

I’d seen such wanton destruction only once before: at Edie’s place in Boston. The monsters responsible for the violence done to both the apartment and, later, to the women were Jarl’s lackeys: Graeme, the rapist-incubus; and Fugwat, the spriggan.

Anyan and Ryu were carefully picking over the evidence. Ryu seemed to be cataloging things and making little notations in the small moleskin notebook he carried everywhere. Anyan, however, was employing his long, crooked nose. His snuffling was the only sound to be heard in the silent apartment, although I was trapped in the cacophony created by my racing heart and the sound
of the blood it sent whizzing through my system and beating against my eardrums.

“This is entirely different from the other kidnappings,” Ryu noted eventually, half to himself.

The barghest snuffled into a corner, grunted either at what he’d smelled or at the baobhan sith, then snuffled again.

“The other women were all taken without a struggle. Either off the street or from work. Very few were taken from their homes, and when they were, there was no sign of forced entry or a fight.”

My heart beat more frenetically as I came to understand what people meant when they said someone’s “blood was boiling.” Because that’s what I felt at that moment. Like my blood was simmering through my system, faster and faster, ready to blow out my ears and eyeballs and eventually out the top of my head.

“Jane, you all right?” Ryu asked.

“I’m fine, Ryu. It’s Iris who’s missing.”

Ryu frowned at me, walking over to where I stood, fists clenched.

“Jane, it’s going to be all right. We’ll get Iris back.”

“I know we will. And then I am going to neuter Jarl. I’ll do it with a spoon. Or dental floss. Something that will make it a slow, tedious process. Maybe chopsticks…”

Ryu blinked at me. “Um, Jane…”

“What, Ryu?” I demanded, rounding on my former lover. “Please don’t start the bit about Jarl’s possible innocence again. Taking Iris was done to
provoke
us. You said it yourselves: They didn’t take her quietly and carefully like they did the other women because they
want
us to know how powerful they are. They killed my mother, but
that wasn’t enough. Now they’re going after everyone I care about.”