The Saint (40 page)

“Can you be ready in time?” Jack asked Kris when they were alone.

Silvered eyes met silvered eyes. Neither fey was afraid.

“Yes,” Kris said definitely. “Pennywyse has been very busy. Haven't you been watching the news? There is virtually no unemployment in the human urban centers of California. And there are also a lot of new jobs in the Third World.”

“I know your resources are vast, but how long can you sustain this . . . plan?”

“I don't know,” Kris admitted. “That involves calculating economic variables that are not yet seen. A lot will depend on how my various film projects do at the box office. Fortunately, most of Hollywood is onboard and willing to volunteer their time and talents for the Bishop S. Nicholas Foundation.”

“What about Washington?” Jack asked.

“We have friends even there. Not as many, but their number grows. In time we'll win them over.”

As soon as Chloe left, Adora switched directions. She really wanted something to eat. But instead of the kitchen, she came upon the men of Cadalach at a round table in one of the many rooms she had yet to explore. She felt a quick and almost enjoyable chill. These were Kris's family. The Chosen. They could be her family too, if she wanted.

“Hey, Adora!” Roman called to her. His grin was easy. “Come tell us about your encounter with the
beastie. Abrial is being stubborn and won't give up the details.”

“Well . . . what sort of details?” she asked, having no desire to relive her time in the tunnels. “I didn't see what Abrial did.”

“Oh.” The pookah sounded disappointed. “But what about before? Even before he shape-shifted, was his gaze so hot that it could spot-weld anything his breath failed at?”

“Yes.” Adora hesitated to mention that the creature had looked like the monster who'd haunted her childhood dreams. She wasn't ready to tell anyone but Kris about Old Man Fletcher.

Roman whistled. “I told you, Thomas. That would likely make him a barghest or a boggart— that's a really nasty shape-shifting goblin who can look in your mind and see what scares you most. What did you do when you saw him?”

She snorted. “I ran.”

“Popular choice.”

“A
wise
choice,” Thomas added.

“How would you deal with a boggart?” Adora asked, genuinely curious.

“Four-speed chainsaw,” Roman said promptly.

“Do they make one?” Thomas asked with interest.

“Oh, yeah. I want one for my birthday.”

“Well . . . I didn't have a chainsaw,” Adora said. “I didn't have anything, except maybe some harsh language.”

“That can be good—if they're words to spells,” Roman answered.

She shivered. No, she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

“I couldn't do anything that might affect Kris.” She shuddered again, thinking of the wildness she had seen in him. Then she admitted, “I can still feel that thing's slimy fingerprints in my head. Sometimes I look at shadows and think I see him there. He was so gross. He turned his body inside out!”

“Kinesthetic perseveration,” Thomas explained sympathetically. “Bad memory sticks around for a bit. It will fade, though. And you're being avenged—that should help. I'm bankrupting that hive even as we speak.” He pointed at the portable computer on the table and grinned. The screen was flashing, numbers scrolling by at an incredible rate.

Adora dared to tease him a bit. “Internet fraud? You look very cheerful. I'm beginning to suspect that you have a natural aptitude for thievery.”

“What gave me away?” Thomas asked with an even wider smile. His eyes were gold and very kind.

“Was it the shifty eyes? The sneaky smirk?” Roman suggested helpfully. He ducked as a computer manual sailed at his head. “It's kind of like porn, isn't it—hard to define, but you just know it when you see it.”

“Don't mind him,” Thomas said. “Roman is something of a hound, and he has no manners.”

“Actually, I'm a horse,” Roman corrected. “A river horse.”

“Hound, horse—I don't mind so long as you don't drink out of my toilet,” Adora replied calmly.

Thomas began laughing. “You've seen him at parties, huh?”

The computer manual sailed back.

“Will you join us for lunch?” Thomas asked, snagging the book out of the air. Adora didn't think she would ever get used to how quickly feys moved. “I don't know when Kris and Jack will get free, but you're welcome to eat with us.”

Kris. Her momentary lightheartedness fell away, as did her appetite. She was going to have to talk to him, tell him about what she was and why she was. They couldn't move forward until he knew the truth.

“Come on. I won't drink out of the toilet,” Roman promised. “You look pale. You should eat. Cyra will be there, too. She and Thomas are expecting a baby any day now—did you know? Maybe you and she could compare notes.”

A baby? Another one? Adora's stomach rolled over in warning.

He thinks you're pregnant,
Joy whispered.
They all know that's the Goddess's plan, and they just assume that you are.

I got that.

“Congratulations—that's wonderful news,” she managed to say. “But I'll pass on lunch. I just need some air.”

Thomas looked at her closely, his gaze suddenly probing. She knew that he was about to suggest she see Zayn.

“I'll probably see you later, though,” Adora offered. She pasted on a smile.

“Bank on it,” Roman said. “I want to take you girls riding.”

That distracted Thomas. “No way!” he said, throwing the book again. This time he threw a little harder. Roman laughed and caught it, then sent it back like a Frisbee, spinning through the air. They weren't watching as Adora backed out of the room on shaky legs.

She was back on her ledge in time to see the dawn— though this time without a scorpion; Adora checked. At first the sunlight seemed cruel, cutting open the night at the edge of the eastern sky, tearing the new wound wide. But the birth of the morning
proved to be beautiful, and the early light so healthful that she soon forgot the sky's imagined pain.

Her own overly empathetic imagination wasn't the only thing strange about the morning; the morning air was touched with an autumnal chill.

Because of what had happened with Kris—the sharing of their thoughts and perhaps even some of his goodness—a part of her childhood had been rewritten, this time in more understood terms that could be viewed safely from a new and welcome distance. It was like she had taken a long vacation— though no one would choose to spend what had felt like that eternity down in that goblin hell-hole.

Yeah, that part is good. You needed a buffer,
Joy said.

Yes
.
But even with it, anyone mentions babies and I still run away.

So, you have a few hang-ups.

A few?

She had been like the captive Gulliver, tied in place by the strings of a thousand assumptions about why her parents had done what they did. And most of them were wrong. It was strange to think, but she could probably let go of many of those unstated and unhappy beliefs that she had been carrying around as a personal ball and chain. She could—when she was ready—finally accept that she was in another world that had its own rules and logic and social culture. But she would have to accept all the way.

In other words, Miss Manners's etiquette guide can no longer be relied upon. You can probably throw out Freud and Jung too,
Joy added.

Probably.

So, go ahead. Throw out the misconceptions and look again.

I am.

Adora shook her head sadly at what she saw. Her parents had been fey—but ignorant of it. How could that be, unless they were also raised by ignorant parents? And what if her mother had been as unprepared as Adora herself was to become a mother? She had never spoken of her childhood. Perhaps her mother had never been raised to feel a sense of responsibility for another being. A baby must have terrified her.

And then, to be overwhelmed with the kinds of blinding emotion that happened between feys when they had sex . . . Well, it explained a lot.

Enough to forgive them? Enough to let the guilt go?

Maybe.

Kris and everyone at Cadalach had given her a priceless gift: understanding of her parents. Though it was still painful to think about, she felt that she could finally forgive them for their neglect, because at last she understood that they had been unwitting victims of a power of which they were not even aware. There had been no malice in what they'd done. They were not heartless. They were two people trapped in their genetic destiny without the knowledge of how to fght free—or even that they
needed
to fight free—and having now felt the blinding attraction of mated magicks that call to one another, Adora knew precisely how strong that draw was.

If her parents had felt as she herself had when she'd made love to Kris—been as afflicted with blind obsession—then she had to pity them. And also, to forgive. If they were still alive, she would call or maybe write them a note of apology for all the awful things she'd thought about them lately.

In fact . . . Adora frowned and began looking around for something to write on. She was much better at organizing her thoughts on paper, and until she wrote them down she'd continue the fruitless rumination. That was the one thing her time with the shrink had taught her.

As though something had anticipated her need, she found her notebook and a pen on the rock at her feet. A stone rested there, holding them in place.

How the hell . . . ?

it must have fallen out of my purse last time I was here,
Adora answered.

You didn't have a purse.

My pocket, then.

Joy snorted but didn't argue any more.

Adora sat down and crossed her legs as though preparing for meditation. She wrote for a long while, then she set the pen aside and closed her eyes. Though she had rarely done it before, Adora prayed to Kris's higher power that wherever her parents were, they were together and at peace, and that they would somehow know—if ever they had been aware—that she wasn't angry anymore.

A shadow passed overhead. Adora opened her eyes and looked up quickly from the letter clenched in her hand. She stared into the sky. It was an empty, painful blue. Not a single cloud marred its brilliance.

Which was how she felt inside. All her resentment was gone and she was empty, waiting for something else to fill her.

“Are you there?” she whispered, and then felt foolish. First a letter to her dead parents, and now she was talking to them.

There was a soft rumbling behind her, and then Kris appeared. She wasn't surprised. They were connected now, and he would have known some of what she was feeling.

Adora turned to smile at him, then blinked in consternation. Kris often did strange things, but she had never seen anything quite so incongruous as a man in an Armani suit carrying what he was carrying.

“I thought maybe you'd want to send that letter,” he said, offering the small flotilla of daffodil-yellow helium balloons. “I think it needs to be set free so it can do its work.”

“You think they'll get it this way?” she asked, touched by the gesture but still feeling foolish.

“Yes,” Kris said gravely. He promised, “They'll get your message if that's what you want.”

Adora nodded, believing him because she needed to believe him, and then she reached for the balloons. Kris helped her tie the strings around her letter, forming a sort of crooked net for the loose pages.

“The sky is too empty anyway. It needs some color,” she said.

Kris nodded, then released the balloons into the air. He and Adora watched until they were just a speck of gold headed eastward over the desert. It was probably psychosomatic, but Adora had to admit that she felt lighter with every minute, as though her sad memories were truly being carried away by the wind.

“I have some time now,” Kris said. “If you want to talk.”

Adora decided it really was time, and began telling Kris the details about her past. She held nothing back, as embarrassing and painful as it was to admit all that she had done and felt: Fletcher, the scorching shame, the blinding rage, the souldestroying loneliness that only Joy had broken.

Kris was silent for a long moment after she finished speaking.

“My first impulse was to preserve my dignity,” she said, when the silence grew uncomfortable. “You know, hope that you would never find out what a coward I was—and maybe still am.”

“You're speaking of that first fire? Aren't you being a little hard on yourself?” Kris asked. “You were only five, and had absolutely no example set for you. It was only natural that you would defend yourself with your magic. I would hope that given those circumstances you would do it again.”

“Really?”

“Really. You needn't worry about me. I have it under control now—thanks to you.” Kris shook his head. “I'll make you a deal. You forgive yourself for your various trespasses, and I'll stop feeling that I was weak for losing my way. We both did the best we could, given the circumstances we were in. The best anyone can do is the best they can do—we can't ask for more from ourselves or from others.”

There it was: absolution. And from the one whose understanding mattered.

You
matter
, Joy said.

Yes, but if he can see me and not condemn, then I can do that for myself.

“Yeah, I'm figuring that out,” she said to Kris. “It's just hard to tear down the childhood beliefs that wallpaper the brain.”

“Well, you're talking to me now. Some of the wallpaper must have come down. The rest will follow when it's ready.”

“Joy thought you already knew all this,” Adora admitted. “That's one reason I decided to come clean. After all, you might be thinking things are worse than they are.”