Widdershins (72 page)

“Thank you,” he said. “I’d appreciate that.”

Ayabe pointed a finger at Jack.

“You’d better have a brother,” he said.

Then he led Walker away, and the pair of them were gone.

“What was that about?” Joe asked.

“Long story. The short version is my brother Jim’s left me holding the short end of the stick again.”

“You should let him take your place the next time Zella’s old man comes looking for you.”

Jack smiled. “Yeah, my mother’d really like that. You know how she is about Jimmy.”

Joe nodded. Jack’s mother doted on his brother. It was that old “the kid could do no wrong,” even when the proof was staring her in the face. He supposed there were worse things than loyalty, even when it was misguided.

“I have to see about this council,” Raven said.

“I won’t be coming,” Joe told him before there could be any talk of him showing up as a witness. “I’ve had my fill of this business.”

Raven smiled. “I think we’ll manage without you.”

Before he could step away as the cerva had, Grey moved toward him.

“I’d like to come with you,” he said. “If it’s okay. That old history between Odawa and me still needs to be resolved.”

Raven nodded and then the two of them were gone, as well.

“Well, that’s that,” Jack said. “But tell me. Am I the only one who thinks we shouldn’t have to go through this kind of crap in the first place?”

Cassie smiled. “If that were the case, the two of you wouldn’t be who you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Let me put it another way,” she said. “You’d die of boredom.”

“Right now, I’ll take a little boredom,” Jack said. “Hell, I’ll take a lot.”

Joe glanced at where the humans still stood in a cluster together. Hearing everything, understanding maybe a third of it, just wanting to go home and get back to their lives.

“We should get them home,” he said.

Cassie nodded.

“What about that sister of yours?” Jack asked. “Aren’t we going to look for her now?”

Joe couldn’t believe that he’d let that slide. That’s what happened when you died and then got brought back to life again. You lost all perspective on the things that mattered.

He lifted his head, casting for scent, though it was more Jilly’s familiar presence he sought. It was something that had nothing to do with physical senses, but he could always find it.

Except for now.

“Damn,” he said. “She’s gone again. Cassie . . . ?”

He looked at the humans, knowing they couldn’t just be left here to their own devices.

“I’ll take them back to the hotel,” Cassie said. “But you’d better be careful.”

“I’m just going to see Honey—find out what happened.”

“You want company?” Jack asked.

Joe nodded, but he glanced at Cassie. She came up to him and gave him a fierce hug.

“Just go,” she said when she stepped back. “Both of you. And—”

“We’ll be careful,” Joe promised her.

“Don’t worry,” Jack added as they stepped away out of the between. “I’ll have his back.”

“Why does that not comfort me?” Joe thought he heard Cassie mutter.

But by then they’d already left the plains behind.

Geordie

I had the mesa to myself
.

I thought the time alone would help me feel a little balanced, but it wasn’t helping at all. The problem wasn’t my being here, in the middle of nowhere and farther from home than I’d ever imagined I could be. I won’t say it wasn’t dislocating and strange, but it ran deeper than that.

The problem was inside me, and being alone just made me focus on it without distractions.

I was on my own because Jilly still wasn’t back, Honey hadn’t returned, and Lizzie and the doonie had gone to fetch my fiddle from that fog-bound seashore where he and I’d first met. When I was pulled into Jilly’s world, it had happened so quickly that I hadn’t been able to bring it with me. I didn’t even know I
was
going anywhere until I was already there. Later, when we came to the mesa, Timony hadn’t thought to bring it along with us and it wasn’t exactly a priority for me, considering I was nothing more than some changeling creature made up of seaweed and flotsam at the time.

It was a very odd feeling, when I realized that I’d left the fiddle behind. Considering how I’ve been pretty much inseparable from the instrument for as long as I can remember, you’d think it would have occurred to me much sooner, but I hadn’t even missed it.

I was that worried about Jilly.

It had taken Lizzie’s mentioning that it was too bad we didn’t have our fiddles for me to remember my own, and even then it didn’t seem nearly as important as Jilly’s continued absence.

I wasn’t going to say no when Timony offered to get it for me, but neither was I about to leave the mesa until Jilly got back. Lizzie went along to keep him company—though I’m sure it was as much from her wanting a change of scenery.

So off they went.

While they were gone, I tried to focus on my surroundings in an attempt to shut up the panicked voice of worry yammering away in the back of my head. It should have been easy. The landscape around me was stark, but incredibly beautiful. No matter where I turned, ranges of mountains lifted from each horizon, with a gorgeous light show starting up in the west as the sun began to dip below those distant peaks.

All I could do was worry.

And when I wasn’t worrying about Jilly being away for so long, I worried about what would happen when she got back.

We’d made promises to each other before she left. I know we said we had to talk, but we both knew it meant more than that. Now I couldn’t help but wonder: did we do the right thing? If it was going to work with us, wouldn’t we already have been together by now?

What if it had only been something born out of the heat of the moment? She’d thought I was dead. People say things—feel things—in times of crisis that don’t necessarily hold when the real world comes back into focus.

God knows I loved her. She was my best friend and weren’t best friends supposed to make the best couples? I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard of a pair of old folks celebrating some incredible anniversary—you know, they’ve been together for fifty years, sixty years—and when they’re asked how it lasted so long, as often as not, the answer was that they’re each other’s best friend.

So we’ve got that totally going for us.

But I’ve never been able to hold a relationship together, and neither has Jilly. So what happens if we break up? Do I lose my best friend?

I can’t imagine a life without Jilly in it.

I know we’ve drifted apart these past few years—we used to see each other every day. We did that for years.
Years.
And if for some reason we weren’t in the same city—like when I moved to L.A. with Tanya—we’d write. There’d be phone calls.

Granted, it hadn’t been quite the same since she had the accident and I got back. But the thing was, even these days, whenever we did get together, there was never any awkwardness. We’d just fall back into our old comfortable ways with each other as though nothing had ever changed.

That wasn’t any big surprise, because inside each of us, nothing had changed. We still cared for each other.

But now we were going to make a change, and the truth was, it scared the crap out of me.

I sighed and turned to look at the spot where she’d disappeared.

After awhile, I got up and wandered down the trail that Honey had taken, collecting bits of wood and lengths of dried up cactus. It was going to get dark soon and we’d probably want a fire.

I managed to kill a half-hour with that and had a good pile gathered by the time the sun went down. Then I realized I didn’t have either a lighter or matches to get a fire started. Hopefully Timony could work some of his magic.

But it wasn’t as dark as I’d expected it to be. Back home, if you were anywhere beyond the city’s light pollution, you could have trouble seeing past the length of your arm. Unless there was a moon.

There was no moon here—at least not yet—but the stars were peculiarly bright and cast a cool light by which I couldn’t have read, but I could still see well enough to get around. I could even make out the petroglyphs.

I ran my fingers along their patterns, then sat down with my back to the rocks that held them. The view was still spectacular—more so, or maybe just differently so in this eerie starlight—but all I did was stare at my shoes and start running all my worries through my head again.

I know. A pointless endeavour. But did you ever try to not think about something?

I was so caught up inside myself that I never heard Lizzie and Timony return until Lizzie spoke.

“Earth to Geordie,” she said.

I started at the sound of her voice. Then the words sank in, and I realized she must have called me a couple of times before I’d finally heard her.

“You’re back,” I said, looking up.

“And successfully, too,” she said. She held a fiddle case in either hand and lifted them to emphasize her point. “We even got food that Timony didn’t have to make.”

I dredged up a smile. “What? Somebody opened up a pretzel stand on that impossibly desolate seashore?”

“No, we went back to the hotel. I wanted to get my fiddle, too, and let the band know we were doing okay.”

There was enough light for me to see the worry crease between her eyebrows.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They weren’t there. Eddie couldn’t tell me where they’d gone except that the last time he’d seen them, they were with Cassie.”

“Then they’ll be okay,” I told her. “Cassie’d never let them get into any trouble. They’re probably out in the woods, still looking for us.”

“I guess. Eddie got weird about the rooms, so I put another night on my charge card for all three of them.”

I nodded. “That’s good. I’ll give you some money when we get back.”

“Don’t worry about it. Are you hungry?”

I wasn’t, but I knew I should eat. The way things were going, who knew what was going to happen next? Better to eat while I could to keep up my strength.

“Sure,” I said. “What have you got?”

Timony opened the paper bag he was carrying and the smell of fish and chips filled the air. He handed us each a package of them, then reached into the bag again and brought out a large Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“Lizzie said you’d like this,” he told me as he handed it over.

“You,” I told her, “are an angel.”

She smiled. “Aren’t I, just?”

Timony lit the fire I’d laid—I’ve no idea how because I wasn’t watching—and we sat around it, eating the meal they’d brought. Lizzie wanted to play some tunes then, but I begged off, telling her to go ahead. Instead, she poked at the fire with a stick and looked at me across the flames.

“I take it you’re not holding up so well,” she said.

“That’s an understatement. I can’t stop worrying about Jilly—she’s been gone so long.”

“That might not mean anything,” Timony said. “Time moves differently in different parts of the otherworld.”

“I know. But then I’m also . . .”

I hesitated a moment, but knew I had to talk to someone. It might be easier with folks I didn’t know so well.

“I’m also worried about what happens when she does get back,” I said.

Lizzie and Timony both waited for me to go on.

“It’s just we’ve been best friends forever,” I explained, “only it was always just that. Friends.”

“I have to tell you,” Lizzie said. “When you and Jilly showed up at the hotel—and doesn’t
that
feel like a million years ago?—I thought the two of you were
already
a couple. I didn’t know any different until your sister got all excited.”

“Christiana’s pretty much an ‘in the now’ person, and she tends to wear her emotions on her sleeve.”

“From the way you say it, I take it that’s not the case with the rest of your family.”

I hesitated a moment. Where did you even begin explaining Christiana?

I settled for, “She didn’t really grow up with the rest of us.”

“She’s not even . . . “ the doonie started to add, but broke off and gave me an embarrassed look. “I’m sorry,” he said

“It’s okay,” I told him. I looked to Lizzie. “What Timony started to say is that she isn’t human.”

I gave her the short explanation, the one Christiana had given me, how she was my brother Christy’s shadow: all the bits of himself that he hadn’t liked when he was six or seven that he somehow rolled up into a bundle and cast off. Except she ended up having a life of her own. Took a name that was part his and part that of a girl he’d had a crush on in grade school, and there she was. Christiana Tree. She used the surname because that’s what Christy called her for years, before she’d tell him who she really was. To him, she was Mystery. So, she liked to call herself Ms. Tree.

“If you’d tried to tell me this a few days ago,” Lizzie said, “I’d have thought you were nuts. But now it almost doesn’t seem weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So, do we all have these shadows?”

“Fairy don’t,” Timony put in.

“Well, you’d know,” I said. “As for the rest of us .. . I guess. But I don’t think it’s the same for most people. I’d say you have to be pretty intense to start off. Christy certainly fit that bill. He was a bad-tempered little kid, but one day he just changed—like someone had thrown a switch inside him. He didn’t suddenly start liking our parents, but he didn’t bother battling them anymore. He just kind of shut himself off from everybody. At least, that’s what our older brother Paddy told me.”