by Zoe Chant
A clatter of claws across the floor announced the arrival of Fabio and Vesta, who took the open door to the garage as an invitation and bounded at once to see their fallen companion.
“Stay back!” Gwen cried, bending to protect the prone cat and Robin, who was in the zone of their over-enthusiastic arrival. The pets swirled in confusion as Ansel and the rest of the household joined them.
Henrik felt a little like one of the four-footed companions, helpless and anxious. Gwen was hurting, and he could do nothing to help her or her fallen friend.
Daniella grabbed Fabio’s collar and hauled him back. Vesta dodged out of Heather’s reach and made hyper, anxious circles around them, whining piteously.
“Let me see her,” Rez said, and everyone drew away from him as he shimmered and shifted.
Henrik tried not to feel jealous, remembering his own pigeon-sized form. Rez, as a unicorn, was magnificent looking, taller at the shoulder than his key, and his mane and shining horn sizzled with power. Heather stood back, making strange gestures in the air, like she was pulling on invisible strands of thread.
Robin directed Gwen to put Socks down, frowning in concern at the black marks on Gwen’s hands, and she and Henrik stood and backed away. She leaned into him when he put his arms around her, and he could feel her anxiousness in every line of her body.
Rez lowered his golden horn with a touch more drama than Henrik suspected was strictly necessary, and even if he could not feel the magic around them, Henrik could see it now, glowing brilliantly around the unicorn. The stains on Socks seemed to writhe, like they were trying to crawl away to the edges of the cat’s fur, as the horn drew close. Then Socks, back to her normal Siamese colors, gave a jerk of outrage and leaped to all four paws, her fur fluffed up all along her back. She shrank back from the looming figure of Rez, looked around in alarm, and streaked out of the garage before Gwen could kneel down and catch her.
Vesta, unable to resist such a temptation, raced after her and Heather dropped her imaginary strings and pelted after. “Leave the kitty alone! Vesta! No!”
Robin commanded Gwen to show her hands, which she obediently did.
“Rez?”
The power the unicorn shifter washed over the dirty-looking smudges on Gwen’s hands was considerably dimmed from what he’d done with Heather’s assistance, but the darkness came off as if she were washing ink off with strong soap. She rubbed them together curiously.
Robin took to the air once they were satisfied with Gwen’s hands. “Where was the darkness?” they wanted to know, and Gwen pointed out the corner where Socks had vanished.
“Do you want me to move the car?” Ansel offered.
“That would be helpful,” Robin said.
“Should we search for Socks?” Henrik asked Gwen, while Ansel found the keys to the covered vehicle and Rez and Trey uncovered it carefully.
“She’s hiding somewhere safe and will come out for dinner, I’m sure,” Gwen said, still sounding shaky as she stood. “She’s very independent.”
Henrik wrapped his arms around her while Ansel uncovered the car and moved it from the garage with a deafening roar, and all of them stared in consternation at what was revealed.
16
Gwen clung to Henrik without thinking twice about it, trying to soak comfort from the solid mass of him as he murmured at her and stroked her hair.
As Ansel pulled the car forward out of the garage, the corner was exposed, and Gwen gasped and forgot about crying. “The bleak’s sword…” she said in horror.
The sword they had taken from the bleak almost a year ago in the terrible battle that still haunted her memory was leaning in the corner against a stack of boxes with a hodgepodge of skis and unstrung bows and odd pieces of lumber and curtain rods and sticks of plumbing pipe. It had been a featureless black sword, matte in texture and so deep that it sucked the light away. Gwen had sparred with it a little, but didn’t like the feel of it, in a purely aesthetic sense as well as a creepy suspicion that it was steeped in evil. For a while, it had hung with the other swords, but she didn’t even particularly like looking at it, so she’d found the furthest corner and simply propped it out sight with the rest of Ansel’s junk.
It wasn’t black anymore. Or at least, it wasn’t all black. It was as if the darkness had drained from it, inch by inch. The hilt was a colorless gray, the guard a touch more charcoal, and the blade was variegated from that to the original black-hole absence of light. Pooled around the base of it was a tarry-looking puddle, stretching under boxes and shelves and ponding out across the concrete floor. It looked like there was more of it than could possibly have oozed from a single blade.
“Ah,” Robin said. They landed near the edge of the pool and knelt but did not offer to touch it.
“A great evil,” Trey said gravely. “How did it come to be here?”
Gwen cleared her throat. “That would be me,” she confessed, feeling about two inches tall. “I didn’t like looking at it. But I really had no idea it would do that.”
“You couldn’t know,” Henrik said swiftly in her defense.
It was big of him to try to protect her, Gwen thought, and she shot him a grateful look. She’d never thought of herself as the kind of person who wanted protection, but Henrik’s was offered without hesitation or expectation and it somehow made her feel like she mattered, not like she was worthless for needing it.
“I also did not consider such a result,” Robin said without blame. They swirled a hand over the dark pool and the surface rippled like a twitch of skin that had been irritated. “Our magic works so oddly here.”
Ansel returned from parking the car and went to stand next to Robin. “So...how do we clean it up? I’m guessing that Lysol doesn’t make a home product for this.”
Rez, still a unicorn, pranced forward with an arched neck, lifting his knees in an exaggerated parade step.
“Show off,” Gwen muttered under her breath, and she was rewarded with a stifled laugh from Henrik at her side.
“A little room,” Trey requested, and Gwen and Henrik shuffled over to the side with Ansel while Daniella closed her eyes and began to hum.
Gwen was not sure she would ever get used to their shifting. It was like Trey wrinkled in place, and then blurred, and then there was a dragon in the garage. He was a great, green, jewel-scaled dragon with wings that would fill the space if they weren’t folded tight against his back, and he slithered forward with as much drama and preening as Rez had, his long neck curved proudly.
Gwen found that her hand was in Henrik’s where they were crowded back together and it felt perfectly right. She’d rather have her little gryphon, she thought, than either of the other, showier knights.
Rez dipped his horn towards the puddle and Gwen could swear that it growled.
The tarry substance wriggled back from him like it was alive, the surface wrinkling. Then tendrils of black abruptly shot forward, towards Rez’s feet. Daniella’s song rose in volume and Trey opened a mouth full of teeth and shot brilliant white flame that harmlessly washed over his shieldmate and drove the darkness back, the surface shimmering like hot oil.
Gwen was sure the pool screamed then, but it wasn’t exactly audible. Henrik’s hand in hers tightened.
The evil tar tried to leap to the side towards Robin, who knelt unafraid at its edge. They raised a hand and muttered and the darkness howled in outrage and streamed in the other direction.
Rez pranced to meet it, and he was glowing again, brightly blue, which made Gwen realize that Heather had returned. Vesta, squirming under one arm, hampered the motions of her hands.
Daniella’s voice was like a bell in the acoustically poor garage, and Trey reared back for another burst of his un-burning flame.
The blackness sizzled at the edges and retreated, making several feints in all directions before it crawled, snarling, back up into the sword as Rez and Trey advanced on it.
Then it was gone, and the sword was as black as it had been when Gwen tos
sed it in the corner, silent and sullen. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
Beside her, Henrik released her hand as if he’d only just realized he was holding it and Gwen felt bereft. She dared a swift glance at him and her heart squeezed at the sight of his miserable expression.
“Is it safe to touch?” Ansel wanted to know. “How about those boxes?”
Rez ran his horn over the tainted storage containers, but Gwen thought it was only a precaution; the blackness seemed to have retreated entirely.
The knights shifted back into their human forms and returned to their keys. Heather put Vesta on the floor again and the tiny dog raced around the garage several times until she crashed into Daniella’s legs and finally sat down to gnaw on her own tail anxiously.
Robin flew to the black sword and gave it a thoughtful touch. Gwen shivered to remember the feel of it in her hands. If it had done that while she was sparring with it...or when they were fighting the bleak at the turn of the year. She rubbed her hands together and wished she was still holding onto Henrik.
She felt a curious draft of air at her side and turned to find that Henrik had left through the open garage door and was walking down the long driveway towards the road. The others were all gathered around Robin, poking at the boxes and speculating about the magic.
She chewed on her lip for a moment, then turned to follow him. She glanced once behind her, and only Ansel seemed to be watching her go. The rest were too busy to notice.
17
Henrik turned a random direction when he reached the road, not sure where he was going, not sure if he cared.
He wasn’t surprised to hear quiet footsteps behind him, and he was less surprised when Gwen fell into step beside him. They walked in silence for a time.
There was slushy snow in some of the shaded places, but the sidewalks were otherwise bare. Houses were spaced at generous distances, with big backyards just visible through fences. Front yards seemed to be in winter mode, dead plants were pruned back in decorative beds, bushes and trees were bare. The grass that showed was brown and dry looking.
Henrik had seen photographs and television of how such places would look in summer. His head still swam with all the new terminology: lawns and suburbs and asphalt and bicycles. Everything was wonderful and fascinating...and overwhelming.
It was almost a relief to see that even here, there were seasons, and periods of rest.
“You saved my cat,” Gwen said at last, when they had walked past a half dozen houses.
She was trying to make him feel better.
When Henrik could think of nothing to say in return, she went on, speaking quickly. “She won’t be grateful, I’m afraid. She’s kind of a snot that way. But I appreciate it. A lot. Cats are just like that, don’t take it personally.”
Henrik was still unhelpfully quiet, letting Gwen flounder on.
“I don’t want you to feel bad,” she said to her feet. “Just because they have better keys.”
Henrik came to a stop. “Better keys?” he said in astonishment. She thought that the other keys were somehow better? Better than her indomitable will and her warrior reflexes? Better than her quick wit and her strong, lithe body? Better in any way that he could imagine?
Gwen took several steps before she realized that he wasn’t beside her, then paused and turned back.
“Heather said that the bleak could choose someone, that they could link with any key that was willing. Can...could you choose someone else, do you think? If they were willing?”
The very idea of it made something freeze in Henrik’s chest. “You would want me to?”
“No!” she cried. Then, more quietly. “No. But…”
Henrik stared at Gwen, realizing that his own feeling of inadequacy had been badly conveyed as something that Gwen might take as fault. Her fault. His fumbling courtship, his confusion with her world and her customs, she’d read these as reluctance.
She chewed viciously on her lower lip, and Henrik thought he knew a better use for it. “Gwen,” he said firmly. “I am very…” He had to pause, searching through an inadequate vocabulary to express himself.
“Fond of me?” Gwen suggested wryly. “Look, you don’t have to worry about my feelings. This is bigger than either of us. The end of the world is at stake. If I can’t be your key...if I can’t…”
“I am more than fond of you,” Henrik said, closing the space between them.
When she would have spoken, in protest, perhaps, or to make a joke and flee, he put a finger on her ill-used lip. “You are my key,” he said confidently. “You are my one. I could imagine no one more fitted to my every desire, my every dream. I could not replace you if I wanted to, and Gwen, I do not wish to. I love you. I love your wit and your eyes and your very unfriendly cat and your world, because you love it. I love your strength and your cleverness. You are my key,” he repeated.
And it was very natural to at last bend down and put his mouth where his finger had been to kiss her.
Gwen gave a whimper and twined her arms up around his neck as she kissed him passionately back.
They might have done much more, or at least much longer, if a large, loud vehicle had not turned at the corner and pulled up across the strip of grass from the sidewalk.
Henrik reluctantly let go of Gwen and she seemed just as reluctant.
“Sorry to bother you,” a man’s voice called from the boxy conveyance. “I’ve got reports of an aggressive black dog in this neighborhood, have you seen one?” There was an official-looking logo on the side of the car-thing, and the words there read: Wimberlette Animal Control.
“No, sorry,” Gwen called brightly back.
The man jotted a note down on a clipboard. “Thanks. Call it in if you see it, I guess it’s been threatening local cats.”
That got their undivided attention. “I’ll keep mine in,” Gwen promised. “And call if I see any stray dogs.”
“Appreciated.” The man made his machine emit a grinding noise and guided it slowly away down the road as he peered into bushes and down alleys.
There was no retrieving their previous moment in the choking wake of the vehicle’s smog. Not now that Henrik could feel the worry for her cat weighing on her mind.
“I should warn the others not to let Socks out,” she said, confirming his suspicion. “She’s ungrateful, but she doesn’t deserve to get eaten.”
Henrik agreed with her, and they hurried back the way they’d come.
The garage door, out of view of the house, was still wide open, despite the chill, and they went in that way and closed it behind them. Gwen looked around anxiously in the low, hidden places that Socks liked to lurk. “Hey, kitty,” she called. “Socks? Let’s try treats in the kitchen.”
Neither of them spoke of the kiss that they’d shared, but Henrik was thinking about it, keenly. It was impossible to watch her bend down to look behind the bench in the practice area and not want her perfect, curvy little body. The feeling of her silky hair in his fingers still seemed to burn there.
The others were all in the living area and there was no way to sneak in from the garage without catching their attention. At first, Henrik thought that the buzz of excitement he sensed was just his own reaction to Gwen, but then he realized that their body language was full of relief and celebration.
Abruptly, he remembered. “Robin, you said you found Tadra’s key!”
Gwen, on her way through to the kitchen, almost tripped over Fabio, who stood up exactly as she would have stepped over him. “That’s amazing,” she said genuinely as she shoved the hound from her path with a knee. “Where is she? Er, he?”
There was a tablet showing what appeared to be a map on the coffee table that they were clustered around. “A wondrous land called Ecuador!” Trey explained, pointing at the green and blue shapes.
“It is a lengthy distance,” Robin said thoughtfully. They were standing on the coffee table frowning down at the device with their arms crossed. Their wings
were folded at their back and Henrik wondered if they weren’t unusually tense. “I was barely able to dowse them, and their details are...confused. I should be able to make it there without trouble, but I will need to rest a short time before I can return with them.”
“You can’t miss Thanksgiving!” Heather protested. “We’re doing all the works!”
Robin looked gratified. “I hope to be back in time to eat myself insensible according to your peculiar customs,” they chuckled. “It would be difficult for me to take a cellphone of my own, but they have robust communications in Ecuador and I should be able to find a phone that I can use if I can’t manage to scry or make a portal. If I’ve overestimated my abilities, we can even figure out an alternate method of transport back.”
“I’ve got airline miles,” Ansel offered, “but I don’t know if they’ll get you from Ecuador.”
Robin gave him a grateful smile.
“Would they be able to travel as a pet?” Heather wanted to know. “They probably wouldn’t need a full seat.”
Trey, standing closest, gave Ansel a punch in the arm that rocked him. “Your generosity has been beyond that we could ask for.”
“What are airline miles?” Rez wanted to know.
Henrik was also curious about airline miles (were they a local unit of measure?), but Gwen had gone into the kitchen for treats, still concerned with her feline’s well-being. Henrik followed her.
“I’m excited to meet Tadra’s key,” she said brightly, kneeling to open the cabinet under the counter where the cat’s treats were stored. “And Tadra, for that matter. Here’s hoping that we can turn up her ornament faster than we found yours.” She laughed dryly. “It’s so funny that you were just a few blocks away, that whole time. I mean, what are the chances?”
Socks was, unsurprisingly, not in the kitchen, and did not come running when Gwen shook the little can.
Gwen wandered back out into the common area, Henrik trailing after.
