by Raquel Lyon
Chapter Twenty
SOPHIE INSISTED UPON giving Connor time to settle in before allowing Beth to work on restoring his memory, but Piper couldn’t decide whether it was to allow him to get used to his home again or because Sophie wanted to keep him all to herself.
They had spent most of their time together over the last few days, while Sophie tried to evoke some kind of recollection from him by way of stories and an old photograph album. Piper could sense Sophie’s frustration that it wasn’t working, and after a couple of days, Sophie reluctantly conceded defeat and yielded him to Beth, who was itching to get her hands on his head.
They had both joined in on Piper’s last few training sessions.
“You might learn something,” Beth had said to her.
Sadly, Beth’s attempts meant all that Piper had learned was that hypnosis would probably be a better bet, but she didn’t feel it was her place to suggest it.
So far, Beth had tried three spells and a charm. Each one got Connor more frustrated than the last.
“Anything?” Beth asked, standing with her hands on her hips after her latest attempt.
Connor’s face contorted to a grimace, his long bangs wet with sweat and stuck to his cheeks. “Let’s face it, woman,” he said. “It’s not happening. You’re gonna end up frying my brain soon.”
“I don’t understand how it can be this hard. It’s like you have a block in there.”
“Beats me how there’s much left at all, after all your meddling.”
“Don’t you think I’m just as frustrated as you are? I’m doing the best I can. It’s not as if I’m an expert on such things... although I do know someone who could be, and I might have to admit it’s time to pay her a visit.”
“Who?”
“Mathanway, of course. She was there when you died, remember?”
“Are you dumb as well as incompetent, woman? Do you think I’d be standing here like a prize turkey if I could remember?”
Beth pursed her lips. “I am not incompetent. Honestly, I don’t know why I bother if that’s all the thanks I get for trying to help.”
“Me neither,” Connor grumbled. He watched Beth stomp from the room and wiped his hair from his face. “Great. As if I need another woman mithering me. Should’ve stayed dead.”
Piper moved to stand beside him. “Beth says Mathanway’s one of the best. I’m sure it will work out in the end.”
He looked down at her with a pained expression. “Will it? You’re not the one trapped with a bunch of strangers you have nothing in common with, being experimented on every day.”
“Um...” It was clear Sophie hadn’t elaborated much with her explanation of her and Lambert’s situation, but she didn’t press the subject. “You’re back where you belong. That’s all that matters.”
He grew silent, and turned from her to scan the room. “It’s strange,” he said after a while. “This is not how I imagined home would be.”
“Did you think about it a lot?” Piper asked.
“Every day.” He wandered over to the piano and ran his hand over the lid as he stared up at the image of a howling wolf depicted in the stained-glass window above it. “But I’d pictured being part of a pack, living in the woods. Brothers to have fun with, maybe.”
“And you’re disappointed to find that, instead, you’re playing happy families with the privileged few?”
“It doesn’t feel real. When I died, everything I knew, everything I loved, was ripped from me, and the pain of the loss tore through me worse than any hellfire torment. I was hurled into the underworld screaming for the darkness to take me and erase it. I guess I got my wish. I don’t feel much of anything anymore. When the Devil took my memories along with the pain, I never thought he wouldn’t give them back. But it seems the Big Man had the last laugh and the joke’s on me, huh?”
Piper offered him a sympathetic smile, wishing she could do something to ease his misery, but her previous attempts to help had already caused enough trouble. This time she was keeping her nose well out of it. “I’m so sorry. You just need to have faith that Beth will figure something out.”
“Yeah, well, she’s pushy enough to. Can’t imagine why I wanted to come back to someone like her.”
“It wasn’t her,” Piper said.
But Connor either wasn’t listening or chose to ignore her. “I’d rather have a hundred fugamor demons pecking my eyes out than go another round with that woman.”
“You came back for Sophie.”
Her words caught his attention, and he jerked his head around. “Sophie? Why? I mean, she’s cool, and she understands me, but...”
“She loves you. And you love her. She told me.”
“Sophie?” he said, incredulously. “She’s... she’s beautiful... but married.”
“I’m not sure that mattered.”
He sat on the piano stool, linking his hands between his open knees as he bowed his head and let out a heavy sigh. “I kinda wish you hadn’t told me that.”
“Why?”
“Bit awkward.”
“Sophie hasn’t mentioned anything?”
“Nope. Not a word.”
Piper leaned her elbows back against the piano’s lid, watching Lambert setting up her next task. “It must be hard for her, being in love with someone and not being able to express it.” As she finished her sentence, Lambert glanced over to her and smiled.
“Speaking from experience?” Connor asked.
“No.” Her gaze dropped to watch her foot absent-mindedly smoothing from side to side. “I’ve never been in love.”
“Sure about that? Maybe you just don’t know it?”
“I think I’d remember.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, but you don’t remember anything. That’s different.”
“I remember what I am, the world I’m from, the past three years.”
Piper turned and folded her arms over the shiny black surface and noted that Connor had lifted the fall to expose the keys. “But nothing at all before you became a Gleaner?”
“I prefer bounty hunter. Much cooler. And no. Not really. When I think of my life, it’s like a painting that’s been left out in the rain—tiny segments left untouched by the drops, but most of it blurred together in a big, stinking smudge.” His fingers brushed over the ivories.
“Perhaps you’re remembering something now?” Piper said before jumping at the sudden sound of wood crashing down as Connor shot to his feet.
“Think again,” he said as he walked away.
Lambert was at her side in an instant. He raised a brow. “Problem?”
Piper’s eyes followed Connor until he disappeared through the doorway. Only me putting my foot in it again. “Nope,” she said, forcing a smile. “Ready when you are.”
Chapter Twenty-One
PIPER FELL ONTO HER bed with exhaustion. Lambert had been working her hard all morning, and now she felt as if she could sleep all afternoon. She deserved it, too. Almost every task he’d thrown at her she’d done to perfection, but it seemed the more accomplished she became, the more Lambert appeared to resent it. The laughter had gone from his eyes, and he’d spent most of the morning staring off into the corner of the ballroom instead of concentrating on her efforts.
He wandered over to the dressing table and stared at her father’s things. She rolled onto her side to watch him. After a moment he picked up the dagger and pressed a finger to its tip before putting it back down. Piper noticed his eyes had glazed over.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
His finger moved to run over her egg, but he remained silent.
“Lambert, talk to me.”
Still he gave no answer. He simply sniffed and wiped his nose quickly as he turned to her.
“You’re thinking about home again, aren’t you?” Piper said.
He bowed his head and gave a small nod.
“It’s okay. I know,” she said.
“That I do not belong in this world, and I hav
e to return?”
The admission of his thoughts hit Piper hard. However much she’d been trying to convince herself she wouldn’t be the one to stand in his way, she’d always hoped he would want to stay. Deep down, though—somewhere so deep she wanted it to remain buried—she knew he would leave. She had prayed that that day would be a long time in the future, and now that it was here, she knew she wasn’t ready.
“Yes, but you can’t. You said you’d be killed if you went home,” she reasoned.
“And the odds are in favour of that being so, but the fact remains, I have to go.”
“Why? Why can’t you wait?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, clearly agitated. “You know why. It is my mother—not knowing whether she is alive or dead.”
“Don’t you think I feel the same way about Dad?”
“That situation is different. Father is alive and well. You have seen the evidence of such. I, on the other hand, have not—my own flesh and blood, and yet I would not know him if I passed him in the street.”
“Is that why you touched the egg? Were you hoping to get a vision?”
“I fear his visions are for you alone.”
“Then in tomorrow’s training, we’ll find a way for you to see him. It can’t be that difficult to come up with a spell.”
He stared down at her, his expression hard. “That would not be enough to keep me here.”
Piper’s chest hitched. Evidently, neither was she. “You speak like it’s my fault.”
“That was not my intention, and if it were merely a matter of my desire to finally meet with my father, I could wait. I have already waited seventeen years. A few more months, or even years, would make no difference, but when I asked for permission to come to this world to find him, I was doing it for my mother, not for me. I only had a short trip in mind and did not foresee being absent from her side for this length of time. Whether Father is tending to her or not, she needs me too. I have to go before it is too late. I have decided the dangers are worth the risk.”
Piper’s heart beat wildly in her throat. “I understand. Honestly, I do, but please stay here. With me. Where you’re safe.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and reached for her hand, then appeared to change his mind. “Piper, we both knew this arrangement was never meant to be permanent. I agreed to train you as thanks for your freeing me, and I have kept to my word. You have progressed far, and you will fare perfectly well without me.”
“No, I won’t. I need you. What if I never see you again? I couldn’t bear that.”
“I will miss you too—you cannot know how much—but it is for the best that we part. We will meet again. I promise.”
“But I’m your sister.”
“Are you? I have been trying to find similarities in our characteristics, but I confess, I cannot. There are days when I wish we had been raised together, as siblings should be. Maybe then I would not be struggling to think of you as such.”
His words hurt. They were spoken in such an unfeeling manner, it crossed Piper’s mind how he could possibly like her at all, but she pushed the thought away. If he was trying to make her hate him to ease their parting, it wasn’t going to work. She had grown too used to his erratic temperament to let it bother her. “And how do you think you’re going to get there, huh? You can’t use that totem pole thingy in the cellar. It only transports people to different realms, not to other dimensions. That’s not allowed.” Her words flooded out on a wave of anger.
“If my assumptions are correct, there will be no need for any laws to be broken, as I will be travelling by portal.”
“What portal?”
“It has taken some time for me to draw my conclusion, but I am now of the opinion that one exists here in this town—the method by which Rixton transported me to your shop and the means by which our father travelled home. Tomorrow, I shall aim to discover if I am correct.”
Tomorrow? Panic flooded through her at the thought of losing him so suddenly. “And when were you planning to tell me that you’re leaving?”
“After asking to see the items our father left for you, once more.”
“Why?”
“I believe he included the means by which to follow him.”
Piper twisted to open her bedside drawer and reached inside. After losing Lambert’s key, and with the egg sitting on the dressing table, the envelope was all that remained. She sat up and unloaded the contents onto the bedspread.
“There’s nothing here,” she said, as if she’d thought by some miracle there would be.
Lambert pushed the bank book to the side and picked up the dry-cleaning receipt. “An unusual object to include, is it not?”
“Well... yes, but I don’t understand.”
“If you remember, we passed by this building on our way to the park.”
“And you stopped outside. Yes, I remember. You weren’t just admiring that pigeon, were you?”
He held the receipt up to the light to study it more closely. “I felt the pull of home.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did not make the connection at the time. It was not until later that I suspected.”
“So, let me get this straight. You think there’s a portal at the laundrette, and that the receipt is what... some kind of ticket?”
His eyes met hers again. “Precisely.”
“Then it’s my ticket,” she said, snatching the paper from his fingers. “Dad clearly left it for me to travel there, not you.”
Lambert frowned. “Voracity does not suit you, Sister. Have you not said, many times, how you have no wish to return home?”
“Chimmeris is not my home.”
“But it is mine, and if you will not give that to me, I shall find another way.”
Piper stared at the receipt. If Lambert’s deduction was correct, and it was indeed a ticket for her to follow her father to Chimmeris, why had his letter said he’d intended to come back? And what had made him think she would want to go there, anyway? If it wasn’t for Lambert, she wouldn’t even be considering it. And yet she was. It was obvious there was nothing she could do to stop Lambert from leaving. He was determined to go, and try as she might, she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it. What was she going to do? Pretend she’d never met him? Live at the Towers throwing fireballs every day? The Lovells were great, and she’d grown to love being part of their family, but they weren’t her family. Lambert was her family. Her father was her family, and as disgusting as the thought was, Chimmeris was in her blood.
She let out a long sigh. “Okay.”
“You will let me have it?”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
THERE WAS A FEELING in the air of something new when they left the Towers the next day, but Piper couldn’t decide whether it was a good feeling or a bad one. It was a crisp November morning, and the sun had made an unusual appearance. It glinted off the shop windows they passed on their way to the laundrette. Fosswell was bustling with early morning shoppers, and Piper smiled good morning to some of her father’s regular customers but dipped her head quickly to avoid engaging in conversation with them. It had been nice living without the whispers and stares, and the last thing she wanted was for the questions to start up again.
By the time they reached the laundrette, the daily loads of washing were already in motion, and as she stepped inside, Piper looked around the unassuming surroundings and questioned Lambert’s intuition. If there was magic here, it was well hidden.
The walls, painted in a sickly shade of blue-green, held notices barely staying in place under their edges of dried-up sticky tape, and rows of silver machines stood regimentally down each wall, their black circular eyes seemingly watching her as she stepped by. She wondered if the alleged portal was behind one of them and whether she’d have to climb inside it to travel, but quickly dismissed the idea as foolish.
Passing the sound of water sloshing against metal and the hu
m of the dryers, Piper’s feet crunched on spilt washing powder as she approached the counter at the back of the shop. Behind it was an open door. Shadows flickering against the woodwork hinted that, beyond it, someone was moving around.
She craned her neck to see if Mrs Huckabee was in the back room.
“Hello,” she shouted. “Is anybody there?” She waited a while, then leaned over the surface and called again. “Hello.”
A few seconds later the old woman hobbled into view, hunched over by the small hump to her shoulders. She was wearing a flowered overall, open at the front to reveal a blouse that was clearly a relic from the nineteen-seventies and a sensible woollen skirt. Mrs Huckabee’s hair colour always stood out from the crowd, and today’s colour of choice was lilac. Piper had never been able to decide if it was a wig, and up close, she still wasn’t sure. Clipped into the centre of her old-lady curls was an orange, artificial gerbera daisy, and she’d completed her eclectic outfit with a pair of red wellington boots.
She looked over the top of her half-moon glasses. “Hello, dearie. Your father said you might call.”
“He did?”
“Yes. Yes. Though I don’t know how you knew this month’s package arrived early.”
“Package?”
“Collects it regular as clockwork, he does, twice a year. Of course, that was before...” Her voice trailed off as she turned. “You just wait right there. I’ll fetch it. Won’t be a minute.”
Piper looked up at Lambert. “Do you think she has me mixed up with somebody else?”
He shrugged. “It is possible, but not probable. It seems she is well acquainted with our father.”
Mrs Huckabee returned carrying a small parcel and handed it to Piper. “Don’t open it here, dearie. One never knows who’s watching.”
“Thank you. Um... we were actually here for a different reason... more of a... travelling one.”
A single grey brow rose as the old woman stared at Piper. “The travel agents is down the road, dearie.”
“Which would be great if we weren’t looking for more of a unique destination. Where my father went to would do. I have this.” She slid the receipt across the counter.
