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Troll Tunnels

Page 21

by Erin M. Hartshorn


  Haris dropped a kiss on my head, then turned to put a kettle on to boil, saying, “The second was how very open she is about what she’s thinking.”

  “The women in this family are very outspoken, yes,” Dad said, sipping at his cup. “You get used to it.”

  “Mystery is overrated.” Haris rested his eyes on me, with a faint smile on his mouth.

  I nodded emphatically. “Haris has always known that I’m stubborn, opinionated, and outspoken.”

  “Also afraid to acknowledge her own worth or how much she’s loved,” Haris added. “But I’m working on that.”

  Haris always knew how to take my breath away.

  “About time someone did. You two don’t need my advice, but I’ll give it to you anyway. Ignore her aunts or anyone else who tries to get in the way. When you find someone special, they’re worth keeping.” He craned his neck to peer in the other room, where the sisters still hadn’t quite simmered down. “Sometime, I’ll have to tell you about the time Ti tried to sabotage me by telling Lexy—”

  “That’s enough of that!” Mom called from the dining room. “How about you bring in the sausage and pancakes now before they get too rubbery in that warming tray?”

  “I’ll tell you another time,” Dad stage whispered to me while he opened the warming drawer beneath the oven. “When there’s no one around to overhear.”

  “To correct your memory mistakes you mean,” Mom said, bustling in to grab the sausages from him. “Ti didn’t tell me anything. Rena did it, although it was Ti’s idea, and Pepper doesn’t need to hear about it because they’re not likely to do it to her anyway.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “You know I didn’t believe a word of it.”

  He turned his face so that they were kissing each other. I rolled my eyes, but when Haris raised his brows at me, I blushed. There were worse things — many worse things — than having parents who were obviously still in love with each other. Would we — I cut that thought off, but not before Haris caught it, judging by the depth of his dimple. He was quite amused both by my thought and that I was trying to hide it.

  I mock glowered at him. The kettle whistled, and I nudged my parents out of the way so I could turn off the stove and grab the hot water to make the coffee. I nodded toward the dining room. “Go. I’ll be out in a couple minutes with the coffee.”

  “See? Stubborn, opinionated, and outspoken,” Haris said to my parents.

  “Wonder where she gets it from,” my dad said dryly. Both my mom and I laughed.

  The actual brunch was delicious as usual, but I lost count of the number of times I wanted to strangle one of my aunts — either one of them, it didn’t matter which.

  Starting with Aunt Rena, who asked, “When Pepper said she had somewhere to live, did she mean she was moving in with you?”

  Half the heat was embarrassment. Half was the thought of being in such close proximity with Haris, not just in the same home, but — heat flamed my face, behind my ears, my middle, rising, sinking. My coffee started boiling in my mug.

  Thankfully, Haris did not look at me. I’m sure if he had, electricity would have arced all over the table. He knew what I was thinking. His awareness was written in his dancing eyes and his deepening dimple. Not a trace of levity was in his voice, though, when he said, “I haven’t managed to convince her that’s a good idea yet.”

  Haris hadn’t tried, and we both knew it.

  “Are you kidding?” Aunt Rena stared at me. “Look at him! How could that not be a good idea?”

  I managed to get words out. “Because I have to leave home and go to work sometime?”

  My dad smothered a laugh, and I knew from long experience that Mom had just kicked him under the table.

  Aunt Ti decided to join in. “What kind of example would that set for your children? You are thinking of them in all this, aren’t you?”

  “No, Aunt Ti, I have somehow forgotten that I brought twin lives into the world that their father is trying to take away from me, forgotten despite the fact that I make sure they have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day, despite reading with them and tucking them in, despite making sure they’re signed up for appropriate lessons for their aptitudes and that they practice for them as well, forgotten despite still having stretch marks that will never go away, even though I weigh no more now than I did before I got pregnant. My memory is a sieve. Any other stupid questions?”

  Silence reigned at the table.

  I sipped at my coffee and tried to hide my wince. It was just under boiling hot. I sucked in air to cool my mouth, set down the coffee, and grabbed my orange juice. No stupid questions but evidently stupid actions.

  Everyone was still staring at me. I forced a smile and looked at my mom. “Could you please pass the sausages?”

  Her steely eyes told me there would be words later for my outburst, but I doubted she was going to make me feel any worse than I already did. I might — did — complain about my aunts and my mother, and the number of ways all of these control freaks tried to make my decisions for me, but I loved them all dearly, and I had just made Aunt Ti feel very small and hurt by lashing out uncharacteristically. And I didn’t know how to make it better.

  After I took a few sausages and passed the plate to Aunt Rena on my left, I kept my gaze on my plate. This was why I didn’t like to get out of control. And that’s why I resented them all so much — their efforts to control me told me they didn’t think I was equal to the task. Goodness only knows what sort of disaster they imagined for me if they didn’t keep my life on the track they saw for me, but I knew what the worst was, and their efforts at control only made it more likely. Tears pricked at my eyes.

  Haris stepped into the silence. “Do either of you have children?”

  I bit my lip. I should have warned him. Why hadn’t I? Oh, right — because all I had to do was look at him to drive practical thoughts out of my head. Or maybe because my cousins were even harder to explain than Haris’s.

  “My son had himself legally emancipated at sixteen, moved to New York, and hasn’t spoken to anyone in the family since,” Aunt Ti said. “I’ll let Rena tell you about hers.”

  “They’re in Alaska, I think.”

  In Alaska? Maybe. Last I’d heard, they were trying to create a commune based on the idea that tech would save us all. They were trying to usher in the Singularity. I said they were hard to explain.

  Later, I would tell Haris about my cousins. We weren’t close — social media messages on birthdays and holidays, but no other contact. I didn’t blame them for getting as far from their mother as they could and still be on the same continent, but that desire not to spend time with Aunt Rena was the only thing we had in common. At least they still called her, which was more than Davy — Davros — did for Aunt Ti.

  “The place I’m looking at is in the Back Bay,” I said to break the silence, looking up at last.

  “Isn’t that a little far from where you work? Or are you looking for a new position?” Mom asked.

  “It’s a short ride on the T,” I said. “And I have a couple of friends in the area.”

  Mom frowned. “Did Beth move?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t know them.” An impish smile crossed my face. “Haris introduced me, actually.”

  “My ex’s sisters,” Haris said smoothly.

  “You must still be on good terms with her.” Aunt Ti looked surprised. “How unusual.”

  “No more so than living above your ex’s restaurant,” Haris said.

  I smothered my laugh. That had never sat well with my aunts.

  “You two certainly are well matched,” Aunt Rena said.

  “Thank you. I think so.” Haris beamed.

  All right, maybe I didn’t spend the entire meal wanting to strangle my aunts. Even if Aunt Rena didn’t mean it as a compliment.

  I glanced over at Dad. “Remind me next time, and I’ll bring some of their finikia. I meant to this week, but someone seems to have eaten them all.”

&
nbsp; “Someone. Uh-huh.”

  “It could have been the twins!”

  I’m not certain who laughed louder, my parents or Haris.

  “Not unless the twins have gotten a lot faster,” Dad said. “Maybe Haris should bring the cookies instead.”

  “Oh, sure, you trust Haris, but not your own daughter.” But Haris and I shared a look, and joy bubbled inside me. I loved the simple assumption that of course Haris would be coming again.

  “I never caught Haris sneaking into the kitchen at two in the morning to raid the cookies.”

  “One time! One time!”

  “You mean he only caught you once, or you only did it once?” Haris raised his eyebrows.

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  His dimple deepened, and I didn’t need to hear the answer.

  Aunt Ti must have decided that was just about long enough for things to be pleasant. “What do Gavin and Tina think of all this?”

  “All this?” Even with my guilt, I wasn’t finished being angry at her. “Do you mean the move or Haris? They haven’t seen the new apartment yet, and I imagine I’ll have to jump through some hoops to keep them at the same school. They love Haris, though — Gavin brings out his violin every time Haris comes over to show off what he’s learned.”

  Not completely true, as that wasn’t why Gavin did it, but she didn’t need to know that. It was enough that we knew and were amused.

  After brunch, I helped clear the table and load the dishwasher while Haris wandered off with Dad somewhere. My aunts still weren’t talking to me, and I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. After all these years, why were they surprised that I didn’t want them running my life?

  I told them goodbye, hugged and kissed my parents and told them I’d have them over for dinner again soon, then grabbed the throw pillow my dad had left sitting next to the door for me.

  As we drove away from my parents’ house, I felt an echo of a gap — the work I had already done had made me more sensitive. I needed to check it out. I pointed off to the right. “Can we go that way?”

  Haris looked at me curiously, but moved over to take the next exit. “Some new discovery? We’re not chasing ghosts again, are we?”

  “I would have told you.” I half-closed my eyes, trying to focus on the sensation of emptiness, to locate which way to go. “It’s this errand for the trolls. Maybe errand isn’t the best word. But I told you they blamed me for the gaps in the magic bedrock, or associated them with me, whichever? So Iárn decided I had to be able to fix them.”

  “You mentioned that before. Are we going to go meet trolls now?”

  I shook my head. “No, I can do the smaller ones on my own, and this one doesn’t feel very big.”

  “This hole. In the magic bedrock. That you didn’t even know existed a few months ago.”

  “I didn’t know trolls or muses existed, either.”

  I stared off at the neighborhoods in the trees, houses like my parents’ that would be hidden from the road again once summer came back around, and tried not to think about what Haris was saying. I’d changed so much. Some of the changes I’d fought — I didn’t want more power — and some I’d embraced — seeing Haris, making wards, having new friends. But the changes hadn’t stopped, and I wondered when they would. What was I becoming?

  Haris moved his hand over to squeeze my hand briefly. As always, his touched filled me with warmth and electricity, like little explosions of joy going off within me, which distracted me nicely from my worries.

  “You’re wonderful,” he said gently. “And the fact that you’re putting up with this nonsense from the trolls, even though it’s not your mess to clean up, is just one more example of that.” He stopped at a red light. “Which way from here?”

  “Keep going for a bit,” I said. “It’s going to be a little to the left, but we’re not there yet.” I wasn’t going to argue with Haris saying I was wonderful. I’d happily listen to that all day.

  He pointed a thumb at the back seat. “So are you going to tell me why you grabbed that throw pillow? It doesn’t exactly go with your usual style.”

  “It was my grandmother’s,” I offered.

  He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was waiting for me to go on. After a moment, I did. “There are some missing pages from her journals in there. Dad wasn’t going to give them to me, but I convinced him that if she didn’t want me to read them, she would have destroyed them instead of hiding them.”

  “And he just found them?”

  “No, I asked about them.” I bit my lip. “She had some worries about her magic, and I think the missing pages talk about why her fear was so great. Why she thought she might kill her husband.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not worried that you’re going to kill me.”

  I forced a smile, but Haris knew, as no one else did, how much I worried about losing control. Exactly once in my life, I had had a vision — of the future? a possible future? — I wasn’t sure, but in the vision, I was power-mad and crazed, and everyone around me was going to suffer because of it. That was the downside of all these changes, these expansions in what I could see and do — I became more capable of being that person.

  “Pepper.”

  Nothing else, just my name, soft and gentle, a caress that started at the nape of my neck and stroked all the way down my spine. I shivered as though he’d actually touched me. Whatever might come, I knew we’d face it together.

  “Left here. A slight left? Or — yes, that park, there.”

  Park was a generous descriptor. It was an open patch that was probably lawn in the summer, but now was mostly bare spots and leaves. Not even a bench to be seen, and the streetlights around the perimeter were dinged and dented. Some of the buildings facing the street were empty, but the laundromat and a couple restaurants looked busy enough.

  Haris pulled the car up to the curb and turned off the key.

  I closed my eyes and felt for the gap. It was thinner than the others I’d dealt with, but deep. This might be easier if I were on the ground, but I didn’t particularly want to sit on the frozen muddy patches where everyone would stare at me and wonder what I was doing. At least the edges were close enough to zip up. I just needed to feed the magic out to line the whole thing. Taking a deep breath, I started.

  First, lining the cavity, my power flowing as a viscous sheet to cover the entire surface before reaching across the gap, looping together, hooking, crafting links and tugging. So simple, so thin — but so deep.

  Haris rested his hand on my shoulder, humming, a faint tune, light, enough to remind me that he was there, that I could draw on him if necessary, or even if not necessary. His strength was mine. Grateful, I let his magic pour into me, through me, bolstering my power and adding enough magic that the sides knitted together quickly and easily, bottom to top, with a final zipped seal at the top to bind it all together.

  I opened my eyes and met his gaze. For the first time, I was not exhausted after closing one of the gaps. Even the trollmiod didn’t help this much.

  “We’re best together.” He squeezed my shoulder, then restarted the car and headed back the way we’d come. “So how much of this trollmiod do you have, and are you willing to share?”

  “Did you want to see the new apartment?” I asked impulsively.

  “This would be the apartment you’ve been fretting over because Tina and Gavin haven’t seen it yet?” Haris’s voice was gentle. “I do want to see it. I hope you’ll invite me over soon. But you’re going to be upset with yourself if you show it to me before them.”

  “I don’t even know if…” I let myself trail off. I couldn’t say out loud my fear that the twins wouldn’t live there with me.

  Haris understood anyway. “Whatever happens, you’re still their mother. That won’t change.” Haris always knew the right thing to say. He took me home, then left, for which I was grateful. I still wasn’t ready for Matt to meet Haris.

  Before the twins got hom
e, I took the journal pages out of the pillow and set them underneath the mythology books piled on the end table. I wanted to look at them, but I didn’t want to call attention to the loose pages. So far, the twins had ignored my reading material — though I kept the journals in my room with a light ward on them. Definitely not something I wanted Tina or Gavin getting into.

  I didn’t read the papers until I was certain the twins were asleep. Gavin murmured to his Wally in his sleep, and Tina’s magic relaxed, becoming more diffuse. I enjoyed the peace for a few minutes before sliding the pages out to read.

  It soon became clear why Grandma had cut these pages.

  Spiros’s parents came today. He didn’t show up until after they’d been here for half an hour. His mother suspects the wrong thing. She told me many men seek other companionship while their wives are nursing, that it was only to be expected if all my attention was focused on Hestia. She suggested that they take her out tomorrow to give us time together. As if that will help! This is the first time we’ve slept under the same roof in months.

  Spiros’s mother is getting more insistent. I think they may never leave, or at least not until we give them the grandson they crave. I may have to do something drastic. I wish when Mama told me about the herbal mix that makes men more compliant, she’d said something about dosages. I’ll have to experiment. The first dose will be in his ouzo tonight.

  It’s still not working. Maybe because the rosemary is dried? I can’t help that, but maybe I can add a bit of poppy juice to help him drop his guard — and then, the spell.

  No, no! It’s not as though I gave him morphine with his alcohol — but his heart shut down. I hit him until it beat again, then collapsed over him, weeping in relief, telling him how we need to be together, we have a bond for life — I don’t remember it all, but he woke up, wondering how we’d ever been apart. He doesn’t remember why he left. What do I do if he does? I can’t try this again.

 

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