Petey chewed the bite of cookie in his mouth and looked from Alexei to Barbara, and then to his father. “Want my mamma,” he said in a whisper. Then more loudly, “I want my mamma.”
Barbara nodded. She’d come across his mother’s information while researching Peter senior. Well, Jazz had, which was nearly the same thing. The woman had been frantically trying to get the courts of the land to take her side. Luckily, she now had something better.
“I can give you his mother’s address,” she said to Alexei. “You’ll make sure he gets safely home?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Alexei said, magically producing another cookie. Trust Alexei to have snacks secreted all over his person, just in case he got hungry on the road. “Little boy, you trust me to take you home to your mother?”
Petey nodded, not even looking back at his father as Alexei carried him toward the door. Once there, the Rider hesitated. “Do you want me to stay, Baba Yaga?” he asked. “We can wait for you to be done here.”
“I think Petey has waited long enough,” Barbara said, making shooing motions with her hands. “If I can’t handle a Human and a rusalka, it is time for me to retire. Go on.”
She saw Alexei open his mouth to make a crack about her age, take in her general mood, and think the better of it. Wise man.
As the door swung shut behind the unlikely pair, Barbara looked at Peter Callahan with disgust. “I could turn you into something slimy, but really, that seems redundant at this point, So I’m just going to let your own company and the legal system deal with you as they see fit.”
She shifted her gaze to the rusalka, who had been attempting to sidle in the direction of the basement. No doubt Maya had some kind of bolt hole prepared, in case things had gone wrong. But she hadn’t anticipated “interference by a Baba Yaga” level of “gone wrong.” Her mistake.
“You, on the other hand,” Barbara said, “are coming with me. I am tired of explaining you to the Queen. Let’s see how well you explain yourself.”
She snapped her fingers, and an invisible but unbreakable net bound the rusalka’s arms to her body and bound her powers, such as they were, at the same time. Barbara left the illusion of humanity, just because it would cause less trouble.
“I hope you enjoy long motorcycle rides,” Barbara said with a smirk. “Because I intend to hit every bump I can find on the way home.”
Chapter Nineteen
Barbara arrived back at the Airstream with her passenger more or less intact, although a lot less smug, and marched her through the door to find a frazzled looking Mikhail sitting on the couch, holding on to one bare foot.
“Those Jego things really hurt when you step on them,” he said as soon as she walked inside. “I can’t believe they let innocent children play with them.” He glared in the direction of said innocent child, who was still up, despite it being way past her bedtime.
Barbara stifled a laugh. She’d seen Mikhail come out of bar brawls bleeding and bruised, and he hadn’t complained nearly as much as this.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Your brother Alexei bought them for her.”
“Oh,” Mikhail said, subsiding. “That figures. They’re probably some kind of weapon in disguise.” He shook his head. “Did you know she will only eat sandwiches if you cut the crusts off of them? It took me three tries to figure that out. I had to eat a lot of rejects.”
Barbara bit her lip. “I did know that, yes. Didn’t you ask her what she wanted to eat?” She shoved the rusalka, still bound, into the nearest seat.
“Of course I did,” Mikhail said indignantly. “She said she wanted a sandwich. She didn’t say she would only eat them if they had precisely half an inch cut off around each edge. Or that the peanut butter side had to go on the bottom, and the jelly side on the top!”
There was actually a bright red jelly stain on his usually pristine white pants, but Barbara thought this was probably not the time to mention it.
“I’m sorry if I was difficult, Uncle Mikhail,” Babs said. “It is only that I am accustomed to having things done in a certain way. It is not your fault that you do not know how to fix sandwiches correctly.”
“Go to bed, little one,” Barbara said, nearly shaking with pent up mirth. “Say thank you to your honorary uncle for watching you. We will speak more of this in the morning.”
Babs, solemn as always, thanked Mikhail and popped into her bed, clearly not at all chastised.
“She’s not an easy child,” Barbara said, patting Mikhail on the shoulder. “You did just fine.” She sobered at a thought. “I’m only sorry you can’t remember what your own child put you through in the other timeline. It made this look like a cakewalk.”
The White Rider pulled on his socks and shoes. “I wish that too, Baba Yaga. I see you achieved at least part of your goal.” He jerked his head toward the rusalka, now back in her own form and dripping wetly on the furniture. “How did the rest of your mission go?’
“Well, we found the boy Petey, a bit traumatized but not physically harmed. Your brother is taking him to his mother as we speak. As for this one,” Barbara kicked the rusalka none-too-gently on the ankles, “I’m taking her through the doorway and turning her in to the Queen right now. That is, if you’re up to another hour or two of babysitting.”
“Not a baby,” Babs said from her bunk, although the blanketed form didn’t stir.
Mikhail sighed. “Sure,” he said. “But I’m keeping my boots on this time.”
It was satisfying to turn Maya over to the Queen. Even more so when, upon seeing the rusalka captured and in disfavor, the three couples who had adopted the Human children she’d stolen stepped up and admitted her involvement. The Queen looked quite pleased, which was always a good thing, but for Barbara it was a bittersweet victory. The children were still trapped in the Otherworld, lost forever to the families who loved them, unless Barbara could pull a rabbit out of an increasingly shrinking hat.
Just how shrinking it was she didn’t discover until she went to read The Little Prince to Babs, who was still awake when Barbara got back.
“I’m sorry,” Barbara said quietly as she closed the book. “I know you like the way Liam reads it better.”
There was a moment of silence, and at first she thought that Babs had fallen asleep. But when she looked, those big brown eyes were staring into hers, a tiny frown crinkling the skin between them.
“Liam used to read me this book?” Babs asked. “In our old lives?”
Barbara suddenly felt as though someone had sucked all the air out of the trailer. “Almost every night,” Barbara said. “Don’t you remember?”
Babs shook her head. “No, I do not,” she said in a voice barely more than a whisper. “I remember the tree house and I remember breakfasts together, but I do not remember the reading.” One tiny tear rolled down her cheek and Barbara brushed it away. She couldn’t remember Babs ever crying before, not even the time when she’d fallen out of that tree house and broken her arm.
“It’s okay,” Barbara said. “Sometimes we forget things.”
“Not Liam things,” Babs said. “I always remember Liam things. Am I doing something wrong?”
Barbara gave her a swift hug, not sure which one of them needed it more. “Not at all, sweetheart. I think this is probably just the universe trying to fix itself. Something is broken and it is the nature of existence to try and mend it. In this case, it is the unraveled timeline. I have been trying to knit it back up the way it was. But I’m guessing that if I can’t do that, the universe will patch up those unraveled pieces the best it can on its own. Your forgetting parts of your old time with Liam is probably a sign that the process is starting.”
Babs’ eyes widened in alarm. “Will I forget all the old Liam times? Will you, Baba Yaga?”
Tiny shards of pain dug themselves even deeper into Barbara’s heart at the thought. If she forgot their time together, would she even know? Or would the memories of their love and marriage be washed away like a sandcastle
left behind on the beach, reclaimed by the waves with no one there to see or mark the passing.
“I don’t know, little one,” she said. “I hope not. But the universe is a very strong force.”
“You need to be stronger than the universe, Baba Yaga,” Babs said fiercely, grabbing on to Barbara’s hand with both of her smaller ones. “You need to fix it first, so we do not lose our Liam.”
“We can build a new life with this Liam,” Barbara said, her whole body aching with grief at the thought. “I’m sure it would be a fine life.”
“But it would not be our life,” Babs said. “Please.”
Barbara pulled the girl into her arms and held on to her as if she could shield her from the pain to come. They clung to each other and Barbara cried her own never-before tears, hiding them in the darkness as she spoke a promise to them both. “I’ll try my best. I promise. I’ll try my best.”
She just didn’t know if her best would be enough, or in time.
Late the next morning, Barbara had finished up yet another unsuccessful variation of the spell she was aiming at (seriously, who knew yarn could explode?) when a knock on the door brought her work to a welcome stopping point. Waving away the smoke, Barbara opened the door to reveal a smiling Liam. Her day instantly got better, despite its frustrations and the depth of her fears.
“Hi,” she said, almost shyly. She never quite knew how to act around him, since he looked exactly like her Liam, and yet this man was almost a stranger. “How are things going over at the house?”
“Pretty well,” he said, stepping inside the Airstream and immediately wrinkling his nose. “Uh, is something on fire?”
“Not anymore,” Babs said from behind the couch, where she was hiding from the worst of the smoke with her new toys, building something that looked a lot like the Queen’s castle, despite the fact that there hadn’t been that many pieces in the kit Alexei had brought her.
“Oh,” Liam said, then looked closer. “That’s really good, Babs.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I like to build things.”
“I do too,” Liam said. “That’s why it is so much fun to work on your house.” He turned back to Barbara. “The kitchen is done, for the most part, and all the bathrooms are in working order, although they could use a few cosmetic touches. Another couple of days, and you should be able to move in.”
“That’s great,” Barbara said. “I look forward to living in a real house again.”
Babs wrinkled her button nose. “But the Airstream is a real house, Baba. We always live here.”
Barbara’s heart skipped a beat. “Always right now, you mean.”
The little girl shook her head. “Always always. It is our home.”
More forgetting. But Barbara’s dire thoughts were scattered to the winds by Liam’s next words.
“I just wanted to come by and thank you for the pie,” he said.
“Pie?” Barbara looked at Babs, but the girl seemed as clueless as Barbara. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything about a pie.”
“Really?” Liam raised his eyebrows. “Because there was a pie sitting on the kitchen counter when I got there this morning. I figured it had to be from you. I mean, who else would be leaving pies in your house?”
Barbara could think of a couple of answers to that question, none of them good. “You didn’t eat it, did you?” she asked, holding her breath while also examining him for signs of imminent illness.
“Uh, no,” he said, still seemingly baffled by her response. “I’d just had breakfast when I got there, and I was going to have some of the pie after my lunch break, but I thought I’d come over and say thank you first, and see if you and Babs wanted to share it with me. It’s a pretty big pie.”
“The better to eat you with,” Barbara muttered.
“What?”
“Sorry. Fairy tale reference. What big teeth you have, grandmother.” Barbara sighed. “Never mind. Let’s go take a look at this pie, shall we?”
She, Liam, and Babs trooped over to the farmhouse, with Chudo-Yudo following behind. They walked through the back door into the kitchen, where just as Liam said, there was a huge pie sitting on the counter. It was a glorious creation, glistening with glazed cherries peeking coyly out through a perfectly woven lattice of flaky crust. Barbara couldn’t have made one like it in a million years, even with a magical assist. It was practically irresistible, which was no doubt the intention.
“That is a very pretty pie,” Babs said, standing on her tiptoes to smell it. Then she took three large steps back and pinched her nose shut with two fingers. “Bleh,” she said. “That pie does not smell as good as it looks. I do not think you should eat it, Liam.”
“No?” Liam bent down and inhaled. “It smells just fine to me. Just cherries and flour and sugar and such.”
With her long sensitive nose, Barbara didn’t even have to get any closer. She could smell all the things Liam mentioned, along with magic, and some acrid aroma underlying it all, plus just the slightest lingering hint of patchouli.
There was only one creature in the room whose nose was even more sensitive than hers. “What’s in the pie?” she muttered quietly to Chudo-Yudo.
Chudo-Yudo padded over and sniffed at the pie, then cocked one furry white eyebrow and stuck a claw in to delicately carve out a small piece.
“Hey!” Liam said indignantly. “My pie!”
Barbara put a restraining hand on his arm. “Well?” she said to Chudo-Yudo. She wasn’t worried about him getting sick from whatever was in the pastry. She’d once seen him eat an entire crop of Fly Agaric mushrooms, among the most deadly in the world, and only end up with a case of the hiccups. Dragon digestive systems were predictably tough.
He lifted the snippet careful to his mouth, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then walked over to the back door and spit it out. “Pah,” he said. “Arsenic, probably derived from cherry pits, although you’d think enough of them to be deadly would make the pie more bitter.”
Liam swung his head from her to the dragon-dog and back again. “I swear, it sounds just like the two of you are having an actual conversation. Although what you could possibly get out of all that barking, I don’t know. Is he some kind of specially trained drug-sniffing dog?”
“Something like that,” Barbara said. “He can detect all kinds of poisons, including the kind hidden in your pretty pie. It’s a very good thing you didn’t eat it. It might not have killed you, but it would no doubt have made you very sick.”
She could see the moment when the lawman superseded the handyman, if for no other reason than she’d watched it happen a thousand times in their previous lives together. It was as though a switch flipped behind his eyes and the mellow Liam was replaced by someone focused and analytical. When that look wasn’t aimed at her, she actually found it pretty sexy.
“Why would anyone want to poison me?” he asked, mostly rhetorically. “And if they did, why do it here, instead of at my own house. Do you think someone wanted you to take the fall for this? Or was it aimed at you, and not me?” His glance fell on Babs, and he shook his head. “You don’t think anyone hates you enough to risk Babs getting her hands on a piece, do you?”
“I would not have eaten it,” Babs said decisively. “It smells of Brenna. I would not eat anything that smells of Brenna. She is a bad witch.”
Barbara coughed. “We don’t call people that name, Babs, remember? Although you have a point about the woman.”
“Who is this Brenna and what makes you think she had anything to do with this? Why would she have anything against me? I’ve never met her, that I recall.”
“I’m afraid her grudge is against me,” Barbara said. “You would just have been collateral damage. She recently threatened to harm anyone who mattered to me.” She could feel her face heat as the subtle admission slipped out. Hopefully he’d be so focused on the situation, it would go right over his head. “She is fond of a particularly strong patchouli scent, which you can just catch a whiff
of on the pie, it you are looking for it.” Which the rest of them were.
“Huh,” Liam thought through the permutations of all that. “Not exactly proof that will stand up in court, alas.”
“No, it isn’t,” Barbara agreed, thinking of another court entirely. “Circumstantial at best. Brenna would just say the she is not the only person who wears that scent, or suggest ever so subtly that if anyone wanted to blame her for something nefarious, that person would probably leave behind a dab of patchouli. Then she’d look at me sadly.”
Despite the serious nature of the discussion. Liam had to hide a laugh behind his hand. “I take it you have gone up against this woman before,” he said. “It sounds like you dislike her as much as she dislikes you, although I can’t see you leaving around a poisoned pie because of it.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Barbara muttered through clenched teeth. “I should have let Chudo-Yudo eat her when he suggested it.”
The dragon-dog barked in agreement.
Liam patted Chudo-Yudo on the head and dug around in his jeans pockets until he found a treat. “He’s a great dog,” Liam said. “He wouldn’t bite anyone.”
“Don’t be fooled by that goofy expression,” Barbara said. “He’s one hell of a guard dog. I only hope Brenna comes sneaking around when he is close enough to smell her.” Something about her expression must have given away how serious she was, because Liam took an involuntary step backward before collecting himself.
“I guess I’d better keep bringing him treats,” Liam said. “Stay on his good side.”
Chudo-Yudo nodded assertively and Barbara rolled her eyes.
“In the meanwhile,” she said, “if someone who looks like a harmless old hippie lady shows up, do not trust anything she says or does.” The Queen had plans to take care of Brenna, but that didn’t mean the crazy witch couldn’t do all sorts of harm before that happened.
Wickedly Unraveled Page 20
