Moon In The Mirror: A Tess Noncoire Adventure

by P. R. Frost

  He replied with another lengthy silence.

  “Okay, back to something you will talk about. The will. Why you? I heard you and Darren fighting. You worked hard to keep him from marrying my mother. Why did he trust you with that kind of money and responsibility? ”

  “Because he knew I’d do something with the money and not fritter it away on cars and drugs and unsound investments.”

  “Why didn’t he do something with the money? Seems like he was just sitting on it for a long time.”

  “His dreams were too large. He wasn’t willing to start small and build. He wanted it all at once or not at all. His kids are too inbred to dream at all.”

  “But you aren’t inbred.” I wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. Not by a long shot, but I’d take what I could get. And this was more information than I’d been able to pry out of him yet.

  “I’m one of a kind.” He flashed me one of his disarming grins.

  I ignored it, fingering the magic comb in my pocket.

  “You are human. King Scazzy said as much. Extremely long-lived but human. How long is extremely long-lived?” Scazzy had told me. I wanted to hear it from Donovan himself.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Try me.”

  “I came to life at the same time as the Citadel near Dry Falls was first built to guard the demon portal.”

  Came to life, not became human. Came to life as what?

  He looked too smug for that to be the entire explanation.

  Then something else he had said hit me between the eyes just as powerfully. “When you said that Darren’s kids would waste their money on cars, drugs, and fly-by-night investments, what kind of drugs do demon spawn use?”

  He stood and turned his back to me, peering out the high, small windows into darkness.

  “Do they consider blood a drug?”

  He nodded.

  “Human blood?” I felt suddenly dizzy and nauseous.

  “When they can get it.”

  “And you sympathize with these beings? You work to give them a homeland!” I stood in my rage, fists knotted. I wanted to slay him as I had slain the Windago and the Sasquatch before them. But something about this man kept my imp at bay.

  What? What? What?

  “I watched the Kajiri struggle against prejudice and poverty too long. I know their intelligence, the contributions they can make to both cultures, human and demon. Some injustices cannot be measured.” He rounded on me, fists as knotted as my own. “They are akin to former slaves in this country for many, many generations. Think about the prejudice African Americans have overcome and how long it took them; how much prejudice they still face. Then multiply that by one hundred.”

  “Scrap said that demons are locked up in ghettos for a reason. Like they eat other sentient beings. African Americans are human with human sensibilities. If I had my way, I’d slay every last demon that crosses into this dimension.”

  “And upset the cosmic balance no end.” He tried to lull me with another smile. “Ever wonder why you humans don’t have a balancing demon? It’s because you are your own demons. The only race that murders each other with glee. By the thousands in war and individually.”

  You humans. He’d said you humans. Like he wasn’t one of us.

  My anger boiled so close to the surface his charm had no effect upon me.

  “You are no better than WindScribe. One way or another I’ll find evidence to get you locked up for a long, long time. In prison or a mental ward. Any way I can get you off the streets. To save humanity from your depredations and those of your . . . people.”

  “Ah, Tess. Don’t be that way. We were good together.” He reached to trace my cheek with a gentle finger.

  I ducked away from his touch.

  “Remember, L’akita. Remember the night you spent in my arms, loving me time and again, hour after hour, never tiring of me?” His voice grew soft and persuasive.

  Goddess help me, I did remember and longed for his touch with every breath.

  “Get out of my house and out of my life. Now.” I pointed toward the door.

  "L’akita.”

  “Don’t.” I closed my eyes lest the sight of his awe-some beauty make me forget what he truly was. Black of heart and soul.

  And, oh, so achingly beautiful.

  “Our lives are already entwined, L’akita. You can’t banish me so easily.”

  “I can try. You know the way to the door.” I turned my back on him, hugging myself against the need to reach out and hold him close.

  “Honor obligates me to warn you. If your mother has not already passed through menopause—completely— there is a good chance she is pregnant. The Damiri are incredibly fertile.”

  I heard the menace of warning in his voice. My eyes flew open in horror. I was lucky I’d made him use condoms the one night we had spent together.

  “Thank you for the warning. I’ll keep an eye on her.” He had no way of knowing Mom had had a hysterectomy right after I was born. Something had gone terribly wrong. I was six weeks premature. But he didn’t know that, and I wasn’t about to enlighten him. Let him worry.

  "L’akita ...”

  “Scrap says that WindScribe is pregnant,” I threw at him. Jealousy screamed through my body. Unreasonable, unthinkable, miserable, aching jealousy. I had no right to the emotion but it was there, like a cancer inside me.

  “How?” His mouth flapped open and closed like a fish drowning in air.

  “You know how it happens.”

  “I mean . . .” he swallowed deeply and flushed a charming shade of mahogany. “I mean, how can Scrap tell? It’s only been a couple of days.”

  “He says he can smell it on her. As long as the cat isn’t around clogging his sinuses.”

  “I have some plans to make. I’ll petition the courts for custody, of course. I wish the baby was ours. He can be. We can raise him together.” He reached to brush a curl off my brow.

  I ducked away from his touch, too fragile to risk breaking if we made contact.

  “Go. Just go.”

  “You going to sleep in your own bed tonight?” Gollum asked as I wandered toward the stairs yawning. He had a goofy grin on his face I couldn’t interpret.

  “How many nights have I slept on your sofa?” I stopped short, one foot on the first step.

  He shrugged. “It felt right every time it happened.”

  “Yeah.” Part of me yearned for the safety and security he gave me. But I couldn’t allow myself to depend upon him. “But not tonight.”

  I was too fragile after banishing Donovan. I needed to learn to be alone again.

  “Whatever. Holler if you need me to hold your hand after a nightmare.” He turned away toward his apartment.

  I almost called him back to fill the cold emptiness that yawned inside me.

  “I don’t have nightmares.”

  Scrap snorted at that.

  I ignored him and made my weary way up to bed.

  Mom had already tucked herself in and lay softly weeping. A hard knot in my gut reminded me how I had felt when Dill died. How close to insanity I’d strayed. I’d loved him deeply. I still did. But I also had accepted his death—finally—and knew I couldn’t go back; couldn’t bring him back.

  We all had to move forward somehow. I was still wandering in circles.

  “I need to find out one way or another if Darren Estevez murdered you, Dill. And why,” I whispered to my memories of my husband, not the apparition I’d seen in the kitchen.

  Softly, I pulled up a chair beside Mom’s single bed and sat. She lay on her side with one hand outside the covers. I took it in mine and just held it.

  And prayed that this midnight vigil would end more happily than the last one I’d sat. With Sister Jenny at the Citadel.

  A tiny smile flickered through Mom’s tears. “He wasn’t truly human,” she whispered.

  “I know, Mom. I know.”

  I wondered what he had done to her that had nearly broken her
mind. The aura of tension between them Saturday morning had disappeared. Had he used his demon whammy to abate her fears? Had he used the same unnatural charm to win her in the first place?

  Undoubtedly. Donovan was capable of the same kind of unnatural influence. I’d seen it in action. That didn’t make me any less lonely for banishing him from my life.

  I was cold and cramped when I awoke several hours later. Mom’s hand still lay in mine, slack with sleep. Her tears had dried and she breathed evenly. I crept away on tiptoe, leaving the door between our rooms open.

  “Scrap,” I called softly into the shadows of the cellar. “Where are you?”

  No answer. I could sense him nearby, but he wasn’t willing to show himself on demand. He must know what I was up to.

  “I’ve got mold, Scrap.” I held up a jar of peach jam half full of the spoiled remains. Nearly a half inch of fuzzy green and white crusted the top. I’d been saving it for emergencies. This seemed like an emergency.

  Bribery will get you anything your sweet heart desires, dahling. Scrap popped into view right in front of me. He stuck his nose into the jar, wings beating overtime in his excitement over the culinary treat I held. He lifted his head on a deep inhale, as if savoring the scent of fine wine or perfume.

  I pulled the jar back just enough to make it awkward for him to reach.

  Faery giver! Scrap pouted.

  “It’s all yours, friend. If you do something special for me.” I pushed the jar out just a little, just enough for him to get another whiff of the putrid stuff.

  What? He backed off suspiciously, crossing his pudgy arms above his rotund tummy.

  “I want to go back.”

  Back where? He didn’t relax his guard at all.

  “To the night Dill was murdered.”

  It was a fire. An accident.

  “It was arson. That makes it murder. You heard Darren claim to have been behind it.” I extended the jam a little further. “There’s no dairy in this. It won’t upset your tummy.”

  Scrap sniffed appreciatively. He turned pink, then purple. Then virulent yellow. His hunger warred with his conscience.

  Don’t make me do it, Tess.

  I was in trouble if he called me by name. No softening to “babe” or a drawled “dahling.”

  “Please, Scrap. I have to know what happened.” Another proffering of the treat. I waved it beneath his nose. He crept a little closer, salivating.

  You were there. You should know what happened.

  “I was asleep until Dill woke me and the room was full of smoke and heat. Everything was dark, misshapen by the flickering flames. You know I won’t rest until I know for certain if Darren Estevez murdered my husband. ” And who helped him.

  No. It’s too dangerous.

  “More dangerous than giving in to Dill’s demands and replacing you with him?”

  Scrap panicked. He flashed green, red, yellow, red, purple, red, blue, and back to red again in rapid succession.

  You’re dead either path. You die: I die, Scrap gibbered. Sorry. And he popped out, leaving me holding the smelly jar of mold and shattered hopes of closure.

  No Fair! No Fair! No Fair!

  I can’t do it.

  I won’t do it. It’s too dangerous. The time separation is three years. Three years, I tell you. And the distance. Three thousand miles back to Half Moon Lake. She doesn’t know what she asks.

  I can’t do it. I’m not skilled enough with dimensional manipulation. The Barrister demons are guarding the chat room. They’ll never let me through on such a mission. Never.

  But Tess is my Warrior. How can I deny her what she truly needs?

  I sense that she does need to do this. She’ll never be able to truly move on and send Dillwyn Bailey Cooper back where he belongs unless she does this.

  Oh, what to do? What to do?

  Chapter 48

  "WE WANT TO GO back,” the plump woman from the coven announced shortly after dawn Wednesday morning. She and her companions descended upon us en masse, and the words came out before I’d fully opened the kitchen door to them.

  I had a funeral to go to at noon, then plans for afterward.

  “Dragonfly, you know we can’t go back. The new rulers of Faery don’t like us very much,” FireHind reprimanded her. “None of the candidates voted to keep us there.”

  I noted that they were all clad in various forms of jeans and sweatshirts, and barefoot. What was it with these women that they disdained shoes? The temperatures had warmed to the low fifties, but the air and land were still soggy with melting snow.

  “I should think the new rulers of Faery would fear you after what WindScribe did,” I said as they trooped into my kitchen and settled around the table and on the counters. “Killing the king of Faery couldn’t have been easy.”

  Scrap flitted about, tweaking curls and blowing smoke in their faces. Our previous argument was ignored but not forgotten by either of us. He punctuated his displeasure with me with an occasional fart that reeked of his lactose intolerance.

  Some of the younger members of the coven kept fanning the air in front of their faces and looking about bewildered, the curious and outspoken Larch among them. The rest were oblivious to my imp’s tricks.

  “She snapped his neck like it was a twig she wanted to use for kindling,” Dragonfly grumbled. “Then she threw him against an oak tree. No remorse, no second thoughts. He got in her way and she just did it.”

  “Hush,” FireHind reprimanded. “We do not speak of it. We agreed.”

  “Under threat of death and dismemberment,” Larch muttered. “But we aren’t in Faery anymore. They can’t touch us here in our home dimension.”

  Now that is something I need to find out. Can the faeries pursue these women like the Orculli pursued WindScribe?

  I’m in luck. J’appel dragons are on duty. Tiny things, hardly bigger than I am. They can flame me, but they have to smell me first, and they are constant victims of sinus infections—from the sulfur fumes they burn. And their eyesight is notoriously weak until someone calls them by their true name and they grow and grow and grow to fill the chat room with angry, reptilian, winged-beasties.

  So I use my small size and the stealth I learned in order to survive my siblings (not all of them survived me, however) and hop over to the leather curtain that covers the doorway I want. Beyond the curtain a clear force field in front of Faery is wavering like ripples on a smooth pond. The colors of grass and flowers are dim, the chuckling creek has become a raging muddy torrent. Uh-oh. Trouble in Paradise.

  Changing air pressure makes my ears pop as I fly into Faery. No matter how big or small you are, when you come to Faery, you are the same size as the faeries. That’s the magic this place holds. Sort of defines equal opportunity.

  Don’t know if I grew or shrank. That’s also part of the magic. And how faeries defend themselves. With deception and mystery. No one knows much about them other than that they are incredibly beautiful. Even without warts.