“Is he going to heal?”
“Bane thinks no, Flynn says yes. I think probably, but it’s going to take a while. This isn’t the kind of thing a healer can do much about. I don’t think there’s going to be any permanent damage, but there’s no way to be sure yet. Kev feels worse about it than he’s mostly letting on. I hate to think how he’s going to react if there is anything permanent.”
“Anything you need me for, tell me. You can pass that on to Sundark. Anyway. If you need cat food, take it, you can pay for it later.”
That wasn’t a very subtle hint, but Gisela went along with it. She tried to remember whether she needed cat food right away, and decided it could wait. So she bid Sam farewell and departed for the house.
*
Jesse was alive.
That simple fact made it impossible to concentrate on the mundanities of the shop. Sam gave up, and perched on the windowsill to gaze outside, not really seeing the familiar street.
Jesse was alive. The faint thread of hope born when she’d seen Nick’s brief description, nurtured by Kevin’s account, hadn’t been false; it really was him. It had been a considerable effort of will to throttle her first impulse to hug him; a good thing, it seemed, since he didn’t recognize her.
Blocking off his memories made sense. To be suddenly completely alone, for the first time in his life, and not know if anyone else in his family survived the nightmare of storm and music that had killed an entire village… making himself forget might well have saved his sanity.
His sanity? His life. How could they possibly find him to kill him if even he himself didn’t know who he was? There’d be no way to see it in his thoughts, no way for a seer to get a fix on him, no way to make him betray himself.
She sighed to herself. To tell him about his family, and that she’d lived with him and them for a few years around and after his father’s death, was to place him in danger. All she could do, it seemed, was let Sundark take care of him, and be ready to get involved if necessary. Without giving anyone any reason to think that she had so much interest in his wellbeing.
He was alive, though. She couldn’t recall any better news in years.
Well, she’d made a bad start on hiding her feelings with Gisela; she’d have to do better than that. She closed her eyes, reached inside to centre herself again.
The bells on the door chimed; she greeted the man who walked in, and smiled when the puppies converged on his black Lab.
Think about right now. Worry about Jesse later.
8
Jesse heard a vehicle pull in the driveway, and forgot about the game of Monopoly Gisela had coaxed him into, reflex putting him on guard.
“It’s only Sundark,” Gisela said, a frown creasing her pixie’s face. “Don’t be so paranoid.”
Deanna was the first one in the door; she paused, contemplating the pair at the table, and glanced back over her shoulder. “Hey, the highlander was right!”
“So what else is new,” Bane retorted, from just outside. “Get out of the way, the rest of us would like to come in too.”
Deanna moved aside.
“What in particular was he right about this time?” Kevin asked, as he followed Bane in; he saw Jesse, and smiled. “Well hi there. How long have you been here?”
“Since Thursday night,” Jesse said. “Have fun wherever you were?”
“Visiting family in a village sort of like Haven only in Quebec. Yes, lots of fun, actually.”
Chaos reigned in the kitchen for a few minutes, then Bane left to drive Flynn and Deanna and Gisela home.
“So what’s new in the city?” Kevin asked, absently fishing a handful of cookies out of the jar while Jesse put the game away. He’d been winning, which was typical: he only had good luck when it didn’t really matter.
Jesse shrugged. “Nothing especially thrilling. Trying to keep warm and hibernate the winter away.” Cynthia disappeared with a canvas sport-bag slung over her shoulder.
“So hang around for a while, you can do both here just as well.”
“For a little while. Not long.” Had the need to be out of the city not been so overwhelming after that insane night of being chased, he didn’t think he’d have come at all; Kevin and the others were friendly, but it frightened him, how much he was starting to like them.
“However long you like.” Kevin stretched, and yawned. “I hate to be rude, but I’m beat, I’m going to go catnap for an hour or two. If I don’t wake up, then good night and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sweet dreams.”
Kevin paused in the doorway, and flashed him a grin. “Probably.”
*
November in Haven was much prettier than November in the city, Jesse mused, wandering contentedly along the quiet road with Kevin. No slushy sidewalks to navigate, no mountains of plowed-up dirty snow, no yellow-orange streetlights turning everything ugly colours, and no people running over you in a hurry to return to their warm homes and a hot meal. Instead, there were trees glittering with icicles, yards spotted with snow sculptures and snow forts, dogs playing in the clean white drifts, and people who said hello and invited you in for a cup of hot chocolate—that last was, in fact, when they’d passed the home of Bane’s parents. Kevin had declined, explaining that they were expected home for supper.
The darkness was more intense than Jesse was used to, with only the countless stars and the outside lights of such houses as they passed; it could have made him nervous, but it was hard to feel threatened here. There were no lights because there was no need for them, simple as that. So he could just relax, and enjoy the tranquillity, and be glad Kevin had suggested the walk. He knew that Kevin’s night-sight was so bad he actually couldn’t safely go for a walk like this alone; it felt odd, that Kevin trusted him that much, but right now, he simply accepted it.
Familiar lights ahead, their house.
Jesse paused at the end of the driveway, and crouched to take a closer look at a line of tracks. “Kev? What made these tracks?”
Kevin joined him. “What do they look like?”
“Four toes, I think I can see claws, and the pad.” He measured one against his spread hand. “Bigger than my hand.”
“Wolf, then,” Kevin said.
“That’s got to be a damned big wolf.”
“Most likely. Don’t worry about it, wolves won’t attack people.”
“It has to have been by here since we left, this wasn’t here before.”
“True.”
Jess gave him a suspicious look. Was that amusement hidden in Kevin’s voice?
“Stand up,” Kevin told him. “I’m betting that’s your wolf I just heard.”
Jess whipped to his feet, and spun around to look where Kevin indicated. Shadowed by a grove of trees, a large dark shaggy animal watched them, very still. Then it trotted off in the other direction, and vanished into the trees that surrounded the yard.
“Wouldn’t they go after the farms, even if they don’t hurt people?”
Kevin shrugged. “There hasn’t been a single domestic animal lost to wolves in this township in well over a hundred years. A couple to feral dogs, pets that went wild, but that’s different. Even outside Haven area, most so-called wolf kills are feral dogs. Leave ‘em alone and everybody can live in peace. They keep the other wildlife under control. C’mon, we’ve been out a while, Deanna will have my hide if you get sick. Not that much can stand up to her herbal remedies and Gisela’s gifts. Besides, that stew I left in the oven should be just about done.”
Jess left the tracks, and went in the house with Kevin. Cynthia greeted them absently, intent on patching a pair of blue jeans, and told them Bane’s brother Bryan had called and invited him to go out with him and a couple of other friends, he wouldn’t be back until late.
Firmly, Jess banished the utterly silly thoughts that crept into his head, and went to hang his jacket in the hall closet.
*
“You’re going to leave soon, aren’t you,” Gisela said.
Jesse walked beside her in silence for a moment. The road to her house was very quiet in the darkness of winter’s early sunset. “Yes. Probably the next day or two. I’ve been here over a week, I need to get back to someone.”
“I thought so. You’ll come back, right?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t know why you leave, either, and you do that.”
“It’s… not easy to explain. It’s just… everything here’s so different from everything I know, it’s like heaven, but it scares me.”
“What does?”
“You. Kevin. Everyone. I’ve never seen anyone trust four other people as totally as they trust each other. I’ve never been able to trust anybody, nobody’s ever cared.”
“Why do I scare you?”
“Because I trust you so much.”
She smiled. “Lots of people trust me. Healers don’t hurt people, ever.”
“And because you trust me. Nobody’s ever trusted me before, either.”
She thought about that. “That’s hard for me to understand. But it makes sense, I guess.”
They were almost at her house, they could see it ahead.
“Jesse… sometimes when I heal someone, like I did you, it leaves a little of you in me and a little of me in you.” She smiled. “I like it, it feels all warm and wild and dark. That might be why you trust me. If you listen for it, you might be able to hear that little piece of me. Maybe it’ll help you stop being scared of trust.” She laid a hand on the railing up the stairs, stepped onto the first, then turned to give him a quick, shy kiss. “Take care of yourself, Jess.” She spun around, darted up the steps and into the house.
The Quicksilver Sphynx
Miscellanea, December 1993
Evaline ‘Winter
You get me, this month; Nick came down with a nasty flu a few days ago, and he’s in no condition to sit at the computer. Since Sonja is working and Liam is with Nick trying to help him get over this, and since this space has to be filled by tonight… (sigh) I guess it falls to me.
I don’t have any gossip for you; Nick will have to catch you up next month. I do, however, have something I’d really like to bring up: a few days ago, I heard someone refer to a wolf killing a demon, to protect her witch.
There is a trick I would devoutly love to see, since 1) wolf abilities only work on predators, and 2) who on earth called a demon to kill this poor witch?
Kids, there are three, count ‘em, 3, types of esoteric (Greek esoteros, inner; secret, mysterious, “unnatural”) beings out there, that is, three distinct categories into which fall those creatures not alive like the rest of us yet alive nonetheless. Granted, faeries and demons are scarce these days, but can we try to keep things clear anyway? Please? Just to humour one obsessive wolf?
Just so no one can say they don’t know the difference, how about a mini-lesson to remind you of any details you may have forgotten?
Predator: (Latin praedator, a robber) These are the ones we usually see, looking for unprotected highly-gifted snacks. They come in a wide range of forms (I’ve seen all too many personally, like most wolves), usually ugly. They have no physical reality; they exist on the astral plane, though they can interact with ours in limited ways. These are the ones wolves kill, because wolves have neat abilities that let us do that, even when magical and physical attacks by the rest of you are a waste of time. This is why you put up with our various quirks and eccentricities, or so my coven tells me: so we’ll kill predators for you. (Ah, yes, now we all remember!)
Demon: (Greek daimon, a spirit) Demons live on a plane of their own, a long way from this one. When called, and only when called, they can take physical form on this plane. Theoretically, that physical form could be killed, but I’ve never heard of anyone who knows how, or whether it would be permanent. Demon forms are reported to be incredibly strong, fast, well-armed, and either ugly or beautiful. That’s not counting the shapeshifting, hypnotic, and other powers some are said to possess, which even wolves aren’t immune to. If you figure out how to kill one, I’d love to hear it. Seriously. These things are bad news: they like to cause suffering and they like to play mind-games. This is why one of the very few absolute rules of our whole community is to not mess with demon-summoning, at all, ever, no excuses.
Faerie: (long history, from Latin fari, to speak, and/or Latin fata, the Fates, to most recently Old French faerie, enchantment) These are those beautiful (sometimes), capricious (always) immortal beings that our oldest legends tell us had a part in teaching us about magic and the cycles of life and death. No one has seen them reliably in a century or so, so most likely they’ve gone back to wherever they came from (theories include Underhill, Alpha Centauri and the sixth dimension; does it really matter?). I suppose seeing the mess that’s being made of Earth might depress an immortal into heading for home.
Anyway, that makes three clearly-defined types of esoteric races. Please, no more tall tales about wolves killing demons, or elvenmages being adopted and trained by predators, or witches being drained psychically dry by faeries, or anything silly like that!
9
“Hello, Kevin.”
“Hello, Rebecca. I’d ask what I can do for you, but I probably don’t want to know.”
The redheaded werewolf settled herself across from him at the table. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Why? Surely you have something better to do with your time.”
She shrugged. “Duayne’s meeting me here for supper, and you look like you’re waiting. Maybe we can talk until then?”
He sighed. “I’ll have a drink with you, but I’ll get my own, thanks.”
Copper-maned Sonja of Coven Winter came over, expression uneasy while she took orders—a refill on Kevin’s ginger ale and a Bloody Mary for Rebecca.
“Relax, Sonja. We won’t wreck anything,” Kevin assured her. “Tomas bawling me out once for it was enough for me. If we’re going to fight we’ll go outside.”
“Don’t fight at all,” Sonja retorted. Her irregularly-cycling psychic gifts had her telepathy reasonably high at the moment—she flashed him a wordless image of her and her witch coven-mate Nick stepping in to back him up no matter what, followed by their healer coven-mate Liam scolding them all while repairing the damage, and her and Nick looking for new jobs.
“I didn’t mean it literally. I have no intentions of starting a fight.” What Rebecca might intend was another matter, but it was highly unlikely she’d use anything but words.
Which were far, far worse. Why could he never seem to just walk away from her, even knowing that? Masochism?
Sonja regarded him measuringly for a heartbeat or two, then spun away to get back to work. Kevin decided to take that as meaning she believed him: not a given with everyone in Haven, but a reasonably safe bet in this case.
He had no doubt, though, that she and Nick would be keeping surreptitious watch in this direction. Nor that Tomas, who owned the Brewery and had been Kevin’s teacher in magic, would be watching as well, though the reason would probably differ. Nor that others in sight would keep a wary eye out for any hint of anger. Haven remembered what he’d just as soon forget.
Rebecca leaned back in her chair, apparently completely relaxed. “So. How’s your foundling doing?”
“In another couple of months he may be able to come to Haven unshielded without pain. He doesn’t remember any of it, luckily. Which means we can take our time explaining about Haven without throwing him into shock. Are you happy that Gisela and I barely managed to save his life? And that he may have permanent damage that will never heal?” Although I did the worst of the damage, really. Once again, she got me to hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.
She shrugged. “He’s nothing special. His whole lifestyle appears to be built around breaking laws and avoiding being caught for it. I was curious about him when I found out he was still alive, and asked Duayne to see what else he could find out for me. Would you like to know?”
“No. Anything Jesse wants us to know he’ll tell us himself.”
“What if he’s a threat to your coven?”
“In what way? He wouldn’t deliberately…” He caught himself mid-sentence.
“Wouldn’t he?”
“No. He wouldn’t. I won’t say he doesn’t have the potential to turn into a control freak, if and when he knows what he can do, but he’ll have Bane and Eva to teach him. With any luck, he won’t end up insecure and messed up like some wolves I know.”
The low rumble that came from deep in her throat didn’t sound like threat, more like annoyance; despite it, she smiled, showing pointed canines that were barely longer than their neighbours. “You’re so cute when you say rude things to try to keep me at arm’s length. Like a puppy growling and showing his milk teeth.” She took a delicate sip of her drink as Sonja set it on the table; her eyes, two-tone like most wolves, velvet blue with a tawny starburst around the pupil, never left his.
“Maybe I say rude things because they’re what you deserve.”
“You didn’t used to think that.”
“No, and at that point, I was also pleased with myself for beating Flynn up. He’s forgiven me for that but I haven’t and possibly never will. So, y’know, it’s a whole way of looking at the world that I think I’m better off without.”
“What a waste. A phoenix in a wicker cage playing at being a canary, and careful every instant to keep the cage intact. All for the sake of jealous pigeons and sparrows.”
“It’s better than being the hawk that preys on them.” He’d heard her use variants of the analogy many times, and it was never comfortable; it struck too close to his own feelings at moments. “Isn’t it lonely, Becky? With no one to trust or love or share with? No one as an equal, only rivals and subordinates?”
“I had an equal once. You left.”
“You didn’t want a partner. You didn’t want me. You wanted the strongest mage in Haven who was still young enough to be manipulated. Not Kevin.”
Black Wolf Page 10
