by Anne Bishop
His breath caught. He sat up straight, his blood pounding in his veins.
“One lock this time,” he whispered. “And only one key that will open it.” Then he felt a stab of sorrow so fierce that he bent over, pressing his forehead to his knees to try to ease the pain of it.
Only one would open that lock. And he wasn’t the right key.
“Well, look who’s here.”
It wasn’t the warmest welcome, Michael thought as he stepped into Philo’s courtyard, but at least Teaser wasn’t hurling threats at him—or stones.
“Michael!” Lynnea hurried over. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you. Where have you been? Have you eaten? You haven’t eaten, have you? Sit down right there, and I’ll bring you something. Teaser, you keep him company.”
“You don’t have to be fussing over me,” Michael protested. “I just…Is Sebastian around?”
“You’re nothing but skin and bones,” Lynnea said.
A little worse for wear, maybe, but hardly skin and bones.
“You will sit, and you will eat.”
She suddenly sounded like a younger version of his aunt Brighid, which scared him enough to make him keep quiet and pull out a chair at a table. When she swung into the building to place his order, he looked at Teaser, who shrugged.
“She’s practicing to be a mommy,” Teaser said, dropping into the opposite chair.
“She’s pregnant?” That would be good news for the family, wouldn’t it?
“They’re working on getting her that way.”
Michael scratched his chin. “They weren’t working on it before?” He couldn’t picture Sebastian abstaining from sex.
“Nah,” Teaser said. “Before, if it happened, it would have been an accident. Now it’s deliberate. Don’t ask me what the difference is. I’m just an incubus, and from where I’m standing, it looks the same to me.”
He smiled, finding comfort in the ordinary. And he could admit to himself that that was the reason he’d avoided the Den over these past few months—he hadn’t felt he deserved the comfort he’d found in this landscape, with these people.
Then he heard the song, before he turned his head and saw the man. A dark song, full of power, threaded with Light.
“Word has it that you’ve settled into the house on the Island in the Mist,” Sebastian said as he joined them.
“I have, yes.”
Lynnea came back and set a plate in front of him piled with roast beef, potatoes, and some kind of casserole. She placed a bowl of melted cheese and a basket of Phallic Delights between Sebastian and Teaser.
“The man isn’t taking care of himself,” she said, glaring at Sebastian. “Don’t let him leave the table until he eats.”
“What’s he supposed to do?” Teaser asked, reaching for a Phallic Delight. “Give Michael a bit of a sizzle?”
Lynnea whacked the incubus on the shoulder and huffed off to a table full of visitors, who cowered at her approach.
“She tangled with Lee over something this morning and has been a bit pissy ever since,” Sebastian said, swirling a Delight in the melted cheese.
“Over me, is what you’re not saying.” Michael started to push the plate of food away, then glanced up and saw Lynnea glaring at him, so he picked up a fork and stabbed a piece of potato.
“Good choice,” Sebastian said. “Anyone who tangles with her today is on his own.”
The first few bites didn’t go down easily, but as he listened to Teaser and Sebastian talking about the Den, he began to relax and enjoy the meal.
Lynnea returned, declared herself satisfied that he’d eaten enough, and removed the dishes.
“Well,” Teaser said, looking from him to Sebastian. “I’ll just take myself off and do…something.”
When they were alone, Michael could feel those sharp green eyes staring at him, so he lifted his head and met Sebastian, look for look.
“Threat and promise is what you called me,” Michael said quietly. “I made good on the threat by helping Glorianna cage the Eater of the World—and cage herself in the process. Now I’m asking for your help, Justice Maker, in order to make good on the promise.”
“In clear words, Magician,” Sebastian said.
“I think there’s a way to get her back. And I think you’re the key to doing it.”
Sebastian stared at him for a long time. Then, softly, “What do you want me to do?”
“It might not work,” Michael said as he and Sebastian walked over to the sandbox.
“You said that.”
“I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“You said that too.”
“I just don’t want you to hope for too much.”
Sebastian stopped. “Magician. Isn’t that the whole point? To hope?”
Michael swayed with the force of those words flowing through the currents on the island. “It is. Yes, it is.”
They stepped into the gravel side of the box and sat down on the bench.
“What do you want me to do?” Sebastian asked.
Michael took out his whistle. “I’m not sure how this reaching through the twilight of waking dreams works, but you were able to reach my aunt and the Ladies of Light on the White Isle when you sent that riddle, so I’m thinking you could reach Glorianna in this other landscape.”
Sebastian looked at the tip of his boot. “I’ve already tried that. It didn’t work.”
Michael nodded. “And I’ve tried what I could do. I’m thinking neither is enough by itself, but together…All we need is a crack, a way to send a little something to help her remember who she was. She divided her heart and built a wall to keep them separated, but given a chance, they’ll come back together. We’re trying to create just enough of a chink in that wall for her to feel the other half of her heart.”
It was tempting to play the love inside himself, but while Sebastian unfurled the power of the incubus and moved through the twilight of waking dreams, Michael played the music he heard in the incubus’s heart.
A beautiful bed in a garden. A piece of granite, the stone of strength, with veins of quartz that sparkled in sunlight. Rich earth. And flowers that rose out of the ground in a dazzle of colors that delighted the eye—and made the scar in her chest ache and ache and ache until…
That was better. Much better. Those beautiful flowers were nothing more than a lure. As they bloomed, the nectar dripped down the petals and poisoned the rich earth, killing the beauty.
And despair moaned through the dying trees, and sorrow was a bed of stones.
And somewhere, just out of sight, a boy laughed, his delight at being included, at being accepted, producing a shimmer of Light.
She woke, her hand pressed against her chest to ease the terrible ache.
Something stirred in her landscape. Something that didn’t belong here.
Something she couldn’t want here.
She rose, feeling stiff, feeling achy, feeling angry. She would strip away any pretties that had crept into her landscape. She would crush anything that fed the weeds of Light, those damned currents she couldn’t eliminate completely, no matter how often she tore at the roots.
Time to find the Eater again. It gave her a savage pleasure to use those remaining flickers of Light to manifest something desirable and watch It try to belong, to fit in with the very creatures It had once wanted to destroy.
Boo, hoo, boo, hoo, little Eater. Belladonna has a treat for you. Poison in the pretties.
Or maybe just a pretty. The hearts in this landscape would tear each other apart to possess something truly pretty. Or tasty. Or desirable.
She laughed, and the sound was a blight on the land.
But as she prepared to leave the lair she had created from a garden a girl had abandoned long ago, she stopped and listened.
For a moment, she thought she heard music. And then there was only the wind.
Sebastian rubbed the back of his neck to ease the ache.
Michael tucked his whistle
in his pocket and ignored the stiffness in his hands—and wondered how long they’d been at this before neither had been able to sustain the effort.
“What do you think?” Sebastian finally asked. “Did anything happen?”
“I don’t know,” Michael replied wearily. “I don’t know.”
Sebastian stood up and stretched. Then he looked at Michael. “Then I guess we do this again tomorrow.”
“I guess we do.”
He walked with Sebastian to the stationary bridge that would take the incubus to Sanctuary and the first step on the journey home. Alone again, he stopped at the bed near the house—and smiled.
“Something happened,” he whispered. “Something did.”
The bud on his little heart’s hope plant had bloomed, and another bud was starting to grow.
Chapter Thirty-four
Michael half turned when he heard the brisk knock on the kitchen door, but before he could step away from the stove, Sebastian was inside, closing the door against the wind and the wet weather.
“You got rain.” Sebastian set the market basket on the table, then stripped off his coat and hung it on a peg by the door.
“Not the best of days to be trying the music,” Michael said, “but there’s an umbrella here. We can stuff ourselves under it for a little while.”
“Won’t that be cozy?” Sebastian rubbed his hands as if he were trying to warm them up. “It’s not raining in Aurora.”
There was a message in those words. “I’m making tea,” Michael said. “If you want koffee…”
“I’ll make it myself,” Sebastian finished, taking a few things out of the market basket.
“I can make it,” Michael said, feeling as if his hospitality had been called into question.
“No,” Sebastian said firmly. “You can’t.”
Ah. So it wasn’t his hospitality that was being called into question but his ability to make an acceptable—according to Sebastian—cup of koffee.
“Fine then,” Michael grumbled. “Make it yourself.”
“I’ve got two jars of Aunt Nadia’s soup, and Lynnea made a couple of beef sandwiches.”
Bribery. And since that would make a far better meal than anything he would have scrounged for himself, he got a pot out of the cupboard to heat up one jar of soup, then set two places at the table.
“It’s been a few days now, Michael,” Sebastian said after he ground the koffea beans and got the brew started. “I couldn’t keep sliding around the question of where I was going each day. So I told Lynnea where I’ve been going—and that led to telling her why.”
Michael ladled the soup into bowls while Sebastian put the sandwiches on plates. “And she told Nadia.” Which explained the food.
“It’s made them hopeful—and that has given them all a lot of energy.”
The way Sebastian smiled gave him a very bad feeling.
“So who else knows?”
“Just the people you’d expect. Family—and close friends.”
Lady’s mercy. That wasn’t all of it. He sensed there was more, but whatever else Sebastian wanted to tell him was something he really didn’t want to know.
When they were halfway through the soup, Sebastian said, “It’s spring. I was told it’s time to tidy up the gardens.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That means it’s not going to rain here tomorrow, Magician, so you’d better be home and you’d better be prepared.”
Michael blinked. “For what?”
Sebastian shook his head and sighed. “Four women, which includes your aunt Brighid, who like to play in the dirt and grow green things.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They will be here tomorrow—along with me, Teaser, Jeb, Yoshani, and Lee—to help you tidy up the walled garden, and plant a few flowers in the personal garden.”
Michael plopped his spoon in the bowl, slumped in his chair, and stared at Sebastian. “There’s close to two acres of land in the walled garden, and that much or more that could be considered the formal grounds around the house.”
“Uh-huh.”
“All of it? We’re going to tidy up all of it?”
“Uh-huh.”
He felt the blood draining out of his head. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He wasn’t a gardener, and didn’t pretend to be, but the gardens didn’t look too bad to his untrained eye. “So what’s to be done then?”
Sebastian held up a hand and began ticking items off with his fingers. “Weeding, mulching, raking the leaves that were neglected last fall—”
“Raking leaves? Why?”
“Because they fell off the trees and are now on the ground. We can rake them up or we can tack them back onto the trees, every single one of them. That’s a direct quote.”
Michael braced his head in his hands. “Lee doesn’t want to come here. His arm has been out of the plaster for a while now, but I’d think he’d use the excuse of a healing bone to get out of coming here.”
“He tried,” Sebastian replied dryly. “He was told, and I quote, ‘You don’t need two hands to pull up weeds.’”
“Lady of Light, have mercy on us.”
“Well, I hope someone does, because Aunt Nadia is pretty ruthless when it comes to cleaning up the garden. And Lynnea isn’t much better,” Sebastian added under his breath.
Michael fiddled with the spoon for a moment, then pushed the bowl aside. “If you could go back and make that choice again, the one that has you tidying up gardens because a particular woman wants it of you…”
“I’d make the same choice,” Sebastian said. “I chose love, Magician. Just like you. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m here.” He studied what was left of the soup in his bowl. “Did Glorianna like this soup?”
“It was her favorite. Aunt Nadia calls it comfort soup.” Sebastian looked at the other jar of soup on the counter and then looked at Michael. “Magician, I have an idea.”
Crying softly, the Eater of the World wrapped the tatters of Its shirt around Its wounded arm.
There had been bushes of ripe berries. Succulent. Sweet. It hadn’t wanted many, just a few. Just a taste of something good.
But the humans had found the berries too, and their minds had been too clotted with greed and viciousness to hear anything else. They trampled each other and tore at each other in order to get to the berries. They stabbed at each other and stoned each other as they fought to stuff handfuls of the ripe fruit in their mouths. They destroyed the bushes and mashed half the berries underfoot in their efforts to have as much as they could—more than anyone else.
And when It had tried to move among them and get Its own small share of the berries, they had turned on It, attacked It, ripped at Its clothes, and driven It away.
They had hurt It. And there was no one—no one—in this landscape who had the kind of heart that would have taken It in to tend the wounds and look after It.
Well, there were hearts in this landscape that were able to feel kindness and compassion, even if only a little, but those feelings just withered without…
World? It whimpered. World? Where is the Light?
“Come on, wild child, you can do this,” Michael said as he set the basket on the sand in the box. “You brought Caitlin’s hair to Aurora to help her, remember? This is the same thing. We just want you to take this basket to Belladonna. Just leave it where she’ll find it. It’s important. You can do this. We know you can.” Michael looked over his shoulder and made a circling “say something” gesture.
“If you could do this, it would mean a lot to the people who love her,” Sebastian said. He didn’t sound confident, even though this had been his idea, but at least the Justice Maker wasn’t trying to fool the world with false heartiness.
Stepping back, Michael tucked himself under the umbrella Sebastian held and gave the other man a minute to unfurl the power of the incubus. Then he pulled out his whistle and began to play.
There w
as a basket on the ground by the fountain, and a resonance flowing through the currents of this old garden.
She moved cautiously toward the basket, expecting some kind of trap, obscenely angry that anything would dare enter her lair. But there was nothing in the basket except a bowl, a spoon, and a jar of…soup.
Something prickled the edges of her memory, a painful tingle like a limb waking up. And that resonance. She felt it hook into the scar in her chest, felt it dig in and set. And from that hook the thinnest thread of Light flowed out to someplace beyond her landscapes. She should pull it out. Would pull it out. Except the thread flowed with that resonance.
She looked at the jar of food—and her belly growled, so she poured some of the soup into the bowl, then sealed up the jar before she picked up the spoon and took a taste.
The sound of chattering birds coming from the room beside the kitchen. Two boys at the table. Her brother Lee and…
So watchful, so wary, so wanting to belong. She felt a connection between his heart and hers, knew this now-stranger would resonate through her life.
Sebastian.
Watching him eat the soup her mother had made. Watching him savor the taste of it, the sensuality of soup and bread eaten at a table where love was served along with the food.
Lee. Sebastian. Nadia.
She flung the bowl away from her. Tried to fling the memory with it. But the memory was more tenacious, had already hooked into the scarred part of her.
“Mother.”
Nadia wasn’t here. Couldn’t be here. Nor Lee. Nor Sebastian. But the basket…
She heard it then. The music that matched the resonance of a boy who had sunk a hook into her heart so many years ago. Too late now. Too late. She had managed to tear that resonance out of her heart once before, but she couldn’t do it again. Not again.
In that moment, suspended between the Dark she could feel and that resonance called Sebastian that made her yearn for something, another resonance rippled through her. The faintest whisper, the merest tug.
A promise.
Chapter Thirty-five
