Phelan didn’t smile this time. “You really think that was it?”
“An advantage? By the gods, I do.”
Again, Ned didn’t see the movement clearly. He couldn’t tell whether the second blade came from a boot top again or from inside the leather jacket sleeve as Phelan’s arm swept downwards.
He saw the knife. Cadell sprang to his feet, twisting, chair scraping on floor tiles.
And then the blade was deep, in Phelan’s own shoulder.
He’d driven it in, exactly where he’d struck the other man.
Ned felt an overwhelming confusion of feelings. It really was becoming way too much. He heard Kate stifle another cry. Then he heard laughter.
He looked across the table. Cadell had subsided into the chair again, his head thrown back. His laughter filled the room.
Ned glanced at his mother. She was staring at the smaller man, who had just put a blade in his own arm. She turned to Ned and met his eyes.
He saw her nod acceptance. Finally.
This, if nothing else, had made her acknowledge that something entirely outside their understanding was unfolding here. Happening right now, but also before this, over and over, and again when they were gone—from Provence, or the world.
“How very amusing,” Cadell said, looking across at Phelan, finally controlling his laughter.
It wasn’t the word Ned would have used.
“I have my moments,” the other man replied quietly.
“Such a stoic Roman,” said Cadell mockingly.
“I was Greek when we met.”
“Roman soon enough.”
“And then something else.”
“No, never anything else.”
The tone was blunt, absolute.
Phelan smiled mirthlessly. “How many years is one a stranger? Do the druids propose a number?”
“That’s a Roman question. You live in a different world.”
“We all do, now,” Phelan said. “Answer. How long?”
“Here? A stranger? Some forever. You are one of those.”
The other man shrugged, with one shoulder. There was a knife in the other. Violence, Ned thought, could come and be gone and leave only the memory—the blurred image of it—behind.
Phelan looked at his left arm and made a face. “I am sorry about the jacket. I like it.” Then he clenched his teeth and pulled out the dagger.
That had to hurt, Ned thought. Blood followed the blade, staining the grey leather. Phelan looked at his knife, wiped it on his trouser leg, and put it away.
It had been in the boot.
Meghan Marriner was staring at him. “I won’t even pretend to understand either of you,” she said. Ned knew that voice. She turned to her sister. “I assume it wouldn’t help us with Melanie if we let these two get infections, lose a unit or two of blood? Die or something?”
Kim shook her head. “It might. But probably not. I think if they’re gone, she’s gone.”
“Melanie?”
“Ysabel, but same thing now.”
Meghan took a deep breath. “You’ll explain?”
There was a lot in that question, Ned thought. Twenty-five years’ worth. There were different ways of measuring what could be called a really long time.
He saw his aunt nod once and then, with a smooth, straight movement, draw the other dagger from Cadell’s shoulder. He showed no reaction at all.
“All that this exercise in idiocy proves,” Kim Ford said grimly, as she began using the same knife to cut away the Celt’s shirtsleeve, “is that not even two thousand years and however many lives can make men halfway intelligent.”
Her sister laughed.
NED GLANCED SIDELONG at Kate Wenger. They had walked around the far side of the pool to the lavender bushes in the last of the daylight. No flowers there yet; late June, apparently.
The sun was gone. Purple and pink bands, beginning to fade, striped the sky above Aix. The moon was over the woods beyond the drive. He heard birdsong.
It was chilly. He’d gone upstairs and found his hooded sweatshirt for Kate. The sleeves were too long; her hands were inside like a little kid’s, the cuffs dangling. He remembered looking that way himself. His mother used to buy him clothes a size too big, cuff or double-cuff sleeves or trousers.
His mother was inside, dressing a knife wound. Someone had tried to kill Ned today. It could have happened, probably would have happened, if his uncle had been later arriving. He wondered if he would start reliving those moments tonight when he turned out the bedroom light.
Kate looked over at him. “Nice pool here.”
“Really cold. They don’t heat them in France.”
“I know. They wait till summer. You’ve been in?” He remembered the ringtone war, being thrown in there. That made him think of Melanie. “Once,” was all he said. Then, as that seemed inadequate, “Steve’s the swimmer. He’s been doing laps. Has a trick knee, that’s his exercise.”
Small talk. Meaningless. Kate seemed to reach the same conclusion. She said, “Why do they keep thinking we know—you know—where she is?”
“Ysabel?” That was dumb too—who else could it be? “I’m not sure they do. I think . . .” He stopped, trying to phrase it right, trying to think it right.
“Yes?”
Ned sighed. “I think they are trying for just anything they can. We did get Phelan to Entremont. You did that.”
Kate made a face. “I didn’t do anything, I just thought you’d want to see it.”
They started walking, came to the western edge of the property. Across the wire fence he could see dug-up earth, black soil exposed. Wild boars, rooting. The neighbouring villa was some distance off, mostly hidden among trees, a little lower down. Lights were on there, he saw. They were alone here in the wind.
“You going to tell me it was just an accident we went up?” he said.
“Well, it was!”
“And the way you were? Before, with me, on the way?”
She looked out across the fence. “That was completely an accident.”
“Right. It was Marie-Chantal, you were channelling her.” He shook his head. “Kate, these two guys don’t think that way, so we can’t. They think we’ve got some other kind of channel.”
“You do, don’t you?”
He sighed again. “Some. I guess Phelan was here to ask us, or me, and Cadell’s kind of tracking him.”
“Yeah. He wasn’t supposed to fly.”
“He wasn’t supposed to throw a dagger at him.”
They looked out over the valley at the city beyond and below. Lights coming on there too, now. It was pretty gorgeous in the twilight. Ned struggled to formulate a thought. “You think, in the old days, people would come out for a sunset?”
Kate shook her head. “Sunrise, maybe. Nightfall would scare them. Not something to enjoy. Time to get behind walls. Bar the door. Evil things abroad.”
Ned thought about it. He remembered the round tower, only a walk from here. Guarding against an attack. People had been calling this place a paradise for a long time. You fought wars for paradise.
And for a woman. He was having a hard time keeping the image of Ysabel from filling his thoughts, shifting them. Men kneeling before her among torches. He looked at Kate, beside him in his outsized sweatshirt. So ordinary, and they were so far from that ordinary world here.
He said, “You know, occurs to me, you cool staying with us? I mean, this is getting rough. And it’s . . . it isn’t your . . .”
She looked at him. “Trying to get rid of me?”
He shook his head. “No, and you know it. But I have a feeling my mom’s going to say this is way too dangerous. She’ll—any bets she’ll want to call your mother or something?”
Kate smiled at the thought. “And tell her what, exactly?”
“No effing idea, but . . . there was a knife in there, Kate.”
“I saw. Two of them. Not thrown at me.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Bad pun. Ned, thank you. But it’s cool. I’m still the only other person here who can recognize Ysabel.”
True, sort of. “I think my aunt would probably know her. You know. Inside. If she wasn’t screening herself.”
“Then we can have three groups tomorrow. With your uncle’s car now.”
She was quick. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He had just figured out his own accidental pun.
“Maybe,” he said. “I’m not telling you what to do.”
“Ned, Melanie’s where I was going to be. You know it.” She looked out over the meadow again, darkening to brown and grey in twilight. “I didn’t sleep a lot last night, thinking about that. I can’t walk away.”
He’d thought about this himself. How hard it would be for her to have been inside, and just leave. He turned towards the field across the fence too.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m glad, actually. I’m glad you’re here.” It seemed easier to say some things not looking at her. “Fair warning about my mom, though.”
“I’ll deal. What did he mean—Phelan—when he said of course you’d have felt something by Les Baux?”
Ned shrugged. “No idea.”
“Where was it?”
“Just north. On the way to those Roman ruins.”
“Glanum.” Kate’s voice was resolute. “I’ll google it and check Melanie’s notes tonight.”
“You do that,” he said. “Prepare a memo with footnotes.” He looked at her, amused, despite everything.
“Don’t you make fun of me!” Kate said, glaring.
“I wasn’t.” Though he had been. He hesitated. “You’re pretty cool, anyhow.” He managed to keep looking at her this time. It was nearly dark, which helped.
“I’m not cool at all. I’m a geek, remember? Someone to get essays from.”
Ned shook his head. “No.”
He left it at that, turned away again. After a moment she said, in a different voice, “Well, thank you. But don’t you think this sweatshirt makes me look fat?”
Ned laughed aloud.
Kate was grinning.
“Yeah, McGill hoodies tend to. Everyone knows that.” He took a chance. “I saw you last night, remember? All legs.”
She chose to ignore that. “What’s McGill?”
“Main university in Montreal.”
“You going there?”
“Might. Probably. Haven’t thought about it a lot. Thinking less about it just now.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
They heard a sound to their right.
Ned turned quickly. In the fading light he saw an owl flying north along the upslope of the hill behind the house. The bird was awkward, labouring, fighting to climb.
They watched it. For no reason he could have explained, Ned felt a lump in his throat. It was Cadell, of course, defiantly forcing himself to take wing despite a wound. Refusing to acknowledge what had been done to him, that it could change anything, make him behave differently.
“He’ll . . . he’s going to have to land,” Kate said. Her voice was rough. “Change back.”
Ned nodded. “I know. He’ll wait till he’s out of sight if it kills him.”
They were silent, watching the bird struggle. They lost it, then Ned saw it again. Its left wing seemed to be hardly moving, though it was difficult to see in the last light, and that might just have been his knowing where the blade had gone.
After another moment the owl passed from sight, cresting the hill.
“He didn’t have to do that,” Kate Wenger said softly.
“Yeah, he did,” Ned replied.
She glared at him again. “Your aunt,” she said, with more anger than seemed called for, “was right, then. Men are idiots.”
“I try not to be,” Ned said.
“Don’t even start with me, Ned Marriner.”
A presence, a voice behind them. “Be fair. He hasn’t done too badly.”
Phelan walked up.
“We didn’t hear you,” Kate said.
The man they’d first seen in the baptistry shrugged a shoulder. The other would be bandaged, Ned knew, under the jacket. The jacket would be torn. It was too dark to make that out.
“I’ve had time to learn how not to be heard,” Phelan said. “I came to say goodbye.”
“Well brought up?” Kate said.
“Once, yes.” He hesitated. “In Phocaia.”
“I know. I looked it up. Eastern Greece. But your name wasn’t Protis?”
He shook his head.
“You can remember being young?” Ned asked.
Another hesitation. He was being kind to them, Ned realized. “You never forget being young,” he said. Then, “Do you have anything for me? Anything at all?”
A great deal of pride being overcome to ask that. Ned shook his head. “I’d have told you both, if I had.”
He thought the other man’s expression was pained, but that was probably his imagination. The bands of colour were almost gone in the west.
“I thought you might . . .”
“Be on your side?”
Phelan nodded. “You were, in the café.”
“You didn’t need me,” Ned said. “You said I was stupid to come out, remember?”
“I remember.” His teeth flashed briefly. “Men are idiots?”
“Yeah. You heard that?” Kate said.
He nodded again. “Inside and out here. A body of opinion, it seems.”
“How’s your shoulder?” Kate asked.
“Same as his, I imagine.”
“But you don’t need to fly.”
“I don’t, no.”
“You do the screening thing, though, right?” Ned said. “You told me about that. Then you did it at Entremont.”
“I did learn it, eventually, yes. As he learned the shape-changing.”
“Why him, not you?”
A hint of impatience for the first time. “Why did they have druids and keep their elders’ skulls, and their enemies’, and believe the sky would fall to end the world?”
Ned said nothing.
“Why did we build aqueducts and cities? And theatres? And arenas and baths and the roads?”
“I get it. Why did you conquer them? Make them slaves?” That was Kate.
“Why were we able to do that?”
“What are you saying? Different ideas of the world?” Ned asked.
Phelan nodded. He turned to Kate. “He isn’t an idiot, by the way.”
“Never said he was,” she retorted.
Phelan opened his mouth to reply, but didn’t. He looked at Ned again. “Different ideas, different avenues to power. You’ve learned how to screen yourself ?”
Ned nodded. “Just now.”
“Remember to let it go unless you need it. You’re still hidden. You don’t need to be. It will kick back on you if you hold too long. You can harm yourself. I learned the hard way.”
“Seriously?” Dumb question.
Phelan nodded. “It drains you, takes a fair amount of energy, though you don’t even know it.”
Hesitantly, Ned closed his eyes, looked within again, saw the silver light that was the man he was talking to and the green-gold of his aunt up in the house. Cadell’s presence was too far away now, or blocked.
He released his own, like opening fingers in his mind, and saw his own pale hue reappear inside.
“Ah,” Phelan said. “There you are. I’ll leave now. This is”—he looked from one of them to the other—“farewell, I suspect. I will say that I am grateful—for the café, for Entremont.”
“You saved us up there,” Kate said.
He shook his head. “He was unlikely to have hurt you, with Ysabel watching.”
“The others might have, and it was Beltaine,” Kate said stubbornly.
Phelan shrugged again, with one shoulder. “So be it. I saved your lives. Doesn’t make me a good man.”
“I know that,” Ned said.
Phelan looked at him for a long moment.
&n
bsp; “You must understand, I have . . . no balancing in this,” he said quietly, in the near-dark. “The air I breathe is her, or wanting her.”
Ned was silent. He felt something pushing from inside himself, a kind of wish, longing. Last encounter, an ending, a world touched and receding.
He heard himself say, “I sensed her in the cemetery. No idea from when. It might have been long ago like the other place, but I did feel her.”
Phelan’s attention was suddenly absolute. “Ysabel herself, not just a sensation?”
Ned nodded. “Ysabel.”
Saying the name himself.
The man’s head lifted. He was looking down the valley, as if trying to see as far as Arles. He was a grey shape in moonlight, going away from them. The villa’s lights were across the grass, up the stone steps, gleaming through windows, far away from where they stood.
“That would have been her now, if so. She knew Les Alyscamps. We all did.”
“What does it tell you?” Kate asked, an edge in her voice. She knows he’s leaving, too, Ned thought. This world they’d found.
“One thing or two,” Phelan said. He looked at Ned. “Thank you, again.”
“I’m not sure why I did that.”
“Neither am I,” Phelan said. “Because he cheated?”
“I cheat on things,” Ned said. “I even took an essay from . . .” He didn’t finish. It seemed too dismally stupid a thought.
He saw white teeth in the darkness. “Perhaps I charmed you with my sweetness?” Phelan laughed. He shook his head. “I’m away. Remember me, if this is the end.”
He turned and started back across the grass. Ned discovered he was unable to speak.
“How are you going to . . . How did you get here?” Kate again.
Ned had a sense—same as in the cloister—that she was trying to keep him here, hold him with questions, not release him into the night.
“You’ll hear,” Phelan said, without turning back. He hadn’t turned back in the cloister, either.
They watched him go past the pool and the lavender to the iron gates. They were closed and locked. The motion sensors kicked on as he approached, so they had a sudden view as he put both arms—one would be bandaged, with a blade wound—on the bars, and then propelled himself over without fuss, with an ease that seemed absurd, in fact.
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