Chapter Fourteen
Qindra dropped me off at Black Briar just after nine. Along the way we discussed what her team had found, and it aligned with my hunch. Someone had captured and questioned the ghost of that poor dead kid. She had no way of knowing what they were looking for, but found it quite possible that it was somehow tied to the attack out at Circle Q. Nothing surprises me anymore. Katie was going to love that news. She promised to let me know if they found anything else, but wasn’t hopeful. Basically, she wanted me to keep my ear to the ground and let her know if I found anything on my end.
When she drove away, I saw that the last of her runes had been scratched off, and she wasn’t happy at all. I knew it had to be frustrating for her to be this powerful, and work for the mother of all dragons, only to be thwarted by a cult in her own territory.
I waved at a group of fighters training out by the new barn as I hustled into the house.
I walked in to find Jai Li whupping Bub at gin rummy—that would be Edith Sorenson’s influence. Katie was watching them so intently I didn’t think she’d even noticed I’d arrived.
When Jai Li called gin, Frick and Frack fell off the couch and rolled around on the floor, laughing. Bub took about a second to go from sullen to joyful. He stood, bowed to Jai Li, and placed his cards on the table. Then he laughed and launched himself onto the twins, starting a rollicking, joyful wrestling scrum. Jai Li took her time gathering the cards into a neat pile, shaking her head at the other kids.
I sat down next to Katie at the kitchen table. She leaned back against me with a sigh.
“Don’t you just miss those carefree times when we could play games all day with no worries?”
I kissed the top of her head. “Good times.”
We’d had drastically different childhoods.
Deidre wheeled into the kitchen and set a basket of towels on the counter. “Hey Sarah, how was your day?”
We made a few minutes of small talk before the conversation died on its own as she turned her full attention to her laptop. The house grew quiet, peaceful. The kids were chatting quietly as Jai Li began to deal the cards once more. Frick and Frack didn’t play yet. They were still trying to understand the overall concept of the game, well, that and they tended to eat the cards. At least Bub hadn’t done that since the first time Jai Li beat him.
It took me far too long to realize the tenseness in Katie. Her shoulders were like steel bars. I began to rub them, and she half melted.
“There’s been this buzzing in my head all day,” she said quietly. She glanced over at the kids before swinging around in her chair to face me, scissoring her left leg between mine and taking both of my hands. “The attack on the house last night,” she began, her hands trembling.
I leaned in and kissed her. Not to stop her from talking, but to reassure her.
She reached up and touched the side of my head, brushing her fingertips across the stubble above my left ear. “Nothing feels right today.”
PTSD. I was very familiar with the aftermath of battle, but then again, so was she. This was the first dust-up we’d had since she’d almost died … since we lost Jimmy.
“I keep thinking back to my mother’s diary; going over the day I collapsed at school. I’m sure the book had written something back to me, but I can’t remember what it said for the life of me, and honestly, it’s really pissing me off.”
I blinked at the sudden subject shift. I could connect the dots in her thinking fairly easily, though.
“That book almost killed you.”
Her face hardened and she grew very still. “You traipsed around the Sideways for weeks with that book, and you were fine.”
There was so much resentment in her. I knew she’d been feeling helpless, but reminding her of all the amazing things she’d done and survived didn’t seem to appease that anger. I held her hands loosely, not wanting her to think I was trying to restrain her in any way. I just wanted her to know I was there for her. I couldn’t solve this problem, short of giving her the book back, and, after last time, there was no way I was bringing that out of hiding again. Not until she got a lot stronger. Especially with the news from Qindra.
And I absolutely knew how controlling that was. I struggled with keeping the book from her. Was it really my place? There are demons and decisions we all live with.
“I just want to find out what it knows about my mother.” She sat back, slipping her hands from mine. “It’s so damn unfair.”
“That book almost killed you,” I started.
Katie slid her chair back suddenly and pivoted, leaned her elbows on the table, and pressed her fists to the sides of her head.
“I just want the buzzing to stop.”
Sounds of yelling came from the living room and Katie whipped around, as if she’d only realized there were others in the house. I started to get up, to say something, but Katie put her hand on my knee.
“Watch.”
Frick was crying, holding his face, and Frack was shouting. Trolls have thick hide, so we knew the child wasn’t actually hurt. Apparently one of them had bitten Bub, who in turn had swatted the biter. The three boys looked ready to start punching and kicking. I needed to intervene.
Katie squeezed my knee hard and whispered, “Just watch.”
Jai Li looked at them, a mixture of concern and exasperation on her face. In a blink, a calm resolve washed over her, and she stood up. With one fluid movement, she placed her hand on Bub’s shoulder and stepped past him, squatted down and wiped the side of Frick’s face while at the same time taking Frack’s hand.
It was over in an instant. The crying and yelling stopped. Each of the three boys grew quiet, still. Bub sat down beside Jai Li and apologized to Frick, who patted him on his scaly knee.
Frack sat down quickly and the three of them held hands, letting quiet settle over them like a blanket. There were no more tears. Instead they sat in one another’s company like they were meditating.
I was amazed. Jai Li had quieted them, pulled away the anger, let the hurt and pain ebb away. That was awesome and a little scary.
Katie stood up then, her chair scraping along the kitchen floor, and the children all looked around. She walked into the living room and knelt down with them. Katie laughed out loud as the kids began to roll around on the floor and wrestle once more.
Children were strange sometimes.
Deidre looked up from her computer screen, glanced at the kids and shook her head.
“Rambunctious bunch. Glad to have Jai Li out here today. The twins were getting anxious, snippy.”
“Have you seen that before?” I asked, leaning across the kitchen table and keeping my voice low.
“What, kids wrestling?” Deidre asked.
“No, before that, one of the twins had done something to Bub. He hauled off and clobbered the kid or something. Frick was crying, Frack was ready to fight, and Bub was outraged. In one move Jai Li moved among them, touching each, and quieting the fight in them.”
Deidre thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, they do behave a helluva lot better when she’s here than when she’s not. I always chalked it up to her being a girl and having a calming influence over them.”
Maybe more than we knew. I wondered if this was why she and her twin had been gifted to Nidhogg. It was a little creepy. “It was like she stilled them, just flipped a switch and turned off the anger and pain.”
Deidre looked from the kids and back to Katie. “Not a bad skill to have. World could use more peacemakers.”
Katie’s sudden squeal of laughter rang through the house as all the kids pig-piled on top of her, laughing and howling.
“Never know what gifts a child has,” Deidre said, patting me on the arm. “You just have to watch ’em grow and guide them the best you can.”
“You did a fair enough job with Katie, I guess.”
Deidre laughed. “She was always a willful child. Spiteful at times. Her teenage years were a trial. That’s for sure.”
I looked out at the kids in the other room. Bub was hundreds of years old but acted like a preschooler most days. Jai Li was only six and the troll twins were close enough to two but acted at least four. And my beloved Katie. Barely twenty-five and carrying more than her fair share of pain.
All of them were orphaned. Did they wonder about their parents?
Family was such a tenuous thing. Easily snuffed out by any number of tragedies. Tears stung my eyes.
“Can you watch them a bit?” I asked Deidre,. “so I can take Katie out for a walk?”
“Sure, hon, take your time.” Deidre closed her laptop and rolled into the living room.
Deidre was only in her early thirties. She and Jimmy had just gotten married when his and Katie’s parents had disappeared. Katie and Deidre shared a lot of loss. It all made me feel old beyond my years. Was that because of the trauma and the pain? Or was it because I couldn’t do a damned thing about it?
Katie came stumbling out of the living room, her face red from laughing. The pain was still there in her eyes, but damn, it was good to see her happy, even for a moment.
I gave her my best smile. “Let’s take a walk.”
She took my hand and we went out the back door. The wind felt good on my face as we strode across the deck. I just needed to breathe, to have the open sky over my head. It was time that I pulled my head out of my ass and stopped trying to control her life.
“Let’s talk about the diary.”
She reached up and grabbed my arm, pulling in close to me as we walked.
We walked in silence until we were out beyond the war memorial.
“Qindra called,” I said, breaking the reverie. “That mercenary that survived the farm attack led to a network of black ops groups, but she couldn’t find any direct connections to witches or dragons. Just a bunch of folks willing to kill people for money.”
Katie sighed. “What a fucked-up world we live in.”
We walked for a good fifteen minutes, just sharing each other’s space. The early evening was beautiful. I always loved it out here. We ended up near the creek that flowed down out of the national forest and onto Black Briar property. Once upon a time, Katie and I had followed a troll up that stream, into the mountains where we killed her. The horror of finding the twins in that cave still made me queasy at times.
Just before the fence that ran along the edge of the property, there was a scattering of boulders that had been laid down by glaciers a billion years ago. It was a pretty place, looking up into the mountains. It would be a nice place to bring the kids for a picnic. When they were older.
We settled on the boulders, and Katie drew a deep breath.
“I still don’t understand why they attacked the farm.”
She turned and draped her legs over my right thigh and held both my hands in hers. “I mean, maybe they were trying to kill you, but the whole thing seemed like a real clusterfuck, you know?”
Now it was my turn to sigh.
“They were after the diary,” I said.
Katie stiffened. “It’s in the house?”
I shook my head. “Not anymore.” She grew silent, her face blank. “The mercenary did say they were to create a diversion while that witch, Anika, stole something from the house. Qindra said it was something very valuable, something very powerful.”
Katie didn’t look up, but she pursed her mouth.
“They were misinformed. I moved the book after you recovered. Didn’t want it near you.”
She looked up then. “It’s mine.”
If she said the word precious, I was going to come unglued.
“When this Anika tried to scry for where the book was, she alerted Edith to her presence. I guess they didn’t expect Bub or Edith.”
Katie barked a laugh. “Honestly, did you have any idea Edith was a witch herself?”
I smiled. “No chance. She totally caught me by surprise.”
“Where’s the book?”
“Safe.”
“I’m a grown-ass woman, Sarah. I know you love me and all, but it’s not your job to control me. You can’t protect me from everything in the world, you know?”
I didn’t say anything, just nodded and let her continue to talk. There was a blockage in our communication and apparently this was the time to smash through that. She just opened her mouth and all her fears and pain surrounding the events of the last year came tumbling out in a mishmash of anxiety. Hell, she was just as worried she’d lose me, as I was that I’d lose her. What did it say about me that I thought myself more capable of protecting her, than she of protecting me?
I’d done exactly what my dad had done when I was twelve and we’d run. Imagine how utterly shitty I felt for keeping the diary from her against her wishes. Who was I to control her? I was being selfish, and even though it was because I loved her, and was afraid for her, it gave me absolutely no right to make such a dick move. Of course, she agreed wholeheartedly.
It was a painful and cathartic three hours. We hadn’t resolved much of anything, but it was all out on the table. The look of relief on her face when we were done made me ashamed.
Learn, Sarah. Learn.
When we tucked Jai Li into bed, we watched as she explained how the day had gone. Katie and I sat together while our daughter laughed and signed all the antics of the boys, and the games, and how absolutely wonderful life was. Made for a pretty great ending to the day.