The Ramble

General Jackson “Longshot” Hunter has been in the intelligence game for decades.  The head of Alliance SpecOps, he’s done everything in his power to prevent his operatives from suffering the personal tragedies he has–sometimes successfully, sometimes not.  With war with the Imperium looming on the horizon, Hunter faces the greatest fight of his life: to protect a man he’s come to regard as the son he never had and to save humanity from itself–and a threat long dead.

The story in Longshot takes place largely during the events if Redeemer and was an experiment from several years ago in centering a story on Jack Hunter, the chief of Alliance SpecOps and the chief of military intelligence back on Epsilon.  It’s part character study, part background, part thought and timeline organization.  Chapter 1 is a little bit of all three wrapped up in a packet.

Enjoy.

One

 The middle-aged general dusted some snow off the dark gray headstone and straightened, staring at the few words carved into the polished granite.

Madeline Terrel Taylor, born August 23, 2213, died July 17, 2255. Beloved.

“I’ve been doing what you’ve asked, Madeline,” the general whispered softly. His breath steamed in the chill January air as he stood in the snow, in the shadows of the oak tree planted over the ashes of another woman he’d loved and lost. “I’ve been watching over him as best I can, but he’s not ready to learn the truth. He’s not ready for that yet. I’m sorry.” He laid a gloved hand against the cold stone, squeezing his eyes shut against the sting of the wind. “He’s out on the frontier where you met his father, doing his job. He’s one of my best, Madeline. You’d be proud. You’d be very proud.”

He stooped to lay the flowers in his other hand down against the stone, then turned his gaze toward the oak, his throat growing tight even though his fiancée had been gone these twenty-seven years. “I’m doing my best, Mai,” he said. “I’m trying harder than Roger ever did to make sure they come home at the end of the day. I won’t let any of them suffer like we did, like Kath and Joe did. I’m trying not to let it happen.”

Jackson Hunter swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. “God forgive me for the times I’ve failed no matter how hard I’ve tried.”

Wind stirred the oak’s bare branches and he exhaled a sigh. He wasn’t a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, but he had to believe that there was something beyond mortal life, even if he wasn’t sure what it was. Little signs like the wind through those branches made him feel like she’d heard him, somehow, from somewhere beyond the grave.

“I miss you,” he whispered, his voice all but lost in the sound of rustling branches. “I miss you both.” One more than the other.

There were days when he wasn’t quite sure which of the two he missed more.

He closed his eyes and lingered a moment longer before he turned and walked down the hill toward the walking path below. Another man in an ESF-issue peacoat stood on the path, waiting in polite silence for his commander’s pleasure.

“You’ve been waiting,” Hunter said.

“Not long.” The young man smiled faintly and inclined his head. “Only a few minutes.”

Hunter nodded slightly. “Did you get through?”

“Yes sir. Message delivered and, if I know him as well as I think I do, taken to heart.”

“What time was it there?”

“Late. Early. A little of both.” They began to walk down the path toward the cemetery gates. “Hard to say if I woke him or not. I can never quite tell.”

“Text would make that hard,” Hunter observed drily. His aide laughed.

“I suppose so. He answered quickly enough, so I’m thinking if I woke him, he wasn’t that deeply asleep.” They lapsed into silence for a dozen steps, then Allyn Cyne turned his blind eyes to his commander and asked, “Permission to ask a personal question, sir?”

One corner of Hunter’s mouth twitched. “Go ahead.” What harm could it do, after all? He’s already gone toe-to-toe with me once and won. Whatever he’ll be asking can’t be that bad.

“Who were they, General?”

Part of him had expected the question, though the fact that Cyne had picked up on the fact that he’d gone to that site to remember two people and not just one caught him slightly off-guard–a real hazard when one was the commander in charge of intelligence operations for an interstellar confederation. He stared at Cyne for a moment, then shook his head slightly. “Curious, are you?”

“A little, sir,” Cyne said.

Hunter smiled despite how much his heart still ached, even years after the two women he’d just gone to visit had died. “One was my partner,” he said softly. “The girl that I would’ve been married to about six weeks after that last mission, if she’d lived. The other was a friend.”

“A dear friend, I imagine,” Cyne observed, his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, his shoulders slightly hunched in the chill wind. “You don’t strike me as the type to visit the graves of casual acquaintances. Men and women who’ve served under you, yes, but not people you simply knew who are gone now.”

It was true. He didn’t even visit Jonah Frank’s grave that often, and they’d have been brothers if Joe had survived that same mission that had robbed him of Maida. Hunter shook his head slightly. “She started out as someone I simply knew of,” he admitted softly. “Then her husband vanished and she came to us. I was the one they assigned to the case.”

“Taylor’s mother,” Cyne said softly. “You were visiting his mother’s grave? Does he–”

“He doesn’t know anything,” Hunter said. “And it’s going to stay that way.”

“I don’t–”

“It’s all right,” Hunter said, cutting off the word understand. “You don’t have to. Just know that there are reasons for it and leave it at that.”

“You visit his mother’s grave,” Cyne said again, his voice curious and full of wonder all at once, as if the blind man was trying to sort out what it could all mean. Hunter couldn’t help but smile a small, rueful smile as he shook his head.

“I’ll tell you someday,” he promised softly.

“But not today, sir?” Cyne was grinning again.

“That’s right,” Hunter said. “Not today. Now tell me what Redeemer had to say to us when you made your request.”

He let Allyn deal with the Resistance lead because the blind man had worked with him in the past, back when Cyne was still stationed in the Borderworlds, at the tiny Alliance post on Caldin. They’d built some kind of rapport, the two of them, and it was more than worth the inconveniences that Cyne imposed on them where the Resistance was concerned. Any advantage that we can leverage at this point that keeps operations secure and the agents in the field safe is worth some strange requests–like writing a report on paper and then asking me to burn it after I’ve read it. I suppose I’ve honored stranger requests.

“He said I didn’t need to ask,” Cyne said simply. “He and Mr. Taylor have gotten close, I think.”

“You think?”

Cyne shrugged slightly. “It’s a highly educated guess. There’s no way for me to be certain unless I’m there to observe them firsthand, but I think it’s a safe bet.”

Hunter nodded slowly, eyes sliding shut for a moment as they drew closer to the cemetery gate. “Well, I’ll trust your judgement, then,” he murmured. “Since I don’t have much more than that to work from.” Other than what I know about Aaron Taylor, and everything I know about that boy is that he’s starved for purpose and friendship in more than a few ways.

They were a lot alike, the old general and the young man he’d sent out into the Borderworlds to do the single most important job he could give to any of his agents: to be the only real, powerful help that the Alliance could give, officially or unofficially–to those fighting against the threat of Imperium domination, to be the eyes and ears of the Alliance intelligence chief on the ground, in the trenches, working with and fighting for the Resistance.

I wish I could be out there, too.

“You’re quiet, sir, but your thoughts are…evident.”

“Delicately put, Cyne.” Hunter shook his head slightly. “Don’t mind an old man’s thoughts. They’re not of any consequence.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” his aide said softly. “Nothing you do is of no consequence.”

I’d like to think that some things are.

Deep down, he suspected that his aide was closer to right than he was.

 It is year 1791 since the fall of the Basilica del Mare.  The Free Isles of the Immersea are faced with threats old and new, chief among them aggression from the empire in the west, Varuulan.  Sailing under the banner the mysterious and storied Lachlan Hope, a young captain and her crew finds themselves unlikely allies in a pair of infamous pirates and their ships–with all of them standing at the center of a fight that will save or doom them all.

Set in a world where water covers most of the globe, Maraeternum tells the tale of Alexia Hope, Laucorn Taurles, Bree O’Kerry, Rooks Taurles, Kyrie Stafford, Trakal Taurles, Daci Cook, Liam D’Arcy, and Lachlan Hope–figures that stand against the might of an empire that could destroy the world.  They will unravel the lost mysteries of Maraeternum’s past in order to ensure that the world has a future.  What follows is the original draft of the second chapter, in which we meet some of the crew of the Blue Typhoon.

  

Two

There was a storm massing out on the horizon and if the ache in her leg was anything to go by, it was going to be a particularly foul one. She assumed that the rest of the crew had noticed the shadow in the distance. It would be on them before mid-afternoon, well before they made port at St. Ransom.

Unless we’ve made better time than I thought—but I doubt the winds were that favorable and gods know Rooks would rather save the engines for when we really need them.

Kyrie Stafford leaned against the rail, shifting her weight slightly. The only sounds she could hear was the sound of the ocean and the crew on the deck and in the rigging—normal sounds of a ship at sea. She stared at the darkness on the horizon, watched a few faint flashes illuminate the shadows. She straightened, her fingers curling around the battered and scarred wood of a rail that had seen more than one boarding hook, more than one fight with the Varuulani.

The ship had seen far worse than the storm building in the distance in her years on the seas, but there was something about the darkness out there that made Kyrie uneasy.

It’s nothing. Stop worrying. Just another storm. We’ll batten down and ride it out then make St. Ransom in the morning if the storm doesn’t break until after dark.

Her gaze drifted over the water and she frowned. Perhaps that was what was bothering her. Half a day out from port and there wasn’t another ship in sight.

Unless we’re off course, which shouldn’t happen. She glanced back over her shoulder, toward the wheel. “Roanoke!”

The first mate glanced down toward her. “Something wrong?”

Kyrie frowned, then turned, jogging across the deck and up to where he stood minding the wheel. She didn’t speak until she was closer, near enough not to be overheard by the rest of the crew. They were largely a seasoned bunch and used to sailing together, but there was no reason to sow unnecessary concern.

“We haven’t drifted off-course, have we?”

The tall man gave her a strange look. “Not so far as I know, but you’re navigation. You tell me.”

She made a face at him and glanced back out toward the water, toward the storm and the open sea. “I give you the headings and you follow them.”

“And we are.” His brows knit. “What’s the matter?”

“Where’s Rooks?”

“Below in the galley, I think. Said something about checking on Cookie and our supplies.”

Kyrie nodded, turning away. Roanoke grasped her arm, his other hand still firm on the wheel.

“What’s the matter?” he asked again. She exhaled and shook her head.

“It’s probably nothing. Just that we’re half a day out of St. Ransom and there’s not a soul on the water except for us.”

Roanoke blinked at her, his brow furrowing a little more as he gazed out onto the water, just like she had been before. “Huh,” was all he said, once again settling both hand on the wheel. “Well…stranger things, right?”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Stranger things.”

This time when she started to walk away, he didn’t stop her.

Kyrie headed below, two decks down toward the galley, where the ever-cheerful Bail “Cookie” Morris held sway—he’d taken the job two weeks after she’d hired onto the Typhoon as their navigator and like she and Roanoke were among the longest-standing members of Rooks Taurles’s crew of misfits and miscreants. They were the only ones left from the days when the Taurles brothers sailed together, the only ones that remembered the horror of the day when Alexia D’Arcy died on Trakal Taurles’s blade, dying on the deck of a captured Varuulani ship set for an ambush that ended up being her undoing—and very nearly theirs as well. Kyrie still had nightmares about that day and the scar from the wound she’d taken to protect D’Arcy’s daughter still ached sometimes. She knew it haunted her captain, too.

Today reminded her of that day—a storm on the horizon and seas that were far, far too quiet, too empty.

She wondered, as she stepped into the galley, if Roanoke had made the connection, too.

“Come for a cuppa, KyKy?” Cookie asked, busy in front of the pot-bellied stove. Dinner was already on, a seafood stew if she were to guess from the smell of it. Fresh bread, too, that would hopefully survive the coming storm.

She shook her head. “No, but thanks. Rooks down here?”

Cookie jerked a thumb toward the storeroom. “Taking stock and checking my figures. What’s the matter? We off course?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, heading for the storeroom door. “Better button up, though. Storm on the horizon.”

The cook grimaced and nodded. “I’ll have to do that. How long do you think we’ve got?”

Kyrie shrugged. “Didn’t get a good idea of how fast it’s moving, otherwise I’d be able to tell you. Doesn’t look pretty, though.”

“Hurricane?”

“Just a bad storm, I think,” she said, then ducked into the narrow storeroom. Rooks Taurles stood at the far end, one hand moving as if he was counting the canisters stacked there—tins of coffee and tea there at the back. “Cap?”

He glanced back over his shoulder, blinking. “Hey. Did you need any of this?”

“Always, but that’s not why I came down here.”

His brow furrowed and he turned fully, picking up the lamp he’d left on a nearby shelf to provide some illumination for his inspection. “What’s wrong? Heard you and Cookie talking about a storm blowing up.” His voice dropped lower as he came within arms’ reach, quiet enough that they wouldn’t be overheard against the normal shipboard sounds—the crew, the sea, Cookie tending dinner in the galley next to them. “You’ve got that look.”

She grimaced, glancing down toward her feet. “It’s too quiet out there,” she said. “We’re only a few hours out of St. Ransom and there’s not a soul on the water. The last time it was this quiet out there was the day you almost got yourself killed in that ambush.”

Rooks rubbed at his collarbone, as if remembering, his expression matching hers. “Maybe they saw the storm rolling in,” he said. “Ships putting out decided not to and others just decided to make best speed to somewhere else. Or they dropped anchor to avoid the mess. How far out is the storm?”

“We’ll be lucky to make it to mid afternoon before it hits,” she said.

“Can we make St. Ransom before it hits?” His blue eyes gleamed in the lamplight. Sometimes, he loved a challenge—especially if it distracted him from something unpleasant, and she knew that bringing up the ambush that had almost taken him five years before was certainly that. “Full sail, engines going full blast?”

“I doubt it,” she said, chewing her lip. “We could try, but I’m not sure we’d clear the reef and the breakwater before the storm’s on us.”

Rooks’s brows knit and he nodded. “Might be worth the shot,” he said, half to her and half to himself. He caught her fingers and squeezed gently. “Worst case scenario, it’ll put us out of range of anything that’s looking to ambush us.”

A broken laugh escaped her lips and she shook her head. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know. But now the thought’s in my head, too. We’re pretty far out from contested waters, though. It’d take some serious balls for someone to be this far into Free Isles waters setting an ambush—for us or anyone else.”

“You’re right,” she murmured. “Intellectually, I know that, too. It’s just…” her voice trailed away and Kyrie chewed her lip. His fingers brushed her cheek.

“I know,” Rooks said softly. “We’ll be careful. There’s not much else we can do besides make best speed for St. Ransom. Who knows. Maybe we will manage to make Firenze before the storm hits us full-force.”

“If it’s moving slowly, maybe, but the way my leg’s aching says otherwise.”

Something flickered through his expression and was gone. “Just your leg? Not your back, too?”

Her brow arched and one corner of his mouth quirked upward into a smile.

“You don’t remember, but I do. When we got ambushed and I took the worst of it, your back was hurting you so badly you were practically in tears. Storm that day, too.” His thumb stroked her cheek one more time before he withdrew his hand and picked up the lamp again. “With any luck, history won’t repeat itself today.”

Luck. That’s something that sure as hell runs hot and cold for us. Kyrie exhaled quietly, turning to follow him out of the storeroom. “Are you heading up?”

He nodded. “Someone’s got to give the order to fire up the engine and make best speed for the harbor. Gods know that Roanoke won’t do it just yet—especially if he knew you were coming to look for me.”

“We know each other too well by this point, don’t we?”

Rooks grinned. “We do, but honestly, I don’t think I’d have it another way. Have them secure everything down here. I’ll see you up on deck afterwards.”

Kyrie nodded, lingering near the door of the galley even as Rooks headed down the hall. “Be careful.”

He shot her the same crooked, boyish smile that somewhere along the line had claimed her heart. “You first.”

Then he bounded up the stairs. 

It is year 1791 since the fall of the Basilica del Mare.  The Free Isles of the Immersea are faced with threats old and new, chief among them aggression from the empire in the west, Varuulan.  Sailing under the banner the mysterious and storied Lachlan Hope, a young captain and her crew finds themselves unlikely allies in a pair of infamous pirates and their ships–with all of them standing at the center of a fight that will save or doom them all.

Set in a world where water covers most of the globe, Maraeternum tells the tale of Alexia Hope, Laucorn Taurles, Bree O’Kerry, Rooks Taurles, Kyrie Stafford, Trakal Taurles, Daci Cook, Liam D’Arcy, and Lachlan Hope–figures that stand against the might of an empire that could destroy the world.  They will unravel the lost mysteries of Maraeternum’s past in order to ensure that the world has a future.  What follows is the original draft of the opening chapter.

  

One

He was a blonde blur of motion, moving too fast for her to avoid even if she’d seen him coming. The impact of his body against hers was bone-jarring, sent her tumbling into a split-rail fence. That fence was the only thing that kept her from a ten-foot drop to a rooftop below the path.

Alexia Hope bounced off the rail and back into her attacker, using every ounce of his momentum against him to bear him to the ground. She had been the object of attack before more than once in her short lifetime and self-defense was nothing shy of second nature. His head snapped back, banging against the cobbles of the walkway, wresting a curse from his lips as she straddled him. Beneath her cavalier’s coat was a knife, secreted at the small of her back.

I just need to reach it…

“This is awkward,” the man beneath her said. Even as her fingers closed around the knife, she blinked at him, saw him for the first time.

“What is?” she asked without thinking.

“I’ve never been pinned like this before.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then swallowed. His white-blonde hair hung in greasy tendrils, crusted with salt near the scalp, face smudged with grease and dirt, but his eyes were the blue-green of the Immersea, glinting like jewels in the dying afternoon sun.

He’s no older than I am. She swallowed again. She was barely old enough herself to be trusted on the docks of Stoneport unescorted—and this boy seemed far less seasoned than she was. Is he a local, I wonder, or something else?

A body flew through a window behind her and she ducked flying shards of glass. The boy coughed.

“Would you mind getting off of me so we can out of range of the barfight? I kind of intended to be pretty far away before bodies started coming out of windows.”

“You started that?” she asked as she shoved herself to her feet, releasing her grip on the knife’s hilt. She wouldn’t need it, not yet–not unless she got sucked into the brewing battle inside the nearby bar. Alexia stuck out her hand, intending to haul the boy to his feet.

He shrugged as he grasped her hand and arm. “It didn’t seem like that bad of an idea at the time,” he said as she hauled him upright. He was clearly stronger than he appeared; his grip on her arm told her that much.

“And now?” she asked, curiosity mingling with annoyance. Who was this boy, anyway—other than what appeared to be a high-caliber troublemaker possibly harboring if a death wish constantly at odds with strong survival instincts. He must have had some drive to live, after all, if he’d started a barfight in Stoneport and ducked out before bodies and other projectiles started flying.

“More of a bad idea.” He half-ducked, flinching at the sound of shouting and more breaking glass. “Can we have this discussion somewhere else?”

“Yeah, I think we’d better.” Alexia took him by the arm and dragged him down the walkway to a narrow set of stairs leading toward the water, nearer to the docks. Cut into a series of hills and cliffs on the edge of the island, Stonepointe’s major port was as multi-leveled as it was multi-layered. Alexia had never minded the long climbs and steep roads, but she knew other sailors that had complained bitterly about them—though never anywhere the master of Stonepointe, the famed master thief Liam D’Arcy, could hear them doing it.

“So what the hell were you doing starting a barfight?” she asked as they made it down to the next tier of the city, this one quieter, with fewer taverns and more respectable-looking establishments than the level above.

“Trying to cover the fact that I just filched a few purses,” the boy said, looking only vaguely abashed at the admission. “A guy’s got to eat.”

She stopped walking long enough to turn back to study him. The fact that he hadn’t tried to cut her purse spoke volumes. Either he’s as smart as his eyes say he is, or I’ve got him sufficiently frightened enough that he wouldn’t try it. Banking on the former, she arched a brow delicately. “So you go and rob pirates in a dockside dive? On an island ruled by a master thief?”

“It wasn’t their money to begin with, now was it?”

Her stern façade cracked and she grinned. “Too true. You have a name?”

“Laucorn. I’m sorry I knocked you over like that. I was just trying to get out of there.”

“Don’t worry, I get it.” She extended her hand for him to shake this time. “Chance.”

His grip was firm and calloused. He’s used to hard work, it seems. Those aren’t the hands of someone raised to luxury.

Then again, neither are mine.

“That’s an unusual name,” Laucorn said. “Chance.”

“It’s not the one I was born with, but it’s one my mother gave me,” she said with a faint smile, the one she used to cover the old pain that rose when she thought about her mother, gone now for the better part of a decade. “How long have you been stuck here on Stonepointe?”

“A few weeks,” he admitted. “Crew berths have been slim pickings. They don’t do a lot of whaling up here, do they?”

She shook her head slightly. “That’s mostly out of the smaller Oesterovan ports or out of the southern ports. This is a hive of scum and villainy. Didn’t someone tell you?”
 “I almost wish they had,” he said, scrubbing one hand back through his tangled hair.

There was something oddly familiar about him, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. You’ll figure it out eventually. A flutter of nervous excitement in her belly told her that this meeting wasn’t an accident—not entirely. Everything for a reason, right? “So you’re in the market for a new berth, then? You sailed a lot before?”

He fell into step with her as she started walking. “Enough that I know my way around a deck and the rigging. They were using me as a harpooner on the whaler, though.”

“Sounds glorious,” she said with a wry smile. “I don’t think they’ve got any use for a harpooner, but there’s a merchanter down there that might be in the market for another able hand or two.” When her companion’s eyes lit, Alexia knew she’d judged him right. She pointed to a twin-masted vessel below them, safely moored in one of Stoneport’s centermost docks. The honey-colored ship’s white sails were tightly furled, but she still flew the rose and sword flag of Hope’s Mercantile proudly, the navy blue flag snapping in the wind and the silver-white cloth of the sword catching the light, glimmering gold in the sun.

“That flag’s familiar,” Laucorn said. “I’ve seen it before.”

“Hope’s Mercantile,” Alexia said. “Pretty profitable operation out of Santrellis. Lachlan Hope and Alexia D’Arcy’s legacy to the Free Isles, if you believe that swill.”

He snapped his fingers. “The ones that told the Varuulani merchanters to shove it, aren’t they?”

“Something like that,” Alexia said, fighting back a smile. Is that how folks think of it now? Papa would laugh. “I know that they don’t take the Varuulani Navy’s intrusions into free waters lightly.”

“I’d heard that,” he said, then nodded to the ship. “Does she fight for them? Against the Varuulani?”

“They all do,” Alexia said. “If the call comes, anyhow. Targets of opportunity.”

“Sounds almost like pirates.”

She laughed. “Not hardly. It’s not piracy when the Navy’s on the wrong side of the border and trolling for easy targets. It’s security for the Free Isles.” She looked him up and down. “Can you fight?”

“Do you have all of your fingers?” he countered.

Alexia laughed again. “You interested, then?”

“I’ve been too long on this rock already,” he admitted. “If I don’t leave soon, I won’t be able to leave at all.”

“Fair point,” Alexia said. “You should probably talk to the first mate. She makes the personnel decisions.”

He hesitated a moment, then asked, “Do you think you could introduce me?”

After a moment’s hesitation designed to let him stew in his own juices, she grinned. “I suppose I could. Come on.”

They’d gone a dozen steps before she glanced back over her shoulder at him. “You don’t have a problem with elves or half-bloods, do you?”

His nose wrinkled. “No. The stories are too damned much to be believed if you ask me.”

Except for the ones that are true. He’ll learn eventually. She laughed. “Good.”

Without another word, she brought him down to the docks and Bree O’Kerry.

“Pick up the pace, you worthless sacks of meat!” Bree tried to push a little more snarl into her voice. She didn’t need to channel her former lover in most ports, but most ports weren’t teeming with scum and the worst sorts of villains.

Most ports weren’t run by master thieves and haunted by the most famed and feared assassin plying the trade, either.

“I need this cargo loaded by midafternoon. Heave to, maggots!”

“Hoy, Bree!”

She turned toward the sound of her captain’s voice, smothering a frown. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to a meeting?”

Chance grinned. “For better or worse. He’ll understand. I got waylaid on the way.” She ushered the small, dirty-faced young man with her to the fore. “This Laucorn and he’s shopping for a berth. I told him we might have a position as cabin boy or general crew. Think you can set him up?”

Her gaze raked over the boy—no, not a boy, a young man. His hair was cropped short, standing up in spikes. The planes and angles of his face were familiar, enough so that her throat tightened momentarily.

Couldn’t be.

“Laucorn, huh?” She nodded, looking at Chance again. “If you can handle the slackers, I’ll get the kid take care of.”

Chance shrugged. “It shouldn’t take long. Probably be done by the time Uncle sends a carriage ‘round.”

“Mm.” Bree looked at Laucorn. “Go on aboard, I’ll catch up in a moment.” She waited until he’d bounded up the gangplank before looking to her captain again. “Since when do you need a cabin boy, Chance?”

“Since about fifteen minutes ago,” she said, then smiled. “I got a feeling, Red.”

Bree snorted. “You and your feelings.”

“We’re not dead yet,” Chance reminded her, then turned to supervise cargo loading. All Bree could do was shake her head and jog up the gangplank to join their newest crewman on the main deck of the Wild Card.

Not yet, no. How much longer we stay alive, though–that’s a thing that remains to be seen, isn’t it? She exhaled a silent sigh as she looked at him again, studied him a little more closely. There was no doubt about it.

But he didn’t have any children—not before.

The way Laucorn watched the men in the rigging and the crew on the deck told her that he’d been on ships before, had worked on them before. He was lean, smaller than the man he reminded her of, his shoulders narrower, his face softer. She didn’t see any visible scars, but that didn’t mean that some didn’t exist.

“You’ve worked on ships before,” she said as she stopped next to him near the center of the main deck, following his gaze toward the rigging, where two of the crew were re-furling the topsail after finishing repairs. They’d run afoul of a Varuulani patrol ship—which was to say the patroller had run afoul of them—and had managed to put a few decent-sized holes in the canvas before the Wild Card brought them to heel. Bree watched them with a critical eye for a moment before glancing toward Laucorn.

The boy blinked, noticing as her gaze settled on him, then nodded. “Whalers, mostly. I signed onto one as soon as I was big enough to hold a harpoon. It beat staying where I was.” He looked toward the harbor and the sea beyond the breakwater, his expression almost wistful. “I remember my mother saying that the sea was in our blood, that eventually it called all of us. I was practically a baby then.” He fidgeted with something tied around his wrist with a strip of leather cord, something hidden by his fingers when Bree glanced down, tracking the motion.

“Where’s home?”

He seemed startled by the question but shrugged it off. “Wherever I end up.”

Cryptic. Bree shook her head. “Do you have any gear you need to pick up?”

“No,” he said. “All I have is what’s on my back and on my belt.” He wasn’t carrying anything more than a small shoulder bag that looked practically empty and a pair of short knives on his belt.

A soft whistle escaped the Wild Card’s first mate. “Well, I suppose that makes it easy. Come on. I’ll get you settled and we’ll find you some clean clothes.”

“Just like that?” he asked, blinking. He jogged a few steps to keep up with her as she started across the deck, headed below to the berths and the ship’s stores.

Bree’s shoulders rose and fell in a slight shrug. “What Chance wants, she gets. She’s the captain.”  We’ll see if this is a mistake or not. If it is, at least he’s gotten passage as far as Port Royale and he’ll be able to find a berth on a whaler or another merchanter if that’s what he wants. Better than leaving him here.

He stopped dead in his tracks. “Wait. She’s the captain?”

Bree smiled, though she smothered it before she turned, her expression mild though still slightly amused when she met his wide-eyed gaze. “She didn’t tell you?”

“I—no.”

Games again. Bree shook her head. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, it’s just—I—she—she doesn’t seem like she’s much older than I am, that’s all.”

Bree shrugged. “She’s been on the water since before she could walk. Her parents were both mariners themselves. It’s in her blood, just like it’s in yours.”

He was quiet for a long moment before his head bobbed in a slight nod. “I guess that makes sense. Still, her own boat?”

“She sails for her father,” Bree said, then turned and started walking again. “Can’t have a world where a Hope isn’t on the water. The Varuulani get too bold otherwise.”

Her charge didn’t argue the point and Bree didn’t bother to give voice to the words that often followed the phrases she’d just repeated.

Without a Hope, all we have are the Taurles, and a war we can’t afford—not yet.

 The Institute called them their Angelic Legion.  They expected a few hundred children, gifted with talents beyond nature, properly trained, would be able to turn back the forces of hell when the End Times came.  Ky Monroe saw them for what they were years ago–a cult masquerading as something good, something holy, something that would help and not harm.  Matthew Thatcher recognized them for what they were, too–a dangerous organization not above murder and violence to achieve their aims, and together with Ky worked tirelessly to make sure the organization died–and when an explosion ripped through the Institute’s main facility in the midwest years ago, Ky dared believe they might have succeeded.  But when an old friend reappears with a story to tell, Ky realizes exactly how wrong she’s been–and that time is running out to save the people she loves…

When All’s Said and Done is narrated by Kyle Anne Monroe (alias Kyrie Thatcher), a college student who escaped from the Institute as a teenager.  It is the major work planned for the Lost Angels Chronicles, which shares a universe (and many characters) with the UNSETIC Files (and Court of Twelve works like The Man Who Made Monsters, a project I’m working on with L.P. Loudon).

This is another one of those super-long chapters that might be cut into two in edits.

Two

Reece was still up when I got home, curled in the corner of the old blue couch with a book open against her knees. She glanced up at the sound of my entry, tilting her head and glancing at the clock. “Later than usual,” she observed, smothering a yawn.

“Were you waiting up?” I asked her, tossing my keys into the basket on top of the microwave. The evening had grown sticky, humidity promising a late summer storm. From the temperature inside the apartment, she and Marie had closed the windows and turned on the air when the stickiness began to ratchet up, probably a few hours before.

She marked her page and closed her book. “Not really. Just got sucked in, that’s all. Enjoying the last few days I can read and be guilt-free about it.” She grinned at me, but her brow began to furrow the longer she looked at me. “You okay?”

I nodded, starting to put the kettle on for hot water. I needed a mug of something hot, mostly to soothe my nerves and help me calm down enough to sleep. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Was it bad?” I’d told her on the phone that Matthew had gotten a call about work. She knew by now what he did, and she’d seen me after I’d helped him through dealing with victims. She didn’t quite know how or why I was so readily able to deal with Matthew—or sometimes the victims themselves—the way I could, but she’d mercifully never asked about it, either. I sometimes thought that was a blessing and a curse all at once.

I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, preparing myself to lie to her as I took down a mug from the cupboard. “Kind of,” I said. “Someone who escaped a cult made it to Damon, so he called Matthew. But it wasn’t really that bad. Could’ve been worse.” Could’ve been a lot worse. I finally looked at her. “You want some cocoa or something? I’m putting water on.”

She shook her head a little, still watching me. “You seem like you’re upset about something.”

“I am a little bit.” I never thought that I’d ever see Ridley so…defeated. Broken. Lost. “It’s hard, that’s all. On Matthew and on me.”

“Do you need to talk about it?”

No. Not yet, but maybe soon. I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, shaking my head. “No. Thanks, though.”

She nodded. “Okay.” She got up and went to lock the door again as I spooned powdered latte into my mug. She paused for a moment next to me at the counter, brow furrowing. “You sure there’s not more to it than that? You’ve been weird for a couple of days.”

“Have I?” I hadn’t noticed. If I had, I might’ve tried to hide it.

“A little. Distant, distracted. I thought it was maybe you worrying about classes starting up again, but you’re never worried about that. Heck, I realized that when we talked about scheduling in March you were really blasé about this semester. Cakewalk, you said. So I know it’s not that.”

Leave it to Reece to pick up on something like that—and remember what I said six months ago. I exhaled and leaned against the counter, staring sightlessly at the teakettle. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind. Not school stuff.”

“And you’re sure you don’t want to talk?”

I nodded. Not yet, anyway. Not quite yet. “Yeah. Not tonight, at least.”

“You haven’t been having nightmares again, have you?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t had the nightmares in almost two years, but they’d been really bad around the time she and I met and became friends. “No. I haven’t had one in a long time.” My stomach twisted as the teakettle began to whistle. I swung it off the burner and started to fill my cup. Hopefully they’re not going to start up again. Hopefully my imagination isn’t going to run wild, run rampant. I looked at her and forced another smile. “Really, Reece. I’m okay—or I will be. Nothing for you to worry about.” Not yet. Not tonight.

She hesitated before nodding. “Okay.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “You know, maybe instead of just looking at that old box of cards, you should open it for a change.”

I sucked in a breath, remembering the way my arm tingled earlier when I’d touched the box. I’d shown her the cards once, a long time ago, when she’d seen it sitting on the shelf and asked about it. I hadn’t told her the whole story, just a series of vague half-truths. That someone I loved had given it to me, that I didn’t really know how to read them the right way, and that it was the only piece I had from the person who’d given them to me. It was a keepsake, a memento. “I didn’t know you saw me looking,” I mumbled.

Reece put a hand on my arm, smiling at me gently, her gaze sympathetic and concerned. “It could help, Ky. With whatever’s bothering you.”

I nodded wordlessly. Maybe she was right. Maybe it’ll…maybe it’ll help. Maybe it’ll help me touch him again… The ceramic of the mug was warm against my hand. “Maybe I will.”

She nodded. “Good.” She went and picked up her book and shut off the lights in our living room. “I’m going to go to bed, I think. Marie’s out with Ian. Said she might not come home tonight.”

“Okay. G’night, Reece.”

“Night.” She headed upstairs and left me alone in our kitchen.

I took a slow sip of coffee and glanced toward the window out onto the parking lot in front of the townhouse, toward the lights of the student union beyond it. The campus was still quiet, still a week out from freshman orientation and a week and a half out from the start of classes. Maybe that would be enough time for me to get my head back on straight.

Maybe enough time to find him and make him safe. I exhaled and turned off the kitchen lights, trudging up the stairs to my bedroom. I flipped on the light and sank down on the edge of my bed, staring at nothing for a long moment. I could hear Reece in the bathroom for a few minutes, and then silence. She’d gone to bed, or at the very least flopped into her bunk to read. I took another swallow of coffee and set the cup aside, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. My eyes fell on the box. It felt like a long time had passed before I actually picked it up.

My arm tingled all the way up to my elbow as I lifted it, shifting to sit cross-legged on my bed. I settled it in my lap and brushed my fingers across the pentacle carved into the wooden lid, exhaling quietly.

Hadrian. I closed my eyes, resting both hands on the box for a long moment. I took another deep breath and opened the box and my eyes in the same moment. The Knight of Swords stared up at me, face-up on top of the pack. I knew I hadn’t left it like that, the last time I’d opened the box, touched the cards. For a moment, I lost all of my breath as a giant hand wrapped around my heart and squeezed.  The Knight of Swords was Hadrian’s card.

I picked it up. Beneath it was the Queen of Swords—my card—also face up. I shivered. After all this time? Are you reaching? Are you…are you trying again? I bit my lip, then picked up the card.

The Devil stared back at me from the top of the deck, mocking me. The Institute. I sucked in a breath and picked up the card with a shaking hand. The green and white Celtic knotwork pattern on the backs of the cards greeted me. Relief flooded me. I was afraid that I’d see more.

I turned the Devil over and laid it back down, followed by the Queen of Swords, but I held the Knight of Swords for a long moment, staring at it and trying to bring to mind the image of Hadrian’s face. It was harder than it should have been, and that brought tears to my eyes. I stared at the card a little longer, then slowly put it back in the box and lowered the lid. I didn’t put it back on the shelf, though. I tucked it into the corner of my bed, near my pillow. That way, it would be near enough to touch without getting out of bed.

I got up, put on my pajamas, and turned out the lights. My coffee sat forgotten on my desk as I curled in bed with my blankets, still trying to hold the wavering image of Hadrian’s face in my mind. I missed him so much, more than I ever admitted, more than I ever let myself feel.

And yet, I was having trouble remembering his face. That upset me more than I wanted to admit.

Closing my eyes, I tried to sleep and hoped the nightmares I expected wouldn’t come. I drifted somewhere between sleeping and waking before I finally dropped off, and dreamed.

I found myself in a familiar garden, a grotto festooned with flowers and trees surrounding a reflecting pool as bottomless as the limitless starry sky it reflected. It was our dream-garden, the place where Hadrian and I had met in dreams, back before, back when I hadn’t dared sneak into his bed back at the Institute, back in those months and years before I failed to rescue him after my own escape. I hadn’t been here in four years, not since then. Not since I thought he’d died because I stopped being able to reach him.

My heart skipped a beat as I saw a thin, frail figure sitting next to the reflecting pool, his back to me. He looked like some kind of shade, dressed in gray, brown hair unruly but limp at the same time. I took a deep breath. Is this real? Or just a fantasy? I slowly walked toward the figure, crouching down to touch his shoulder.

He turned to face me, and I knew it wasn’t a dream.

A nasty, blackening bruise ringed one eye, his face gaunt and narrow, a few freckles standing out starkly against the paleness of his complexion. There was defeat in his eyes at first glance, defeat that melted like ice under the midsummer sun as he stared at me. His chapped lips parted and he sucked in a breath, shock quickly replacing the hopelessness I’d first seen.

“Ky,” he breathed. His shoulder was thin and boney under my hand, and his fingers were frail and reedy as he grasped my arm. “Are you real? Really real? Did I die?”

My heart cracked in half and I sank down onto my knees, shaking my head. “No, Hadrian. No. You’re alive.”

“But you’re dead,” he whispered, fingers tightening painfully. “They all said so.” He sounded confused, terrified.

Oh, Hadrian. I slowly slid my arms around him. He didn’t resist, just sat there, staring almost blankly, as if he was lost. He was so cold, for a moment I wasn’t sure that he was still alive. It was an agonizing few moments before his arms slid around me and he held on tight.

“We’re not dead?”

“No,” I whispered, threading my fingers through his hair. “No, we’re not dead. Whoever told you that lied. I’m so sorry.”

“Ridley and Laren…they said I had to be dreaming. Letting my wishes run away with my heart and mind. That you’d been dead for years, since you tried to escape. They told us…they told us you’d died then. I didn’t believe them.” He shuddered and clung to me. “Until I did. Until I gave…gave up…” He sucked in a breath as if he were a man drowning, struggling for air. “I couldn’t feel you anymore after…so I finally got to thinking that maybe they were right. Maybe I’d just dreamed it all because I missed you so much and needed to be able to focus my hope on something…”

I pulled back and looked at him, at the tears brimming in bloodshot hazel eyes. I took his face gently in my hands and kissed those tears, then held him for a long moment. He shuddered in my arms and pressed his face against my neck. “I’m going to get you out of there,” I whispered. “Somehow. I promise.”

He shook his head a little. “Don’t even know where I am,” he mumbled into my neck.

“We think we do.” I started to stroke his hair again, wincing at how thin and frail he felt. What had they been doing? Had they just never stopped, even though I was gone and they didn’t need the leverage anymore? Or had they found something else to do to him instead?

“We?” He whispered. “Who’s we?”

“Ridley found his way to me and Timothy’s brother.”

Hadrian stiffened. “He gave in to them, Ky. They broke him.”

“I know,” I murmured. “He told me.” He graduated. I knew what it meant when he said that. “There’s some things that don’t go away, though, and one of those things was Ridley’s sense of right and wrong. He got away, and now he’s told me where I can maybe find you.”

“Hurry,” Hadrian murmured. “Please. I…there isn’t much time, Ky.”

My heart seized up again. “What is it?” Tell me you’re not dying. Tell me I haven’t come this close only to lose you again. Please. 

He shook his head a little, drawing back and staring at me with haunted eyes. “Something’s going to happen,” he whispered, a glimmer of clairvoyant madness slipping into his gaze, lending an edge to his voice. “I can’t…I can’t quite grasp what, but I know. I can feel it, in the pit of my stomach. Something big, something bad. They’re going to do it and you have to stop it.”

I grasped his arms and squeezed. “We have to stop it.”

Hadrian stared at me for a long moment before leaning forward again, pressing his forehead against my shoulder. It was my turn to cling to him, now, as if he’d slip through my fingers and be gone again if I didn’t hold onto him with all of my strength. He shivered, once, and pressed closer.

“So cold,” he murmured. “So tired.” He swallowed hard. “What if they find you, Ky? What if they find you before you can get to me? What if they’re…what if they’re using our connection right now to find you?”

“They don’t have anyone that could do that, Hadrian,” I murmured. At least they didn’t then. Why should now be any different? I’ve never heard of someone with that kind of gift. He just shivered again, not answering me.

“Don’t tell me where you are,” he murmured. “Don’t tell me what you’re planning—not all of it. I…I don’t know how far I can be trusted these days. I don’t know what I’ll say if I’m delirious. Don’t know what I can keep back from them.” He sucked in a breath. “I’m almost an open book, Ky. If they asked someone loyal to them to read me, they’d know everything.”

“Do you think they would?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, arms loosely ringing my waist, now, as if he was too tired to wrap them any higher. “Don’t know if they could tell what’s real from what’s a delusion, either. Don’t know that they care that much anymore. They’ve stopped asking me to tell them what I see. Maybe they already know.” He wet his lips, lifting his face to mine again. “Before tonight…before tonight, I’d started hoping that they’d just end me and let me have peace. I thought that whatever was on the other side had to be better than what I was trying to live through.”

Oh, Hadrian. “And now?”

“I have to hang on,” he said simply. “You say you’re coming for me, and I believe you. You’re the only thing I have left to believe.” He reached up, put his cold palms against my cheeks and cradled my face in his hands, his eyes searching mine for something he’d lost—his hope, I guess. “Tell me this is real, Ky. Just one more time. Tell me it’s real and I’m not imagining this.”

I hugged him close again, drawing him tight against my chest, near enough that he could hear my heartbeat. “This is real,” I murmured to him, resting my chin on his head. “This is real and I’m coming for you, one way or another. I’m going to find you and you’ll be safe and we’ll be together, like we always planned. Like we’re supposed to be.”

He swallowed and nodded. “I believe you,” he whispered. “But please hurry.”

We sat there together, in our dreaming place, for a long time. All I could do was hold him and pray. I prayed that I would find him, and that I wouldn’t be too late. I loved him, after all. I owed it to him—needed to keep my promise. I’d promised I’d come back and get him out of there, a promise I’d made before I ran six years ago, before I escaped.

It was a promise I intended to keep. 

♦ ♠ ♦

I woke in the morning to my phone ringing, tears still wet on my face. It was light outside, the sun slowly climbing up into the sky. The ringtone told me it was Matthew and given current circumstances I probably shouldn’t ignore it. I rolled out of bed, grasping for my phone.  I eventually found it just before it kicked to voicemail.

“Morning, Matthew,” I grated, then coughed and cleared my throat. “Sorry.”

“You okay?” His voice sounded concerned, even over the phone. “Kicked to voicemail twice before you picked up.”

“I was asleep.” I sat on the floor against my bed, staring at the open blinds. How I’d managed to sleep with that much light flooding into the bedroom, I wasn’t quite sure. “What’s the matter?”

“I just thought it would be better if you were with me when I went to collect your friend and Damon’s cousin today, that’s all. I found a safehouse for them.” Matthew exhaled. “If you don’t want to come, tell me now, because I’m already driving.”

Weariness dragged me down. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t say no, not to this, even if I’d wanted to. “No, I’ll come. When will you be here?”

“Twenty minutes.”

Enough time for a shower. “All right. If I don’t answer the door when you knock, just wait. Might still be in the shower. I’m getting off the phone now.” Maybe the shower would help ease all the tightness in my limbs, the knots in my back.

“All right. See you shortly.”

We both hung up and I headed for the shower, which helped ease some of the tightness, but didn’t erase it completely.

We’re really connected again. The aching wasn’t mine, it was his—it belonged to Hadrian. Whatever had severed our connections four years before wasn’t keeping us apart anymore. In a way, it was a relief, though I feared the moment that I stopped feeling again. I wasn’t sure what that would mean, but given the skeletal, gaunt vision of him, I was afraid it would mean that I’d lost him forever.

I was scrubbing a towel over my short hair when I heard Matthew knocking on the door. I poked my head out of the bathroom to see Reece heading to answer it. I ducked back into the bathroom to drag a brush through my hair. Their voices drifted up to me.

“Hi Matthew. Ky didn’t tell me you were coming over this morning.”

“She didn’t know until half an hour ago,” Matthew admitted, probably as she let him inside.

“What are you two doing today?” Reece sounded confused. I wondered for half a minute what the hell Matthew was wearing. Either he was in a suit or he wasn’t. I wasn’t quite sure which would have confused her more.

I didn’t catch his response as I tossed my brush into a drawer. “Sorry, sorry,” I said as I came down the stairs.

Matthew was dressed in a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, looking more like he was about to go play golf than about to go move two people to a safehouse. Then again, that was probably safer. At least he wasn’t carrying his gun, which I was pretty sure was out in the trunk of his car. It was never that far away. He smiled at me and nodded.

Reece glanced at me and arched a brow. “You guys don’t look like you’re dressed to go to work.”

I shook my head. “Suits are intimidating.” It was the first thing that came to mind, and apparently it made as much sense to her as it did to me.

“I guess so,” she said, looking between us for a moment. “You going to be home for dinner, Ky? I think Ian was going to cook for us.”

I nodded. “Hopefully. I’ll call by four if I’m not, okay?”

“Sure.” She chewed the inside of her lip for a moment, then glanced at Matthew, then back to me. “Ky, can I talk to you for a minute?”

I looked at Matthew. “I’ll be out in a second, Matthew. Just give me a couple.”

He nodded. “I’ll start the car.”

Reece waited until he was out of the house before she took a deep breath and stared at me. “What’s going on, Ky? I’ve seen you go with him on a case once, but never twice on the same case like this.” She touched my arm. “Are you going for him, or are you going for you?”

I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Do I tell her the truth? “He asked me to come,” I said quietly.

“Why?”

I grimaced, crossing my arms, almost hugging myself and looking toward the sliding glass window and the shared commons behind the townhouse—looking anywhere but at her. How much do I say? “Because I know how to help the victim he’s dealing with.”

“How?”

I’d braced for the question, even though I hadn’t quite formulated how I was going to answer her. I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Bite the bullet, Ky. “Because I used to be like him.”

I still couldn’t look at her, couldn’t bring myself to see what her reaction was to that. The strain in her voice, though, that told me all I needed to know. “Ky…what are you talking about? You used to be just like who?”

“The victim,” I said quietly. “The one Matthew’s going to go move to a safehouse.” I swallowed and finally looked at her, seeing the shock etched on her face. It was a big secret, one I’d kept for a long time, even from my closest friends. “You knew that Matthew took me in after my folks died, but you didn’t know that they died a long time before Matthew found me.”

Reece’s jaw worked for a moment before a sound managed to come out. “A cult had you? You never told me.” She wet her lips. “No wonder you have such a problem with religion.”

I couldn’t help myself—I burst out laughing, so hard I sat down on the floor just shy of our stairs. I covered my face with my hands, laughing helplessly until tears came. Reece dropped to her knees next to me, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Ky?”

“I’m fine,” I gasped between fits of laughter. “You have no idea, Reece. No idea.” Angelic legions. Battles at the end of time, against the demons of hell that will rise. There will be no Rapture, no saving, only the Legions to hide behind. The Legions will save us, which is why they must be taught. Must be trained. Must listen and believe… The old words echoed through my brain and that helped me regain control of myself. Most of us hadn’t believed in their rhetoric.  We’d laughed about it in private, mostly so we wouldn’t cry. I could see how someone desperate and broken, though, one of us, could come to believe them. The words were hope, twisted as it was, and made us important, gave us a reason for all of our suffering. Yes. I could see how some of us, some of their purported Angels, could break. The thought sobered me and I took a deep breath, wiping my eyes.

“Sorry,” I said as I finished drying my eyes, suddenly feeling hollow in the wake of my laughter. I shook my head a little. “It’s a long story, Reece, and Matthew’s waiting for me.”

“Let me put my shoes on. I’m coming with.”

I blinked at her. Wait, what? “No, Reece.”

“Why not?” She was already getting her shoes. Something told me I was going to lose against her stubbornness, but I had to try.

“Because this isn’t something you really need to be exposed to.” It was a weak answer and I knew it.

She looked at me squarely, tugging her shoes on and grabbing her satchel. “Maybe not, but it’s something I need to understand. You’re my friend. I don’t know why you’ve kept this a secret for so long, but if you’re not going to tell me why, then I can at least witness why.”

I swallowed bile. “Reece, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t—”

Reece just stared at me and shook her head. “You’re not talking me out of it. You need someone to lean on that’s not Matthew and you know it. Something’s been eating you up almost for as long as I’ve known you. Is that what it is? Whatever you went through?”

After a moment’s hesitation, I sighed. “Part of it.” I grabbed my bag and shook my head. “If you’re going to get involved, will you do something for me?”

She blinked, but nodded. “Depends on what it is, but shoot.”

“Don’t press me. Please? If I tell you I don’t want to talk about it, please believe that there’s a good reason for it.”

A few moments passed before she nodded. “All right. I think I can do that.”

I exhaled the breath I was holding. “Thank you.”

She squeezed my arm. “You’re welcome.” She handed me my keys and stepped out onto our tiny concrete porch. I turned to lock up the house. Her question came quietly. “The box, with the Tarot deck in it. You got that while you were inside, didn’t you?”

I paused in twisting the bolt into place, nodding. “Yeah,” I said softly.

“Is he still out there? Alive, I mean. Somewhere.”

I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment as I finished locking the house. “I think so,” I lied, not wanting to tell her that I knew. I’d told her enough. I wasn’t ready to tell her that, not yet. Though coming with Matthew and I to move Ridley…well. She’d get an education pretty quickly.

Matthew isn’t going to like this. I shoved my keys into the pocket of my jeans. “All right. Let’s go.”