"Ysabel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER XVI

“I think,” said Meghan Marriner, “it is time for me to get up to speed here. Who’ll start?”

They had eaten, the dishes were cleared. Veracook was at the sink washing up. The kitchen doors were closed, and they were speaking in English. Vera hadn’t—apparently—seen the knives earlier. Ned hadn’t checked, but it seemed that Steve had. He’d gone towards the kitchen when the blade was thrown, and closed those doors.

Ned hadn’t noticed any of that. It would have been awkward to have their cook gossiping about weapons, he thought. Greg’s injury—scratched by an animal—was one kind of event in the countryside; violence in the villa would be something else.

Ned watched as his mother took some sheets of printer paper from beside the telephone and set them in front of her beside a cup of tea. She had her reading glasses on.

He usually had a decent idea of what his mother was thinking—it was important in life to have a read on your mother—but this was all new terrain. He kept glancing from her to his aunt, the red hair and the white. He saw his father doing the same thing, which made him feel better. Sometimes he didn’t think they looked so much alike, then he’d realize they did, a lot.

Meghan looked around the table now, waiting.

Ned cleared his throat. “It’s my story, I guess. Mostly. Kate and Aunt Kim can help as I go.”

Kate was still wearing his sweatshirt, and fiddling with a pen. They hadn’t called her mother in New York. Ned didn’t know what she’d said to his own mom—he’d seen them talking before dinner—but it had evidently been enough. She was still here.

He saw Aunt Kim, at the far end of the table from her sister, smiling a little. “I remember that note-taking,” she said, looking at Meghan. “You had these green notebooks with you all the time.”

“Blue. Someone,” Meghan replied, “needs to be organized here.”

“Melanie was,” Greg said.

“Then I’ll try to be,” Ned’s mother said. “So we can get her back.” She uncapped her pen.

Ned started in. He expected her to interrupt, challenge him. She didn’t. Not at the skull and sculpted head, not at the rose in the cloister or Phelan jumping from the roof. Not when Ned was sick by the mountain or fought the dogs outside the caf#233;.

She took notes. She did look hard at her sister when Ned told of his aunt’s phone call.

“I’d driven to London and flown down that morning. I’d become aware of Ned the day before,” Kimberly said. “In my garden. Nothing like that has ever happened before, Meg. Not even back when. I knew who he was and where he was, a kind of explosion in my head. Then he was gone. But I was pretty certain what had just happened. He’d crossed into the space where I am.” She looked at Ned, then at her sister. “I think…I know it has to do with our family, Meg. Blood ties. It can’t be anything else.”

“Your grandmother?” Edward Marriner asked quietly, from the middle of the table, opposite Ned.

“Great-grandmother, if this means anything.” It was his wife who replied. “The story was she had the second sight. And her father before her. People in Wales, Ireland, the west of England, they all tell those stories.”

No one said anything.

“Go on,” Meghan said to her son.

He told his own story. His mother wrote, neat handwriting, straight lines on the unruled paper. No challenges, no comments. He spoke of meeting his aunt by the roofless tower and Cadell and the wolves attacking there.

“What did you say? To make them stop?” It was Steve.

Kimberly glanced at her husband. “Some things about me, a place I’d been when I was younger. Someone I knew.”

“And it scared him off?”

“Didn’t scare him. Made him think. Gave him a reason to back away. He wanted Ned out of the story, didn’t have any particular desire to kill him.”

“But he would have, if he had to?”

Meghan, looking at her sister.

Kim said quietly, “These two have caused a lot of damage over the years, honey.”

“Collateral damage?” Steve said.

“That’s about it,” Dave Martyniuk said. “It’s all about the two of them, and Ysabel.”

“Brys didn’t think so,” Ned said.

“Back up, Ned. You’re still at that tower.” His mother looked at him.

Ned backed up to the tower. Moved on towards Entremont. He was going to skip the walk up there, but Kate didn’t let him. She held up a hand, like a good student in class, and he stopped.

“I was feeling weird all day,” she said. “Like, as soon as I woke up.”

“Weird, how?” Meghan asked, looking over the top of her reading glasses, a doctor in her office.

Kate flushed. She lowered her gaze. “That gets embarrassing.”

“You don’t have to—” Ned began.

She held up her hand again.

“I felt older, and…darker. Stronger. Not dark as in bad. Dark as in…” She trailed off, looked for help.

“Desire?” Aunt Kim said softly.

Kate nodded, staring down at the table.

Ned saw Kim exchange a glance with her husband. “I do know a little about that. It was Beltaine. You were connecting through Phelan. And maybe Ned.”

“Why me?” Ned asked.

His aunt smiled gently. “That’s the hard question in this, you know. Our family line, back a long way. We’re in this.” She looked at her sister. “That’s what happened to me, Meg.”

“But I was never like this before,” Ned protested.

“Everything starts somewhere, dear.”

“You never shaved before this year either, right?” Uncle Dave said helpfully.

His wife stared at him, her eyes wide. “My goodness. Thank you so much for the clarification, dear. That,” she added, “is an amazingly silly analogy.”

Uncle Dave looked abashed. “I, uh, have shaving on my mind, I guess.”

There was a brief silence. No one laughed.

“You’re walking up to Entremont,” Meghan Marriner said, looking at her notes. “Kate’s feeling strange. Go on.”

“Forgot to say, Phelan had told me to keep away that night. He’d overheard Kate and me planning the outing in the caf#233;, told me not to go, just before he left, and then we fought the dogs.”

“He tried to warn you?” Ned’s father looked thoughtful, but not as if the thinking was getting him anywhere.

“Why did you go up?” Steve asked. Fair question. Melanie was gone because they’d done it.

“I made him,” Kate said glumly. “Called him a wimp and stuff.”

“Oh, well, that’ll do it,” Greg said. “Really, I dig it, you had no choice. When a girl says that…”

A couple of smiles around the table this time.

Ned said, “It wasn’t far. It was just after five, maybe a quarter after. The place closed at six-thirty. Way before dark. He’d told me not to be there for Beltaine, and I figured it started at night.”

“It does,” Kate said. “But it got dark too soon.”

They shared the story, tripping over each other a little. The moon, the fires, the bull. Cadell and the druid and the spirits that came. Phelan appearing beside them. Ned phoning the villa.

Melanie. Ysabel.

Around the table there was silence as they spoke and when they were done.

“I just had to fall asleep back here,” Greg said bitterly, first to break the stillness.

Kate looked at him. “I’d be gone,” she said. “I’d be Ysabel now, if you had come.”

She began to cry.

Meghan pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and passed it down. She looked at Ned, and nodded calmly. He carried on alone, to Cadell and Brys in the laneway with the boar. He kept the one thing back: what he’d done to Cadell’s horns. He told of Brys attacking Greg.

“My first Purple Heart,” Greg said. “My mom will be proud.”

“After that,” Ned said, looking at his own mother, “Dad and the others came and got us, and then we talked to you.”

“And I called Dave,” said Aunt Kim.

Kate had stopped crying. She was still holding the handkerchief.

“And Dave was minding me in Darfur. We are going to have to talk about that,” Meghan Marriner said, looking at her brother-in-law.

“I know,” said Uncle Dave. “Will I get a blindfold and last cigarette?”

“Doubt it,” Meghan said. “Ned, you’re up to this morning? While I was flying here?”

He finished, taking her through Glanum and the cemetery. His father joined in there, and then Uncle Dave.

As they were wrapping up, laying the druid in his coffin, the telephone rang.

It seemed an alien, intrusive thing. No one moved for a moment. Ned’s father finally got up to answer it at the desk.

“Oliver!” he said, forcing cheerfulness. “How nice to hear from you. No, no, no, we ate early. North Americans, what can I tell you? What’s up?”

Everyone around the table was looking at him in silence. Edward Marriner said very little for a time. “Really?” once, and then, “That is extraordinary.”

And then, “No, no, of course it is interesting. Thanks for calling. I’ll be sure to tell the others.” And finally, “Yes, we might indeed think of a photograph.”

He hung up. Looked at all of them.

“It was just on local radio. Someone on a motorcycle dropped a heavy bag an hour ago in front of a caf#233; on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix, and tore off.”

“A bomb?” Steve asked.

Edward Marriner shook his head. “They thought so, obviously. Cleared the street. But when the police and dogs came, it turned out not to be.” He looked at Ned. “It was the sculpted head and skull stolen from the museum.”

Motorcycle. Ned looked at Kate. He couldn’t begin to think of what to say.

“These are the two things Ned saw? Under the cathedral?” his mother asked.

“They have to be,” her husband said.

Meghan sighed. “Fine. I’ve got a note, for what it’s worth.” She looked at Ned, and then at Kimberly. “Is that it? That takes us to this evening?”

“More or less,” Ned said. “I mean, I’m sure I’ll remember other things, but…”

His mother nodded. “But this is the story. Fine. A couple of questions?”

“I knew there’d be an exam,” he said, trying to smile.

“I’m the one writing it,” his mother said. “Or it feels that way.” She looked at her notes. “Wolves, twice, by that tower and in the cemetery, but dogs in the city?”

Ned blinked. What did that have to do with anything? He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Meghan turned to her sister. “I’m playing along here, you understand? Don’t imagine I am buying everything.” She waited for Kim to nod, then said, “Do these…spirits change themselves into animals or take over real animals here?”

Kim thought about it. “I don’t know. I think they were dogs in Aix because there are always dogs there, and wolves would obviously cause an alarm.”

“Yes, I thought that. But you don’t know which they do, change or…occupy?”

Kim shook her head.

Her sister was still looking at her. “Ysabel takes over someone, right? Someone real? Melanie, this time, it would have been Kate. Different women each time, before?”

Kim nodded slowly. “I see where you’re going.”

“Good.”

Meghan removed her glasses and turned to Greg.

“Whatever else happens, young man, we are going to the hospital first thing in the morning, you and I. Rabies will kill you. The treatment’s easy now, but it must start quickly. I’m not going to be argued with on this. Some things we may not be able to do anything about, but simple medicine and common sense we can use. If these Celtic spirits entered an existing wild creature we have no idea what its condition was before.”

Greg opened his mouth. Meghan held up a finger.

“Gregory, hush. We will say you met an uncollared dog outside the locked cemetery gates. You like dogs, you knelt to pat it, it clawed you and ran away. End of story, end of questions. I show my M#233;decins Sans Fronti#232;res ID, I sign all their forms, and they give me the dosages to follow up. They like MSF here, they founded it. One immunoglobulin shot tomorrow morning and one vaccine, five over the next month. Not even remotely complicated. Guaranteed prevention. Are we done discussing this?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Greg said meekly. Ned would have said the same thing. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief that his mom was here, and not just because she wasn’t where she’d been yesterday.

Meghan Marriner made a precise tick mark on her first page of notes. She put her glasses on again and studied the page a moment, then looked up at her sister again.

“Same point. If Ysabel has become Melanie, or the other way round, what do we know from that? Is Melanie there in any way?”

Kim pursed her lips. “I think so.” She looked at her husband. “I think Ned had it right, before…the men return as themselves, but she’s summoned into someone, and she’s a little different each time.”

Meghan nodded, “So if she’s different it’s—”

“—Melanie that’s the difference,” Kate Wenger finished. “That makes sense.”

Meghan Marriner smiled a little. “I try.”

“But what do we know if we know that?” Steve asked.

Meghan took off her glasses again. “Well, for starters, imagine she wanted to steer this, to tell us something. What does Melanie know about Provence, about Aix, this whole area?”

Ned’s brief excitement faded. He looked glumly at Greg and Steve, and then his dad.

Edward Marriner sighed. “Just about everything, honey. She spent half a year getting ready for this.”

“She’s worse than Kate, Mom. She’s worse than you,” Ned said.

“Well, really,” said his father, half-heartedly, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Meghan raised an eyebrow at her son and then looked at her husband. “Careful, both of you. You are both in potential trouble tonight.”

“Why me? I didn’t compare the supernatural realm to an adolescent shaving,” Edward Marriner protested.

“I still think that was a good metaphor!” Uncle Dave complained promptly.

“That,” said Kimberly, “just makes the point for us. Better to keep quiet. Nobody needs to know you still think that way.”

“The management is taking the entire question of male idiocy under advisement,” Kate Wenger said.

Meghan grinned encouragement at her. “You said it, girl.”

Ned carefully avoided looking at Kate. He knew exactly what she was doing with that phrase. He’d either redden or laugh if he caught her eye, and neither would be useful just now.

He cleared his throat. “I hate to accuse my own mother of being frivolous, but is this really the best time to get into sisterhood bonding?”

“It isn’t such a bad time,” Aunt Kim murmured.

She was looking at Meghan. Ned blinked. Moods could change pretty fast, he thought.

Meghan shook her head, “Don’t rush me, Kim.” She paused, looked back down at her notes. “So you guys are saying we can’t predict anything from Melanie being part of this?”

“Maybe we can,” Kim said. “It’s a good thought, Meg. I just don’t know what, yet.”

Steve lifted his hand. They seemed to be copying Kate’s good-student gesture here. “You know, I’d bet a lot the reason there’s a search and not a fight is Melanie.”

“That makes sense too,” Kate said. “They were really surprised by it. They didn’t like it at all.”

“Why?”

“They want to kill each other,” Ned said.

Meghan hesitated, then made another tick mark.

HIS MOTHER HAD other notes, and other questions. None of them triggered anything close to a revelation.

She asked why Phelan had been going under the baptistry in the first place. What he’d been looking for down there. Ned didn’t know, neither did Aunt Kim.

“If I was guessing…” Ned began.

“Might as well, honey,” his mother said. “No marks deducted.”

“He said something about finding him—the other guy—in time. And never being able to do it.” The world will end, he’d actually said. “Maybe he wanted to kill Cadell before the summoning.”

“But then she’d never appear,” his father said, “if I understand this at all.”

“I know,” Ned said. “That’s why I’m just guessing. I think…I think he’s really tired.”

There was a short silence.

“‘Who could have foretold that the heart grows old,’” Aunt Kim said. Then added, “That’s Yeats, not me.”

The air I breathe is her, or wanting her. That didn’t sound like a worn-out heart.

“I think it’s really complicated,” Ned said.

“Uh-huh, I’ll buy that,” said Greg.

Ned’s mother made a dash this time on her sheet, not a tick mark. She asked about when the sculpture underground had been stolen, and when it might have been made. The theft, they knew, was recent. The work, they had no idea. A tick mark, a dash.

Meghan wanted to know what had happened at B#233;ziers. God will know his own. Kate answered that one. Good student. Another tick. More questions, varying marks on paper, the moon rising outside. Ned felt a sudden rush of love for his mother. Against the weight of centuries—against druids and skulls and wolves, rituals of blood, fire, and men who could grow horns from their heads like a forest god, or fly—she was trying to bring order and clarity to bear.

He saw her put down her pen, take off her glasses and fold them. She rubbed her eyes. This would have been, he thought, a long, amazingly hard day for her.

Kate excused herself to call Marie-Chantal’s house and report she was spending another night away. Ned had the feeling they didn’t worry a whole lot about their guest there, but he didn’t ask questions. He was glad she was staying. There were—by now—a variety of reasons.

In the absence of anything close to a better idea, they decided to stay with today’s plan: do the same searching tomorrow. Kate had been right—they arranged three groups.

“I want to go back to Aix,” Ned said suddenly.

He hadn’t planned to say that, but it was interesting how everyone simply accepted it, deferring to him. Even his mother. That went beyond “interesting” and reached “surreal,” actually.

Veracook had gone home. Greg went into the kitchen to make another pot of tea. Kate and Kim and Uncle Dave stayed at the table, bent over a big map, sorting out routes. Ned’s parents put on sweaters and went out on the terrace together. He could see them through the glass doors, their chairs close. His mom touched his father on the shoulder once, as Ned watched.

Steve had put on the television, a soccer game. Ned went and joined him on the couch. Eventually Greg brought his tea and sat with them. On the screen one team got a corner kick and someone headed the ball into the net. The player became very excited, so did the announcers and the crowd.

When it was time for sleep things got interesting in another way, since they were now short a bed. Ned had the two singles in his room, but he somehow didn’t think Kate would switch up there.

Good call on that one. Uncle Dave came upstairs with Ned, Kate stayed in the main-floor bedroom with Aunt Kim.

Ned thought he might talk with his uncle a little. He had his own really long list of questions. Mostly about his family. But he was also flat-out exhausted and he fell asleep pretty much as soon as they turned out the light.

He woke in the middle of the night again.

Not jet lag this time. He felt disoriented, afraid. He sat straight up in bed, his heart pounding. After a minute he rose quietly and went to the window. He looked out over the grass and pool. Nothing there that he could see. He checked his watch. It was past two in the morning.

“Ned, what is it?”

He hadn’t been as quiet as he’d thought. “Don’t know. Something woke me.” His head was hurting.

That was what made him do the inward search.

Another good call. He found his own aura, and Aunt Kim’s downstairs. But there was a third presence registering, gold as well, but shaded towards red now—and pulsing, bright and dim, bright and dim, like a signal beacon.

“I got it,” he said to his uncle in the dark room. “Cadell’s out there, not too far, and I think he’s calling.”

“Why?”

“How would I know?”

That was unfair, even if he hated these questions…And then, in fact, he realized that he did know, because he remembered something.

“I bet he’s hurt. Kate and I saw him trying to fly when he left.”

His uncle stood up, a large figure in the darkness. “Ned, he couldn’t have. He’d had a knife in his shoulder muscle.”

“Go tell him that.”

There was a silence. His uncle sighed. “All right,” said Dave Martyniuk. “Let’s do that. You able to find him?”

“Don’t know, but if he’s actually calling me, I have a guess. Why do…why do we want to go out there?” He was scared, he’d admit it if asked.

His uncle was dressing. “Because we’re adrift here, no good ideas.”

“He is too. That’s why they came to us.”

Martyniuk shrugged. “Sometimes the blind do lead the blind.”

“Yeah,” said Ned. “Straight over cliffs.” But he started pulling on his jeans and a shirt. “We should bring Aunt Kim. If I’m right, he’ll need a doctor again.”

“Kim, and your mother,” his uncle said.

“Mom?”

His eyes had adjusted enough that he could see his uncle nod.

“She still feels outside all this. Afraid of it. The story of your family. The reason we never met before today. You have to draw her in, Ned. Has to be you.” He hesitated. “You might not have thought about this yet, but what’s happened to you here isn’t going to go away after we leave.”

Ned hadn’t thought about that.

They went quietly down the hall and Dave knocked softly on the master bedroom door.

His mother was a light sleeper. “What is it?” they heard.

“We need you, Meghan. I’m sorry. Can you come downstairs?”

They went down without waiting. Same knock at the bedroom below.

A few moments later there were six of them in the kitchen, with the stove light turned on, for muted light. Ned had had a quick, subversive thought that Kate would come out all T-shirt and legs again, but she’d pulled on jeans and his McGill sweatshirt.

Uncle Dave briefed the others.

“We can all get in the van,” Ned’s father said. “I’ll drive.”

Dave Martyniuk shook his head. “Too many of us, and no reason. I’ll take Ned and the doctors. Edward, there’s really nothing you can do up there, and certainly not Kate.”

“I did have four years of karate?” Kate said optimistically. “Till I was twelve.”

Ned smiled, so did the others.

Edward Marriner looked as if he was about to protest. Aunt Kim forestalled it. “Actually,” she said, “Dave can drive us, but he stays by the car. Ned will take us up.”

“That makes no sense,” her husband said quickly. “Kim—”

His wife held up an index finger. “One, you can’t even walk properly, cher. I’ll wrap your knee again later. That was a bad landing.” She lifted another finger. “Two, even with that, you could very easily start or be provoked into a fight. I saw the way you two were circling each other.”

“I was not circling!” her husband exclaimed. “I, um, have a bad knee!”

His wife didn’t laugh. “Dave, listen. If he flew it was to be defiant, show that Phelan couldn’t stop him, and our orders not to didn’t matter. But the wound did stop him.”

“Of course it did,” Meghan said.

“I know. But Y chromosome, remember. Male idiocy. And so he may be up there spoiling for a fight because he’s had to ask for help.”

“Perfect logic,” Dave said. “So you leave me behind and he picks on Ned?”

“He won’t,” Ned said.

Again that new response after he spoke, the unexpected deference.

“I’ll get my bag,” his mother said briskly. “Ned, take a jacket, it’ll be cold out there.”

The kitchen emptied of adults. Kate lingered a moment. “Want the sweatshirt back?”

He managed a crooked smile. “What’s under it?”

“Me, I guess. But a T-shirt, too.”

“Drat. Only reason I woke everyone was to see if you’d flash your legs again.”

“I figured.” She cleared her throat. “I’d feel stupid saying, ‘Be careful,’ you know.”

“Go ahead, I won’t tell anyone.”

“You scared?”

“Yeah.”

She looked at him. “Be careful.”

He nodded.

UNCLE DAVE PARKED THE CAR where Kim pointed, by the barrier that separated the road from the jogging path. He turned off the engine and they all got out.

“Keep your cellphones on,” he said. “I’m right here.”

“Ready to limp to the rescue?” his wife said.

“Kim, don’t be funny.”

She smiled at him, the moonlight caught it. Ned saw his mother watching as Aunt Kim gave her husband a hug and lifted her face for a kiss. “Sorry, love,” she said. “But I’m right about this and you know I am.”

Dave still looked like he wanted to argue.

Ned walked around the barrier with his mother and aunt, following the beam of his flashlight down the path. It was farther than he remembered. The moon was ahead of them as they went. Clouds moved quickly, obscuring and exposing it, and stars. None of them spoke. This would be, he realized, the first time the two sisters had been together since his mother was a teenager.

In a way, it made him wish he weren’t here. Then he realized something: he didn’t have to be. There was nothing important he brought to this, once he’d woken up knowing that Cadell was calling. Aunt Kim could sense the man as easily as he could.

He was here as a buffer, he decided. To let them be together. Or maybe to hold a flashlight.

He kicked a pebble on the path, heard it skitter away. His aunt, on his right side, said quietly, “Not usually a good idea to talk about kids when they’re there, but I haven’t had a chance to tell you I really like my nephew.”

His mother, on Ned’s other side, made no reply. Ned kicked another stone. It was quiet up here, and cold. He kept expecting to see the tower ahead, round and roofless.

Meghan said, “None of your own. Was that a choice?”

Something difficult seemed to have entered the night.

“Not directly,” his aunt said finally. “Result of a different kind of choice, back when. I would have liked children. So would Dave. Teach them basketball, whatever.”

She was talking in a clipped way. Not her usual tone, Ned thought. As if she was controlling her voice.

The silence that followed made him nervous. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, post-up moves and all that, I guess.”

“That’s it,” Aunt Kim said. Her voice was almost inaudible.

“Adoption was a no?” his mother asked.

Another dozen steps. Ned played the beam ahead of them. He really did wish he were somewhere else now.

His aunt sighed. “Oh, Meg. This was all so long ago. It would have felt like dodging something, sneaking around it.”

“What? You thought you deserved to be childless?” His mother’s voice was sharp.

“I deserved something for a decision I made. This was it.”

“And you know that, Kim? You know that’s why you couldn’t?”

“Oh, sweetie. Meg. Yes, I know it.”

His mother swore in the darkness. She didn’t apologize, either. Ned kept his mouth shut.

He heard a snorting, scuffling sound to the right. Shone the beam quickly that way, but there was scrub and brush off the path, and he saw nothing.

He looked ahead again, and there was the tower at the end of the path, with the moon behind it and empty space beyond, where the land fell away.

His mother stopped, staring at that roofless ruin, the ghostly solitude of it. He and Aunt Kim had been here before; she hadn’t.

“I could quote Browning,” he heard his mom say.

“I thought of that too, Meg, first time,” his aunt murmured.

“I didn’t,” Ned said. “Mainly ’cause I have zero idea what you’re talking about.”

Both of them smiled, exchanging a glance. “You will one day,” his mother said. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

She called Cadell’s name, loudly, and walked straight up to the barrier that ringed the tower.

Ned was wondering what they’d do if he wasn’t here, when a darkness on the far side moved and became a shape. He saw the Celt come over to them, on the other side of the makeshift fence.

“Why here?” Meghan Marriner asked. No other greeting.

Cadell shrugged. He was holding his left arm. “I thought I’d rest. It is a place I know. Then I realized it could be a problem to go down into the city like this.”

Ned shone the beam on his shoulder, and winced. The bandage had ripped apart. The shirt was soaked in blood. There was blood on the hand holding his shoulder, too.

His mother said nothing.

“Ned, bring the light over. You’ll have to hold it for me.” Aunt Kim sounded angry. “You, on that rock, sit down. If I do this again you will undertake not to fly?”

The big man looked down at her. Ned saw him smile. He knew what was coming before the man spoke.

“No,” Cadell said. “I can’t do that.”

“So we do this now, and then do it again?”

He stepped over the low fence and went to sit, as instructed, on the rock. Ned remembered wolves here, the last time.

The Celt said, quietly, “I expect nothing of you. I am grateful you came.” He looked at the three of them. “Only the boy? Where is the warrior?” Amusement in his voice.

“Dave? Waiting in the car.”

Cadell laughed aloud. “You feared for his life. Wise of you.”

Aunt Kim had been reaching for his shirt. She stopped.

“Truthfully? My fear was that he would have killed you, even if he tried not to. And as I understand this, we’d have lost Melanie when he did. Next comment?”

She sounded like his mom, Ned thought. Really precise.

The man sitting on the boulder stared up at Kim, as if his eyes could penetrate thoughts through the dark. Ned kept the flashlight beam on his shoulder; he found himself breathing faster.

“You actually believe that? What you said?” Cadell murmured.

“I do.”

The Celt seemed amused again. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with yet, do you?”

“I think I do. I think we all do by now. I think the failure’s yours.”

She had taken a pair of scissors from her sister’s hand and began cutting away the shirt. Uncle Dave’s shirt this time. Cadell’s had been sliced away in the villa the first time this was done.

His deep voice was quiet. “Not every man who fought at Waterloo or Cr#233;cy or Pourri#232;res was a warrior. Being at a battlefield doesn’t mean anything in itself.”

“True. You begin to sound less of an idiot,” Kimberly said. Her hands were busy as she spoke. “There are even men I have known—three or four of them—who could certainly best my husband, but I am not persuaded you are one, with a wrecked shoulder, especially.”

“You make me want to test him, for the joy of it.”

“I know I do. That’s why he’s by the car. This is about Melanie.”

“Melanie is gone,” Cadell said. “You must accept that. It is about Ysabel. Everything always is.”

“No. For you and the other one. Not for the rest of us,” Meghan Marriner said. She handed Kim sterile wipes to began cleaning the wound again.

“We’re sure he missed the brachial?” Ned’s mother asked.

Her sister nodded. “He couldn’t have moved the arm. There’s no major muscle implicated. This is just an infection risk. The knife was in his boot.”

“You up to date with your tetanus shots?” Meghan said. “Got your immunization record?”

Aunt Kim laughed. Cadell said nothing. Ned watched his aunt’s hands moving quickly, exposing the wound. “I can’t suture out here, obviously, and I still don’t think he needs it.”

“Clean, debride, antibiotics.”

“Yes.”

Cadell remained silent through all of this, sitting very still. Moments passed, the wind blew. It really was cold. Then, softly, the man who’d called them here said, “You have never seen her. You have no way of realizing what this is. What she is. You will say you understand, but you do not. The boy knows.”

The air I breathe is her, or wanting her.

Aunt Kim looked at Cadell. She hesitated, choosing words, it seemed. “Yours,” she said finally, “is not the first love I have known to last for lifetimes. It isn’t even the second. You will forgive me if I value one of us more than your passion.”

Ned blinked. It wasn’t what he’d expected. Cadell took a breath. Then the Celt smiled again. “I begin to wonder if I should pity your husband.”

“He’d say yes, but I don’t think he suffers so much,” Kimberly replied, her hands packing the wound with gauze. She looked into her patient’s eyes again. “And he could give you the same answer I did.”

Ned watched Cadell gaze at his aunt. Then the Celt turned and stared at Meghan, and finally at Ned himself. Aunt Kim wrapped the wound in silence. Ned held his light steady and looked up above it at the tower and the stars.

Impulsively, he said, “Why did you put that skull and the other thing under the cathedral?”

Cadell looked at him. He actually seemed surprised. “Why do you think I did?”

“I have no idea why you did it.”

“No, I mean, why do you think it was me?”

Ned felt himself flushing. “Well, I mean…”

“He told you I did?”

This kept happening with these two. He could never get his balance. Now he was trying to remember if Phelan had actually said so, in as many words.

“He led us to think so.”

“And why would I have done something like that?”

“To…to bait him. Because he was searching for you?”

“Down there? Really?”

Ned swallowed.

“There’s been nothing there for a thousand years,” Cadell said.

“So…so what would he have…?”

“He wanted to bring you in. Obviously.”

“It isn’t obvious at all.”

“Of course it is.”

“But why?”

“He sensed you, read you as someone linked to this world.”

“Before I knew it myself? ’Cause I had never—”

“That can happen.” It was his aunt, interjecting. “Happened with me that way. Someone knew me before I understood anything.”

“But why would he want me?” Ned protested.

Cadell’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “He looks for ways to balance matters.”

“He threatened us with his knife!”

“One of his knives,” Cadell said dryly.

“He never once asked for…he never…” It was hard to form thoughts suddenly, cause words to make sense. He was trying to replay that first morning in his mind, and he couldn’t.

“The Roman? Ask for something?” Cadell was still amused. “That he would never do. He sets events in motion, and takes what he can use.”

“He said you like to play games.”

“That’s true enough.”

“He kept telling me to stay away. That there was no role for me.”

The smile remained. “Do you know a better way to draw a young man? To anything?”

Ned felt anger surge. “The dogs outside the caf#233;? Was that you?”

“That was me.”

“Playing games?”

“I told you I didn’t expect you to come out. Neither did he.”

“This makes no sense!” Ned cried. “When would he have had time to steal those things? And get them to the cathedral? Why did it look like him?”

“Not difficult. He made a bust of himself long ago, for her. You could have thought of that—which of us is the sculptor?”

Ned swallowed.

“For the rest…we both sensed you as soon as you arrived. I was curious, he was more than that, it now seems. He needed you more. It wouldn’t have been difficult to learn who your father was—and where he was going that morning, Ned.”

First time he’d ever used Ned’s name.

“I imagine, if you bother to check, you’ll find the two things were stolen from the museum storage the night before you found them. He had them with him and was watching to see if you went inside the cathedral that morning. If you hadn’t, he’d have tried something else. Or not. He’ll never have only one thought, you know.”

“Oh, God,” Ned said.

“Should we believe you?” Meghan Marriner asked quietly.

Cadell looked at her. “You’ve given me a great deal, coming here, and I’m grateful. A debt. I have no reason to lie.”

There was a silence. The round tower rose above them. A backdrop.

“I told him something,” Ned said. “When he left.”

“And that was?” Cadell’s voice changed, a rising note.

Ned drew a breath. “I told him I’d sensed her…Ysabel…in the cemetery.”

That tension again, as if the air around them were a stringed instrument, vibrating.

“And now you’re angry with him and telling me?”

“I feel cheated.”

Cadell shook his head. “He does what he can. We don’t fight the same way.”

“He can’t fly, or summon spirits,” Kimberly murmured.

“Neither of those, no.”

“And he has to be there when she’s summoned?”

The big man nodded. “He’s at risk, otherwise. There have been times she’s come to me simply because he wasn’t there.”

“Unfair,” Meghan Marriner said.

“Why would it be fair?” He turned to Ned. “You must hear what I am trying to say: everything else, everyone else, is insignificant. It is about her. It always has been since he came through the forest.”

Ned looked away, fists clenched. “Fine. None of us matter a damn. I get it. Well, now I’ve told you both. Keeps it even.”

“He kept it even, too,” Kim said, still quietly. “At the villa. Wounded himself.”

Cadell laughed. The amusement angered Ned now. “I wouldn’t have done that, I confess it. He’s a different man.”

The Celt stood up, shirtless again, the bandage white in the moonlight. You were made aware of ease and power as he moved. “I must go.”

“Does it matter, what Ned said about the cemetery?” Kim asked.

“Of course it does. A place she’s been?”

“You’ll go there now?”

Cadell nodded. “I may even meet him there. Which would be amusing.” He glanced at Ned. “I’ll tell him he’s disappointed you.”

“You can’t fight each other,” Ned said quickly.

Cadell smiled. “I know. She forbade that, didn’t she?”

He turned to go down the slope that would take him towards the city. He stopped and looked back. Phelan hadn’t done that.

“Move away from us,” Cadell said. “Let it go. You’ll hurt yourself. It doesn’t have to happen.”

Then he went from them, disappearing down the path.

NED’S MOTHER PACKED her kit. When she was done, they started back the way they’d come. Ned didn’t use the flashlight, the moon seemed bright enough. He walked ahead, could hear his mother and aunt behind him.

“You understand all this, I guess?” his mother said.

Aunt Kim walked a few steps without answering. “Some. Not the details, but I know things like this can happen.”

“You know, because of before?”

“Of course.”

“And Ned’s…like you?” His mother’s voice was tentative.

“Not quite the same, but yes. You know the family stories, Meg. You grew up with them.”

“I know. I don’t like them.”

“I know.”

Stars overhead and the wind. Ned put up his jacket hood. He was still trying to deal with anger, this new feeling of having been abused by Phelan that first morning. A con job, a guy doing the shell game on a sidewalk table. Drawing him in with that underground deception. Then telling him to go away, in the cloister—just another way of luring him?

He remembered the man’s fury, coming down off the roof. Surely that had been real? Maybe…maybe Ned had moved faster, ended up closer, known more than Phelan had expected?

Right. Like he was going to figure this out, however hard he worked at it.

He put his hands in his pockets. Tried to see it from the other man’s point of view. Outnumbered by Cadell, who had the spirits with him, Beltaine coming, far less power than them, needing to know where the summoning would be, and then this kid with a link to their world shows up…

Ned sighed. He could see it.

He just couldn’t get past the anger. This version of the story made him feel so naive, so stupidly young. He forced himself to remember Phelan at Entremont, telling them how to leave, and when, to save their lives. Cadell wouldn’t have killed them there, but Brys would have. And he could have, that night.

It was hard to stay angry, and as hard to let go of it.

He heard his mother again. “Kim, do you have any idea how difficult this is for me?”

“Of course I do.”

“I wonder. I can’t lose Ned the way I lost you.”

That got his attention.

After a few more steps, his aunt said, carefully, “Meg, I was changed, I wasn’t lost. Maybe it was my fault, but I didn’t have enough in me to make it easier for you. By the time I did…”

“It was too late. Old story?”

“Old story,” his aunt agreed.

He heard only their footsteps on the path for a while. Then his mother said, quietly, “Did they die? Your friends?”

Ned strained to hear. This was all new to him.

Aunt Kim murmured, “One did. A darling man. Saved everything, really. One stayed there. One…found what she was, and joy in the end. Dave and I came home.”

“And were punished?”

“Oh, Meg. Don’t let’s go there. I did something important. You pay a price, sometimes. Like you, when you go to war zones.”

“It’s not the same thing. Nothing near.”

“Near enough.”

He heard his mother make a sound that could have been laughter, or not. “You’re being a big sister. Trying to make me feel better.”

“Haven’t had much chance.”

The same sound again.

“I made it worse for you, when you came back, didn’t I?”

Aunt Kim said nothing. She couldn’t, Ned realized: she’d either have to lie, or admit that it was true, and she wouldn’t want to do either. He felt like an intruder again, listening. He quickened his pace, moved farther ahead. He took out his cellphone and dialed his uncle. It was picked up, first ring.

“Where are you?”

“On our way back. It’s okay.”

“Everyone?”

“We’re fine. It was pretty intense.”

His uncle said nothing.

“Honestly,” Ned said. “We’re fine.”

“Where are Kim and your mom?”

“Just behind me. They’re talking.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll be there in a few.”

“I’m here,” his uncle said.

He hadn’t been, for all Ned’s life. It was a nice thing to hear. He said, “We won’t have a lot of time. We have to focus now, to get her back.” His math teacher talked about focusing all the time.

His uncle cleared his throat. “Ned, I was going to say this before we went to bed. You need to think about the possibility that we won’t. We’ll do what we can, but it isn’t always poss—”

“Nope,” Ned Marriner said. “Uh-uh. We’re getting her back, Uncle Dave. I’m getting her back.” He hung up.

He found himself walking faster, the urgency inside him strong suddenly, anger and fear. He needed to run, burn some of it off.

He heard a sound ahead of him.

Same snuffling, grunting as when they’d come this way. He stopped dead, breathing quietly. His mother and aunt were well behind him now.

He was about to turn on the flashlight when he saw the boar in the moonlight.

It was as he remembered it. Huge, pale-coloured, nearly white, though that was partly the moon. It was alone, standing stock-still in his path—as it had the last time, in the laneway below.

The animal returned his gaze. He knew by now this wasn’t a simple sanglier like those that had rooted up the field beside the villa.

There was an ache in his chest, as if too many things were wanting release. He said, “Cadell’s gone. He went down the other way. So’s Brys. The druid? He’s really gone. I’m sorry. There’s just me.”

He had no idea what he expected. What happened was that, after a moment, the boar turned its back on him.

It turned and faced east as Ned was—as if rejecting him and all he’d said. As if saying just me meant nothing to this creature, or worse than nothing. As if he didn’t mean anything at all, wasn’t worth looking at.

It did look back once, though, then trotted away—surprisingly agile—into the brush beside the path and was swallowed by the night.

“And what the hell did that mean?” Ned Marriner said.

They came up beside him. “What is it?” his mother asked.

“That boar, same as before.”

His aunt looked around. “It’s gone?”

He nodded.

Kimberly sighed. “Let’s go, dear. Don’t make yourself crazy trying to understand all this.”

“Can’t help it,” he said.

But he walked on with them, and at the end of the path they turned right and came to the barrier and went around it. Dave was on the other side, leaning against his car. Kim went forward and put her arms around him, her head against his chest.

They heard her say, “I told him you could have taken him apart.”

Dave Martyniuk chuckled. “You did? Good thing I stayed behind then, isn’t it? You tired of me? Ready for widowhood?”

“He was trivializing you, honey. I didn’t like it.”

Dave kissed the top of her head. “Trivializing? Kim, I’m a middle-aged lawyer who plays Sunday rugby for the district team and can’t move for two days after.”

Ned heard his aunt laugh softly. “Yeah, so?” she said. “What’s your point?”

“That does remind me,” Ned’s mother said brightly. “I really need to review the quality of security being sent out with me. What good’s a gimpy rugby player in Darfur anyhow?”

Dave Martyniuk looked at her, over top of Kim’s head, which was still against his chest. He grinned. “Fair question.”

Meghan shook her head. “No, it isn’t. And you know it.”

“I know it too,” Ned said. “I saw you this afternoon, remember? That was no weekend rugby thing.”

“You haven’t seen our team play,” his uncle said. “Ned, you want your uncle killed soon as you meet him?”

Ned shook his head. “Not in a hurry for that, no.”

Dave said, “The truth? I do know how to fight. I’ve made sure I still do. But this one—both of these—are in their own league, their own world. I talked a good game in the villa because I wanted them taking us seriously, but I’d have died up there if he wanted me dead.”

Silence. They were completely alone at the end of the road, in the middle of a night.

“What’d he wind up doing?” Dave asked.

Meghan said, “Kim cleaned him up again, then Ned told him he’d sensed Ysabel in Arles. He’s going there.”

Dave looked at Ned. “Why did you do that?”

Ned shrugged. “I told Phelan when he said goodbye. Guess I was being fair.”

“Think anyone else will be?”

Ned scuffed at the gravel. “Maybe not.”

Kimberly let go of her husband, stepped back a little. Her hair was very white in the moonlight. “I’ve decided not to like her,” she said.

Uncle Dave pretended to be startled. He looked at Meghan. “What? After all these years!”

Kim punched him in the chest. “Not my sister! I adore my sister.”

“I haven’t deserved that a whole lot,” Ned’s mother murmured.

“Not the point,” Kim said.

“Shouldn’t it be?”

Her sister shook her head. “No. And the one I don’t like is Ysabel.”

Her husband laughed aloud, startling Ned. “Oh, God. Don’t let her know,” he said. “You’ll completely ruin her life this time around if she finds out Kim Ford feels that way.”

His wife hit him again. “Be quiet, you.”

Dave was quiet. It was Ned who said, after a moment, “Don’t hate her. Don’t even dislike her. She’s outside that. Even more than they are.”

The other three looked at him.

“Can’t help it,” his aunt said stubbornly. “The two of them play this game of hide-and-seek and then the loser gets killed for her? I don’t like it, that’s all.”

“You haven’t seen her,” Ned said. “It…makes a difference. It’s what they’re all about. I don’t think she has a lot of choice either.”

“Hold on,” his mother said.

They turned to her. The moonlight was on her face.

“You didn’t say one would be killed, Ned.”

“But I did,” he said. “That’s what she…”

He stopped. His heart was suddenly hammering again.

“You didn’t, dear,” his mother said, very gently. “Neither did Kate. I wrote it down.”

They were staring at her.

Meghan Marriner looked at her son.

“You said sacrificed.”