Chapter Twelve

“Abigail, what are you doing in the corner?”

“Umm…sitting?”

Eyes of uncanny gold regarded me unblinkingly for a brief span and then turned away, giving the air of having cast judgment on the infinite and imponderable caprice of young people. I got to my feet as he strode to the last pedestal and retrieved his burgundy flask. I watched closely in hopes of seeing what he did to bypass the barrier, but my efforts were in vain. His hand slid as easily past the invisible shield as if it hadn’t been there at all. That sort of thing would be keyed, wouldn’t it?

“I’m not sure,” he said, “that I would have brought you to this trove of ours, but Timothy was right in that it was the safest place for you.”

That seemed to be all he intended to say on the matter.

“Milton, how did you find out about my dad?”

“What?” He hid the flask under his shirt, where it bulged like a tumor.

“There aren’t any phones here, and Timothy said Traveling was too expensive to do often. How did you know what happened to him so quickly?”

“Oh, we have a Message Box. The man who keeps watch over the area where you lived has one of a set. We use them to write to each other instantaneously. Whatever is written in one appears in the other.” He appeared bemused at having to explain it.

“So… instant messaging?”

He nodded, not catching the reference.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just get phones? They do that too, you know.”

He grimaced. “Perhaps, but they too often fail and are too readily tampered with.”

“Oh. Ok.” Now I knew what I had been wondering about, but… Sorcerers always lie.

He paused, as if awaiting further questions. He grew pensive, then shook his head, scattering errant thoughts like dandruff. “Come upstairs,” he said. “I am afraid there are things we need to discuss.” I saw his eyes pass over the space of unremarkable wall that I knew hid the spy passage, but he made no reference to it.

One ladder, two turns, and three doors later I was in yet another dining room, though not the location of their clandestine meeting. A glass cabinet stood to one side prominently advertising a wealth of china and silver. The center of the scene was dominated by a table of bronze wood, and on one corner of it sat a tea set with a faint puff of steam floating languidly above.

Timothy was already there, stirring a cup with a small spoon. He pulled one of the chairs out for me, and soon we were all three seated. I was extremely nervous, and the feeling only increased as Timothy poured two more cups in silence. The liquid was tinted orange, something I hadn’t seen before. It was too hot to drink.

“Freshly brewed,” Timothy said. “It hasn’t had time to clear.”

“It’s Soma?” I asked.

“It will be.” Timothy smiled, easing the tension only slightly, and Milton made a rumbling noise deep in his throat like a querulous volcano.

“Doubtless you have some small curiosity about our visitor,” he said, “and why it was necessary for you to be out of sight.”

I said nothing. The steam continued to rise.

“It is because of blood, Abigail, your blood, that you must be hidden. You are very special for certain purposes because of who your parents were. There are those in this occult world of ours who would pay dearly for only a few ounces of what runs so freely in you veins.”

That didn’t make sense to me. “Wait. You’re my uncle. I may have sorcerers in my family, but so do both of you. How can my blood be more special than yours?”

The gold of his gaze was veiled for a moment. “It is not your father I am speaking of. He is important, necessary even, to the alloy, but it is your mother who makes you special.”

Somehow, I knew it would come back to her.

“My mother?”

“Yes. She is what we call a Cariad.” Milton blew on his tea, taking an unhurried sip that instilled me with a desire to slap the cup out of his hands.

“Cariad?”

Timothy answered me. “You have not come far enough in your reading, but Wyrm speaks of them in depth. All that you absolutely need to know is that a Cariad is a person who descended, however distantly, down a line of firstborns whose original progenitor was a god.”

I followed the first sentence, and then my brain was hit by a truck.

“Those stories are real?!”

“Not in all the particulars, but roundly speaking, yes.” He said this like it was old news, which for him, it may have been. I still had to recover from the wreck.

I looked from one face to the other, both utterly serious. This was simply too much. This could not be. It sounded like they were saying, far back in my family tree, was the real life equivalent of Zeus up to his old, promiscuous tricks. My mind called up the image of Disney’s Hercules, singing a song about not knowing how to be a hero. I thrust it aside. This was not the time for cartoons.

“But I can’t do anything.”

Milton was perplexed. Timothy laughed.

“It doesn’t work like that. You are not a demigod. There is only a glimmer of the original divinity in you, but mixed with the spark of sorcery from your father’s side, that glimmer is still very special. It is almost unique. There are only a handful like you the whole world over. Not one in a million anymore, one in a billion.”

My eyes may have become somewhat wide at this point.

“What does it mean ?”

“For you,” Timothy leaned back in his chair, rolling and tasting the words on his tongue before saying, “possibly nothing. You are able to learn the Languages of Magic, but your father’s spark alone could have insured that. As for your mother’s legacy, the only practical effect is that your blood could be used to catalyze certain rituals, magic that would be impossible otherwise. The danger of this is that you do not have to be a willing donor.”

A piece slid into place, a long forgotten suspicion.

“Is that,” I began slowly, “is that what happened to mom? Did someone take her and use her like that?”

It seemed to fit everything else perfectly, even though it was strange that my dad would have said she left when she really died. But he had lied about so much; it couldn’t make a difference except for what I thought of her.

Milton was rumbling again and shaking his head. “The woman that your father loved is gone, but that was not the way of her going.”

I felt my heart constrict. “You know about her? You know what happened?”

“I know some of it, but that is not for tonight.” He took a breath and with it seemed to be drawing the world into himself, rising upward. “You are family in more ways than one. Until you came here, even since, it must not have seemed to be so. That is my fault. Acton and I…,” he faltered, “that, too, is for another time. Here is what you must know now. The magical world is eating itself; things are not as they should be. You have come into all of this at exactly the wrong time. If you knew our visitor, you would better understand the danger.”

“I take my bodily fluids very seriously,” I said.

Timothy smiled. Milton did not. The big, tawny man folded his hands in front of him as I had seen him do talking to the woman. He seemed to stretch in his seat.

“My apprentice and I need to go on something of an expedition. It will not be a lengthy one, only a day or two. We need to replenish some of the supplies that cannot be renewed here on the ranch.”

“You’re going into town?”

“No.” He paused, making certain I would not interrupt again. “It is not that sort of supply. While we are gone, you must stay in the house. You must not go beyond these doors. Even my own land is not safe for the time being. It may be watched when I am not here to guard it personally, and there is no need to expose you to that risk.”

“I can deal with that.” The thought of that woman confronting me outside was not a pleasant one. I could definitely stay inside. I didn’t have to leave the house to go to the garden anyway. At least not out the front door.

“Who was this…person?” I caught myself before I said ‘woman.’ Milton hadn’t even said ‘she.’ “Were they looking for me?”

“She was here on another matter, but she would be able to recognize you on sight if it came to that.”

He had admitted it was a woman, but from what I had overheard, her visit had everything to do with me. It sounded like she had expected Milton to act the part of her minion, and that I was supposed to be a runaway.

“How would she recognize me if she doesn’t know me?” Timothy was watching me with too much interest, but he said nothing. Milton’s eyes flashed, not metaphorically. They actually flashed a darker gold.

“Sorcerer’s see what other eyes do not, and we are not the only ones. Your heritage is as plain to those with the sight as if your forehead bore a mark describing it.” Timothy had said almost the same thing. He could see things in the garden that I couldn’t. They all could.

Soon that would change; assuming Li had been telling me the truth. I would see more in the garden than I might want to.

Just as I was about to ask what “business” they could have with this woman that didn’t involve divvying up my blood, Timothy spoke. “I think that’s enough for now.” He gave me a meaningful look. “We have preparations to make before we go, and I haven’t even planned dinner yet.”

He stood, and I followed his lead.

“Go,” Milton dismissed us. “I have thinking to do.”

The house brought us to the kitchen, the rooms shuffling like a tricked out deck of cards, boggling my sense of direction once again.

“What if I get lost in here while you’re both gone?” I asked Timothy in half-seriousness. That could be a real problem.

“Stay put and wait for me to come. We won’t be gone long enough for you to starve.” His expression was studiously blank.

“Thanks.”

I watched him pull ingredients out of the cabinets. Despite his admonition that I would be doing the cooking once I became an apprentice, he still kept the chore to himself. The reading lessons may not have counted as an apprenticeship, but even if they had, I think he enjoyed preparing the food.

“You will have to forgive Milton,” he said. “When I was young, I didn’t appreciate the reason for his coolness. He never gives an ounce more than he must. Knowledge can be more dangerous than any magic. He is cautious in distributing it.”

“That sounds like a lesson.”

“It’s a law, actually, or part of one.”

By rote, I went to the fridge to pour us both Soma, but there was hardly any left. “It’s a good day for milk,” Timothy said. “Soma is one of the things we are missing.” He had not looked up from slicing a tomato, but he had known exactly what I was doing.

I found our glasses, setting the table in a haphazard way. All the banality of this made me think of home, of the things that would be different by the end of the summer.

I sighed. “I was going to be a senior this year.”

“What?” He was concentrating on onions now.

“In school. It was going to be my last year of high school. I don’t suppose I’ll be going back.”

The sorcerer snorted. “Would you want to?” I could hear the grin on his face.

“No.” I sat back down. “It’s just weird. My life has been rewritten. It’s like everything I did before, everything I could have done, doesn’t matter.”

“Do you miss it?”

I miss my dad , I thought, but I didn’t want to say it. Better to let some hurts lie.

“It happens that way.” Timothy went on when I didn’t respond. “Magic comes into your life and it wrecks all plans. It changes the way we look at things. They say love is like that too, but I would guess that is one of man’s fonder exaggerations.”

His back was still to me and I watched him finish putting together our sandwiches before toasting them. The kitchen was warm, approaching cozy, and I felt safe. I felt safe with Timothy, though Milton could scare me with a look even when he wasn’t angry.

I had the oddest impression, sitting there, that I was looking into a possible future. Timothy was playing with the oven, and we were together and alone. Milton had gone away long ago out of our lives. We were more than friends, but not like brother and sister. I thought I could live that way, if I had to, and it wouldn’t be so bad despite everything I’d lost.

I wondered then what I would find in the garden and whether I would have to learn to hate him.

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