“Wil,” I said calmly, “I believe you. But it’s not that simple.”
I meant it. It wasn’t so simple, no matter how much I wanted it to be. I hated Otherworldly inference more than I hated anything else. Taking a teenage girl was the ultimate violation. I wanted to make the guilty party pay for this. I wanted to make them suffer. But I couldn’t cross over with guns blazing. Getting myself killed would do none of us any good. I needed more information before I could proceed.
“You have to-”
“No,” I snapped, and this time my voice wasn’t so neutral. “I do not have to do anything, do you understand? I make my own choices and take my own jobs. Now, I’m very sorry about your sister, but I’m not jumping into this just yet. As Lara told you, I don’t generally do jobs that take me into the Otherworld. If I take this one, it’ll be after careful deliberation and question-asking. And if I don’t take it, then I don’t take it. End of story. Got it?”
He swallowed and nodded, cowed by the fierce tone in my voice. It was not unlike the one I used on spirits, but I felt only a little bit bad about scaring Wil with it. He had to prepare himself for the highly likely possibility that I would not do this for him, no matter how much we both wanted it.
On the way home, I swung by my mom’s place, wanting to talk to Roland. Sunset threw reddish-orange light onto their house, and the scent of her flower garden filled the air. It was the familiar smell of safety and childhood. When I walked into the kitchen, I didn’t see her anywhere, which was probably just as well. She tended to get upset when Roland and I talked shop.
He sat at the table working on a model airplane. I’d laughed when he picked up this hobby after retiring from shamanism, but it had recently occurred to me it wasn’t so different from working puzzles. God only knew what stuff I’d find to keep me busy when I retired. I had the uneasy feeling I’d make a good candidate for cross- stitching.
His face broke into a smile when he saw me, making laugh lines appear around the eyes of the weathered face I loved. His hair was a bright silver-white, and he’d managed to keep most of it. I was five-eight, and he was only a little taller than me. But despite that height, he was solidly built and hadn’t lost muscle with age. He might be pushing sixty, but I had a feeling he could still do some serious damage.
Roland took one look at my face and gestured me to a chair. “You’re not here to ask about Idaho.” I hadn’t really understood their recent vacation choice, but whatever.
Giving him a quick kiss, I held my arms around him for a moment. I didn’t love many people in this world-or any other-but him I would have died for. “No. I’m not. But how was it anyway?”
“Fine. It’s not important. What’s wrong?”
I smiled. That was Roland. Always ready for business. If my mom would have let him, I suspected he’d still be out there fighting, right by my side.
“Just got a job offer. A weird one.”
I proceeded to tell him all about Wil and Jasmine, about the evidence I’d found for her abduction. I also added in Wil’s bit of information about this Aeson guy.
“I’ve heard of him,” said Roland.
“What do you know?”
“Not a lot. Never met him, never fought him. But he’s strong, I know that much.”
“This gets better and better.”
He eyed me carefully. “Are you thinking about doing it?”
I eyed him back. “Maybe.”
“That’s a bad idea, Eugenie. A very bad idea.”
There was a dark tone in his voice that surprised me. I’d never known him to back down from any danger, especially one where an innocent was involved.
“She’s just a kid, Roland.”
“I know, and we both know that the gentry get away with taking women every year. Most don’t ever get recovered. The danger’s too high. That’s the way it is.”
I felt my ire rising. Funny how someone telling you not to do something can talk you into it. “Well, here’s one we can get back. We know where she is.”
He rubbed his eyes a little, flashing the tattoos that marked his arms. My tattoos depicted goddesses; his were of whirls, crosses, and fish. He had his own set of gods to appeal to-or in this case, God. We all invoked the divine differently.
“This isn’t a drop-in and drop-out thing,” he warned. “It’ll take you right into the heart of their society. You’ve never been that deep. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“And you do?” I asked sarcastically. When he didn’t answer, I felt my eyes widen. “When?”
He waved a hand of dismissal. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that if you go over in body, you’ll get yourself killed or captured. I won’t let you do that.”
“You won’t let me? Come on. You can’t send me to my room anymore. Besides, I’ve gone over lots of times before.”
“In spirit. Your total time over in body’s probably been less than ten minutes.” He shook his head in a wise, condescending way. That irked me. “The young never realize how foolish something is.”
“And the old never realize when they need to step aside and let the younger and stronger do their jobs.” The words came out before I could stop them, and I immediately felt mean. Roland merely regarded me with a level look.
“You think you’re stronger than me now?”
I didn’t even hesitate. “We both know I am.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t give you the right to go get yourself killed over a girl you don’t even know.”
I stared at him in surprise. We weren’t exactly fighting, but this attitude was weird for him. He’d married my mom when I was three and adopted me shortly thereafter. The father-daughter bond burned in both of us, obliterating any longing I might have had for the birth father I’d never known. My mom almost never spoke about him. They’d had some sort of whirlwind romance, I knew, but in the end, he didn’t want to stick it out-not for her, not for me.
Roland would have done anything for me, kept me away from any harm that he could-except when it came to my job. When he’d realized I could walk worlds and cast out spirits, he’d started training me, and my mother hated him for it. They were the most loving couple I’d ever met, but that choice had nearly broken them apart. They’d stayed together in the end, but she’d never been happy about what I did. Roland, however, saw it as a duty. Destiny, even. I wasn’t like one of those silly people in the movies who could “see dead people” and go crazy from it. I easily could have ignored my abilities. But as far as Roland was concerned, that was a sin. To neglect one’s calling was a waste, especially when it meant others would suffer. So he tried to treat me as objectively as he would any other apprentice, fighting his personal feelings.
Yet, for some reason now, he wanted to hold me back. Weird. I’d come here for strategy and ended up on the defensive.
I changed the subject abruptly, telling him about how the keres had known my name. He cut me a look, not wanting to drop the Jasmine topic. My mom’s car pulled in just then, giving me a temporary victory. With a sigh and a look of warning, he told me not to worry about the name. It happened sometimes. His had eventually gotten out too, and little had come of it.
My mom came into the kitchen, and shamanic business disappeared. Her face-so like mine, down to the shape and high cheekbones-put on a smile as warm as Roland’s. Only hers was tinged with something a little different. She always carried a perpetual concern for me. Sometimes I thought it simply had to do with what I did for a living. Yet, she’d had that worry ever since I was little, like I might disappear on her at any moment. Maybe it was just a mom thing.
She placed a paper bag on the counter and began putting away groceries. I knew she knew what I was doing there, but she chose to ignore it.
“You going to stay for dinner?” she asked. “I think you’ve lost weight.”
“She has not,” said Roland.
“She’s too skinny,” complained my mom. “Not that I’d mind a little of that.”
I smiled. My mom looked amazing.
“You need to eat more,” she continued.
