“Hello, Caern,” I said.
TWENTY-TWO
Caern Ankou gestured for me to enter without another word. She looked sick and frightened. “This way, please. I don’t want us to disturb my son.” She led me through the airy, bright house, through a den where a little boy with mocha skin, a mop of unruly black curls, and a slight point to the tips of his ears sat in front of a flat-screen TV and watched cartoons, something called The Aquanauts. He looked up at me and smiled. I felt his soul pouring out of that simple smile.
“Hi,” he said. He looked to be about two, maybe a little younger.
“Hey,” I said.
“In here,” Caern said to me, an edge in her voice. “Garland, you watch your shows. Mommy and our guest have some things to talk about, okay?”
“Okay,” Garland said, already over the novelty of me and back to the adventures of singing aquatic animals. Caern led me to the rear of the house to an open and sun-filled kitchen with an island for dining. We could still see the boy; there were no doors between the two rooms. Caern sat, struggling a bit to get up on a high stool while cradling her belly. I helped her as much as she’d allow and then sat myself in the chair on the other side of the island, which was littered with junk mail, breakfast dishes, brightly colored plastic, children’s bowls decorated with Disney characters, and sippy cups. She had coffee but offered me none.
“Who sent you?” she asked, “Roland Blue, Brett, my father?”
“I’m here on my own,” I said. “I was hired by your dad to find you and bring you home.”
Caern snorted and shook her head.
“It figures,” she said. “I’ve felt him for years, probing, seeking. This,” she said, holding up the purple crystal bracelet on her wrist, “was my mother’s. It’s powerful, from the first land, and it hides me from the far sight. I stole it from her jewelry box after she died, when I left.”
“I know you have no reason to believe me, but I’m here to make sure you’re okay, not make you go home.”
She sighed. “I’m inclined to believe you’re not one of my father’s men. You knocked, and didn’t try to kick the door down, or grab me and Garland and throw a bag over our heads in some parking lot. How long have you been looking for us?”
“A few months,” I said.
“You must be good. He’s been hunting the globe for me for … nine, ten years. Well, his proxies have. He’s too busy to do it himself.”
“I had a lot of help from my friends,” I said. “Is that why you left? You didn’t think he had time for you after your mother passed?”
“Look, Mr.…?”
“Ballard, just Ballard.”
“Look, Ballard, no matter how much you’ve dug to get here, you don’t know me, you don’t know my life, and you surely have no idea about Theodore Ankou.”
“You’re right, I don’t know your life. I took this job for two reasons, one was a reward your dad promised me, and two was because I cut out from home at thirteen too. I had reasons, one of them was a mother so deep up a bottle, she could have been a model ship. I fed myself, looked after myself and her too. I understand not feeling loved.”
“You ever patch things up with your mom?” she asked. “Ever go home again?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. She’s dead now.” I’d told the lie about her death so often now that even I believed it most of the time. I wondered for a moment if maybe she really was dead by now, then I pushed the thought away and focused on the now.
“Well, it wasn’t for lack of attention, exactly,” she said. She paused and I saw her pushing herself out of the dark vault of memory too. “You want something to drink? Tea? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be great,” I said. As she fixed me a cup, opening and closing cabinets as she did, I turned to watch her son, Garland, in the other room. He was transfixed by the TV, most of his chubby little hand covered in drool and popped in a ball between his lips. “He’s a beautiful kid. Where’s Dad?”
“At work,” she said, handing me a cup. “Thank you. He’s the most beautiful part of this world, or any other, that I’ve ever seen.” She was concealing something under the table, a weapon, I figured, maybe a kitchen knife. I didn’t blame her. “He left not too long before you showed up. I figured you had waited until he was gone.”
“You give me too much credit,” I said, breathing in the hot, black coffee like it was the secret of life, which, of course, it was. “I just showed up. My cab is still waiting out there, full of sinister-looking Fae gunsels.” She smiled at that and it was like the whole universe got a touch warmer, brighter. I sipped my coffee.
“Gunsel? You out of a Humphrey Bogart movie or something?” she asked.
“Close enough,” I said. “I’m impressed someone your age even knows who Humphrey Bogart is.”
“My mom loved old movies,” she said. “When Father was away on work, I’d
