“Mine too,” I said. “I got to your front door mostly through being persistent and some dumb luck, both of which make up about ninety percent of detective work. What happened, why did you take off from home, how’d you got away from Glide? I know some of it, but there are gaps.”
“Do you really care?” she asked. “I mean, it’s mission accomplished now, right? Grab me, grab Garland, and take us back for that big paycheck. Why would you give a damn?”
“No paycheck,” I said. “Someone I love … she’s trapped in slavery to the Court of the Uncountable Stairs. I owe her to try to get her out of that. He promised to free her if I found you. I told him if I did find you, I wouldn’t make you go anywhere you didn’t want to go. He has no clue about your life here, about your family, Garland,” I nodded toward her belly, “or baby number two.”
A look of relief washed over Caern’s face. “He doesn’t know?” She slumped a little, then looked at me, searching my face, my eyes. “You’re sure? Please, you can’t tell him about the children, Ballard!” She was trying to stay calm, I could see that, but a desperate, panicked energy was creeping into her voice. Whatever she had hidden under the table she was clutching it like a lifeline. I saw Garland turn his head, as he sensed the same thing I did from his mother.
“Why did you run away, Caern?” I asked, keeping my voice low, putting down the coffee, leaning toward her.
“When Mom was alive everything seemed normal, sane, just … life, y’know,” she began, hesitantly. “Father was always busy with his work, his political and business battles. It made him happy. He was a good husband to Mom, he was … kind to me, generous, but always standoffish, but I didn’t find out why until later.” She closed her eyes and cradled her coffee mug, like it was giving her warmth, sanctuary, from a bitter cold. She glanced to her boy who was back to watching cartoons. Garland looked at his mom and she smiled at him. He went back to talking platypuses.
“Then Mom was gone,” she said, having recovered enough strength from her ghosts and her child to continue, “and everything changed. It was bad. He shipped me back off to those expensive schools I’d spent half my life at. Holidays were … I was alone. Since Garland was born, Joey and I have celebrated every goddamned holiday with him. We go overboard, we decorate the whole house, we make up all these stupid rituals, Joey makes up songs to sing to him.” The summer returned to her and I could feel it. It was part of her Fae nature, the world mirrored her moods, when she laughed there was birdsong, when she wept, the rain was cold. “I swore back then, sitting alone at a fucking million-dollar dining table on Christmas Eve—a feast laid out before me, for me to eat by myself, presents to open with no one—that this would never happen to my kid.”
I was silent. I tried to recall a holiday that hadn’t involved a hotel room and a bottle. I couldn’t. Caern sighed and looked to Garland again. Then she went on. “He came to some big event at my school, on Spetses, a few months after I turned thirteen. It was expected all the parents would jet in for it, so, of course he came. I think it was a concert or something. Afterward, we went out to dinner and he was different toward me, he paid attention to what I said, he … actually listened, and we had a conversation instead of him just waiting for me to shut up so he could talk. He was engaged; for the first time in my life, he acted like I was more than just an obligation, like a power bill or changing out the litter box.” She swallowed hard as the memory played out and her eyes got wet. She choked back a sob with a feeble laugh and sniffed. “I should have fucking known, right?
“That night, when we were alone and away from everyone, he told me how … beautiful … I was … what a beautiful woman I had become, so like … Mom.” She was fighting hard to stay in the present, and I wished I could say or do anything to help her in this, but I knew I couldn’t. This was hers alone. “He’d never talked to me that way, never. Then he tried to … touch me. I managed to slip away, get away before, y’know, before he…” I thought she was going to fall apart. She didn’t. She rubbed her face, rubbed her eyes, exhaled, and sat up straight. “He told me I had a … family obligation to him, to our name … since Mom hadn’t given him an heir fit to take his place. You see, I wasn’t good enough to run the empire. I didn’t have the requisite equipment, it seems. He told me he had to make sure the Ankou line remained pure, not polluted, tainted, with human blood.” She looked at her boy again and the anger made her trembling voice strong. “It was our … duty to keep the blood pure. What a crock of shit. He left the next day without saying another word to me. I went home a few months later when I knew he was away and I took a few things that mattered to me, and I never came back. I never will.”
“He gave me some line about an arranged marriage, there was some snobby little noble guy there he said was supposed to be your husband?” She made a choked sound that might have been an attempt at a laugh. It got stuck in her throat.
“Yeah, that
