“I know you came up here with me to defend our life-to help find a quick fix and make all these new people in our lives go away,” Cal said. “For a brief moment in time, Cat, I believed we might do it, too. But it’s not going to happen. There’s no easy fix. I have to look for this boy, Cat. Not as a hobby or something I do in my spare time. I have to look for this boy,” Cal emphasized. “If I can’t find him during my sick leave, grieving over Erin’s murder, then I’ll cite psychological stress and use my vacation time, too.”
“That’s about four weeks in all. What if you still-?”
“Then I’ll think of something else. With Lelani’s help, I hope to find the prince in the next few days. I’ll consider what to do with the boy as I search. It would depend on his current living situation.”
“Fair enough,” Cat said. “And if he’s not alive?”
Cal stoked the fire. It popped a few cinders on Cat, which Cal quickly brushed off with his hands.
“If the prince is dead,” Cal continued, “my mission is a failure-and House Athelstan loses its claim to the throne. If the prince is dead, it would be better for me not to go back. My family there would be better off for it.”
“God forgive me, Cal…” Cat’s eyes began to well. “Part of me wants the boy not to be alive. I feel like a selfish horrible monster. I want you back home.”
“Catherine-”
“But if this little boy died because you weren’t there to protect him, you’ll never be the same man again. You’d never forgive yourself.”
“Will I ever be the same again either way, Cat? Will anything?” Cal was scared, about his mission, his family, his very purpose for being, and Cat was the only person on earth he could ever admit such a thing to.
“I always wanted you to find your past,” Cat said. “Be careful what you wish for, huh?”
“Let’s take things one day at a time. One of the other guardians might have raised the boy. If we whip the bad guys, we might have years here before any big decision needs to be made.”
“What if everything turns out okay? Are Bree and I even invited to join you in Aandor, Cal?”
Cal was surprised by the question. He had assumed Cat could join him if she wished. Yet did she want to be a nobleman’s wife at court in a feudal society? Her family, friends, and history were here-Cal understood what it meant to not have those things in one’s life. How could he place such a burden on someone who never bargained for problems of this magnitude? Or perhaps he didn’t ask her to come because of Chryslantha. The thought of his wife and his betrothed actually meeting bothered him greatly. He felt he had betrayed them both. But what was he thinking… that he’d return to Aandor without Cat and Bree and take up with Chryslantha as though nothing had happened? Cat would haunt his memories in Aandor just as Chryslantha preoccupied them now.
“Cal, are you okay?”
“What?”
“You spaced out.”
“I would never abandon you, but… do you really want to come to Aandor?”
The air hung heavy between them as Cat considered the question. A medieval life without modern conveniences; no electricity, television, motorcars, public education, women’s equality, or even aspirin. How would Bree take to that change? What would she lose by going to a medieval world?
“I don’t know,” Cat answered honestly. “I’m trying to be a ‘Stand By Your Man’ type of woman. Fucking song! But this-”
“We don’t have to figure it all out now,” Cal said. He took her hands, leaned forward and kissed the tears on her cheeks. She moved to his lap and nuzzled her face in his neck. “Let’s see how things play out,” he added.
Cat laughed softly. “I always thought the worst scenario I’d have to contend with if we found your family was that they lived in trailer parks and were related even before they got married,” she confessed. “Our problems never came this big.”
“It’s not the size, it’s what you do with it that matters,” Cal said, smiling.
Cat chuckled, even as she was tempted to punch him. She kissed him instead. “Dope,” she teased.
With her arms around his neck, she asked, “What now, my lord?”
“We get out of this room and attend a good man’s funeral. Come up with a plan to pick up the prince’s trail. The sooner we accomplish this, the quicker we can get back to New York and see our daughter again.”
CHAPTER 19
The sky was a perfect blue and the wind strangely warm. Cal thought of Ben as the breeze caressed him, as though the air were made of Ben’s essence and he wasn’t truly gone. That idea brought solace to his troubled thoughts as they laid the old man to rest beneath Rosencrantz’s shade.
Cat stood beside him. She hadn’t let him out of her grasp since their talk in the Scottish bedroom. She was still angry at him for the secrets he held from her, but Helen’s loss put things in perspective-a dark foreshadowing of what Cat might experience soon enough. Lelani leaned against the tree, drawing in its healing energies and recuperating from her injuries. Seth brooded in his own lonely corner.
Ben’s children had argued with their mother that he needed to be autopsied and then put to rest with his ancestors at the family cemetery in Puerto Rico. But Helen would hear nothing of it. Ben had been caretaker of the world’s only sentient tree… the world’s last wizard. There were greater traditions to uphold.
It was a beautiful service. A local minister who knew of Ben’s special circumstances led the service. He added elements into the service that reminded Cal of the Druid culture back home. Ben’s children each read from scripture. They sang hymns. His body had been anointed with lavender oil and wrapped in a clean white linen. He was placed directly into the earth without a coffin. In time, his flesh would become part of the meadow, and those who knew him in life would always feel his presence in this place. The Reyes children looked at Cal and his group as intruders who brought carnage to their parents’ home. The bodies of men and monsters were still strewn about the meadow when the children had arrived. Cal and Seth had spent the rest of the morning throwing them into a pyre. They worried that the lingering smell of burnt flesh would pollute the ceremony, but a timely warm breeze cleared the air at the last moment. No doubt, the tree’s doing. The kids hadn’t said anything to Cal, but he knew they blamed him for their father’s death. He agreed with them; another burden to carry.
Cal had gone to too many funerals in his day-too many fallen comrades on both worlds. It was part of being a soldier, a protector. As a young man, duty and honor motivated him. This conflict was not a job, though… it was about family. It was everything he held dear in the universe thrown like dice into a cosmic crapshoot of war and peace. So many pieces in flux. How could he possibly make it all right?
Seth was taking the death especially hard. He sat on a fold-out chair next to the trailer, smoking a cigarette, contemplating the grass. Seth hadn’t spoken since Cal found him huddled with Helen and Ben. The cop couldn’t understand it. The boy had no conscience, and yet he was broken up over a man he knew barely a day. He wished he could expel him from the mission, but Lelani insisted that Seth had a purpose. She had faith in her old teacher’s decision.
The Reyes family headed back to Puerto Rico via the conduit, leaving the four of them alone. Lelani took out the lead canister Cal had found on the mage and turned it in her hand. Seth joined them, looking worriedly at the canister and its bright yellow and black markings.
“Well?” Cal prompted.
“It does not bode well,” Lelani said.
“Our ‘bodings’ always suck,” Seth said.