She shut the library door behind her and leaned against it.
“Okay, sweet cheeks. What happened? Another Baba Yaga interlude?”
“Yeah. Get this, she says I can understand French. And a bunch of other languages. She’s flipped!”
Instead of agreeing with her immediately, he stroked his chin. “Well,” he finally said, “that does make sense. Some of my languages are rusty, like I haven’t spoken Vietnamese in over two hundred years, but we were in France in the late 1900’s.”
As exhausted and stressed as she was, Lina felt tears of frustration spring to her eyes. “Help me, please? She said you might be able to.”
“Oh, sweetie. Come here.” He enveloped her in a hug as she sobbed against him.
“I’m sooo tired. I’m worried about all of…all of this, whatever this is. I’m hungry and I just want a bath and want to go to bed after I eat and that bitch is driving me crazy, and—”
He stroked her hair. “Honey, shhh, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” He sat on a nearby loveseat and pulled her into his lap. “Relax.” He held her so her forehead rested against his. “Close your eyes and listen to me…”
He took her on a journey to the past, telling her some of their life together, their younger days growing up in a small village outside of Lyon. Of how their parents were best friends, how they grew up together.
“I called you mon ange,” he said.
“My angel,” she whispered.
“Very good.” His voice grew softer as he told her stories. In a few minutes, he said, “Est-ce que l'aide?”
She smiled. “Oui. Oh, holy crap! I understood that!”
He laughed and helped her up, out of his lap. “Let’s go in and test you, kiddo.”
Everyone went quiet as they returned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Je regrette.”
“Holy crap!” Rick and Jan said together.
She smirked. “Yeah, I now remember how to speak French. I think. Let’s get this over with.”
The attorney warily eyed her, but continued speaking in French. This time, Lina understood nearly everything he said. If there was something she didn’t understand, she had one of the men translate it into English for her.
The reading of the will didn’t take long. Everything—the house, all its contents, and all her assets—went to Lina. There was a sealed letter for Andel, which the attorney handed over to him.
And that was it.
“Are there any other questions or concerns?” the attorney asked.
She glanced at him, then at Andel. “Is he…one of us?” she softly asked him in English.
Andel smiled. “James is from dragon lineage, if that’s your question.”
“Ah.” She started to ask Andel something else, but he politely raised a hand to stay her. “Let me read this first, please. Then I will spend all day and night answering anything you wish to ask me.”
Lina nodded. “Of course.”
He broke the wax seal on the envelope and withdrew the single page. As he read it, his eyes brimmed with tears. Then he burst into laughter. When he finished, he smiled and returned the letter to the envelope. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket, dried his eyes, and blew his nose. “I’m sorry, my dear.” He looked around. “There is…an object we need to discuss.”
“The tablet.”
He looked startled. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to discuss this openly.”
Daniel arched an eyebrow at him. “Andel, you’re about the only one in this room, with the exception of Perry Mason, here, who hasn’t been in the loop about the tablet.”
That seemed to confuse him even more. “What?”
Jocko waved him down. “Relax, Andel. It’s under control. Get comfy, it’ll be a whopper of a story.”
Lina let the others do most of the talking. She didn’t want to talk. She only wanted to eat and sleep. Sitting still for more than a few minutes in her fairly comfy chair, she found herself dozing off.
A gentle nudge to her shoulder startled her awake. Callie. “Hey, want to go eat? We’ll let the guys finish up here.”
Lina wearily nodded and hauled herself out of the chair. They followed the delicious smell of food through the first floor until they found the dining room, where a long sideboard had been covered from one end to the other in chafing dishes and platters full of nommy goodness.
“They must have told them Wally and the wolves were coming with us,” Callie joked.
As Lina grabbed a clean plate from the stack at the end of the sideboard, a ridiculously stupid thought hit her.
She turned to Callie. “You’re Baba Yaga’s sister.”
A puzzled smile crossed Callie’s face. “Yeah?”
“Her sister.”
Callie nodded. “Uh-huh. You okay?”
Lina blamed it on accumulated stress, exhaustion, jet lag, and her period. “I’ve spent all this time bitching about her, when I’ve got you right here!”
Callie’s eyebrows arched as she realized where Lina was going with her point. “Ah. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but while yes, I do have powers, my powers are far less than Babs’. On a scale of one to ten, she’s a ninety-seven, and I’m around twenty-five. Now Brighde, our other sister, she’s older than me, but younger than Babs. She’s about a forty-two.”
Lina blankly stared at her for a moment as the disappointing news sank in. She burst into tears.
Callie looked alarmed. “Hey, it’s okay.” She put her plate down, took Lina’s from her and put it down as well, and hugged her. “Hey, I’ll help you as much as I can. But this is Baba Yaga’s gig, honey. I can only do so much. I’m also bound by certain laws, anyway. If I went willy-nilly, I’d get slapped down in a big way.”
“I thought I was so close to answers!” Lina sobbed against her.
“Hey, believe me, no one has all the answers. Not even Babs. She’s as hamstrung in a lot of ways as any of us are. She’s just…a lot sneakier.”
Without a word, one of the housekeepers brought Lina a cloth napkin and left them alone again.
Lina laughed and blew her nose. “They’re efficient.”
Callie laughed. “Seems so. How’s it feel to be the lady of the manor?”
“I don’t know yet. Ask me in a few weeks, if I haven’t been committed to an asylum.”
They filled their plates and settled in at one end of the long table. The housekeeper filled their coffee cups and water glasses for them and silently disappeared again.
“I wonder if I change my hair color,” Callie said, “if it’d spook her?”
Lina nearly choked on her scrambled eggs as she laughed. “You can do that?”
Callie snorted and, before Lina’s eyes, went from a curly redhead to straight black hair with purple highlights.
Lina’s eyes widened. “Holy crap!” she said.
“Yeah, but—”
“Ahem.”
Callie flinched and turned to see Daniel standing in the doorway, a wry expression on his face.
Lina wondered at the immediate change in Callie’s demeanor. Callie lowered her head. “Sorry, Sir,” she softly said.
He laughed and walked over to her. Smiling, he gently tipped her chin up so he could lean in and kiss her. “It’s okay,” he said. “I heard Lina’s comment. I know you were just showing her.”
Relief filled Callie’s face. Her hair immediately changed back to its previous deep-red hue and curly texture. “Thank You, Sir.”
Lina’s eyes narrowed. “Not that it’s any of my business, but what the hell’s going on here?” She immediately felt protective of Callie. The irony wasn’t lost on her, since Callie was probably far more powerful than Lina could ever hope to be.
Callie laid her hand over Daniel’s, where it rested on her shoulder. She smiled at Lina. “It’s okay. Do you really think a wolf could do something to me that I didn’t want done?” She looked up at Daniel with love in her eyes. “He’s my Sir. I love Him. He’s the first man in my entire life who understood what I wanted and needed.”