I’m on a roof, and I’m holding a black cat. And then I am the black cat, and I’m being held by a girl, a scullery maid. The images swirl and merge, the girl and the cat. That’s when I realize what we’re watching, and my breath catches.
Down below Matilda rides to her final hunt. My chest seizes, and I want to look away, but in this vision, I’m not Matilda. I’m the maid and the cat, and we’re watching Matilda, and as the girl, I’m happy for her. She’s going to Arawn, where she belongs. Arawn is the right choice, sweetness and sunlight to Gwynn’s dark chill.
The maid watches, and she is pleased with herself for not telling her mistress what she overheard about the pact between the young men. Matilda should be with Arawn, and this is—
This is death. That’s what comes next. Matilda realizing the world of the Tylwyth Teg is closing to her and trying to ride back. Gwynn is there, shouting at her to keep going, willing to lose her to Arawn rather than see her fall into the fire between them.
Matilda does run into the fire. And so does the little maid, black cat clutched in her arms. She runs to warn her mistress, to tell her what she should have said before. She runs, and she falls into the fiery abyss, the cat still in her arms, and when she wakes…
Matagot.
I’m thrown, gasping, from the vision. I look down, and all I see is TC, my vision blurring with tears. This isn’t the little maid. It isn’t Matilda’s cat, either. But there are bits of both here, just as there are bits of Matilda in me.
Endless rebirth. Endless seeking. Endlessly trying—like me, like Gabriel, like Ricky—like us, to make things right.
I forget about Thiten. She’s no longer important. Patrick will take her, and the elders will deal with her. As he restrains the fae, I quickly tell Patrick and Gabriel what I saw.
“Enid,” Gabriel says. “The little maid was Enid, and the cat was Derog. I remember them.”
“I don’t,” I say wistfully.
“It’ll come,” Patrick says. “And TC isn’t either of them. Not really.”
“I know. Still…”
I lift TC onto the desk and bend to look him in the eyes. “You thought you owed a debt. You didn’t, but I understand. That’s why you found me. Thank you.” I stroke the top of his head. “You saved my life, and you are now free of any obligation.”
“And me?” Patrick says.
I straighten and look at him. “You didn’t save our lives.”
He waves at Thiten. “I’m taking a threat off your hands, and not for the first time. We’re square?”
Gabriel’s brows furrow. He has no idea what we mean, of course. I’m the one who never lets Patrick forget what he did because I’m the one who cares, on Gabriel’s behalf.
“Forever and a day,” I call as I head for the door.
“Not actually a thing!” he calls after me.
I turn to face him. “Do you want me to stop calling you into adventures?”
“No, but I’d like to actually go on the adventure now and then.”
I shake my head.
“I’ll follow you home,” Gabriel murmurs to me. “To be safe. And thank you for coming.”
I arch my brows. “Do you ever think I wouldn’t?”
The faintest smile tugs at his lips as he leans down to press his lips to mine.
“Forever and a day,” I murmur.
“Forever and a day,” he says.
We separate, and I see the coffees on Lydia’s desk. I lift mine, take a sip and make a face.
“Cold, damn it.” I shake my cup at Thiten. “You owe me a mocha.”
Gabriel’s smile grows a little. “We’ll stop at the bakery on the way home. A near-death escape, a captive ancient fae, and a mocha.”
“Best day ever.”
We head outside. Gabriel goes to his car, and when I open the door of mine, TC is right there. He hops over me onto the passenger side.
I slide in and turn to him. “I meant it, TC. Please don’t stay because you feel obligated.”
He eyes me, and in that look I see a question, and I have to smile.
“Of course, you’re welcome to stay. You are always welcome. Just don’t ever feel obligated.”
He settles in on the seat.
“Excellent,” I say as I start the engine. “Now let’s talk about the gold coins.”
He gives me a look.
I reach to pat him. “Kidding. No gold coins required. No dramatic rescues required. You have a place to stay, with all the tuna you can eat and all the pets you can endure.” I meet his eyes. “Forever and a day.”
He stretches out on the seat, and I smile and back the Spyder out onto the road.
Kelley Armstrong believes experience is the best teacher, though she’s been told this shouldn’t apply to writing her murder scenes. To craft her books, she has studied aikido, archery and fencing. She sucks at all of them. She has also crawled through very shallow cave systems and climbed half a mountain before chickening out. She is however an expert coffee drinker and a true connoisseur of chocolate-chip cookies.
Connect with Kelley at: https://www.kelleyarmstrong.com
The Unexpected Dachshund
By L.E. Modesitt, Junior
ONE FOURDAY NIGHT, AT LEAST I recall it was a fourday, because it was right after the south end of dome four almost collapsed and the teams had worked for two days straight to stabilize the ground—all because the geo team hadn’t caught a tunnel snake’s den below the sterilized area—Keryleyn looked across the plastex table at me, and said, “I’ve been thinking…”
“Yes?” I said warily.
“There has to be more to life than this.”
“I agree,” I replied, and then I said the most dangerous words a man could utter. “What do you have in mind?”
“They have a few puppy zygotes on the mothership. There’s a miniature, cream, longhaired dachshund. His name is Rudolfo…”
“We can’t afford whatever they want. Not just the cost…but the food—”
“He’s a miniature, Dom. They don’t eat much…”
For once, I didn’t answer immediately. I just looked into her eyes. That was enough. We’d come to Nieuwhuis under the standard terms, and, at our ages, that meant no children. Ever. But it had been the only chance to escape. At least the air in the gray skies of Nieuwhuis was clean, unlike Old Earth. But there were times when life felt a little empty, and I knew we weren’t the only ones to feel that way.
Finally, I said, “How do you figure we can do it?”
As I suspected, Keryleyn had it figured out to the last fraction of a credit, which was good because Rudy cost every free credit we could scrape together, as well as part of our food ration, and that didn’t count the sterilized gravel for his box inside the dome.
Almost from the beginning, Rudy wasn’t exactly what we expected him to be. We had to wait almost half a year, between the maturation womb and his growing big enough to make the drop planetside. He arrived as a small brownish puppy and was from a reputable breeder, or rather, his zygote came from a reputable breeder, as did most Terran stock.
Since cream dachshunds all start out brownish, how were we to know he wasn’t what he was supposed to be? Yes, by the time he was six months old, his coat was turning, but not quite the way we expected. His undercoat was more a golden cream, and the tips of each hair were reddish. And his coat wasn’t long and silky soft, like most longhairs. His was medium-length and disheveled, soft but not silky, and just a trace wavy. The other unexpected difference was he had whiskers, sort of a beard—and longhaired dachshunds definitely don’t have beards or whiskers. But wire-haired dachshunds do. The only problem with that was, besides the drooping whiskers, he didn’t look like a wirehair.