We still had no idea what the horned people were.
The hunter reached the top of the stairs. I got up and nodded to her. She nodded back and sat on the log, holding her spear.
“Why is she doing this?” Troy said.
“They are trying to show that they are useful,” I told him. “If she could talk, she would be saying, ‘Please don’t kill me. I can work. I will guard you. I will be loyal.’”
The language barrier was a problem, but we would get past it eventually. Conlan has made a lot of headway with the two younger shapeshifter teenagers. They were up to five words. Water, food, yes, no, and chocolate. Eventually we would explain to everyone from the Ice Age that they were free to do as they wanted.
I looked back at the paper.
Isaac had survived. Not only had he walked away from that fight, he had gone all the way back to Penderton, and when the tech hit that evening, he called back to the Order HQ. Now I was in possession of a letter from Grand Master Damian Angevin, sealed with his sigil and signed by his hand. I’d asked Isaac if he had any shades so the golden light of the Grand Master’s magnificence wouldn’t blind me when I opened it. He hadn’t even cracked a smile.
The Order was officially requesting permission to establish a one-knight chapter at our temple complex to “facilitate the retrieval of our brothers and sisters so their bodies can be returned to their families.” Unofficially, Angevin wanted to keep an eye on us, and I had no doubt that once the bodies were retrieved, he would find some pretext to keep Isaac or someone else stationed here.
I had dealt with him before. He had a thing for Erra, but besides that, my aunt and the Grand Master were a part of a much larger strategy involving the higher levels of federal government. So far, the feds had wisely left Curran and me alone.
Having a knight of the Order on hand brought both advantages and disadvantages. He would, of course, report everything to Angevin, probably directly, considering that the Grand Master knew exactly who Curran and I were. Our family was likely at the top of Angevin’s Watch Me list. But having access to the authority wielded by the Order could prove beneficial down the line.
Curran and Paul were walking toward me.
“Hey, baby!” my husband called.
“Hey, handsome! You come here often?”
“Just to see you. Hey, did those files you got from Ned mention any kind of caves or anything in this area?”
“No. Why?”
“Where does the sewage go?”
Good question. The fortress had almost no furniture, and what little there was was made of stone mostly, but it did have toilets. Sort of. If you could call a hole in the floor a toilet. I had thrown a match in there, which in retrospect wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but it hadn’t illuminated anything and went out before it hit the bottom.
“No idea.”
“First priority,” Paul said. “That and running water. The wells are good and all, but there need to be sinks and showers. This will take a lot of manpower.”
“We’ll hire Penderton people,” Curran said.
“It will be expensive.”
Curran grinned. “We’re bucks up.”
Paul shook his head. “Whatever you say.”
They walked away.
We had just finished renovations on the other house. None of the buildings around me were fit for human habitation without serious construction. I would be stuck in renovation hell forever.
What to do about the Order? I looked at the paper some more. It didn’t say anything new.
If we did allow the Order to establish their one-man chapter here, it would have to come with a lot of conditions attached. For one, I would want its existence to be sealed. I should be able to count the number of Order people who knew about it on one hand, and Nick Feldman couldn’t be one of those people. Curran’s Pack rescue strategy relied on surprising the alphas. Nick was in love with Desandra. He would do anything to keep her and her two sons safe. If he found out what we were planning, he would immediately tell her. We had to keep him in the dark.
Come to think of it, we’d need to stick to our schedule as well. Before we had left for Wilmington, Mahon and Martha made us promise to return for holidays and during summer, so they could spend time with us and especially with Conlan. We’d need to keep that up no matter how busy things got here. As far as Atlanta knew, we were chilling on the beach. The last thing we needed was for them to come looking for us before we were ready. And Mahon would, too. We didn’t need that old cranky bear stomping through our woods.
I was reasonably sure Penderton would keep our secret. I had released my claim on the town, so I held up my promise. That and getting rid of the Pale Queen made us trustworthy, and Penderton wanted to maintain a good relationship with us. First, we proved we were handy at dispatching threats, and if Penderton came to us for help, we would take care of it to be neighborly. And second, renovating this place would require a lot of manpower and skilled tradesmen. Curran already talked to Ned about supplies, and judging by the way Ned’s eyes lit up, we would be keeping Penderton’s builder guilds happily employed probably for years to come.
I would have to discuss all of this with Curran tonight over dinner.
A commotion broke out at the gap. Jynx appeared in it and took a deep breath. “Consort! There is a man here to see you! He says he is a wizard!”
I needed to invest in a bullhorn or something. “Is his name Luther?”
“Might be. He looks like a Luther! Let me check!” Jynx disappeared from view and came back. “Yes!”
“Let him in!”
She stepped aside and a man strode through the gap, looking like an academic who had gotten lost in the woods and was now seriously put out. His dark hair was damp with sweat. His naturally pale skin still showed a little of his summer tan. He wore hiking pants and a sweatshirt that said A WIZARD IS NEVER LATE. Tolkien. Of course.
Luther adjusted his glasses and noticed me. “You!”
“Troy, this is Assistant Director Luther Dillon. We are in the presence of Biohazard royalty. We are not worthy.”
Troy executed an elaborate bow.
“Laugh it up, you philistine. I hiked twenty miles to get here!”
“What brings you to our neck of the woods, Assistant Director?”
“You sent me a kilogram of enchanted gold and a blood sample with DNA from an extinct American cheetah! Of course, I…”
He trailed off. I couldn’t blame him. Seeing a ten-foot-tall furry mastodon coming around the corner with an eight-year-old boy riding on her back would give anyone pause.
“Conlan, where are you taking Mona?” I called out.
“Southern pasture.”
“You can’t. Owen went there with the baby rhinos.”
“I will take her to the west then.”
“Where is Darin?” I asked.
“He went to the lake again. He found some sort of magic freshwater clams in it. He’s very excited about it.” Conlan shrugged.
“Okay,” I told him.
Mona trotted her way past Luther and exited through the gap, carrying Conlan with her.
“What the hell is going on?” Luther demanded. “What is…all of this?”
I got up. “Come. I’ll show you.”
We walked through the antechamber of the palace, taking it slow so my hunter guard could keep up. The palace felt eerie, its ceiling too high, its contours too severe. Shadows pooled in the corners.
Luther hadn’t said a word in the entire fifteen minutes it took us to walk over here. I had done the impossible. I had rendered Luther Dillon speechless. It only took a magical scheme roughly twelve thousand years in the making to accomplish this feat.