“Reeducated!” she finally burst out, her eyes glittering. “Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve said? Have our talks meant nothing?”
“Of course I’ve heard what you said,” I responded. “Haven’t you heard what I’ve said? I thought you’d come to agree with the council’s position on true names of living beings.”
“I said I understood it,” Justine cried, getting to her feet. “Not that I agree with it! I thought I’d made that perfectly clear.”
I stood up also. “How can you not agree? How can you possibly defend keeping a written list of the true names of living beings? Don’t you remember that story I told you, about the boy in my village and the fox?”
She threw her arms out to the sides. “What has that got to do with anything? That’s like saying don’t go to Africa because I knew someone who tripped and broke their leg there. I’m not an uneducated child!”
Before I realized it, we were shouting our views and shooting the other’s down. It turned out that all week we had been dancing around each other, skirting the issues, avoiding openly confronting each other and, in so doing, had made incorrect assumptions about what we agreed on, how we felt, what we were willing to do. I had thought I was being a subtle but influential Seeker, but Justine had chosen not to be influenced.
Ten minutes into it, our faces were flushed with heat and anger, and Justine actually put out her hands and shoved against my chest, saying, "You are being so pigheaded!”
I grabbed her arms below her shoulders and resisted the temptation to shake her. “Me pigheaded? You have pigheaded written all over you! Not to mention self-centeredness!”
At that very instant, as Justine was drawing in a breath to let me have it again, I became aware that someone was watching me, scrying for me. I blinked and concentrated and knew that Justine had just picked up on it, too. It was Morgan, trying to find me. She must not have cast concealing spells. As soon as I made that connection, she winked out, as if she were only trying to locate me to see where I was. I looked down at Justine, saw what we looked like, with her hands pressed against my stomach and me holding her arms, both of us arguing passionately, and realized what it might have looked like to Morgan. “Oh, bloody hell,” I muttered, dropping my hands.
“Who was that?” Justine asked, her anger, like mine, deflated.
“Bloody hell,” I repeated, and without warning, my whole life came crashing down on me. I loved Morgan, but she’d been spying on me! I was a Seeker but growing increasingly uncomfortable with the council’s secrecy and some of its methods. And my da! I didn’t even want to go there. My father who wasn’t a father; my mother who was dead. It was all too much, and I wanted to disappear up a mountain-side, never to be seen again. I rubbed my hand against my face, across my jaw, feeling about forty years old and very, very tired.
“Hunter, what is it?” Justine asked in a normal voice.
I raised my head to look at her, her concerned eyes the color of oak leaves in fall, and the next thing I knew, she had pressed herself against me and was pulling my head down to kiss me. I was startled but could have pulled back. But didn’t. Instead my head dipped, my arms went around her, and our mouths met with an urgency as hot as our argument had been. Details registered in my mind: that Justine was shorter and curvier than Morgan, that she was strong but less aggressive than Morgan, that she tasted like oranges and cinnamon. I drew her closer, wanting her to turn into Morgan, then realized what I was doing and pulled back.
Breathing hard, I looked down at Justine, horrified by what I had just done, even as I acknowledged that I had liked it, that it had felt good. She smiled up at me, her lips full, her eyes shining.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since the first moment I saw you,” she said, her voice soft. “I haven’t been this attracted to anyone in I don’t know how long.” She reached for me again and spread her hands across my chest, splaying her fingers and pressing against the muscle there. Gently I covered her hands with mine and pulled them away from me.
“Justine,” I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have kissed you, for several different reasons. I don’t know what came over me. But I apologize.”
She laughed—a light, musical sound—and tried to pull me close again. “Don’t apologize,” she said, her voice drawing me in without a spell. “I told you, I’ve been wanting to kiss you. I want you.” Her eyes took on more intent, and she stepped closer to me so we were touching from chest to knees. I felt her full breasts pillow against me and the width of her hips against mine. It felt terrific, and I felt awful, guilty.
“I’m sorry, Justine,” I said again, stepping back. I crossed the room with big strides and grabbed my coat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Then I was out the door like a dog turned loose and rushing toward my car.
I was back at the bed-and-breakfast hours before I had expected to be. All I wanted was to lie on my bed and figure out what the hell had just happened. I knew I loved Morgan sincerely and truly, and I knew I was intensely attracted to her. The fact that we hadn’t slept together didn’t seem to have any bearing on this—I was sure we would, when it was right. No, this was a freak occurrence, and I needed to figure it out so I could make sure it never happened again. I also just needed to get my head clear about the council and my father. A daunting task.
Groaning to myself, I turned my key in the lock and tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. I tried the key a couple of times, then realized that the damned door was spelled from the inside! Working as quickly as I could, I dismantled all the blocking spells, then crashed into the room. Da was on the floor, hastily brushing a white substance under his bed. I lunged for it, dabbed my fingers in it, and tasted it. Salt.
“What have you been doing?” I demanded while he got up and sat on his bed, brushing off his hands. He was silent, and I looked around the room. Now I saw a small section of the concentric circles of power he had drawn on the floor with salt, and I also found a book, written in Gaelic. Written Gaelic is a struggle for me, but I could read enough to decipher that there was a chapter on creating a sort of artificial bith dearc, far from a power sink. I wanted to throw the book across the room.
“Did Justine give you this, or did you take it?” I demanded, holding the book out to him.
He looked at me. “I took it,” he said without remorse.
I shook my head. “Why am I even surprised?” I asked no one. Suddenly feeling angry seemed pointless. Instead a deep sadness came over me as I accepted the fact that I wasn’t enough of a reason for Da to want to live. I flopped down on my bed and looked at the ceiling. “Why am I disappointed? You don’t want to stop contacting Mum. You don’t care that it hurts her, that it hurts you, that it hurts me. You don’t care that you’re going to take away the only parent Alwyn and I have left. I just—I don’t know what to do. You need a father, a father of your own. I’m not up to it.”
“Son, you don’t understand,” Da began.
“So you say,” I interrupted him, turning on my side, my back to him. “No one understands how you feel. No one has ever lost anyone they cared about, except you. No one has felt your kind of pain, except you. You’re so bloody special.” I didn’t try to hide my bitterness. I hated the fact that I cared enough to be disappointed. I hated Da for being who he was, and who he wasn’t.
“No, I mean you don’t understand what I was doing,” Da said, a stronger tone in his voice. “I was trying to help you.”
“Help me?” I laughed dryly. “When have I ever mattered enough for you to want to help? I know I’m nothing to you. The only good thing about me is that I’m half Mum.”
Silence dropped over the room like a curtain. My father was so still and quiet that I turned over to see if he was still there. He was. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at me, a stunned, confused expression on his face. “You are,” he whispered. “You are half Fiona. You, and Alwyn both. Fiona lives on in you.”